Bishop Hill Divergence problem solved (allegedly)
May 8, 2014 Climate: MWP An article in Newsweek is claiming that the divergence problem has been solved:
[The] solution is simple, elegant, and intuitive: global dimming. Since the 1960s—exactly when tree-ring data started to go awry—“there’s been large scale decreases in the amount of light that’s reaching the earth,” says Stine. It’s fairly easy to see why, too. In rapidly industrializing parts of the world with fewer emissions laws—like Southeast Asia—the light decline is particularly steep, and continues into the 21st century. On the other hand, in areas like the U.S. and Europe, you see a rapid decline in the middle of the 20th century, but then light levels steady themselves later on—right around the time most air pollution laws were put into place.
The article is largely the normal news magazine misrepresentation of Climategate and the scientific issues around temperature reconstructions and is not really worth the time of anyone other than the global warming faithful. However, the source of the alleged breakthrough is a paper by AR Stine and Peter Huybers, published in Nature Communications.
Annual growth ring variations in Arctic trees are often used to reconstruct surface temperature. In general, however, the growth of Arctic vegetation is limited both by temperature and light availability, suggesting that variations in atmospheric transmissivity may also influence tree-ring characteristics. Here we show that Arctic tree-ring density is sensitive to changes in light availability across two distinct phenomena: explosive volcanic eruptions (P<0.01) and the recent epoch of global dimming (P<0.01). In each case, the greatest response is found in the most light-limited regions of the Arctic. Essentially no late 20th century decline in tree-ring density relative to temperature is seen in the least light-limited regions of the Arctic. Consistent results follow from analysis of tree-ring width and from individually analysing each of seven tree species. Light availability thus appears an important control, opening the possibility for using tree rings to reconstruct historical changes in surface light intensity.
It seems that trees whose growth was said to be limited by temperature are actually sometimes limited by something else altogether.
This is one for Mr McIntyre, I fancy.
Reader Comments (52)
"Global Dimming" sounds a bit scary.
Are we hearing the first gentle hiss of steam, as the next catastrophiliac gravy train warms up in the scientactivist engine shed?
If there were "large scale decreases in the amount of light that’s reaching the earth”, wouldn't that include the rest of the spectrum and make it colder? Or am I being dim..?
Those damned volcanoes again......nobody worked out the tax arrangement yet. Must be some modelling cash somewhere?
Ah yes, "Global Dimming", now there's something impossible to refute/deny. It's been visible for some time in the MSM and BBC so the evidence is spot on. Expect Dame Slingo to confirm she has been affected soon.
Enough to make you toes curl?
I have not looked at the paper, but here are two relevant tweets.
https://twitter.com/GarethSJones1/status/464305992701079552
https://twitter.com/GarethSJones1/status/464306339653885952
(H/T Doug McNeall)
Test tree rings from 16th through 21st century London, or even 20/21st century Beijing.
Nice study in places nobody much lives. Transmissivity has to be tweezed from proxies, as opposed to actual observations.
Maybe it was just warmer in the past than it is now!
"opening the possibility for using tree rings to reconstruct historical changes in surface light intensity"
so that's temperature, light intensity and water availability - all from tree rings - I wonder how they decide which input is having the effect they think they're seeing - oh I guess that's the trick.
but but but
Isn't all that "light", photons, radiation ricocheting back and forth the TOA and the surface all the time?
Or was alecm right all the time, and the radiation budget as peddled by the warmish religion is cpra
Wouldn't global dimming reduce the amount of heat getting into the oceans? If so, how can the "missing heat" be hiding in the deep oceans? I suppose that by the time that dust and soot get blow out to see they will be widely dispersed and therefore global dimming will only apply on land. That is the only explanation I can think of. Do alarmists have any other explanations?
"Global Dimming:" What our politicians inflict on school-children in the 21st century in order to keep them under control.
It were irrigation..
#1 greenhouse gas = h2o
Area under irrigation
1955 1.21 million square km
1983 2.13 million sq km
2010 3.26 million sq km
Graph that hockey stick!
So nothing to do with the fact that tree rings are a poor proxy for temperature as they are more readily influenced by precipitation, nutrition and ironically co2 than small variations in temps.
So it's sell control knobs and go long on dimmer switches?
Global-dimming is really Global-brightening.
Working out available, if necessary!
The light decline was steep alright. It went UP.
UK
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/12/05/uk-tmax-versus-sunshine-are-well-correlated-cleaner-air-more-sunshine/
"“The mean annual G series over Spain shows a tendency to increase during the 1985-2010 period, with a significant linear trend of + 3.9 Wm- 2 per decade. "
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/sunshine-up-in-spain-from-1985-to-2010-by-3-9wm2/
Netherlands:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.ca/2012/05/new-paper-finds-large-increase-in.html
Martin Wild:
"Surface radiation data beyond the year 2000 are particularly interesting as they provide independent and complementary information to the ambitious satellite programs which became operational with the beginning of the new millennium. The surface records suggest a continuation of the surface solar brightening beyond 2000 at numerous stations in Europe and the United States, as well as parts of east Asia (Korea). Surface solar radiation variations in Europe after 2000 are dominated by a large positive anomaly in the year 2003 with its unprecedented summer heat wave, exceeding 10 Wm−2 on an annual and 20 Wm−2 on a summer mean basis in central Europe. The brightening seen at sites in Antarctica during the 1990s, influenced by a recovery from the low atmospheric transparency after the Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption in 1991, fades after 2000"
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008JD011382/abstract
A likely story indeed.
