Manuscript In English

MOT: Cooling in the Greenhouse.

By Martti Backman, reporter

Finnish Broadcasting Co. TV1, September 29th, 2008

Roy Spencer: “It is interesting that, in the last seven to eight years there hasn’t really been any warming, and in fact recently it has cooled dramatically.”

John Christy: ”Now we have one of the coolest periods we have seen here. In fact it’s cooler than it was back in 1979 when we started the record”.

Voice Over (VO), reporter Martti Backman: Scientists John Christy and Roy Spencer from the University of Alabama at Huntsville are amazed at a temperature curve that reveals an abrupt turn in the development of global temperature. The 0.7 C rise in temperature during the past century has been almost wiped out in 16 months.

> (Graphic of the temperature curve from the UAH)

VO: Even if mankind has emitted 270 billion tons of feared carbon dioxide during the past ten years, the atmosphere has not warmed at all. During the previous two decades warming was considerable, although carbon dioxide emissions were a third smaller than after 1998. Why is the carbon dioxide pushing up temperatures now, although it is considered to be the main culprit for the previous warming? Where did the predicted warming disappear?

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VO: Last winter was exceptionally mild in Finland, but much of the globe suffered from serious cold and blizzards. The Finnish Meteorological Institute predicted that, this summer would be exceptionally warm. But the weather refused to obey the Institute’s script.

(A compilation of archive footage of the predictions.)

VO: The summer was cool around the Northern Hemisphere, and the cool phase is now expected to continue at least until 2015. The computer models used by climate scientists did not predict the recent end in warming and the turn towards cooling. These are the same models that predict serious global warming with catastrophic consequences.

John Christy: ”This dramatic up and down that you see , is not really shown in any of the climate models. They are not capable of showing how the heat really is absorbed and released in the atmosphere”.

VO: As meteorologists, John Christy and Roy Spencer belong to a minority that has doubts about established truths about human influence on climate change. They are also rare among climate scientists in that, their work is based on real world measurements, not computer simulations of reality. They use cutting edge technology and satellite based instruments that measure climate phenomena.

When working for the US Space administration NASA, Christy and Spencer developed a global, satellite-based temperature measurement system, for which they were awarded a medal of exceptional scientific achievement by NASA, and a special award from the American meteorological society. John Christy has also served as one of the lead authors of the United Nations’ climate panel IPCC.

An important reason for transferring temperature measurements into space was the contamination of Earth based measurements by the so called urban heat island effect. A good example of that can be found on the back yard of the University in Huntsville, Alabama. A parking lot with heat absorbing black asphalt has encroached on the university’s weather station. The temperature readings are distorted upwards.

That is why Christy and Spencer rely more on this instrument, which receives a signal from a satellite measuring the temperature from microwave radiation.

Christy: ”And the really good thing about this is that, when it’s on the satellite, it’s seeing the entire globe evenly, basically every day, and so rather than the traditional measurements, like those over there, it will see, it’s a bulk large scale measurement rather than a tiny spot measurement”.

Spencer: “We can sample the whole, which you can only do from satellites”.

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(A graphic of global temperature predictions)

VO: Leading computer models of the Earth’s climate have predicted that, global temperature should rise like this (curves going up) – But according to the British meteorological office, in reality the climate has evolved like this (The HadCRUT3 –curve going down).

VO: And the satellite measurements compiled by the University of Alabama show an even steeper decline in recent temperature (graphic of the UAH curve). The trend is now just half of what was predicted, about 1,4 degrees Centigrade per century.

The climate models can’t predict local climate change either. Development of the Finnish climate has been predicted in two studies, called SILMU and FINSKEN. But the Finnish climate has not changed according to these predictions. The researchers in the FINSKEN group already knew that, climate models do not match Finnish conditions – the starting point for the local climate was 5 degree C colder than reality.

A recent study from Greece examined the hit rate of climate model to regional climate changes on eight weather stations in different parts of the globe. Compared to real life measurements, the models’ predictive capacity was judged to be close to zero. (Source: Kotsoyannis et. Al. 2008)

Christy: ”The climate models do not have some of the critical processes within them, by which the atmosphere releases heath to space”.

VO: The Finnish Meteorological Institute has a different take on how well models have succeeded in predicting the country’s average climate.

Mikko Alestalo, director at the FMI: ”Actually quite well – the models have reproduced this average long time trend quite well.”

VO: Climate modellers swear by this study by the German researcher Stefan Rahmstorf. Also the climate change advisor to the Finnish government, MP Oras Tynkkynen goes around the country with this study and uses it to convince audiences of the unprecedented speed of climate change.

