One picture says it all, 2010 is warm because there is less La-Nina driven clouds. July 20 2010, no blackish high above Cirrus cloud seeds in sight, this Montreal observation is as important as any place, simply because air never stays at the same place, its in constant flux, the air over Montreal is likely similar to many other places world wide, especially in the Upper atmosphere.

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As projected here last year on EH2r news, a perfect world wide temperature projection comes from 2 theories. 1: Measuring temperature of the whole atmosphere, finding weaker optical refraction by observing expanded sun disks, no trivial matter since this method covers a great atmospheric expanse. 2: Lesser cloud seeding from the seas particularly the Pacific during current La-Nina.

Great Asian Russian heat have disturbed planetary waves apparently forcing a near permanent low over the Arctic Ocean, as the last cool place in the Northern Hemisphere, is surrounded by very warm weather. I see this phenomenon as a natural effect from less cloudy land areas, causing prolonged slow moving anticyclones, fed by dryer hotter air, I have never seen these patterns before. This of course slowed down ice compressing over the Beaufort Gyre, having in effect caused a stall in what would have otherwise have been the greatest melting ever. The lack of persistent North Atlantic lows is another key feature making the UK unusually dry and warm. This is very interesting. If there is a persistent high over the North Atlantic, this would eventually accelerate the melt over the Atlantic side as opposed to the Pacific Arctic, making eventually the North Pole vulnerable to open water from 0 degrees meridian instead of 180. Given that ice will flow towards the Atlantic, a constant replenishment of ice gives the illusion of no melting, also making unlikely event that the Pole would be ice free. However, 2 months away from freezing onset, ice extent is already lower than many preceding years. But the Atlantic side melt is to watch closely. Not to say that gyrations towards a stronger La-Nina, ie even lesser cloud seeds, would make conditions better for a high anticyclone over the Beaufort Gyre area, but It is again certain that the Northwest and Northeast passages will be ice free.

I have changed lenses and telescope methods in order to confirm unprecedented Montreal sun disk expansions. It seems so, the telescope gets a rough ride as it needs to be mounted dismounted every day on its way to the Mount Royal, as opposed to a fixed location in the Arctic. 2010 expansions have reached the 50% mark , meaning that 100 sun disk elevations, from -0.3 degrees all the way to 10.8, 10.9 and 11 degrees 2010 average sun disks are more expanded than all previous years (going back to 2003). Sunset clouds are extremely rare compared to last year, number of observations have exceeded 300. 50% is a calamity of sorts, also confirming 2010 as really really hot year.

wd July 25, 2010

CSW: I believe Judith Curry argued that, on your various lists, under “convinced of the evidence” you were including people who are ecologists and biologists, and who aren’t really experts in the climate change detection and attribution research. So that somehow skews your notion of how to sort people out in terms of credibility. What’s your response to that?

Schneider: Well, there are two responses. First of all, there are a couple dozen people in the world that work in ecology – that includes people like Terry Root, Camille Parmesan, and myself, among others – who actually look at the bloom dates of roses in your grandmother’s back yard and when birds come back. We do detection and attribution studies. Those people are in the IPCC and they are legitimate experts and they have published research in Science and Nature and PNAS and places like that. There was an entire chapter on it in [IPCC] Working Group II and those people, again, like Cynthia Rosenzweig, were included in the IPCC database.

But she does have a point, that not everyone in IPCC is an expert in detection and attribution. That’s certainly true. But when she said that the IPCC group that we used in our PNAS study should be cut down to something like 20% of the original. That’s hundreds of people, that’s still quite a lot of people. If you look at the “unconvinced of evidence” group, virtually nobody in it has ever published a paper on detection and attribution. So, by Judy’s own logic, that means it’s virtually a null set. That means there’s almost nobody in the unconvinced category who has any expertise whatsoever in detection and attribution. So, if you take her logic, and apply it symmetrically to the “convinced” and “unconvinced” you narrow the “convinced” group down to a smaller but still clear and robust population and the “unconvinced” has virtually no expertise, and their opinion becomes completely irrelevant.

the waters more acidic than it was

dum de dar

hence the fish carnt detect predators

dar de dum

id say theres gotta be real trouble before any real alternative becomes the major fuel source
n at the current count weve got 300 years before we run out of petrol

so erm tame fish is what were gonna get

July 23, 2010...7:00 am
“The Greenhouse Effect” by Ben Herman and Roger Pielke Sr.

