Climate Science: Roger Pielke Sr. Research Group News

Thanks to Mike Smith for alerting us to this news article

 New Jersey, Pennsylvania farmers don’t like the smell of a federal ‘cow tax’ by Bill Wichert on Sunday, December 28, 2008 in The Express-Times

The article includes the text

“The rear end of a cow could become the next source of financial hardship for farmers.”

“Facing lower milk prices and higher operational costs, dairy farmers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania say they couldn’t afford the so-called cow tax, a suggestion made by federal officials to charge permit fees for livestock as a way of regulating greenhouse gas emissions.”

“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency raised the concept in a recent report on possible greenhouse gas regulations under the Clean Air Act. Those regulations also could be extended to small businesses, schools, hospitals and churches.”

“In its comments on the EPA proposal, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said the regulations might force permitting requirements on dairy farms with more than 25 cows, beef cattle operations with more than 50 cattle, swine facilities with more than 200 hogs and farms with 500 or more acres of corn.”

“The permit costs would mean $175 per dairy cow, $87.50 a head for beef cattle and $20 per hog, according to Liz Thompson, a research associate with the New Jersey Farm Bureau. A herd of 75 dairy cows would carry a price tag of about $13,000.”

This is the type of pandora’s box that Climate Science has weblogged on in the past; e.g. see

Has The IPCC Produced A Hydra?

The clear answer is that a wide range of consequences, with serious environmental, economic and social effects, are going to result as a result of the inappropriately narrow IPCC focus on carbon as the currency for a wide range of climate effects.

There is an important new paper to appear in JGR [and thanks to Mike Jonas for altering us to it!]. It is

Pallé, E., P. R. Goode, and P. Montanes-Rodriguez (2009), Inter-annual trends in Earth’s reflectance 1999-2007, J. Geophys. Res., doi:10.1029/2008JD010734, in press. (accepted 21 November 2008)

The abstract reads

“The overall reflectance of sunlight from Earth is a fundamental parameter for climate studies. Recently, measurements of earthshine were used to find large decadal variability in Earth’s reflectance of sunlight. However, the results did not seem consistent with contemporaneous independent albedo measurements from the low Earth orbit satellite, CERES, which showed a weak, opposing trend. Now, more data for both are available, all sets have been either re-analyzed (earthshine) or re-calibrated (CERES), and present consistent results. Albedo data are also available from the recently released ISCCP FD product. Earthshine and FD analyses show contemporaneous and climatologically significant increases in the Earth’s reflectance from the outset of our earthshine measurements beginning in late 1998 roughly until mid- 2000. After that and to date, all three show a roughly constant terrestrial albedo, except for the FD data in the most recent years. Using satellite cloud data and Earth reflectance models, we also show that the decadal scale changes in Earth’s reflectance measured by earthshine are reliable, and caused by changes in the properties of clouds rather than any spurious signal, such as changes in the Sun-Earth-Moon geometry.”

The conclusion includes the text

“In this paper, we have demonstrated that the agreement between earthshine and CERES reflectances have shown a dramatic improvement after CERES data were re-calibrated and earthshine data were re-analyzed. In the common period, earthshine, CERES along with ISCCP-FD data show a trendless albedo. However, preceding CERES, earthshine and ISCCP-FD reflectances show a significant increase before flattening and holding the increase. This implies a reduction in the net sunlight reaching Earth. In the context of the recent climate change, it is important to point out that the physical causes behind these large decadal variations in albedo are still unknown, and that we just don’t know yet whether we should expect the albedo changes observed during the modern period to persist into the future.

Further, we have demonstrated that the trend toward an increasing terrestrial albedo seen in the earthshine is due to evolving cloud properties, rather than sampling problems or issues arising from the Sun-Earth-Moon geometry.”

Since, as communicated in the Figure provided by Josh Willis in the recent article

Pielke Sr., R.A., 2008: A broader view of the role of humans in the climate system. Physics Today, 61, Vol. 11, 54-55

upper ocean heating has discontinued since 2004, their results are consistent with that independent observational measurement.

