Review paper finds no evidence warming has increased drought or climate variability

A new review paper from SPPI and CO2 Science concludes, "In summation, and in view of the numerous similar findings from across a wide and varying geographic area, it would appear that much of Canada has (1) experienced less-variable extreme moisture conditions, as both it and the rest of the world have emerged from the relative cold of the Little Ice Age and are now basking in the greater warmth of the Current Warm Period, and that (2) this finding appears to be independent of the atmosphere's CO2 concentration."

For the Full Report in PDF Form, please click here.

[Illustrations, footnotes and references available in PDF version]

 Excerpts:

Knowledge of the past is extremely important when it comes to contemplating future climatic possibilities; for what's happened before can clearly happen again. Hence, this summary briefly reviews the history of Canadian droughts with respect to how they varied over the past several centuries in response to significant changes in global air temperature but very little change in the atmosphere's CO2 concentration, which exercise provides some idea of how Canadian droughts might possibly vary in the post-Little Ice Age world that is known as the Current Warm Period.

There is no solid evidence to conclude that climatic warming, if it occurred, has caused the Prairie drought to become more severe.

It is clear that 20th century warming, if anything, has led tomore stable climatic conditions with fewer hydrologic extremes (floods and droughts) than was typical of prior Little Ice Age conditions.

Hydro-ecological conditions after 1968 have remained well within the broad range of natural variability observed over the past 300 years, with the earlier portion of the record actually depicting "markedly wetter and drier conditions compared to recent decades."

In summation, and in view of the numerous similar findings from across a wide and varying geographic area, it would appear that much of Canada has (1) experienced less-variable extreme moisture conditions, as both it and the rest of the world have emerged from the relative cold of the Little Ice Age and are now basking in the greater warmth of the Current Warm Period, and that (2) this finding appears to be independent of the atmosphere's CO2 concentration.

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UN IPCC Reviewer Dr. Vincent Gray: IPCC climate models are incapable of determining effect of greenhouse gases on climate

A new paper from SPPI and climatologist Dr. Vincent Gray:

For the Full Report in PDF Form, please click here.

[Illustrations, footnotes and references available in PDF version]

Excerpts:



The Climate is a heat engine. Energy input is mainly short wave radiation from the sun. Energy output is mainly long wave radiation from every surface on the earth and from every level in the atmosphere, including clouds and aerosols.

The density of the atmosphere falls with height from reduced gravity and it cools adiabatically. This fall of temperature with height is called the Lapse Rate. The return of latent heat by clouds causes a decrease in this rate. In addition, there are effects from convection, radiation loss and latitude. Figure 2 shows only the adiabatic and moisture effects.

...

The surface of the earth and every level of the atmosphere radiates energy according to the Stefan Boltzmann Law, dependent on emissivity multiplied by the fourth power of the absolute temperature. The lapse rate means that the radiated energy from the atmosphere falls very rapidly with height, so that most of it comes from close to the surface.

Radiation from the surface is upwards, but from the atmosphere it is in all directions, so that half of this radiated energy returns to the surface. By land, the amount returned depends on local albedo, but there is evidence that this is very low over the ocean where most is reflected.

PART 2 — THE UNREAL CLIMATE

An alternative view of the climate has recently arisen from the environmental movement, which believes human activity can be shown to cause all changes in the climate – natural causes being merely responsible for “variability”. 

As there was no evidence to support this theory, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established by the World Meteorological Organisation and The United Nations Environment Programme in 1988 to assess scientific evidence and formulate response programmes. It has supplied four major Reports and several minor ones, and is currently engaged on its fifth Report. 

THE UNREAL GREENHOUSE: THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT

The unreal Climate theory is referred to as “The Greenhouse Effect”. It is based on a false theory of the action of a greenhouse by Fourier, who speculated that a greenhouse was heated by reflection of infrared radiation from the soil from the glass of the greenhouse. This false theory is used to justify a similar behaviour in the atmosphere.

Fourier1-10 (1768-1839) made major contributions to the theory of heat flow in solids and to the mathematical simulation of irregular behaviour, but he lived before the discoveries of the mechanical equivalent of heat and the nature of radiation in the later part of the nineteen century. 