Post By Ben Herman and Roger A. Pielke Sr.

During the past several months there have been various, unpublished studies circulating around the blogosphere and elsewhere claiming that the “greenhouse effect” cannot warm the Earth’s atmosphere. We would like to briefly explain the arguments that have been put forth and why they are incorrect. Two of the primary arguments that have been used are

1. By virtue of the second law of Thermodynamics, heat cannot be transferred from a colder to a warmer body, and
2. Since solar energy is the basic source of all energy on Earth, if we do not change the amount of solar energy absorbed, we cannot change the effective radiating temperature of the Earth.

Both of the above statements are certainly true, but as we will show, the so-called “greenhouse theory” does not violate either of these two statements. (we use quotation marks around the words “greenhouse theory” to indicate that while this terminology has been generally adopted to explain the predicted warming with the addition of absorbing gases into the atmosphere, the actual process is quite a bit different from how a greenhouse heats).

With regards to the violation of the second law, what actually happens when absorbing gases are added to the atmosphere is that the cooling is slowed down. Equilibrium with the incoming absorbed sunlight is maintained by the emission of infrared radiation to space. When absorbing gases are added to the atmosphere, more of emitted radiation from the ground is absorbed by the atmosphere. This results in increased downward radiation toward the surface, so that the rate of escape of IR radiation to space is decreased, i.e., the rate of infrared cooling is decreased. This results in warming of the lower atmosphere and thus the second law is not violated. Thus, the warming is a result of decreased cooling rates.

Going to the second statement above, it is true that in equilibrium, if the amount of solar energy absorbed is not changed, then the amount of IR energy escaping out of the top of the atmosphere also cannot change. Therefore the effective radiating temperature of the atmosphere cannot change. But, the effective radiating temperature of the atmosphere is different from the vertical profile of temperature in the atmosphere. The effective radiating temperature is that T that will give the proper value of upward IR radiation at the top of the atmosphere such that it equals the solar radiation absorbed by the Earth-atmosphere system.

In other words, it is the temperature such that 4 pi x Sigma T4 equals pi Re2 Fso, where Re is the Earth’s radius, and Fso is the solar constant. Now, when we add more CO2, the absorption per unit distance increases, and this warms the atmosphere. But the increased absorption also means that less radiation from lower, warmer levels of the atmosphere can escape to space. Thus, more of the escaping IR radiation originates from higher, cooler levels of the atmosphere. Thus, the same effective radiating temperature can exist, but the atmospheric column has warmed.

These arguments, of course, do not take into account feedbacks which will kick in as soon as a warming (or cooling) begins.

The bottom line here is that when you add IR absorbing gases to the atmosphere, you slow down the loss of energy from the ground and the ground must warm up. The rest of the processes, including convection, conduction, feedbacks, etc. are too complicated to discuss here and are not completely understood anyway. But the radiational forcing due to the addition of greenhouse gases must result in a warming contribution to the atmosphere. By itself, this will not result in a change of the effective radiation temperature of the atmosphere, but it will result in changes in the vertical profile of temperature.

The so-called “greenhouse effect” is real. The question is how much will this effect be, and this is not a simple question. There are also questions being raised as to the very sign of some of the larger feedbacks to add to the confusion. Our purpose here was to merely point out that the addition of absorbing gases into the atmosphere must result in warming, contrary to some research currently circulating that says to the contrary.

For those that might still question this conclusion, consider taking away the atmosphere from the Earth, but change nothing else, i.e., keep the solar albedo the same (the lack of clouds would of course change this), and calculate the equilibrium temperature of the Earth’s surface. If you’ve done your arithmetic correctly, you should have come up with something like 255 K. But with the atmosphere, it is about 288 K, 33 degrees warmer. This is the greenhouse effect of the atmosphere.