Comments On The Paper “Was there A Basis For Anticipating The 2010 Russian Heat wave?” By Dole Et Al 2011

There is a new paper that makes an important finding regarding the causes of the 2010 Russian heat wave (h/t to Attribution and the Russian heat wave).

The paper is

Dole, R., M. Hoerling, J. Perlwitz, J. Eischeid, P. Pegion, T. Zhang, X.-W. Quan, and D. Murray (2011), Was there a basis for anticipating the 2010 Russian heat wave? Geophys. Res. Lett., doi:10.1029/2010GL046582, in press.

The abstract reads [highlight added]

“The 2010 summer heat wave in western Russia was extraordinary, with the region experiencing the warmest July since at least 1880 and numerous locations setting all-time maximum temperature records. This study explores whether early warning could have been provided through knowledge of natural and human-caused climate forcings. Model simulations and observational data are used to determine the impact of observed sea surface temperatures (SSTs), sea ice conditions and greenhouse gas concentrations. Analysis of forced model simulations indicates that neither human influences nor other slowly evolving ocean boundary conditions contributed substantially to the magnitude of this heat wave. They also provide evidence that such an intense event could be produced through natural variability alone. Analysis of observations indicate that this heat wave was mainly due to internal atmospheric dynamical processes that produced and maintained a strong and long-lived blocking event, and that similar atmospheric patterns have occurred with prior heat waves in this region. We conclude that the intense 2010 Russian heat wave was mainly due to natural internal atmospheric variability. Slowly varying boundary conditions that could have provided predictability and the potential for early warning did not appear to play an appreciable role in this event.”

In their conclusions they write

“Our analysis points to a primarily natural cause for the Russian heat wave. This event appears to be mainly due to internal atmospheric dynamical processes that produced and maintained an intense and long-lived blocking event. Results from prior studies suggest that it is likely that the intensity of the heat wave was further increased by regional land surface feedbacks. The absence of long-term trends in regional mean temperatures and variability together with the model results indicate that it is very unlikely that warming attributable to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations contributed substantially to the magnitude of this heat wave.”

This finding is agrees with what we and others concluded regarding the European heat wave of 2003; i.e.

Chase, T.N., K. Wolter, R.A. Pielke Sr., and Ichtiaque Rasool, 2006: Was the 2003 European summer heat wave unusual in a global context? Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L23709, doi:10.1029/2006GL027470

Chase, T.N., K. Wolter, R.A. Pielke Sr., and Ichtiaque Rasool, 2008: Reply to comment by W.M. Connolley on ‘‘Was the 2003 European summer heat wave unusual in a global context?’’Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L02704, doi:10.1029/2007GL031574

Connolley W.M. 2008: Comment on “Was the 2003 European summer heat wave unusual in a global context?” by Thomas N. Chase et al. Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L02703, doi:10.1029/2007GL031171.

In our 2008 paper we wrote

“Therefore we also conclude that land surface conditions (low soil moisture) are the likely direct cause for such an ‘‘unusual’’ event near the surface. This is supported by Fischer et al. [2007] who reported the lack of rainfall the preceding spring as an important contributing factor in enhancing the 2003 heat wave.”

The role of land surface conditions in droughts is further supported by the results reported in Dole et al 2011.

The next text in their conclusion, however,  is where they make the mistake of assuming the IPCC multi-decadal global climate models can skillfully predict climate through the rest of the 21st century. They write

“Nevertheless, there is evidence that such warming has contributed to observed heat waves in other regions, and is very likely to produce more frequent and extreme heat waves later this century [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007]. To assess this possibility for the region of western Russia, we have used the same IPCC model simulations to estimate the probability of exceeding various July temperature thresholds over the period 1880-2100 (Figure 4). The results suggest that we may be on the cusp of a period in which the probability of such events increases rapidly, due primarily to the influence of projected increases in greenhouse gas concentrations.”

