Global Warming Opens Up Antarctic Waterways

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by Tensen

Yes, trivially. There is no question about what CO2 does in the atmosphere. Most deniers have long given up asking this question and moved on to trying to say it's natural, or that the results won't be severe enough to matter.

I'm still waiting to hear the reasons (or excuses if need be) why the predicted warming of the troposphere over equatorial regions hasn't happened. Perhaps you can inform me since you appear to be so well versed in the subject.

[Tensen]

Originally Posted by LakeSuperior

Tensen, methinks you are over your head and making stuff up here. To the first point...a simple analogy, to the second, lecture us on modeling and cloud cover. Check on most recent cloud cover comments from the modelers.

Best think again then.

For the first, acceleration is the result, gravity is a cause. There is no possibility of needing to differentiate them.

For the second I owe you an apology, I didn't read closely, and missed your error about H2O. Trapping water in the atmosphere is not the crux of GW. The CO2 itself traps heat, it doesn't require water to do it for it.

[LakeSuperior]

Originally Posted by Tensen

Best think again then.

For the first, acceleration is the result, gravity is a cause. There is no possibility of needing to differentiate them.

For the second I owe you an apology, I didn't read closely, and missed your error about H2O. Trapping water in the atmosphere is not the crux of GW. The CO2 itself traps heat, it doesn't require water to do it for it.

Tensen, no offense here but as I suspected, you may want to take a couple classes as you have a couple seriously fundamental misunderstandings about how things work.
Cheers!

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by TeddyDiver

Nobody can... What you can do is an observation of objects influencing each other in space, but you can't prove it when you don't know what it really is..

Well I'll stand corrected. However there is Newton's law of universal gravitation which was superseded by Einstein's theory of Relativity yet is satisfactory for many gravity calculation purposes.

[LakeSuperior]

From the RSS satellite monthly global mean surface temperature anomaly dataset. Still no warming. This measurement BTW was considered by NASA to be the best method to estimate earths mean temperature.

El Niño or ñot, the Pause lengthens again | Watts Up With That?

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by LakeSuperior

Interestingly enough there is no test you can perform that will differentiate gravity from acceleration. Recognition of this fact was key in formulating the theory of general relativity.

Then to connect the dots...think of a test that will differentiate AGW from natural cycles in the climate.

Can we determine that 100 more ppm of CO2 really allowing more H2O to be retained in the atmosphere. This is the crux of the AGW theory. The weak link in the models is modeling the global cloud coverage and types as some cloud types affect a net heat retention and other cloud types affect a net heat loss (by reflecting solar energy into outer space.)

Climate change: More carbon dioxide leads to fewer clouds | Phys.org

The warmer the air, the more water can evaporate: a simple relationship familiar to us from everyday life. Researchers from Germany and the Netherlands have now established that this is not always the case: although an increase in the greenhouse gas CO2 makes the climate warmer, it also allows less water to evaporate. Plants, with their billions of tiny leaf pores, are the cause of this apparent contradiction. They influence the gas and moisture content of the air around them. Using new calculations of an atmospheric model, the researchers found that this sets in motion a cascade of processes, finally resulting in global warming.

"We wanted to know how the foreseeable rise in CO2 would affect cloud formation in temperate climate zones and what part the vegetation plays in this," says Jordi Vilà-Guerau de Arellano from the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands. Working with colleagues from the Max Planck Institutes for Chemistry and Meteorology, the geophysicists made use of, for the first time, a computer model that takes account of the soil, water cycle, atmosphere and growth processes of plants. The model results highlight how local and daily variable processes, through turbulence, can influence the atmosphere on larger scales....

The cascade starts harmless: in the double CO2 scenario, the stomata close earlier since the plants can assimilate the necessary CO2 for photosynthesis more optimally. As a result, less moisture is evaporated by the plants and there is overall less water vapour introduced into the atmosphere.

