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Tropical tropospheric trends again (again)

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Translations: (Italian) (English)

Many readers will remember our critique of a paper by Douglass et al on tropical tropospheric temperature trends late last year, and the discussion of the ongoing revisions to the observational datasets. Some will recall that the Douglass et al paper was trumpeted around the blogosphere as the definitive proof that models had it all wrong.

At the time, our criticism was itself criticised because our counterpoints had not been submitted to a peer-reviewed journal. However, this was a little unfair (and possibly a little disingenuous) because a group of us had in fact submitted a much better argued paper making the same principal points. Of course, the peer-review process takes much longer than writing a blog post and so it has taken until today to appear on the journal website.

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Climate change methadone?

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Geoengineering is increasingly being discussed (not so sotto voce any more) in many forums. The current wave of interest has been piqued by Paul Crutzen’s 2005 editorial and a number of workshops (commentary) and high profile advocacy. But most of the discussion has occurred in almost total ignorance of the consequences of embarking on such a course.

A wider range of people have now started to publish relevant studies – showing clearly the value of continued research on the topic – and a key one came out this week in JGR-Atmospheres. Robock et al used a coupled GCM with interactive aerosols to see what would happen if they injected huge amounts of SO2 (the precursor of sulphate aerosols) into the tropical or Arctic stratosphere. This is the most talked about (and most feasible) geoengineering idea, based on the cooling impacts of large tropical volcanic eruptions (like Mt. Pinatubo in 1991). Bottom line? This is no panacea.
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More PR related confusion

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It’s a familiar story: An interesting paper gets published, there is a careless throwaway line in the press release, and a whole series of misleading headlines ensues.

This week, it’s a paper on bromine- and iodine-mediated ozone loss in marine boundary layer environments (see a good commentary here). This is important for the light that it shines on tropospheric ozone chemistry (“bad ozone”) which is a contributing factor to global warming (albeit one which is about only about 20% as important as CO2). So far so good. The paper contains some calculations indicating that chemical transport models without these halogen effects overestimate ozone near the Cape Verde region by about 15% – a difference that certainly could be of some importance if it can be extrapolated across the oceans.

However, the press release contains the line

Large amounts of ozone – around 50% more than predicted by the world’s state-of-the-art climate models – are being destroyed in the lower atmosphere over the tropical Atlantic Ocean.

(my highlights). Which led directly to the headlines like Study highlights need to adjust climate models.

Why is this confusing? Because the term ‘climate models’ is interpreted very differently in the public sphere than it is in the field. For most of the public, it is ‘climate models’ that are used to project global warming into the future, or to estimate the planet’s sensitivity to CO2. Thus a statement like the one above, and the headline that came from it are interpreted to mean that the estimates of sensitivity or of future warming are now in question. Yet this is completely misleading since neither climate sensitivity nor CO2 driven future warming will be at all affected by any revisions in ozone chemistry – mainly for the reason that most climate models don’t consider ozone chemistry at all. Precisely zero of the IPCC AR4 model simulations (discussed here for instance) used an interactive ozone module in doing the projections into the future.

What the paper is discussing, and what was glossed over in the release, is that it is the next generation of models, often called “Earth System Models” (ESMs), that are starting to include atmospheric chemistry, aerosols, ozone and the like. These models may well be significantly affected by increases in marine boundary layer ozone loss, but since they have only just started to be used to simulate 20th and early 21st Century changes, it is very unclear what difference it will make at the large scale. These models are significantly more complicated than standard climate models (having dozens of extra tracers to move around, and a lot of extra coding to work through), are slower to run, and have been used much less extensively.

Climate models today are extremely flexible and configurable tools that can include all these Earth System modules (including those mentioned above, but also full carbon cycles and dynamic vegetation), but depending on the application, often don’t need to. Thus while in theory, a revision in ozone chemistry, or soil respiration or aerosol properties might impact the full ESM, it won’t affect the more basic stuff (like the sensitivity to CO2). But it seems that the “climate models will have to be adjusted” meme is just too good not to use – regardless of the context.

