Bishop Hill What's all this then?
Sep 11, 2011 Climate: Models The blogospheric dissection of the papers by Spencer and Braswell and by Dessler continue apace. In fact the pace is a bit of a problem, as I have been left rather behind - radiative physics is an area I need to get up to speed on. This is a pity because it looks as though today's excitement is all going to be focused the effect of clouds on the earth's energy budget.
Firstly there is this comment by Bart at CA. Then there's this post by Tallbloke, which is essentially just a reposting of a comment by Bill Illis at WUWT.
The Bill Illis/Tallbloke piece seems rather more straightforward to me - if I understand it correctly, it shows that the variability in the amount of heat escaping the earth is driven to a large extent by changes in cloud cover. As one commenter puts it:
But the [climate models] only assign a single, constant value for all clouds, at all latitudes, for all periods of day and night, for all seasons of the year, across all elevations for all values of humidity and rainfall and percent CO2.
Right?
I can see that this is a problem, although perhaps I haven't quite got my head around the implications yet.
The Bart comment at CA is, however, more tricky and I haven't made head or tail of it yet. Given that there seems to be general agreement that it may be significant, maybe readers here can explain.
Reader Comments (162)
This is what Bart says at Roy Spencer's blog.
"...what I have found is significantly greater evidence that the feedback relationship is, indeed, negative, contrary to Dessler. The phase shift at low frequencies, which determines the sign of the feedback, is very clearly near 180 degrees. Saying an input is 180 degrees from the output is a long winded way of saying that the one is the negative of the other."
I hope he will pop in and explain
Hi all,
I've collated Bart's main comments from CA and Roy's site here
I don't fully understand it either, but thought it worth collating together into a single post.
If you have knowledge of control engineering and understand damped systems then you can get a handle of what is being said. Going from the time domain into the frequency domain simplifies the maths somewhat, though it may not look like it.
In my opinion we are seeing the result of two good scientists (Spencer and Dessler) operating in a proper scientific manner by releasing methods and data in a timely manner to a wider audience drawn in by the wider controversy.
I have a real distaste for the slurs pointed in the direction of both these scientists from both sides blogland.
In my opinion Roy Spencer has never allowed his religious views intefere with his scientific work. Andrew Dessler like Roy Spencer has also run a blog, has readily engaged with people including offering to debate skeptics and has defended Steve McIntyre on at least a couple of occasions against the likes of Jim Hansen. Andrew Dessler is also relatively untainted by Climategate.
I wouldn't go overboard on the findings by Bart until they have been examined more fully. A lot of very bright people appear to be getting engaged on this and ideas will get tossed around a lot.
What I am still missing is the views of other highly regarded scientists like Isaac Held. Roy Spencer has always argued that he received some encouragement from Isaac Held to pursue this line of investigation. I will be interested if Held and Forster eventually weigh in.
clivere
I look forward to a paper in Remote Sensing (a publication that has demonstrated scientific integrity) by Spencer, Dessler and possibly others from the blogosphere.
This would be a good way of putting science back into the climate
Bish,
Firstly, I wouldn't get too excited about knowledge or lack thereof of radiative physics. The constant drumbeat about rad phys has more to do with the need for the consensus to claim that the entire system is dominated by radiative physics than any resemblance to reality.
Secondly what Bart is talking about is that he is suggesting that since the earth is a huge and very complex system, it might be useful to apply control systems theory to the attempts to understand or analyse it.
There is no need for all the huffing, puffing and waffle about steely, razor-sharp minds being applied to dissecting every subtle nuance of the infinitesimals, it's just basic systems theory - bread and butter in the engineering world.
All that Bart is saying is that tools for analysing the feedback of 'black box' systems exist, and he is surprised that they are not being used in climate studies, given the obsession with unknown feedbacks.
It would be a massive step forward if Dessler and Spencer would consider working together and to produce a joint paper.
Although I doubt that it would affect the politics, it would be a huge first step in the process required to
heal the rift in science.
When is the cut off date for papers to be referenced in AR5?
Will Dessler and Spencer, and Bart et al make it?
