Archives for January 2008

The American Geophysical Union (AGU) have released this statement on Climate Change:

The Earth’s climate is now clearly out of balance and is warming. Many components of the climate system – including the temperatures of the atmosphere, land and ocean, the extent of sea ice and mountain glaciers, the sea level, the distribution of precipitation, and the length of seasons – are now changing at rates and in patterns that are not natural and are best explained by the increased atmospheric abundances of greenhouse gases and aerosols generated by human activity during the 20th century. Global average surface temperatures increased on average by about 0.6°C over the period 1956-2006. As of 2006, eleven of the previous twelve years were warmer than any others since 1850. The observed rapid retreat of Arctic sea ice is expected to continue and lead to the disappearance of summertime ice within this century. Evidence from most oceans and all continents except Antarctica shows warming attributable to human activities. Recent changes in many physical and biological systems are linked with this regional climate change. A sustained research effort, involving many AGU members and summarized in the 2007 assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, continues to improve our scientific understanding of the climate.

During recent millennia of relatively stable climate, civilization became established and populations have grown rapidly. In the next 50 years, even the lower limit of impending climate change – an additional global mean warming of 1°C above the last decade – is far beyond the range of climate variability experienced during the past thousand years and poses global problems in planning for and adapting to it. Warming greater than 2°C above 19th century levels is projected to be disruptive, reducing global agricultural productivity, causing widespread loss of biodiversity, and-if sustained over centuries-melting much of the Greenland ice sheet with ensuing rise in sea level of several meters. If this 2°C warming is to be avoided, then our net annual emissions of CO2 must be reduced by more than 50 percent within this century. With such projections, there are many sources of scientific uncertainty, but none are known that could make the impact of climate change inconsequential. Given the uncertainty in climate projections, there can be surprises that may cause more dramatic disruptions than anticipated from the most probable model projections.

With climate change, as with ozone depletion, the human footprint on Earth is apparent. The cause of disruptive climate change, unlike ozone depletion, is tied to energy use and runs through modern society. Solutions will necessarily involve all aspects of society. Mitigation strategies and adaptation responses will call for collaborations across science, technology, industry, and government. Members of the AGU, as part of the scientific community, collectively have special responsibilities: to pursue research needed to understand it; to educate the public on the causes, risks, and hazards; and to communicate clearly and objectively with those who can implement policies to shape future climate.

Human Impacts on ClimateAdopted by Council December 2003
Revised and Reaffirmed December 2007

Marc Morano’s response:

“The AGU Board issued a statement on climate change without putting it to a vote of the group’s more than 50,000 members. Its sweeping claims, drafted by nine committee members, rely heavily on long term computer model projections, cherry-picking of data and a one-sided view of recent research. As with the recent statements by the AMS and the NAS, this is the product of a small circle of scientists who all share the same point of view, and who failed to put their statement to a vote of the AGU members on whose behalf they now claim to speak. As such it amounts to nothing more than a restatement of the opinion of a small group, rather than a consensus document.”

Marc Morano
Communications Director
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) Inhofe Staff

In response to criticisms from Gavin Schmidt, Craig Loehle and J Huston McCulloch have published a correction to Loehle’s temperature reconstruction that uses 18 non-tree ring proxies. The pdf of original paper and the correction can be found here.

The corrected Figure 2 can be seen below:

The MWP and LIA remain prominent, in contrast to ‘Hockey Stick’ style reconstructions. However, in terms of reconstructions involving tree rings, as Steve McIntyre points out, if Yamal instead of Polar Urals update are used, you can get Modern Warm Period higher than MWP and vice versa; similarly with Indigirka versus bristlecones; or depending on Mann PC1 bristlecones versus Ababneh bristlecones.

In short, the jury is still out on whether the MWP had a global influence or if it was warmer than the Modern Warm Period. Nevertheless, the Loehle reconstruction makes a valuable contribution to the debate and should be included in the IPCC spaghetti graph that replaced the Mann et al Hockey Stick in AR4.

A new paper has been published in GRL by Wang, C., and S. Lee, entitled: ‘Global warming and United States landfalling hurricanes.’

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel has an article about the new study here:

Scientists: Warm seas may mean fewer hurricanes

Excerpt: Following in the footsteps of an earlier study, government scientists on Tuesday said warmer oceans should translate to fewer Atlantic hurricanes striking the United States.

The reason: As sea surface temperatures warm globally, sustained vertical wind shear increases. Wind shear makes it difficult for storms to form and grow.