Tropical tropospheric trends again

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Back in December 2007, we quite heavily criticised the paper of Douglass et al (in press at IJoC) which purported to show that models and data were inconsistent when it came to the trends in the tropical troposphere. There were two strands to our critique: i) that the statistical test they used was not appropriate and ii) that they did not acknowledge the true structural uncertainty in the observations. Most subsequent discussion has been related to the statistical issue, but the second point is perhaps more important.

Even when Douglass et al was written, those authors were aware that there were serious biases in the radiosonde data (they had been reported in Sherwood et al, 2005 and elsewhere), and that there were multiple attempts to objectively address the problems and to come up with more homogeneous analyses. We mentioned the RAOBCORE project at the time and noted the big difference using their version 1.4 vs 1.2 made to the comparison (a difference nowhere mentioned in Douglass et al’s original accepted paper which only reported on v1.2 despite them being aware of the issue). However, there are at least three new papers in press that independently tackle the issue, and their results go a long towards addressing the problems.
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How to cook a graph in three easy lessons

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These days, when global warming inactivists need to trot out somebody with some semblance of scientific credentials (from the dwindling supply who have made themselves available for such purposes), it seems that they increasingly turn to Roy Spencer, a Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama. Roy does have a handful of peer-reviewed publications, some of which have quite decent and interesting results in them. However, the thing you have to understand is that what he gets through peer-review is far less threatening to the mainstream picture of anthropogenic global warming than you’d think from the spin he puts on it in press releases, presentations and the blogosphere. His recent guest article on Pielke Sr’s site is a case in point, and provides the fodder for our discussion today.

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Climate Change and Tropical Cyclones (Yet Again)

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By Rasmus Benestad & Michael Mann
Hurricane Katerina
Just as Typhoon Nargis has reminded us of the destructive power of tropical cyclones (with its horrible death toll in Burma–around 100,000 according to the UN), a new paper by Knutson et al in the latest issue of the journal Nature Geosciences purports to project a reduction in Atlantic hurricane activity (principally the ‘frequency’ but also integrated measures of powerfulness).

The close timing of the Knutson et al and Typhoon Nargis is of course coincidental. But the study has been accorded the unprecedented privilege (that is, for a climate change article published during the past 7 years) of a NOAA press conference. What’s the difference this time? Well, for one thing, the title of the paper: “Simulated reduction in Atlantic hurricane frequency under twenty-first-century warming conditions” (emphasis added).

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Enfriamiento Global, ¿Quieres apostar?

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Translations: (Deutsch) (Italian) (English)

Por Stefan Rahmstorf, Michael Mann, Ray Bradley, William Connolley, David Archer y Caspar Ammann (Traducido por Angela Carosio)

El enfriamiento global parece ser el sabor del mes. Primero, ha brotado una discusión descarriada en los medios de comunicación sobre si el calentamiento global se ha detenido, basándose en las temperaturas observadas en los pasados 8 años (ver nuestro correo aquí). Ahora hay una nueva discusión que está capturando la imaginación, basada en un grupo de científicos alemanes que predijeron una pausa en el calentamiento global la semana pasada en un artículo en la revista Nature (Keenlyside et al. 2008).

En dicho artículo se hacen dos pronósticos de temperaturas globales, y se discuten en los últimos párrafos y se muestran en la Figura 4 (ver abajo). El primer pronóstico se refiere a los años 2000-2010, mientras que el segundo se refiere a los años 2005-2015 (*). Los autores hacen las siguientes predicciones para estos dos intervalos promedio de diez años:

“la predicción inicial indica un leve enfriamiento con respecto a las condiciones en los años 1994-2004”

El gráfico muestra lo siguiente: Las temperaturas en los dos intervalos pronosticados (los puntos verdes muestran 2005 y 2010) son casi iguales y son ambas más bajas que las observadas en 1994-2004, correspondiente al final de la línea roja en el gráfico.

