Merged Recent climate observations disagreement with projections

[BenBurch]

and indeed addressing the subject....projections do "disagree" with reality - they have been conservative.....

continues with supporting documents...

http://blog.nodvin.net/?p=212

I think they are VERY conservative with respect to how quickly Greenland will melt. We'll see, but I think they have not fully factored in the albedo change caused by 200 years of industrial soot and tens of thousands of years of dust.

 

[mhaze]

I think they are VERY conservative with respect to how quickly Greenland will melt. We'll see, but I think they have not fully factored in the albedo change caused by 200 years of industrial soot and tens of thousands of years of dust.

....Which when factored in also lowers the climate sensitivity to Co2 and other greenhouse gases...

 

[BenBurch]

....Which when factored in also lowers the climate sensitivity to Co2 and other greenhouse gases...

No, actually, just accelerates it. If new winter snow fell and persisted at a rate that covered over the melt crust, Greenland would not be melting. It is GHGs that cause that not to be the case. Cure that problem, and the melt stops.

 

[Wangler]

and indeed addressing the subject....projections do "disagree" with reality - they have been conservative.....

If they are conservative, but CO2 emissions were one of the things mentioned as having been nailed on the head in the models, I wonder what has caused the divergence?

 

[BenBurch]

If they are conservative, but CO2 emissions were one of the things mentioned as having been nailed on the head in the models, I wonder what has caused the divergence?

Actually I believe the models have an intentional bias to underestimate the problem so as to get political buy-in.

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

Back on the subject and leaving the ad hominem attack on McIntyre...

I'm merely stating a fact. In the ClimateAudit article, McIntyre clearly conflates the two. Apparently you don't understand the difference either.

so you don't agree that the evidence points to lower climate sensitivity, not higher? Just seems like a reasonable question and chain of logic.

Higher or lower than what? "Higher" and "lower" are relative, not absolute. Fitting a trend through 2006 gives a result closer to the high end of the IPCC survey while fitting a trend through 2008 gives a result closer to the center.

 

[Wangler]

Actually I believe the models have an intentional bias to underestimate the problem so as to get political buy-in.

Ben, are you yanking my chain?

 

[mhaze]

No, actually, just accelerates it. If new winter snow fell and persisted at a rate that covered over the melt crust, Greenland would not be melting. It is GHGs that cause that not to be the case. Cure that problem, and the melt stops.

No. Sounds like you are trying to count your photons twice.

• Soot - All spectrum rays hit it and largely are transformed into a local IR intense area.
• GHG - Certain wavelenghs are absorbed by CO2, water vapor, etc. These do not hit the soot particle for any practical purpose.

As noted before, warmer = more snow.

 

[BenBurch]

Ben, are you yanking my chain?

No, I believe that scientists are in general a conservative lot, and will usually underestimate things as a result.

And consciously or subconsciously they realize that they get more support when they are very, very conservative than if they make a more realistic estimate and that produces what seems to be an outlandish result.

And if you underestimate Bad Things and are proven wrong, you suffer less than if you overestimate them, and get looked upon as an Alarmist.

And having worked in Big Science, I know that there is a LOT of politics.

 

[mhaze]

And what did the ClimateAudit post prove, other than that McIntyre doesn't know the difference between fitting trends and fitting polynomials?

I'm merely stating a fact. In the ClimateAudit article, McIntyre clearly conflates the two. Apparently you don't understand the difference either.....

Okay, sure.

The five or six years I did nothing but computer modeling with polynomial curve fits....

 

[BenBurch]

No. Sounds like you are trying to count your photons twice.

• Soot - All spectrum rays hit it and largely are transformed into a local IR intense area.
• GHG - Certain wavelenghs are absorbed by CO2, water vapor, etc. These do not hit the soot particle for any practical purpose.

As noted before, warmer = more snow.

No, the issue is snow that survives the summer. And those photons absorbed by the soot represent energy held in the system. The energy will leave the system in only one way, being re-radiated into space. GHGs absorb the energy en-route to space and again re-radiate it, half of it radiated down. Thus the same photons pass through the system again.

This is what I mean when I say we have increased the hysteresis of the system.

 

[mhaze]

No, the issue is snow that survives the summer. And those photons absorbed by the soot represent energy held in the system. The energy will leave the system in only one way, being re-radiated into space. GHGs absorb the energy en-route to space and again re-radiate it, half of it radiated down. Thus the same photons pass through the system again.

This is what I mean when I say we have increased the hysteresis of the system.

The issue is not net radiative balance? That's news to me.

You are somehow claiming that there is a positive feedback effect on CO2 forcing based on the amount of soot in the higher latitudes?

And there are research articles that talk about this? (no derail into the general use of the indefinite phrase hysteresis please)

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

Okay, sure.

The five or six years I did nothing but computer modeling with polynomial curve fits....

Which proves?

 

[BenBurch]

You do not understand the mechanism, MHaze, that has always been your problem.