He believed the earth was heated by the ether but needed extra heat to explain the difference between the tropics and the poles.His friend de Saussure11,12 had invented a Hot Box which was a small insulated greenhouse which could be heated by the sun’s rays. Fourier4,6,7thought that when the sun’s rays were changed into non-luminous heat (infrared) when they meet the surface, the infrared rays could not leave the hot box because they were unable to pass through the glass window the box, and so were concentrated inside the box....

The First IPCC Report 35 (1990) presented what it called “the Greenhouse Effect” in this simplified diagram on page XIV of the Policymakers Summary.



This model has hardly anything in common with the Real Climate.

Its assumptions include the following:

 The earth is flat.

 The earth does not rotate.

 The sun shines all day and all night with equal intensity.

 Energy interchange in the climate is entirely by radiation. 

 Conduction, convection and latent heat transfer do not happen.

 Energy flow parameters are constants with no variability.

 Energy flow is "balanced" with input equal to output.

 Air movements, wind, rain, hurricanes are ignored.

 Chaos has been abolished.

 Change in this system is entirely caused by increasing human-induced trace gases in the

atmosphere.

 The earth is dead: there are no living organisms, no trees, animals, birds or people.



The energy imbalance of the earth is probably positive, but also extremely uncertain, so that the IPCC Climate model, as shown by Figure7 and also by the recent update (Figure 8), is quite incapable of giving guidance on the possible role of greenhouse gases in modifying the climate. 



Kevin Trenberth himself has correctly summarized the situation with the remark he made amongst the Climategate Emails; that the models are a “Travesty”.



On Oct 14, 2009, at 10:17 AM, Kevin Trenberth wrote: 



“Hi Tom How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are nowhere close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter. We are not close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty! Kevin”





Who could disagree with him? 

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Little Ice Age was due to low solar activity, not high volcanic activity

Those who which to dismiss the role of the Sun in climate often claim the Little Ice Age was due to high volcanic activity rather than low solar activity. However, a new paper reconstructing the paleoclimate of Ireland over the past 5000 years shows that volcanic activity during the Little Ice Age was low in comparison to the Current, Medieval, and Roman Warm Periods, as well as most of the past 5,000 years. Based upon this reconstruction of volcanic sulphate from the Greenland GISP2 ice core, volcanic activity appears to show little correlation with long-term warming and cooling periods. 



In contrast, solar activity drops to the lowest levels of the past 5,000 years during the Little Ice Age and the Dark Ages Cold Period, and rises to relatively high levels during the Current, Medieval, and Roman Warm Periods. I'll leave it to the reader to decide which of the three primary drivers best explain climate variation of the past 5,000 years: volcanic, CO2, or solar.

Horizontal axis is years before the present [BP]. Current Warm Period [CWP] shown at left, Little Ice Age during next band in blue to the right, preceded by the Medieval Warm Period beginning about 1050 years ago. Next in blue is the Dark Ages Cold Period, preceded by the Roman Warm Period ~2000 years ago.
Portion of Fig 11: Climate forcing parameters include volcanic sulphate data from the GISP2 [Greenland] ice core (Zielinkski and Mershon, 1997), a combined CO₂ record from Mauna Loa, the Law Dome and EPICA Dome C ice cores (Keeling et al., 1976; Etheridge et al., 1996; Monin et al., 2004) and total solar irradiance data for the last 5,000 years (Steinhilber et al., 2004). Known climate events are marked (wetter/colder = blue; drier/warmer = red).

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Delingpole: Global warming believers are feeling the heat

Global warming believers are feeling the heat

By James Delingpole Environment Last updated: September 25th, 2013 The Telegraph


On Friday the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change delivers its latest verdict on the state of man-made global warming. Though the details are a secret, one thing is clear: the version of events you will see and hear in much of the media, especially from partis pris organisations like the BBC, will be the opposite of what the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report actually says.

Already we have had a taste of the nonsense to come: a pre-announcement to the effect that “climate scientists” are now “95 per cent certain” that humans are to blame for climate change; an evidence-free declaration by the economist who wrote the discredited Stern Report that the computer models cited by the IPCC “substantially underestimate” the scale of the problem; a statement by the panel’s chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, that “the scientific evidence of… climate change has strengthened year after year”.