For data concerning cloud-temperature interactions I recommend looking at http://www.climate4you.com/ in the section labelled climate + clouds. It well illustrates the complexity of the situation.
Bart certainly seems confident that the data are giving a clearly interpretable result.
Beyond looking it up in Wiki, I can't help with this one.
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2010/05/24/comments-on-nature-commentary-by-kevin-trenberth/
The link above and about a dozen other links contained therein has an interesting exchange between Roger Pielke Sr, Kevin Trenberth, Josh Willis (of JPL and ARGO fame) and Roy Spencer regarding the energy budget and energy balance of the earth. Spencer's and Trenberth's exchange about the use of satellite data to measure shortwave reflectivity (albedo) and long wave emisivity revealed that the satellite measurements are good to one or two percent while the imbalance that's being looked for is on the order of a tenth of a percent. On top of that the long wave emmisivity changes with cloud cover and the el nino vs. La Nina state in the Pacific. In other words, direct measurements of the energy imbalance are not possible using satellites at this time. That's why Pielke prefers the use of the Argo ocean heat content data as the integration over the years allow a much better measure of the total heat accumulated in the system. So I would contend that the arguments between Spencer and Braswell vs. Dressler and/ or Trenberth may not be resolvable given the accuracy of the measurements but there is a resolution and it's the heat content data from Argo. That's why Trenberth feels its such a shame the lack of ocean heat can't be accounted for.
I think Bart is an electronics engineer and uses the art of Linear Systems Theory
I'd suggest we all quickly read up on wikipedia , lol
Basically i think you depart from the premise that you can model your system (cloudcoverage vs anomaly) with a linear ordinary differential equation. If that is the case you're after the constants you use in that set of L ODE.
but if you have sampled input and output you have a massive toolbox to get them (which he is doing with Matlab fast fourier function transform calls)
Once you have an estimate of your system (the constants)
You can play with your model
for example you can say i give my model a jerk in cloud coverage , how much is my anomaly and how does it evolve over time.
that's his step response he plotted.
The stepresponse output showed 10W/m**2 cooling effect produced in 10years form a step in clouds. i still do not know whether that means from none to all clouds, or step from all to none clouds.
but is shows clouds are part of the game.
now you can say its all non linear etc but the 1st approximation of a system is to consider it obeys LODE's. very little of this world's artefacts that hv not been modellled with LTI to some satisfaction. freaky waves one of them.
"..Bart is saying is that tools for analysing the feedback of 'black box' systems exist, and he is surprised that they are not being used in climate studies..": surprised? Heavens, there's a large field of human knowledge called Statistics and the climate change hysterics don't use it much either. Or at least not competently.
On reading the comments at Bart Comment at CA I noticed one comment that caught my eye:
Actually we do -- we have blog review. I think Dessler, for one, paid the price of ignoring that.
Chuckles
Really? What does drive the climate system if not a mix of DSW from the sun and DLW from atmospheric re-radiation?
BBD: Don't forget to add albedo and convection and ocean heat content to what drive the climate system.
BBD
It also seems that meteorological patterns, pollution, land-use, vulcanism/tectonic plate-movements and the things they give rise to destroy the pure radiative physics as well.
Philip
They are feedbacks. They amplify or reduce the forcings from RF.
RF runs the show.
diogenes
Nothing is destroyed. Forcings create feedbacks.
But you are right, there is a very small energetic forcing from geothermal and anthropogenic change (aerosols, GHGs, land-use change etc) modifies climate behaviour. CO2 increases RF. Aerosols decrease it by reflecting DSW etc.
BBD: You spout rubbish!
Philip
And you are being rude. It would be more constructive if you were to point out why I am 'spouting rubbish.
I am getting a bit tired of this omnipresent mix of ad-hominem unpleasantness and content-free 'response'.
Philip
Can you please avoid addressing other commenters like that.
Sorry Bish but I have been waiting for so long for you to say the same thing to someone else on the site (we all know who but I do not want to get into a troll war) but apparently BBD is untouchable!
