Man-made global warming theory is falsified by satellite water vapor observations

Reblogged from Clive Best and Ken Gregory at Friends of Science.org:

Water Vapor Decline Cools the Earth: NASA Satellite Data

Posted on March 6, 2013 by Clive Best

by Ken Gregory P.Eng., Friends of Science.org

Original article at http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=483

An analysis of NASA satellite data shows that water vapor, the most important greenhouse gas, has declined in the upper atmosphere causing a cooling effect that is 16 times greater than the warming effect from man-made greenhouse gas emissions during the period 1990 to 2001.

The world has spent over $ 1 trillion on climate change mitigation based on climate models that don’t work. They are notoriously poor at simulating the 20^th century warming because they do not include natural causes of climate change – mainly due to the changing sun -  and they grossly exaggerate the feedback effects of greenhouse gas emissions.

Most scientists agree that doubling the amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere, which takes about 150 years, would theoretical warm the earth by one degree Celsius if there were no change in evaporation, the amount or distribution of water vapor and clouds. Climate models amplify the initial CO₂ effect by a factor of three by assuming positive feedbacks from water vapor and clouds, for which there is little direct evidence. Most of the amplification by the climate models is due to an increase in upper atmosphere water vapor.

The Satellite Data

The NASA water vapor project (NVAP) uses multiple satellite sensors to create a standard climate dataset to measure long-term variability of global water vapor. NASA recently released the Heritage NVAP data which gives water vapor measurement from 1988 to 2001 on a 1 degree by 1 degree grid, in three vertical layers.¹ The NVAP-M project, which is not yet available, extends the analysis to 2009 and gives five vertical layers. Water vapor content of an atmospheric layer is represented by the height in millimeters (mm) that would result from precipitating all the water vapor in a vertical column to liquid water. The near-surface layer is from the surface to where the atmospheric pressure is 700 millibar (mb), or about 3 km altitude. The middle layer is from 700 mb to 500 mb air pressure, or from 3 km to 6 km attitude. The upper layer is from 500 mb to 300 mb air pressure, or from 6 km to 10 km altitude.

The global annual average precipitable water vapor by atmospheric layer and by hemisphere from 1988 to 2001 is shown in Figure 1.

The graph is presented on a logarithmic scale so the vertical change of the curves approximately represents the forcing effect of the change. For a steady earth temperature, the amount of incoming solar energy absorbed by the climate system must be balanced by an equal amount of outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) at the top of the atmosphere. An increase of water vapor in the upper atmosphere would temporarily reduce the OLR, creating a forcing of more incoming than outgoing energy, which raises the temperature of the atmosphere until the balance is restored.

Figure 1.  Precipitable water vapor by layer, global and by hemisphere.

The graph shows a significant percentage decline in upper and middle layer water vapor from 1995 to 2001. The near-surface layer shows a smaller percentage increase, but a larger absolute increase in water vapor than the other layers. The upper and middle layer water vapor decreases are greater in the Southern Hemisphere than in the Northern Hemisphere.

Table 1 below shows the precipitable water vapor for the three layers of the Heritage NVAP and the CO₂ content for the years 1990 and 2001, and the change.

Layer	L1 near-surface	L2 middle	L3 upper	Sum	CO2
	1013-700	700-500	500-300
	mm	mm	mm	mm	ppmv
1990	18.99	4.6	1.49	25.08	354.16
2001	20.72	4.03	0.94	25.69	371.07
change	1.73	-0.57	-0.55	0.61	16.91

Table 1.  Heritage NVAP 1990 and 2001 water vapour and CO₂.

Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi performed computations using the HARTCODE line-by-line radiative code to determine the sensitivity of OLR to a 0.3 mm change in precipitable water vapor in each of 5 layers of the NVAP-M project. The program uses thousands of measured absorption lines and is capable of doing accurate radiative flux calculations.  Figure 2 shows the effect on OLR of a change of 0.3 mm in each layer.

The results show that a water vapor change in the 500-300 mb layer has 29 times the effect on OLR than the same change in the 1013-850 mb near-surface layer. A water vapor change in the 300-200 mb layer has 81 times the effect on OLR than the same change in the 1013-850 mb near-surface layer.

Figure 2. Sensitivity of 0.3 mm precipitable water vapor change on outgoing longwave radiation by atmospheric layer.