“Using data extending back to the middle 19th century, we found a gentle decrease in the trend of U.S. landfalling hurricanes when the global ocean is warmed up,” Chunzai Wang, a physical oceanographer and climate scientist with NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami, said in a prepared statement.

The Abstract of the paper states:

A secular warming of sea surface temperature occurs almost everywhere over the global ocean. Here we use observational data to show that global warming of the sea surface is associated with a secular increase of tropospheric vertical wind shear in the main development region (MDR) for Atlantic hurricanes. The increased wind shear coincides with a weak but robust downward trend in U.S. landfalling hurricanes, a reliable measure of hurricanes over the long term. Warmings over the tropical oceans compete with one another, with the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans increasing wind shear and the tropical North Atlantic decreasing wind shear. Warmings in the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans win the competition and produce increased wind shear which reduces U.S. landfalling hurricanes. Whether future global warming increases the vertical wind shear in the MDR for Atlantic hurricanes will depend on the relative role induced by secular warmings over the tropical oceans.

Received 18 October 2007; accepted 13 December 2007; published 23 January 2008.

Keywords: global warming; Atlantic hurricanes; climate variability.

A new paper has been published in GRL showing that the Antarctic is accumulating snow. The paper by Thomas, E. R., G. J. Marshall, and J. R. McConnell is entitled: ‘A doubling in snow accumulation in the western Antarctic Peninsula since 1850.’

This shouldn’t surprsie the IPCC who say “the Antarctic ice sheet will remain too cold for widespread surface melting and is expected to gain in mass due to increased snowfall.” Accumulation was measured using ice cores and the largest increase is in the Gomez area. Figure 1 (below) from the paper shows data for the Dyer Plateau, James Ross Island, and the ITASE01_05 core, which also shows an increase (since the 1970s).

Figure 1. Annual accumulation at Gomez (dashed blue) and running decadal mean accumulation at Gomez (solid blue), Dyer Plateau (red), James Ross Island (black) and ITASE01_05 (green) in meters of water equivalent per year (mweq y-1) between 1850 and 2006 (from Thomas et al., 2008)

The Abstract states:

We present results from a new medium depth (136 metres) ice core drilled in a high accumulation site (73.59°S, 70.36°W) on the south-western Antarctic Peninsula during 2007. The Gomez record reveals a doubling of accumulation since the 1850s, from a decadal average of 0.49 mweq y−1 in 1855–1864 to 1.10 mweq y−1 in 1997–2006, with acceleration in recent decades. Comparison with published accumulation records indicates that this rapid increase is the largest observed across the region. Evaluation of the relationships between Gomez accumulation and the primary modes of atmospheric circulation variability reveals a strong, temporally stable and positive relationship with the Southern Annular Mode (SAM). Furthermore, the SAM is demonstrated to be a primary factor in governing decadal variability of accumulation at the core site (r = 0.66). The association between Gomez accumulation and ENSO is complex: while sometimes statistically significant, the relationship is not temporally stable. Thus, at decadal scales we can utilise the Gomez accumulation as a suitable proxy for SAM variability but not for ENSO.

Received 31 October 2007; accepted 6 December 2007; published 12 January 2008.

Keywords: snow accumulation; Southern Annular Mode; Antarctica.

Al Gullon gives the whole transportation and climate change debate a politically scientific angle.

The following article by Al Gullon appeared in the April/May 2007 edition of the H3B Media publication ‘Thinking Highways’ and is reproduced here with kind permission.

“I hasten to add that it is not ‘another opinion piece’. I put many hours (and my two undergraduate degrees) into an analysis of the IPCC and NASA data on trends in “global warming” and solar radiation. The linked article is my attempt to “vulgarize” the data for the intelligent non-scientists among us.”

Sincerely,
Al

A. C. Gullon, BSc., PEng.
Automobiles+Concepts+Environments
Consulting on Safety & the Environment
Technical Articles & Lectures
Web: www.alsaces.ca
Rule #1 Regleof/deampSYdalalu

“It’s the happy thought that’ll kill ya!”
“C’est la pensée heureuse qui t’tuera!”

The people or their sun?

