Recent Ignored Research Findings In Climate Science – An Illustration Of A Broken Scientific Method

This weblog lists three research findings that are in the peer reviewed literature, but have been completely ignored by the IPCC and CCSP climate assessment communities, nor have been refuted in the literature. These are just three examples of the level to which the scientific method has sunk to in climate science.

• Observations of the spatial distribution of aerosols in the atmosphere in the lower latitudes, shows that the aerosol effect on atmospheric circulations, as a result of their alteration in the heating of regions of the atmosphere, is 60 times greater than due to the heating effect of the human addition of well-mixed greenhouse gases [from Matsui and Pielke, 2006];
• A conservative estimate of the warm bias in the construction of a global average surface temperature trend resulting from measuring the air temperature near the ground is around 0.21°C per decade (with the nighttime minimum temperature contributing a large part of this bias). Since land covers about 29% of the Earth’s surface, the warm bias due to this influence explains about 30% of the IPCC estimate of global warming. In other words, consideration of the bias in temperature would reduce the IPCC trend to about 0.14°C per decade; still a warming, but not as large as indicated [based on Lin et al 2007];
• The radiative temperature of the Earth is used by the IPCC and CCSP to represent the portion of the radiation emitted at the top of the atmosphere which originates at the Earth’s surface. However, the outgoing long wave radiation is proportional to the fourth power of T [T⁴], from Stefan-Boltzman’s Law, not temperature by itself. A 1C increase in the polar latitudes in the winter, for example, would have much less of an effect on the change of long wave emission than a 1C increase in the tropics. The spatial distribution matters, but this important distinction has been ignored.  A more appropriate measure of radiatively significant surface changes would be to evaluate the change of the global average of T⁴ with time. [Pielke et al 2007].

Until, and unless the climate science community returns to the proper scientific method of examining the climate system, policymakers will continue to be fed erroneous information. Only poor policy decisions can result due to this failure.