Table 2 below shows the change in OLR per change in water vapor in each layer, and the change in OLR from 1990 to 2001 due to the change in precipitable water vapor (PWV).

		L1	L2	L3	Sum	CO2
OLR/PWV	W/m2/mm	-0.329	-1.192	-4.75
OLR/CO2	W/m2/ppmv					-0.0101
OLR change	W/m2	-0.569	0.679	2.613	2.723	-0.171

Table 2.  Change of OLR by layer from water vapor and from CO₂ from 1990 to 2001.
The calculations show that the cooling effect of the water vapor changes on OLR is 16 times greater than the warming effect of CO₂ during this 11-year period. The cooling effect of the two upper layers is 5.8 times greater than the warming effect of the lowest layer.

These results highlight the fact that changes in the total water vapor column, from surface to the top of the atmosphere, is of little relevance to climate change because the sensitivity of OLR to water vapor changes in the upper atmosphere overwhelms changes in the lower atmosphere.

The precipitable water vapour by layer versus latitude by one degree bands for the year 1991 is shown in Figure 3. The North Pole is at the right side of the figure. The water vapor amount in the Arctic in the 500 to 300 mb layer goes to a minimum of 0.53 mm at 58.5 degrees North, then increases to 0.94 mm near the North Pole.

Figure 3. Precipitable water vapor by layer in 1991.

The NVAP-M project extends the analysis to 2009 and reprocesses the Heritage NVAP data. This layered data is not publicly available. The total precipitable water (TPW) data is shown in Figure 4, reproduced from the paper Vonder Haar et al (2012) here. There is no evidence of increasing water vapor to enhance the small warming effect from CO₂.

Figure 4. Global month total precipitable water vapor NVAP-M.

The Radiosonde Data

Water vapor humidity data is measured by radiosonde (on weather balloons) and by satellites.  The radiosonde humidity data is from the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory here.

Figure 5. Global relative humidity, middle and upper atmosphere, from radiosonde data, NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory.

A graph of the global average annual relative humidity (RH) from 300 mb to 700 mb is shown in Figure 5. The specific humidity in g/kg of moist air at 400 mb (8 km) is shown in Figure 6. It shows that specific humidity has declined by 14% since 1948 using the best fit line.

Figure 6.  Specific humidity at 400 mb pressure level

In contrast, climate models all show RH staying constant, implying that specific humidity is forecast to increase with warming. So climate models show positive feedback and rising specific humidity with warming in the upper troposphere, but the data shows falling specific humidity and negative feedback.

Many climate scientists dismiss the radiosonde data because of changing instrumentation and the declining humidity conflicts with the climate model simulations. However, the radiosonde instruments were calibrated and the data corrected for changes in response times. The data before 1960 should be regarded as unreliable due to poor global coverage and inferior instruments. The near surface radiosonde measurements from 1960 to date show no change in relative humidity which is consistent with theory. Both the satellite and radiosonde data shows declining upper atmosphere humidity, so there is no reason to dismiss the radiosonde data. The radiosonde data only measures humidity over land stations, so it is interesting to compare to the satellite measurements which have global coverage.

Comparison Between Radiosonde and Satellite Data

The specific humidity radiosonde data was converted to precipitable water vapor for comparison with the satellite data. Figure 7 compares the satellite data to the radiosonde data for the years 1988 to 2001.

Figure 7. Comparison between NOAA radiosonde and NVAP satellite derived precipitable water vapor.

The NOAA and NVAP data compares very well for the period 1988 to 1995. The NVAP satellite data shows less water vapor in the upper and middle layers than the NOAA data. In 2000 and 2001 the NVAP data shows more water vapor in the near-surface layer than the NOAA data. The vertical change on the logarithmic graph is roughly equal to the forcing effect of each layer, so the NVAP data shows water vapor has a greater cooling effect than the radiosonde data.

The Tropical Hot Spot

The models predict a distinctive pattern of warming – a “hot-spot” of enhanced warming in the upper atmosphere at 8 km to 13 km over the tropics, shown as the large red spot in Figure 8. The temperature at this “hot-spot” is projected to increase at a rate of two to three times faster than at the surface. However, the Hadley Centre’s real-world plot of radiosonde temperature observations from weather balloons shown below does not show the projected hot-spot at all. The predicted hot-spot is entirely absent from the observational record. If it was there it would have been easily detected.

