Climate Science: Roger Pielke Sr. Research Group News

Drs. Yongkang Xue and Randy Koster are organizing a session at the AMS meeting in January. It is

SESSION ON SURFACE/ATMOSPHERE INTERACTION

For the 22nd Conference on Climate Variability and Change and the 24th Conference of Hydrology in the 90th AMS Annual Meeting in Atlanta, GA. 17-21 January 2010

The land’s role in the climate system – its impact on atmospheric means and variability across a broad range of timescales, ranging from hours to centuries – has been the subject of much recent exploratory research. The meteorological, hydrological, biophysical, biogeochemical, and ecosystem processes that underlie the connections between climate and soil moisture, vegetation, snow, and frozen soil, however, are not yet fully understood. This session focuses on (1) interfaces between climate, ecosystems, and the land branches of the energy, water, and carbon cycles and the impact of land processes on climate variability and extreme events (such as droughts and flooding); (2) dynamic, physical, and biogeochemical mechanisms by which the land surface (e.g., soil moisture, albedo, snow, frozen soil, vegetation) influences atmospheric processes and climate; (3) predictability associated with land-surface/atmosphere interaction and land initialization; (4) impacts of land-cover and land use change on climate; and (5) application and analyses of large scale field data (such as CEOP, AMMA) for land/atmosphere studies. We welcome papers addressing any of these topics. Interaction studies with GCMs or RCMs are welcome.

Please submit your abstract by August 3, 2010 to the AMS 90th Annual Meeting. Please also send a copy to Yongkang Xue (yxue@geog.ucla.edu) and Randy Koster (randal.koster@gsfc.nasa.gov).

Mike MacCracken attended my George C. Marshall Institute seminar titled ”Considering the Human Influence on Climate” on May 14 2009.  First I want to thank the Institute again for graciously inviting me to present a lecture, and for encouraging the open participation by climate scientists and others of all viewpoints.

I also want to thank Mike for attending and for the time he took to complete his weblog. While he and I disagree on a number of substantive issues, he is willing to engage in constructive discussions, unlike quite a few others who are involved in the IPCC and CCSP process.

Mike has posted a summary of my talk titled “Michael MacCracken’s review of Roger Pielke, Sr.’s May 14 climate talk to the Marshall Institute”. While, he correctly summarized much of the talk, his summary does need clarification and correction in places.  Below, I will comment on these issues in which we disagree.

1. Mike’s comment:“Pielke noted that the term “climate change” was not the right term to be using because climate was always changing. True, but by how much and how rapidly really matters. The recent pace of change is very unusual, given the present set of surface conditions (i.e., we do not have continental ice sheets melting around the Northern Hemisphere).”

The climate system has had much larger natural excursions in the recent past. We provide examples in

Rial, J., R.A. Pielke Sr., M. Beniston, M. Claussen, J. Canadell, P. Cox, H. Held, N. de Noblet-Ducoudre, R. Prinn, J. Reynolds, and J.D. Salas, 2004: Nonlinearities, feedbacks and critical thresholds within the Earth’s climate system. Climatic Change, 65, 11-38

and

Pielke Sr., R.A., 2008: Global climate models - Many contributing influences. Citizen’s Guide to Colorado Climate Change, Colorado Climate Foundation for Water Education, pp. 28-29.

We also need to make sure we do not use the term “climate change” when we are referring to “global warming or cooling”. Climate variability and change cover a much wider set of influences on society and the environment (e.g. see).

2.  Mike’s comment: “He then made the point that CO2 is not like a traditional pollutant in that CO2 is and has always been a part of the climate system. He later said that it should not therefore be regulated like a traditional pollutant—suggesting that it would seem that with EPA treating it as a pollutant needing to be regulated, in the future EPA could regulate water vapor and land cover. On these points Pielke is being quite sloppy—methane, non-methane hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and ozone are all present naturally and are being regulated as pollutants.”

