Attribution Report for the July 2019 Heat in Europe

[bdgwx]

I'm not sure what JC's concern is on the sea level acceleration. According to the paper cited the acceleration early in the period of analysis lasted 10 years (1920-1930) 20 years (1920-1940) while we are currently in a 50+ year period of positive acceleration. And whereas the rate peaked at 2.0 mm/yr early in the period it is currently 3.5 mm/yr. And with the energy uptake in the hydrosphere being 0.8-0.9 W/m^2 with increasing GHG concentrations and significant ice sheet melting occurring I don't see this turning negative anytime soon. The data (at least in this publication) clearly shows that sea level rise late in the period is far more significant than early in the period.

 

 

[drstuess]

So I see we are now hanging our hat on "July was possibly not the hottest month on record" Such good faith, honest discussion.

 

Also, all that damn UHI in Alaska, Greenland amd Antartica, someone should tell them about urban farming and green roofs.

 

 

https://climate.copernicus.eu/surface-air-temperature-july-2019

 

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[stadiumwave]

2 hours ago, bdgwx said:

I'm not sure what JC's concern is on the sea level acceleration. According to the paper cited the acceleration early in the period of analysis lasted a mere 10 years (1920-1930) while we are currently in a 50+ year period of positive acceleration. And whereas the rate peaked at 2.0 mm/yr early in the period it is currently 3.5 mm/yr. And with the energy uptake in the hydrosphere being 0.8-0.9 W/m^2 with increasing GHG concentrations and significant ice sheet melting occurring I don't see this turning negative anytime soon. The data (at least in this publication) clearly shows that sea level rise late in the period far more significant than early in the period.

Not much acceleration since around 1970. You had the big acceleration from 1940-late 1960's then not much acceleration since, but no big decelerations either like previous years.

The steep increase from around 1920 is still curious. Again, AGW effect is there the last 50 years but back in 1920's-30's C02 PPM was not high enough to attribute to AGW & for anyone that argues it was then we have to admit % had to have been a minuscule.

[donsutherland1]

5 hours ago, stadiumwave said:

 

It's the crap like this pointed out today by Dr. Judith Curry. Using info for convenience is just bologna. 

 

BTW, while we're on the 1930's...the new bullcrap of trying to say it was only regional warming is not impressive when plain evidence is there it was global...at least in the N. Hemisphere. Also the trying to minimize the 1930's with crappy educated explanations are not impressive either. Those heatwaves were certainly not C02 & the land argument is laughable.

With all of that said...I'm not saying AGW is not a fact, it obviously is. And yes I believe its AGW, not just GW. But honest objective discussions & not history revision is needed. And certainly we need responsible realistic action. I'm all for that to. My posts are not about any of that. My posts are about the exaggeration, fearmongering, lack of objectivity, flat out lying about history to cause action really is & will hurt science in the long run. 

It does not take a very smart objective person to admit there is some truth to what I'm saying.

EDIT: And I'm certainly not saying any of this about Don. He is one of the best, respected posters on the forum.

 

To be sure, Dr. Curry does not fall into the category of a “denier.” Her objections are narrower and more specific based on what I have read. There are some people in social media who have taken the anti-science route, which differs from honest skepticism. 

[blizzard1024]

10 hours ago, Bhs1975 said:

 

Instead of trying to make it not look as bad by taking the difference of the whole average and the latest 13 month average look at the warming that has taken place since 1979 which is twice as much at 0.6C.



.

 

Remember this dataset began during the end of the 1970s cool phase. So of course it has warmed since then. The long term records back to the 1890s for rural stations in the U.S show little warming and a definite warm spike in the 1930s and 1940s. Then a cooling 1940s to 1970s. 

[blizzard1024]

This whole thread irks me because it is part of hyping global warming. Every storm, every heat wave, every flood, even cold waves and snowstorms now are supercharged by CO2 induced global warming. A reasonable atmospheric scientist knows this is just simply not true. The headlines from Europe were " We caused this heat wave" and other similar headlines. This is blatant hype to convince people into paying more for energy through switching to renewables before it is cost effective.   Yes I do believe that increasing CO2 will warm the Earth some. Physics says it would be around 1.2C per doubling. OK. I do believe the surface record is rife with inaccuracies especially the oceans. I do believe that climate scientists have been adjusting data to show more warming than is present.  I don't believe that modest warming that we are seeing is going to destroy the planet. Warming is good. Cooling is bad. We are warming on the order of 1 to 2C per century which is well within the bounds of past climate change in the Holocene.  There is no reason to panic. We need to slowly switch to renewables in the next 50 to 100 years as technology evolves only because we will run out of cheap fossil fuels. Doing this before it is cheap enough will crash the worlds economy.  