The hot-spot is forecast in climate models due to the theory that the water vapor profile in the tropics is dominated by the moist adiabatic lapse rate, which requires that water vapor increases in the upper atmosphere with warming. The moist adiabatic lapse rate describes how the temperature of a parcel of water-saturated air changes as it move up in the atmosphere by convection such as within a thunder cloud. A graph here shows two lapse rate profiles with a larger temperature difference in the upper atmosphere than at the surface. The projected water vapor increase creates the hot-spot and is responsible for half to two-thirds of the surface warming in the IPCC climate models.

Figure 8. Climate models predict a hot spot of enhanced warming rate in the tropics, 8 km to 13 km altitude. Radiosonde data shows the hot spot does not exist. Red indicates the fastest warming rate. Source: http://joannenova.com.au

The projected upper atmosphere water vapor trends and temperature amplification at the hot-spot are intricately linked in the IPCC climate theory. The declining upper atmosphere humidity is consistent with the lack of a tropical hot spot, and both observations prove that the IPCC climate theory is wrong.

A recent technical paper Po-Chedley and Fu (2012) here compares the temperature trends of the lower and upper troposphere in the tropics from satellite data to the climate model projections from the period 1981 to 2008.² The upper troposphere is the part of the atmosphere where the pressure ranges from 500 mb to 100 mb, or from about 6 km to 15 km. The paper reports that the warming trend during 1981 to 2008 in the upper troposphere simulated by climate models is 1.19 times the simulated warming trend of the lower atmosphere in the tropics.  (Note this comparison is to the lower atmosphere, not the surface, and includes 10 years of no warming to 2008.) Using the most current version (5.5) of the satellite temperature data from the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), the warming trend of the upper troposphere is only 0.973 of the lower troposphere in the tropics for the same period. This is different from that reported in the paper because the authors used an obsolete version (5.4) of the data. The satellite data shows not only a lack of a hot-spot, it shows a cold-spot just where a hot-spot was predicted.

Conclusion

Climate models predict upper atmosphere moistening which triples the greenhouse effect from man-made carbon dioxide emissions. The new satellite data from the NASA water vapor project shows declining upper atmosphere water vapor during the period 1998 to 2001. It is the best available data for water vapor because it has global coverage. Calculations by a line-by-line radiative code show that upper atmosphere water vapor changes at 500 mb to 300 mb have 29 times greater effect on OLR and temperatures than the same change near the surface. The cooling effect of the water vapor changes on OLR is 16 times greater than the warming effect of CO₂ during the 1990 to 2001 period. Radiosonde data shows that upper atmosphere water vapor declines with warming. The IPCC dismisses the radiosonde data as the decline is inconsistent with theory. During the 1990 to 2001 period, upper atmosphere water vapor from satellite data declines more than that from radiosonde data, so there is no reason to dismiss the radiosonde data. Changes in water vapor are linked to temperature trends in the upper atmosphere. Both satellite data and radiosonde data confirm the absence of any tropical upper atmosphere temperature amplification, contrary to IPCC theory. Four independent data sets demonstrate that the IPCC theory is wrong. CO₂ does not cause significant global warming.

Note 1. The NVAP data in Excel format is here.

Note 2.  The lower troposphere data is: http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt

The upper troposphere data is calculated as 1.1 x middle troposphere – 0.1 x lower stratosphere; where middle troposphere is: http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2/uahncdc.mt and the lower stratosphere is:http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t4/uahncdc.ls

Greens Bash Moniz for Energy Secretary

Greens Bash Energy Choice

By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL

WSJ.COM 3/6/13:  The environmental community is throwing a fit over President Obama's nomination of nuclear physicist Ernest Moniz to run the Department of Energy. Their protests are primarily a comment on just how radicalized the green movement has become in recent years.

Mr. Moniz, after all, is exactly the sort of true-believer environmentalist that one would expect Mr. Obama to nominate to follow Steven Chu. The physicist is a huge supporter of throwing taxpayer dollars at renewable energy projects, which has unfortunately become one of DOE's core functions. (See Solyndra, and other bankrupt grant recipients.) Mr. Moniz helped write a 2010 report from his perch on the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology that recommended dumping $16 billion a year into renewables)—or three times the previous amount.

