Home/BlogOne of the most vivid predictions of global warming theory is a “hotspot” in the tropical upper troposphere, where increased tropical convection responding to warming sea surface temperatures (SSTs) is supposed to cause enhanced warming in the upper troposphere.
The trouble is that radiosonde (weather ballons) and satellites have failed to show evidence of a hotspot forming in recent decades. Instead, upper tropospheric warming approximately the same as surface warming has been observed.
It has been also been pointed out, with some justification, that our lower tropospheric temperature product really can’t be used to find the hotspot since it peaks too low in the troposphere, and our mid-troposphere product might have too much contamination from cooling in the lower stratosphere to detect the hotspot.
A recent paper by Sherwood and Nishant in Environmental Research letters presented a reanalysis of the radiosonde data and claims to find evidence of the hotspot. I’ve looked through the paper and find the statistical black box approach they used to be unconvincing. I’ll leave it to others to examine the details of their statistical adjustments, what what the physical reasons for those adjustments might be.
Instead, I want to introduce you to a new product that is made possible by the new methods we now use in Version 6 of our UAH datasets (links at the bottom).
Since we now have a tropopause (“TP”) product, we can combine that with our lower stratosphere (“LS”) product in such a way that we pretty well isolate the tropical upper tropospheric layer that is supposed to be warming the fastest.
The following plot of the satellite weighting functions shows that a simple linear combination of the TP and LS weighting functions (from MSU3/AMSU7 and MSU4/AMSU9, respectively) gives peak weight in the layer where the strongest warming is expected to occur, approximately 7-13 km in altitude:
If we apply the coefficients (1.4, -0.4) to the TP and LS products, the resulting “UT” (upper troposphere) product for the tropical oceans (20N-20S) produces monthly anomalies since 1979 as shown by the bright red line in the following plot (I have added offsets to all time series so their linear trend lines intersect zero at the beginning of 1979):
Note that the linear warming trend in the UT product (+0.07 C/decade, bright red trend line) is less than the HadSST3 sea surface temperature trend (light green, +0.10 C/decade) for the same 20N-20S latitude band, whereas theory would suggest it should be about twice as large (+0.20 C/decade).
And what is really striking in the above plot is how strong the climate models’ average warming trend over the tropical oceans is in the upper troposphere (+0.35 C/decade, dark red), which I calculate to be about 1.89 times the models’ average surface trend (+0.19 C/decade, dark green). This ratio of 1.89 is based upon the UT weighting function applied to the model average temperature trend profile from the surface to 100 mb (16 km) altitude.
So, what we see is that the models are off by about a factor of 2 on surface warming, but maybe by a factor of 5 (!) for upper tropospheric warming.
This is all preliminary, of course, since we still must submit our Version 6 paper for publication. So, make of it what you will.
But I am increasingly convinced that the hotspot really has gone missing. And the reason why (I still believe) is most likely related to water vapor feedback and precipitation processes, which largely govern the total heat budget of the free-troposphere (the layer above the turbulently mixed boundary layer).
I believe the missing hotspot is indirect evidence that upper tropospheric water vapor is not increasing, and so upper tropospheric water vapor (the most important layer for water vapor feedback) is not amplifying warming from increasing CO2. The fact that UT warming is indeed amplified — by about a factor of 2 — during El Nino events in the above plot might be related to the relatively short time scales involved, since convective heating and radiative cooling are far out of balance during short term variations, but are much closer to being balanced in the long-term with global warming.
The lack of positive water vapor feedback is an especially controversial assertion to make, given that (1) SSM/I satellite measurements of water vapor have indeed been increasing in lock-step with SST warming, and (2) probably a unanimous opinion in the IPCC climate community that water vapor feedback is positive.
But the SSM/I measurements are largely insensitive to the very low levels of upper tropospheric water vapor, so they can’t tell us anything about upper tropospheric vapor. And while lower-tropospherc water vapor is governed mostly by SST, upper tropospheric vapor is governed by precipitation processes, and we don’t even understand how those might change with warming, let alone have those physics included in climate models.
Instead, I suspect the models have been adjusted so that precipitation systems detrain more water vapor into the upper troposphere with warming, simply because that’s what we see on short time scales, say during El Nino events, and so the convective parameterizations in the models are adjusted to meet that expectation.
As part of a DOE contract we have, we will be examining 183 GHz measurements of upper tropospheric vapor, but those are available only since 1991 from the DMSP satellites, and late 1998 from the NOAA satellites. And from what I’ve read, it might not be possible to get meaningful trends from those data. So, at this point it’s not clear that we can get long term trends from water vapor…although there has been some tantalizing evidence of upper tropospheric drying since the 1950s in radiosonde data.
You can read more about the issues involved in determining water vapor feedback, and why I think it might not be amplyfing global warming, here.
For those interested in combining the TP and LS products themselves, the new Version 6 files (look for “beta2” in the filenames) are located here:
Lower Troposphere: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/tlt
Mid-Troposphere: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/tmt
Tropopause: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/ttp
Lower Stratosphere: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/tls
I think the way to defeat AGW based on what present data and past data is telling us should be the approach I have presented below.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2014/09/new-paper-finds-natural-ocean.html
Ferdinand, says,”CO2 levels do lead temperature already since at least 1900, as the increase in CO2 is (far) beyond what Henrys law shows for the temperature increase.”
My reply,
This is why I approach the flaw in AGW on the two fronts I present below.
Front one is, as evidenced by the data I sent that natural forces correlate quite nicely with temperature trends. Look at hockeyschtick graph.
Front two is, I think more attention needs to be paid to the water vapor aspect of the GHG effect rather then increasing amounts of CO2.
Also the saturation factor in that increasing amounts of CO2 have a lesser effect upon temperature.
If a negative feedback is associated with upper atmospheric water vapor concentrations and an increase in CO2 concentrations then this theory(AGW) is in deep trouble.
Better yet if natural conditions are the controlling factor of water vapor concentrations in the atmosphere at all levels of the atmosphere this would also put AGW theory in deep trouble, especially if the climate should cool ( which I think it may) due to prolonged minimum solar conditions.
