Simple test shows sulphates not cooling

There is no statistically significant warming trend since November of 1996 in monthly surface temperature records compiled at the University of East Anglia. Do we now understand why there’s been no change in fourteen and a half years?

Well, yes, because “blame” for this interruption in warming has been placed on sulphates emitted by China’s power stations zealously burning coal. Hasn’t it?

Has this hypothesis been tested? No. Can it be tested? Yes.

Most of the aerosols are in the northern hemisphere, and there’s little mixing of air between the hemispheres. Reason tells us that the northern hemisphere should be cooling and the southern hemisphere should be warming.

Well, go on, this is the big test, look it up.

world temps since 1998

So in the northern hemisphere, where all the aerosols are, it is actually still warming, and down here where there are hardly any aerosols it’s cooling without them.

The sulphates aren’t cooling us after all. How interesting. We’ve been cooling for 15 years and nobody knows why.

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Article nicked from Forbes.com. Author Patrick Michaels. Enjoy it in the original.

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7 Thoughts on “Simple test shows sulphates not cooling

  1. Andy on 19/07/2011 at 11:07 am said:

    Interesting article. I was wondering about the spatial distribution of aerosols globally which I put up in a previous comment.

    It seems to give a good example of a falsifiable theory being falsified.

  2. Australis on 19/07/2011 at 5:46 pm said:

    NASA has now read your above dis-proof of the Kauffman sulphates.

    They flew into a panic and released a paper saying “well, it was the … the earthquakes! No, no, it was the ..the … volcanoes. That’s it, it was volcanoes all along.”

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/18/new-nasa-paper-contradicts-kaufmann-et-al-saying-its-volcanoes-not-china-coal

    Apologies to Ian Plimer.

  3. Richard C (NZ) on 22/07/2011 at 9:59 am said:

    NOAA has added to the aerosol question and concede that:-

    “….models miss an important cooling factor if they don’t account for the influence of stratospheric aerosol, or don’t include recent changes in stratospheric aerosol levels”

    See:- NOAA study: Increase in particles high in Earth’s atmosphere has offset some recent climate warming (Solomon et al, 2011)

    http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20110721_particles.html

    1) Will they also concede that models miss an important cooling factor if they don’t account for the influence of cosmic ray flux on cloud cover if Svensmark’s hypothesis is upheld by CERN CLOUD along with Aarhus?

    2) Will they also concede that models miss an important cooling factor if they don’t account for oceanic oscillations that have been proven to influence climate and temperature in particular?

    3) Will they also concede that models miss an important cooling factor if they don’t account for the influence of celestial cycles?

    4) Will they also concede that models miss an important cooling factor if they don’t account for the influence of tropical volcanic eruptions (and how will they “project” those to 2100?)? See:-

    Major influence of tropical volcanic eruptions on the stratospheric aerosol layer during the last decade (Vernier et al, 2011).

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/18/new-nasa-paper-contradicts-kaufmann-et-al-saying-its-volcanoes-not-china-coal/

    Solomon et al’s cooling has only “offset” a third of the warming they attribute to CO2 change according to the article:-

    A recent increase in the abundance of particles high in the atmosphere has offset about a third of the current climate warming influence of carbon dioxide (CO2) change during the past decade

    But Solomon et al can’t bring themselves to admit there’s no warming this century (it’s just a “slower rate of warming” and CO2 would still be warming us if it wasn’t for the danged aerosols):-

    “Since the year 2000, stratospheric aerosols have caused a slower rate of climate warming than we would have seen without them”

    If we add up all the “cooling [and warming] factors” that are absent from the models (stratospheric aerosols, cosmic ray flux, ocean oscillations, tropical volcanic eruptions, celestial cycles etc) it’s obvious that their CO2 attribution is an incredible overestimate (and pleeese don’t bring up the water vapour situation).

    • Richard C (NZ) on 22/07/2011 at 8:01 pm said:

      I’m wrong about ocean oscillation come to think of it, there’s extensive on-going development. AR4 has this:-

      8.4 Evaluation of Large-Scale Climate Variability as Simulated by Coupled Global Models
      8.4.1 Northern and Southern Annular Modes
      8.4.2 Pacific Decadal Variability
      8.4.3 Pacific-North American Pattern
      8.4.4 Cold Ocean-Warm Land Pattern
      8.4.5 Atmospheric Regimes and Blocking
      8.4.6 Atlantic Multi-decadal Variability
      8.4.7 El Niño-Southern Oscillation
      8.4.8 Madden-Julian Oscillation
      8.4.9 Quasi-Biennial Oscillation
      8.4.10 Monsoon Variability

      http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch8.html

    • Richard C (NZ) on 23/07/2011 at 12:46 am said:

      I was thinking of this paper and the blog comments:-

      GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 38, L10703, 4 PP., 2011
      Decadal variability in snow cover over the Tibetan Plateau during the last two centuries

      Caiming Shen, Wei-Chyung Wang, Gang Zeng 2011

      Key Points

      * Coherent variability in ice cores can be considered as a proxy for snow cover
      * This proxy for snow cover over the TP exhibits significant decadal variations
      * Its variations are highly associated with AMO

      Hockey Schtick blog comment:-

      “Ocean oscillations such as the AMO are not incorporated in climate models”

      http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/05/new-paper-shows-significant-natural.html

      C3 Headlines blog comment:-

      “Climate models used by the IPCC and the national climate agencies are notoriously bad at making predictions of precipitation, including snow during the Northern Hemisphere winter months. The primary resaon for this prediction failure is the lack of input from natural ocean and atmospheric cycles. The models’ perfect ignorance of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) is a case in point.”

      http://www.c3headlines.com/2011/05/researchers-pinpoint-why-ipcc-climate-models-fail-at-winter-precipitation-predictions-atlantic-multi.html

      AR4 WG1 8.4.6 Atlantic Multi-decadal Variability

      “Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Models simulate Atlantic multi-decadal variability (e.g., Delworth et al., 1993; Latif, 1998 and references therein; Knight et al., 2005), and the simulated space-time structure is consistent with that observed (Delworth and Mann, 2000).”

      http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch8s8-4-6.html

      So easy to have thinking derailed by errors in print whether warmist or sceptic.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 22/07/2011 at 8:56 pm said:

      AR4 has this on aerosols:-

      Direct aerosol radiative forcing is now considerably better quantified than previously and represents a major advance in understanding since the time of the TAR, when several components had a very low level of scientific understanding. A total direct aerosol radiative forcing combined across all aerosol types can now be given for the first time as –0.5 ± 0.4 W m–2, with a medium-low level of scientific understanding.

      http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/tssts-2-2.html

      Cosmic rays:-

      Empirical associations have been reported between solar-modulated cosmic ray ionization of the atmosphere and global average low-level cloud cover but evidence for a systematic indirect solar effect remains ambiguous. It has been suggested that galactic cosmic rays with sufficient energy to reach the troposphere could alter the population of cloud condensation nuclei and hence microphysical cloud properties (droplet number and concentration), inducing changes in cloud processes analogous to the indirect cloud albedo effect of tropospheric aerosols and thus causing an indirect solar forcing of climate. Studies have probed various correlations with clouds in particular regions or using limited cloud types or limited time periods; however, the cosmic ray time series does not appear to correspond to global total cloud cover after 1991 or to global low-level cloud cover after 1994. Together with the lack of a proven physical mechanism and the plausibility of other causal factors affecting changes in cloud cover, this makes the association between galactic cosmic ray-induced changes in aerosol and cloud formation controversial. {2.7}

      Volcanic eruptions

      Explosive volcanic eruptions greatly increase the concentration of stratospheric sulphate aerosols. A single eruption can thereby cool global mean climate for a few years. Volcanic aerosols perturb both the stratosphere and surface/troposphere radiative energy budgets and climate in an episodic manner, and many past events are evident in ice core observations of sulphate as well as temperature records. There have been no explosive volcanic events since the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption capable of injecting significant material to the stratosphere. However, the potential exists for volcanic eruptions much larger than the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption, which could produce larger radiative forcing and longer-term cooling of the climate system. {2.7, 6.4, 6.6, 9.2}

      http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/tssts-2-4.html

      Since then there’s at least these papers:-

      “Cosmic rays linked to rapid mid-latitude cloud changes”, Laken, Kniveton and Frogley (2010)

      http://endtimeclimate.org/climate/AtmosChemPhys_CosmicRaysLinkedToCloudChanges.pdf

      “Cosmic ray decreases affect atmospheric aerosols and clouds”, Svensmark, Bondo and Svensmark (2009)

      ftp://ftp.spacecenter.dk/pub/Henrik/FB/Svensmark2009%28Forbush%29.pdf

  4. Richard C (NZ) on 22/07/2011 at 11:51 pm said:

    New Study Linking Global Cooling With Coal Sulfur Emissions Found To Be Clown Science: Without Merit & Silly

    http://www.c3headlines.com/2011/07/new-study-linking-global-cooling-with-coal-sulfur-emissions-revealed-to-be-bozo-science-pure-specula.html

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