Phillip has been battling the AGW rubbish for some years now, posting relevant and clearly thought out comment, not just here but through all the blogs and MSN comments. One post you do not like and you warn him? Would not am email have sufficed? BBD has been guilty in the past and nothing said.
Sorry BBD but if you want, ask others to go back and search. My life is winding down and like Phillip...I am tired of your moaning and groaning!
BBD "I am getting a bit tired of this omnipresent mix of ad-hominem unpleasantness and content-free 'response'."
Me too! This is a fascinating topic, not least because it exercises our little grey cells so much - so let's not derail it.
BBD I think you deserve a cartoon, do get in touch if you like ... josh at cartoonsbyjosh.com
Of course it wont help understand Bart's ideas one iota but we have to have a bit of fun every now and then.
Sorry Bish and BBD.
BBD: They are all part of the dynamical system that drives the climate. If you were to write down the conservation of mass, momentum and energy equations of the climate system you would see that they are all aprt of the system. If you look at the equations you will see that we don't need "forcings". It is a term invented by "climate scientists" to try and bamboozle people.
Sean is correct about the insufficient resolution of data for the top of atmosphere energy balance. Something which can help is a comparison of ARGO data and CERES data:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2010/12/20/working-out-where-the-energy-goes-part-2-peter-berenyi/
Pete H
I haven't seen anything that I have felt warranted my intervening. I may well have missed something. You are free to point out things that require my attention - others do.
If I am going to intervene, I have to do so publicly I think so that I am seen to deal be even-handed.
Philip
If you were to write down the conservation of mass, momentum and energy equations of the climate system you would see that they are all aprt of the system. If you look at the equations you will see that we don't need "forcings". It is a term invented by "climate scientists" to try and bamboozle people.
I think you are going to need some references for this.
To avoid the usual crap about trollery, why not create a Discussion thread? You can attempt to prove that the climate system is not fundamentally driven by RF there. But with references, please.
Yeah, it is a big interlinked system but BBD knows what drives the show. Troll is as troll does.
!Of course it wont help understand Bart's ideas one iota but we have to have a bit of fun every now and then.!
Sep 11, 2011 at 4:20 PM | Josh
Now! That's more like it for a Sunday afternoon and to be fair...Button did well!
Phillip Bratby If you look at the equations you will see that we don't need "forcings". It is a term invented by "climate scientists" (...)
Thanks for that, Philip. As someone fully clued up on the dynamics of linear systems and control theory, I had never managed to make sense of the "feedbacks" vs. "forcings" terminology of climate scientists. Now I understand why.
BBD, Shub
If you hadn't noticed, I am trying to put this thread back on an even keel. Please can you help in that effort.
Josh
Really, I'm flattered. However, I'd settle for rational debate and substantive responses (although you are of course always courteous to a fault).
If you want to have a good laugh at me, that's fine though. I have no doubt at all that you will be able to skewer me with your usual precision.
BH
Of course. See at 4:46 pm.
"Pete H I haven't seen anything that I have felt warranted my intervening."
Fair enough Bish, Your site, your rules. My training was to take a dispute to a quiet office but blogs maybe call for a different approach.
I still maintain that Philip was prevalent in the MSN way before BBD popped up and I feel he (Phillip) has a right to an opinion even though he could possibly have put it more diplomatically...Diplomacy being the art of politely saying the same thing?
Whatever, its a Sunday and you should be doing family time rather than refereeing our spats and for that my apologies! Bear in mind that here in Cyprus we are a couple of hours ahead so the Scottish wine has had an effect BTW way...XXX BBD ;-) !
BBD
Would you care to switch the discussion back onto the topic of Bart's black-box analysis...?
BBD, actually I need your help a bit. But no worries either way.
BBD
I have made no secret that I am using this blog as much as a resource to examine the psychodynamics from a clinical view (aka Freud, Jung, Adler and others) as an education in the science of the weather/climate. I, for one, do not consider you a troll, as I do others. You do hold some firmly held beliefs, but from time to time I do see you willing to reason -- unlike others I could name.
Cool off, calm down and relax. The same can be suggested to Shub and Phillip, who don't quite see you the way I do. EVERYBODY take a deep breath.
