Another wrong headline at WUWT about CERN and related cloud experiments

It's happened again. Anthony has written another misleading headline (archived here), this time about the cloud experiments at CERN and related research. There were three papers this week from the same group of people, discussing aspects relating to clouds with and without cosmic rays. Anthony's headline was "CERN’s CLOUD experiment results suggests industrial revolution reduced cloud cover, cosmic rays have an impact too". Well, no. The papers didn't say that the industrial revolution reduced cloud cover. I don't know how he got that idea. The papers were about ionisation, and volatile emissions from plants - both from cloud chamber experiments, plus a paper on research conducted at high altitude fairly free of anthropogenic aerosols, looking at new particle formation as a precursor to clouds.

More about the hot weather in North America, and more

In the comments today, under the article about the extreme weather around the world these past few days, there was a claim that "It was warmer in the US in 1955". There was nothing else except a link to two maps of the USA. The top map was labeled 2015 and the bottom map was labeled 1955. The maps were coloured but there was:

• no legend
• no date
• no information that would explain anything about what the charts were meant to represent.

That sort of behaviour is more common on denier blogs than it is here at HotWhopper. Anyway, it prompted me to do some reading and research, and in the process I got diverted a bit into US temperature records, and trends in diurnal temperature range. So this article is a bit of a wander, and a bit long.

How hot was it in 1955 in the USA?

First, though, let's see about the very short and somewhat cryptic comment from HotWhopper reader, Andy Wilkins. He wrote that it was warmer in the US in 1955. But was it? No, it wasn't. At least not if you are looking at mean annual surface temperatures.

Below is a chart showing the annual mean surface temperature for the contiguous USA from 1895 to 2015 (average to November). I've marked the mean temperatures for 1955 and 2015, and this year so far is 1.31 °C hotter than the annual mean temperature in 1955.

Data source: NOAA ClimDiv

Now if Andy had somehow mistaken 1955 for 1954, then the difference between then and now would have still been 0.41 °C . That is it's been 0.41 °C hotter this year so far than it was back in 1954. (Note: The US temps and chart were corrected shortly after posting.)

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

Reducing uncertainty and Jasper Kirkby of CERN's CLOUD

At WUWT, I saw that there is a new TED-Ed video by a particle physicist at CERN. As you probably know, a team at CERN is investigating the details of how clouds form, as part of a project called "CLOUD".

A fair bit of the video is just basic climate science. I have to say, though, that Jasper Kirkby seems prone to self-aggrandisement, big-noting his research and implying that his experiment is going to pin down a precise number for climate sensitivity.

Clouds? What a gas! Anthony Watts and his three year old "bombshell" at WUWT.

Anthony Watts triumphantly crows that physics has stopped working. Once again he shows that he can't tell if something is science or pseudo-science and copies and pastes from another pseudo-science blog (archived here).

He found a denier article about an older paper published three years ago in the Journal of Climate, written by Jonathan Gero and David D. Turner. Anthony is late to the party once again.

The paper was reporting data about downwelling IR radiation from a single instrument at a single site on the U.S. Southern Great Plains. It found that over the 14 year period of observation, there was a drop of downwelling IR radiation over winter, summer and autumn but not spring. They reported that a change in cloudiness in three seasons (all except spring time) meant less outgoing long wave radiation from the surface was being reflected back downwards again.

No bombshell. And clouds are not water vapour.

No, there was no bombshell. Nor a bomb. And clouds are not a greenhouse gas. They aren't any sort of gas. Anthony wrote:

The findings contradict the main tenet of AGW theory which states increasing greenhouse gases including the primary greenhouse gas water vapor and clouds will cause an increase of downwelling longwave infrared “back-radiation.”

Umm, no Anthony. There is no contradiction. You seem to be confusing a single instrument from a single site with the whole world. And I hope that you weren't suggesting that clouds are water vapour - they are primarily liquid and solid water, not gaseous water.

The part of the abstract that confused the deniers was probably this bit:

The AERI data record demonstrates that the downwelling infrared radiance is decreasing over this 14-yr period in the winter, summer, and autumn seasons but it is increasing in the spring; these trends are statistically significant ...

They didn't read any further, so they missed the rest, which was quite important, or it wouldn't have been in the abstract:

...and are primarily due to long-term change in the cloudiness above the site. The AERI data also show many statistically significant trends on annual, seasonal, and diurnal time scales, with different trend signatures identified in the separate scene classifications.  