Mike is the one who is not accurate here. Human caused emissions of “methane, non-methane hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and ozone“  can result in atmospheric concentrations, that humans are exposed to, that have direct health effects, while CO2 at current, or even doubled or tripled atmospheric concentrations, does not.

3. Mike’s comment: “The focus solely on CO2 is mainly in the media and so in the public discussion—mainly to keep the matter focused and not to make things overwhelmingly complex. In addition, for the long-term (over centuries to millennia), CO2 is the major factor contributing to climate change (as indicated by the recent paper in Proceedings of the National Aacdemy of Sciences by Susan Solomon).”

The claim that CO2 is dominant over centuries to millennia is oversimplistic. Landscape and aerosol emissions (e.g. dust, fires) also have long term changes.  Mike agrees the climate system involves these forcings, so he should be more vocal about letting the policymakers know this.

Moreover, with respect to policy actions, we are focusing on the coming decades, where all of the climate forcings that we identified in the 2005 NRC report are occurring; see

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.

Policymakers need to be correctly informed of the diversity of human climate forcings that are altering local, regional and global climate. The IPCC and CCSP reports did not provide an accurate report to policymakers on this fundamental climate science issue. 

 Mike writes “The focus solely on CO2 is mainly in the media and so in the public discussion—mainly to keep the matter focused and not to make things overwhelmingly complex”.  This narrow focus, also results in erroneous information being communicated to the public and policymakers!

4. Mike’s comment: “As specific illustrations of his assertion, Pielke showed the trends in satellite-derived observations of tropospheric and stratospheric temperatures (interestingly, and sensibly, using the RSS data set), indicating that while the former showed warming over the last four decades and the latter showed cooling over this period, the results for the last 10 years did not show the expected trends.”

I presented the RSS data since their figures were easier to extract from their webpage than the corresponding analysis of the UAH group. Both analyses show a lack of lower tropospheric warming in recent years. However, from your comment, it appears you have concluded the RSS analyses are superior. This issue was addressed, however, in an independent assessment and reported in the peer reviewed literature;

Randall R. M., B. M. Herman (2008), Using limited time period trends as a means to determine attribution of discrepancies in microwave sounding unit–derived tropospheric temperature time series, J. Geophys. Res., 113, D05105, doi:10.1029/2007JD008864. 

I reported on this paper on my weblog (see), where I concluded that

“While both UAH and RSS are outstanding research groups, with respect to the assessment of multi-decadal tropospheric temperature trends, the independent comparison reported in Randall and Herman indicates that the trend values of the UAH group are more accurate.”

5.  Mike’s comment: “For sea ice, Pielke suggested that Arctic sea ice had recovered its average area this past winter and Antarctic sea ice cover had recently been increasing, drawing the conclusion that sea ice feedback is not monotonic.”

I did not report that the Arctic sea ice has recovered to its long terms average (see my slide 8). Arctic sea ice has been below average for several years, and we published on this issue even before the more recent greater decline; see

Pielke Sr., R.A., G.E. Liston, and A. Robock, 2000: Insolation-weighted assessment of Northern Hemisphere snow-cover and sea-ice variability.J. Geophys. Res. Lett., 27, 3061-3064.

Pielke Sr., R.A., G.E. Liston, W.L. Chapman, and D.A. Robinson, 2004:Actual and insolation-weighted Northern Hemisphere snow cover and sea ice — 1974-2002. Climate Dynamics, 22, 591-595 DOI10.1007/s00382-004-0401-5.

6. Mike’s comment: “…..he suggested, measuring the temperature at 2 meters above the surface tends to yield a warm bias—for reasons that seemed to me a bit obscure during his lecture.”

The paper below provides a discussion of the reason for this bias. We have another paper, almost through the review process, which shows this is a global scale issue for all land areas.

Lin, X., R.A. Pielke Sr., K.G. Hubbard, K.C. Crawford, M. A. Shafer, and T. Matsui, 2007: An examination of 1997-2007 surface layer temperature trends at two heights in Oklahoma. Geophys. Res. Letts., 34, L24705, doi:10.1029/2007GL031652.