Evidence for the above assertions is the lack of a lower tropical tropospheric hot spot and the fact that OLR emissions from earth to space have yet to decrease in response to increasing CO2 concentrations.
Salvatore, here is a fascinating paper that you may or may not already know about… Abdussamatov is the russian solar scientist who predicted the current weak solar cycle over a decade ago. Here is his prediction going forward:
http://thermalscience.vinca.rs/pdfs/papers-2015/TSCI140902018A.pdf
I have read this. Thanks
@Salvatore, here is a fascinating paper that you may or may not already know about
It will be fun to see Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann over at realclimate, wearing Arctic parkas and mukluks, explaining to us how the reduction of 1C in global temperatures was predicted by their climate models.
Meantime, the UN will have relocated it’s offices to Beijing, since according to them, China has a better form of government than western democracies. Of course, the UN’s IPCC will have increased their confidence levels to 99.99% that humans are causing global warming.
(insert smiley)
“here is my prediction for climate going forward, this decade will be the decade of cooling.”
– Salvatore del Prete, 11/23/2010
http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/andrew-dessler-debating-richard-lindzen/#comment-8875
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Crux_Flawed_Science.pdf
Thanks for the link, Salvatore Del Prete.
You are welcomed.
One is left wondering why this “refutation” is not published in a serious journal. But I think we can take a safe guess. 🙂 Either the author hasn’t even tried to publish it or the editors and peer-reviewers have conspired against him. 😉
http://patriotpost.us/opinion/19138
This shows ENSO is the controlling factor not CO2.
Roy, the UKMO HADSST3 data likely have a warm bias. For the tropics (20S-20N) the HADSST3 data show a warming rate of 0.10 deg C/decade for the period of January 1979 to present, while NOAA’s ERSST.v3b and ERSST.v4 both show trends of 0.08 deg C/decade.
During the satellite era of sea surface temperature measurements (November 1981 to present), HADSST3 still shows warming rate of 0.1 deg C/decade for the tropical oceans, where the two satellite enhanced sea surface temperature datasets show much lower trends. NOAA’s Reynolds OI.v2 data show a warming rate of 0.06 deg C/decade, and the UKMO HADISST data show trend of 0.05 deg C/decade, half the HADSST3 data.
A couple of things to consider, which are notes Ive made for my upcoming book (I haven’t plotted the graphs yet):
(1) Climate models do not properly simulate tropical sea surface temperatures in the Pacific, as youll recall. They have the double ITCZ problem, where a double ITCZ rarely exists in the real world. The double ITCZ is also evident in the model precipitation outputs, where they are not in the satellite-based precipitation data like GPCP v2.2. As a result, the double ITCZ likely produces way too much convection in the models.
(2)Modeled tropical precipitation for the oceans (CMIP5 with historic/RCP8.5 forcings) averages 4.5 mm/day for the period of 1979-2014, while the GPCP v2.2 data show an average of only 3.3 mm/day.
(3) For 1979 to 2014, GPCP v2.2 precipitation data for the oceans show tropical precipitation increasing at a rate of +0.016 mm/day per decade, while the models (CMIP5 with historic/RCP8.5) show a trend of +0.02 mm/day per decade for the oceans. So, not only is there way too much tropical precipitation in the models, but its increasing too fast.
(4) If we were to isolate the Pacific Ocean, the disparities between models and observations are even greater, because the trend for tropical Pacific precip is zero.
Thanks, Dr Roy, plenty of interesting things to think about.
Thanks, Dr. Spencer. Very interesting new product.
The absent “hotspot” in the tropical upper troposphere is one of the reasons not to believe the global warming theory is correct. The failed models are another.
By Dr. Spencer’s standards I could just say that I find his methods unconvincing and that Ill leave it to others to examine the details of his adjustments. 🙂
Can’t wait to see Dr. Spencer to publish a paper on this.
My feeling is once sunspot numbers average 40 and lower the sea surface temperatures are going to start to drop.
This should in turn start to reduce water vapor levels in the lower atmosphere.
4.5 years ago you wrote “this decade will be the decade of cooling.”
Since so far it has been anything but, why should anyone believe another of your predictions?
http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/andrew-dessler-debating-richard-lindzen/#comment-8875
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:2010/plot/gistemp/last:60/trend
http://woodfortrees.org/graph/rss/from:2010/plot/rss/last:60/trend/plot/none
As we can see the global temperature trend is down of late.
Thanks Salvatore. Looks down to me also. David A, Do you care to comment?
So HADCRUT3, HADCRUT4, RSS and UAH shows negative trends for this decade so Appell cites GiSS to “prove” what he says is true, the only outlier data set to claim the opposite. A set managed btw, by heavily invested global warming alarmists and the most heavily adjusted without physical justification. Appell really is a clown.
Saying is he is a clown is being very polite.
Actually I took Salvatore’s link and checked all the available temperature sets. Interestingly, only RSS shows negative trend of all of them, so I’m not sure why you accuse Dave of cherry-picking a set.
GISS, is a heavily adjusted data set as shown by various sources,where they show the past GISS adjustments to the current ones.
Here is an example of what GISS has been doing for years now:
NASA Hiding The Decline
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/05/23/nasa-hiding-the-decline/
The animated chart:
https://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/gissus1999vs2015.gif?w=640
GISS is not a credible source anymore.
David, why did you ignore the much longer time frame?,which covers from 2001 to 2015 April:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2001/to:2015.4/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2001/to:2015.4/trend/plot/rss/from:2001/to:2015.4/plot/rss/from:2001/to:2015.4/trend
The point isn’t whether this decade is warming or cooling, but that Appell claimed that it wasn’t and demanded to know why anyone should believe Salvatore henceforth. In Appell’s twisted and obsessive world view the world is warming out of control, so it never occurred to him to check if the world had in fact been cooling for the decade. Such an event to him would be an impossible event. Which is why he never spent a few minutes to check first. He always types things out without even spending a few moments thinking he might be wrong. Should I check this claim first? Of course, not. The people I am typing too are deniers. They are too dumb to check any claim I make up… The fellow is so obsessive in his beliefs it literally inhibits him from thinking rationally any more.
and I stand by all of it.