Consequently, fewer cumulus clouds are formed, which means that the Earth's surface becomes warmer, as the sun's rays hit it directly and are not reflected by clouds. Then, warmer air creates more turbulence in the atmosphere near the surface, and in consequence there is more heat and less moisture transported. The earth and the atmosphere thus heat up through the plants' response to the higher CO2 levels.

The researchers have thus found another feedback mechanism in the climate system, a self-reinforcing process. This feedback mechanism did not develop in the second scenario, in which the atmosphere only warms by two degrees Celsius without the effect of higher concentrations of the greenhouse gas CO2 on plants.

The researchers then simulated a third scenario in which they increased both the CO2 levels and the temperature. "Positive effects on cloud formation include the ability of the warmer atmosphere to hold more water or increase the growth of biomass. However, they are only partly able to compensate for the reduction in cloud formation," according to Jordi Vilà. "Evaporation will fall by 15%. The atmospheric boundary layer dries out, and fewer clouds form," adds Jos Lelieveld, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz....

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by LakeSuperior

From the RSS satellite monthly global mean surface temperature anomaly dataset. Still no warming. This measurement BTW was considered by NASA to be the best method to estimate earths mean temperature.

El Niño or ñot, the Pause lengthens again | Watts Up With That?

OMG OMG that will be so quickly debunked by the alarmists. Better get one in before they do using the same weapons

HotWhopper: Much to the dismay of Christopher Monckton and his illiterati fans at WUWT, it's still not cooling

Notice:

• The name calling.
• The manipulating of the data points to arrive at the desired results.
• Slipping in the odd fib (e.g. Chart title "error").
• More name calling and inference of stupidity in those that don't follow the author's pov.

Here's the original piece: Dueling Datasets: Satellite Temperatures Reveal the ‘Global Warming Pause’ Lengthens to 18 years 2 months – (218 Months) | Climate Depot

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by LakeSuperior

...Can we determine that 100 more ppm of CO2 really allowing more H2O to be retained in the atmosphere. This is the crux of the AGW theory. The weak link in the models is modeling the global cloud coverage and types as some cloud types affect a net heat retention and other cloud types affect a net heat loss (by reflecting solar energy into outer space.)

The Impact of Global Warming on Marine Boundary Layer Clouds over the Eastern Pacific—A Regional Model Study | American Meteorological Society Journal

Abstract
Cloud simulations and cloud–climate feedbacks in the tropical and subtropical eastern Pacific region in 16 state-of-the-art coupled global climate models (GCMs) and in the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) Regional Atmospheric Model (iRAM) are examined. The authors find that the simulation of the present-day mean cloud climatology for this region in the GCMs is very poor and that the cloud–climate feedbacks vary widely among the GCMs. By contrast, iRAM simulates mean clouds and interannual cloud variations that are quite similar to those observed in this region. The model also simulates well the observed relationship between lower-tropospheric stability (LTS) and low-level cloud amount.

To investigate cloud–climate feedbacks in iRAM, several global warming scenarios were run with boundary conditions appropriate for late twenty-first-century conditions. All the global warming cases simulated with iRAM show a distinct reduction in low-level cloud amount, particularly in the stratocumulus regime, resulting in positive local feedback parameters in these regions in the range of 4–7 W m−2 K−1. Domain-averaged (30°S–30°N, 150°–60°W) feedback parameters from iRAM range between +1.8 and +1.9 W m−2 K−1. At most locations both the LTS and cloud amount are altered in the global warming cases, but the changes in these variables do not follow the empirical relationship found in the present-day experiments.

The cloud–climate feedback averaged over the same east Pacific region was also calculated from the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) A1B simulations for each of the 16 GCMs with results that varied from −1.0 to +1.3 W m−2 K−1, all less than the values obtained in the comparable iRAM simulations. The iRAM results by themselves cannot be connected definitively to global climate feedbacks; however, among the global GCMs the cloud feedback in the full tropical–subtropical zone is correlated strongly with the east Pacific cloud feedback, and the cloud feedback largely determines the global climate sensitivity. The present iRAM results for cloud feedbacks in the east Pacific provide some support for the high end of current estimates of global climate sensitivity.

