Bishop Hill Parliamentary feedback
Feb 3, 2014 Climate: Models Climate: Parliament Greens The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) has come to the attention of this blog from time to time, most notably when it was noticed that it was chaired by Lord Oxburgh and included a member of the Russell panel. Lord O has now stood down as chairman and has been replaced by Adam Afriyie MP, but remains on the board.
POST has just issued a briefing on climate feedbacks and this is interesting reading. It was written by a POST staffer, but the research was done by a secondee called Danny Heptinstall, who seems to be an ecology PhD student at the Aberdeen Centre for Environmental Sustainability (and whose secondment is being paid for by the British Ecological Society). Hmm.
The document is structured so as to consider physical feedbacks separately from carbon cycle feedbacks, but the coverage of the specifics is rather odd. Under physical feedbacks we learn about water vapour and albedo, but there is no mention of clouds. We are, however, told that "The underlying physics of physical climate feedbacks are relatively well understood so they are comparatively well represented in models". Blimey.
It's only in the later section on uncertainties that we learn that there is a cloud feedback, and here there is mercifully a suggestion that there are still some unknowns to consider.
Cloud Feedback
Clouds can both warm and cool the climate and the sum of these effects determines whether clouds result in a net cooling or warming effect. Both high and low clouds reflect the sun’s radiation back into space, causing the Earth to cool, and trap heat, preventing it from being lost into space. Low clouds trap less heat than they reflect so they have a cooling effect on the climate, while high clouds trap more heat than they reflect so they have a warming effect.Although the cooling and warming properties of different clouds are well understood, there is uncertainty about how climate change will influence the height of clouds. Most models suggest the feedback will be amplifying as the height of clouds will increase in a warmer world. However, some models predict the feedback will have little overall amplifying effect. No models predict the cloud feedback to be net diminishing.
And here are the conclusions:
Compared to existing model estimates, it is likely that climate feedbacks will result in additional carbon in the atmosphere and additional warming. This is because the majority of poorly represented climate feedbacks are likely to be amplifying feedbacks. This additional atmospheric carbon from climate feedbacks could make it more difficult to avoid a greater than 2˚C rise in global temperatures without additional reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The strength of many amplifying feedbacks is likely to increase with warming, which could increase the risk of the climate changing state (Box 3). Some commentators suggest the uncertainties in our knowledge of carbon cycle and physical feedbacks may mean the Earth will warm faster than models currently estimate.
Reader Comments (51)
So, no bias there then. Talk about corruption.
Last year Europol director Rob Wainwright said VAT fraud in the carbon credits market had cost the EU about 5bn euros
So...not only worse than we thought...but worse than we could have thought!
Still, it is nice to know that even lowly ecology students can guide our energy policies. It is not as though they are important or anything.
Heptinstall may as well have worked for Greenpeace or WWF for all the actual scientific data to back his speculation. Where is the data to support any of his claims, and oh the hubris of this individual who thinks he knows all the processes which contribute to the net forcing/feedback.
Are they giving out PhD's for this standard of work nowadays?
"It is likely that climate feedbacks will result in additional carbon in the atmosphere" and also "This additional atmospheric carbon from climate feedbacks." It seems that this chap has discovered how to create mass from scotch mist.
Lindzen was right. You don't get the best scientific minds going into climate science
Well this just confirms the models are bollocks. Compare the following:
Global cloud anomaly (%), 1983-2012)
Hadcrut4, 1982-2013.
Also: http://www.climate4you.com/images/HadCRUT3%20and%20TropicalCloudCoverISCCP.gif
Is it just too obvious for IPPC / Met Office / Royal Society climate scientists that a decrease in global cloud cover (particularly in the tropics) will result in higher insolence and thereby warmer surface temperatures?
Meanwhile Germany is dumping failed AGW policies and building coal asap.
The UK, like the US, needs a change in the weather- political weather.
