A group of top NASA boffins says that current climate models predicting global warming are far too gloomy, and have failed to properly account for an important cooling factor which will come into play as CO2 levels rise.
According to Lahouari Bounoua of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and other scientists from NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), existing models fail to accurately include the effects of rising CO2 levels on green plants. As green plants breathe in CO2 in the process of photosynthesis – they also release oxygen, the only reason that there is any in the air for us to breathe – more carbon dioxide has important effects on them.
In particular, green plants can be expected to grow as they find it easier to harvest carbon from the air around them using energy from the sun: thus introducing a negative feedback into the warming/carbon process. Most current climate models don’t account for this at all, according to Bounoua. Some do, but they fail to accurately simulate the effects – they don’t allow for the fact that plants in a high-CO2 atmosphere will “down-regulate” and so use water more efficiently.
Bounoua and her colleagues write:
Increase in precipitation contributes primarily to increase evapotranspiration rather than surface runoff, consistent with observations, and results in an additional cooling effect not fully accounted for in previous simulations with elevated CO2.
The NASA and NOAA boffins used their more accurate science to model a world where CO2 levels have doubled to 780 parts per million (ppm) compared to today’s 390-odd. They say that world would actually warm up by just 1.64°C overall, and the vegetation-cooling effect would be stronger over land to boot – thus temperatures on land would would be a further 0.3°C cooler compared to the present sims.
International diplomatic efforts under UN auspices are currently devoted to keeping global warming limited to 2°C or less, which under current climate models calls for holding CO2 to 450 ppm – or less in many analyses – a target widely regarded as unachievable. Doubled carbon levels are normally viewed in the current state of enviro play as a scenario that would lead to catastrophe; that is, to warming well beyond 2°C.
It now appears, however, that the previous/current state of climate science may simply have been wrong and that there’s really no need to get in an immediate flap. If Bounoua and her colleagues are right, and CO2 levels keep on rising the way they have been lately (about 2 ppm each year), we can go a couple of centuries without any dangerous warming. There are lots of other factors in play, of course, but nonetheless the new analysis is very reassuring.
“As we learn more about how these systems react, we can learn more about how the climate will change,” says Bounoua’s colleague Forrest Hall, in a NASA statement accompanying the team’s scholarly paper. “Each year we get better and better. It’s important to get these things right.”
The NASA/NOAA boffins’ paper Quantifying the negative feedback of vegetation to greenhouse warming: A modeling approach is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters (subscription required). ®
Now hopefully someone will recogonize that increased evaporation with higher temperatures also produces negative feedback as shown in my paper posted here, “Climate Science’s Blind Spot – Evaporation Cooling”. And it is stronger than that from plants.
@1 Richard,
The IPCC began the climate models with adjustable parameters cranked up to the highest positive feedbacks they could reasonably claim. Now, the only way the model climate sensitivity can go is down as more and more reality is inserted into the models.
This simple inclusion of more realistic evapotranspiration response to precipitation has reduced climate sensitivity below the alarm level and shows the alarmist concerns for political action to reduce human CO2 emissions are without foundation.
There are many more negative feedback effects yet to include in the models. Including the effect of major ocean cycles and a proper cause-effect between earth temperature and clouds will reduce the climate sensitivity below 0.5 C.
Readers may compare Leonard’s comment @61 here about the latest NASA climate sensitivity being close to 1.6 C.
Wow!!!! What impresses me most (just joking, of course) is that we now have not only the “most accurate” value for sensitivity determined to date but also one of unbelievably ‘high precision’. That value , 1.64 degress C, has appearently been “determined” to an accuracy of 3 significant figures. By expressing it in this manner, we know know that the real sensitivity will be somewhere between 1.63 and 1.65 degrees C!! Their uncertainty is less that +/- 1% !!! Most theoreticians claim uncertainties greater than +/- 100%.
Simply amazing!!!! No wonder why Ed is so impressed by this work. (Note however that even this group does not buy Ed’s far lower suggestions f0r Sensitivity, what were they Ed? about 0.2 degrees C?).
Since the post above provides essentially no details, I’ll look forward to looking into this remarkable new study ASAP. – and will reserve additional comments until then. I will also be interested to see if these theoreticians bothered to test their model against actual observations from the past.
