Monday, November 18, 2013

NCAR scientist admits IPCC may be wrong on clouds, may have a net cooling effect instead of warming

Cloud expert Dr. Greg Holland, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, says in a Huff Post article today, "The current consensus on this from the IPCC is that the clouds are in the net warmingNot real sure. There is a possibility that the other effects are dominating and they could be cooling. So this is one of those areas that we need to know a lot more." 

Indeed, many peer-reviewed studies find clouds have a net cooling negative-feedback effect, opposite of the claims of the IPCC of a net warming positive-feedback effect. This single erroneous programming assumption of the IPCC climate models, along with an inability to model cloud cover, can alone explain all warming of the 20th century without any influence of greenhouse gases.   

As Dr. Roy Spencer notes,


"The most obvious way for warming to be caused naturally is for small, natural fluctuations in the circulation patterns of the atmosphere and ocean to result in a 1% or 2% decrease in global cloud cover. Clouds are the Earth’s sunshade, and if cloud cover changes for any reason, you have global warming — or global cooling."


Clouds Float Front & Center In Climate Change Narrative (VIDEO)

Posted: 11/18/2013

Most of us learned all about clouds in grade school -- from the different types of clouds there are in the sky to how they form. But for climate scientists, there is much more to learn about clouds -- especially when it comes to the role clouds play in climate change.

Clouds can trap heat in Earth's atmosphere, causing warmer temperatures on the planet's surface. But they also reflect solar radiation, resulting in lower temperatures. This dual role has made it tricky to build reliable models of our changing climate -- and even led some scientists, who are far outside the mainstream, to push back against the large body of evidence showing that climate change is a real problem.

So, what exactly is the overall influence of clouds on climate change and our planet's future? To cut through the fog, I spoke with Dr. Greg Holland, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, for answers.


 


Watch the video above, and/or click the link below for a transcript. Don't forget to sound off in the comments section at the bottom of the page. Talk nerdy to me!

JACQUELINE HOWARD: Hey everyone. Jacqueline Howard here. All around the world, sophisticated supercomputers are crunching huge amounts of data to create climate models, or simulations, that help us understand how our world is changing. Now, this data includes global temperatures, extreme weather events, rainfall, sea levels, and even wind patterns. Sounds crazy cool, right? But there remains some doubt around one critical component: Clouds. And because of this, some people question the very validity of climate models. As a 2012 article in The New York Times puts it, “clouds’ effect on climate change is last bastion for dissenters.” So, what does that mean? What do mainstream scientists say about clouds and the role they play in climate change? Can we harness clouds to save the planet? For answers, I reached out to the prominent climate expert Dr. Greg Holland. He’s a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

DR. GREG HOLLAND: The really important thing about clouds is understanding this very fine interaction between the warming part, and the cooling part, and how that may actually impact future climate. Right now, the scientific consensus is that the warming, in other words the net effect of redistribution of water vapor and the re-radiation of heat back down to the surface, dominates. And unfortunately that’s bad news because if that is true, that accelerates global change rather than helping us mitigate it.

JH: Did you get that? Clouds both heat and cool our planet. That's why some say it’s difficult to predict cloud behavior and the net effect they have on our global climate. But a recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, hints at a more certain relationship between clouds and our climate.

GH: The current consensus on this from the IPCC is that the clouds are in the net warming. Not real sure. There is a possibility that the other effects are dominating and they could be cooling. So this is one of those areas that we need to know a lot more.

JH: The cooling component is what fuels some of the criticism current climate models receive. See, low-level thick clouds, like stratus clouds, keep us cool by reflecting solar radiation, or they may absorb heat emitted from our planet’s surface and then radiate that heat out into space. But high, thin clouds, like cirrus clouds, primarily keep us warm by absorbing heat emitted from our planet’s surface and then re-radiating that heat back down to us. Another way clouds may warm our planet is by distributing water vapor.