7. Mike’s comment: …”many other variables suggest that the surface temperature is rising. For example, snow cover is retreating; ranges of species are shifting, etc.”

Observational data conflicts with Mike’s assertion.  Although not specifically on the range of species, with respect to phenology  (see) the new White et al 2009 article reported on in that weblog writes

“We found no evidence for time trends in spring arrival from ground- or model-based data; using an ensemble estimate from two methods that were more closely related to ground observations than other methods, SOS trends could be detected for only 12% of North America and were divided between trends towards both earlier and later spring.”

For northern hemisphere snow cover, see from the Rutgers Snow Lab, where since about 1988 there has been no clear long term trend in this metric of snow cover.

8. Mike’s comment: ” …it seems to me that while land cover change can indeed affect local weather, even by significant amounts, and might well need to be locally regulated, the increase in the CO2 concentration is very dramatically altering the underlying baseline climate for everyone in the world—and so it has drawn the attention of international regulators.”

Mike has ignored, or is unaware, of the rich literature that documents that human caused landscape results in alterations of regional and global climate including; for example, the Asian monsoon (e.g. see); the summer weather over the eastern USA (e.g. see); and planetary circulation patterns (e.g. see).  A NASA press release on our Florida research effectively summarizes this issue (see).

9. Mike’s comment: “I also agree with Pielke that the spatial variations in aerosols and their forcing should be considered, but I am more interested in scales larger than in the more localized areas that Pielke seemed to focus on.”

Mike and I agree on this issue. I am also concerned about scales larger than localized areas. However, Mike is inconsistent in his conclusion. If spatial variations in aerosol heating are important in terms of their role in altering regional scale circulation features, land use/land cover change, and other aspects of landscape dynamics, should be of a comparable importance.

10. Mike’s comment: “Near as I could discern, he believes the main problem is that IPCC and other assessments are not, even after review, sufficiently accounting for his views on the effects of land cover change on the regional weather and climate.”

My concerns with the assessment process are much more significant than just that my per reviewed viewpoint on the important climate issues was excluded. The problem with the assessment process is that indepedent evaluations of them are not being completed.  I have documented the resulting narrowness of the IPCC and CCSP assessments in detail, and invite Mike to respond to the specific concerns that I report.  This documentation can be read at

Pielke Sr., Roger A., 2005: Public Comment on CCSP Report “Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences“. 88 pp including appendices.

Protecting The IPCC Turf - There Are No Independent Climate Assessments Of The IPCC WG1 Report Funded And Sanctioned By The NSF, NASA Or The NRC.

The appendices in Pielke Sr., Roger A., 2008: A Broader View of the Role of Humans in the Climate System is Required In the Assessment of Costs and Benefits of Effective Climate Policy.Written Testimony for the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality of the Committee on Energy and Commerce Hearing “Climate Change: Costs of Inaction” – Honorable Rick Boucher, Chairman. June 26, 2008, Washington, DC., 52 pp.

11. Mike’s comment: “On the question of having the author teams be neutral, I don’t think a coherent vision emerged. For this to be implemented, these neutral authors would, at the start, have to not be doing research in the area, for it would not be helpful to change the process if all that we ended up with was a new set of authors citing their own work.”

The assumption that the authors would be “neutral” or “not to be doing research in the area” is not correct. There are many well-qualified climate scientists working on climate research, who do not have the significant vested interest in the outcome of a climate assessment. 

As an example of the current conflict of interest, Tom Karl was Chair of the committee evaluating the quality of his own surface temperature trend data in the CCSP Report “Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences“.  I was strong-armed on that committee to accept Tom Karl’s conclusion on the robustness of his data and analyses. This failure in the assessment process led us subsequently to complete our own multi-authored peer reviewed assessment which we reported on, for example, in

Pielke Sr., R.A. J. Nielsen-Gammon, C. Davey, J. Angel, O. Bliss, N. Doesken, M. Cai., S.  Fall, D. Niyogi, K. Gallo, R. Hale, K.G. Hubbard, X. Lin, H. Li, and S. Raman, 2007: Documentation of uncertainties and biases associated with surface temperature measurement sites for climate change assessment. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 88:6, 913-928.

Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, S. Foster, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S08, doi:10.1029/2006JD008229.

 12.  Mike’s comment: “In seeking win-win strategies, Pielke also urged that the climate effects of all factors, including natural variability, be accounted for in addition to the climate change effects of greenhouse gases. Well, the National Assessment urged that as well. Indeed, regional assessment leaders were urged to consider three types of scenarios for the 21st century: (a) a repeat of the 20th century climate, but with altered societal conditions; (b) the changes in climate projected by a set of climate models (unfortunately, appropriate and complete model results were then available from only two modeling groups, although less complete results could also be used in some analyses); and (c) based on longer-term paleoclimatic data (derived, for example, from tree-ring reconstructions and other means), evaluate where sensitive thresholds might be and their likelihood and consequences. It is true that the first (and so far only) time through the National Assessment process most of the emphasis was on the use of the model-based scenarios, but the intent was there (although unfortunately not the resources and the time)—the effort really needed to be continued and improved rather than halted as the Bush-43 Administration ended up doing”.

I am glad that Mike and I agree on the scenario approach above. However, the choice of ONLY the model-based scenarios resulted in a seriuosly incomplete miscommunication to policymakers of the actual possible threats we face in the future. I urge Mike to encourage funding in the current Administation for such an inclusive vulnerability assessment.

13. Mike’s comment: “I would also note that I do not think that scientists should be asked what they “believe,” but instead what their analysis and interpretation of the evidence indicates.”

I agree with Mike on this. However, he is in error in reporting what is written on my powerpoint slide on this issue. I wrote “The climate science community should be polled with respect to which of the following three hypotheses have been rejected” (see slide 53).

14. Mike’s comment: “in that for four IPCC assessments there has been unanimous acceptance of the IPCC chapters by the nations of the world without any nation taking exception..”

Mike is mixing up a political acceptance of the chapters with the scientific rigor of the assessments. We have completed a preliminary poll of the climate science community (see) and found more diversity of perspectives than claimed by Mike’s statement of the “unanimous acceptance of the IPCC chapters”.

15. Mike’s comment: “Overall, my sense was that this was a more thoughtful discussion of the issues than Prof. Pielke has presented in the past—and one that one could engage with. So, that’s progress. ”

I agree with Mike on this, and welcome his contributution to a constructive debate.  I also want to thank again the George C. Marshall Institute for their graciousness in providing a venue so that these discussions can take place.  We need more such opportunities, if the public and policymakers are going to be provided the true diversity of viewpoints by climate scientists on the role of humans within the climate system.

There was an interesting diverse viewpoint set of talks on February 26, 2009 at EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics titled “Climate Science Seminar: Climate Change and Its Causes: A Discussion about Some Key Issues“. {thanks to Nicola Scafetta for altering us to this!]. 

The presentations are by Nicola Scafetta, Judith Lean, Richard Lindzen and Karl Wunsch.

We need more such meetings where alternative viewpoints on climate science are presented.

On February 10 2009, an informative article was published by Takashi Kitazume of The Japan Times. It is titled  “Climate Change Symposum: Rethinking a global post-Kyoto solution -
Initiatives to counter climate change have to be ecologically sustainable and economically viable.

The article reads in part

“New ways of thinking on climate change are needed if the world is to create a workable post-Kyoto Protocol framework to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, European scholars told a recent symposium in Tokyo.

Solutions to climate change must be ecologically sustainable and economically viable, the scholars said, stressing that the participation of all major emitters is crucial to building an effective tool against the rapidly expanding concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Four experts from Europe spoke at the Jan. 21 symposium organized by the Keizai Koho Center under the theme, “Climate change: Considering post-Kyoto frameworks with European scholars.” Akihiro Sawa, a senior executive fellow at the 21st Century Public Policy Institute, served as moderator of the discussions.