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by LakeSuperior

...Can we determine that 100 more ppm of CO2 really allowing more H2O to be retained in the atmosphere. This is the crux of the AGW theory. The weak link in the models is modeling the global cloud coverage and types as some cloud types affect a net heat retention and other cloud types affect a net heat loss (by reflecting solar energy into outer space.)

Observational and Model Evidence for Positive Low-Level Cloud Feedback | Science Mag

Abstract
Feedbacks involving low-level clouds remain a primary cause of uncertainty in global climate model projections. This issue was addressed by examining changes in low-level clouds over the Northeast Pacific in observations and climate models. Decadal fluctuations were identified in multiple, independent cloud data sets, and changes in cloud cover appeared to be linked to changes in both local temperature structure and large-scale circulation. This observational analysis further indicated that clouds act as a positive feedback in this region on decadal time scales. The observed relationships between cloud cover and regional meteorological conditions provide a more complete way of testing the realism of the cloud simulation in current-generation climate models. The only model that passed this test simulated a reduction in cloud cover over much of the Pacific when greenhouse gases were increased, providing modeling evidence for a positive low-level cloud feedback.

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by SailOar

Climate change: More carbon dioxide leads to fewer clouds | Phys.org

Originally Posted by SailOar

Observational and Model Evidence for Positive Low-Level Cloud Feedback | Science Mag

That's odd. Fewer low level clouds don't seem to affect rainfall in the US, at least. I'd have thought there'd be some link between the two.





U.S. and Global Precipitation | Climate Change | US EPA

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by LakeSuperior

Interestingly enough there is no test you can perform that will differentiate gravity from acceleration. Recognition of this fact was key in formulating the theory of general relativity.

Then to connect the dots...think of a test that will differentiate AGW from natural cycles in the climate.

Can we determine that 100 more ppm of CO2 really allowing more H2O to be retained in the atmosphere. This is the crux of the AGW theory. The weak link in the models is modeling the global cloud coverage and types as some cloud types affect a net heat retention and other cloud types affect a net heat loss (by reflecting solar energy into outer space.)

New measurements confirm extra heating from our carbon dioxide

New measurements from Alaska and Oklahoma have confirmed that recent increases in carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air, caused mostly by burning coal, oil and gas, are indeed heating up Earth's surface by making the greenhouse effect stronger (Feldman et al., 2015).

This was already beyond all reasonable doubt: satellites (Harries et al., 2001), computer simulations tested with measurements from planes (Tjemkes et al., 2004) and other ground experiments (Evans & Puckrin, 2006, Philipona et al., 2004) confirmed that more CO2 is making us hotter. This new study is still important though. Unlike satellites, these measurements were taken from Earth's surface. And unlike the previous surface measurements, this experiment combines a decade-long experiment with the right instruments to be able to untangle the causes of heating.

The Science
Rather like a tuning fork humming to the right note, greenhouse gases like CO2 respond to specific frequencies of light. The Earth glows constantly in the infrared (a bunch of colours we can't see) and greenhouse gases respond. They absorb very specific fractions of some frequencies and then recycle the energy they absorbed, sending some of it back down to Earth to warm us up.

In this study, instruments called spectrometers were pointed at the sky to watch this recycled infrared. They split light into its different frequencies (or colours, if you prefer) like a rainbow or a prism does. The brightness of each frequency is measured, the whole spectrum is put back together and patterns in the spectrum tell us what's going on.

The scientists used their measurements to test a computer model of the physics of how light moves in the atmosphere (LBLRTM, available here). It needs to know things like temperature, humidity and the presence of other gases in the air, and these were provided by a combination of weather balloons and some other sources. Measurements and simulations were only done when the sky was clear of clouds to make comparison easier. For the frequencies where CO2 is most active, the computer model predicted the spectrum to within a few tenths of a percent in most cases, so it's reliable.