GH: That last one is a critical one because water vapor is the biggest greenhouse gas we have. It’s about 70 to 80 percent of all of the greenhouse warming on the Earth is due to water vapor. [Why the remaining alleged 20% of the greenhouse warming from CO2 indicates that climate sensitivity is only 0.33C to a doubling of CO2 levels]

JH: What if we actually controlled cloud behavior to mitigate global climate change ourselves? Think about it. If low-level clouds cool the planet, what if we artificially whip some up to keep human-induced warming in check?

GH: There are actually very good scientific studies that have looked at this using complex computer models and some fairly advanced theory. If we can increase the size of that bank of cloud, then we can cool the locality, but also, we can increase it enough, and the models have shown this and the theories have shown this, we could increase it enough to be able to have a net cooling effect on the world at large. So there’s one possibility where we could, what is called geoengineering, the climate to use clouds to our advantage.

JH: Clouds for the win! But geoengineering can be risky business. For instance, one proposal is to amp up production of these cooling clouds by what's called cloud brightening. Now, that's when you blast salty mist into the air to speed up formation of water droplets in clouds. But do you think we should be looking up at clouds to combat human-induced climate change here on Earth? Let me know in the comments. Leave your thoughts in the cloud. Talk nerdy to me!


Related:

New paper finds climate models grossly underestimate cooling from clouds

11 comments:

  1. There are several experiments that must be examined because they show that the IPCC does not know their A*s from a hole in the ground. The first is the work of Carl Brehmer and the second is the study by Martin Chaplin listed below.
    There is an experiment that proves that the Greenhouse gas effect does not exist. This experiment which has been technologically reviewed by Ph. D physicists . Ph. D. Chemical engineers and others Ph. D’s in other fields The experiment is found on the web-site http:// www.slayingtheskydragon.com click on the blog tab then on page 3 of 12. . It is titled "The Experiment that failed which can save the world trillions-Proving the greenhouse gas effect does not exist” replaced by the following web-site: http://principia-scientific.org/ This web-site is being up-dated regularly with pertinent articles about the real science of the atmosphere.

    The Greenhouse Effect Explored
    Written by Carl Brehmer | 26 May 2012
    Is “Water Vapor Feedback” Positive or Negative?
    Exploiting the medium of Youtube Carl Brehmer is drawing wider attention to a fascinating experiment he performed to test the climatic impacts of water in our atmosphere.
    Carl explains, “An essential element of the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis is the positive “water vapor feedback” hypothesis. That is, if something causes an increase in the temperature this will cause an increase in the evaporation of water into water vapor.” ( This experiment proves that GHGE by the AGW is wrong)

    Another important website is www. Climate Clash.com -G3 The Greenhouse gas effect does not exist.

    http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/vibrat.html Water Absorption Spectrum by Martin Chaplin

    There is another factor that seems to be totally ignored by everyone in the Scientific world, that is the fact that with about 80% of the earth being covered with water and that there is rainfall over 99.5 % of the planet. The temperature of the atmosphere is really controlled by solar input and is cooled by evaporative cooling, which effects condition and convection.
    Having looked at satellite photos of the earth I'd guess that the maximum cloud cover at any one time is less than 40% and may in reality be far less. Yes there is experimental data that shows that clouds do cool the ground thus because of reduced temperature there is less out bound IR. Off course we have to add to the cooling effect of evaporation from all bodies of water and wet soil, the evaporator-transpiration from all plants including those in the deserts.
    The earth's temperature regulation system is very complicated. The nitwits at the IPCC are not intelligent enough to even begin to understand it.
    There is one reason that every computer model used by the IPCC has failed is because they are based on the unprovable Hypotheses of the greenhouse gas effect.
    The world should defund and disband the IPCC it is a totally political bunch of nitwits. There is not an ounce of science in anything they are doing.
    There are many group of real scientists that have and are studying the physics of the atmosphere (http://principia-scientific.org/ ), but there are also groups of fear mongers like most of the media and the environmental vampires that totally ignore real science It's time that the liars are charged with fraud and when convicted they are sent to jail. These people accuse the deniers of man-made global warming with “crimes against Humanity” when they are the criminals.
    Science is never settled, that is why it is called science-looking for new facts.

