Climate Research News

An international team of scientists including Mark Williams and Jan Zalasiewicz of the Geology Department of the University of Leicester, and led by Dr. Thijs Vandenbroucke, formerly of Leicester and now at the University of Lille 1 (France), has reconstructed the Earth’s climate belts of the late Ordovician Period, between 460 and 445 million years ago.

The findings have been published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA – and show that these ancient climate belts were surprisingly like those of the present.

The researchers state: “The world of the ancient past had been thought by scientists to differ from ours in many respects, including having carbon dioxide levels much higher – over twenty times as high – than those of the present. However, it is very hard to deduce carbon dioxide levels with any accuracy from such ancient rocks, and it was known that there was a paradox, for the late Ordovician was known to include a brief, intense glaciation – something difficult to envisage in a world with high levels of greenhouse gases. “

The team of scientists looked at the global distribution of common, but mysterious fossils called chitinozoans – probably the egg-cases of extinct planktonic animals – before and during this Ordovician glaciation. They found a pattern that revealed the position of ancient climate belts, including such features as the polar front, which separates cold polar waters from more temperate ones at lower latitudes. The position of these climate belts changed as the Earth entered the Ordovician glaciation – but in a pattern very similar to that which happened in oceans much more recently, as they adjusted to the glacial and interglacial phases of our current (and ongoing) Ice Age.

This ‘modern-looking’ pattern suggests that those ancient carbon dioxide levels could not have been as high as previously thought, but were more modest, at about five times current levels (they would have had to be somewhat higher than today’s, because the sun in those far-off times shone less brightly).

“These ancient, but modern-looking oceans emphasise the stability of Earth’s atmosphere and climate through deep time – and show the current man-made rise in greenhouse gas levels to be an even more striking phenomenon than was thought,” the researchers conclude.

Reference: Vandenbroucke, T.R.A., Armstrong, H.A., Williams, M., Paris, F., Zalasiewicz, J.A., Sabbe, K., Nolvak, J., Challands, T.J., Verniers, J. & Servais, T. 2010. Polar front shift and atmospheric CO2 during the glacial maximum of the Early Paleozoic Icehouse. PNAS doi/10.1073/pnas.1003220107.

Contacts: (Mark Williams and Jan Zalasiewicz at the Department of Geology, University of Leicester: Respectively tel. 0116 252 3642 and 0116 2523928, and e-mails mri@le.ac.uk and jaz1@le.ac.uk).

University of Leicester Press Release: An ancient Earth like ours

Geologists reconstruct the Earth’s climate belts between 460 and 445 million years ago

Issued on 09 August 2010

August 12th, 2010 | Tags: Climate Sensitivity to CO2, Paleoclimate | Category: News | Leave a comment

1. Introduction

News broke on or around November 19 2009 that a large archive of emails and files from the Climate Research Unit had been released on the internet. The contents of the files were sufficiently disconcerting to the public, governments and university administrations to prompt the establishment of a number of inquiries. This paper reviews the official inquiries.

During the public uproar over the climategate emails, the main concerns that were repeated over and over could be distilled to the following questions.

1. Did the scientists involved in the email exchanges manipulate, hide, invent or otherwise misrepresent evidence in IPCC or WMO reports so as to mislead readers, including policymakers?

2. Did the scientists involved delete emails or other documents related to the IPCC process in order to prevent disclosure of information subject to Freedom of Information laws?

3. Did the scientists involved in the email exchanges express greater doubts or uncertainties about the science in their own professional writings and in their interactions with one another than they allowed to be stated in reports of the IPCC or WMO that were intended for policymakers?

4. Did the scientists involved in the email exchanges take steps individually or in collusion to block access to data or methodologies in order to prevent external examination of their work?

5. Did the scientists involved in the email exchanges take steps individually or in collusion to block publication of papers, or to intimidate or discredit journals, in order to prevent rival scientific evidence from being published?

My examination of the Climategate inquiries centers on the extent to which they succeeded in providing credible answers to these questions. As will be shown, the various inquiries reviewed evidence that leads to an affirmative answer in each case, and in many cases the inquiries reached affirmative answers, yet couched the conclusions in terms that gave the opposite impression. In other cases they simply left the questions unanswered. In some cases they avoided the issues by answering irrelevant questions.