I believe indeed that the overall relative humidity of the troposphere has been decreasing. As for why? I think that as warming increases the presence of water vapor, cloudy updrafts transport more heat. But since the polar regions (both of them combined) are warming more than the tropics, the amount of heat needing to be advected from the tropics to the polar regions is less. And precipitation seems to not be increasing proportionately with the vapor pressure of water as a function of global temperature. So, it seems to me that the percentage of the surface with cloudy updrafts overhead is decreasing, and the percentage of the surface with descending dry air overhead is increasing. This leads to the water vapor feedback being less than that of constant relative humidity, and the cloud albedo feedback being positive (but probably less positive than IPCC says is most likely).
Roy,
Nice work…
Surface temperatures are mainly controlled by the water cycle: water -> water damp -> clouds -> precipitation. As long as we have plenty of water this protects the world from overheating during the day and freezing at night. The role of CO2 is not to warm the earth on it’s own but to influence the dynamics of this water cycle a little bit, mainly in the lower temperature range. So adding a little CO2 will only influence this cycle were air is dry an will be corrected by reducing the amount of water (clouds) in the atmosphere or something like that. ( That is what Ference is trying to tell us, although his physical foundation has it’s shortcomings).
Infra-red radiation originating in the upper atmosphere, directed either upwards or downwards, is only a third as intense as it would be if it originated in the tropical lower atmosphere – because of the comparative coldness of the high air, and the Stefan-Boltzmann approximation:
Say, (200/300)^4 = 0.3455
(200/300)^4 should be (230/300)^4.
Remote Sensing Systems already do a detailed breakdown by level.
Thus:
Name of series Main Height sampled Decadal ‘Trend’
(km) (C)
Troposphere
TLT 3 + 0.121
TTT 4 + 0.111
TMT 5 + 0.077
Tropopause
TTS 10 + 0.011
Stratosphere
TLS 15 – 0.269
C10 20 – 0.235
C11 25 – 0.362
C12 30 – 0.477
The last three series use data from 1998 onwards. The rest use data from 1979 onwards.
I think Dr Spencer is right to put quote marks around “hot” – in connection with something at 50 C below zero.
Gawd! What a formatting mess.
TLS 15 -0.269
stands for “Temperature of Global Lower Stratosphere, with a principal level or height sampled of 15 kilometers, has declined at an average rate of 0.269 Degrees C (or K) since 1979”.
Further re RSS:
Of course, their published series are Global and not just for the Tropics. But the global upper atmosphere is rapidly mixed HORIZONTALLY.
Dr. Spencer is the one who came up with the negative water vapor feedback first I believe.
@Salvatore…”Dr. Spencer is the one who came up with the negative water vapor feedback first I believe”.
There is no other type of feedback available in the atmosphere. a positive feedback signal requires amplification by an independent amplifier although many people mistakenly claim that positive feedback causes amplification.
I think it’s fair to claim that most people who talk about positive feedback have no idea what it is. I have read through Google looking for definitions of positive feedback and most descriptions are far from clear that positive feedback requires gain.
The only people I have seen describing PF correctly are those who must apply it in electronics circuits. If they applied it based on it’s loose definition in climate science they could never get an electronic device dependent on positive feedback to work.
I examined the IUK data ( the basis of the Sherwoood paper ) and note the use of “Kriging”, which you can read about here:
http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#/How_Kriging_works/009z00000076000000/
“Kriging is based on the regionalized variable theory that assumes that the spatial variation in the phenomenon represented by the z-values is statistically homogeneous throughout the surface (for example, the same pattern of variation can be observed at all locations on the surface). This hypothesis of spatial homogeneity is fundamental to the regionalized variable theory.”
Is radiosonde data sufficiently homogenous to employ Kriging?
IDK. Fluctuations of the ITCZ and subsidence might imply narrow zones of discontinuous trends, but I’m not well informed in these matters.
I have created a “horse-blanket” graphic comparing the linear regression trends for various data sets for comparable periods of record for 1979 through 2012 ( the last year of IUK ) and for 1979 through 2014 ( the last complete year ).
The IUK data I computed the station trends and took simple means ( not medians as in the Sherwood paper ) for thirty degree latitude bands ).
Should point out that the Fu treatment was specifically to remove any stratospheric cooling signal and it doesn’t indicate a hot spot either.
Here is 1979 through 2012:
http://climatewatcher.webs.com/HotSpot2012.png
Here is 1979 through 2014:
http://climatewatcher.webs.com/HotSpot.png
The IPCC claims doubling of CO2 would raise the surface temperature 1.5 to 4 C.
To raise the temperature 1.5C requires an additional 8 w/m2.
To raise the temperature 4C requires an additional 22 w/m2.
The doubling of CO2 from 280 to 560 ppm will directly add 3.75 w/m2.
Thats mean the rest of the energy must come from positive feedbacks somewhere between 5.25-18.25 w/m2.
Radiative forcing vs surface temperature is not 1:1 ratio this is where term climate sensitivity kicks in.
The equation radiative forcings change in equilibrium surface temperature (ΔTs):
ΔTs= λ ΔF
ΔTs = equilibrium surface temperature
ΔF = radiative forcing
λ = climate sensitivity coefficient
One problem there is no consensus on the value for climate sensitivity (λ).
CO2 forcing is logarithmic increasing amounts have a diminishing effect.
53% of the forcing comes from the first 20 ppm.
94% of the forcing comes from the first 200 ppm
20 ppm 16.03 w/m2
200 ppm 28.35 w/m2
280 ppm 30.15 w/m2
400 ppm 32.05 w/m2
560 ppm 33.85 w/m2
800 ppm 35.76 w/m2
You can see from the table the doubling of CO2 from 280 to 560 will add 3.75 w/m2
@JDAM…”Radiative forcing vs surface temperature is not 1:1 ratio…”
The term ‘forcing’ comes from differential equation theory. A forcing function is an equation (like an impulse function) applied to a differential equation to ‘force’ a response (an output).