[chubbs]

Warmest July for RSS - 0.71 vs 0.70 in 2010.   0.8C of warming in past 40 years.

[blizzard1024]

1 minute ago, chubbs said:

Warmest July for RSS - 0.71 vs 0.70 in 2010.   0.8C of warming in past 40 years.

RSS adjusted their dataset to account for diurnal drift using model data instead of real data and hence now is way warmer than it should be. UAH is the only dataset that still matches the upper air balloons. I trust the UAH because it is confirmed by this totally different dataset

[chubbs]

12 minutes ago, blizzard1024 said:

RSS adjusted their dataset to account for diurnal drift using model data instead of real data and hence now is way warmer than it should be. UAH is the only dataset that still matches the upper air balloons. I trust the UAH because it is confirmed by this totally different dataset

No -RSS implemented a new method in V4. The main difference between uah and RSS, is that uah discards some NOAA-14 data because it "warmed too much". RSS is in much better agreement with other data sets. Below is land temperatures where diurnal drift is most important. UAH lags in the late 1990s/early 2000s when the NOAA-14 data was removed.

[chubbs]

Hasn't received any publicity, but the NHemi oceans are scorching, much more important to global July temp records than the brief European heat wave. Per below the warming has continued in early Aug. UHI?

[bluewave]

11 hours ago, blizzard1024 said:

The UAH Satellite record had +.38C for July which is minimal.  The CFSV2 reanalysis data shows +.305C for July....hardly anything to go nuts over. The record lows are skewed because of UHI. Plain and simple. 

 

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/RyanMaue/status/1158565610860814338

Just a warning about using one of my (really) old maps that still circulates. NCEP CFSR reanalysis has a significant problem after March 2011 when the model switched from T382 to T574. This creates a mismatch if you compare months before & after. Only use the JRA-55 or ERA5.

https://mobile.twitter.com/RyanMaue/status/1157318343482888192

July 2019 average temperature was 16.77°C and is hottest month in instrumental record maybe tied with July 2016 by a hundredth of a degree. Regardless of the significant figures, the Earth was quite warm overall last month.

[blizzard1024]

3 hours ago, chubbs said:

No -RSS implemented a new method in V4. The main difference between uah and RSS, is that uah discards some NOAA-14 data because it "warmed too much". RSS is in much better agreement with other data sets. Below is land temperatures where diurnal drift is most important. UAH lags in the late 1990s/early 2000s when the NOAA-14 data was removed.

Just read this....   UAH agrees with radiosondes which are a better measure of the atmosphere than the corrupted surface record. Plus MSU 14 is too warm because of drift and the instrument heating itself.  see below for a detailed description from Dr Spencer. It clears it up.  The RSS wanted to be considered with the others and not the coldest one which is was.  Its poltical.  see below 

UAH, RSS, NOAA, UW: Which Satellite Dataset Should We Believe?

April 23rd, 2019

NOTE: See the update from John Christy below, addressing the use of RATPAC radiosonde data.

This post has two related parts. The first has to do with the recently published study of AIRS satellite-based surface skin temperature trends. The second is our response to a rather nasty Twitter comment maligning our UAH global temperature dataset that was a response to that study.

The AIRS Study

NASA’s Atmospheric InfraRed Sounder (AIRS) has thousands of infrared channels and has provided a large quantity of new remote sensing information since the launch of the Aqua satellite in early 2002. AIRS has even demonstrated how increasing CO2 in the last 15+ years has reduced the infrared cooling to outer space at the wavelengths impacted by CO2 emission and absorption, the first observational evidence I am aware of that increasing CO2 can alter — however minimally — the global energy budget.

The challenge for AIRS as a global warming monitoring instrument is that it is cloud-limited, a problem that worsens as one gets closer to the surface of the Earth. It can only measure surface skin temperatures when there are essentially no clouds present. The skin temperature is still “retrieved” in partly- (and even mostly-) cloudy conditions from other channels higher up in the atmosphere, and with “cloud clearing” algorithms, but these exotic numerical exercises can never get around the fact that the surface skin temperature can only be observed with satellite infrared measurements when no clouds are present.