The question “why is there another global warming article in Thinking Highways?” was answered just as I finally decided to put my thoughts onto paper. The radio reported on the UK’s “60 per cent by 2050” announcement and the news was not good on two fronts, except for those moved more by faith or photo opportunities than science. Not good, because that grandiose goal ignores both the economic benefits of improving productivity – for every member of human society – and, with respect to the required/expected improvements in fuel efficiency, the iron ‘law of diminishing returns,’ not to mention several past and recent scientific developments. Not good, because of the probability that the pursuit of such a false and unattainable goal will divert material and human resources, in the ITS community as elsewhere, into dead ends (e.g. CO2 payments to governments who have so abused both their citizens and their economy that their productivity is already in decline) at the same time as everyone’s standard of living declines – in tempo with decreasing productivity.

Enough of the ’why’ and now for the ’what’
When the Kyoto Accord and the working methods of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) first came to my attention I was; pensioned off after 23 years as technocrat with Environment Canada, initially very understanding, even sympathetic at seeing the work of the climatologists severely misrepresented in summaries and sound bites prepared by the politicians. Later, when it appeared that at least some of my fellow scientists were pre-misrepresenting their work in order to remain ‘on the list’ for research contracts, sympathy turned to shame and I was looking for ways to disown my science degree. Fortunately I also have an engineering degree to fall back on. Whereas it is the scientist’s job to develop an understanding of what is theoretically possible, including speculating on scale-ups from proven laboratory results, it is the engineer’s job to calculate whether the laws of nature thus revealed can be economically combined to produce useful objects and/or processes which can be (safely) placed at the service of humans. This ‘division of labour’ works well in the private sector but is derailed when politicians arrive, few of whom are scientists and fewer engineers. In whichever country or issue they pay no attention to the engineers and, as in global warming, seem to extrapolate on the scientists’ speculations.

Honest to a fault?
It was in October 1999 that Prof. Dr. Dusan Gruden, now retired but then Porsche’s Director for Environment and Energy, responded to my invitation to bring their message on global warming to Ottawa. As I had heard his presentation at several international meetings, it’s actually a two-part message: firstly, “The combustion of petroleum products by the private automobile contributes an insignificant portion of the global CO2 emissions” and, secondly, “NEVERTHELESS, the automobile industry will continue its ongoing, and fruitful (an average of 1 per cent per year over the past 25 years), efforts to improve fuel consumption.” Unfortunately the emotional controversy surrounding the first part often obscures the second part of the message. The research behind the presentation [Emissions and Air Quality, Lenz and Cozzarini, SAE Publications (with 148 references!)] was carried out by Dr. Gruden’s alma mater, the Technical University of Vienna. Given the ‘facts’ we have been fed by the media, the first part is surprising, at least. Nevertheless it is easily understandable (even by those of us without Dr. Gruden’s academic qualifications) once you realize that true scientists are the most honest inhabitants of this planet. They won’t even let you misunderstand the accuracy of their calculations. They insist on providing what they call an ‘error band’ around the answer. (Unfortunately they can do little about the misquotes and misrepresentations of their work by the mass media – and by the small and large “p” politicians.)

Being precise about imprecision
You ask for the answer to the ‘burning question of the day’ (pun intended) and they don’t give you one answer, they give you three! Translated into everyday English itcomes out something like, “Well, using currently published research on presently known emission sources, our best guess at the CO2 emissions from natural sources is 770 Gigatonnes per year. However, many of the ‘measurements’ are in fact of dubious accuracy so it could be as low as 600 or as high as a number slightly north of 1000.” “What about the automobile?” you say. And they say, “We have some better numbers for total man-made CO2. It’s somewhere close to 28. Say plus or minus 2. And we’ve got some real good numbers for the personal automobile itself. All you have to know really is the amount of gasoline (of each formulation) sold each year and, because it is everywhere subject to taxes, every government keeps a good count. What? Oh, yes. The number is 1.54 … roughly. Plus or minus 0.075.” We can now put the automobile’s role in CO2 emissions in perspective. We will ignore that huge error band (600 to 1000+) for a moment and just focus on the ‘best guess’ 770 for natural emissions to which we will add the maximum amount of manmade (28+2) to get a round number 800 for total global annual emissions of CO2. Within that best-guess total of 800 Gigatonnes/year our automobiles contribute just 1.54. (For the mathematically minded that’s two tenths of 1 per cent.) Somehow the word “insignificant” comes to mind.