Fig. 4 from <em/>Keenlyside et al ’08” align = “left” width=90%/><br /> <b>Figura 4 extraída del artículo de Keenlyside et al, 2008</b></p> <p>Los autores también hacen pronósticos regionales, pero fue, naturalmente, el pronóstico global el que cautivó la mayoría de las historias en diarios alrededor del mundo (ej.: BBC Noticias http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/01/science/earth/01climate.html?_r=1&>New%20York%20Times,%20<a %20href=&oref=slogin ,Reuters, Bloomberg, etc.), por su aparente contradicción con el calentamiento global. Los autores enfatizan este aspecto en su propio comunicado de prensa, titulado: <a href=¿El Calentamiento Global, se Tomará unas Cortas Vacaciones?

No es siquiera necesario explicar que este enfriamiento es solo un pequeño parpadeo y que no cambiará nada del calentamiento global. El tema ha sido ampliamente discutido en otros sitios (ej. aquí). Pero hay una pregunta que se ha discutido poco: ¿Será correcto el pronóstico?

Nosotros pensamos que no, y estamos dispuestos a apostar una importante suma de dinero por nuestra postura. Hemos verificado dos veces con los autores: ellos insisten en que su artículo es un pronóstico serio y que no se trata de un experimento metodológico. Si los autores realmente piensan que su pronóstico tiene una chance de ser correcta mayor al 50%, entonces deberían aceptar nuestra apuesta; sería una oportunidad de ganar dinero fácil. Si no aceptan nuestra apuesta, deberíamos cuestionar, entonces, cuanta fe realmente tienen en su pronóstico.

La apuesta que proponemos es muy simple y concierne su pronóstico específico en el artículo de la revista Nature. Si la temperatura promedio de 2000-2010 (su primer pronóstico) resulta ser más baja o igual que la temperatura promedio de 1994-2004 (*), les pagaremos € 2500. Si resulta ser más alta, ellos nos pagan € 2500 a nosotros. Esta apuesta será decidida a fines del 2010. Ofrecemos lo mismo para el segundo pronóstico: si la temperatura promedio de 2005-2015(*) resulta ser más baja o igual comparando con la temperatura promedio de 1994-2004(*) les pagaremos € 2500, si resulta ser más alta, ellos nos pagan a nosotros esa cifra. Tomaremos el HADCRUT3, conjunto de datos del promedio de la temperatura de superficie global, como base para comparar las temperaturas, que es la misma base de datos utilizada por los autores en el artículo.

Para ser justos, necesitaríamos una cláusula de salvaguardia, por si un gran volcán hace erupción o si un gran meteorito golpea la tierra y causa un enfriamiento menor al del promedio de 1994-2004. En este caso, el pronóstico de Keenlyside et al. no se podría verificar y por lo tanto la apuesta sería inválida.

La apuesta también tendría que tener un árbitro neutral, proponemos, por ejemplo, el director del Hadley Centre, donde se albergan los datos utilizados por Keenlyside et al., o un comité de colegas neutrales. Dicho árbitro neutral también decidirá si una eventual explosión volcánica o un impacto de meteorito son lo suficientemente grandes para invalidar la apuesta.

Discutiremos pronto las razones científicas de nuestra evaluación, primero queremos ver si Keenlyside et al. acepta nuestra apuesta. Nuestro amigable desafío ha sido propuesto y esperamos que sea aceptado con buen espíritu deportivo.

(*) Adoptamos aquí la misma definición de intervalos de 10 años que en su artículo, que va del 1 de noviembre del primer año al 31 de octubre del último año, ej.:2000-2010 significa 1 de noviembre de 2000 hasta 31 de octubre de 2010.

Actualización: Ya hemos publicado la segunda parte de esta apuesta con nuestros argumentos científicos.