Then there is the additional problem of comparing surface skin temperatures to traditional 2 meter air temperatures, especially over land. There will be large biases at the 1:30 a.m./p.m. observation times of AIRS. But I would think that climate trends in skin temperature should be reasonably close to trends in air temperature, so this is not a serious concern with me (although Roger Pielke, Sr. disagrees with me on this).

The new paper by Susskind et al. describes a 15-year dataset of global surface skin temperatures from the AIRS instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite.ScienceDaily proclaimed that the study “verified global warming trends“, even though the period addressed (15 years) is too short to say much of anything much of value about global warming trends, especially since there was a record-setting warm El Nino near the end of that period.

Furthermore, that period (January 2003 through December 2017) shows significant warming even in our UAH lower tropospheric temperature (LT) data, with a trend 0.01 warmer than the “gold standard” HadCRUT4 surface temperature dataset (all deg. C/decade):

AIRS: +0.24 
GISTEMP: +0.22
ECMWF: +0.20
Cowtan & Way: +0.19
UAH LT: +0.18
HadCRUT4: +0.17

I’m pretty sure the Susskind et al. paper was meant to prop up Gavin Schmidt’s GISTEMP dataset, which generally shows greater warming trends than the HadCRUT4 dataset that the IPCC tends to favor more. It remains to be seen whether the AIRS skin temperature dataset, with its “clear sky bias”, will be accepted as a way to monitor global temperature trends into the future.

What Satellite Dataset Should We Believe?

Of course, the short period of record of the AIRS dataset means that it really can’t address the pre-2003 adjustments made to the various global temperature datasets which significantly impact temperature trends computed with 40+ years of data.

What I want to specifically address here is a public comment made by Dr. Scott Denning on Twitter, maligning our (UAH) satellite dataset. He was responding to someone who objected to the new study, claiming our UAH satellite data shows minimal warming. While the person posting this objection didn’t have his numbers right (and as seen above, our trend even agrees with HadCRUT4 over the 2003-2017 period), Denning took it upon himself to take a swipe at us (see his large-font response, below):

 

First of all, I have no idea what Scott is talking about when he lists “towers” and “aircraft”…there has been no comprehensive comparisons of such data sources to global satellite data, mainly because there isn’t nearly enough geographic coverage by towers and aircraft.

Secondly, in the 25+ years that John Christy and I have pioneered the methods that others now use, we made only one “error” (found by RSS, and which we promptly fixed, having to do with an early diurnal drift adjustment). The additional finding by RSS of the orbit decay effect was not an “error” on our part any more than our finding of the “instrument body temperature effect” was an error on their part. All satellite datasets now include adjustments for both of these effects.

Nevertheless, as many of you know, our UAH dataset is now considered the “outlier” among the satellite datasets (which also include RSS, NOAA, and U. of Washington), with the least amount of global-average warming since 1979 (although we agree better in the tropics, where little warming has occurred). So let’s address the remaining claim of Scott Denning’s: that we disagree with independent data.

The only direct comparisons to satellite-based deep-layer temperatures are from radiosondes and global reanalysis datasets (which include all meteorological observations in a physically consistent fashion). What we will find is that RSS, NOAA, and UW have remaining errors in their datasets which they refuse to make adjustments for.

From late 1998 through 2004, there were two satellites operating: NOAA-14 with the last of the old MSU series of instruments on it, and NOAA-15 with the first new AMSU instrument on it. In the latter half of this overlap period there was considerable disagreement that developed between the two satellites. Since the older MSU was known to have a substantial measurement dependence on the physical temperature of the instrument (a problem fixed on the AMSU), and the NOAA-14 satellite carrying that MSU had drifted much farther in local observation time than any of the previous satellites, we chose to cut off the NOAA-14 processing when it started disagreeing substantially with AMSU. (Engineer James Shiue at NASA/Goddard once described the new AMSU as the “Cadillac” of well-calibrated microwave temperature sounders).

Despite the most obvious explanation that the NOAA-14 MSU was no longer usable, RSS, NOAA, and UW continue to use all of the NOAA-14 data through its entire lifetime and treat it as just as accurate as NOAA-15 AMSU data. Since NOAA-14 was warming significantly relative to NOAA-15, this puts a stronger warming trend into their satellite datasets, raising the temperature of all subsequent satellites’ measurements after about 2000.