When forcing is applied to climate science one must be aware that we are talking pure theory. We are talking about equations built by mathematician professing to have a practical expertise in physics.
Radiative forcing is a concept from climate model theory, not a fact. In climate models, mathematicians are free to create any kind of pseudo-science that suits them, then fight fiercely against physical proof that proves them wrong.
Can you explain, in real terms, what relationship radiative forcing has to the reality of the average kinetic energy of the real molecules that make up air? Surface temperature is the average kinetic energy of air molecules.
Please put the equations away and explain in words what you are trying to say.
I am not being persnickety or obtuse, I find it extremely helpful at times trying to explain physics to myself without the math. It forces the brain to gain clarity into what the reality behind physics means.
Roy,
It is pretty clear that the CMIP models rather grossly overestimate tropical ocean surface warming. That makes their projection of a tropical hot spot comically wrong compared to measurements.
In evaluating why there is no evidence of a “hot spot” (missing amplification), I think the only comparisons that are informative are the satellites, surface readings, and balloon readings. The rather good correlation between ENSO driven surface temperature changes and the corresponding satellite temperature changes suggest that amplification is real enough over periods of a few years. In fact if both ocean surface and satellite series were linearly detrended over the entire satellite era, I suspect the correlation between the surface temperature variation and the upper troposphere would show the expected amplification factor of about two. As you note, the only discrepancy is in the long term trend. I would argue that the simplest explanations are a slight positive bias in the surface record slope, a slight negative bias in the satellite record slope, or some combination of both. Since the overall slopes are both small, the biases in the trends would not have to be very large to bring the the trends into agreement WRT upper tropospheric amplification of surface warming.
Of course that does not mean some more complicated explanation is not correct, but if I had to bet, I’d bet that there will more likely be a simple explanation rather than a complicated one.
Wow. It’s been quite some time since I last looked at the global map of surface trends since 1979. I had not realized the Pacific was indeed cooling over large areas over that time – PDO signal?
This would seem to physically corroborate the measurements by the same argument for the Hot Spot in the first place – convection couples surface ocean temperatures with upper tropospheric temperatures.
Now the question is, does the model variance reflect just an inability to capture PDO? or is there another unknown issue?
http://climatewatcher.webs.com/SatelliteEraMap.gif
Before you start drawing conclusions from your TP and LS products, shouldn’t your new algorithm and code at least be submitted to a peer reviewed journal? Sufficiently many errors have been found in past versions of your work that this seems a minimal necessity.
I wonder what you, Dr. Spencer, or any of the other commenters here would say, if GISS recalculated an anomaly and found it changed by up to 1.4 C in a single month. I’m absolutely sure you would throw a holy fit. Yet that’s what happened with your changes, and not one contrarian said a single thing about it.
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2015/04/some-big-adjustments-to-uahs-dataset.html
I see very double standards.
Well, as I wrote above,
no sign of a hot spot, in:
UAH, Fu-UAH, RSS, Fu-RSS, NOAA-STAR, or RATPAC.
And there shouldn’t be a hot spot because much of the tropical Pacific has a cooling trend over the satellite era.
I agree for people like David Appell, three independent measures are not enough to admit he is wrong. We need four or five or six. And another 60 years of data to be doubly sure.
David A,
Sure the revised process and resulting data set should be published, and I think Roy has already said that is going to happen. Lots of people discuss preliminary findings, and it seems a bit uncharitable to hold Roy to ‘standards’ not always practiced by other climate scientists. I suggest you also keep in mind that the new data sets are closer to the comparable RSS data sets, which indicates the new data sets are by no means out of line with reasonable expectations.
Two separate and perhaps unrelated things are clear: the GCMs have on average grossly overstated tropical surface warming (relative to measurements), and there is an apparent lack of long term amplification when satellite, balloon, and surface data sets are compared. The latter is a scientific puzzle that needs resolving. The former calls into question how accurately the GCM’s are able to relate rising GHG forcing to increases in surface temperature, and so more generally, calls into question the credibility of long term warming projections from GCMs.
I think it would have been better for Roy to not have combined these two subjects, and instead have focused only on the apparent lack of long term amplification in the measured trends, if only to make less likely the kind of gratuitous critiques you regularly offer. The GCMs are almost certainly too sensitive; you ought not let that influence your judgement too much. IOW, get over it.
David,
I see you neglected to point out that the 1.4 C number is a regional value, not global value. What is the RMS difference in the global value between v5.6 and v6.0? Probably a much smaller difference than the global changes we’ve seen for many of the months of GISS since the year 2000. As for 1.4 C changes, those kinds of adjustments to a monitoring site are not uncommon for any of the land-based temperature sets.
-Scott
According to RSS:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:2010/plot/rss/last:60/trend
It has been cooling so far, so Salvatore Del Prete is spot on. Not that Salvatore has the slightest clue about the future. The only thing certain seems to be limitless stupidity of David Appell.
Dr Spencer:
Why do you allow people here to insult others like this? Is that really the kind of blog you are running?
I thought this place was about discussing science?
David you keep misrepresenting what I say and that is allowed to go through.
David below is what I am saying. The solar maximum has sent solar parameters much above the values I said are needed to cause cooling. If /when the solar parameters I mention below are meant and there is still no decline in temperatures can you say I am wrong.
THE CRITERIA
Solar Flux avg. sub 90
Solar Wind avg. sub 350 km/sec
AP index avg. sub 5.0
Cosmic ray counts north of 6500 counts per minute
Total Solar Irradiance off .15% or more
EUV light average 0-105 nm sub 100 units (or off 100% or more) and longer UV light emissions around 300 nm off by several percent.
IMF around 4.0 nt or lower.
The above solar parameter averages following several years of sub solar activity in general which commenced in year 2005..