“At the same time, Korhola [Atte Korhola, a University of Helsinki professor] noted that no linear relationship has been established between the increased emissions and the rise in global temperature. “There is absolutely global warming . . . but data also show that global warming has slowed and stabilized during the last 10 years” even as greenhouse gas emissions increased at an unprecedented rate, the professor said.”

“The professor also expressed concern that the target to increase the share of biofuels to 10 percent of energy consumption in transportation ‘can lead to many, many types of ecological disasters.’

“It increases the use of water, increases the price of food, increases deforestation, increases land erosion and degradation,” he said. There may be good solutions to come in the future “but now the EU is forcing us to employ inefficient and very expensive ways to use first-generation biofuels that are causing much more harm than the benefits that are arising from their use,” he added.

Korhola said one of the problems in conventional ways of thinking on global warming is the view that climate change is a pollution problem — just like acid rain or ozone depletion — and that you can solve these environmental problems by legislation.

“That worked with acid rain. It was easy, and relatively cheap to solve the problem of sulfur emissions from factories and energy generation,” the professor said. “But climate change is a totally different problem. . . . It’s a multidimensional problem, not one-dimensional like all previous global environmental problems.”

This is the type of informative news reporting that we need more of!
“

Climate Science has weblogged about a meeting Global Warming and the Next Ice Age that was held in Santa Fe, New Mexico July 17-21 2006; i.e. see, see, see, and see.

The AMS Bulletin of the American Meterological Society has published a summary of this meeting in its December 2008 issue;

 Manvendra K. Dubey, Charlie S. Zender, Chris K. Folland, and Petr Chylek, 2008: Global Warming and the Next Ice Age. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, pp. 1905–1909. DOI: 10.1175/2008BAMS2359.1.

The goal of the meeting was that

“More than 120 scientists from 14 countries with expertise in the observation, theory, and
modeling of climate change met to discuss how Earth’s climate responds to non–greenhouse gas forcings, and how to improve predictions of these responses.”

The BAMS meeting summary starts with the text

“Earth’s climate is a complex dynamical system that is responding to an array of forcings, which include anthropogenic carbon dioxide and aerosols and solar variability. Aeorsol and solar forcings are imperfectly constrained and only monitored by observational systems with limited sensitivity and coverage.”

Among the conclusions of the meeting, as written at the end of the BAMS article is that

“It was determined during this conference that the optimal path to reduce uncertainties and increase precision of climate change forecasts is by bringing in observations to inform, test, and refine climate models. This is particularly important for aerosols and clouds, which are complex and influence the planetary albedo and radiation budget significantly. Progress is being made and the outlook it good since many aerosol-cloud perturbations and processes operate on shorter time scales rendering them measurable. However, this is a daunting task for other longer-term feedbacks such as ocean–ice–atmosphere changes where our community will have to use paleoclimate data or gather longer records to validate climate models, an interaction that our meeting also catalyzed. Observationalists and modelers (Xiao and Li 2007) must play a synergistic role in climate change research to increase the precision of climate forecasts for future energy options.”

A unique aspect of this meeting was that it was inclusive and permitted the spectrum of viewpoints on climate to be presented.  This balance is often lacking in other meetings, as documented recently on Cliamte Science; e.g. see

Protecting The IPCC Turf - There Are No Independent Climate Assessments Of The IPCC WG1 Report Funded And Sanctioned By The NSF, NASA Or The NRC.

We need more such balanced, inclusive conferences as summarized in the 2008 BAMS article.

Yesterday, January 13 209, climate Science posted the weblog

Protecting The IPCC Turf - There Are No Independent Climate Assessments Of The IPCC WG1 Report Funded And Sanctioned By The NSF, NASA Or The NRC.