The new 2009 Pallé et alstudy further highlights the limited understanding that we still have of the role of natural and human climate forcings.

Staff at the UK Met Office and the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom continue to communicate erroneous information on the changes of heat content within the climate system. On December 30 2008, the UK Met Office website published the news article

Pacific continues to influence climate

The article reads in part

“2009 is expected to be one of the top-five warmest years on record, despite continued cooling of huge areas of the tropical Pacific Ocean, a phenomenon known as La Niña.

According to climate scientists at the Met Office and the University of East Anglia the global temperature is forecast to be more than 0.4 °C above the long-term average. This would make 2009 warmer than the year just gone and the warmest since 2005.

During La Niña, cold waters rise to the surface to cool the ocean and land surface temperatures. The 2009 forecast includes an updated decadal forecast using a Met Office climate model. This indicates a rapid return of global temperature to the long-term warming trend, with an increasing probability of record temperatures after 2009.

Professor Chris Folland from the Met Office Hadley Centre said: “Phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña have a significant influence on global surface temperature. Warmer conditions in 2009 are expected because the strong cooling influence of the recent powerful La Niña has given way to a weaker La Niña. Further warming to record levels is likely once a moderate El Niño develops.”

These cyclical influences can mask underlying warming trends as Professor Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, explains: “The fact that 2009, like 2008, will not break records does not mean that global warming has gone away. What matters is the underlying rate of warming - the period 2001-2007, with an average of 14.44 °C, was 0.21 °C warmer than corresponding values for the period 1991-2000.”

Until and unless the major weather and climate groups can more accurately present accurate global warming/cooling assessments, the news media will continue to miscommunicate reality to the public and policymakers, as discussed, for example, in the Climate Science weblog Erroneous News Article In The Times. As I wrote in that weblog

“The writers of the Time article, and other journalists who write similar misinformation, damage the liklihood of responsible environmental actions as a result of their overstatement and erroneous communication to the public and policymakers of climate science.”

This communication of misinformation is not isolated to the media but is embedded within the climate science community, as illustrated by the December 30 2008 UK news release. Indeed, to assume that a La Niña can mask warming that otherwise would occur ignores the obvious that the La Niña is an integral part of the climate. Its controls on the global average temperature illustrate that other effects besides the radiative effect of added CO2 exert a major influence on the climate system.

Finally, the documentation that the UK Met Office is working as a political advocate is obvious from their webite. For example, they write (see)

“The Met Office offers world-leading expertise to help you make strategic decisions about weather and climate change impacts. We offer an understanding of the future through risk analysis and long-range forecasting, enabling you to make better informed decisions.”

and (see) where their training overview writes

“The scientific evidence is overwhelming — our climate is warming. These changes will affect all organisations.

To plan effectively for the future, influencers and decision-makers in Government and the public sector need to understand how the climate will change and how this may impact their organisation. The new Met Office climate change seminars will equip you with the knowledge of climate change you need to:

• Make the best decisions for your organisation, so that the plans you make today safeguard your future success in a changing climate.
• Using the latest research from the world-leading Met Office Hadley Centre - the authoritative voice on climate change - our seminars will build an understanding of why and how our climate is changing and the likely impacts.
• Focusing on how we can plan for the future, our seminars also explore some of the options available for organisations to reduce (mitigate) and prepare for (adapt to) climate change.

What you’ll learn

By the end of our seminars, you will:

• understand why and how our climate is changing and the likely impacts
  
• be equipped to dispel scepticism about climate change in your organisation and ensure your colleagues’ engagement
  
• know the steps you need to take to factor climate change into the decisions you make for your organisation

Who should attend

This seminar is designed for professionals in Government and the public sector. It’s particularly appropriate for those with responsibility for, or interest in, planning, projects and policies. No prior scientific training is required.”

The UK Met Office would benefit by reading the book The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics by Roger A. Pielke Jr. in order to recognize that they are clearly “Issue Advocates” rather than a government agency that is presenting the diversity of perspectives on the climate issue to policymakers and the public.