IF , these average solar parameters are the rule going forward for the remainder of this decade expect global average temperatures to fall by -.5C, with the largest global temperature declines occurring over the high latitudes of N.H. land areas.
The decline in temperatures should begin to take place within six months after the ending of the maximum of solar cycle 24.
“Why do you allow people here to insult others like this? Is that really the kind of blog you are running?”
Given the fact that you recently wrote on your little blog that climate change deniers, i.e., people like Roy Spencer, should be prosecuted by the state for thought crime, isn’t it a little rich that you’re now asking for censorship in your favour, from the people you despise?
LOL. Like the proverbial kid who murdered his parents, asking for leniency on account of his being an orphan.
Made me laugh! Touche.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:2010/plot/gistemp/last:60/trend
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst3gl/from:2010/plot/hadsst3gl/last:60/trend
Here’s the same graph for HadCRUT4
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2010/plot/hadcrut4gl/last:60/trend
but their data is wrong.
http://woodfortrees.org/data/hadcrut4gl/from:2010/plot/hadcrut4gl/last:60/trend
Notice it stops almost a year ago, at 2014.5, and even then its data is wrong. Here is what WFT gives for the first three months in the interval
2010 0.545
2010.08 0.558
2010.17 0.668
and here is what the first three HadCRUT4 anomalies actually are:
2010.04 0.559
2010.13 0.572
2010.21 0.677
Bottom line: Wood for Trees is wrong, and can’t be trusted.
What you highlight here David is that Hadcrut4 is adjusted all the time and you have to wonder, as you say, if it can be trusted. Indeed, can any temperature dataset be trusted since they continually change past data retrospectively?
For example, if you look at the last 3 months of 2014 Hadcrut4 gave figures in January 2015 of:
Oct 0.614,
Nov 0.486
Dec 0.632
If you look today, these values have already changed to:
Oct 0.620
Nov 0.487
Dec 0.630
So, in your words, HadCruT4 cant be trusted?
According to you which is just an opinion. I contend the data you think is correct is wrong.
Have you tried this from the start of the century, that lines up with a major IPCC temperature projection they made back in 2007?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2001/to:2015.3/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2001/to:2015.3/trend/plot/rss/from:2001/to:2015.3/plot/rss/from:2001/to:2015.3/trend
Shows no warming so far.
While the IPCC thought it would warm up around .35C after 13 years and 4 months.
How do you explain the gap David?
Good point. David A, care to comment?
As David Appell gradually disengages more and more from reality, every source of information ultimately becomes part of the denialist industry. It only follows logically that the data sets themselves become part of the denialist industry. Franz Kafka wrote about these mental states a hundred years ago.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
Dr Spencer
Thank you for an interesting article. I likewise have not examined Steven Sherwood’s recent kriging approach and so I am uncertain whether it produces valid trends or not.
Regarding model amplification of warming in the upper tropical troposphere, I highly recommend looking at section 3.1 and figures S7, S8 and S15 of the SI to the recent Mauritzen and Stevens paper about their new ECHAM6-Iris model, here: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v8/n5/extref/ngeo2414-s1.pdf . These show that incorporating a LW iris effect substantiallly reduces both WV (relative humidity) and temperature responses in the upper tropical troposphere, and leads to better agreement with CERES EBAF data.
A small request: would it be possible to include pressure levels in future graphs? I find them easier to relate to than heights.
Dr Spencer,
The derived “UT” curve still included contributions from above 13km and below 7km, because it’s simply not possible to remove them with satellite data. Looks like the total weighting of the 7-13km range is between 70% and 100% greater than the total weighting of the non-hotspot ranges on that curve, or the SNR is between 1.7:1 and 2:1. Is that basically correct?
If so, is that SNR actually enough to detect the hotspot?
For example I have tried the following method. I didn’t know where to get the real TP weighting function, so I estimated your “TP” curve as roughly a slightly skewed Gaussian based on the “LT” and “UT” curves shown, though it was not small enough at the higher altitudes but that won’t affect my conclusion. I can contrive two different temperature profiles, a HotSpot version and a NotSpot version, which have the same values above 14km and below 5km. I apply my estimated UT weighting function to both and the two profiles will give the same weighted sum, ie signal received by satellite. If a mix of the curves cannot distinguish a warm region from a smoothly cooling region at a single point in time (as this exercise shows), how can this be used to detect the hotspot trend over time?
Do we even need to detect a hotspot to validate the enhanced greenhouse hypothesis? Surely any warming anywhere in the troposphere, if accompanied by stratospheric cooling, is consistent with an increased greenhouse effect?
If an increase in a greenhouse gas partial pressure will impede the escape of LWIR and so warm the troposphere and cool the stratosphere, then any greenhouse gas will do that, yes? ie H2O or CO2. As H2O(g) can increase from surface warming, the observed result is still not able to distinguish between CO2-caused warming and a primary radiative forcing (eg solar and cloud changes), correct?
If not, can you point us to a page which explains why the tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling is necessarily a fingerprint of increased CO2 only?
RSS data series for ALL levels of the atmosphere are essentially sideways, since the 1998 El Nino.
Them’s the facts, as far as I am concerned.
Not that it matters what any of us think, compared to the inevitable march of events in the real world. For instance, India will increase its coal burn from 600 million tons a year in 2013 to 1,000 million tons a year in 2020. The Government of India) is jolly proud of this “leap-forward”, so reminiscent of Stalinist Five Year Planning!
“…fingerprint…”
I suspect Mother Nature wipes off most fingerprints we leave on her. Perhaps not immediately…
The assumption that CO2 can raise SST is incorrect. Water is opaque to LWIR, the incident energy being converted to latent energy instantly (the wavelength at 15 microns being absorbed within 3 microns). Hence, the late SST warming trend is positive proof that the surface warming trend circa 1980-2000 was not AGW- CO2.
For confirmation, see temperature profile of sea surface.
That is really funny. Incident energy being converted to latent energy instantly..
That conversion to latent energy is impossible when the temperature of the skin layer does not increase in the first place.