This part of their otherwise excellent study is misleading as there is no skill at predicting droughts (including their statistical frequency) decades from now. Papers such as

Stephens, G. L., T. L’Ecuyer, R. Forbes, A. Gettlemen, J.‐C. Golaz, A. Bodas‐Salcedo, K. Suzuki, P. Gabriel, and J. Haynes (2010), Dreary state of precipitation in global models, J. Geophys. Res., 115, D24211, doi:10.1029/2010JD014532.

should be sufficient to show that the reporting in Dole et al 2011 of IPCC  multi-decadal  model simulations as robust science is flawed and misleading.

New Paper “A Dampened Land Use Change Climate Response Towards The Tropics” By Van Der Molen Et Al 2011

There is a new paper that further examines the role of land use change on the climate. It is

M.K. van der Molen, B.J.J.M. van den Hurk and W. Hazeleger (2011): A dampened land use change climate response towards the tropics. Climate Dynamics, open access, online first, DOI: 10.1007/s00382-011-1018-0.

The abstract reads

“In climate simulations we find a pronounced meridional (equator to pole) gradient of climate response to land cover change. Climate response approaches zero in the tropics, and increases towards the poles. The meridional gradient in climate response to land cover change results from damping feedbacks in the tropics, rather than from polar amplification. The main cause for the damping in the tropics is the decrease in cloud cover after deforestation, resulting in increased incoming radiation at the surface and a lower planetary albedo, both counteracting the increase in surface albedo with deforestation. In our simulations, deforestation was also associated with a decrease in sensible heat flux but not a clear signal in evaporation. Meridional differences in climate response have implications for attribution of observed climate change, as well as for climate change mitigation strategies.”

The conclusion reads

“Simulations with the EC-Earth climate model indicate a strong meridional gradient in climate response to land cover change: the climate response is nearly zero in the tropics and increases towards the NH mid-latitudes. Classical theory is that climate warming amplifies towards the poles, because of the snow-albedo feedback. However, in our simulations, the change in net radiation resembles the radiative forcing in the NH mid-latitudes, whereas it is much smaller in the tropics. This indicates that (net) damping feedbacks are present in the tropics, but not in the NH mid-latitudes. We show that in our model a decrease in cloud cover after deforestation is responsible for this ‘tropical damping’.

Distinguishing meridional differences in climate response to land cover change is important for attribution of climate change, and may have implications for the effectiveness of aforestation programs to mitigate climate change due to increasing CO2 concentrations. Simulations of the impact of land cover change on climate by different
climate models often provide contrasting results, as a consequence of defensible differences in model formulations. The climate response is a useful parameter for climate model intercomparisons, and we aim to contribute to such intercomparisons with this publication.”

One comment I have regarding this interesting paper is that, if “tropical damping” is due to a “decrease in cloud cover”, than what this paper calls a “climate response” is too narrowly defined. Nonetheless, this is an important new contribution to the recognition of land use/land cover change as a first order climate forcing.

Seminar – “A Way Forward In Climate Science Based On A Bottom-Up Resource-Based Perspective” At Wageningen University

Today, I am presenting a seminar at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. The title is

“A Way Forward In Climate Science Based On A Bottom-Up Resource-Based Perspective”

with the abstract

“Recent research and observations of the climate system have shown that the climate system is more complex than concluded in the 2007 IPCC WG1 report, and, moreover, is not evolving as predicted by the multi-decadal global climate models. Moreover, these models do not appear to be capable of providing skillful predictions of regional and local societally and environmentally important impacts in the coming decades. Examples and reasons for this lack of forecast skill are presented. This includes the failure of a global average surface temperature trend as a robust metric of global warming, and, more generally, of climate change.

As an alternative approach, we are developing a bottom-up, resource-based vulnerability assessment perspective. There are 5 broad areas that we can use to define the need for vulnerability assessments : water, food, energy, human health and ecosystem function. Each area has societally critical resources. The vulnerability concept requires the determination of the major threats to these resources from climate, but also from other social and environmental issues. After these threats are identified for each resource, then the relative risk from natural- and human-caused climate change (estimated from the GCM projections, but also the historical, paleo-record and worst case sequences of events) can be compared with other risks in order to adopt the optimal mitigation/adaptation strategy. Examples of this approach will be presented.”