He has warned about climate change, and complained that there hasn't been enough action to combat it. The MIT Energy Initiative, which he directs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has studied natural gas and fracking, and it has led Mr. Moniz to parrot the usual environmental lines about water contamination and methane leaks. In Senate testimony two years ago, he suggested regulation would be best if "applied uniformly to all shales," which suggests he is in favor (as most greens are) of the feds taking over regulation of fracking from the states.

Reuters

Nominee for Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz

And yet the left is up in arms. "At a time when the last thing we should be doing is undermining our progress against climate change, Moniz is the wrong choice to head one of the most important agencies in the fight for a sustainable energy future," complained Elijah Zarlin, who works at progressive activist group CREDO Action. Food and Water Watch, an anti-fracking outfit, declared that his nomination "could set renewable energy development back years." Greenpeace moaned that Mr. Moniz was a "strange choice to pair with the president's choice to fight global warming."

Mr. Moniz's sin, it would seem, is in favoring natural gas as a "bridge fuel" until such time as the greens' vision of all-renewable world comes to pass. This is hardly controversial, and was in fact exactly the view of nearly every environmental group not so long ago. Green outfits pushed and praised natural-gas as a low-carbon alternative to oil and coal, and liked especially that dwindling natural-gas supplies (at that time) kept gas prices high and closer to the cost of renewables.

But as the fracking breakthrough has produced a gush of natural gas, lowering prices and creating a jobs boom, green groups have violently turned against the fuel and declared anyone who continues to support it a heretic. This would include Mr. Moniz, for daring to suggest, as he did at the Senate hearing, that "natural gas can indeed play an important role in the next couple of decades (together with demand management) in economically advancing a clean energy system." Even though Mr. Moniz wants to further regulate fracking, and ultimately phase gas out, this is still too much for a green movement that, under Mr. Obama, has developed zero tolerance for fossil fuels.

Mr. Moniz is also under attack for holding the view that nuclear should remain part of the energy mix—an uncontroversial view among most policymakers but a new bright line for a growing number of greens. And the physicist gets rapped for the fact that the MIT Energy Initiative has accepted some money from fossil fuel companies. Not that.

What makes these complaints odd is that Mr. Moniz has the potential to be a bigger thorn in conservatives' sides than Mr. Chu. A former Clinton administration official, Mr. Moniz is likely to be more Beltway savvy than his predecessor. And while Mr. Chu largely focused on renewable investment, Mr. Moniz's wide range of interests could signal that he'll drag Energy into bigger fights over fracking and climate.

Settled science: 48% of models predict a drier California in 2060, 52% predict wetter

A paper published today in the Journal of Climate examines the output of 25 climate models for projected precipitation in California and finds little consensus, stating that "12 projections show drier annual conditions by the 2060s and 13 show wetter." The paper adds to many other peer-reviewed papers demonstrating the failure of climate models to predict known temperatures of the past, much less the future, as well as an inability to even agree on the sign of future precipitation, the effect of clouds, ocean oscillations, solar activity, winds, internal waves, etc, etc.

Journal of Climate 2013 ; e-View

doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00766.1

The key role of heavy precipitation events in climate model disagreements of future annual precipitation changes in California

David W. Pierce,^1,* Daniel R. Cayan,¹ Tapash Das,^1,6 Edwin P. Maurer,² Norman L. Miller,³ Yan Bao,³ M.Kanamitsu,^1,+ Kei Yoshimura,¹ Mark A. Snyder,⁴ Lisa C. Sloan,⁴ Guido Franco,⁵ and Mary Tyree¹