Thanks to Andrew Forster of Local Transport Today in the UK for alerting us to the erroneous news article from the Times on December 27 2008 titled

The war on carbon - Arguments of 2009: Can Copenhagen save the planet?

An excerpt reads,

“The stakes at Copenhagen could not be much higher. Global surface temperatures have risen by a tolerable three quarters of a degree celsius over the past century, but the rate of increase is accelerating. The Kyoto Protocol has had negligible impact on greenhouse gas emissions, and projections for the mean global temperature rise in the next century range from 1.1 to 6.4 degrees. Whether fast or very fast, the Earth is heating up.

There will be continued argument about the science of climate change over the next 12 months, but not, except on the conspiratorial fringe, about the threat. Climate change is real and worsening, and there is an overwhelming likelihood that much of it is man-made.”

This is a erroneous report on the climate system! The rate of increase is NOT accelerating. There is absolutely no question that global warming has stopped for at least 4 years (using upper ocean data) ; e.g see

Pielke Sr., R.A., 2008: A broader view of the role of humans in the climate system. Physics Today, 61, Vol. 11, 54-55.
http://www.climatesci.org/publications/pdf/R-334.pdf

and over 7 years using lower tropospheric data; e.g. see

Figure 7 TLT in http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_description.html.

With respect to the surface temperature trends [which have a warm bias in any case, as we have documented in our peer review papers; e.g. see], a good set of analyses on this subject has been posted over the last few years at http://rankexploits.com/musings/ [you should scroll back over the last several months to view; it is an excellent comparison with model predictions]. As discussed on that website, even with the warm biased global average surface temperature trends, the models have over-predicted warming. The GISS data itself even shows recent cooling in the ocean sea surface temperatures [see their figure for Monthly-Mean Global Sea Surface Temperature; http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/ where it has cooled since 2002.

The writers of the Times article, and other journalists who write similar misinformation, damage the likelihood of responsible environmental actions as a result of their overstatement and erroneous communication to the public and policymakers of climate science.

There was a recent Nature news article

Barratt, A., 2008: Forecasting the future of hurricanes. Nature News. Published online December 11, 2008. doi:10.1038/news.2008.1298.

The article is  titled

A meteorologist’s new model zooms in on how climate change affects Atlantic storms.

by Anna Barnett

“The world’s most advanced simulation of extreme weather on a warming Earth completed its first run on 5 December. Greg Holland at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, is leading the project, which nests detailed regional forecasts into a model of global climate change up to the mid-21st century. Under the model’s microscope are future hurricane seasons in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, along with rainfall over the Rocky Mountains and wind patterns in the Great Plains.”

This type of article perpetuates the myth that the climate science community currently has the capability to make skilled regional multi-decadal predictions [in this case of hurricane activity]. Such claims to not conform even to the statements by IPCC authors.

For example, see An Essay “The IPCC Report: What The Lead Authors Really Think” By Ann Henderson-Sellers where she reports that

“The rush to emphasize regional climate does not have a scientifically sound basis.”

Even Kevin Trenberth, one of the Lead IPCC authors, has written (see)

“the science is not done because we do not have reliable or regional predictions of climate.”

[see the Climate Science posting on the Trenberth essay - Comment on the Nature Weblog By Kevin Trenberth Entitled “Predictions of climate”.]

The Nature article Forecasting the future of hurricanes is yet another example of not critically and objectively assessing claims made by climate scientists. What ever happened to objective journalism in Nature?

Thanks to Martin Claussen, Victor Brovkin, and Ning Zeng there is another meeting which shows the complexity of the climate system. It is

“Biospheric feedbacks in the climate system in the past, present, and future”  (Session CL21) at the EGU General Assembly in Vienna, 19 - 24 April 2009. Convener: Claussen, M.  Co-Conveners: Brovkin, V.; Zeng, N.