Another Climate Forcing – From City Lights!

There is another climate forcing that has been reported in NOAA’s ESRL Quarterly.  The article is

Night Lights: ESRL researchers find small but significant effect of nighttime city lighting on air pollution

Every night, the cities of the Los Angeles Basin throw a dome of light into the dark sky, cast by millions of street lamps and other outdoor lights. That glow is 10,000 times dimmer than sunlight, but still powerful enough to influence chemistry affecting air pollution, ESRL scientists discovered.

In a press conference and poster session at the American Geophysical Union annual fall meeting, Harald Stark (Chemical Sciences Division, CSD) and colleagues presented measurements made during several nighttime flights in California last summer, part of the CalNex field campaign in California, to study the nexus of air quality and climate change. “We showed that city lights diminish the nighttime cleansing of the atmosphere,” Stark said, “and that could have an influence on what happens the next day,” in terms of air pollution. Stark’s coauthors are Steve Brown, William Dubé, Nicholas Wagner, Thomas Ryerson, Illana Pollack, and David Parrish, all of CSD.

In a typical air quality field campaign, scientists make masses of measurements during the day, when sunlight triggers interesting chemistry. Several of CSD’s recent field experiments have looked at new dimensions of the air quality issue by studying nighttime chemistry. CalNex involved several nighttime flights, although Stark wasn’t originally planning to participate.

At Brown’s urging, Stark decided to pull a few all-nighters, re-calibrating a key instrument – designed to measure sunlight during the day – to pick up the faint intensity of city lights at night. He and his colleagues also used controlled ground-based measurements and chemical models to further understand the chemistry taking place in the Los Angeles (LA) Basin. “We measured light intensities 10,000 times dimmer than the Sun…but 25 times brighter than the full moon,” Stark said. His team also found evidence of the breakdown of nitrate radicals (NO3). Nitrate typically helps cleanse the nighttime atmosphere by breaking down certain air pollutants.

Sunlight quickly destroys NO3, which is consequently at extremely low concentrations during the day. Stark and his colleagues determined that the nighttime glow of the LA Basin was intense enough to do some damage, reducing the nighttime cleansing activity of NO3 by as much as 7 percent. That, in turn, could leave more pollutants in the air overnight, the team calculated – as much as 5 percent more nitrogen dioxide, NO2, in particular. NO2 is a key ingredient in the daytime formation of ozone, a regulated pollutant that can harm people’s lungs as well as crops and ecosystems.

“Many cities are really close to their regulatory limits for ozone… so even a small effect like this could be important for those regulations,” Stark said.

This is yet another example that shows that the more we study the climate system, the more complex we find its behaviour.

February 2011 University Of Alabama Lower Tropospheric Temperature Summary

Courtesy of Phil Gentry, the February 2011 University Of Alabama Lower Tropospheric Temperature Summary is presented below.

**************************************************

Global Temperature Report: February 2011

Global climate trend since Nov. 16, 1978: +0.14 C per decade February temperatures (preliminary)

Global composite temp.: -0.02 C (about 0.04 degrees Fahrenheit) below 30-year average for February.

Northern Hemisphere: -0.04 C (about 0.07 degrees Fahrenheit) below 30-year average for February.

Southern Hemisphere: ±0.00 C (about 0.00 degrees Fahrenheit) above/below 30-year average for February.

Tropics: -0.35 C (about 0.63 degrees Fahrenheit) below 30-year average for February.

January temperatures (revised):

Global Composite: -0.01 C below 30-year average

Northern Hemisphere: -0.06 C below 30-year average

Southern Hemisphere: +0.04 C above 30-year average

Tropics: -0.35 C below 30-year average

(All temperature anomalies are based on a 30-year average (1981-2010) for the month reported.)