0.6 degrees of separation
So, is CO2 even the major driver for the purported Greenhouse Effect? Intrigued by that Porsche presentation I then did some surfing on the Internet for the base IPCC data behind their contention that anthropogenic CO2 was the major driver of the greenhouse effect. I quickly discovered that all the fuss was over a purported warming of just 0.6ºC … over the past century! My first thought was that it was technically impossible to take the earth’s temperature with such precision. However, the next steps proved me wrong on that point. A little more surfing revealed that some scientists were suggesting that small, cyclical variations in the radiation of the sun might be at the root of the observed warming trend. When I put the temperature trendline on a graph with that Solar Cycle (Figure 1) I soon noticed that the small perturbations along the length of the temperature trendline corresponded very well with the Solar Maximums. Whatever might be moving that temperature trendline it was now certain that the technicians manning the weather stations throughout the world were doing an excellent job. An email exchange with the IPCC administration directed me to a downloadable source of the corresponding, century long, trendline for anthropogenic emissions of CO2. When added to Figure 1 it produced a gigantic X through the theory that CO2 was moving the earth’s temperature. The CO2 line rises strongly and steadily right through the mid-century, three decade long decline in the temperature line. Note that this does not disprove the greenhouse effect. CO2 is a minor greenhouse agent, with both water vapour and methane being much stronger. Nonetheless, it is hard to imagine that either of those took that three-decade long drop in mid-century. So, if not a effect, then what is causing the indisputable rise in global temperature? Before leaving Figure 1 for Figure 2 you should note two things about the Solar Irradiance line. Firstly it does show that mid-century decline. Of almost equal importance it carries the adjective ‘reconstructed’. Although no regular measurements of solar irradiation had been made until 1979, irregular measurements could be correlated with sunspots which have been regularly recorded since the early 1600s. In this way scientists could ‘reconstruct’ the probable annual irradiance levels shown in Figure 1.

A completely credible correlation
However, since 1979 satellite measurements have been made of the intensity of the sunlight reaching the top of our atmosphere and regular measurements have been made of CO2 levels near the surface of the earth and oceans. Those measurements and the magic of the Internet have enabled the construction of Figure 2 which both extends Figure 1 into this century and provides a more accurate and detailed look at the past 25 years. The three block-arrows point to the three maxima marking off two Solar Cycles. The first covers the 1980’s and is the standard length of 11 years. The second, however, is only 9-10 years which leads to a higher minimum and thus a higher average annual energy inflow than in the 1980s. This correlates well with the global temperature line over those two decades. When first assembled the correlation between the temperature line and the, rather irregular, solar radiationline was poor (R=0.2). However, while researching on the ‘net I was reminded that volcanoes can have a lengthy impact on global temperatures and so explored both them and El Ninos. As you can see at the bottom of Figure 2 it was an Eureka moment. Actually several moments, because each of these extreme events locked into one of the aforementioned irregularities, until finally all of them were covered. They are colour-coded so that blue indicates an event which pulls the temperature down in their year(s) of operation and red indicates one which tends to raise global temperatures. By mentally moving the temperature line back to where it would have been without each event one can clearly see that the global temperature line has a great visual correspondence with the solar irradiance line. Although it was not done accurately enough to include in this article I did succumb to the temptation of nudging the numbers in the indicated direction in my Excel spread sheet and then ran the correlation again … and the R jumped to 0.6!

The Wrapup
Now all this is most definitely NOT to say that we should do nothing about the energy consumption of the automobile or more generally the energy consumptive nature of today’s human society. What the environmentalists are forgetting is that engineers, including automotive engineers, are the original conservationists. As a personal example, I shudder every time I see a two tonne SUV with only the driver on board. That, however, is a judgement on consumer choice. The engine in that SUV has a very good efficiency (measured as BSFC) and most SUVs employ very sophisticated controls to deliver emission performance much better than the government requires. The problem is that most SUVs have way too much weight for the load they are carrying. I shudder because they are mostly used inefficiently. We must stop whipping the willing horse. Aided by informed consumers automobile engineers will continue progress on improving both engine efficiency and overall vehicle efficiency. In that manner we will usually find that, instead of paying an exorbitant price for minuscule reductions, we will find that environmental improvementswill actually save us money.

For more information about Al Gullon and his findings, go to: www.alsaces.ca

About the author

Mr. Gullon retired from Environment Canada in February, 1996 to establish ACEs. Immediately prior to retirement he had spent five years managing a program which assisted small business in the development of innovative recycling technology. His work experience includes about a decade each as a motor transport officer in the Canadian military, as the chief of motor vehicle emissions for Environment Canada and, latterly, in various technical management positions with that department. He has separate (by ten years) science and engineering degrees and, in his off-hours over the past decade, has been nosing around in economics.