As an exercise in bravura spin, these claims are up there with Churchill’s attempts to reinvent the British Expeditionary Force’s humiliating retreat from Dunkirk as a victory. In truth, though, the new report offers scant consolation to those many alarmists whose careers depend on talking up the threat. It says not that they are winning the war to persuade the world of the case for catastrophic anthropogenic climate change – but that the battle is all but lost.

At the heart of the problem lie the computer models which, for 25 years, have formed the basis for the IPCC’s scaremongering: they predicted runaway global warming, when the real rise in temperatures has been much more modest. So modest, indeed, that it has fallen outside the lowest parameters of the IPCC’s prediction range. The computer models, in short, are bunk.

To a few distinguished scientists, this will hardly come as news. For years they have insisted that “sensitivity” – the degree to which the climate responds to increases in atmospheric CO₂ – is far lower than the computer models imagined. In the past, their voices have been suppressed by the bluster and skulduggery we saw exposed in the Climategate emails. From grant-hungry science institutions and environmentalist pressure groups to carbon traders, EU commissars, and big businesses with their snouts in the subsidies trough, many vested interests have much to lose should the global warming gravy train be derailed.

This is why the latest Assessment Report is proving such a headache to the IPCC. It’s the first in its history to admit what its critics have said for years: global warming did “pause” unexpectedly in 1998 and shows no sign of resuming. And, other than an ad hoc new theory about the missing heat having been absorbed by the deep ocean, it cannot come up with a convincing explanation why. Coming from a sceptical blog none of this would be surprising. But from the IPCC, it’s dynamite: the equivalent of the Soviet politburo announcing that command economies may not after all be the most efficient way of allocating resources.

Which leaves the IPCC in a dilemma: does it ’fess up and effectively put itself out of business? Or does it brazen it out for a few more years, in the hope that a compliant media and an eco-brainwashed populace will be too stupid to notice? So far, it looks as if it prefers the second option – a high-risk strategy. Gone are the days when all anybody read of its Assessment Reports were the sexed-up “Summary for Policymakers”. Today, thanks to the internet, sceptical inquirers such as Donna Laframboise (who revealed that some 40 per cent of the IPCC’s papers came not from peer-reviewed journals but from Greenpeace and WWF propaganda) will be going through every chapter with a fine toothcomb.

Al Gore’s “consensus” is about to be holed below the water-line – and those still aboard the SS Global Warming are adjusting their positions. Some, such as scientist Judith Curry of Georgia Tech, have abandoned ship. She describes the IPCC’s stance as “incomprehensible”. Others, such as the EU’s Climate Commissioner, Connie Hedegaard, steam on oblivious. Interviewed last week by the Telegraph’s Bruno Waterfield, she said: “Let’s say that science, some decades from now, said: 'We were wrong, it was not about climate’, would it not in any case have been good to do many of the things you have to do in order to combat climate change?” If she means needlessly driving up energy prices, carpeting the countryside with wind turbines and terrifying children about a problem that turns out to have been imaginary, then most of us would probably answer “No”.

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New paper finds Ireland climate controlled by natural ocean oscillations and Sun over past 5000 years

A new paper published in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology reconstructs the climate of Ireland during the past 5000 years and finds "Some terrestrial palaeo-climatic changes in Ireland appear to coincide with changes in the North Atlantic [Oscillation or NAO] and solar activity." The authors show reconstructed solar activity has increased over the past 500 years to some of the highest levels of the past 5000 years, and correlation with some warming periods. Reconstructed CO2 levels, however, do not show any apparent correlation with temperature or precipitation during any portion of the past 5000 years.

Figure 11. Diagram showing the continuous 5,000-year palaeoclimate data for Ireland (the water table compilation expressed in standardised water table units with 95% bootstrap errors shown), the Crag Cave δ¹⁸O [a temperature proxy] and Inis Oírr %CaCO₃ records. The δ¹⁸O record [a temperature proxy] from the NGRIP ice core (NGRIP members, 2004), RAPiD-12-1 K δ¹⁸O [a temperature proxy] and density difference indicators of changes of temperature and salinity in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Thornalley et al., 2009), the N. Atlantic IRD record (Bond et al., 2001) and the Na⁺ content of the GISP2 ice core as a proxy of sea salt aerosol loading of the atmosphere over Greenland (O’Brien et al., 1995; Mayewski et al., 1997) are shown. Climate forcing parameters include volcanic sulphate data from the GISP2 ice core (Zielinkski and Mershon, 1997), a combined CO₂ record from Mauna Loa, the Law Dome and EPICA Dome C ice cores (Keeling et al., 1976; Etheridge et al., 1996; Monin et al., 2004) and total solar irradiance data for the last 5,000 years (Steinhilber et al., 2004). Known climate events are marked (wetter/colder = blue; drier/warmer = red).

