Richardthughes
Posts: 11178
Joined: Jan. 2006
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More climate Tard from Dave, complete with slapdown:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.p....t-26091
| Quote | I was browsing the NASA interactive satellite temperature data for the troposphere which stretches from 1979 to 2003. It has a global map that's colored in shades of red for heating and blue for cooling. Flipping through the time sequence it's obvious that almost all the heating anomalies are in the snow covered far north. South of Canada down to Antarctica isn't really heating at all. Moreover, there's a graph of the average temperature anomalies of all areas (below the world map) and that shows that the net of heating and cooling is just about zero. I was wondering what could account for this pattern of heating and cooling and it occured to me that if the albedo of the snow cover in the far north was declining that would do it. So I looked around and dug up a study of snow albedo that appeared in the Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, Volume 37, August 1980 which confirmed that carbon soot from manmade sources (including forest fires) migrates thousands of miles and accumulates on permanent snow cover causing melting and temperature increases. The antarctic is relatively free of soot buildup but the arctic has been well contaminated.
This explains the heating (and lack of heating) patterns quite well. How does CO2 greenhouse heating explain these patterns and why is the global average temperature not really increasing?
[Response: Congratulations, you've just discovered "polar amplification." This pattern is common to most means of heating up the planet, including CO2, and is not prima facie evidence for soot controlling everything. A superficial look at the patterns can make it look like all the warming is in the Arctic, since that is indeed where the effect is strongest so far. However, as the recent National Academy report pointed out at great length, a careful study of the most careful satellite retrievals indicates consistency between the satellites and the surface network regarding the warming -- and that means that there is indeed warming in the midlatitudes and tropics, not just in the Arctic. I'll leave it to Gavin to comment on the status of the soot-albedo issue. Hansen made some pioneering attempts to estimate the magnitude of these effects, but like most pioneering attempts they're not the last word on the subject.
By the way, for further illumination readers should click on the DaveScot's name below the comment, to follow the link to where he has posted his take on the satellite trends (a classic case of jumping to the desired conclusion based on a superficial analysis). The link takes you to Dembski's Intelligent Design web site. The common cause being made between global warming skeptics and Intelligent Designers, both of which dress up their arguments with the exterior trappinggs of science, is -- as Mr. Spock would say -- "fascinating." --raypierre]
Comment by DaveScot — 18 Feb 2007 @ 2:03 am
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