I communicated this weblog to the e-mail list for my December 8 2008 NRC committee meeting, and have reproduced this e-mail below.

Hi Art

 I have posted a weblog today on our December 8 2008 meeting:

http://climatesci.org/

 As described in the post, the obvious conflict of interest, and the ignoring of this issue by the agency representatives that were present, have prevented the convening of a much needed independent assessment of the accuracy and completeness of the 2007 IPCC WG1 report. The members of our committee who stated that the IPCC is doing this broad review, yet are significantly involved with the IPCC process, should have reclused themselves. The agency representatives should have required this.

 I would be glad to post guest weblogs from anyone on this mailing list who disagrees, or otherwise would want to add to this discussion. You can share my e-mail with others, if you would like.

Sincerely

Roger

There are no independent climate assessments of the IPCC report “Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis of Climate Change”  that have been funded and sanctioned by the NSF, NASA or the NRC.

On Monday December 8, 2008 I attended a meeting to discuss whether the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council should convene a meeting titled “Detection and Attribution of Solar Forcing on Climate”. The strawman outline for this meeting was

Strawman for Meeting on December 8, 2008

Detection and Attribution of the Solar Influence on Climate Change

Summary: The NRC will convene a one-day meeting that will consider the timeliness and utility of a study or workshop that would be focused on applying current understanding to help clarify an ongoing debate on the contribution of solar variability to the observed climate change, both regionally and globally.

Background: The relatively recent changes observed in the Earth’s climate have been attributed primarily to human activity: [IPCC AR4]

 Increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases;
 Global changes to land surface, such as deforestation; and
 Increasing atmospheric concentrations of aerosols.

Despite an emerging scientific consensus that natural causes cannot explain the observed warming, either in the past few decades, or during the industrial epoch, a rancorous and sometimes political debate over solar versus anthropogenic causes of climate change continues, especially in the popular media. Indeed, absent resolution of enduring claims that solar variability has caused significant (30-70%) recent surface global temperature increases, it is difficult to envision policymakers here or abroad undertaking what are likely to be, at least in the short term, unpopular and/or economically painful measures to slow global warming.

In order to understand the solar influence on climate and the atmosphere, it is essential to also understand the contributions of volcanic aerosols, as well as anthropogenic greenhouse gases and tropospheric aerosols, and other human influences such as land use changes, all of which contribute to the observed climate. Furthermore, because there is growing evidence that responses of the climate system to these various influences likely engages and modifies existing circulation patterns, it is necessary to understand pervasive climate processes (e.g., ENSO, NAO, QBO) and centers of action, and their responses to radiative forcings.

Also in need of clarification is the current wide disparity regarding how to achieve and quantify attribution. IPCC studies have primarily utilized simulations by general circulation models, which thus require that the models be sufficiently understood and validated to engender confidence that simulated global and regional fingerprints are realistic. An array of results using various statistical analyses of observations suggests that deficiencies of the climate models may compromise their ability to simulate responses to small radiative forcings, such as by solar variability (Stott et al.; Camp and Tung).

The study under consideration would augment and advance two recent NRC reports on 1) Radiative forcing and 2) Responses, by assessing how the extended complexities of the climate system likely precludes such a separation of forcings and responses, especially in the case of solar variability. A third NRC report assessing surface and atmospheric temperature trends is also relevant since the atmospheric responses to solar forcing becomes increasingly stronger, relative to anthropogenic (and other) influences, at increasing heights above the surface, so that the attribution of anthropogenic change in the troposphere and stratosphere is unlikely to be the same as that of surface temperature. In addressing the regional and altitudinal, as well as global signatures, of climate change the study would also serve to compile current understanding that will be relevant for the next IPCC (for which regional change is expected to be a priority).

Stott, Peter A.; Jones, GarethS.; Mitchell, John F. B. (2003), “Do Models Underestimate the Solar Contribution to Recent Climate Change?” (PDF), Journal of Climate 16 (24): 4079–4093,

Camp, Charles D.; Tung, Ka-Kit (2007), “The Influence of the Solar Cycle and QBO on the Late Winter Stratospheric Polar Vortex”, J. Atmos. Sci., 64, 1267-1283.