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  2. part 2 of 3
    Written by H. Schreuder & J. O'Sullivan

    A recent NASA report throws the space agency into conflict with climatologists after new NASA measurements prove that carbon dioxide acts as a coolant in Earth's atmosphere.
    NASA's Langley Research Center has collated data proving that “greenhouse gases” actually block no less than 95 percent of harmful solar rays from our planet, thus reducing the heating impact of the sun. The data was collected by Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry, (or SABER). SABER monitors infrared emissions from Earth’s upper atmosphere, in particular from carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitric oxide (NO), two substances thought to be playing a key role in the energy balance of air hundreds of miles above our planet’s surface.
    NASA's Langley Research Center instruments show that the thermosphere not only received a whopping 26 billion kilowatt hours of energy from the sun during a recent burst of solar activity, but that the upper atmospheric carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide molecules sent as much as 95% of that straight back out into space.
    The shock revelation starkly contradicts the core proposition of the so-called greenhouse gas theory which claims that more CO2 means more warming for our planet. However, this compelling new NASA data more likely serves as the final nail in the junk science global warming coffin and a huge embarrassment for NASA's chief climatologist, Dr James Hansen over at NASA's GISS.
     
    Already, leading international climatologists have been in full retreat after having to concede there has been no global warming for 16 years despite levels of atmopheric CO2 rising almost 40 percent in recent decades. The new SABER data now forms part of a real world double whammy against climatologists' computer models that have always been programmed to show CO2 as a warming gas.
    As NASA's SABER team at Langley admits:
    "This is a new frontier in the sun-Earth connection," says associate principal investigator  Martin Mlynczak, "and the data we’re collecting are unprecedented."
    Over at Principia Scientific International (PSI) greenhouse gas effect (GHE) critic, Alan Siddons is hailing the findings. Siddons and his colleagues have been winning support from hundreds of independent scientists for their GHE studies carried out over the last seven years. PSI has proved that the numbers fed into computer models by Hansen and others were based on a faulty interpretation of the laws of thermodynamics. PSI also recently uncovered long overlooked evidence from the American Meteorological Society (AMS) that shows it was widely known the GHE was discredited prior to 1951. [1]
    Pointedly, a much-trumpeted new book released this month by Rupert Darwall claims to help expose the back story of how the junk GHE theory was conveniently resuscitated in the 1980's by James Hansen and others to serve an environmental policy agenda at that time. [2]
    As the SABER research report states:
    A recent flurry of eruptions on the sun did more than spark pretty auroras around the poles.  NASA-funded researchers say the solar storms of March 8th through 10th dumped enough energy in Earth’s upper atmosphere to power every residence in New York City for two years.
    “This was the biggest dose of heat we’ve received from a solar storm since 2005,” says Martin Mlynczak of NASA Langley Research Center.  “It was a big event, and shows how solar activity can directly affect our planet.”

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  3. Part 3 of 3
    As PSI's own space scientists have confirmed, as solar energy penetrates deeper into our atmosphere, even more of its energy will end up being sent straight back out to space, thus preventing it heating up the surface of our earth. The NASA Langley Research Center report agrees with PSI by admitting:
    “Carbon dioxide and nitric oxide are natural thermostats,” explains James Russell of Hampton University, SABER’s principal investigator.  “When the upper atmosphere (or ‘thermosphere’) heats up, these molecules try as hard as they can to shed that heat back into space.”
    To those independent scientists and engineers at Principia Scientific International this is not news. The “natural thermostat” effect of CO2 has long been known by applied scientists and engineers how have exploited it's remarkable properties in the manufacturer of refrigerators and air conditioning systems. The fledgling independent science body has repeatedly shown in it's openly peer reviewed papers that atmospheric carbon dioxide does not cause global warming nor climate change.
    Some diehard climate alarmists will still say that in the lower atmosphere the action of carbon dioxide is reversed, but there is no actual proof of this at all. PSI suggests it is time for the SABER team to have a word with James Hansen.
    ----------------------
    [1] Brooks, C.E.P. (1951). “Geological and Historical Aspects of Climatic Change.” InCompendium of Meteorology, edited by Thomas F. Malone, pp. 1004-18 (at 1016). Boston: American Meteorological Association. It shows the American Meteorological Society had refuted the concept of a GHE in 1951 in itsCompendium of Meteorology. They stated that the idea that CO2could alter the climate “was never widely accepted and was abandoned when it was found that all the long-wave radiation [that would be] absorbed by CO2is [already] absorbed by water vapor.”
    [2] Darwall, R., 'The Age of Global Warming: A History,' (March, 2013), Quartet Books