But rather than just asserting the new AMSU should be believed over the old (drifting) MSU, let’s look at some data. Since Scott Denning mentions weather balloon (radiosonde) data, let’s look at our published comparisonsbetween the 4 satellite datasets and radiosondes (as well as global reanalysis datasets) and see who agrees with independent data the best:

Trend differences 1979-2005 between 4 satellite datasets and either radiosondes (blue) or reanalyses (red) for the MSU2/AMSU5 tropospheric channel in the tropics. The balloon trends are calculated from the subset of gripoints where the radiosonde stations are located, whereas the reanalyses contain complete coverage of the tropics. For direct comparisons of full versus station-only grids see the paper.

Clearly, the RSS, NOAA, and UW satellite datasets are the outliers when it comes to comparisons to radiosondes and reanalyses, having too much warming compared to independent data.

But you might ask, why do those 3 satellite datasets agree so well with each other? Mainly because UW and NOAA have largely followed the RSS lead… using NOAA-14 data even when its calibration was drifting, and using similar strategies for diurnal drift adjustments. Thus, NOAA and UW are, to a first approximation, slightly altered versions of the RSS dataset.

Maybe Scott Denning was just having a bad day. In the past, he has been reasonable, being the only climate “alarmist” willing to speak at a Heartland climate conference. Or maybe he has since been pressured into toeing the alarmist line, and not being allowed to wander off the reservation.

In any event, I felt compelled to defend our work in response to what I consider (and the evidence shows) to be an unfair and inaccurate attack in social media of our UAH dataset.

UPDATE from John Christy (11:10 CDT April 26, 2019):

In response to comments about the RATPAC radiosonde data having more warming, John Christy provides the following:

The comparison with RATPAC-A referred to in the comments below is unclear (no area mentioned, no time frame).  But be that as it may, if you read our paper, RATPAC-A2 was one of the radiosonde datasets we used.  RATPAC-A2 has virtually no adjustments after 1998, so contains warming shifts known to have occurred in the Australian and U.S. VIZ sondes for example.  The IGRA dataset used in Christy et al. 2018 utilized 564 stations, whereas RATPAC uses about 85 globally, and far fewer just in the tropics where this comparison shown in the post was made.  RATPAC-A warms relative to the other radiosonde/reanalyses datasets since 1998 (which use over 500 sondes), but was included anyway in the comparisons in our paper. The warming bias relative to 7 other radiosonde and reanalysis datasets can be seen in the following plot:

[bdgwx]

Keep in mind that the chart from Christy above is for TMT (mid troposphere) between 20N and 20S latitude. It is also important to note that UAH's TLT (lower troposphere) isn't measuring the temperature of the surface and their TLT product is higher up than RSS's TLT product. Anyway, I believe on a global basis RSS actually has the better match to balloon, surface, and reanalysis datasets. UAH is the clear outlier from what I've seen. But that's okay with me. It provides a reasonable floor to the warming trend.

[blizzard1024]

29 minutes ago, bdgwx said:

Keep in mind that the chart from Christy above is for TMT (mid troposphere) between 20N and 20S latitude. It is also important to note that UAH's TLT (lower troposphere) isn't measuring the temperature of the surface and their TLT product is higher up than RSS's TLT product. Anyway, I believe on a global basis RSS actually has the better match to balloon, surface, and reanalysis datasets. UAH is the clear outlier from what I've seen. But that's okay with me. It provides a reasonable floor to the warming trend.

Even if it is higher up than RSS there should be more warming based on the enhanced greenhouse  theory. We are not seeing this. We don't understand enough about the radiation balances, convection, albedo, ocean current, solar cycles and longer term trends to be blaming most climate change on a trace gas that never mattered in the past. The Vostok ice cores irrefutably prove this.  How anyone could look at these ice cores and still believe that CO2 drives climate is beyond me. 

 

[raindancewx]

I haven't looked - how similar was July 2019 to the heat wave in Europe in 2003 synoptically?

[bdgwx]

1 hour ago, blizzard1024 said:

Even if it is higher up than RSS there should be more warming based on the enhanced greenhouse  theory. We are not seeing this. We don't understand enough about the radiation balances, convection, albedo, ocean current, solar cycles and longer term trends to be blaming most climate change on a trace gas that never mattered in the past. The Vostok ice cores irrefutably prove this.  How anyone could look at these ice cores and still believe that CO2 drives climate is beyond me. 