¹ Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, CA

² Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA

³ University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA

⁴ University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA

⁵ California Energy Commission, Sacramento, CA

⁶ CH2M HILL, Inc., San Diego, CA

Abstract

Climate model simulations disagree on whether future precipitation will increase or decrease over California, which has impeded efforts to anticipate and adapt to human-induced climate change. This disagreement is explored in terms of daily precipitation frequency and intensity. It is found that divergent model projections of changes in the incidence of rare heavy (> 60 mm/day) daily precipitation events explain much of the model disagreement on annual timescales, yet represent only 0.3% of precipitating days and 9% of annual precipitation volume. Of the 25 downscaled model projections we examine, 21 agree that precipitation frequency will decrease by the 2060s, with a mean reduction of 6-14 days/year. This reduces California’s mean annual precipitation by about 5.7%. Partly offsetting this, 16 of the 25 projections agree that daily precipitation intensity will increase, which accounts for a model average 5.3% increase in annual precipitation. Between these conflicting tendencies, 12 projections show drier annual conditions by the 2060s and 13 show wetter. These results are obtained from sixteen global general circulation models downscaled with different combinations of dynamical methods (WRF, RSM, and RegCM3) and statistical methods (BCSD and BCCA), although not all downscaling methods were applied to each global model. Model disagreements in the projected change in occurrence of the heaviest precipitation days (> 60 mm/day) account for the majority of disagreement in the projected change in annual precipitation, and occur preferentially over the Sierra Nevada and Northern California. When such events are excluded, nearly twice as many projections show drier future conditions.

Man-made global warming theory is falsified by satellite observations

Global warming theory proposes that CO2 traps longwave (infrared) radiation in the troposphere to reduce outgoing longwave radiation [OLR] to space. However, satellite measurements since 1975 indicate that global OLR has instead increased by about 1.3 Wm-2. This is in direct contradiction to global warming theory that "trapping" of radiation by CO2 should have instead reduced* OLR by .93 Wm-2 since 1975. 

NOAA global outgoing longwave radiation [OLR] from annualized monthly means, via the KNMI Climate Explorer

In addition, the theory predicts the "trapping" of OLR should cause a "hot spot" in the tropical mid- upper troposphere to warm faster than the Earth surface. However, satellite observations are again contrary to the theory and instead show that the "hot spot" does not exist, that the mid-troposphere has warmed at the same rate as the surface, while the upper troposphere has cooled since 1979.

From Climate4you.com:

  

Diagram showing observed linear decadal temperature change at surface, 300 hPa and 200 hPa, between 20^oN and 20^oS, since January 1979. Data source:  HadAT and HadCRUT3. Click here to compare with modelled altitudinal temperature change pattern for doubling atmospheric CO₂. Last month included in analysis: March 2012. Last diagram update: 14 June 2012. 

The three diagrams above (using data from HadAT and HadCRUT3) show the linear trend of the temperature change since 1979 between 20^oN and 20^oS to be ca. 0.00087^oC/month at the surface, 0.00089^oC/month at 300 hPa, and -0.00016^oC/month at 200 hPa, corresponding to 0.10455, 0.10650 and -0.0188^oC/decade, respectively (see bar chart above). 

Thus, these radiosonde and surface meteorological data from the Equatorial region do not at the moment display the signature of enhanced greenhouse warming. With the observed warming rate of about 0.10455^oC/decade at the surface, a warming rate of about 0.21-0.31^oC/decade would have been expected at the 200 and 300 hPa levels to comply with the prognosis on this derived from the CO₂ hypothesis.

*IPCC claim of "trapped" OLR 1975-2012 calculated using the IPCC formula: 5.35*ln(393.81/331.08) = .93 Wm-2

OLR values from the KNMI Climate Explorer:

# using minimal fraction of valid points 30.00

# olr [W/m^2] from Monthly means of OLR from interpolated OLR dataset
# cutting out region lon=   -1.250  358.750, lat=  -90.000   90.000

 1975   234.1676    
 1976   233.3056    
 1977   231.9952    
 1978   227.6897    
 1979   232.2657    
 1980   230.0455    
 1981   230.6246    
 1982   230.7409    
 1983   231.3250    
 1984   230.8478    
 1985   231.5050    
 1986   231.6427    
 1987   231.5573    
 1988   232.2282    
 1989   232.7308    
 1990   231.7560    
 1991   230.7416    
 1992   229.6506    
 1993   229.5302    
 1994   229.9730    
 1995   232.1093    
 1996   231.7132    
 1997   231.5179    
 1998   231.5533    
 1999   230.0013    
 2000   229.3632    
 2001   231.1178    
 2002   231.5232    
 2003   233.2428    
 2004   232.9978    
 2005   232.9438    
 2006   233.0898    
 2007   233.2389    
 2008   232.9702    
 2009   233.1986    
 2010   233.0779    
 2011   232.8238    
 2012   232.2572    

TED talk claims livestock is the solution to climate change

While green religionists have claimed that livestock is to blame for death, global warming, tsunamis, mine collapses, and terrorist attacks, an "astonishing" talk given at the TED conference last week instead claims that livestock is the "solution" to climate change, and more than capable of reversing alleged climate change due to use of fossil fuels, while also providing food to millions of people and turning deserts into grasslands.