Notes on data released March 14, 2011: Color maps of local temperature anomalies may soon be available on-line at:

http://nsstc.uah.edu/climate/

The processed temperature data is available on-line at: vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt

As part of an ongoing joint project between UAHuntsville, NOAA and NASA, Christy and Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist in the ESSC, use data gathered by advanced microwave sounding units on NOAA and NASA satellites to get accurate temperature readings for almost all regions of the Earth. This includes remote desert, ocean and rain forest areas where
reliable climate data are not otherwise available.

The satellite-based instruments measure the temperature of the atmosphere from the surface up to an altitude of about eight kilometers above sea level. Once the monthly temperature data is collected and processed, it is placed in a “public” computer file for immediate access by atmospheric scientists in the U.S. and abroad.

Neither Christy nor Spencer receives any research support or funding from oil, coal or industrial companies or organizations, or from any private or special interest groups. All of their climate research funding comes from federal and state grants or contracts.

New Paper “Decadal Variations In The Nocturnal Heat Island Of London” By Wilby Et Al 2011

There is a new paper that adds significantly to our understanding of the urban heat island, and thus its role on long-term surface temperature records. The new paper is

Robert L. Wilby,Philip D. Jones  and David H. Lister: Decadal Variations In The Nocturnal Heat Island Of London. Weather March 2011. DOI: 10.1002/wea.679

The abstract reads

“Our review of the long-term behaviour of London’s UHI provides a salutary reminder that the appearance and disappearance of trends in environmental data can depend very much on the segment of data analysed. Nonetheless, we can confirm – using both daily and monthly temperature records – that the summer nUHI did intensify between the late 1950s/early 1960s and the 1980s. This period coincided with an abrupt increase in the frequency of summer anticyclonic weather. There is also evidence of a slight rise in the annual number of intense heat-island events that can be linked to more persistent anticylonic weather systems at that time. A weak decline in summer nUHI since the 1980s coincides with a rise in the frequency of cyclonic weather. Since 1931, the summer nUHI has risen slightly, but not significantly. The overall annual mean nUHI does, however, show a weak but significant (p<0.05) rise when the monthly SJP record is compared to that of WIS.”

Their concluding remarks read

Our review of the long-term behaviour of London’s UHI provides a salutary reminder that the appearance and disappearance of trends in environmental data can depend very much on the segment of data analysed.
Nonetheless, we can confirm – using both daily and monthly temperature records – that the summer nUHI did intensify between the late 1950s/early 1960s and the 1980s. This period coincided with an abrupt increase in the frequency of summer anticyclonic weather. There is also evidence of a slight rise in the annual number of intense heat-island events that can be linked to more persistent anticylonic weather systems at that time. A weak decline in summer
nUHI since the 1980s coincides with a rise in the frequency of cyclonic weather. Since 1931, the summer nUHI has risen slightly, but not significantly. The overall annual mean nUHI does, however, show a weak but significant (p<0.05) rise when the monthly SJP record is compared to that of WIS.

 Over the 50-year daily record, less than half of the variance in the summer-mean nUHI signal is explained by synoptic weather patterns. This could be due to a number of factors. The weather types describe conditions across the British Isles generally, rather than for southeast England specifically. The conditions experienced within a given weather class are known to vary from day to day. There have also been marked changes in regional air quality in the wake of the notorious winter ‘smogs’ of the 1950s and the summer stubble burning
of the 1970s and 1980s. Other time-dependent factors (such as artificial heat sources, building albedo, thermal mass, sky-view factors, surface roughness, and vegetated area) may be locally important (McGregor et al., 2006). Furthermore, censuses show that the population of Greater London peaked in 1939 then fell until 1991 and has since risen again.”

This paper is an important new addition to the literature on multi-decadal surface temperature trends.

