Pat'n Chip float by WUWT on a cloud of aerosols

Patrick J Michaels and Paul C. "Chip" Knappenberger have discovered a new blog article about aerosols. The article is by Dr Nicolas Bellouin from the University of Reading, who specialises in studying aerosols. He wrote about a preliminary estimate of aerosol-cloud forcing of -0.6 W m^-2, which is lower than the estimate in the latest IPCC report, of -0.9 W m^-2, but well within the range in the IPCC report, which is quite wide - from -1.9 to -0.1 W m^-2.

Pat'n Chip grabbed hold of the blog article as though it were precious gold, and published at WUWT (archived here).  Deniers haven't got much to grab hold of right now, so a blog article about a blog article will have to do. The first blog article is not yet a paper. That's promised for August this year. In fact, at the bottom of his article, Dr Bellouin wrote:

I thank Graham Feingold, Johannes Quaas, Annica Ekman, Leo Donner, and Ilan Koren for interesting discussions on current understanding of aerosol-cloud interactions. Note that they do not all agree that aerosol-cloud radiative forcing is weak: some argue that a value of up to −1.2 W m^-2 remains consistent with scientific understanding.

That value of −1.2 W m^-2 is higher than the lower end referred to in the IPCC report (−1.9 W m^-2), so it could be that the range has been better defined in the three years since the AR5 IPCC report.

In Eric Worrall's logically fallacious opinion - aerosols and climate change

Some science deniers do not understand science. Some of them have made it their life's mission to not understand it. Others devote their retirement to writing nonsense on climate conspiracy blogs such as WUWT. One feature that's shared almost universally among climate conspiracy theorists is they excel at logical fallacies.

Figure 1 | Aerospan sun photometry station, Birdsville Australia. Credit: CSIRO

Take Eric Worrall at WUWT. In recent months Anthony Watts has been using Eric to write most of his very silly blog articles. Eric takes pride in his inability to reason. Today (archived here) he's written about a letter from a senior NASA scientist Brent Holben to Alex Wonhas, a senior CSIRO executive of CSIRO, which was published in the Sydney Morning Herald.  Dr Holben was requesting that CSIRO not stop its important work in researching aerosols.

Looking at Clouds with Ulrike Lohmann at AGU14

This year's Charney Lecture at the AGU Fall Meeting was given by Professor Ulrike Lohmann from ETH Zurich. Her topic was:

A21N-01 Grand Challenges in Understanding Clouds: From Ice Crystal Formation to Their Influence on Climate (Invited)

Ulrike Lohmann, ETH Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

As she said, you can just enjoy clouds by looking at them, "looking at the beauty that is out there". Although you can tell she loves clouds from an aesthetic viewpoint, she is also curious about them from a scientific perspective. Her talk outline was:

• Importance of clouds for radiative forcing - which means there is an external perturbation to the system;
• Ice crystal formation in the laboratory and in the field - ice crystals are understood much less than liquid clouds
• Importance of clouds for climate change
• Climate engineering with cirrus clouds

Anthony Watts is shocked by clean air and becomes a Little Ice Age Bouncer

Some people get shocked by the strangest things.  Anthony Watts is shocked to find out what most people have known for a very long time.  He's just found out that human-caused aerosols can cause global dimming.

I don't know what rock Anthony's been hiding under all this time.  (Despite his recent misplaced outrage, he can't have read any of the previous IPCC reports.) It's not as if he doesn't boast that his blog is "...the world's most viewed climate website" - which is, of course, wrong.  WUWT may be the world's most viewed anti-science website, but it would be most inaccurate to describe WUWT as a "climate" website.  At best it's a disinformation resource for hard line climate science deniers and extremist right wing ideologues.

Back to the smog.  There was a paper presented by O'Dowd et al at a recent AIP international conference. The paper was called: Cleaner air: Brightening the pollution perspective?  Here is the abstract (my paras):

Clean-air policies in developing countries have resulted in reduced levels of anthropogenic atmospheric aerosol pollution. Reductions in aerosol pollution is thought to result in a reduction in haze and cloud layers, leading to an increase in the amount of solar radiation reaching the surface, and ultimately, an increase in surface temperatures.