Can This Surprising Discovery Fix Climate Change?

By Chris Taylor,  Mashable

You know how gloomy the global climate picture looks: temperatures are inching up. Droughts are on the rise. Populations are growing. Forests and grassland are disappearing. And about a billion people live on land that is threatening to turn into desert.

But is there a simple fix for desertification — and has it been under our noses the whole time?

Allan Savory thinks so. An award-winning biologist and land management expert, Savory gave what was widely seen as one of the most astonishing talks at the TED 2013 conference in Long Beach last week. (You can see it in full, above).

The solution? Put thousands of animals onto land that is threatening to turn into desert. Bunch that livestock together as a herd and move it around at speed, in a way that mimics the great herds of ages past.

What you'll find, as Savory has time and again, is that with all that trampling and fertilization, the grassland will bloom again, fast enough to make your head spin.

A climate bonus: you'll take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere by preventing the release of carbon from the soil, and removing the need to burn grassland so next year's growth can come through. Savory says employing this technique globally is the equivalent of removing 6,000 cars from the road every second.

The livestock fix is completely counterintuitive for biologists, who long believed that animals were causing desertification, not fixing it. Savory himself insisted on this for years. Based on his recommendations as a young researcher, African national parks killed around 40,000 elephants.

"That was the saddest and greatest blunder of my life," Savory says. "I will carry that to my grave."

But it also gave him impetus to figure out how to really fix the problem. Now he has it, Savory says, "I can think of almost nothing that offers more hope for our planet, for our children, for their children, and for all of humanity."

New paper finds Arctic temperatures were up to 3.8°C warmer ~3000 years ago

A paper published today in Quaternary Science Reviews reconstructs Arctic temperatures in Kamchatka, USSR over the past 4,500 years and finds the highest reconstructed temperatures were about 3.8°C warmer than modern temperatures. The authors find "the highest reconstructed temperature reaching 16.8 °C between 3700 and 2800 years before the present," about 3.8°C above "modern temperatures (∼13 °C)." In addition, the data shows temperatures between 2500 - 1100 [during the Medieval and Roman warming periods] were about 1-2°C above modern temperatures of ~13°C. The paper adds to many other peer-reviewed papers demonstrating that there is nothing unusual, unnatural, or unprecedented regarding modern Arctic temperatures. 

Graph on left side shows reconstructed July temperatures were 1-2°C  higher than modern from 2500-1100 years ago [during the Roman and Medieval warming periods], and up to 3.8°C higher than modern from 3700-2800 years ago [during Egyptian and Minoan warming periods]. Second graph from left shows similar changes in Greenland ice core data.

Late Holocene climate and environmental changes in Kamchatka inferred from the subfossil chironomid record

• Larisa Nazarova^a, b, , , , 
• Verena de Hoog^c, 
• Ulrike Hoff^d, 
• Oleg Dirksen^e, 
• Bernhard Diekmann^a

• ^a Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Research Unit Potsdam, Telegrafenberg A43, 14473 Potsdam, Germany
• ^b Kazan Federal University, Kremlyovskaya Str., 18, 420018 Kazan, Russia
• ^c Potsdam University, Am Neuen Palais 10, 14469 Potsdam, Germany
• ^d University of Tromsø, Department of Geology, Dramsveien 201, 9037 Tromsø, Norway
• ^e Institute of Volcanology and Seismology FED RAS, Piipa blvd., 9, 683006 Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia

• http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2013.01.018, How to Cite or Link Using DOI