They will never get the irony of this claim. Meanwhile they are wrong,the lack of warming is clearly down to fairies
This doesn't really solve the problem for the issue. If "global dimming" can distort the response of the trees, this is yet another confounding factor that puts past results in doubt. So there is a possibility that the actual temperatures in the past are higher than an analysis without the global dimming factor would indicate. So are there "declines" in the past that have not been detected as of yet?
Note that all the dimming is is a factor that decreases the response of trees to temperature. So a rise in detected temperature could still be seen even in the face of dimming.
solar dimming could well have been the reason of the iceages
nothing that says the sun shines always in the same way.
was there not a david archibald article on this?
Ferenc M Miskolsczi has some rather neat data from a NOAA re-analysis that shows optical depth to be nearly invariant in the period 1948-2008. See p59 of:
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/The-Saturated-Greenhouse-Effect-Theory-of-Ferenc-Miskolczi.pdf
What dimming?
suppose it turns out we are descending into an ice age due to solar dimming
I think we have been misinvesting then, with all those billions of windmills
we could have invested them into thorium research, fission, fusion
We could have built more nukes.
At some stage the soundness of the decisions in governmental investment policies will be put in question.
This will be the day the career politicians point to their once-buddies in the IPCC,
and the IPCC points to all the words like "likely, maybe" in their 10.000 pages, and nobody will ever have said it was warming.
Rascals.
They switched the lights off in the Yamal....?
Great, another piece of the the puzzle solved then !!!
is the final puzzle square, round or unknown ?
do these guys come in on Monday with a new task to be finished next Monday & a booking code ?
or are they on "speculate endlessly" codes.
great job if you can fit in.
The global warming faithful are lucky enough to have a hat filled with an endless supply of rabbits.
More post hoc arm waving for those still buying climate hype.
The only dimming going on in relation to the climate is that of the intelligence of the climate obsessed who keep enabling the never ending supply of contrived rationalizations by rent seeking hypesters.
Nothing that a good set of headlights won't fix.
Those tree ring specialists are good.
I reckon they will soon be able to tell when the Neanderthals took a coffee break just from looking at those tree rings.
Surface temperatures rise and more clouds start to form reducing transmitted light..... mmm sounds like negative cloud feedback. No funding in that...Ahhh!!.... global dimming.... that better!!!
Never, in the history of science, can so many work to prove a hypothesis right, and so few work to prove it wrong.
So fossil fuels are responsible for global cooling from 1945 to 1975, global warming from 1975 to 1998, the temperature plateau from 1998 to 2014 (ref Hansen), acid rain, reduced alkalinity in sea water and global dimming. Anything else?
JamesG
Chelsea failing to win the league?I've always been fascinated by Brignell's apparently endless list of things (see here) that have at one time or another been attributed to global warming. The whole subject is a mixture of threats as to what will (correction "is likely to") happen and excuses as to why it didn't, or at least hasn't yet.
Reading some of this paper, the first thing which strikes is pretty "intuitive" as they put it - trees don't grow so well in cloudy wet conditions, well blow me if that ain't a revelation - and of course how volcanic eruptive episodes do evidently affect cloud formation and it therefore follows, sunlight.
Then, the definition of "Arctic"
It [above quote] - seems to mean just 'the northern hemisphere' and here's me thinking that the Arctic was about > 66º N but you know Arctic, it's origin, stem, Arkitos Greek for north, who am I to quibble? But for the sake of this paper, that, puts Britain in the "Arctic" - whodda thunk it?
Lastly, the arbitrary way in which the sites are chosen, come on - if you'll excuse me but 'cherry picking' - thus carving the supposition to fit the wood. The SE Asia angle, we've been here before - Hansen told us that Chinese industrial pollution and aerosols in the upper atmosphere were 'cooling' the planet - and thus put a stop to global warming [so unfair ain't it?]....... and now affecting tree ring growth in the 'Arctic' and here was me thinking that above the tree line - trees just don't grow so well in the Arctic but that's quibbling again - I guess.
All in all, A. R. Stine & P. Huybers, is a bit of a stretch going over CRU stats and Briffa et bloody cetera - and not much to see here - again.
I'm not going to look but no doubt the "Real Climate" mob will be creaming themselves over this.
This still seems a pertinent question...
Link
In between, running round trying to make a living and looking after some elderly close relatives. If, someone were to pay me a large grant to do just that [and allowed me to peruse all of the data - with statistical method] - why yes, I'd maybe even take the time to properly refute this pathetic effort but I don't think it is worth the time and effort, all because: it is so pi** poor.