Try again mpainter.
LWIR energy deposited at the sea surface is very transient, being converted to latent energy within seconds (or instantly) This is particularly true of the 15 micron band (CO2), which is absorbed in the upper three microns of the surface. Water cools primarily via evaporation and incident IR only accelerates that process. All IR, SW and LW, is absorbed in the upper one mm of the sea surface. It does not get any farther because of the thermodynamics of the sea surface. Hence the hypothetical CO2 warming of SST fails due to observations of the sea surface. This failing is just another aspect of the egregious science of the AGW advocates.
Do you demur? Then, can you offer any science or do you just do sneers?
So if I put water in a microwave oven, does it not heat up?
-Scott
You do not know the difference between microwave and IR? Tsk, tsk.
I notice you didn’t answer my question and respond with snark. If you can heat the entire bowl with one LW and not the other, then why not? The penetration depth of the radiation used in a microwave oven is only ~1 cm in water, so can I not heat up a bowl of water 10-cm deep?
Your opaque argument is flawed because it ignores several different principles. First, you ignore thermal/mass diffusion, which transports heat on short scales. At room temp, a water molecule has a root(2Dt) distance of ~21 um in just 1/10 of a sec. That’s almost an order of magnitude higher than what your 3-um value, in just 1/10 of 1 s. Note that if the surface really heated up a ton like you suggest that the viscosity of water at 90 C is ~1/3 that of room temp, so the diffusional distance will probably be ~1.7x farther. Second, you’re ignoring large-scale heat transport, i.e. convection. Probability that a surface molecule on the ocean at t=0 could be 0.1 m below the surface at t=10 s? Certainly finite. When CAGWers ignore convection, we rail on them (and often rightfully so). So why ignore it here? Third, as was pointed out by at least someone else, there is heat transfer occurring between the air and the water, so if the air warmed up, what would the water do? Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we’re not talking about just 15-um excitation here. Other frequencies are generated at the source and have higher penetration depth than your 3-um value.
Conceptually there’s nothing different in trying to heat up a large body of water with microwaves than a small one with IR. They both are opaque before reaching the center of the water, yet both can still heat up the container.
But apparently you communicate in snark, so I’ll translate for you: You do not know about the concepts of thermal diffusion, convective mixing, two-phase heat transfer, and polychromatic sources? Tsk, tsk.
-Scott
Scott,
You are incoherent. Tsk, tsk.
Again, no substance. “Tsk, tsk”. Do you have any argument of substance? Or lets set the bar lower–can you point out where any of my text is “incoherent”. That’s setting the bar so low that you shouldn’t be proud to reach it, you should be embarrassed not to step over it.
Here’s what you’re claiming–if IR only heats the surface and therefore can’t heat below, the same can be said for any hot material at the surface of the water. After all, the interfacial layer of water around a red-hot piece of metal is only a few nm, orders of magnitude less than the penetration depth of IR light. Clearly then, hot metal can’t warm up a bowl of water.
-Scott
Scott:
To gain understanding of the thermodynamics of the ocean surface, I recommend that
1. you study the temperature profile of the sea surface. Met office has listed their version on the web, one for day and another for night. There are other, similar versions.
2. study the absorbency spectrum of water w/r to the attenuation of the near and far infra red.
If you study these conscientiously, you should gain some understanding and this become conversant in the issue.
Also, read the exchange between Jan Perlwitz and myself on Dr. Spencer’s May 1 post, several threads below. This address the issue.
1) I don’t need to study a temperature profile. I’ve been swimming in my lifetime and know that the water a few inches below the surface isn’t significantly warmer than the interface water, so interface water can transfer energy to the molecules below after EM excitation.
2) I don’t need to study this. One of my research projects is real-time monitoring of aqueous chemical reactions by IR spectroscopy. I’m well-versed in it and my undergrad engineering heat and mass transfer courses taught me well also.
You’re right, it does address the issue. Jan blew you out of the water. Tell me–if I put a heated object a very small distance directly above, or in contact for that matter, a pool of water, will the water body warm? Of course it will, despite only the surface layers being directly affected!
Here’s the rub – IR light at a certain wavelength may saturate within only a few microns…BUT, those excited molecules can easily diffuse below the surface layer very quickly before absorbing so much IR that they just boil off. This is easily shown with root(2Dt) calculation for water: it takes ~2 ms for a water molecule to diffuse 3 um. Therefore, for the water boil off so fast as to not heat the water below would require 3 um of it to evaporate every 2 ms. That’s equivalent to 9 cm/min! Are the oceans evaporating at 9 cm/min? Obviously not, so clearly vibrationally excited water molecules heated at the surface are diffusing down into the bulk material, where they can heat it up.
What you’re claiming is that a body absorbing 100% of the incoming radiation keeps it from warming up. That’s just silly, and the above calculations show it.
-Scott
You did not study and so you did not become conversant in the issue. The temperature profile to which I referred you shows that you are spouting nonsense. Tsk, tsk.
Nothing but snark again.
I’ve studied for over a decade in the relevant topics. Post a link to the Met Office temp profile if you want to discuss it. Unless their temp profile is only covering the first few cm of the ocean depth, it won’t be relevant to the surface mechanisms we’re discussing. I’m guessing it’s not relevant.
Unless you can show me that my root(2Dt) values are grossly in error, you have no argument.
-Scott
Scot Sez ” I ain’t gonna look at no profile”
And so you prefer to assert your views ignorantly. That’s your choice, and no, it’s not snark; it’s the facts.
I was going to type a long response to this, but it’s clear you’re not going to listen. I refuted your views with four different mechanisms, none of which you responded to.
Give me the link to your Met Office profile and let me kick your @s$ with it…
-Scott
Search for “SST temperature profile”.
Study the data, then report your deductions, assuming that you are capable of such. I’ll wager that you are not. Probably you will never make the effort.
By the way, Richard Perlwitz agreed with me that the energy of the incident LWIR never made it past the surface. He argued that it increased SST indirectly.