• Permissions & Reprints

Abstract

This study presents a reconstruction of the Late Holocene climate in Kamchatka based on chironomid remains from a 332 cm long composite sediment core recovered from Dvuyurtochnoe Lake (Two-Yurts Lake, TYL) in central Kamchatka. The oldest recovered sediments date to about 4500 cal years BP. Chironomid head capsules from TYL reflect a rich and diverse fauna. An unknown morphotype of Tanytarsini,Tanytarsus type klein, was found in the lake sediments. Our analysis reveals four chironomid assemblage zones reflecting four different climatic periods in the Late Holocene. Between 4500 and 4000 cal years BP, the chironomid composition indicates a high lake level, well-oxygenated lake water conditions and close to modern temperatures (∼13 °C). From 4000 to 1000 cal years BP, two consecutive warm intervals were recorded, with the highest reconstructed temperature reaching 16.8 °C between 3700 and 2800 cal years BP. Cooling trend, started around 1100 cal years BP led to low temperatures during the last stage of the Holocene. Comparison with other regional studies has shown that termination of cooling at the beginning of late Holocene is relatively synchronous in central Kamchatka, South Kurile, Bering and Japanese Islands and take place around 3700 cal years BP. From ca 3700 cal years BP to the last millennium, a newly strengthened climate continentality accompanied by general warming trend with minor cool excursions led to apparent spatial heterogeneity of climatic patterns in the region. Some timing differences in climatic changes reconstructed from chironomid record of TYL sediments and late Holocene events reconstructed from other sites and other proxies might be linked to differences in local forcing mechanisms or caused by the different degree of dating precision, the different temporal resolution, and the different sensitive responses of climate proxies to the climate variations. Further high-resolution stratigraphic studies in this region are needed to understand the spatially complex pattern of climate change in Holocene in Kamchatka and the surrounding region.

---

Highlights

► We investigated fossilized chironomids in lake sediment core from Central Kamchatka. ► We reconstructed late Holocene climate variations using chironomid inference model. ► Before 3.7 cal ka BP reconstructed T_July are close to present day temperatures. ► Between 3.7 and 1.1 cal ka BP two warm stages are reconstructed. ► After 1.1 cal ka BP lower than present day T_July are reconstructed.

New paper shows 99% of IPCC models exaggerate warming in central & southeastern US

A paper published today in the Journal of Climate finds that the latest IPCC climate models are unable to reproduce the cooling observed in the southeastern and central portions of the US during the 20th century. According to the authors, "Some parts of the U.S., especially the southeastern and central portion, cooled by up to 2°C during the 20th century, " but that "only 19 out of 100 all-forcing historical [climate models] simulated negative temperature trends (cooling) over the southeast U.S. with 99 members under-predicting the cooling rate in the region." The authors also find, "the simulations with greenhouse gases (GHG) forcing only produced strong warming in the central U.S." in comparison to the observed cooling. The paper adds to many other peer-reviewed papers demonstrating that climate models greatly exaggerate warming, and the alleged effects of increased greenhouse gases. It is also remarkable that the "adjusted" temperature record still shows the central & southeastern US cooled up to 2°C during the 20th century, despite massive data tampering to produce an artificial warming trend in US temperatures of > 1°C.

Journal of Climate 2013 ; e-View

doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00559.1

Inter-model variability and mechanism attribution of central and southeastern U.S. anomalous cooling in the 20^th century as simulated by CMIP5 models

Zaitao Pan,¹ Xiaodong Liu,² Sanjiv Kumar,³ Zhiqiu Gao,⁴ and James Kinter³

¹ Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO 63108, USA

² Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an, Shaanxi, 710075, China

³ Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies, 4041 Powder Mill Road, Suite 302, Calverton, MD, 20705, USA

⁴ Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

Abstract

Some parts of the U.S., especially the southeastern and central portion, cooled by up to 2°C during the 20^th century, while the global mean temperature rose by 0.6 °C (0.76 °C from 1901-2006). Studies have suggested that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) may be responsible for this cooling, termed “warming hole (WH)”, while other works reported that regional scale processes like the low-level jet and evapotranspiration contribute to the abnormality. In phase 3 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3), only a few of 53 simulations could reproduce the cooling. This study analyzes newly available simulations in CMIP5 (phase 5 of CMIP) experiments from 28 models, totaling 175 ensemble members. We found that (i) only 19 out of 100 all-forcing historical ensemble members simulated negative temperature trend (cooling) over the southeast U.S. with 99 members under-predicting the cooling rate in the region, (ii) the missing of cooling in the models is likely due to the poor performance in simulating the spatial pattern of the cooling rather than the temporal variation, as indicated by a larger temporal correlation coefficient than spatial one between the observation and simulations. (iii) the simulations with greenhouse gases (GHG) forcing only produced strong warming in the central U.S. that may have compensated the cooling, and (iv) the all-forcing historical experiment compared with the natural-forcing-only experiment showed a well-defined WH in the central U.S., suggesting that land surface processes, among others, could contributed to the cooling in the 20^th century.