> Source: Rahmstorf et. al. 2007

> Source 2: Curves

Rahmstorf compares the temperature development of 16 years to predictions. He draws the conclusion that, change has been even faster than predicted: the trend curve describing real temperature is above the predicted curves. But Rahmstorf’s comparison stretched only until 2006. The cooling since then is not visible in his trend.

MOT asked a statistical expert to update the curve with real climate data up to July 2008. And here’s the result: the trend has sunk fast and now at the lower end of the range of model predictions. So, if we take the modellers’ own method, we discover that, warming has clearly more modest than predicted.

(Graphic showing updated Rahmstorf trend)

Mikko Alestalo: ”But whether this downward trend is now statistically significant or not, well I have my doubts.”

VO: The updated trend is just as significant as the original one, done by Rahmstorf with other top scientists of the IPCC – it was calculated with the very same method.

During the past century, the Earth’ surface temperature has gone up by less than one degree. It is a fact that, carbon dioxide emissions strengthens the natural greenhouse effect slightly. The phenomenon causes a kind of gas blanket to cover the Earth, preventing solar radiation from escaping back to space.

The effect of man caused carbon dioxide alone is small, only about one per cent of the whole greenhouse effect. The reason is that, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is small. Is it really to be believed that changes in such a small factor in atmospheric chemistry may bring about catastrophic consequences?

The answer depends on what we expect from the so called feedbacks, or the effects of the increased CO2 on other factors behind temperature change. The most important of these is water vapor, which together with clouds, is responsible for more than 90 per cent of the greenhouse effect.

Doubling of the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere alone is enough to cause a warming of just one degree Celsius. That could still be manageable. But this small warming increases evaporation, and this extra water vapor is then believed to cause additional warming of several, up to ten degrees. Without this water vapor feedback the atmosphere and seas would never warm dangerously, even if man burned all coal and oil reserves in the Earth’s crust.

Spencer: ”Virtually all of the disagreement in the science community about how bad global warming is going to be is related to feedbacks. Whether the changes in clouds and water vapor will amplify the little bit of warming from the extra carbon dioxide we’re putting into the atmosphere or whether they will change in such a way to mitigate that warming, to reduce it greatly.”

VO: Is the total effect of feedbacks positive or negative, warming of cooling? That is the million dollar question in the climate debate. The answer tells us how big is the climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide emissions. Most climate scientists believe that, the total effect of all feedbacks is clearly positive, enhancing warming. But not the scientists in Alabama. They chose to study the phenomenon with the help of satellites from the troposphere, at 5 to 10 kilometers’ altitude. They concentrated on the tropical troposphere because, according to climate models, that’s where the warming should be at its strongest.

Christy: ”And there is the largest signal, where the warming should be very strong. – So we looked at the climate models’ best guesses, all of them, compared that with observations and found a significant difference. So what it looks like is that the way the real climate is evolving is different than what climate models say it should be doing, if the greenhouse gases are having this large effect. So since we did not find that effect in the real observations, our conclusion is that these climate models should be used with great caution, because they are not reproducing what we see in the world.”

VO: The comparison reveals that, climate model predictions and reality were at odds in much of the tropical troposphere. In reality, the atmospheric warming has not followed the pattern predicted by them models. They predicted two to four times the warming compared to what was measured. At over 8 kilometers’ altitude the air had in fact cooled, when the models said it should have warmed. (Source: Douglass et. al. 2007)

Christy: ”And so, if we go to where the models say something is very strong, and we cannot find it, that is a way to test the models and show that there is something wrong there”.

VO: According to climate models, carbon dioxide emissions should induce the humid upper air of the tropical troposphere to develop large cells of warm air, so called hot spots. Like fingerprints, they should be the definitive proof of manmade, anthropogenic global warming.

But again, reality refused to obey the models. The satellites detected no hot spots, no human fingerprints. Just cold air, evenly distributed.

Alestalo: “The results here are somewhat ambiguous. If we look at direct measurements, then it has been difficulty in detecting the signal. But of course, it depends on the method, what is being looked at.”

VO: But where has the predicted warming disappeared?

Alestalo: ”Well, a great deal of this extra warming caused by greenhouse gases goes into the oceans. Up to 80 per cent of the heat sinks in the oceans.”

VO: The oceans are a popular explanation for the missing heat problem. But why would the oceans have started sucking heat during the past ten years, when they didn’t do it during two previous decades? And why have the oceans started cooling in the past five years?

Alestalo: ”These measurements are taken from the sea surface, and in many cases from depths of just 700 meters, sometimes 3.000 meters – but there is ocean water deeper than that. In other words, it is possible that the heat has just been distributed more evenly in the oceanic water masses.”