John B @ 12.29 "where is the data to support any of his claims " - well it is referenced, the authoritative parts to IPCC AR5 WG1. He appears to show no conception of the relative size and timescale of feed backs. His example of positive feedback (sun on snow) reverses within a 24 hour cycle due to increased heat loss at night. The negative feedback - vegetation growth - manifests on a 365 day cycle with the NH seasons - not long enough to affect the putative CO2 warming - in any case, this is subsumed within this cycle by the effect of the NH summer insolation. His last paragraph gives the game away. After exhaustively listing all the uncertainties and poor guesswork involved- even in the models - the unknowns are "likely to be amplifying feedbacks" . So,though nobody else knows - he does! Must be in his yet unpublished thesis, I can hardly wait.
Danny boy might as well be a dugong. Talk about copy 'n paste - although I doubt WWF / Greenpiece will go after him for plagiarism - this quality of research support is just woeful. Love his "computers write my blogs all by themselves" stuff - shows a pitiful grasp of the situation - the software coders have nothing to do with it - it happens by magic. I see he has a small line in sociology too... Spreading himself too thinly - trying to be around where the research money tree is dropping fruit.
I was doubtful it was the same Danny Heptinstall, but it really is!
How can a PhD student studying Red Kites be suitable for this "report"?
Can some answer what I think should be a question of fact. Do the models "predict" cloud feedback, or do they "assume" cloud feedback?
Chandra's a male then. Apologies
It would be interested to see how many of those involved in climate research in the UK had Further Maths/Scholarship Level Maths pre 1988( when GSCEs were introduced). Pre 1988O Levels included calculus which meant those starting A Level physics could be taught by deriving equations using this method. Post 1988, GSCEs no longer included calculus.
This is why Lindzen's comments on not the most numerate going into climate science is important.
Also, pre 1991 and the collapse of Communism , how much of the Met Office funds came from the M o D? Consequently how much of the AGW scare is due to the Met Office trying to justify it's existence?
My view is that apart from those who are Cambridge Maths Part III Tripos with courses in fluid mechanics and thermodynamics or similar M.Sc from Imperial; people cannot comprehend that the earth's climate is too complex to model accurately. After all consideration of the climate led to chaos theory. If the basic equations are too simple to model the complexity of the weather , it does not matter how quickly one does them, the answer will be wrong.
It would be interested to see how many of those involved in climate research in the UK had Further Maths/Scholarship Level Maths pre 1988( when GSCEs were introduced). Pre 1988O Levels included calculus which meant those starting A Level physics could be taught by deriving equations using this method. Post 1988, GSCEs no longer included calculus.
This is why Lindzen's comments on not the most numerate going into climate science is important.
Also, pre 1991 and the collapse of Communism , how much of the Met Office funds came from the M o D? Consequently how much of the AGW scare is due to the Met Office trying to justify it's existence?
My view is that apart from those who are Cambridge Maths Part III Tripos with courses in fluid mechanics and thermodynamics or similar M.Sc from Imperial; people cannot comprehend that the earth's climate is too complex to model accurately. After all consideration of the climate led to chaos theory. If the basic equations are too simple to model the complexity of the weather , it does not matter how quickly one does them, the answer will be wrong.
AR5 WG1 Chapter 6 -- of which this report is more or less a summary -- says, "There is high confidence that climate change will partially offset increases in global land and ocean carbon sinks caused by rising atmospheric CO2." I read that as suggesting that the net of carbon feedbacks is negative; yet the Heptinstall suggests the opposite: "Although, the effectiveness of the [ocean carbon store] sink is likely (medium confidence) to reduce over time," and "The majority of models predict the land carbon store will remain a sink, although its ability to absorb carbon will weaken."
Which is the correct interpretation of WG1?
The only good thing about this is that along with all the other spin and hype, time will surely underline the paucity of such conclusions.
So it is not so much the fact that idiots make idiotic decisions - that is surely a given.
What is of HUGE concern is that these muppets are making decisions that affect the economy.