Will Obama side with science and jobs, or with green religionists on Keystone?

No More Keystone Excuses

Will Obama side with science and jobs, or with green religionists?

WSJ.COM  3/4/13: President Obama's spokesmen claim that cutting $43 billion out of a $3.8 trillion federal budget this year will be an economic disaster, though investors seem unconcerned. But if Mr. Obama wants shovel-ready spending stimulus today, why doesn't he finally approve the Keystone XL pipeline? It won't cost taxpayers a dime.

On Friday the pipeline from Canada through six U.S. states to the Gulf Coast received another boost when a State Department study found there would be no significant damage to the environment. This follows Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman's endorsement in January of a revised pipeline route that now skirts around the Sand Hills region of his state. All of which means the White House has run out of excuses to keep delaying approval of a $5.3 billion private investment that would provide some 16,000 direct jobs and more downstream.

The State Department study, the fourth such U.S. review in four years, found once again that the pipeline wouldn't make much difference to climate change. The Alberta tar sands are the world's third largest reservoir of oil, and Canada is going to develop them one way or another.

All told the oil sands contribute a mere 0.01% of global carbon emissions, and if that sort of thing bothers you, Canada is offsetting that with carbon-reduction policies elsewhere. State's report concludes that the pipeline would result in "no substantial change in global greenhouse gas emissions."

Reuters

The Keystone Oil Pipeline is pictured under construction in North Dakota.

If the Alberta oil doesn't flow south to America via the Keystone XL, it will flow west to China via other pipelines or rail. It will also flow to the Gulf Coast by other means, including pipelines and rail to East Coast ports, and then via tankers in the Atlantic and around Florida. Keystone XL will have a smaller "carbon footprint" than these alternatives.

As for the danger of spills, the high-tech pipeline will be buried underground and contain valves that allow for rapid detection and shutoff. The environmental risk is arguably greater on a tanker. Even if the oil sands were shut down entirely, Gulf Coast refineries would merely use the similarly heavy oil from Venezuela, also shipped via tankers.

Thus the issue is not whether the oil will flow but how much Americans will benefit. A rule of thumb is that for every dollar of imported foreign oil, North America receives about 10 cents of the economic benefit. The Venezuelans, Saudis and others get the rest. The benefit from oil produced in North America is roughly 80-90 cents of each $1. This includes the cost of producing and transporting the oil, and the ancillary jobs and sales that flow from it. The Keystone XL has also reserved space for about 250,000 barrels a day of oil produced in the U.S., which means a new and environmentally safer outlet for oil from the booming Bakken fields of North Dakota.

All of this was known two years ago, but Mr. Obama opposed the project in 2011 to appease the Sierra Club and his other green financial donors while running for re-election. The pipeline's builder,TransCanada, applied again with a new route, and now the President faces another choice.

His labor supporters favor the pipeline, which will provide thousands of union jobs. His green supporters don't much care about jobs because they are already rich. They are also impervious to evidence like that in the State Department report because global warming is their religion.

"Mother Nature filed her comments last year—the hottest year in American history; the top climate scientists in the U.S. have already chimed in," said Bill McKibben in reaction to the report. He's the leader of the anti-Keystone forces who was arrested last month after chaining himself to the White House gate.

The opponents' goal is to shut down all fossil-fuel production, one step at a time. They're on the way to destroying the U.S. coal industry, and the Sierra Club has made shale-gas drilling its next political target. They want the world economy to run on windmills and solar panels. And these are the folks who denounce Republicans for ignoring science.

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry need to think about the impact of rejection on U.S.-Canada relations. One of the better economic stories of the last 50 years has been the integration of the North American economy, including the free flow of goods, investment and to some extent people. Rejection of the pipeline would be an insult to Canada and a step back from that integration.

The larger issue is whether the U.S. wants to continue to be considered a serious economic nation with rising living standards and a modern energy supply. If Mr. Obama turns down Keystone XL, the Chinese will be laughing at us as they buy Canadian oil and build their economic power, while America adapts to the Sierra Club's preferred future of the world as Walden Pond.