MOT (Question to Alestalo): “Are you just guessing that, the heat has sunk in the depths?”

Alestalo: ”Not really, because we know for sure that it happens. What I mean is that, we don’t yet have measurements that would cover the whole volume of sea water.”

MOT (Question to Alestalo): “But if we don’t have measurements, what is this view based on?”

Alestalo: ”On the fact that ocean waters mix anyway in the long term, from the top down to the deepest layers.”

VO: The researchers in Alabama are not looking into the abyss of the oceans, but they started to look for the disappeared heat from the heights of the sky. Climate models assume that, carbon dioxide warming increases the upper cirrus clouds, which then trap extra heat even more effectively.

Alestalo: ”They tend to warm. They are thin and at high altitude, so they let the solar radiation pass through fairly well – not completely, but they are more transparent to solar radiation than lower clouds, so that they are not a cooling feedback.”

VO: Spencer and Christy’s space instruments measured not only temperature, but clouds, rain and radiative changes as well. And in the interactions of these variables, they discovered a previously unknown natural mechanism.

Spencer: “This is a thermostatically controlled air conditioning thing, a natural cooling system that comes in when the atmosphere becomes too warm. And we’ve actually documented behavior that behaves that way.”

VO: The researchers noticed that, as the tropical atmosphere warms, there is no increase in cirrus cloud formation, as was previously assumed. Instead, they shrank. As the cloud cover was reduced, holes opened up for the extra heat to escape.

Christy: ”And so, as the temperature warms, the clouds tend to allow more heat to escape and therefore the heat does not build up continuously as it does in climate models. It is important to remember that, once that heat escapes to space, it’s gone forever.”

VO: So what the scientists found was that, upper clouds actually mitigated the greenhouse warming, when it has been believed that they exert an accelerating warming influence. The warming did not cause a change in cloudiness as much as the change in cloud cover led to temperature change. (Source: Spencer et. al. 2007)

Spencer & al 2007
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And here’s how nature’s own air conditioner works: 1) Sun warms the Earth’s surface and causes warm and moist air to rise. 2) As water vapor condensates, heat is released, lifting air even higher. The condensed water falls down as raindrops. 3) In the upper atmosphere heat escapes into space, and the cooled and dried air returns to the lower layers of the atmosphere.

(Animation nature’s air conditioning mechanism)

VO: The precipitational air conditioning has two cooling mechanisms at its disposal: it removes heat while trapping water vapor from the atmosphere, and allows thermal radiation to escape directly into space from between clouds.

Spencer: “Nature’s air conditioner – like I like to call it –, precipitation systems are constantly operating. The air that we breathe is continuously being recycled. The air that we breathe a few days ago was inside a precipitation system somewhere and then it coursed through the upper troposphere and sank back down and then it’s down here where we breathe again, so precipitation systems are always acting in this thermostatic way. Now the question is, will they continue to operate in that way? I think they will, but there’s no way to prove it. So everything I’ve said, I’m not absolutely sure of. You know, these are different theories and we’re always going to be faced with uncertainty. We’re going have to make policy decisions in the face of uncertainty, when it comes to global warming, there’s just no way around it.”

VO: After this interview in Alabama in June (2008), two new studies have been completed at Huntsville, and they have increased Spencer’s confidence (in his theory).
(Links at: http://www.weatherquestions.com/Roy-Spencer-on-global-warming.htm )

In July, he was testifying at a hearing of the US Senate’s Environmental committee.

Spencer testifying (from YouTube): ”An analysis of six years of our latest and most accurate NASA satellite data reveals evidence of very low climate sensitivity. When translated into an estimate of future global warming, it will be less than 1 C by 2100, well below the range of IPCC’s estimates of future warming.”

(Pictures from a demonstration)

Spencer: “If this new evidence of low climate sensitivity is indeed true, it also means, and this is very important, if we have low climate sensitivity that also means that the radiative forcing, being caused by the co2 we are putting in the atmosphere, is not nearly enough to explain the warming we have seen in the last hundred years. There must be also some sort of natural mechanism involved. And this is where the IPCC process has failed us.”

(Climate demonstrators)

Spencer: “In conclusion, I am predicting today that the theory that mankind is mostly responsible for global warming will slowly fade away in the coming years, as will the warming itself.”

VO: In the climate change debate, there are several ‘natural’ explanations for the rapid rise in global average temperature during the 1900’s, and the turnaround during the present decade.