The changes were primarily because of long term change in the cloudiness above the site. Not because of any change in the physical properties of water vapour. Certainly not because a greenhouse gas suddenly stopped being a greenhouse gas. The authors know that, it's Anthony and his denier blogger who are being really foolish. The authors were exploring changes at a single site to better understand detailed changes on a small scale. Not because they thought that the greenhouse effect wasn't real. It is.

Sheesh denier bloggers are dumb. Or maybe they just think that their main audience is dumb as. Probably both.

If anything, the paper is suggestive of climate change in the region. However the authors are cautious in that regard. Notice the last two sentences of the abstract. The denier bloggers copied and pasted them without reading them:

Given the decadal time span of the dataset, effects from natural variability should be considered in drawing broader conclusions. Nevertheless, this dataset has high value owing to the ability to infer possible mechanisms for any trends from the observations themselves and to test the performance of climate models.

About clouds and the greenhouse effect

If you want to learn about how different clouds behave in regard to incoming short wave radiation and outgoing long wave radiation, there's a good article on the NASA website. The impact of clouds is determined by their temperature (top vs bottom of cloud), the albedo (their reflectivity), how high or low they are in the atmosphere and how thick they are (eg, how deep is the cloud, top to bottom). To sum up:

• High thin clouds warm on balance. They let a lot of incoming solar radiation through and absorb long wave radiation from the surface.
• Low clouds cool on balance. 
• Thick clouds, like cumulonimbus clouds are about even. The "cloud greenhouse and albedo forcings almost balance, and the overall effect of cumulonimbus clouds is neutral-neither warming nor cooling".

Below are some diagrams from the article to show how different clouds can affect surface temperature. The cream coloured arrows are long wave radiation from the surface and the reddish coloured thin arrows are incoming solar radiation (short wave):

High cirrus clouds - large greenhouse forcing

Low clouds - on balance a cooling effect

Deep thick convective clouds - about even, or no net effect on warming.

From the WUWT comments

Let's see how dumb or smart are the commenters at WUWT. Some of them are just as big idiots as Anthony Watts and his HockeySchtick:

sleepingbear dunes says:

August 5, 2014 at 4:24 pm
How many ways can AGW predictions be proven wrong. Let me count the ways.
This appears to be one of the most significant findings in a long time. Anticipating the criticisms, what are the holes or weaknesses in the study?

dccowboy says:

August 5, 2014 at 4:25 pm
“DENIER”!!!
There, I’ve dealt with this inconvenient research in the most scientific manner possible.

Readers here have seen that jim Steele is just another denier. True to form he says:

August 5, 2014 at 4:27 pm
The truth is out there!

pokerguy is impressed that the three and a half year old "not a bombshell" paper was published and says he liked that scientists learn from science:

August 5, 2014 at 4:28 pm
The mere fact that the paper was published strikes me as important as its findings. I’m not a scientist…I’m not even all the bright…so I might well have missed it, but I don’t see any of the usual pro forma obeisances to the CAGW party line. .

I really like this part: “Nevertheless, this dataset has high value owing to the ability to infer possible mechanisms for any trends from the observations themselves and to test the performance of climate models.”

sturgishooper decides there were "more clouds" (the abstract doesn't say) and asks if it's magnetism, cosmic causes or aliens from outer space:

August 5, 2014 at 4:30 pm
More clouds from more condensation nuclei thanks to reduced solar magnetism, or from some other terrestrial or cosmic cause? 

Theo Goodwin says:

August 5, 2014 at 4:38 pm
So, AGW becomes ZombieAGW? Or is it AGWZombie? The first ever theory that is living dead.

ossqss says:

August 5, 2014 at 4:39 pm
Ouch!
That is difficult to homoogenize away..

Steve Mosher was the first person to point out that it's a single site and gets flack from lots of people among the denier crowd for doing so. Steven Mosher says:

August 5, 2014 at 4:52 pm
One site.

 Bob says:

August 5, 2014 at 4:59 pm
Steven Mosher says: August 5, 2014 at 4:52 pm One site.

OK Steven, point out a site where IR has increased.

Willybamboo says:

August 5, 2014 at 5:44 pm
Mosh says its just one site. What else could he say? He’s trapped in the corner, there is no way out. He’s a desperate man. 

It took quite some time before anyone noticed how old the paper was. Nick Stokes was the first (and only?) one to do so and gets flack from Anthony Watts for it. He says:

August 5, 2014 at 5:01 pm
This is hardly a bombshell. The paper was published in 2011.
But it doesn’t contradict any main tenets. It states explicitly that the result is due to a change in cloudiness. And since they measured cloudiness, that is not speculation.