The meeting outline is given as

Contributions are welcome in the field of:
a) Global scale vegetation dynamics and feedback with climate system dynamics
b) Interaction between vegetation feedbacks on a local scale and global scale feedbacks
c) Global and continental scale anthropogenic land cover change, past, present, future
d) Lifespan of the biosphere, astrobiology
e) Concepts and simplified models of climate-ecosystem feedbacks
f) Comprehensive dynamic global ecosystem models
h) Global data sets for feedbacks assessment

Solicited presentation:
“Climate-Vegetation Feedbacks on different scales” by Dekker SC, de Boer HJ and Rietkerk M

The deadline for submitting abstracts is 13 JANUARY 2009. The deadline for registration is 31 MARCH 2008.
Details about the conference and submission of abstracts can be found at:
http://meetings.copernicus.org/egu2009/

While the policy community and media continue to erroneously hammer that the addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is the dominate human climate forcing, the several meeting at the EGU this Spring (see and see, also) illustrate that the climate, in reality is much more complex and difficult to predict than has been communicated by the IPCC and CCSP reports to the politicians and public.

Thanks to A.T.J. de Laat of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute (KNMI), Climate Science has listed several other sea ice data urls below.

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/cgi-bin/seaice-monitor.cgi

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm

http://arctic-roos.org/observations

http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic

Best Wishes for the Holidays to Everyone!

Thanks to Meinrat O. Andreae for alerting us to yet another meeting at the EGU meeting in April which further documents the diversity of first order climate forcings. The meeting is at the EGU
General Assembly in Vienna, 19 – 24 April 2009 is

AS1.15  Aerosol-Precipitation Interactions
Conveners:           M. O. “Andi” Andreae, Ulrike Lohmann, Danny Rosenfeld

“This session will explore recent progress in our understanding of the interactions between atmospheric aerosols and precipitation and their implications for the Earth’s climate. We encourage contributions on the role of aerosols in the formation and evolution of water and ice clouds, on the impact of aerosols on cloud microphysical properties, and especially on the processes that lead to the formation of precipitation. Presentations that address the impact of clouds, precipitation and hydrological processes on the sources and burdens of atmospheric aerosols are also welcome. The session further encourages presentations on the implications of aerosol-cloud-precipitation interactions for climate and atmospheric chemistry. The presentations will include reports on field campaigns and laboratory studies, as well as theoretical investigations, microphysical, meso- and global- scale modeling studies.”

The deadline for abstracts is on 13 JANUARY 2009.

Details about the conference and submission of abstracts can be found at:
http://meetings.copernicus.org/egu2009/

These meetings at the EGU underscore that a focus on just CO2 as the dominate human climate forcing, as is promoted by the IPCC and CCSP reports, is scientifically flawed.

These meeting support the second hypothesis listed in the weblog

Three Climate Change Hypotheses - Only One Of Which Can Be True

that

while natural variations are important, the human influence is significant and involves a diverse range of first-order climate forcings (including, but not limited to the human input of CO₂.

There has been quite a bit of commentary on the web with respect to the current absence of continued freeze up of Arctic Sea ice as monitored by the National Snow and Ice Data Center.  Mark Serreze has graciously permitted Climate Science to post the explanation for this lack of increase. His comment follows:

“We’ve been getting a lot of questions about this. We are quite certain that the almost complete lack of increase in ice extent since about December 10 is real. Satellite-derived ice extent from the SSM/I (Special Sensor Microwaver/Imager) used to create the time series on our website was checked against extent based on the AMSR (Advanced Microwave Sounding Radiometer) instrument. AMSR shows the same pattern.  This gives us independent confirmation. The past 10 days has seen a very unusual atmospheric pattern.  It has been very warm over the  Arctic Ocean, and wind patterns have favored a compact ice cover.  While the lack of increase in ice extent is certainly quite unusual as well as interesting,  we would not read too much into it right now, at it is just weather. It will be interesting to see  what happens over the next week.  [The] issue with Chapman’s site, apparently,  is that they are looking at area (concentration weighted) versus extent (part of ocean covered with ice with at least 15% concentration)  The compaction that seems to be going on could give a flat line  in extent but still a rise in area.  In other words,  the issue  may be that we are looking at two different measures of ice conditions. Also,  it’t not clear (I’ll have to check) how current Chapman’s data are.  We had a delay in posting for awhile because of some data dropouts. “