 

I believe you are referring to the mid troposphere tropical hotspot problem. I agree. This is one deficiency in climate models though it is my understand that this discrepancy is improving. There are other discrepancies in modeling as well. Clearly there is more to learn.

But that does not mean that our understanding of the climate is incapable of assigning radiative forcing estimates with reasonable margins of error to the various agents that modulate the climate. We do, in fact, have enough understanding of the major players in the climate system to draw conclusions with confidence. 

CO2 (and other polyatomic gas species) are an essential piece of the puzzle in explaining and predicting the climate system. Alternative theories that ignore it do a poor job at matching up with all available observations. The Vostok ice cores (and other proxies) are consistent with the theory that CO2 puts a positive/negative radiative forcing on the climate when it increases/decreases. What are you thinking is the problem? In the absence of CO2 how do you explain the magnitude of the glacial/interglacial cycles? How do you solve the faint young paradox?

[chubbs]

46 minutes ago, blizzard1024 said:

Even if it is higher up than RSS there should be more warming based on the enhanced greenhouse  theory. We are not seeing this. We don't understand enough about the radiation balances, convection, albedo, ocean current, solar cycles and longer term trends to be blaming most climate change on a trace gas that never mattered in the past. The Vostok ice cores irrefutably prove this.  How anyone could look at these ice cores and still believe that CO2 drives climate is beyond me. 

 

Funny, I have the opposite reaction to ice cores.  The temperature/CO2 correlation is almost perfect in ice cores and modern observations.

[blizzard1024]

21 minutes ago, bdgwx said:

I believe you are referring to the mid troposphere tropical hotspot problem. I agree. This is one deficiency in climate models though it is my understand that this discrepancy is improving. There are other discrepancies in modeling as well. Clearly there is more to learn.

But that does not mean that our understanding of the climate is incapable of assigning radiative forcing estimates with reasonable margins of error to the various agents that modulate the climate. We do, in fact, have enough understanding of the major players in the climate system to draw conclusions for with confidence. 

CO2 (and other polyatomic gas species) are an essential piece of the puzzle in explaining and predicting the climate system. Alternative theories that ignore it do a poor job at matching up with all available observations. The Vostok ice cores (and other proxies) are consistent with the theory that CO2 puts a positive/negative radiative forcing on the climate when it increases/decreases. What are you thinking is the problem? In the absence of CO2 how do you explain the magnitude of the glacial/interglacial cycles? How do you solve the faint young paradox?

Ice albedo feedbacks, colder oceans less water vapor and hence colder temperatures.  How can CO2 go up and temperatures fall or vice versa if CO2 is the thermostat? It makes no physical sense

[bdgwx]

1 hour ago, blizzard1024 said:

Ice albedo feedbacks, colder oceans less water vapor and hence colder temperatures.  How can CO2 go up and temperatures fall or vice versa if CO2 is the thermostat? It makes no physical sense

Two reasons...First, CO2 isn't the only agent modulating the climate. It's the net effect of all climate forcing agents that drives the energy balance on the planet. CO2 happens to be an important player in the energy budget, but it's not the only player. Second, the surface temperature is influenced by the transport of energy between the various heat reservoirs in the geosphere including the hydrosphere, lithosphere, cryosphere, atmosphere, etc. It's possible for the temperature of one reservoir to decrease even though the energy uptake is positive across all reservoirs. Everything matters. What the abundance of evidence shows is that hypothesis that selectively ignore an agent (like CO2) provide poorer matches to reality than those that include everything.

 

[bdgwx]

I was trying to think of a way to test the hypothesis that the UHI was a contributing factor to the magnitude of this summer's heat waves in Europe. I think most of us would agree that the UHI is probably not significant enough to influence weather patterns like the persistent ridging which spread over Europe on a synoptic scale. But maybe our perception of the magnitude of the events was skewed by the UHI. It seems like a falsification of this hypothesis could be attempted by trending the difference of urban vs rural readings over long periods of time as a means for quantifying the change in UHI. Is the UHI effect still increasing? Is the signal strong enough to explain part of the magnitude of the observations? I still don't think this experiment would tell us much about the frequency of such events since that seems to be more related to synoptic scale patterns. Thoughts?

[etudiant]

2 hours ago, bdgwx said:

I believe you are referring to the mid troposphere tropical hotspot problem. I agree. This is one deficiency in climate models though it is my understand that this discrepancy is improving. There are other discrepancies in modeling as well. Clearly there is more to learn.