Richard Petschauer when you combine your information with the work of G-4 with the work of John Tyndall in the 1860′s with the work of Alan Siddons-The Hidden flaw in Greenhouse effect with the work of R.W.Wood in 1909 etc you can only come to the conclusion is that O2., N2, H2o all effect the heat sink of the atmosphere, but there is no “greenhouse gas effect” which is consistent with the following list of references:
List of references:
The paper “Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 greenhouse effect within the frame of physics” by Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner is an in-depth examination of the subject. Version 4 2009
Electronic version of an article published as International Journal of Modern Physics
B, Vol. 23, No. 3 (2009) 275{364 , DOI No: 10.1142/S021797920904984X, c World
Scientific Publishing Company, http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpb.
Report of Alan Carlin of US-EPA March, 2009 that shows that CO2 does not cause global warming.
Greenhouse Gas Hypothesis Violates Fundamentals of Physics” by Dipl-Ing Heinz Thieme This work has about 10 or 12 link
that support the truth that the greenhouse gas effect is a hoax.
R.W.Wood
from the London, Edinborough and Dublin Philosophical Magazine , 1909, vol 17, p319-320. Cambridge UL shelf mark p340.1.c.95,
The Hidden Flaw in Greenhouse Theory
By Alan Siddons
from:http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/the_hidden_flaw_in_greenhouse.html at March 01, 2010 – 09:10:34 AM CST
The below information was a foot note in the IPCC 4 edition. It is obvious that there was no evidence to prove that the ghg effect exists.
“In the 1860s, physicist John Tyndall recognized the Earth’s natural greenhouse effect and suggested that slight changes in the atmospheric composition could bring about climatic variations. In 1896, a seminal paper by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius first speculated that changes in the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could substantially alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect.”
Arrhenius’ high absorption values for CO2, however, met criticism by Knut Ångström in 1900, who published the first modern infrared spectrum of CO2 with two absorption bands. Arrhenius replied strongly in 1901 (), dismissing the critique altogether. He touched the subject briefly in a technical book titled (1903). He later wrote (1906), German translation: (1907), English translation: (1908) directed at a general audience, where he suggested that the human emission of CO2 would be strong enough to prevent the world from entering a new ice age, and that a warmer earth would be needed to feed the rapidly increasing population. He was the first person to predict that emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels and other combustion processes would cause global warming. Arrhenius clearly believed that a warmer world would be a positive change. From that, the hot-house theory gained more attention. Nevertheless, until about 1960, most scientists dismissed the hot-house / greenhouse effect as implausible for the cause of ice ages as Milutin Milankovitch had presented a mechanism using orbital changes of the earth (Milankovitch cycles). Nowadays, the accepted explanation is that orbital forcing sets the timing for ice ages with CO2 acting as an essential amplifying feedback.
Arrhenius estimated that halving of CO2 would decrease temperatures by 4 – 5 °C (Celsius) and a doubling of CO2 would cause a temperature rise of 5 – 6 °C. In his 1906 publication, Arrhenius adjusted the value downwards to 1.6 °C (including water vapour feedback: 2.1 °C). Recent (2007) estimates from IPCC say this value (the Climate sensitivity) is likely to be between 2 and 4.5 °C. Arrhenius expected CO2 levels to rise at a rate given by emissions in his time. Since then, industrial carbon dioxide levels have risen at a much faster rate: Arrhenius expected CO2 doubling to take about 3000 years; it is now estimated in most scenarios to take about a century.
Interesting that NASA Goddard is getting down to what was hypothesized by Arrhenius in 1906. Arrhenius sure got it wrong!!!
After 1909 when R.W.Wood proved that the understanding of the greenhouse effect was in error and the ghg effect does not exist. After Niels Bohr published his work and receive a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. The fantasy of the greenhouse gas effect should have died in 1909 and 1922. Since then it has been shown by several physicists that the concept is a Violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Obviously the politicians don’t give a dam that they are lying. It fits in with what they do every hour of every day .Especially the current pretend president.
Paraphrasing Albert Einstein after the Publishing of “The Theory of Relativity” –one fact out does 1 million “scientist, 10 billion politicians and 20 billion environmental whachos-that don’t know what” The Second Law of thermodynamics” is.