Spencer: ”I’m more convinced that it’s just internal chaotic behavior in the climate system, but it may be that all of these things are happening together, it might be partly solar, partly interior chaotic behavior in the climate system, and a little bit of manmade global warming in there too. – One possibility is that, the thermostatic mechanism with precipitation systems is operating and correcting for the extra warming that we are expecting from the carbon dioxide.”

VO: The sun is going through an interesting phase just now. Our star radiated intensely when the Earth’s atmosphere warmed (during the 1900’s), and as the Earth has now stopped warmed, the Sun’s radiation is at its lowest during the 30 year period that it has been measured from satellites. The number of sunspots is exceptionally low. August 2008 was the first whole month since 1913 with no sunspots at all. Many scientist are already seeing signs of a small ice age.

Man or Nature, which is the main culprit for the 0.7 degree warming observed during the 20th century? The question is crucial, because if the answer is Nature, man can not stop climate change with emission controls.

Spencer: “I think the possibility of a catastrophic man made climate change is very, very small. But that is a statement of faith on my part. I cannot prove it. And climate modellers that believe that there will be a catastrophic climate change, can’t prove it either. So it’s a matter of faith ultimately, how much we believe predictions of global warming in the future. I’m not worried about it and I’m not worried that my children are gonna be affected by it or their children. I don’t think it’s gonna be a problem.”

(Pictures of a demonstration in Helsinki, September 2008)

VO: These demonstrators, lying on the stairs of the Parliament building believe otherwise. They fear destruction of civilization from climate change and demand the government to pass a law for mandatory cuts in carbon dioxide emissions.

Spencer: “If there was a way to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions substantially, by 50%, 60%, 70%, without it being too painful, it would be stupid to not do that. The trouble is, there is nothing humanity can do from a practical standpoint to greatly reduce carbon dioxide emissions, because everything we do depends on energy, and the only affordable, abundant source of energy we have right now is fossil fuels. You can add solar energy to help a little bit, you can add wind energy to help a little bit, but the demand for energy in the world is growing so rapidly there’s no other way to satisfy it than with fossil fuels, so we don’t have a choice. Using the insurance analogy is not a good analogy, because the insurance policy is way too expensive and it may not even pay off anyway, because it may be that we’re not the ones responsible for global warming. It could be Mother Nature.”

Christy: “Let’s look at the environmental issues of today and find out which ones are most important to attack. And it turns out in terms of cost and benefit, global warming is one of the poorest investments you can make, because there’s so much CO2 involved, we can only make tiny fractions of a difference in it’s amount, which means virtually no change in whatever the climate is going to do. But if you attack something like water pollution, where we know how to clean up water, then you’re talking about saving millions of peoples’ lives today. When you talk about providing nutrients to children, vitamins and so on, you’re talking about saving the lives of millions of people today.”

Spencer: “I don’t like Al Gore’s statement at the end of his movie “An Inconvenient Truth”, where he says we can fix this problem, if we switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs, buy hybrid cars and turn the lights off when you leave the room. Well, even if everybody in the world does that, CO2 emissions are going continue to rise anyway, because these are very minor components of all of the energy that we use, so I think there’s no way around it until we find a new energy source of some kind that we can’t currently envision; we are stuck with fossil fuels.”

VO: Cutting greenhouse emissions is often considered necessary because it is supposed to benefit poor people in developing countries, threatened by the effects of climate change. In his youth John Christy worked as a missionary in Africa, and his view is different.

Christy: “One thing I learned about energy in Africa is this: without energy, life is brutal and short. And I saw the effects of having no energy in peoples’ lives. So any process that makes energy less accessible, and that generally means making energy more expensive, means you are going to degrade the quality of life of people, especially those who already are poor and have difficulty acquiring energy. – I’ve been in many African huts and found it very difficult to breathe because of the smoke that comes out of their fires. The United Nations estimates today that between 1.8 million and 5.2 million women and children die each year, just because of the respiratory problems of breathing in that smoke and these respiratory problems are very difficult to take care of. That’s a dramatic and horrible statistic when you think about it, and that’s because of a poor energy policy and energy availability in those countries. That’s something we can do something about too in terms of helping. If you had an environmental issue provide good energy to folks and they won’t have to chop down forests, destroy habitats where wildlife lives and kill themselves with the smoke that comes from those burning biomass systems.”

VO: The believers in human caused climate change have already declared that, the greenhouse debate is over. Again, the Alabama scientists disagree.

Spencer: “I think the debate is going to continue, I think there are more people like myself on the skeptic side that are speaking out now, and it may get more heated in the future, especially if interesting things happen in the climate system. For instance, if it continues for several more years without warming, people are going to be very distrustful of these predictions of catastrophic global warming.”

END