But that does not mean that our understanding of the climate is incapable of assigning radiative forcing estimates with reasonable margins of error to the various agents that modulate the climate. We do, in fact, have enough understanding of the major players in the climate system to draw conclusions with confidence. 

CO2 (and other polyatomic gas species) are an essential piece of the puzzle in explaining and predicting the climate system. Alternative theories that ignore it do a poor job at matching up with all available observations. The Vostok ice cores (and other proxies) are consistent with the theory that CO2 puts a positive/negative radiative forcing on the climate when it increases/decreases. What are you thinking is the problem? In the absence of CO2 how do you explain the magnitude of the glacial/interglacial cycles? How do you solve the faint young paradox?

Afaik, the Vostok core show that CO2 lags the temperature changes by several hundred years. Obviously there are lots of issues, whether CO2 chemistry/diffusion in the ice biases the results, but it does raise a flag. My understanding is that water vapor is by far the dominant green house gas here on earth and that we live thanks to the peculiarities of the H2O molecule.

That leaves me reluctant to endorse CO2 as the primary driver for earth temperature.

[bdgwx]

17 minutes ago, etudiant said:

Afaik, the Vostok core show that CO2 lags the temperature changes by several hundred years. Obviously there are lots of issues, whether CO2 chemistry/diffusion in the ice biases the results, but it does raise a flag. My understanding is that water vapor is by far the dominant green house gas here on earth and that we live thanks to the peculiarities of the H2O molecule.

That leaves me reluctant to endorse CO2 as the primary driver for earth temperature.

CO2 concentration does lag (with caveats) the temperature trend for much of the glacial cycles. This is consistent, if not totally expected, with modern climate science theory. Remember, CO2 is both in a forcing relationship and a feedback relationship with the temperature. If CO2 dominates early as a catalyzing agent for temperature changes it will be observed to lead the temperature profile. If something else dominates early as the catalyzing agent for temperature changes it will be observed to lag. But, that does not preclude CO2 from also playing the role as a forcing agent as well. In fact, CO2 is essential in explaining the amplitude of the glacial cycles even though other agents like Milankovitch cycles, albedo feedback, randomly timed volcanic aerosols, etc. were likely the catalyzing agents that explain the timing. In other words, CO2 acted via its feedback first and its forcing second. But CO2 doesn't always lag the temperature in the paleoclimate record anyway. For example, the Paleo-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) was characterized by a sudden release of CO2. Thus CO2 dominated early as a catalyzing agent itself. In other words, it acted via its forcing first and its feedback second. The point...we actually have examples of CO2 both leading and lagging the temperature profile in the paleoclimate record and each era is consistent with the idea that CO2 is both a feedback and forcing agent. Those eras by marked feedback dominance are typically long and drawn out similar to the glacial cycles while those marked by forcing dominance are quick and sudden similar to what is playing out today. The key to understanding when it leads vs lags is identifying what is modulating its release. H2O behaves differently. Yes, being a polyatomic gas species, it too is a GHG. But, it cannot, on its own, catalyze long term changes in temperature like how CO2 can which makes its relationship with temperature strikingly different.

[etudiant]

Thank you for this more detailed and thoughtful reply.

I'd really appreciate links to the underlying papers. I have no issues with CO2 as a feedback component.

My concern is that CO2 was at a nadir in the ice cores when temperatures began to climb, so a catalytic role seems pretty much excluded, as there is no reason for catalysis at 280 ppm when there was none at 330 ppm.

Separately, H2O vapor has the virtue of acting as a much wider spectrum GHG, than CO2, so it is hard to dismiss it as unable to catalyze long term changes in temperature, but I've no insight into that.

[donsutherland1]

7 hours ago, blizzard1024 said:

Ice albedo feedbacks, colder oceans less water vapor and hence colder temperatures.  How can CO2 go up and temperatures fall or vice versa if CO2 is the thermostat? It makes no physical sense

CO2’s heat-trapping properties are not non-existent. They have been documented. Instead, what had happened is that there had to be a trigger to start the release of stored greenhouse gases. That trigger was natural e.g., an increase in solar insolation, which led to warming, which in turn allowed for some stored greenhouse gases to be released into the atmosphere, which led to further warming, etc. Today, humanity is the trigger via its burning of fossil fuels. Atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases is rising and leading to warming. That process is underway and the body of evidence is large. There are no mysteries of physical laws involved.