To me the following quote is more than just "quote of the week" - it is quote of the decade - and quite possibly THE quote of the last 1.7 decades.
“Whatever the UK is deciding to do vis-a-vis climate will have no impact on your climate. It will have a profound impact on your economy.”
Richard Lindzen in testimony to the UK House of Commons, Energy and Climate Change Committee
Donna Laframboise can add another expert to the list mentioned in her works.
"It is likely that climate feedbacks will result in additional carbon in the atmosphere" and also "This additional atmospheric carbon from climate feedbacks." It seems that this chap has discovered how to create mass from scotch mist.
Lindzen was right. You don't get the best scientific minds going into climate science
Feb 3, 2014 at 12:52 PM | Colin Porter
We dont get the best scientific minds on Bishop Hill either.
The two main carbon sinks relevant to this discussion are tundra and the ocean.
Warm the tundra and the permafrost melts. Gigatons of peat then decay and release CO2 into the atmosphere.
Warm water and its capacity to store dissolved gas decreases. Warm the oceans and their dissolved CO2 returns to the atmosphere.
Both concepts are familiar to any ecologist, but apparantly not to you.
The timing of the publication of this paper should be quite inconvenient for the POST:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2014/02/new-paper-finds-negative-feedback.html
"A new paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres finds water vapor can act as a negative-feedback cooling effect to significantly counteract anthropogenic global warming"
You couldn't make it up...
Oh - sorry - Danny Heptinstall just did...
Cloud feedbacks depend on having something to feed back. This is the 40 W/m^2 IR emission from the Earth's surface through the 'atmospheric window'. When it is intercepted by clouds, the surface gets warmer, shifting heat transfer to convection and evapo-transpiration. Real GHG-absorbed energy flux is far lower; 23 W/m^2, and it's not thermalised in the gas phase.
i definitely think we should stop putting carbon in the atmosphere. Especially in the form of diamond. Must cost a fortune.
CO2 though is perfectly OK, which is probably why he doesn't mention it.
OMG.
That wotsupwiththat.com scietivist (who claims he is an important tenured physicists at a top ranked university) will surely be ALL OVER this one.
His nickers were getting awefuly tangled about a NON CLIMATE-SCIENTIST (OMG) appearing on a radio program and having the temirity to talk about models.
Imagine a student Ecologist writing reports for Government Offices. This will surely force him to his keyboard in a fit of apoplexy.
Or maybe not.
I agree with Soarer, the use of Carnon is moronic, since when does it rain down Coal?
Sorry I should have said
I agree with Soarer, the use of Carbon is moronic, since when does it rain down Coal?
Entropic man. climate was obviously warmer as large herbivores survived there. CO2 has increased over last 16 years but temperature has not. Look at geological history, CO2 has reached 1000s ppm- Cretaceous .
Soarer
"Atmospheric carbon" refers mostly to CO2, methane and soot particles.
Geckko
I like the idea of ecologists studying climate. Ecologists are multidisciplinary, trained in a variety of physical, chemical and biological sciences. They are also familiar with numerical analysis of nonlinear mulatvariate systems showing complex feedback behaviour.
Better an ecologist than an overspecialised physicist or, worse, an engineer.
Entropic man. climate was obviously warmer as large herbivores survived there. CO2 has increased over last 16 years but temperature has not. Look at geological history, CO2 has reached 1000s ppm- Cretaceous .
Feb 3, 2014 at 3:24 PM | Charlie
The Cretaceous also had tropical sea surface temperatures 17C warmer than today and deep ocean temperatures 10C warmer. The global temperature was a minimum of 4C warmer.
Anyone convinced that there has been no 21st century warming should read this.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/global-temperature-the-post-1998-surprise/
Before you go off half-cocked I suggest you read the discussion of Tamino's post between Martin A and myself on the
"Walport's reverse thinking" thread.
Mydogsgotnonosed
The GHG- absorbed energy flux is also reradiated. Half of it finds its way back to the surface, where its warming effect also increases convection and evapo-transpiration
Pethefin
"this effect may actually slightly weaken the more dire forecasted aspects of an increasing warming of our climate, the scientists say."