So, your pretense of having read our exchange falls to the ground, where lies your pretense at science.
See my reply below
This type of claim is so stupid it defies credulity. IR doesn’t have to warm the sea surface — even if one assumes beyond all reason that the sea surface is flat and still and doesn’t constantly churn with waves — that if the temperature above the surface isn’t a little warmer, this won’t have any effect on the ocean. It’s just stupidity in action.
Will,
You’re obviously right, but trying to communicate with someone like that is nearly impossible. Above, I even threw in some basic numbers and an equation showing my (our) point, and all I got as a response was “Incoherent” and “tsk tsk”. Personally, I wonder if people like this are paid by the CAGWers to say dumb skeptic stuff to make us look bad.
-Scott
Another funny bit with this brilliant analysis is what does conversion to latent energy mean?
Answer: Increased water vapor. Tell Dr. Spencer that mpainter. You just fount a major flaw in his argument.
See above.
Yawn!!!
Another dozen angels are testing the pinpoint with their bums.
Remote Sensing System’s Global anomalies figure for Lower Troposphere, for May, has been released. Up a little, at + 0.31 C, which is still deep within the sideways ‘trading range’ since the April 1998 high – even though there is an El Nino going on.
https://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/figure-81.png
Roy, what is the models’ global average surface trend?
The measured trend you compare with is just the sea surface trend HadSST3, but it would be useful to know how the models’ result for the whole global surface so we can compare it with the measurements for the whole global surface.
Hey Dr. Roy,
I appreciate there’s been little to no warming news in a looooong time, but it feels like 18 years since your last post.
I’m sure I speak for many when I ask for some Spencer Time! Hope you’re well.
Best regards.
Atmospheric CO2 has been identified as a possible climate change forcing. Forcings, according to the consensus and the IPCC, have units of Joules /sec/m^2. Energy, in units Joules/m^2, divided by the effective thermal capacitance (Joules/K/m^2) equals average global temperature (AGT) change (K). Thus (in consistent units) the time-integral of the atmospheric CO2 level (or some function thereof) times a scale factor equals the AGT change. When this is applied to multiple corroborated paleo (as far back as 542 million years ago) estimates of CO2 and average global temperature, the only thing that consistently works is if the effect of CO2 is negligible and something else is causing the temperature change.
Search agwunveiled to see proof that CO2 has no effect on climate and discover what does cause climate change (explains 97+% average global temperatures since before 1900).
Correct, Jan, not Richard Perlwitz.
Search “sea water temperature profile” and that will get you the met office data plot and others to boot. This data shows that conduction is always to the interface m the tmax at one mm, daytime profile. I beg your pardon for not providing the correct search words.
Yes, Jan Perlwitz agrees with me substantially on the thermodynamics of the sea surface. Conduction does not transmit incident IR energy to below the interface, but rather the reverse happens. Your view that conduction or convection transmits this energy downward is refuted by the profile of the sea surface temperature. Convection occurs at night, and the sea overturns ( near surface), and this is shown by the night temperature profile. But note that even at night, conduction is from the subskin to the cooler interface. The daytime profile, under strong insolation, shows that there is no overturning, or convection.
Your overtones of violence are very disagreeable and I ask that you refrain from such expressions.
I reiterate, incident LWIR makes no contribution to SST, this shown by observations.
Dang, messed up the / terminators on both blockquotes and italics.
-Scott
If you reject the sea surface temperature profile as unreliable and not representing reality then we have no basis for discussion.
If you do accept the data as reliable, then you must accept that the profile shows that there is no overturning (i.e., convection from below) in the daytime, and that conduction is determined by the temperature gradient from tmax to the interface.
Or, alternatively, you must demonstrate some process that transfers the incident IR energy from the interface to depth, keeping in mind that the rate of evaporation ablates the interface at the rate of about seven microns per minute in tropical oceans (based on one cm/day evaporation rate).
I’m guessing it is reliable (haven’t verified b/c it really doesn’t matter), just not your conclusions from it. Huge difference.
No, I do not have to accept this (flawed) explanation. How does the presence of daylight prevent convection from happening? Simple, it can’t. Every video of the ocean I’ve ever seen shows serious wave action. You see the daytime temperature distribution as there not being convective mixing, an absurd notion. For instance, what’s the Reynolds number of the ocean water during the day vs at night and what could cause it to change? Instead, I see the temperature profile as the result of multiple processes: radiative, convective, and conductive.
I have already done this above. And your suggestion that I haven’t just goes to show that you’re either not paying attention to me, don’t understand what I’m calculating, or both. I could be like you and not specify where I showed this, but instead I’ll be more respectful and show similar calculations again. The diffusion constant of water in water at room temperature is ~2.3E-5 cm2/s. Thus, the average travel distance for a water molecule in one minute (calculated by root(2Dt)) is ~525 microns. That’s 75x faster than the number you posit. But wait, it’s worse than that. Diffusion distance is a square root function whereas evaporation is linear. So really all the water molecule has to do is escape the evaporation threshold long enough to transfer its energy the bulk material. Even assuming an absurdly long distance to transfer all its energy, say 5 um, shows how much faster diffusion is on the molecular scale than evaporation. The time to traverse 5 um is a miniscule 5.4 ms. In the same time, using your evaporation rate the total evaporation has only been 6 nm. So on more relevant time scales, simple diffusion of water is over 1000x faster than your evaporation.
Of course, anyone who works with this stuff knows that diffusion is a very minor component of the mixing of the ocean surface. Convection is orders of magnitude better. You can test that yourself–drop some dye gently into the surface of a large body of water and see how long it takes for some of it to reach > 1 mm deep (your Tmax depth). Seconds, at the most. This is just common sense. Saying there’s no convection during the day is laughable.
Here’s another experiment I’ve done that confirms that you can heat the water from above with IR light. We have a CO2 laser cutter in my lab and I’ve attempted cutting things under a water surface with it…the water was immediately boiled despite being deeper than your 3-um penetration depth value. The vigorous boiling of the water was actually enough to damage the part below I was attempting to cut.
