Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for April 2, 2008

Climate Audit: IPCC Review Editors Comments Online

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IPCC Review Editors have an extremely important function under IPCC procedures. In prior discussion of the Replies by WG1 Chapter Authors to Review Comments, we noted their unresponsiveness on issues that we were familiar with e.g. the deletion of the inconvenient post-1960 Briffa reconstruction results, the handling of the HS dispute. When the IPCC WG1 (grudgingly) placed the WG1 Review Comments and Replies online- url here they did not place the Review Editor comments online, despite the importance of review editors. Through the diligent efforts of David Holland, the IPCC WG1 and WG2 Review Editor comments have now been obtained and are now online for the first time here – at this point, another Climate Audit exclusive.

When you examine these review comments, as I urge you to do, please remember that this is supposed to be the most carefully reviewed document in human history, where entire stadiums of scientists have carefully weighed each word. Compare that impression to the actual review editor comments, which as you will see do not rise above a form letter for 64 of 69 Review Editor comments discussed here.

Read the rest of the entry here.

There is a very good letter from David Holland to Prof John Mitchell here.

Climate Change Less Threatening to Declared Reserves?

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Last August, a panel of scientists from the Australian Greenhouse Office and the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation), called on the federal and state governments to expand the number of nature reserves in Australia in a bid to protect animal populations from climate change.

Following on from Queensland’s climate-linked plan of doubling its declared reserves, the Federal Government has now pledged $180 million to expand the National Reserve System.

“Today’s announcement will help protect key habitats at a time when native species such as the mountain pygmy possum, tree kangaroos and hare wallabies need them most – as they struggle to adapt to the impacts of climate change,” Mr Garrett said.

WWF‘s Protected Areas Policy Manager, Dr Martin Taylor, said the $180 million funding boost was a promising step toward saving Australia’s wildlife from a “decade of neglect”.

“National parks and nature reserves are the proven best and most secure method of arresting declines of threatened wildlife toward extinction and buffering nature against climate change,” Dr Taylor said.

A little over 11 per cent of Australia is presently reserved, which is apparently less than many developing countries. However, associating declared reserves with protection unfairly suggests Australia is eighty-nine percent unprotected.

The irony of the entire exercise is that it is underpinned by an environmental ethos, held by the majority and enunciated through the bidding of elected representatives, but only if others pay it for. As far as I know, there has never been a transfer of reserved land into private-ownership for improved protection. It has only ever been the other way. Australia incrementally increases its reserve system, leaving an ever-decreasing off-reserve portion.

Perhaps a more inclusive and cost-effective national approach would be possible if our elected representatives represented the protective interests of land-holders off-reserve.

Willis Tries to Dismiss His Own Ocean Non-Warming Research

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Roger Pielke Sr has taken issue with comments on a nationalpost.com blog by Josh Willis titled, ‘Josh Willis on climate change: Global warming is real.’

Willis is an author of the recent paper on data derived from the ARGO network, which shows no warming in the upper 700m of the ocean over the past 4 years:

The national post blog comment by Willis begins:

“As a scientist, I always enjoy it when people outside my field take an interest in oceanography. But I was a bit disappointed to read Lorne Gunter’s column: Perhaps The Climate Change Models are Wrong, March 24.

It is a well-established fact that human activities are heating up the planet and that global temperatures will continue to rise for decades to come. Climate change skeptics often highlight certain scientific results as a means of confusing this issue, and that appears to be the case with Mr. Gunter’s description of our recent results based on data from Argo buoys.

Pielke Sr says:

Josh Willis is a well respected scientist and his views merit consideration. In this case, however, Climate Science concludes that he is misinterpreting the significance of his data analysis. He agrees that

“Indeed, Argo data show no warming in the upper ocean over the past four years”.

He dismisses this though by claiming that

“…but this does not contradict the climate models. In fact, many climate models simulate four to five year periods with no warming in the upper ocean from time to time. “

Where are these model results that show lack of upper ocean warming in recent years? There is an example of a model prediction of upper (3km) ocean heat content for decadal averages in Figure 1 of

Barnett, T.P., D.W. Pierce, and R. Schnur, 2001: Detection of anthropogenic climate change in the world’s oceans. Science, 292, 270-274,

but they did not present shorter time periods. Nonetheless, since Figure 1 is presumably a running 10 year average, the steady monotonic increase in the model prediction of upper ocean heat content (the grey shading) suggests that no several years (or even one year) of zero heating occurred in the model results. The layer they analyzed in the figure is also for the upper 3 km but in Figure 2 the Barnett et al study showed that most of this heating was in the uppermost levels.

Thus the lack of heating in the upper 700m over the last 4 years does conflict with at least the Barnett et al model results!

What the upper ocean data (and lack of warming) actually tells us is that if global warming occurred over the last 4 years, it was in the deeper ocean and is thus not available in the short term to the atmosphere.

Indeed, if it is in the deeper ocean, it likely more diffused and therefore could only enter the atmosphere slowly if at all. This heat could also have exited into space, although the continuation of global ocean sea level rise suggests that this is less likely unless this sea level rise can be otherwise explained.

The other heat stores in the climate system are too small (and the atmosphere has clearly not warmed over the last few years). Global sea ice cover is actually above average at present (the Antarctic sea ice is at a near record level). The continued sea level rise indicates that the heat is in the deeper ocean (which is not predicted by the models).

Finally, there is also no “unrealized” heat in the system. This is a fallacy of using temperature trends as the surrogate for heat trends as has been reported Climate Science (e.g. see, see and see).

Josh Willis too easily dismisses the significance of his research findings.