Christian Beer of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry has notified the community of an upcoming important meeting on Interactions between the carbon and hydrological cycle within the climate system. In the past, ecologists have tended to focus on the carbon cycle while hydrologist and atmospheric scientists have emphasized the water cycle. The linkage between these two climate processes is an integral part of climate as has been reported in detail in books such as

Bierkens, M.F.P.,  A.J. Dolman, and P.A. Troch (Eds): 2008 Climate and the Hydrological Cycle, IAHS Special Publications 8. ISBN 978-1-901502-54-1. 344 pp;

Cotton, W.R. and R.A. Pielke, 2007: Human impacts on weather and climate, Cambridge University Press, 330 pp;

Kabat, P., Claussen, M., Dirmeyer, P.A., J.H.C. Gash, L. Bravo de Guenni, M. Meybeck, R.A. Pielke Sr., C.J. Vorosmarty, R.W.A. Hutjes, and S. Lutkemeier, Eds., 2004: Vegetation, water, humans and the climate: A new perspective on an interactive system. Springer, Berlin, Global Change - The IGBP Series, 566 pp;

Matsuno, T., and H. Kida, Eds., 2001: Present and Future of Modeling Global Environmental Change: Toward Integrated Modeling. Terra Scientific Publishing Company, Tokyo, Japan, 458 pp;

Tenhunen, J.D., and P. Kabat, Eds., 1999: Integrating Hydrology, Ecosystem Dynamics, and Biogeochemistry in Complex Landscapes.  John Wiley and Sons Ltd., 384 pp;

Visconti, G., et al., Eds., 2001: Land-atmosphere interactions. In: Global Change and Protected Areas, Kluwer Academic Publishers, The Netherlands, 521 pp.

as well as in our papers; e.g. see

Pielke Sr., R.A., G. Marland, R.A. Betts, T.N. Chase, J.L. Eastman, J.O. Niles, D. Niyogi, and S.W. Running, 2003: The influence of land-use change and landscape dynamics on the climate system: Relevance to climate-change policy beyond the radiative effect of greenhouse gases. Chapter 9 in Capturing Carbon and Conserving Biodiversity: The Market Approach, I.R. Swingland, Ed., Earthscan Publications Ltd., London, 157-172.

The Eurpopean Geophysical Union Session is titled

“BG1.8 Interactions between the carbon and hydrological cycle and the climate system”

and will be held at the EGU General Assembly 2009, Vienna, Austria, 19-24 April 2009 convened by Christian Beer and Markus Reichstein (Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany).

The information on the meeting reads

“The carbon and hydrological cycles are coupled in different ways and at different time scales over land. At short time scales, for instance, stomatal conductance relates carbon and water exchanges between the canopy and atmosphere (water-use efficiency), and the decomposition of organic matter depends on soil moisture. At longer time scales, soil moisture status impacts carbon allocation and even plant composition within the ecosystem. Both processes have effects on rooting pattern. Disturbances, especially fire, are also dependent on moisture leading to subsequent pulses of carbon to the atmosphere and major changes in physical properties of the land surface. The sum of all these interactions may have significant impacts on the regional and global climate systems. Therefore, an improved understanding of the interaction of carbon and water cycles is crucial for future climate predictions.

This symposium aims at bringing together a wide range of studies that address the relation between the water and carbon cycle at scales ranging from plot level, through catchment and regional to global scales. Both modelling and observational studies are solicited.”

The deadline for submitting abstracts is January 13, 2009. The abstract submission procedure is at
the program of the biogeosciences division on the website link  http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2009/sessionprogramme/BG
Once there,  click on “abtract submission” under session BG1.8.

This session provides an opportunity to implement some of the findings and recommendations in the 2005 NRC report that climate involves interactions across spatial scales of physical, chemical and biological processes. The NRC report is

National Research Council, 2005: Radiative forcing of climate change: Expanding the concept and addressing uncertainties. Committee on Radiative Forcing Effects on Climate Change, Climate Research Committee, Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, Division on Earth and Life Studies, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., 208 pp.