‘However, this was a static simulation that did not include the fact that the forcing itself can change the depth of the boundary layer by making it less stable. In a series of papers exploring the nonlinear dynamics of the stable boundary layer [McNider et al. 1995a, 1995b; Shi et al., 2005; Walters et al.
, 2007] it was shown that in certain parameter spaces the nocturnal boundary layer can rapidly transition from a cold light wind solution to a warm windy solution. In these parameter spaces, even slight changes in longwave radiative forcing
or changes in surface heat capacity can cause large changes in surface temperatures as the boundary mixing changes. However, these temperature changes reflect changes in the vertical distribution of heat, not in the heat content of the deep atmosphere…

In summary, given the lack of observational robustness of minimum temperatures, the fact that the shallow
nocturnal boundary layer does not reflect the heat content of the deeper atmosphere, and problems global models have in replicating nocturnal boundary layers, it is suggested that
measures of large-scale climate change should only use maximum temperature trends’ http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/r-321.pdf

I have been reading Pielke’s paper on surface temps that he posted yesterday. Here is another mechanism – in addition to the others covered in the paper.

The so-called land/ocean contrast is a surface artifact that doesn’t exist in the deep atmosphere.

As I said earlier, internal natural variations such as the short wiggles in your plot may well have the ocean leading, and you are not looking at anything to do with climate change when you look at those. The 30-year focus is to look at genuine climate change by itself, where the signal becomes clear, otherwise you are just confusing yourself with the irrelevant details of wiggles.

JimD, “As I said earlier, internal natural variations such as the short wiggles in your plot may well have the ocean leading, and you are not looking at anything to do with climate change when you look at those.”

Really? Normalized to one standard deviation the 1940 peak would be a little bit Abby-normal and the 1980 shift would also be a bit Abby-normal. Both seem to have some relationship with “natural” variability as in FIIK what done it. When you just smooth Abby-normal peaks and valleys, the smoothed result can shift those Abby-normal peaks and valleys a touch. That is why smart folks do double checks when they get those Eureka moments.

There is another Eureka moment complete with over smoothing, poor data selection and over confident data manipulation. No matter how often someone, including the authors point out the lack of “robustness”, climate kiddies still like to ride the roller coaster.

Judith Curry

I am concerned about the muddled situation still prevailing as the recent climate warming is treated by scientists, media and politicians. There seems to be only indiduals who openmindedly are able to scrutinize the real problem of the recent global warming.

Judith Curry; http://judithcurry.com/2014/11/25/groups-and-herds-implications-for-the-ipcc :
”Group failures often have disastrous consequences—not merely for businesses, nonprofits, and governments, but for all those affected by them. – Cass Sunstein and Reid Hastie”

I regard the mere belief of AGW as one of the most threatening ‘group failure’. Without any empiric evidence, politicians, media and certain institutional scientists seem to focus their attention on the hypothetic target to prevent global warming by cutting anthropogenic CO2 emissions. As I have already e.g. in my comment http://judithcurry.com/2014/11/15/week-in-review-35/#comment-648868 stated, the role of Anthropogenic CO2 in the recent total increase of CO2 content in atmospere is only about 4 % at the most, and the increase of CO2 content in atmosphere has followed warming and not vice versa.

Judith Curry, you have yourself got rid of the model-based climate sensitivity as your pragmatic logic replaced the model results of temperature. I appreciate your statements, according to which the climate sensitivity based on empiric observations of temperature is only about half of the result based on climate models adopted by IPCC. This together with the hiatus during the last about 18 years questions the AGW warming assessed by IPCC. However, I regard still even the assessment of yours on the climate sensitivity as uncertain, since the hiatus can be understood that the climate sensitivity could be near zero.

As I understand, even you assess that the anthropogenic CO2 emissions mainly have controlled the increasing, decadal trend of recent CO2 content in atmosphere. On the basis of my comment above you surely understand that I regard the anthropogenic share of increase of atmospheric CO2 content as minimal.

In addition, I have understood that you, Judith Curry, are striving for an appropriate interface between politicians and scientists where both of them can understand each others well enough concerning a potential working solution for actions needed. But this is very difficult on the multidisciplinary problem of climate warming like on any kind of complex problem. However, if we focus only on one key point maybe this is easier. The key point of mine is the role of anthropogenic CO2 emissions in the total CO2 content in atmosphere. It can be expressed very simply:
a) All CO2 emissions from sources to atmosphere and all CO2 absorptions from atmosphere to sinks together control the CO2 content in atmosphere.
b) A share of a particular CO2 emission in total content of CO2 in atmosphere is determined by its proportional amount in total CO2 emissions to atmosphere.
c) As the anthropogenic share of the total amount of CO2 emissions is about 4 %, even the anthropogenic share of CO2 content in atmosphere is about 4 % (at the most).