And BBD, if Josh wanted to use his rapier wit on you, I assure you that you would already be skewered. Trust me on that. Contact him. Please.
Don Pablo
Thank you.
Now, onward with the thread!
Bart's analysis identifies a 5 year lag between cloud changes and temperature changes, and agrees this is surprising. If true, then how should this be interpreted relative to the inverse proportionality between sensitivity and response time? If at all?
BBD -
What I find simplistic about the RF-is-all approach, is the assumption that it seems to take the radiative temperature at the top of atmosphere for granted. That is, from the point of view of the earth, atmosphere included, the energy balance is determined from the solar radiation (less reflected) and the outgoing thermal radiation. However, when we focus on the earth's surface, the equations have to include not only the short-wave and long-wave radiation, but convection and evaporation as well. While models attempt to account for these effects when computing "feedbacks", I can't put much stock in their fidelity. Exhibit A is the wide spread in sensitivity amongst the models. This is characteristic of science which is still finding its way.* Exhibit B is that (and I may be incorrect here) there has been no reconciliation of the models' outgoing radiation, with the observations, such that we have a reliable indication of the energy imbalance which is claimed. Following Dr Pielke Sr, I believe that the best measure of energy imbalance is the oceanic heat content, and that has shown little increase from the ARGO data.
I'm not impressed by accounting for aerosol forcing when I see in Hansen et al. (submitted 2011) that the recent (past 20 years) aerosol forcing is set equal to -0.5 times the greenhouse gas forcing, despite the rather different trajectory of sulphate emissions over that period. Cf. figure 2 here. Certainly aerosol effects are not limited to sulphates, but one would expect some consideration of them in attempting to produce an estimate of aerosols upon the energy balance. I dislike to say it, but it has the earmarks of a kludge -- that is, there are factors not considered, and in order to balance the books, the aerosols effects, rather than computed from first principles, are instead set to take up the slack.
*I have seen elsewhere, in discussions of the claim that the greenhouse gas effect is "just a theory", a comparison to gravity, as another theory which presumably the skeptic must accept. Now most of these discussions are pure bs, but there is a point here which is relevant. While the greenhouse effect *in radiative physics* is on quite firm ground, the effect *in climate science* is (to my mind) much less well established. If one takes several computer models of gravitational effects, say of the solar system, they will all agree, up to minuscule effects from e.g. time step size. There are at least two methods of which I'm aware, for computing the theoretical greenhouse effect -- that is, the "no-feedback" effect -- and they are in close agreement. But global circulation models (GCMs) vary considerably from each other. I conclude from this that while the basic physics is understood, the applicability to the hugely complex system which we call climate, is not.
"Bart's analysis identifies a 5 year lag between cloud changes and temperature changes, and agrees this is surprising. If true, then how should this be interpreted relative to the inverse proportionality between sensitivity and response time?"
Between El Nino events, heat builds up in the pacific warm pool, most of the energy is therefore hidden from the surface temperature record. The approximate period of the ENSO cycle is around 5 years.
The last 3 solar cycles were all around 10 years long. It is noticeable that the big El Nino's occur just after solar minimum. I have a theory why....
If Bart analysis is correct about the 5 yr lag in temp response to cloud change, and Dragić et al is correct (below) regarding a 3 day lag in temp response to Forbush decreases, is this because of regular CR flux being a much smaller effect than Forbush events? Could the CR flux & Forbush numbers be compared apple to apples?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/11/new-paper-links-cosmic-rays-clouds-and-temperature/
"Physicist Luboš Motl also writes about the new paper:
What have they found? If they take all Forbush decreases, the effect is insignificant. However, if they compute the average of the largest Forbush decreases, they find a substantial increase of the day-night temperature difference by as much as a Fahrenheit degree around 3 days after the event [reference to Figure 5 above]."
Philip and Martin A.- thanks for calling out the 'forcings' & 'feedbacks' craziness of the climateers.
Returning to the thread, some kind of rapprochement between Dessler and Spencer is the last thing that we need.