There have been many studies illustrating coherent relationships between surface solar radiation and temperature however, a direct link between aerosol emissions, concentrations, and surface radiation has not been demonstrated to date.

Here, we illustrate a coherence between the trends of reducing anthropogenic aerosol emissions and concentrations, at the interface between the North-East Atlantic and western-Europe, leading to a staggering increase in surface solar radiation of the order of ∼20% over the last decade.

A couple of things are of interest.  Firstly, the paper seems to have put a number on the amount by which reduction in aerosols has contributed to an increase in surface solar radiation.  Secondly they appear to be defining an area to which the number applies: the "interface" between the North-East Atlantic and western-Europe.  I'm not sure what they mean by that exactly.  Probably they are referring to an area of land and ocean and maybe have a map in the paper itself, or the presentation.  They probably indicate a time period in the paper, too.  Could be since the 1960s, which is when most developed nations started to introduce clean air regulations.

The comments are weird.

Anthony Watts rejects the Greenhouse Effect and becomes a Little Ice Age Bouncer

Anthony Watts is now stepping away from his acceptance of the greenhouse effect.  See his inline response to this comment:

Lawrence Todd says:

August 19, 2013 at 1:02 pm  If i get this right, industrial pollution masked the natural warming from the Little Ice Age and the clean air initiatives caused the earth temperatures to rebound to normal levels.

REPLY: Bingo. – Anthony

There are more "it's magic" Little Ice Age Bouncers in among the comments, like RobRoy, who says:

August 19, 2013 at 1:13 pm That natural warming trend seen in the temp records as recovery from the LIA is so often dis-regarded. How many times do warmist types crow over record high temps. Or a record in record high temps. Record high temps would be expected with even with ZERO CO2 effects, through the oft forgotten natural warming trend we have enjoyed since the LIA.

WUWT-ers and aerosols

Lots of WUWT commenters have never heard of the fact that aerosols reflect incoming solar radiation.  You've got to wonder at their ignorance, particular that displayed by the WUWT regulars.  For example Peter Miller says:

August 19, 2013 at 1:23 pm  Seems to make a lot of sense, so the Global Warming Industry will do their very best to ensure this theory is stillborn. C’mon trolls, do your best..

Some of them have read about this before but don't accept the idea. Mike Jonas says:

August 19, 2013 at 1:42 pm Count me out. This smells just like the claims that the ~1940-70 cooling was caused by (man-made, unmeasured) aerosols. This hypothesis only runs marginally OK from ~1940 onwards. It has no explanation for the ~1910-40 warming, or for the cooling before that. To me, it’s a non-starter.

Cleaner air is down to technology, not regulation?

One person has decided that regulations had nothing to do with cleaning up air pollution.  They put it all down to technology.  Chip says:

August 19, 2013 at 4:32 pm I would disagree with one point. The air didn’t get cleaner because of laws, but because technology and wealth enabled us not to pollute.

Anthony Watts is unfamiliar with scientific conferences

Anthony Watts understands very little about scientific research.  He mistakes the conference paper for a peer-reviewed journal article, responding to a query from John W, who asks:

August 19, 2013 at 1:51 pm  Is this a peer review paper….? I could not tell from the link.

REPLY: yes, it is in the American Institute of Physics (AIP) website – Anthony

A few more choice comments from WUWT

A few more comments - chosen for different various reasons, mostly amusement:

Other_Andy asks about UHI:

August 19, 2013 at 2:15 pm  Also wondering, as many stations are in or near cities\ airports, how this will affect UHI for weather stations.

ntesdorf's brain can't conceive that more than one thing affects climate:

August 19, 2013 at 3:32 pm  This theory is far more convincing than the CAGW due to CO2 and other ‘greenhouse’ gases. However, first, I would like to check some temperature records that have not been surgically renovated to support the CAGW cause..

highflight56433 reckons scientists should not be the ones reviewing science (he probably thinks it should be judged by the scientific illiterati):

August 19, 2013 at 8:43 pm …peer review? Like having 12 bank robbers as jurors to pass judgment over a bank robbery case.