REPLY: So because it is from 2011 and was only noticed today, that makes it not significant for you? Oh wait, I forgot, nothing fits the racehorse equation for significance except the latest pony scores. ...Show something to counter it, then you’ll have an argument. Otherwise, meh. – Anthony

dmacleo asks for help, but in vain, and says:

August 5, 2014 at 5:38 pm
I’m just an average guy, is this as important as it seems to me or am I readign into it incorrectly? 

I'll give him a hand. First, I don't know how "important it seems" to dmacleo. I'll say that it's of minor importance in the wider scheme of things. It was important enough to get published in the Journal of Climate. It was a diligent piece of work. It didn't change science. It provides some insight into changes that can take place at a single location. In this case, a single location as measured by a single instrument in the U.S. Southern Great Plains. This work can inform science more generally and add to the understanding of changes in weather patterns elsewhere in the world.


I'll leave you with this comment from S. Geiger who sums it up fairly well when he/she says:

August 5, 2014 at 8:07 pm
Mosh and Nick. Thanks for keeping things ‘real’, as they say. The findings are interesting, but by no means do they overthrow the current theory, IMO. Certainly shows that (in some areas, at some times) that other ‘knobs’ certainly play an important–and yes sometimes primary–role along with the GHGs. FWIW, I do appreciate papers like this being posted (whether at time of publishing or later), however, in some cases it seems as though the implications are a bit over hyped. Just my own 2 cents.

---

Gero, P. Jonathan, and David D. Turner. "Long-term trends in downwelling spectral infrared radiance over the US southern Great Plains." Journal of Climate 24, no. 18 (2011): 4831-4843. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/2011JCLI4210.1

WUWT boasts: "We don’t know clouds". Indeed they don't!

It's raining, it's pouring psoo-do-science at WUWT.

WUWT is struggling, trying to find something to publish.  Anthony's resurrected a snippet from an umpteen-year-old email stolen from Professor Jones as his Quote of the Week.  He did that to prove what awful people mild-mannered, inoffensive, hard-working, pioneering climate researchers are.  His quote of the week was written by Eric "eugenics hoax" Worral (archived here).  He followed this up with a guest article by Rolf Westgard, which Anthony called an "essay" as if that adds panache or somehow makes up for it being so full of pseudo-science waffle. (Archived here.)

Here are some gems:

It is actually not clear that our fossil fuel burning CO2 emissions are a serious global warming threat. 

Huh? If it's not clear to Rolf by now then it never will be. There have been thousands of scientific papers explaining this and they've been compiled into five mammoth reports over twenty four years.  Rolf should be very embarrassed that he still doesn't understand the basic science of global warming.

But this should embarrass him even more. Rolf wrote:

Clouds are water vapor, a green house gas which warms us. 

Oops.  And to think that Anthony Watts advertises his blog as "The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change." and winner of umpteen "bloggie" awards, beating all the other science denying blogs for the honour!  You've got to wonder where all his readers come from.  Clouds are not water vapour. Clouds are composed of liquid and solid water and other stuff, not gaseous water.

Never mind, Rolf managed to get this next bit half right:

Clouds reflect the sun’s light, cooling us. 

Rolf forgot to mention that clouds also absorb and emit longwave radiation, warming us.  Then he scores a plus - he does get this bit right:

Clouds produce rain which removes CO2 from the atmosphere, etc.

Thing is, there's rather a lot of CO2 in the air these days.  Rain does dissolve some CO2.  It always has.  Nothing much has changed.  Sure, there's a bit more rain now than their used to be because of global warming.  And there's a whole heap more CO2.  So those two factors probably mean that a bit more CO2 will dissolve in the rain.  However whatever might be dissolving in rain is not making a dent in the build up of atmospheric CO2.  Our emissions totally swamp anything that rain might wash out of the air.

Rolf finishes with a flourish - of sorts. Australians will be used to deniers quoting Dorothea Mackellar at them to "prove" that our climate has extremes.  Rolf goes for something as prosaic, lyrics from Joni Mitchell. The last line he quotes is most appropriate to his "essay".  Sing it with feeling:

 I really don’t know clouds at all.

I agree. Rolf Westgard knows precious little about clouds.

Would you believe that Rolf Westgard claims to be a member of the guest faculty (or is it a guest of the faculty) on energy subjects for the U of MN Lifelong Learning program. He recently taught class #17016 “America’s Climate and Energy Future: the Next 25 Years”

Pity the poor sods at U of MN, whatever that is.

Just to inject a bit of science, here is the energy budget diagram from the IPCC AR5 WG1 report, which shows how energy bounces around the surface and moves through and in and out of the atmosphere:

Fig. 2.1 IPCC AR5 WG1

And here's a nice introduction to clouds from the Bureau of Meteorology, and a Mr McCloud quiz.  Or click here to read about what has recently been occupying the minds of NASA and other scientists who are studying clouds.