-Scott
Also, Jan Perlwitz is not a “she”. Also, you cited comments between Perlwitz and me on CS ( climate sensitivity) as disagreement on sea surface thermodynamics. I won’t say tsk, tsk, but you really need to get facts straight.
In fact, Perlwitz accepts the thermodynamics shown by the referenced temperature profile. He posits warming of the SST (via increased CO2) based on this profile: via reduced conduction from the subskin to the interface. This hypothesis is easily refuted, however. Read the exchange.
Water is opaque to LWIR. Sea surface thermodynamics show that IR incident within one mm of the surface does not warm the sea. Hence, SST is determined solely by insolation less whatever heat loss via evaporation, etc. GHG have no effect on SST; ten mm of water ( atmospheric water vapor) does not determine the temperature of 100,000 mm of water (sea depth to 100 meters).
mpainter says:
June 5, 2015 at 3:05 PM
Now this is just being ridiculous. You complain about me not knowing he vs. she for someone I’ve never met…petty, particularly coming from someone who got the person’s first name wrong immediately before that. And no, I did NOT cite your disagreement on CS as disagreement on SST. If you would actually read and comprehend what I write, you’d know that. I won’t keep the reference vague like you, I’ll actually link to it:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2015/05/new-satellite-upper-troposphere-product-still-no-tropical-hotspot/#comment-192672
Specifically, I said this:
So tell me, who should get a “tsk, tsk” and “you really need to get facts straight”? Wow.
So do I.
I have read the exchange. Your handwaving is not convincing. Perlwitz didn’t agree with you, just got tired of arguing with someone who doesn’t understand the basics.
No, it doesn’t show that, it’s your faulty conclusion from looking at a theoretical curve that’s a TWA of radiation/convection/conduction.
Well, I’ve never said that GHG “determined” the temperature of 100 m of water, which is absurd. But I think it does have a small effect, one which when accumulated over decades could raise SSTs by a few hundreths of a deg C.
-Scott
You say that convection occurs during the day, the referenced temperature profile notwithstanding. I rest my case and win the wager.
You must not know what convection is. The profile you reference is a theoretical TWA and does not imply no convection. It could easily be the combination of convection, conduction, and radiation.
Are there waves during the day? Is there any sort of temperature difference/profile? Yes, there is convection.
-Scott
Of course there’s no hot spot, because there’s no valid physics which implies there should be.
To physicists and those who want to understand what’s happening …
You are correct in believing carbon dioxide cannot warm the Earth’s surface: in fact it cools, but probably by less than 0.1 degree.
But I wonder if you really understand the explanation as to why the Earth’s mean surface temperature is in fact warmer than the Sun’s direct radiation could make it. This is very obviously also the case for Venus where the surface receives only about a tenth of the direct solar radiation that we do, and yet is over 450C.
I have had on offer a AU $5,000 reward since the publication of my book “Why It’s Not Carbon Dioxide After All” in March 2014 (available through Amazon) and my reward is for anyone proving the physics in the book to be significantly incorrect and also producing a counter study which, with similar methodology to mine in the Appendix of the book, shows that, instead of cooling, the so-called “greenhouse gas” water vapor warms the surface in the order of about 20 to 30 degrees for each 1% in the troposphere, as is implied by the IPCC.
My book is based on extensive research that I had previously published in two papers in 2012 and 2013, all based on correct physics.
Unlike others, I have not only shown why the radiative forcing “greenhouse” conjecture is wrong, but I have also explained just precisely how it is that a planet’s surface does receive the required thermal energy in order that its temperature normally rises during its daytime on the sunlit side, offsetting the inevitable cooling at night.
The required thermal energy cannot be (and is not) supplied by radiation. It is supplied in accord with the laws of physics as I have shown based upon the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I am probably the first in the world to have correctly explained planetary surface temperatures (and even sub-surface temperatures) and the necessary energy supply mechanisms.
This explanation is the last nail in the greenhouse coffin, and so I urge you to look into it carefully. You will not defeat the fraudulent hoax with analysis of temperature data, because there will be some warming before about 500 years of natural cooling starts, probably within 100 years or so. You will also not defeat it unless you understand the one and only correct explanation of planetary temperatures and energy flows – which is what I have explained.
I wonder if, for example, you know that the base of the nominal troposphere of the planet Uranus is hotter than Earth’s surface, even though it is about 30 times further from the Sun. No significant solar radiation reaches down there through 350Km of the Uranus troposphere, and there’s no surface there anyway. Likewise Earth’s tropospheric temperatures are not in general the result of direct solar radiation warming the surface which then just cools off. On Venus the Sun’s direct radiation can only raise the temperatures in the upper troposphere and above where such temperatures are not already above about 400K. Such radiation simply cannot raise the temperature of lower regions or the surface where such temperatures are already around 700K and more. So you need to think about why it is that a location on the equator of Venus does warm back up by about 5 degrees during its four-month-long sunlit period, having cooled by a similar amount at night, which cooling must happen to some extent. It takes an input of thermal energy to raise a temperature, so how does that energy get into the Venus surface? Radiation from the less-hot troposphere of Venus cannot raise the surface temperature. So what does?
For more information you may read my website http://climate-change-theory.com and the papers linked at the foot of the ‘Evidence’ page.
I would like this comment to be drawn to the attention of any physicist with a sound knowledge of thermodynamics and an understanding of entropy maximization that occurs as unbalanced energy potentials dissipate. Readers without such understanding may find the website http://entropylaw.com helpful.
I am happy to answer questions which pertain to the content of my book and papers and clearly demonstrate that these documents have been studied.
Complexity will always drain the pool.
Dr Roy.
I am not too happy about the “without GHG’s we would not have weather” I suppose that depends on your definition of weather, we would still have winds if not clouds and rain.
We would still have adiabatic lapse rate, as other planets have like Jupiter and Saturn, they have storms too.
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Hmm is anyone else having problems with the images on this blog loading?
I’m trying to find out if its a problem on my end or
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