I think the key word here is "slightly". Hockeyschtic has taken observations of a minor local effect and blown them up out of all proportion.
I note that the author also excludes lapse rate feedback - which is a genuine temperature-dependent feedback, but includes a brand new feedback called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation feedback!! A feedback to what input exactly?
Hilarious.
In support of the PDO feedback, his paper cites
http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-the-case-of-the-missing-heat-1.14525
which is actually a very good article IMO.
The problem appears to be that Mr Heptinstall didn't understand it.
Staffer: Climate feedbacks could both increase and decrease global warming.
Heptinstall: Some commentators suggest the uncertainties in our knowledge of carbon cycle and physical feedbacks may mean the Earth will warm faster than models currently estimate.
Presumably others don't. A profound potpourri of perplexing pronouncements and preposterous philosophy all portending practically nothing.
AndyL,
The answer to your question is that the models predict cloud feedback, but very very badly.
Cloud formation starts as a sub-gridscale process, which means that the prediction in models is parameterised. It is an engineering kludge.
How do we know that the models do a bad job? There was a massive reduction in equatorial albedo due to decreasing cloud cover between 1982 and 2000. This corresponded to a warm phase of the PDO. This cloud albedo change caused an increase in global received shortwave radiation amounting to greater than 3 W/m2 over the two decades. None of the GCMs matched this relatively massive change in shortwave. Since the turn of the century, as the PDO has moved into a cool phase, the equatorial cloud albedo has reversed direction, with a corresponding reduction of received SW flux. Again the GCMs all failed to predict this behaviour.
However, it should be said that the work of Kosaka and Xie 2013 suggests some hope for the climate models. They prescribed temperature in a small part of the equatorial Pacific (the ENSO region) and showed that they could explain a large part of the late 20th century heating and the subsequent hiatus - driven in large part by SW variation in response to cloud variation. This suggests that if the models could correctly predict the ENSO region temperature - which over decadal timeframes is related to the PDO phase - then their prediction of cloud behaviour could be substantially improved.
A profound potpourri of perplexing pronouncements and preposterous philosophy all portending practically nothing.
Feb 3, 2014 at 4:30 PM | Alan Reed
Spend a while among the commenters here! An average BH contributor produces output fitting that description as a matter of course.
I am grateful to all of you.
Unlike the POST post, even an above-average BH contributor does not ask me to pay for their contribution.
@Entropic Man
>Better an ecologist than an overspecialised physicist or, worse, an engineer.
Usually I'd prefer the physicist as they'd know enough maths to avoid making total idiots of themselves. But if we are talking about feedbacks then the people you need to listen to are engineers. They've forgotten more about feedback than an ecologist is ever likely to learn.
NickM: yes, engineers do tend to have a better grasp on reality than many of the alarmists. However, CAGW is real, and is something for us all to be fearful of – have a look at DP’s definition in the comments here to realise that.
Most models suggest the feedback will be amplifying ,,, <'i>
the majority of poorly represented climate feedbacks are likely to be amplifying feedbacks.
The above statements imply that warming should be self-perpetuating. How on earth, or how on Earth, did previous warm periods come to an end? Can climate models tell us what caused the Little Ice Age? If they can, what is the answer? If they can't, why should we take any notice of them?
Entropic Man "The GHG-absorbed energy flux is also reradiated. Half of it finds its way back to the surface, where its warming effect also increases convection and evapo-transpiration". Complete bollocks.
My, my.
You and Mygodsgotnonoses and Alec must have gone to the same school.
Nick M
I hope you are not referring to electronic engineers. They have an even looser connection to external reality than anyone else I've known.
@Entropic Man
> I hope you are not referring to electronic engineers. They have an even looser connection to external reality than anyone else I've known.
Well there is no accounting for your particular prejudices.