The pdf of the entire paper is here.

August 11th, 2010 | Tags: Climategate | Category: News, Opinion | Comments (1)

TROPICAL TROPOSPHERE: The 2006 CCSP report pointed to a mismatch between models and observed trends in the tropical troposphere as a “potentially serious inconsistency.” In short, the climate models need to get the tropical troposphere right, since it’s a vast region where the models all show a relatively enhanced and rapid response to greenhouse gases. If the models and data don’t agree in that region, there might be a deep problem with the way the models represent the climatic system’s response to greenhouse gases. Or at least there is an issue that needs to be sorted out. An important question, therefore, is whether the apparent mismatch between models and observations  is statistically significant, or just random noise. In 2007 Douglass et al. looked at the data and said Yes, the mismatch is significant: if you adjust the models so that they agree at the surface, the resulting profile of tropospheric trends are too high to match the observations. In 2008 Santer et al. said No, the mismatch is not statistically significant. They argued that the Douglass results were biased due to a failure to deal with autocorrelation, and in a model-observation comparison on data ending in 1999 they could not reject a null hypothesis of trend equality. The Santer paper figured prominently in the EPA endangerment finding research and in other places where the validity of climate models is at issue. In a new paper:

* **McKitrick, Ross R., Stephen McIntyre and Chad Herman (2010) “Panel and Multivariate Methods for Tests of Trend Equivalence in Climate Data Series” in press at Atmospheric Science Letters.

we critically examine the common methods used for trend comparisons, and explain some modern econometric methods that provide improved handling of the complex error structures in these data sets. We then apply the methods to the tropical troposphere issue, based on an up to date (1979-2009) time series comprising the full suite of IPCC climate models and 4 observational data series. We conclude that observed trends in the lower troposhere (LT) are significant but those in the mid-troposphere (MT) are not; that on average the balloon and satellite observational data sets agree with each other, though the RSS and UAH satellite series exhibit significant trend differences; that the model-predicted trends are two to four times larger than observed trends and the model-data discrepancy is statistically significant in both the LT and MT layers. See also Supplementary Information; Data/code archive.

See also:

 Climate Audit: McKitrick et al (2010) accepted by Atmos Sci Lett

Jo Nova: The models are wrong (but only by 400%)

August 11th, 2010 | Tags: Climate Models | Category: News, Observations | Leave a comment

Abstract:
There are three main global temperature histories: the combined CRU-Hadley record (HADCRU), the NASA-GISS (GISTEMP) record, and the NOAA record. All three global averages depend on the same underlying land data archive, the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN). Because of this reliance on GHCN, its quality deficiencies will constrain the quality of all derived products.

The number of weather stations providing data to GHCN plunged in 1990 and again in 2005. The sample size has fallen by over 75% from its peak in the early 1970s, and is now smaller than at any time since 1919. The collapse in sample size has increased the relative fraction of data coming from airports to about 50 percent (up from about 30 percent in the 1970s). It has also reduced the average latitude of source data and removed relatively more high-altitude monitoring sites.

Oceanic data are based on sea surface temperature (SST) rather than marine air temperature (MAT). All three global products rely on SST series derived from the ICOADS archive. ICOADS observations were primarily obtained from ships that voluntarily monitored SST. Prior to the post-war era, coverage of the southern oceans and polar regions was very thin. Coverage has improved partly due to deployment of buoys, as well as use of satellites to support extrapolation. Ship-based readings changed over the 20th century from bucket-and-thermometer to engine-intake methods, leading to a warm bias as the new readings displaced the old. Until recently it was assumed that bucket methods disappeared after 1941, but this is now believed not to be the case, which may necessitate a major revision to the 20th century ocean record. There is evidence that SST trends overstate nearby MAT trends.

The quality of data over land, namely the raw temperature data in GHCN, depends on the validity of adjustments for known problems due to urbanization and land-use change. The adequacy of these adjustments has been tested in three different ways, with two of the three finding evidence that they do not suffice to remove warming biases.

The overall conclusion of this report is that there are serious quality problems in the surface temperature data sets that call into question whether the global temperature history, especially over land, can be considered both continuous and precise. Users should be aware of these limitations, especially in policy-sensitive applications.