An Inaccurate Claim By IPCC Co-Chair Christopher Field

In a recent news article by Robert Koenig in the St. Louis Beacon titled

Storm of controversy follows Luetkemeyer’s climate-change measure

there is the following information [highlight added]

Christopher Field, a co-chair of an IPCC working group who is director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, told the Beacon on Monday that the IPCC “is a very good deal for the governments and for the world.” Field, a leading U.S. climate change researcher, is also a professor of biology and environmental earth system science at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.

“The IPCC has been able to harness, at a minimal cost, a remarkable pool of scientific knowledge and experience through this approach of engaging volunteers,” said Field, who spoke at Washington University in St. Louis last September. “In their work with the IPCC, hundreds of the world’s leading scientists are donating their nights and weekends to provide the world’s governments with the best available information on climate science.”

First, most (all?) of the climate scientists who are “coordinating lead” and “lead authors” IPPC authors are funded for the science they are reporting on in the IPCC WG1 report, as they are with their peer reviewed papers. It is not accurate to indicate they are donating their time.  Chris Field does not obtain his funding from the IPCC, but, while I have no evidence, it is my personal opinion that much of his research funding is based on perpetuating the IPCC viewpoint.

I respect Chris’s scientific expertise and have had the pleasure to attend meetings with him (including the House Hearing earlier this week).  However,  he is inaccurate with respect to his perspective of the IPCC process.

Of particular importance is the claim that

“the world’s governments [are being provided] with the best available information on climate science.”

The 2007 IPCC WG1 report (and early IPCC assessments) have been selective in what they chose to present.  The WG1 report is actually analogous to a position paper by an advocacy group.

It is straightforward to document this bias as exemplified in the appendix to my Congressional testimony

Pielke Sr., Roger A., 2008: A Broader View of the Role of Humans in the Climate System is Required In the Assessment of Costs and Benefits of Effective Climate Policy. Written Testimony for the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality of the Committee on Energy and Commerce Hearing “Climate Change: Costs of Inaction” – Honorable Rick Boucher, Chairman. June 26, 2008, Washington, DC., 52 pp.

The need for a broader perspective is supported by other credentialed climate scientists, for example, as reported by Fellows of the American Geophysical Union, in

 Pielke Sr., R., K. Beven, G. Brasseur, J. Calvert, M. Chahine, R. Dickerson, D. Entekhabi, E. Foufoula-Georgiou, H. Gupta, V. Gupta, W. Krajewski, E. Philip Krider, W. K.M. Lau, J. McDonnell,  W. Rossow,  J. Schaake, J. Smith, S. Sorooshian,  and E. Wood, 2009: Climate change: The need to consider human forcings besides greenhouse gases. Eos, Vol. 90, No. 45, 10 November 2009, 413. Copyright (2009) American Geophysical Union.

Statements in the St. Louis Beacon news article that

Academic researchers outside of the scientific community often make use of IPCC reports. William R. Lowry, a political science professor at Washington University, told the Beacon on Monday that “to me, the IPCC is a pretty reliable source” for climate-change information. “Losing that would be problematic. It’s one place we can get some honest data about climate change.”

are being mislead that the IPCC WG1 report is an inclusive presentation of climate information.

Missed Opportunity At The March 8 2011 The House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee Hearing “Climate Science and EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Regulation”

Yesterday, I posted on the March 8 2011 House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee Hearing “Climate Science and EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Regulation”;

Oral Presentation On March 8 2011 At The House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee Hearing Climate Science and EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Regulation

Today, I want to present a few comments on the process. First, as has been written elsewhere (e.g. see) the Hearing was political theater, including props (such as the stack of books presented by Congressman Inslee) . 

 There were only a few questions/comments directed to the witnesses of the opposing sides and these were usually confrontational, and not designed to effectively explore the areas of disagreements and, of  equal or even more importance, of agreement.  The introduction of DDT by one of the Republican witnesses and of tobacco smoke effects by Congressman Jay Inslee of Washington was completely irrelevant to the science issues of climate. 