Climate Change and Collapse
The focus of this note is on: that while politicalized scientists, environmentalists, industrialists, and their lackeys in various elected bodies argue about kicking the can down the carbon pathway we really need to start dealing with the consequences of the inevitable: there has been climate change before and there will be climate change again. Humanity’s actions may accelerate or slow the process but we will not stop nature’s cycles.
A bit of background: I got interested in the collapse of societies in the late 70s as part of my interest in space industrialization, space colonies, and sustainable energy (satellite solar power systems). Though ASCE I was involved in some of the pre-CONs leading to Rio 84. Also living in the US Southwest has made me very aware of the cycles of drought re climate variability. Since I’m visiting grandchildren I’m not at home and don’t have access to all my files so I hope the readers will forgive some sloppiness in dates.
First, I accept climate variability and climate change as a given based on historical records. Major droughts have caused the collapse of civilizations: one about 1500 BC, the Maya 1100-1140 AD, the Anasazi, approximately around 1140 AD. Then there was the middle warming period, 600 to 1000 AD followed by the little ice age, 1000- to ?? AD, there is considerable debate about when the little ice age ended. There was also the shift in the southern oscillation which caused the “mid-Victorian holocausts” due to drought in India and China. From my high school Latin I remember reading about the breadbasket of the Roman Empire being Northern Africa, which is now desert. The droughts in the Midwest in the 30’s (dust bowl), and early 50’s changed the structure of a number of cultures in the US.
From major volcanic eruptions we know that “massive” changes in atmospheric reflectivity can dramatically impact global weather. However, I haven’t read much about the atmospheric sensitivity to carbon concentrations vs. its sensitivity to water vapor and flaring products (nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor). Coal is bad and we won’t talk about oil producers flaring practices. Wonder why?
What I find interesting and slightly amusing is the focus on carbon while ignoring the impact of the flaring from oil wells around the world. “Every year, billions of dollars worth of natural gas are wasted; burned or flared at oil fields across the world. Such flaring produces some 400 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions.” GGFR.
Ignored in the public discussions is the impact of massive ridges of heat, dry air, and particulate matter injected into the atmosphere by the extremely long strips of urban development along the coasts.
Also ignored are the implications of desertification and deforestation. When I was involved in PrepCon IV leading to Rio 84 the destruction of the rainforests was the current hysterical crusade. Recently some Brazilian researchers have theorized that the vast destruction of the Amazon rainforest may be partially responsible for the long lasting drought in the Sao Paulo region.
An economic question that should be asked is: what costs should a society be willing to incur to satisfy the carbon hysteria crowd in their efforts to perhaps slowing global warming vs. the costs required to protect the built infrastructure from the effects of global climate change.
A question which I think should be researched is there a tipping point? Global warming doesn’t concern me as much as the tipping point issue. We can build islands for the Pacific tribes but the whole of the Northern Hemisphere will be in a world of hurt if we tip over into another climate scenario such as another ice age.

Rob, “In summary, given the lack of observational robustness of minimum temperatures, the fact that the shallow
nocturnal boundary layer does not reflect the heat content of the deeper atmosphere, and problems global models have in replicating nocturnal boundary layers, it is suggested that
measures of large-scale climate change should only use maximum temperature trends’”

I tend to think that both should be used and neither one trusted completely. All data’s gots its limitations.

Have a great thanksgiving, eat lots, share stories and enjoy the family.

The point was that Tmax is more reliable for temperature trends.

captdallas2 0.8 +/- 0.2
I consider that the top foot or so of the land is like an atmospheric layer as well in that the sunlight penetrates a few microns and the heat energy permeates the top foot or so depending on the composition of the earth and the amount of sunlight it receives. Hence the earth is a heat sink like the ocean albeit not a very good one.
Read somewhere average earth temperature is 14.0 degrees, Oceans are 16.1 degrees and land is 9.0 degrees over the earth as a whole.
Are these ball park figures correct and why don’t we use the average estimated earth temperature [AEET] more widely and more often?

I consider that the top foot or so of the land is like an atmospheric layer as well in that the sunlight penetrates a few microns and the heat energy permeates the top foot or so depending on the composition of the earth and the amount of sunlight it receives. Hence the earth is a heat sink like the ocean albeit not a very good one.
Read somewhere average earth temperature is 14.0 degrees, Oceans are 16.1 degrees and land is 9.0 degrees over the earth as a whole.
Are these ball park figures correct and why don’t we use the average estimated earth temperature [AEET] more widely and more often?

Economists take on Little Ice Age:

Abstract

We analyze the timing and extent of Northern European temperature falls during the Little Ice Age, using standard temperature reconstructions. However, we can find little evidence of temporal dependence or structural breaks in European weather before the twentieth century. Instead, European weather between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries resembles uncorrelated draws from a distribution with a constant mean (although there are occasional decades of markedly lower summer temperature) and variance, with the same behavior holding more tentatively back to the twelfth century. Our results suggest that observed conditions during the Little Ice Age in Northern Europe are consistent with random climate variability. The existing consensus about apparent cold conditions may stem in part from a Slutsky effect, where smoothing data gives the spurious appearance of irregular oscillations when the underlying time series is white noise.