[BillT]

science FACT = no insulator ever "traps heat"   slow its movement YES, but "trap" it never happens......

[donsutherland1]

2 hours ago, BillT said:

science FACT = no insulator ever "traps heat"   slow its movement YES, but "trap" it never happens......

“Trapping” is used to describe the slowing release of heat to space. On account of that process, some of the heat that would otherwise escape is re-radiated to the earth. The end result is the observed warming that is now underway and its evidence assessed by science as all but unequivocal. The deflection to common usage of technical terms—even by physicists to readily communicate complex concepts with the public so that they are readily understood—cannot undermine the breadth and depth of scientific understanding of contemporary warming and its principal cause.

[BillT]

the IR wave does NOT "some of the heat that would otherwise escape is re-radiated to the earth"   it is released with no direction imparted and continues its natural movement towards space....

[bdgwx]

31 minutes ago, BillT said:

the IR wave does NOT "some of the heat that would otherwise escape is re-radiated to the earth"   it is released with no direction imparted and continues its natural movement towards space....

Polyatomic molecules like CO2, H2O, CH4, CFCs, etc. both emit and absorb IR photons of certain frequencies. Outbound photons that would otherwise have escape trajectories are absorbed and then reemitted in all directions with roughly half having escape trajectories and the other half having surface trajectories. There is a process by which the quantized energy contained in the photon is "thermalized" as it is converted into kinetic energy as well.

[blizzard1024]

3 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

CO2’s heat-trapping properties are not non-existent. They have been documented. Instead, what had happened is that there had to be a trigger to start the release of stored greenhouse gases. That trigger was natural e.g., an increase in solar insolation, which led to warming, which in turn allowed for some stored greenhouse gases to be released into the atmosphere, which led to further warming, etc. Today, humanity is the trigger via its burning of fossil fuels. Atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases is rising and leading to warming. That process is underway and the body of evidence is large. There are no mysteries of physical laws involved.

Weak GHG somehow dominates the climate system?  The thing that is not well described is that temperatures begin to fall despite CO2 rising after an interglacial has ended. If the water vapor feedback is so strong (which it needs to be in order for CO2 to even matter), then how does this happen? Something else triggers the warming, then CO2 responds after 800 year lag and THEN dominates the climate? This does not make any sense. Plus the almost one to one correspondence between CO2 levels and temperatures in the ice cores reveals that the climate system responds to CO2 almost linearly.? But the climate system is highly non-linear. Again makes no sense. What makes sense is the simplicity that colder oceans are more soluble to CO2 and suck it in and then warmer oceans outgass CO2 with a lag of several hundreds years. Hence CO2 is a minor component to the climate system in the grand scheme. This is common sense.   There will be no 6th extinction, the world won't end in 12 years and there won't be ecocide because of CO2.  We are seeing minor beneficial warming well within the bounds of past climate change in the Holocene. 

[donsutherland1]

2 hours ago, blizzard1024 said:

Weak GHG somehow dominates the climate system?  The thing that is not well described is that temperatures begin to fall despite CO2 rising after an interglacial has ended. If the water vapor feedback is so strong (which it needs to be in order for CO2 to even matter), then how does this happen? Something else triggers the warming, then CO2 responds after 800 year lag and THEN dominates the climate? This does not make any sense. Plus the almost one to one correspondence between CO2 levels and temperatures in the ice cores reveals that the climate system responds to CO2 almost linearly.? But the climate system is highly non-linear. Again makes no sense. What makes sense is the simplicity that colder oceans are more soluble to CO2 and suck it in and then warmer oceans outgass CO2 with a lag of several hundreds years. Hence CO2 is a minor component to the climate system in the grand scheme. This is common sense.   There will be no 6th extinction, the world won't end in 12 years and there won't be ecocide because of CO2.  We are seeing minor beneficial warming well within the bounds of past climate change in the Holocene. 

The anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have contributed to the rising atmospheric concentration of such gases. They made the marginal difference. That concentration is driving the ongoing warming.

As for the world ending in 12 years, that’s nonsense that has almost nothing to do with climate change. It is exaggeration that exploits it for political ends that are largely disconnected from it e.g., an economic reordering that deals with non-climate goals. Such tactics fall on the opposite side of the spectrum as denial, with both undercutting the science. Denial ignores the science. The economic reordering gives life to conspiracy theories wielded to discredit the science.