Figure 1 The top is what a spectrum looks like, with the radiance (think "brightness") at each different frequency (reported here as wavenumber). The left shaded red bit is mostly from CO2, and can be separated from the effect of other things like water vapour. The bottom shows, in red, the difference between the computer simulation and the measurements over March 2001. Differences in the CO2 region are mostly less than 0.5 units, out of total measurements of up to 140 units.

Some older studies that managed to measure over a longer period of time used instruments that weren't able to split up the atmosphere's spectrum: they could tell that more heat was coming down, but they couldn't directly measure the cause. Big, quick changes can happen because of changes in the air's temperature or the amount of water vapour, for example. These new measurements can tell the difference.

In the next step, the team calculated the amount of CO2-caused heating. They ran the impressively-accurate computer model LBLRTM with the observed changes in atmospheric temperature and everything else except for CO2. It was fixed at the starting level. Outside of the CO2 bands, the model matched the observations, but inside the CO2 bands the observations were different. This difference is due to the extra heat being sent down by CO2, and the team used this to calculate the growth in heating from CO2.



Figure 2 As measured at the North Slope Alaska (NSA) measurement site, the growth in CO2 heating effect is shown in red, and in grey the concentration of CO2 estimated to be in the bottom 2 km of the atmosphere is shown. The CO2 heating effect is in Watts per square metre, and the amount of CO2 in parts per million.


From 2000–2010, the CO2 we added to the atmosphere (22 parts per million) added another 0.2 Watts per square metre (W m-2) of heating to the surface. It was even possible to see the yearly cycle of plant growth: spring growth sucks up CO2 and reduces its heating effect, before the plants lose leaves for winter and the CO2 and its heating effect returns.
The extra heating reported here is not directly comparable with the effect known as radiative forcing, which is used to help project climate change. However, it confirms the calculations that have been used to work out these values.

Conclusions
We already knew that the greenhouse effect was real and that we're making it stronger. This new study uses some truly impressive measurements, and reports that they match the predictions of physics excellently. The computer models that apply these physics have been rigorously tested in the past and they are an amazing achievement.

I would interpret this study as being worth a sigh of relief: physics works great at calculating CO2's heating effect so we can move on to other problems. It's unlikely to change the opinions of those who deny the greenhouse effect though. Measurements showing that it exists and is getting stronger have been around for years, and evidence has failed to convince them so far, so there's no reason to think this will be any different.

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by LakeSuperior

...Then to connect the dots...think of a test that will differentiate AGW from natural cycles in the climate. ...

So you think the temperature spike of the last century looks "normal"?

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by SailOar

New measurements confirm extra heating from our carbon dioxide

That bastion of unbiased climate change data - skepticalscience. Whilst alarmists like to remind us so-called deniers of the lack of credentials of those outspoken against the 97%, perhaps you should do some homework on one Mr John Cook

Now, because you quote and that makes it hard to highlight some anomalies, let me point out that the amount of unadulterated sunlight falling on the Earth is around 1100 watts per square metre. Your graphic illustrates that anthropogenic + natural CO2 is contributing 0.2 watts per square metre. Regardless of how accurate that measurement is, do you see a problem at all with 0.2 vs 1100?

[capngeo]

Originally Posted by SailOar

[B]in the Tortugas west of Key West but also in the middle Keys and reefs south of Turkey Point popular with divers

Hmm the ten thousand idiots standing on the coral might have something to do with it

[IdoraKeeper]

This is a most incredible thread. I have tried to read all of it but its voluminous. Its got to be a record.. But no surprise,not one convert to either side. Same as in the middle east. At the very least its an exposition of the human condition. The only thing I can say is its making me consider buying a Rocna. Is that crazy?