The Agenda for the Study Planning Meeting was

The Attribution of Solar Forcing to Recently Observed Climate Change

Convened jointly by the:
Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences (Space Studies Board)
Division on Earth and Life Sciences (Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate)

December 8, 2008

The National Academies Keck Center - Room 204
500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001

AGENDA

8:30 am Coffee and pastries available

9:00 Background and Participant Introductions Art Charo, SSB

9:15 Meeting Objectives Chris Elfring, BASC

9:30 Solar Influences and Climate: Overview and Current State of the Science
Judith Lean, NRL

10:15 IPCC AR4 and Thoughts on Directions for Future Research
Caspar Ammann, NCAR

10:45 Perspectives from the Modeling Community and Update on Research Results
Regarding GCRs and Solar Variability Drew Shindell, NASA GISS

11:15 Break

11:30 Recent Work on Solar Forcing and Response K.K. Tung, Univ. of Washington

12:00 pm Working Lunch
Suggestions for Future Research (12:25-12:45) Roger Pielke Sr., Univ. of Colorado

12:45 Comments on the Methodologies Employed by Scafetta and West
Gavin Schmidt, NASA GISS

1:15 Roundtable Discussion with Agency Officials

2:00 Discussions All Participants
 Is there a need for an NRC study?
 If so, what are the key elements of such a study?
 Comments on the “strawman” task statement

Meeting Adjourns No Later Than 4:00 PM

The group that were invited to attend this December 8th meeting (with their IPCC involvement] were

Caspar Ammann (NCAR) [IPCC Contributor]
Don Anderson NASA HQ
Jay Fein NSF
Isaac Held (NOAA GFDL) [Lead Author IPCC Chapter 11]
Tom Karl (NCDC) [IPCC Contributor]
Chick Keller (Los Alamos National Laboratory)
Judith Lean (Naval Research Laboratory) [Lead Author IPCC Chapter 2]
Roger A. Pielke Sr. (University of Colorado)
Drew Shindell (NASA GISS) [IPCC Reviewer]
Gavin Schmidt (NASA GISS) [IPCC Contributor]
Terry Nathan (UC Davis)
Ka-Kit Tung (University of Washington)

There were also a few others present including Chris Elfring (for just the early part of the meeting, Walter Robinson of the NSF, and from the NRC Martha McConnell and Art Charo (who chaired the meeting).

I welcomed the convening of this meeting and the excellent strawman proposal as it was recognition of the need to build onto

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.

Most of the several powerpoint talks that were given at the planning meeting, however, are not being made available by the presenters [a very unusual arrangement; as contrasted with other meetings such as the 2006 SORCE meeting - see].  The talks were each very informative, so it is unfortunate that they have chosen not to share.

The titles were

Solar Influences and Climate: Overview and Current State of the Science by Judith Lean (which was an excellent balanced presentation)

IPCC AR4 and Thoughts on Directions for Future Research by Caspar Ammann

Perspectives from the Modeling Community and Update on Research Results Regarding GCRs and Solar Variability by Drew Shindell

Recent Work on Solar Forcing and Response  by Kat-Kit Tung [with unpublished materials removed]

The Need To Assess Spatial Variations In Climate Forcings - Suggestions For Future Research by Roger A. Pielke Sr.

Comments on the Methodologies Employed by Scafetta and West by Gavin Schmidt

My main recommendations for an NRC Panel were to

1. Report on the regional modulation of solar forcing by such effects as land cover/land use change and aerosols.
2. Appoint scientists who do not have a significant vested interest in the outcome of the report

Judith Lean summarized her conclusions of the talks as follows

1. The evidence for a solar influence on climate is becoming more robust [although she and the others disagreed with the Scafetta and West Physics Today study]
2. Models do not do a good job at representing the solar influence
3. The solar cycle should be used to improve model performance
4. There is a need for an NRC study on this issue.