From the WUWT comments

There haven't been too many comments so far.  I guess the WUWT-ers are so overwhelmed by all the psoodisciency cloudy stuff they are lost for words. (Archived here.)

Henry Clark says "it's only warmed 0.2%!" (excerpt - minus a link):

February 11, 2014 at 1:30 am
Earth’s average cloud cover has changed by multiple percent over recent decades*, let alone compared to further back, and the impact of the corresponding albedo change is large in context (when, for perspective, all of global warming over the past century was merely <=~ 0.6 K or thus <=~ a 0.2% change in an average absolute temperature near 298 K).

tango must be off his meds and says:

February 11, 2014 at 1:51 am
I have been informed by a doctor that they will not take there medication please take it for they no not what they a doing

Kelvin Vaughan gets it sort of back to front when he says:

February 11, 2014 at 2:09 am
I would have thought the radiation from a cloud depends on its height. The higher a cloud is the colder it is. The colder it is the less the energy it is radiating down. So if CO2 warms the atmosphere the clouds will warm, rise higher, get even colder and radiate back less energy.

(Low clouds tend to be thicker and reflect more solar radiation.  High thin clouds let the solar radiation through but still absorb and emit longwave radiation.  That's in the daytime of course.  At night it's a different story.)


johnmarshall starts off saying what he always says.  Then he decides that scientists don't know nuffin' and mutters some nonsense about latent heat, "convective clouds" and missing heat.

February 11, 2014 at 2:36 am
There is no empirical data showing that CO2 causes temperature increases. In fact empirical data shows the exact opposite.

Clouds, well we do not understand them. 90% are caused by convection which disproves IPCC claims that latent heat is not an important sink for heat. Convective cloud is full of heat that is lost to space. That is where Trenberth,s missing heat is not the oceans.

MikeB chides Rolf Westgard and Anthony Watts and says:

February 11, 2014 at 3:18 am
Clouds are water vapor, a green house gas which warms us.

Clouds are NOT water vapour. Water vapour is an invisible gas. You can see clouds, so they are NOT water vapour.

In a field where there is so much misunderstanding already, I think it is important to avoid adding to the confusion by using loose, inaccurate or incorrect statements [where possible].

Andyj has the climate science hoax all worked out.  No flies on Andyj:

February 11, 2014 at 3:22 am
Fossil fuels already are trapped and stored underground carbon.. So why do they want to re-bury it along with our oxygen this time?

I have the answer.. TO TAKE MONEY OFF THE SCHMUCKS!

Seriously, anyone and everyone who proposes or implements this needs a bullet in the brain.

Oceans and clouds are driving Anthony Watts crazy

This is just a quick heads up in case you bump into a science denier and they raise the topic - so you know what they are talking about.

Anthony Watts at WUWT has just posted an article about this because he finds it funny.  I can see the funny side too, in the way it's written up at Grist.  Unlike Anthony I don't find it ridiculous.  I see the serious side. Anthony writes it up as Climate Craziness of the Week (archived here to save you a trip):

Over at Grist, where “burnt out” David Roberts just threw in the towel, the craziness continues with a new alarmist writer:

I'll get to the point.  There is a new paper in Nature Climate Change by Six et al called Global warming amplified by reduced sulphur fluxes as a result of ocean acidification.  Here is the abstract:

Climate change and decreasing seawater pH (ocean acidification)1 have widely been considered as uncoupled consequences of the anthropogenic CO2 perturbation2, 3. Recently, experiments in seawater enclosures (mesocosms) showed that concentrations of dimethylsulphide (DMS), a biogenic sulphur compound, were markedly lower in a low-pH environment4. Marine DMS emissions are the largest natural source of atmospheric sulphur5 and changes in their strength have the potential to alter the Earth’s radiation budget6.

Here we establish observational-based relationships between pH changes and DMS concentrations to estimate changes in future DMS emissions with Earth system model7 climate simulations.

Global DMS emissions decrease by about 18(±3)% in 2100 compared with pre-industrial times as a result of the combined effects of ocean acidification and climate change. The reduced DMS emissions induce a significant additional radiative forcing, of which 83% is attributed to the impact of ocean acidification, tantamount to an equilibrium temperature response between 0.23 and 0.48 K. Our results indicate that ocean acidification has the potential to exacerbate anthropogenic warming through a mechanism that is not considered at present in projections of future climate change.

Here's the link to the Grist article. Vanishing ocean smell could also mean fewer clouds.