Electronic engineers are probably the people with the most experience of feedback systems. But I think it's now recognised as a property of many systems in many branches of engineering. Car suspension systems or earthquake proofing a building would require a knowledge of the same maths. And probably one of the oldest feedback mechanisms is the Watt governor from 1788.
Oddly I cannot believe any engineer looking at a machine would be unable to work out whether the system exhibited positive or negative feedback - I mean how could you not know.
In my experience, Electronic, and Electrical, Engineers have been some of the most grounded people I've met.
NickM -
"I cannot believe any engineer looking at a machine would be unable to work out whether the system exhibited positive or negative feedback - I mean how could you not know."
The problem is that the term is used in an atypical fashion. While I've heard of some references to a "runaway greenhouse effect", which would be a system with (truly) positive feedback, I don't think that's really considered as a possibility for Earth.
If we consider the earth's temperature as the system (climate) output, there is a strong negative feedback from thermal radiation. That is, if there is an excess of energy flowing into the system -- considered as the ocean+land+atmosphere -- then the temperature will rise and the earth will radiate more heat into space, tending to bring the energy imbalance back toward zero. And similarly if there is a net loss of energy, the Earth will cool and radiate less, again bringing the energy imbalance toward zero. Now consider sea-ice feedback: the idea is that as the temperature rises, there is less sea ice, and as ice is a better reflector of sunlight than water, more energy enters the system, which -- by itself -- will tend to raise temperature further. This is called a "positive feedback", but an electronic engineer would say that the system feedback remains negative (that is, stable), but is less negative than in the absence of this effect.
Think of a public address system. If the amplification of a microphone is too high, then one gets that annoying squeal increasing in volume as far as the speakers allow -- that's positive feedback in action. Climate science refers to anything which increases the microphone gain as a positive feedback, and anything which decreases the gain as a negative feedback. Even though the system never goes unstable.
Cumbrian Lad: :-)
As an Electrical Engineer, I appreciate the support some of you have shown above. (I do hope that Cumbrian Lad is being serious, and not just referring to "earthing" connections when he writes of EEs being "grounded"...)
Since graduating and moving into the business world, I have told those who ask that being an Engineer (and particularly an Electrical Engineer) is a quick way to get in touch with reality. If I design a circuit in accordance with reality, it works. If my design is contrary to reality, it doesn't work -- sometimes spectacularly! Successful designs lead to a satisfying career, while a string of unsuccessful designs lead to the unemployment line. Being successful requires being in touch with reality.
There are many other disciplines in which reality can be boxed up and placed at the back of a dark closet. The educational theories behind "Look-Say" reading (it has a thousand other names) created generations of barely-literate graduates in the US. Similarly, the "new math" has created innumerable innumerates. There has been no retribution for crushing the potential of generations of school children. To the contrary, the culprits are rewarded and honored. So it is in too much of Climate Science, as well. Nobel prize, anyone?
Colonial
Fear not Colonial, it was indeed a compliment, though I could not resist the opportunity for phrasing it as
I did. (I nearly said that they were 'down to earth' but that's not much better).
@HaroldW
I am aware that climate scientists use words to have their own special meaning - but apart from knowing the words and when to use them they don't seem to know anything else. Like what those words mean, or what the actual value for the number might be (except it must be big and positive although we have no explanation of how come we know it must be big and positive). IPCC AR4 says almost nothing about feedback.
Let's suppose the climate system exhibited no feedback - positive or negative. Then if you turn the sun up by lets say 2 watts the earth's temperature would go up by say 1 degree. Turn the knob on the sun down by 2 notches and the temperature would drop by a 1 deg. If the climate system is stable, then it's overall feedback is negative and that means for the same change in energy you'd get a smaller change in temperature. And that's how it is - can't really be any other way.
If the feedback were positive, then the system is unstable. A small change would drive the system into a runaway venus like greenhouse effect or into an ice age. The system might have been unstable in the past - say as we came out of the last ice age but it's had many thousands of years to find a stable state. having found it any attempt to change it will be resisted - i.e negative feedback.