Centennial-scale climate change in Ireland during the Holocene

• Graeme T. Swindles^a, , , 


• Ian T. Lawson^a, 


• Ian P. Matthews^b, 


• Maarten Blaauw^c, 


• Timothy J. Daley^d,


• Dan J. Charman^e, 


• Thomas P. Roland^f, 


• Gill Plunkett^c, 


• Georg Schettler^g, 


• Benjamin R. Gearey^h, 


• T. Edward Turner^a, 


• Heidi A. Rea^c, 


• Helen M. Roe^c, 


• Matthew J. Amesbury^e, 


• Frank M. Chambersⁱ, 


• Jonathan Holmes^j,


• Fraser J.G. Mitchell^k, 


• Jeffrey Blackford^l, 


• Antony Blundell^a, 


• Nicholas Branch^m, 


• Jane Holmesⁿ, 


• Peter Langdon^f, 


• Julia McCarroll^h, 


• Frank McDermott^o, 


• Pirita O. Oksanen^j, 


• Oliver Pritchard^p, 


• Phil Stastney^l,


• Bettina Stefanini^q, 


• Dan Young^l, 


• Jane Wheeler^r, 


• Katharina Becker^r, 


• Ian Armit^r

---

Abstract

We examine mid- to late Holocene centennial-scale climate variability in Ireland using proxy data from peatlands, lakes and a speleothem. A high degree of between-record variability is apparent in the proxy data and significant chronological uncertainties are present. However, tephra layers provide a robust tool for correlation and improve the chronological precision of the records. Although we can find no statistically significant coherence in the dataset as a whole, a selection of high-quality peatland water table reconstructions co-vary more than would be expected by chance alone. A locally weighted regression model with bootstrapping can be used to construct a ‘best-estimate’ palaeoclimatic reconstruction from these datasets. Visual comparison and cross-wavelet analysis of peatland water table compilations from Ireland and Northern Britain shows that there are some periods of coherence between these records. Some terrestrial palaeoclimatic changes in Ireland appear to coincide with changes in the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation and solar activity. However, these relationships are inconsistent and may be obscured by chronological uncertainties. We conclude by suggesting an agenda for future Holocene climate research in Ireland.

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New paper finds 'the reality of a link between long-term changes in solar activity and climate...has been confirmed'

A paper published today in Advances in Space Research finds "the reality of a link between long-term changes in solar activity and climate in [Finland-Scandinavia] has been confirmed." The author's temperature reconstruction from 1000 - 2004 AD finds "highly significant" temperature "oscillation modes, 55–100 year and 100–140 year variations" for which "a probable cause of this periodicity is the modulation of regional climate by the secular solar cycle of Gleissberg." The authors suggest the climate was controlled via solar amplification mechanisms in the lower troposphere.

Fig. 1. The five northern chronologies built using RCS. A – Swedish ring width (Grudd, 2008); B – Swedish maximum density (Grudd, 2008); C – Finnish ring width (Lindholm and Jalkanen, 2012); D – Finnish height increment (Lindholm and Jalkanen, 2012); E – Russian ring width ( and ).

Fig. 2. ¹⁰Be records: A – from Dye-3 core (South Greenland, Beer et al., 1994); B – from NGRIP core (Central Greenland, Berggren et al., 2009).

Fig. 3. A – T_proxy (PC1) scaled as anomalies of July temperature in Northern Fennoscandia. B – observed temperature in Northern Fennoscandia (CRUTEM4, mean July temperature of three grid boxes; thin line) and T_proxy – thick line in 1898–1994

Fig. 4. A – local Morlet wavelet spectrum of T_proxy over 1000–1900. The spectrum is normalized to 0.99 confidence level calculated for red noise with AR(1) = 0.50. B – Fourier spectrum of T_proxy for the same period with confidence level based on red noise with AR(1) = 0.50. SPD is spectral density. C – global Morlet wavelet spectra of T_proxy (thick line), Northern Fennoscandian temperature reconstructed by Lindholm and Eronen (2000) (thin line), Northern Fennoscandian temperature reconstructed by Briffa et al. (1992) (dotted line). The global spectra are calculated over 1000–1900 and normalized by variance.