Considering how little respect and attention we get down here in the Southern Hemisphere from your Northern Hemisphere climate scientists and considering our minimal contribution down here in the Southern hemisphere of CO2 to the catastrophic global warming / climate change situation I really think we should just take our half of the planet and leave you northerners to wallow in your own climate science created CO2 cess pool.
Us southerners down here should just toddle off with our half of the planet to somewhere else in orbit so as to get some peace and quiet from the shallowness and arrant stupidity of a fair proportion of those climate alarmist scientists of yours up there in the north.
''Global Dimming''?? Well one way to rescue a theory is to dream up an impossible scenario. The theory is wrong is why models fail to follow reality.
It is also funny to see that all of a sudden the sun is brought into the equation. The theory already cuts insolation in half to justify the GHE theory. To now blame the lack of insolation beggers belief.
Globally, by how many Watts /M^2 has manmade global dimming reduced insolation and over what time period?. When big, smoky industry used to be in America and Europe I wonder by how much temperatures were reduced prior to the clean air acts. I'd have thought that since tree rings were being suppressed by a lack of light, it must be a pretty significant amount. How many deg C of surface temperature reduction did it cause in US and Europe? Would that mean that the respective temperature rises of the 80's and 90's may have been a bounce back, at least in part, from dimming suppressed temperatures. Certainly a thought provoking paper (;>)
Ah, peer-review. Shall I raise the spectre of Diederik Stapel again (30 respected peer-reviewed papers, all of them subsequently proven to be pure hokum)?
Nah… not worth it.
But – a dimming world? I wasn’t even aware that we were on a light-producing body. I thought that, to all intents and purposes, all the light from Earth was reflections of the Sun. Perhaps what was meant was a dimming Sun, an argument I would not argue with, as I have long held that, as all the energy on this planet originates from the Sun, and the amount being received within an hour is more than the human race could ever use, then just a slight fluctuation of that would have some effect on us. How soon before the scientivists claim it is the Sun wot dun it, not carbon? (Actually, probably never, as it then removes all blame from whosoever is the eco-loons bogey-man of choice for the day – unless they can find some way to blame “Big Oil” for Solar activity.) But, then, who am I but a small, insignificant hamster in the wheel of life.
Don't you just love the intellectual contortions of "The Team"?
Any explanation to preserve the AGW narrative and keep the grant money flowing in, is acceptable,
What is unacceptable is the way in which these "explanations" are provided, studiously avoiding
the obvious conflicts of interest and science.
So the trees aren't acting as thermometers over a significant fraction of the instriumental era.
Ah yes it could be "increased CO2", "global dimming", "atmospheric nitrate deposition".
Virtually anything in fact.
Of course none of these factor, or others, unrecognised and unquantified, could possibly have affected
the tree-ring "temperature" reconstructions in the pre instrumental era.
Em "post hoc rationalisation", go on impress me by making pretions about the future climate which are proved repeatedly true.
Predictions about the past don't impress me, anyone can do that.
as the science was supposed to be settled, it is rather amusing to always see new ideas been brought in to explain things? The warmish are telling us they were wrong all along, OR they should argue with settled (=old) arguments.
If they have to argue with new discovered facts and evidence, they should first be made to admit that with the amalgam
of their old settled science things can NOT be explained. They should be made to admit they were WRONG.
If they were WRONG it remains an interesting thing to pursue the new facts of course. Only why would THEY , the warmish ones, be credible in pursuing them. Time to clear the deck. Game over.
Logic is not their strongest suit.
posthocism should NOT be a admissable tool for the warmish. They said the science was settled.
all their argumentation should come from old reports, only. I am amazed they still seem to have research going on in a "settled science" btw. Why is that ? If there is any research to be going on it should be by those who were not yet convinced the science is settled.
The opposite seems to be the case: billions going to people to investigate something further they are convinced is settled.
I am looking at this from an outsider's perspective.
All research further strutting warmism is a waste of time and money.
Research strutting skepticism is justified as it can supposedly be attacked with old existing wisdom and add to an increased confidence for the warmish and their paymasters.Also it can surprisingly lead to a change in perspective.
They might win the argument and overthrown the settled science conclusions. That makes sketical research worthwhile.
All the warmish research should stop, they should research new energy solutions or something. Not further blahblah of something that to them is settled.
To further fund settled science research , I do not see the point , the policy setters and paymasters should tell us why they keep paying for that?
We all think there is a gravitational force. Does callmedave consider it a high priority to keep relentlessly funding people who want to further prove there is a gravitational force?? I can see the point in him funding some research in people who attack this settled science, but to further prove a consensus is a waste of tax money and a rip off of the tax payer.
Me thinks I spy an new epicycle to explain an inconvenient flaw with geocentricism.
Or perhaps Occam's razor is being used: "among competing hypotheses, the one with the
fewestmost assumptions should be selected."Dimming on the Yamal peninsula? I seriously doubt that. If anything, the air has become clearer after the Russians stopped detonating H-bombs on the nearby Novaya Zemlya! (They moved tests underground in 1963)
Athelstan.
50'N is the Arctic, that takes in all of the UK and Holland , parts of France Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany Poland, Ukraine etc. etc. Personally I think they're jumping the gun although they could be proved right in the very near (geological) future.