There were some exceptions. For example, Morgan Griffith of Virginia asked a series of excellent science questions which he said will be sent to us for answers. Pete Olson of Texas, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, Jay Inslee of Washington, Henry Waxman of California and Bobby Rush of Illinois were clearly passionate about the subject, and a number of their questions were very good (but generally also directed to their invitees). 

I have a recommendation to the Chair of the Committee Congressman Ed Whitfield of Kentucky for future Hearings of this type. Rather than adopt the standard Hearing format, it would be more informative for him to invite 6 scientists (3 witnesses each selected by the Republicans and Democrats) and pose a set of several questions, such as

1. Is CO2 the dominant human climate forcing?

2. What observational evidence is available to bolster or refute the predictions of the climate model multi-decadal predictions of climate change and of  extreme weather?

3. What certainty is there in the skill of regional and local predictions of societally and environmentally important climate for the coming decades?

Then permit each witness, in sequence, 5 minutes to answer one of the questions followed on by 5 minutes of further comment by each witness.  Then the second question can be addressed.

In this format, the House members would listen and would wait until the witnesses have cycled through each question before asking their questions on the science. The Members might be quite surprised regarding the degree of agreement among the climate scientists, as well as see major areas of disagreement (as well as how these disagreements can be resolved).

I recognize that this is not the way formal Hearings are conducted and my request is unrealistic.  However, until there is a venue to properly discuss and assess the diversity of perspectives regarding climate science issues (and the National Research Council has not properly done this in the last few years), we are going to continue in the same polarized framework where scientifically unsubstantiated claims (on both sides) are being make.

An NRC panel, which is inclusive of climate scientists of all viewpoints, that is convened to report on areas of agreement and disagreement, would be very valuable to everyone.

Oral Presentation On March 8 2011 At The House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee Hearing Climate Science and EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Regulation

Yesterday, I participated in the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee Hearing

 “Climate Science and EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Regulation

I have reproduced my oral presentation below. My talk  at the Hearing (and of the other speakers including House members) as well as the Q&A will also be available online (I will provide the link to the session when available – Update: here it is).  

There is an informative set of sites that did live-blogging of the Hearing and twitttering (each site has archived the posts);

Live-blogging the climate science hearings

Live Blogging Climate Science and EPA Regulations Hearing

UCSUSA

My oral presentation at the Hearing, unfortunately, was poor. I violated a rule that I tell my students by trying to cram too much into the rigid 5 minute limit that is provided.

In any case, the issues I raise are presented in my oral and written testimonies (the later will be posted on our research site in the next day or so, and I will post on that more detailed write-up then).

Tomorrow I will post on the process which, unfortunately, was not at all effective in discussing areas of disagreement in climate science.  It is a missed opportunity to debate the scientific issues in the front of important policymakers. I will make a recommendation tomorrow for a different format.

Oral Presentation -Roger A. Pielke Sr. University of Colorado at Boulder and Colorado State University

“I have worked throughout my career to improve environmental conditions, including air quality, by conducting research, teaching and also by providing scientifically rigorous information to policy makers.  At the state level, I served two terms on the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission where we developed the oxygenated fuels program to reduce atmospheric CO emissions from vehicles, promulgated regulations to mandate strict controls on wood and coal burning in residential fireplaces and stoves, and on asbestos concentrations in the air.  

In my testimony today (and in more detail in my written testimony) I have four main points: 

1.      Research has shown that a focus on just carbon dioxide and a few other greenhouse gases as the dominant human influence on climate is too narrow, and misses other important human influences.

2.     The phrases “global warming” and “climate change” are not the same. Global warming is a subset of  climate change.

 3.     The prediction (or projection) of regional weather, including extremes, decades into the future is far more difficult than commonly assumed.  As well, the attribution of extreme events to a particular subset of climate forcings is scientifically incomplete, if the research ignores other relevant human and natural causes of extreme weather events. 