The bottom line is that the facts show that the greenhouse gas effect is a fairy-tale and that Man-made global warming is the World larges Scam!!!The IPCC and Al Gore should be charged under the US Anti-racketeering act and when convicted – they should spend the rest of their lives in jail for the Crimes they have committed against Humanity.
Web- site references:
http://www.americanthinker.com Ponder the Maunder
wwwclimatedepot.com
icecap.us
http://www.stratus-sphere.com
SPPI
many others are available.
The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance.”
—Albert Einstein
Tyndall’s setup for measuring the radiant heat absorption of gases. (Click on image for a description).
Tyndall explained the heat in the Earth’s atmosphere in terms of the capacities of the various gases in the air to absorb radiant heat, a.k.a. infrared radiation. His measuring device, which used thermopile technology, is an early landmark in the history of absorption spectroscopy of gases.[8] He was the first to correctly measure the infrared absorptive powers of the gases nitrogen, oxygen, water vapour, carbon dioxide, ozone, methane, etc. He concluded that water vapour is the strongest absorber of radiant heat in the atmosphere and is the principal gas controlling air temperature. Absorption by the bulk of the other gases is negligible. Prior to Tyndall it was widely surmised that the Earth’s atmosphere has a Greenhouse Effect, but he was first to prove it. The proof was that water vapor strongly absorbed infrared radiation.[9] “
How does the fact that water vapor absorbs infrared proof the “greenhouse gas effect”?
Tyndall ignored the heat sink of the atmosphere as a whole.
Its time for me to go out and shovel the” Mann-made “global warming off the sidewalk and driveway.( February 6, 2011)
@3 Eric,
The number 1.64 C is the publication’s number, not mine, and it is a peer-reviewed paper. The link given will take you to the abstract. Lewis Page seems to have read the full paper since he is quoting numbers that do not appear in the abstract. Although I am a member of AGU, I am still working my way through the AGU website to display the full paper. When I accomplish this task, I will present more information on the paper.
Regarding your “Wows” it might be safe to say the paper concludes climate sensitivity is well less than 2 C, making it a significant conclusion if it holds up under challenge. Your remark about why they did not yet include other known effects in the model is rather stupid. People will get around to adding the new effects as they have time.
You can read the paper at GRL – a highly regarded scientific journal.
In fact the number 1.64 does not appear in the paper!
Regarding Eric’s point, yes they have compared their results with observations.
Here is the conclusion:
“As an additional feedback to water availability caused by CO2-induced water use efficiency and changes in climate, we postulate that the excess photosynthetic capacity following down-regulation of the vegetation physiological activity would stimulate vegetation growth much more than previously simulated. When we include these feedbacks in climate simulations with 2 × CO2, the associated increase in precipitation contributes primarily to increase evapotranspiration rather than surface runoff. This results in an additional cooling effect not fully accounted for in previous elevated CO2 climate simulations. These effects slow but do not alleviate the projected atmospheric warming by accelerating the recycling of water between the land and atmosphere, reducing the warming by about 0.3°C globally and 0.6°C over land. These results suggest a stronger negative feedback on warming from increases in LAI than previously suggested. In sharp contrast to previous studies, the feedback also results in precipitation and runoff trends that are consistent with observations [Jackson et al., 2005]. Globally, precipitation increased faster than runoff, especially in forested areas. Most importantly, results from this study suggest that long term negative feedbacks from increases in LAI could act to reduce temperature for years following a stabilization of atmospheric CO2 concentration.”
@6 Paul,
Thanks I look forward to reading the paper. And I am not surprised, of course, that the authors did not claim less than 1% precision. Whoever tacked those 3 digits of precision onto their title must not know much about science.
Do you also know what their claim of uncertainty is. As you know. estimated ranges of uncertainty are typically very large for theoretical models mainly because they don’t know yet enough about clouds. I will find a copy of this article myself and, in particular, will be interested to see how they compare their predictions with the historical record – which you say they do.
@Ed,
My Wow! was in response to the implied precision in the title. An uncertainty of less than 1% would deserve several Wows, in fact. We now understand that this error occurred in the translation of the article by one of your contributors.