In fact that thread is so chock-full of denier weirdness I'm having a hard time picking out the most choice comments.

Colin O'Dowd, Darius Ceburnis, Aditya Vaishya, S. Gerard Jennings, and Eoin Moran (2013) Cleaner air: Brightening the pollution perspective? AIP Conf. Proc. 1527, pp. 579-582; doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4803337

Two media releases from CSIRO show up the WUWT illiterati

Today on WUWT Anthony Watts pasted two press releases from Australia's CSIRO.

1. Aerosol influence on ocean circulation

The first one is about this paper (open access) published in Nature's Scientific Reports.  It's titled: Forcing of anthropogenic aerosols on temperature trends of the sub-thermocline southern Indian Ocean.

The authors, Tim Cowan et al find support for the hypothesis that aerosols influence ocean circulation trends.  Here is the abstract:

In the late twentieth century, the sub-thermocline waters of the southern tropical and subtropical Indian Ocean experienced a sharp cooling. This cooling has been previously attributed to an anthropogenic aerosol-induced strengthening of the global ocean conveyor, which transfers heat from the subtropical gyre latitudes toward the North Atlantic.

From the mid-1990s the sub-thermocline southern Indian Ocean experienced a rapid temperature trend reversal. Here we show, using climate models from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, that the late twentieth century sub-thermocline cooling of the southern Indian Ocean was primarily driven by increasing anthropogenic aerosols and greenhouse gases. The models simulate a slow-down in the sub-thermocline cooling followed by a rapid warming towards the mid twenty-first century. The simulated evolution of the Indian Ocean temperature trend is linked with the peak in aerosols and their subsequent decline in the twenty-first century, reinforcing the hypothesis that aerosols influence ocean circulation trends.

Anthony Watts comments: From CSIRO, but sadly just with modeling, not empirical analysis:

While it's true that the scientist explored the situation using computer simulations, what they are testing for is an explanation for real world observations.  It makes one wonder if Anthony knows what the word "empirical" means.  And he's not the only one.  From the comments:

Anymoose hasn't read the paper and doesn't know that it's all about explaining "actual measured data" and says:

July 23, 2013 at 6:40 pm  Simulation? Model? How about some actual measured data, just like a scientist might provide?

 The other comments are mainly deniers saying "we know more than those dumb scientists" or "we don't believe you".

2. Carbon exchanges in tropical ecosystems are extremely sensitive to temperature

The second one is an interesting analysis of what happens to photosynthesis and respiration in the tropics, particularly during El Niño years, and how it affects the carbon cycle.  In this research, the scientists looked at data on CO2 concentration and global air temperatures for to a fifty-two year time span, from 1959 to 2011.  The press release is not the best one I've read.  As far as I can make out, the gist of it is as follows.

The focus of the study was on El Niño years when it's hotter and drier in the tropics.  What the researchers found was that under those conditions, plants cut down on photosynthesis and increase respiration such that the net effect is an increase in CO2 emissions from the tropical vegetation.  And quite a big increase at that.  A one degree increase in temperature causes a rise in CO2 equivalent to one third of annual human emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation combined.  The money quote seems to be this one:

"Our study indicates that carbon exchanges in tropical ecosystems are extremely sensitive to temperature, and they respond with the release of emissions when warmer temperatures occur".

I couldn't find the PNAS paper itself.  It doesn't seem to listed at PNAS yet, not even as part of the PNAS early edition.  I'd have preferred to read the paper because the press release is not easy to follow.  I don't know if there is a net reduction in CO2 during La Nina years, for example.  One would presume so, otherwise in the past there would have been an accumulation of CO2 over time. But there wasn't - until recently.  But that was from our efforts.

Consistently unstable at WUWT

I notice that Anthony Watts interpreted "consistent" as "stable" - writing a headline "Earth’s self regulation of Carbon Dioxide is remarkably stable".  Can't say I got that from the press release.  It doesn't match with the "extremely sensitive" quote.

The comments at WUWT are the usual mixed bag of denialist denial, conspiracy theorising, "we know better" and other nonsense.  Quite a few comments were debating whether or not a petagram equals a billion tonnes, confusion between tonnes and tons and similar.