{"id":477,"date":"2007-10-04T07:57:43","date_gmt":"2007-10-04T12:57:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/archives\/2007\/10\/my-model-used-for-deception\/"},"modified":"2007-12-26T17:22:20","modified_gmt":"2007-12-26T22:22:20","slug":"my-model-used-for-deception","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/archives\/2007\/10\/my-model-used-for-deception\/","title":{"rendered":"My model, used for deception"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Well, not my model exactly. I developed and host a web interface<\/a> to the modtran model of atmospheric infrared radiation, an early example of a line-by-line code which I downloaded and use to teach and as part of a textbook<\/a>. Now David C. Archibald from Summa Development Limited, Perth, WA, Australia claims<\/a> that my “University of Chicago modtran facility” proves that global warming won’t happen. <\/p>\n

Archibald begins by discovering that the IR light flux at the top of the atmosphere is more sensitive to changes in atmosphere CO2<\/sub> when the concentration of CO2<\/sub> is lower. This will come as no surprise to regular readers of realclimate who will know that the energy flux scales with the logarithm of CO2<\/sub>. The log dependence is why the climate sensitivity parameter is often posed as a temperature change for doubled CO2<\/sub> concentration; to first order, a change from 10 ppm to 20 would have about as much climate impact as a change from 1000 to 2000 ppm. So Archibald is right on this score, clearly climate is more sensitive to CO2<\/sub> when levels are lower. However, I think most climate models are aware that atmospheric CO2<\/sub> is 380 ppm rather than 10 ppm, and they predict global warming anyway. If we were starting out from 10 ppm, the warming would be even worse. <\/p>\n

Archibald then takes an atmospheric increase of 40 ppm which he thinks will happen by the year 2030. I’d have guessed 60 ppm by then at least, the way things are going, but whatever, we’ll see. He uses my setup of modtran to calculate that the IR flux to space would drop by 0.4 Watts \/ m2<\/sup> as a result of this 40 ppm. Try it yourself.<\/a> Run the model once with 375 ppm CO2<\/sub> and another time with 415 ppm, and compare the Iout<\/sub> values in Watts \/ m2<\/sup>. The exact number you get depends on humidity, setting, clouds, etc. Formulas given in IPCC would say 0.5 Watts \/ m2<\/sup>; zeroing out water vapor in modtran gets the IR response up to 0.6 Watts \/ m2<\/sup> for the default tropical atmosphere case. At any rate Archibald isn’t wildly off here either. <\/p>\n

But then Archibald multiplies the radiative forcing by an absurdly low value of the climate sensitivity parameter. In this case he is using the parameter in units of degrees C per Watt \/ m2<\/sup>. The two forms of the climate sensitivity parameter that we have discussed here are related by a factor of about 4 Watts \/ m2<\/sup> for a doubling of CO2<\/sub>. The value Archibald uses is 0.1 degree C per Watt \/ m2<\/sup> which was “demonstrated” in a paper entitled “CO2-induced global warming: a skeptic\u2019s view of potential climate change” by Idso, 1998. Translated, Idso’s climate sensitivity winds up to be 0.4 degrees for doubling CO2<\/sub>. IPCC finds it essentially impossible (yeah, I know, highly unlikely<\/i> or whatever) that the climate sensitivity could be less than 1.5 degrees C for doubling CO2<\/sub>, and 3 degrees C is a best-guess value. <\/p>\n

In the end, Archibald concludes that the warming from the next 40 ppm of CO2<\/sub> rise (never mind the rest of it) will only be 0.04 degrees C. Archibald’s low-ball estimate of climate change comes not from the modtran model my server ran for him, but from his own low-ball value of the climate sensitivity. <\/p>\n\n<\/div> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, not my model exactly. I developed and host a web interface to the modtran model of atmospheric infrared radiation, an early example of a line-by-line code which I downloaded and use to teach and as part of a textbook. Now David C. Archibald from Summa Development Limited, Perth, WA, Australia claims that my “University […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-climate-science","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t