 4.     The climate science assessments of the IPCC and CCSP, as well as the various statements issued by the AGU, AMS and NRC, are completed by a small subset of climate scientists who are often the same individuals in each case.  

 Indeed, the production of multi-decadal climate predictions of regional impacts, whose skill cannot be verified until decades from now, is not a robust scientific approach.  Models themselves are hypotheses. The steps of hypothesis written with respect to climate predictions as

 1.      Make a Prediction

2.     Quantitatively Compare the Prediction With Real World Observations [i.e. Test the Hypothesis]

3.     Communicate The Assessment the Skill of the Prediction

There is no way to test hypotheses with the multi-decadal global climate model forecasts for decades from now as step 2, as a verification of the skill of these forecasts, is not possible until the decades pass.

 There has also been a misunderstanding of the relationship between global warming and climate variability and longer term change.

 Global Warming is typically defined as an increase in the global average surface temperature.  A better metric is the global annual average heat content measured in Joules. Global warming involves the accumulation of heat in Joules within the components of the climate system.  This accumulation is dominated by the heating and cooling within the upper layers of the oceans.

 Climate Change is any multi-decadal or longer alteration in one or more physical, chemical and/or biological components of the climate system. Climate change includes, for example, changes in fauna and flora, snow cover, etc which persists for decades and longer. Climate variability can then be defined as changes which occur on shorter time periods.

 With respect to climate change, in 2009 18 Fellows of the American Geophysical Union accepted an invitation to join me in a paper where we discussed three different mutually exclusive hypotheses with respect to the climate system:

 Hypothesis 1: Human influence on climate variability and change is of minimal importance, and natural causes dominate climate variations and changes on all time scales. In coming decades, the human influence will continue to be minimal.

 Hypothesis 2a: Although the natural causes of climate variations and changes are undoubtedly important, the human influences are significant and involve a diverse range of first- order climate forcings, including, but not limited to, the human input of carbon dioxide (CO2). Most, if not all, of these human influences on regional and global climate will continue to be of concern during the coming decades.

 Hypothesis 2b: Although the natural causes of climate variations and changes are undoubtedly important, the human influences are significant and are dominated by the emissions into the atmosphere of greenhouse gases, the most important of which is CO2. The adverse impact of these gases on regional and global climate constitutes the primary climate issue for the coming decades.

 Hypothesis 2b is the IPCC perspective. In our EOS paper, we concluded that only Hypothesis 2a has not been refuted. Hypotheses 1 and 2b are inaccurate characterizations of the climate system.

 In our 2009 paper we wrote

 “In addition to greenhouse gas emissions, other first- order human climate forcings are important to understanding the future behavior of Earth’s climate. These forcings are spatially heterogeneous and include the effect of aerosols on clouds and associated precipitation [e.g., Rosenfeld et al., 2008], the influence of aerosol deposition (e.g., black carbon (soot) [Flanner et al. 2007] and reactive nitrogen [Galloway et al., 2004]), and the role of changes in land use/land cover [e.g., Takata et al., 2009]. Among their effects is their role in altering atmospheric and ocean circulation features away from what they would be in the natural climate system [NRC, 2005]. As with CO2, the lengths of time that they affect the climate are estimated to be on multidecadal time scales and longer.”

 We concluded that

 “Therefore, the cost- benefit analyses regarding the mitigation of CO2 and other greenhouse gases need to be considered along with the other human climate  forcings in a broader environmental context, as well as with respect to their role in the climate system”

 and

 “The evidence predominantly suggests that humans are significantly altering the global environment, and thus climate, in a variety of diverse ways beyond the effects of human emissions of greenhouse gases, including CO2. Unfortunately, the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment did not sufficiently acknowledge the importance of these other human climate forcings in altering regional and global climate and their effects on predictability at the regional scale.”

 A major conclusion indicated from these studies is that regional atmospheric and ocean circulation features produce extreme weather events, not a global annual average surface temperature anomaly. It is the multi-decadal change in the statistics of these circulation features, in response to natural and human forcings and feedbacks, which must be skillfully predicted.  This level of predictive skill has not yet been achieved even in hindcasts of past decades.