 

[macdoc]

If you actually kept up with climate science you would know that mHaze instead of appearing stunned and skeptical.....

http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/arctic-haze/rx-for-arctic-warming

and

Plausible estimates for the effect of soot on snow and ice albedos (1.5% in the Arctic and 3% in Northern Hemisphere land areas) yield a climate forcing of +0.3 W/m2 in the Northern Hemisphere. The “efficacy” of this forcing is ∼2, i.e., for a given forcing it is twice as effective as CO2 in altering global surface air temperature.
This indirect soot forcing may have contributed to global warming of the past century, including the trend toward early springs in the Northern Hemisphere, thinning Arctic sea ice, and melting land ice and permafrost.

If, as we suggest, melting ice and sea level rise define the level of dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, then reducing soot emissions, thus restoring snow albedos to pristine high values, would have the double benefit of reducing global warming and raising the global temperature level at which dangerous anthropogenic interference occurs.

However, soot contributions to climate change do not alter the conclusion that anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been the main cause of recent global warming and will be the predominant climate forcing in the future.

http://www.pnas.org/content/101/2/423.full

and
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_10/

and

http://www.physorg.com/news66586712.html

The effect has several vectors ...... direct heating by soot deposition, inversion holding warm air lower and increased re-radiation downward.

Not only heat is pumped to the Arctic.....

 

[BenBurch]

And on ice masses, the soot that is there, is there. It will not be gone until the ice is gone. Like a dirty snowbank in the winter. You've seen what happens with the dirtiest parts. We could stop emitting soot now and it would not stop what is about to happen.

 

[mhaze]

And on ice masses, the soot that is there, is there. It will not be gone until the ice is gone. Like a dirty snowbank in the winter. You've seen what happens with the dirtiest parts. We could stop emitting soot now and it would not stop what is about to happen.

Changing your tune now? (And Macdoc's links do not help your case). You said:

No, actually, just accelerates it. If new winter snow fell and persisted at a rate that covered over the melt crust, Greenland would not be melting. It is GHGs that cause that not to be the case. Cure that problem, and the melt stops.

Which I've noted seems both implausible and insupportable. But go ahead and try to support it. Using the word hysteresis....does not help your case.

 

[mhaze]

And on ice masses, the soot that is there, is there. It will not be gone until the ice is gone. Like a dirty snowbank in the winter. You've seen what happens with the dirtiest parts. We could stop emitting soot now and it would not stop what is about to happen.

Changing your tune now? (And Macdoc's links do not help your case). You said:

No, actually, just accelerates it. If new winter snow fell and persisted at a rate that covered over the melt crust, Greenland would not be melting. It is GHGs that cause that not to be the case. Cure that problem, and the melt stops.

Which I've noted seems both implausible and insupportable. But go ahead and try to support it. Repetition of the word hysteresis....does not help your case.

Which proves?

That snide remarks or inane lecturing about straight line versus poly curve fits mgiht be something that I would just laugh at (all the more at an assertion that McIntyre, the high school math champion of Canada, would not know such things).

 

[BenBurch]

I know you aren't stupid, so that means you are not paying attention.

IF you cover it over with white snow which because you have remedied the GHG problem is allowed to remain covering it ALL SUMMER and another coating of white snow goes on it the next year and the next, the soot is covered and therefore has no effect.

As long as the new snow does not survive, the albedo continues to fall.

If you can't understand that, go take a vacation from this topic until you are calm enough to think it through, OK?

 

[mhaze]

I know you aren't stupid, so that means you are not paying attention.

IF you cover it over with white snow which because you have remedied the GHG problem is allowed to remain covering it ALL SUMMER and another coating of white snow goes on it the next year and the next, the soot is covered and therefore has no effect.

As long as the new snow does not survive, the albedo continues to fall.

If you can't understand that, go take a vacation from this topic until you are calm enough to think it through, OK?

Oh, well it could also just mean we are talking at cross purposes.

As I understand your initial comment (and you are welcome to modify it any way you want or indicate how I misunderstood it) a "strong greenhouse gas forcing" would somehow have a positive feedback on those tiny little black particles or maybe it was vica versa.

This does not have anything to do with albedo or longer or shorter snow seasons. Now your comment:

IF you cover it over with white snow which because you have remedied the GHG problem is allowed to remain covering it ALL SUMMER and another coating of white snow goes on it the next year and the next, the soot is covered and therefore has no effect.

Looks like made up on the spot guesswork science to me. All you have described is essentially an ice age onset, or possibly part of the PDO cool side cycle. And the energy in the infra red range is very, very low, so emissions of energy from some hypothesized greenhouse gas layer in the atmosphere are not going to contribute substantially to the heat content of our little black bodies. Having absorbed visible light, they are obviously hotter than the air irregardless of greenhouse effects.

I could argue just as well, that melt would carry large amounts of the black soot away preferentially. Thus the lower layers of snow would be revealed clear of the soot (or earlier deposits of soot revealed, over and over until there wasn't any left).

What is not demonstrated convincingly in your logic is some positive feedback between these two things. We are in agreement about the effects of soot in the polar regions. How you have scrambled it up with GHG forcing is the issue.