Concerning the average number for Sensitivity, maybe we should find out what the estimated uncertainty estimated by the authors is. Why would you call that “stupid”.
(And is the use of your word “stupid” called for here. Was that not meant to be a personal insult? I think the PC monitor of the site should give you one demerit for that one. Since I he cuts you far more slack than me, let me tell you here, please Ed, lets stick to the science and not stick it to science on this site, OK. We should be trying harder to present a good image to the public.)
All, I don’t know if Ed allows the use of any “dark humor’ on HIS site in order to convey serious thoughts, but I’ll guess I’ll find out with this post.
The comfort provided to us all by Ed on @2 and Mr. Page in his summary of this scientific paper is most comforting – if one were to assume that these interpreters of the paper know the entire literature. Consider, for example, Mr. Pages assessment:
“It now appears, however, that the previous/current state of climate science may simply have been wrong and that there’s really no need to get in an immediate flap. If Bounoua and her colleagues are right, and CO2 levels keep on rising the way they have been lately (about 2 ppm each year), we can go a couple of centuries without any dangerous warming. There are lots of other factors in play, of course, but nonetheless the new analysis is very reassuring.”
I free so much better already – UNTIL I recall the following perhaps relevant points.
1. The uncertainty of sensitivity predictions by ALL theoretical models is always very high due to the tremendous complexity of the task. Since those uncertainty ranges are so high things could go far worse or far better than the predictions suggest.
2. And then those darn measurements have to be considered which supposedly tell us what Mother Nature actually did in the past AND the uncertainties of those measurements are actually much less than those of theoretical prediction!! And Mother Nature tell us via the ice core record that Sensitivity is likely to be nearer to 3 degrees C in the short term and then increasing to 6.5 degree C in the longer term !!
What a bummer that message is! So lets instead put our faith in Theory, OK?. What does Mother Nature know about the Earth anyway.
OK, so since Her message is such a bummer, let’s play kill the messenger in one of several possibly ways.
1. Who says that the past can be used to predict the future? Maybe there will be not correlation there.
2. Those ice core sampling guys don’t know what they are doing. Let’s just claim that their measurements are crap and do not reflect what happened in the past.
3. Sure the ice core samples show that CO2 and temperature changes are consistent with the generally accepted model for the climate changes that occurred during the last 800,000 years – that is, climate changes occurred through the following set of sequential changes in this order: orbital change, then albedo changes, followed by GHG changes, with the latter two providing the most powerful positive feedback effects. But not lets just claim that that model is crap because during the first few centuries of a U-turn in climate change, T changes preceeded CO2 changes. Sure the promoters of the model related above also predict that short lived delay of CO2 change, but lets just ignore that subtle point and still claim that the entire model is pure crap. Afterall, what other argument can we use to discredit this model which just accidentally happens to fit the historic record embarrassingly well.
OK, so now I am not feeling quite so good anymore, but am making progess.
Next, we must remember that “anything is possibly” right? So lets continue to produce as many threads of theoretical evidence as we can that will at least allow people to feel better about present conditions and, most importantly, will allow BAU to continue for as long as possible.
So try to “be happy, don’t worry” – everyone like to hear that tune. Convince them that the Deniers will take far better care of everyone’s immediate needs far better than those dam Alarmist. Sure this statement might apply more to the older among us, but what the heck, those youngens aren’t even smart enough to vote yet – what do they know?
So: This new report is just the Great New we are looking for. Let’s rejoice and be glad in it – while the party lasts anyway.
I am now feeling so good that I am hesitant to find and read the actual paper that has generated so much happiness among us. So often, the devil lies in those dam details. Many I should just let Mr. Page’s summary of it do for me. Gosh, sensitivity will be only 1.64 degrees C!! We are thereby saved!!! (if only for two centuries when the slow feedbacks kick it – but let’s ingore that bid also, OK?),
Thanks for reading (assuming Ed has allowed you to). Hope you enjoyed the dark humor embedded here in what I consider to be serious thought – to be ridiculed shorted, I suspect, by Ed and Co.. I just hope Ed does not call me “stupid” again this time. Writing in an entertaining way is not easy and efforts of that sort are generally not appreciated only by the most self-righteous among us.
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