August 11th, 2010 | Tags: Global Average Near Surface Temperature | Category: Observations, Opinion | Leave a comment

..close examination of the source of the claimed 97% consensus reveals that it comes from a non-peer reviewed article describing an online poll in which a total of only 79 climate scientists chose to participate. Of the 79 self-selected climate scientists, 75 agreed with the notion of AGW.

The Hockey Schtick: The 97% “Consensus” is only 75 Self-Selected Climatologists

August 11th, 2010 | Tags: Climate Science | Category: Opinion | Leave a comment

Throughout Earth’s history, there is evidence of large carbon dioxide releases, greenhouse conditions, ocean acidification, and major changes in marine life. About 120 million years ago (mya), during the early part of the Cretaceous period, a series of massive volcanic eruptions pumped huge amounts of carbon dioxide into Earth’s atmosphere. During the Aptian Oceanic Anoxic Event, atmospheric CO2 content rose to about twice today’s level. Eventually, the oceans absorbed much of that CO2, which significantly increased the water’s acidity. The change reduced the amount of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) in the water, making it difficult for creatures such as some kinds of plankton to form shells. But the plankton did not die out. In fact, the geological record indicates that ocean biota can adapt to CO2 concentrations as high as 2000 to 3000 ppm—five to eight times current levels.

Read more by Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth: Marine Life Survived 8X Current CO2 Levels

August 2nd, 2010 | Tags: Climate Alarmism, CO2, Ocean Acidifcation | Category: Observations, Opinion | Leave a comment

The backing by Chris Huhne, the energy secretary, for a toughening of European Union emissions targets has been attacked by the CBI, which has warned it will entail “huge costs”, “huge repercussions” and will “jeopardise and potentially damage” businesses across the economy.

Richard Lambert, CBI director-general, set out several arguments against hardening the targets, including that a unilateral tightening would create an uneven playingfield and that businesses affected by the recession could not cope with additional costs.

Mr Lambert wrote: “Europe must not overburden its companies with unilateral climate protection constraints . . . Our companies are in global competition and are able to locate production globally.”

The move came as the TUC and the Energy Intensive Users Group, representing companies with high energy needs, said energy prices could more than double by 2020 under the government’s climate policies, a surge that “would jeopardise the future competitiveness” of industries employing 225,000 people.

The row is over whether the EU should stick to its goal of cutting emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, or endorse a far more ambitious 30 per cent reduction by the same date.

Read more at TGWPF: CBI attacks plan to tighten emissions targets

August 2nd, 2010 | Tags: Climate Policy | Category: Opinion | Leave a comment

“It seems like we’ve asked this question a million times before and will probably ask it again a million more times. Had these scientists from these three articles found accelerated melting (or any melting), how many headlines would have covered their stories across the globe? They find a gain of ice mass in the Horseshoe Valley and a historically low amount of melting around the coastlines, so you had to come to World Climate Report to hear all about it.”

References:

Tedesco, M., and A.J. Monaghan. 2009, An updated Antarctic melt record through 2009 and its linkages to high- latitude and tropical climate variability, Geophysical Research Letters, 36, L18502, doi:10.1029/2009GL039186.

Tedesco, M. and A.J. Monaghan. 2010. Climate and melting variability in Antarctica. Eos, Transactions, American Geophysical Union, 91, 1-2.

Wendt, A., G. Casassa, A. Rivera, and J. Wendt. 2009. Reassessment of ice mass balance at Horseshoe Valley, Antarctica. Antarctic Science, 21, 505–513.

World Climate Report: Recent News from Antarctica

August 2nd, 2010 | Tags: Antarctic | Category: Observations | Leave a comment

The Times Higher Education Supplement has an interesting article entitled Profits of Doom:

Climate change is serious business – in more ways than one. Martin Cohen describes how capitalist ‘bootleggers’ have co-opted the environmental ‘Baptists’ to fulfil their raison d’etre – making money. Thanks to the ‘greenwash’, the solutions could be worse than the problems.

Read the entire article.

July 30th, 2010 | Tags: Climate Alarmism, Climate Policy, Funding | Category: Opinion | Comments (1)