Policymakers and the public rarely encounter this broader view of the climate system, in part due to the limited number of scientists who are leading climate assessments. As just one example, I present my experiences with the first CCSP report.  My experience is documented in a public comment. In the executive summary of that report, I wrote

 “The process for completing the CCSP Report excluded valid scientific perspectives under the charge of the Committee. The Editor of the Report systematically excluded a range of views on the issue of understanding and reconciling lower atmospheric temperature trends.

 Future assessment Committees need to appoint members with a diversity of views and who do not have a significant conflict of interest with respect to their own work. Such Committees should be chaired by individuals committed to the presentation of a diversity of perspectives and unwilling to engage in strong-arm tactics to enforce a narrow perspective. Any such committee should be charged with summarizing all relevant literature, even if inconvenient, or which presents a view not held by certain members of the Committee.”

 Finally, I have proposed a new approach in the climate community based on a bottom-up, resource-based perspective. There are five broad areas that we can use to define the need for this type of  vulnerability assessment: water, food, energy, human health and ecosystem function. Each sector is critical to societal well-being. The vulnerability concept requires the determination of the major threats to these resources from extreme events including climate, but also from other social and environmental pressures. After these threats are identified for each resource, relative risks can be compared in order to shape the preferred mitigation/adaptation strategy.”

A New Paper “Dreary State Of Precipitation In Global Models” By Stephens Et Al 2010

There is a new paper that sheds more light on major problems with the scientific accuracy of the multi-decadal global climate model predictions (h/t to John Christy]. The paper is

Stephens, G. L., T. L’Ecuyer, R. Forbes, A. Gettlemen, J.‐C. Golaz, A. Bodas‐Salcedo, K. Suzuki, P. Gabriel, and J. Haynes (2010), Dreary state of precipitation in global models, J. Geophys. Res., 115, D24211, doi:10.1029/2010JD014532.

The abstract reads [highlight added]

“New, definitive measures of precipitation frequency provided by CloudSat are used to assess the realism of global model precipitation. The character of liquid precipitation (defined as a combination of accumulation, frequency, and intensity) over the global oceans is significantly different from the character of liquid precipitation produced by global weather and climate models. Five different models are used in this comparison representing state‐of‐the‐art weather prediction models, state‐of‐the‐art climate models, and the emerging high‐resolution global cloud “resolving” models. The differences between observed and modeled precipitation are larger than can be explained by observational retrieval errors or by the inherent sampling differences between observations and models. We show that the time integrated accumulations of precipitation produced by models closely match observations when globally composited. However, these models produce precipitation approximately twice as often as that observed and make rainfall far too lightly. This finding reinforces similar findings from other studies based on surface accumulated rainfall measurements. The implications of this dreary state of model depiction of the real world are discussed.”

The conclusion includes

“The differences in the character of model precipitation are systemic and have a number of important implications for modeling the coupled Earth system as discussed above. It is also well known that the ability of a numerical model for resolving wave‐like fields that vary continuously in time and space is several times the grid resolution [e.g., Williamson, 2008]. Our results suggest this is also true of intermittent fields like precipitation. Since the tendency is for increased frequency of precipitation as the averaging scale of observations increases (e.g., Figures 3 and 5), the much higher frequency of occurrences of model grid point precipitation implies that this precipitation is more representative of a scale that is many times the model grid resolution. Roberts and Lean [2008], for example, demonstrated that an acceptable measure of skill in precipitation forecasts from high resolution models of 1 and 12 km resolution occurs at scales of 45–60 and 50–80 km, respectively. This suggests that the real resolution of model precipitation is several times that of the model grid resolution. This implies little skill in precipitation calculated at individual grid points, and thus applications involving downscaling of grid point precipitation to yet even finer‐scale resolution has little foundation and relevance to the real Earth system.”