    The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance."
    —Albert Einstein
    Albert Einstein once said, “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” Einstein’s words express a foundational principle of science intoned by the logician, Karl Popper: Falsifiability. In order to verify a hypothesis there must be a test by which it can be proved false. A thousand observations may appear to verify a hypothesis, but one critical failure could result in its demise. The history of science is littered with such examples.

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  4. JACQUELINE HOWARD: I am awaiting a posting of my concern that 90 % of the pretend climate scientists/ cloud experts, IPCC are ignoring the most important factor in earth's weather system-evaporative cooling. Every meteorologists knows its effect. It may be called by other names like "wind chill factors" ,evapo-transpiration, sublimation from ice etc. the net effect is that it is happening from 99.50% of the earths surface. Cloud cover may be 40 % of the earth's surface at any time.
    The biggest problem is there is no credible test that proves that the "greenhouse gas effect" exists. Every "climate model" is based on a Hypotheses that can not be proved. Therefore no mater how super powerful the computer is used the old adage applies "garbage in is garbage out at super high speed.
    Albert Einstein once said, “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” Einstein’s words express a foundational principle of science intoned by the logician, Karl Popper: Falsifiability. In order to verify a hypothesis there must be a test by which it can be proved false. A thousand observations may appear to verify a hypothesis, but one critical failure could result in its demise. The history of science is littered with such examples.
    The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance."
    —Albert Einstein

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  5. For an explaination of the cloud cooling mechanism that is significantly different from the one usually cited, go to M. Hertzberg, Energy & Environment, Vol 23, No. 5 2012, pp819ff.

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  6. http://www.psmag.com/environment/don-ho-solution-global-warming-71132/

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  7. http://www.earth-syst-dynam.net/3/97/2012/esd-3-97-2012.pdf

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  8. http://www.klimatupplysningen.se/2014/01/14/moln-klimatvetenskapens-joker/

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  9. models all over the map on clouds

    http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-14-00113.1?af=R

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  10. Cloud formation is an exothermic process, when water vapor converts to water droplets the Heat of vaporization is rejected to the atmosphere.
    What is still to be identified is the effect of "evaporative cooling".
    while clouds only cover a portion of the sky at any one time, why is evaporative cooling ignored when evaporative cooling is occurring over every square inch of the planet 24/7/365.25. Yes the amount of evaporative cooling will vary significantly from near zero from the deserts to a maximum from the oceans during high winds and storms. No one has a commuter with the capacity to determine an educated guess as to how much cooling is occurring from this source.
    As it has been proven by many experiments that the Greenhouse gas effect does not exists, this leaves the water cycle as the second most important effect in weather control.
    A simple definition of climate shows that man can not control it. Climate is the average pattern of thousands of weather days end to end for one location or region. There are many thousand different climates in the world from the cold of either the North & South poles to the heat of the tropics. Only an nitwit would try to lump these different average patterns together. The best way to hide the meaning of an experiment is to average the data. You loose the importance of the details.

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  11. The big, big, big problems that most pretend scientists think that there is only one answer to what is happening, in reality all three or 15 things can be happening simultaneously, thus clouds can be absorbing sun light on the tops, the water particles can be radiating IR and other Electromagnetic energy, in all directions, water vapor is condensing to water droplets , water droplets can be freezing to ice crystal(releasing energy) changes in volume caused by condensing and freezing, evaporation from the water droplets or sublimation from the ice crystals. There is no steady state when looking at clouds and the weather. In maybe 200 years we might have sophisticated enough computers to handle most of the variable, by then who will give a dam, because all of us today will be dead and the scientists of that day will realize that its a waste of time to try to control the weather because the sun is the primary source of our energy, and we still will not be able to control it.

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