Kelly, Morgan; Ó Gráda, Cormac. Change points and temporal dependence in reconstructions of annual temperature: Did Europe experience a Little Ice Age?. The Annals of Applied Statistics 8 (2014), no. 3, 1372–1394. doi:10.1214/14-AOAS753. http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.aoas/1414091217.

Behind a paywall. You can get it if you have an account with Euclid.

Angtech, They are in the ballpark. One of the problems is the ballpark is a few degrees. Hansen tends to agree with the 14C down from 15 and there was a paper that had average at 14.45 C degrees.

Reynolds oiv2 has SST at around 18 C.

and that agrees pretty well with ERSSTv3b

CRU has a land temperature product that is around 14 C

So based on those, “Average” surface temperature should be around 17 C degrees.

Scottish Sceptic: Cloud feedbacks

Multiple processes in the flow diagram are undoubtedly changed by CO2, surface temperature increase, or both.

Doubling of CO2 concentration probably increases the rate of outbound radiation from everywhere except the extreme lower troposphere; that was a conjecture of mine some time ago, and a quote from a source provided a few days ago by Pat Casson suggested that I might be correct.

An increase in surface temperature of 1C undoubtedly increases both the rate of energy transport by dry thermals, and by evapotranspiration; water vapor pressure, hence presumably rate of evaporation, increases supralinearly with temperature, so the increase in evapotranspiration ought to be higher the higher the temperature increases.

Few studies have been done on the changes in the rates of the energy flows, which was why I got so excited by the Romps et al paper on the change in lightning frequency, which depended on their calculation of a particular energy flow rate and its changes.

It is fairly easy to posit what seem like reasonably changes in some of those flow rates that would completely nullify any warming; I can find little information on whether those rates have changed since 1900, have changed since 1950, or are changing now. Those “posits” are naive, and not “constrained” (as Poms et al wrote of lightning rates) by calculations based on careful analysis.

I expect more and more attempts like that of Poms et al to estimated changes in the rates of diverse energy transfer mechanisms.

captd, the 30-year averaging resolves the upturn that matters and the phase lag of the ocean well enough to see. I don’t think we need any more detail than this to see the lag which is blatantly obvious and the separate gradients of the recent warming are represented well here too. This separation is a sign that the earth has fallen behind the rising forcing curve and is now trying to catch up, land first: something that didn’t seem to happen in the prior warming ending after 1940. Emphasis on long-term trends like this is also more relevant for the future.

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/crutem4vgl/mean:240/mean:120/from:1900/plot/hadsst3gl/mean:240/mean:120/from:1900

In the spirit of the day, I would like to thank the Denizens for your continued participation, insights, and civility.

You are most welcome. I thank you many times for permitting me to read and write here, mostly silently. So, …, out loud,

Thank you!

Matt

When I try to model cloud feedbacks, I start getting some startling figures with likely warming for a doubling of CO2 is as low as 0.1-0.2C. Clearly this is the reason they “can’t” model clouds – because this whole scam falls apart.

#########

It’s always ironic to find skeptics making huge leaps of
Logic. Here there are several. One. Thinking that clouds
Refers to one type of entity. Two. Assuming your modeling efforts were without flaw even if you can’t find the problem.
Three assuming you know why clouds are hard to model.

Go back to skeptic school

I don’t pretend to have a great understanding of climate science; so my question is very basic. What is meant by “anomaly”? Anomalous in comparison to what? What authority decides the basis for the anomaly?

To date, nobody, Warmist or otherwise, has managed to warm anything at all by surrounding it with carbon dioxide. No one.

The molten planet on which we live continues to cool. Slowly, very slowly, but inexorably, for all that. The distant Sun is unable to prevent the cooling, let alone increase the heat content, of the planet some hundred and fifty million kilometres distant.

And how could it be otherwise ?

Never in the field of human endeavour has so much been spent by so few, to produce so little for so many. Buffoons to the right of them, buffoons to left of them, into the valley of Stupidity . . . – pretty much sums up the Charge of the Climate Clowns!

Happy Thanksgiving to all the US denizens! May all your turkeys be tender!

Live well and prosper,

Mike Flynn.

JimD, Right, the point is you like the results and don’t mind at all that there are issues with your method.

And JCH, being a good team player, agrees wholeheartedly with your assessment. I just wanted to make sure y’all weren’t getting all pseudo-sciency on me.

Max – unfortunately, oil and gas represent the hottest areas of the US economy. I don’t have a handle on all the variables, so I can’t really say if a further drop in the price of oil will be a boon or bane overall. If it stays where it is now, the oilfield will probably be OK. If it drops a lot more, who knows what the net effect will be.