What is needed is a return to a state such that 0.0 correlation coefficients do not find space in Science in defense of the GCMs which are being used to control the course of human technological development.
Dessler is either a fraud or sadly deluded, and all his papers should be reviewed. The Science 2010 paper should be withdrawn.
Nice input HaroldW. BBD's point that conservation of energy (or energy in must equal energy out) while correct, and obvious, does nothing to really address the problem. We don't actually know what the total fluxes in and outare.and have recently found new ones! Working out where all the energy goes, and in what ways it flows around the system is what all the fuss is about. Spencer and Dessler's spat comes down to saying that we found a small part of that field were we've definitively worked out that we don't really know, and that's just a small part of the whole problem. Bart seems to be suggesting a new set of tools to poke about with. Excellent, let's all poke awayand see what's revealed. Wish I had shares in a popcorn company -this last few weeks has been fascinating.
HaroldW
Well, not exactly, particularly if you go beyond the solar system. While Newtonian physics will get you to say Saturn within a few meters of where you want to go, it doesn't do much for why the outer edges of the galaxy are move as fast as the center, effects that are put down to "black matter". And they also "invented" "blank energy" to explain why the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.
Perhaps you chose that example with that in mind -- things are never as simple as we thought them to be. We are not even sure how many spatial dimensions there are, although I have long ago argued that there are more than three, because Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and other "tenets" of quantum mechanics were just "black magic" excuses. (Of course, you can argue that more than three spatial dimensions is "black magic" as the have not been demonstrated.)
At least with "Black Matter" and "Black Energy", today's scientists are admitting that they have no fecking idea -- yet, but at least they are looking at it. In the case of simplistic explanations for climate, I think there is a reticence by some to look at it objectively and would prefer to put it off to the same sort of magic conjured by by Heisenberg about 85 years ago.
Don Pablo -
I appreciate your generous suggestion that I chose gravity in my previous post, for such a subtle reason. Unfortunately, there was no such deep thought in mind. But you do make an excellent point -- even well-verified science can be amended with further research.
Because gravity is known to such precision, scientists are willing to give credence to such speculation as dark matter and dark energy. Indeed, slight deviations in planetary orbits were the clues which resulted in the discovery of the outer planets. [Well, technically, planet in the singular now that poor Pluto has been demoted.]
Perhaps in a century or maybe two, climate science will have achieved such a state. Right now, I think we're just getting started. I've previously compared the current state of the science to the human understanding of electricity and magnetism in say the time of Benjamin Franklin or Alessandro Volta. That may be a little on the pessimistic side. But certainly we're not yet to the stage of Gauss or Maxwell.
I'm no physicist. Does not some thermal energy in the overall system get consumed or released in the chemical phase changes of water between solid liquid and gaseous state, and some consumed into kinetic energy driving the huge ocean and air mass circulation systems? Do they not buffer it in cycles of varying length striving to, but never achieving, equilibrium? Surely it is variations in the dynamics of these regional systems that control climate in terms of tangible experience.
HaroldW
You might find this article helpful.
Let's be careful what we say here. You say that ARGO 'shows little increase', but von Schuckmann & Le Traon (2011) presents a revised estimate of OHC from ARGO data for the period 2005 - 2010. From the abstract (emphasis added):
I'd be the first to admit that OHC reconstructions pre- and post-ARGO integration are far from definitive. I'd be the last to agree that OHC is not increasing on an inter-decadal scale.
I'm uncomfortable with the uncertainties over the whereabouts of the famous missing energy. The treatment of this issue (eg Hansen et al. 2011) shows that there is much still to learn. There are two responses to scientific uncertainty. It can be accepted as a necessity or it can be used in an attempt to undermine a whole field. One is logical; one is (ultimately) political.
This is getting a bit long, and is borderline OT, so let me leave it there. I hope the links are helpful.
And thank you for your civil tone. It is greatly appreciated.
BBD</>
Aiming to retain a measure of the civility which has (all unwanted) crept in, I must gently point out that the (demanded) expenditure of trillions of dollars, on the basis of uncertain science, is essentially political.