Fig. 5. Time series wavelet filtered (MHAT basis) in 61–128-year band. A – Wolf number (gray curve) and T_proxy (black curve); B – concentration of ¹⁰Be in Dye-3 core (gray curve) and T_proxy (black curve); C – flux of ¹⁰Be in NGRIP core (gray curve) and T_proxy (black curve).

New evidence of solar variation in temperature proxies from Northern Fennoscandia

• M. Ogurtsov^a, c, , , 


• M. Lindholm^b, 


• R. Jalkanen^b, 


• S.V. Veretenenko^a

• ^a A.F. Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia


• ^b Metla, Rovaniemi Research Unit, PO Box 16, FI 96301 Rovaniemi, Finland


• ^c Central Astronomical Observatory at Pulkovo, Russia

---

Abstract

A new summer temperature proxy was built for northern Fennoscandia in AD 1000–2004 using parameters of tree growth from a large region, extending from the Swedish Scandes to the Kola Peninsula. It was found that century-scale (55–140 year) cyclicity is present in this series during the entire time interval. This periodicity is highly significant and has a bi-modal structure, i.e. it consists of two oscillation modes, 55–100 year and 100–140 year variations. A comparison of the century-long variation in the northern Fennoscandian temperature proxy with the corresponding variations in Wolf numbers and concentration of cosmogenic ¹⁰Be in glacial ice shows that a probable cause of this periodicity is the modulation of regional climate by the secular solar cycle of Gleissberg. This is in line with the results obtained previously for a more limited part of the region (Finnish Lapland: 68–70° N, 20–30° E). Thus the reality of a link between long-term changes in solar activity and climate in Fennoscandia has been confirmed. Possible mechanisms of solar influence on the lower troposphere are discussed.

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IPCC says only way to lower temperatures is NEGATIVE CO2 emissions

According to New Scientist, the forthcoming IPCC report will say, "CO2-induced warming is projected to remain approximately constant for many centuries following a complete cessation of emission. A large fraction of climate change is thus irreversible on a human timescale, except if net anthropogenic CO2 emissions were strongly negative over a sustained period."

In other words, even if all the world ran on carbon-free energy and deforestation ceased, the only way of lowering temperatures would be to devise a scheme for sucking hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

In essence, the IPCC says we're doomed no matter what. 

Fortunately, any small effect of CO2 on the climate is overwhelmed by natural variability, thus nature will do what it wants regardless of man's attempts to control the weather with the harmless, essential, trace gas CO2. And even if you think CO2 has a significant climate effect, the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere is only about 14 years, not the hundreds claimed by the highly flawed IPCC Bern model.

World won't cool without geoengineering, warns report

• 11:40 25 September 2013 by Fred Pearce New 'Scientist'

Global warming is irreversible without massive geoengineering of the atmosphere's chemistry. This stark warning comes from the draft summary of the latest climate assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Delegates from national governments are discussing the draft this week, prior to its release on Friday morning.

According to one of its lead authors, and the latest draft seen by New Scientist, the report will say: "CO₂-induced warming is projected to remain approximately constant for many centuries following a complete cessation of emission. A large fraction of climate change is thus irreversible on a human timescale, except if net anthropogenic CO₂ emissions were strongly negative over a sustained period."

In other words, even if all the world ran on carbon-free energy and deforestation ceased, the only way of lowering temperatures would be to devise a scheme for sucking hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Much of this week's report, the fifth assessment of the IPCC working group on the physical science of climate change, will reaffirm the findings of the previous four assessments, published regularly since 1990.

It will point out that to limit global warming to 2 °C will require cumulative CO₂ emissions from all human sources since the start of the industrial revolution to be kept below about a trillion tonnes of carbon. So far, we have emitted about half this. Current emissions are around 10.5 billion tonnes of carbon annually, and rising.

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