Except for Judith Lean, Art Charo and myself, however, there was no support for the Strawman proposal. The proposal for a formal NRC Panel was rejected by the others, unless it was very narrowly focused, such as on “decadal forecasts”. The agency representatives (from NASA and the NSF) were similarly not willing to support such a study.

The reason, undoubtedly preordained before we even met on that Monday, is that a significant number of the members of the Committee were (and presumably still are) active participants of the IPCC assessment, as documented above.

Thus, the intensity of the dismissive and negative comments by a number of the committee members, and from even several of the agency representatives, with respect to any view that differed from the IPCC orthodoxy, made abundantly clear, that there was no interest in vesting an assessment of climate to anyone but the IPCC.

The IPCC is actually a relatively small group of individuals who are using the IPCC process to control what policymakers and the public learn about climate on multi-decadal time scales. This NRC planning process further demonstrates the intent of the IPCC members to manipulate the science, so that their viewpoints are the only ones that reach the policymakers.

If the NSF, NASA and the NRC are going to appoint and accept recommendations by groups with a clear conflict of interest to protect their turf [in this case the IPCC], they will be complicit in denying all of us a balanced presentation of the physical science basis of climate change, including the role that humans have.  

The obvious bias in the 2007 IPCC WG1 report is illustrated in the weblogs

Documentation Of IPCC WG1 Bias by Roger A. Pielke Sr. and Dallas Staley - Part I

Documentation Of IPCC WG1 Bias by Roger A. Pielke Sr. and Dallas Staley - Part II

As it stands now, there are no independent climate assessments of the IPCC WG1 report funded and sanctioned by the NSF, NASA or the NRC. 

The agency representatives at the NRC planning meeting on December 8 2008, either are inadvertantly neglecting the need for independent oversight, or they are deliberately ignoring this lack of an independent assessment because the IPCC findings fit their agenda on the climate issue. In either case, the policymakers and the public are being misled on the degree of understanding of the climate system, including the human role within in it.

The U.S. National Science Foundation has sponsored a limited number of awards of up to $2000 each to support participation in the workshop by graduate students and postdoctoral associates who are affiliated with institutions in the United States. The workshop will be held in Lund, Sweden, 4 - 8 May 2009. For more information see the Conference website or the Call for Papers.

Download the announcement and application form by which people can apply for these funds.

Submit applications for suppor to baltex (at) gkss.de not later than 15 February 2009.

This announcement was called to our attention by René Laprise (IAMAS), Jens Christensen (IACS), Markus Meier (IAPSO)

The IAMAS, IAPSO and IACS invite the international atmospheric, oceanographic and cryospheric research community to MOCA-09, their Joint Assembly, to be held in July 2009 in Montréal, Québec, Canada:

The deadline for submission of abstracts is January 23, 2009

http://www.moca-09.org/index.asp

Consider submitting a contribution to the Joint Session J12: “Regional Climate Modelling”

     “Increasingly Regional Climate Models (RCMs) evolve towards Regional Earth System Models, coupling interactively the atmospheric, oceanic and land components. Contributions are invited on model development including the coupling of components of the climate system, such as regional ocean and sea ice, marine and terrestrial ecosystems, and biogeochemical cycles. Contributions are also invited reporting on coordinated model intercomparison projects, including time-slice simulations performed with global Atmospheric General Circulations Models of uniform high resolution or variable resolution and with nested limited-area Regional Climate Models. Contributions reporting on methodological and validation issues, assessment of the skill and added value for current climate simulations and projections of climate changes are particularly welcome.”

Sponsoring Associations: IAMAS/IACS/IAPSO

Convenors: René Laprise (IAMAS), Jens Christensen (IACS), Markus Meier (IAPSO)

Invited Speaker: Gudfinna Adalgeirsdottir, Danish Climate Centre

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.