Anything else just doesn't make any physical sense.
A physicist would think the engineers (and climate scientists) are making it too complicated. She'd simply draw a potential energy diagram. It could be flat, u-shaped or n-shaped. flat is neither stable nor unstable and corresponds to global warming of 1deg. Anything u-shaped implies stable, negative feedback and global warming is a non-problem. Only an n-shaped curve would be interesting. But such a curve is unstable. How come we've stayed precariously perched at the top for thousands of years just waiting for a bit of warming supposedly from CO2 to send us hurtling down the slope?
Nick M
In your scenario of a 2W increase in insolation two different processes come into play, which complicates things a little.
First is Harold W's point. The excess of incoming radiation over outgoing energy creates a temperature rise. The increased temperature increases the outgoing radiation. Warming continues until the outgoing energy has increased by 2W and the system comes into equilibrium at a higher temperature than before, probably about 0.5C
Second is the feedback between temperature and CO2. Carbon sinks such as dissolved CO2 in the oceans and tundra at high latitudes are temperature sensitive. Increase the temperature and they store less CO2. Some of the CO2 releases easily, some is held more tightly, but the sinks only hold enough CO2 for a limited concentration rise. This means that the increase in temperature produces an increase in CO2, but less than would produce a runaway increase in temperature.
The extra CO2 blocks some of the increase in the outward radiation. The result is that instead of the 0.5C temperature rise necessary to balance the 2W alone, the system warms by perhaps 1.5C.
I havent mentioned climate sensitivity. This is the effect of increasing temperature due to CO2 on water vapour, cloud and other potential amplifying effects. They increase the temperature change beyond what CO2 could generate directly.
The combination of the two factors produces an s-shaped temperature/time curve. At first the increased insolation produces a curve which looks exponential. Then increasing outward radiation and the limited CO2 release flatten the curve gradually to a new equilibrium state.
The key word is equilibrium. Consider the two natural states of climate over the last two million years. Glacial periods have lower insolation, which cools the system and encourages CO2 uptake by the sinks. Interglacials have higher insolation which increases temperature and encourages CO2 release into the atmosphere. The insolation difference produces a 1C change, which the CO2 amplifies into a 5C change.
How has the system stayed in balance? For Earth the system oscillates gradually between 9C and 280ppm CO2 during glacial periods and 14C with 280ppm during interglacials. The warming during the last 130 years is due to the same process, but instead being triggered by increasing temperature as usual, the initial trigger has been an abrupt and destabilising artificial CO2 increase, to ~ 400ppm.
"This is because the majority of poorly represented climate feedbacks are likely to be amplifying feedbacks"
Translation: We don't know but if we did know, the answer would be X.
NickM-
If I had to pick a letter to describe the potential energy diagram, it would be "w". That is, two energy wells, the left one being the glaciated state, and the other being the interglacial. As the glacial periods are of longer duration, I'd draw the interglacial well as shallower. [So it wouldn't be a symmetric "w".] Greenhouse gases would be likened to a force pushing towards the right (warm) end. The long-term temperature history implied by ice cores suggests that not all orbital variations which favor warmer conditions, are strong enough to get over the "wall" between the energy wells.
@HaroldW
Agree 100%. Looked at over the long term the planet's PE diagram would be a w. But I'd think of the Milankovitch cycle as being a change to the shape of the PE diagram rather than a change in forcing. The earth stays the same average distance away from the sun; so there isn't really any change in forcing. The Milankovitch cycle changes where and when different parts of the earth get that energy.
At the transition between glacial and inter-glacial, it's a w with the middle bit low enough to allow the system to shift from one stable point to the other. This leads to the system bouncing very quickly back and forwards between the two states. That actually happened a couple of times at the start of the current inter-glacial. In the middle of an inter-glacial the system is more stable, the 2nd v is deeper and the sides are much steeper. Otherwise every time a big volcano went off we'd be plunged straight back into an ice age.