GWPF | 2 April 2015
Two Pioneers Whose Research Gave Birth To Empirical Climate Science
The silver anniversary of Roy Spencer’s career-defining moment arrived with no expectation in March. He didn’t realize it until someone mentioned it to him. For John Christy, he had no idea that a discovery announced in 1990 would not only still resonate 25 years later but would be at the center of a raging debate. The date was March 29, 1990. That was the day they publicly became climate change skeptics. What Christy and Spencer (who then worked for NASA at Marshall Space Flight Center just down the street from UAH) announced at that press conference on March 29, 1990, was that their study of temperature data from satellites indicated the world was not warming as much as was believed. –Paul Gattis, Alabama.com, 1 April 2015
1) 25th Anniversary of Global Satellite Temperature Monitoring – Alabama.com, 1 April 2015
2) David Whitehouse: Arctic Ice Decline: A New “Pause”? – Global Warming Policy Forum, 31 March 2015
3) Greg Jones: Grasping For Pause-ible Deniability On Climate Change – The Federalist, 30 March 2015
It wasn’t too long after John Christy came here that we were at a meeting and we were discussing things over lunch. And the subject [of global warming] came up. Hey, don’t we have satellites? Jim Hansen (a climate scientist who sounded perhaps the first alarm about climate change in the 1980s) had just done his testimony for Al Gore in Congress. That’s sort of when global warming became public knowledge, when Hansen testified. We were discussing, Don’t we have something better than the thermometer data to monitor global temperatures? (UAH scientist) Dick McNider said, ‘What about the microwave sounders we have on the weather satellites? We got back to Huntsville and we started looking at how we could get all that data. Roy Spencer, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Alabama.com, 1 April 2015
Numbers are numbers. That’s what we produced. Those aren’t Republican numbers or Democratic numbers. Those are numbers. Those are observations from real satellites. Roy and I were the pioneers. We discovered how to do this with satellites before anyone else did. We had no clue at that time, 25 years ago, we would be in the center of a huge controversy almost 25 years to the day with congressional investigations, the secretary of state, the vice president telling us we don’t even believe in gravity. Who would have thought that 25 years ago? –John Christ, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Alabama.com, 1 April 2015
The decline in Arctic sea ice has become an iconic symbol of global warming. You don’t have to look far on the internet to find predictions by scientists, campaigners and commentators about how soon the region will become ice free in the summer. Unfortunately for those predictions, the Arctic ice has not been listening. The extent of minimum Arctic melting may have paused over the past eight years. It will be interesting to see if it continues in the future. But whatever happens the big question will remain. Is it caused by internal variability masking continuing human-induced-sea-ice loss? Or has internal variability over decadal periods since 1979 been misinterpreted as human-induced decline? –David Whitehouse, Global Warming Policy Forum, 31 March 2015
Climate change has a major problem on its hands: the Earth’s average surface temperature has failed to significantly increase in nearly two decades, and all this despite ever-increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Unlike the globe, this controversy has been simmering for the past several years. Skeptics have increasingly pointed to the pause as proof they were right all along while the warming faithful’s reaction to the ever-mounting evidence provides a perfect case study in modern psychology’s Five Stages of Loss and Grief. Stage 1: Denial. Stage 2: Anger. Stage 3: Bargaining. Stage 4: Depression. Stage 5: Acceptance. –Greg Jones, The Federalist, 30 March 2015
1) 25th Anniversary of Global Satellite Temperature Monitoring
Alabama.com, 1 April 2015
Paul Gattis
The silver anniversary of Roy Spencer’s career-defining moment arrived with no expectation in March. He didn’t realize it until someone mentioned it to him.
For John Christy, he had no idea that a discovery announced in 1990 would not only still resonate 25 years later but would be at the center of a raging debate.
The date was March 29, 1990. That was the day – though unbeknownst to either Christy or Spencer – they publicly became climate change skeptics.
The scientists at the University of Alabama in Huntsville are known throughout the environmental community as being skeptical that climate change (or global warming) will have a catastrophic effect on the earth. The crux of the matter is that their research, using satellite data to measure temperatures in the atmosphere, disagrees with climate models they say that overstates the earth’s warming.
“We are in the minority, there’s no question about that,” Christy said.
Yes, they agree, that there is climate change. Yes, they agree, humans play a role in that climate change. No, they agree, it’s not a catastrophic event.
“We had no clue at that time, 25 years ago, we would be in the center of a huge controversy almost 25 years to the day with congressional investigations, the secretary of state, the vice president telling us we don’t even believe in gravity,” Christy said. “Who would have thought that 25 years ago?”
Still, they carry on – comfortable in their research and data that has remained true to their findings 25 years ago.
What Christy and Spencer (who then worked for NASA at Marshall Space Flight Center just down the street from UAH) announced at that press conference on March 29, 1990, was that their study of temperature data from satellites indicated the world was not warming as much as was believed.
These days, such an opinion is ridiculed from President Obama on down.
“I think we knew it was going to be an important new way of monitoring the climate,” Spencer said. “But you just never know if something like that is going to have legs scientifically. Whether somebody will come up with a new way of doing it better in two years.
“Looking back, I’m kind of surprised this is still the leading way of doing this. Really our only competitors in the field have the same answer we do, very close to the same answer.”
AL.com recently sat down with Christy and Spencer for extended interviews as the anniversary approached. Here are excerpts of those conversations:
AL.com: So how did this research get started?
Spencer: John came here to work on a different project. It wasn’t too long after he came here that we were at a meeting — I think it was in New Hampshire — and we were discussing things over lunch. And the subject came up, Hey, don’t we have satellites? Jim Hansen (a climate scientist who sounded perhaps the first alarm about climate change in the 1980s) had just done his testimony for Al Gore in Congress. That’s sort of when global warming became public knowledge, when Hansen testified. We were discussing, Don’t we have something better than the thermometer data to monitor global temperatures? (UAH scientist) Dick McNider said, ‘What about the microwave sounders we have on the weather satellites? We got back to Huntsville and we started looking at how we could get all that data.”
AL.com: President Obama recently said that Republicans are going to have to change their opinions on the dangers of climate change. Is this a partisan issue?
Christy: Numbers are numbers. That’s what we produced. Those aren’t Republican numbers or Democratic numbers. Those are numbers. Those are observations from real satellites. Roy and I were the pioneers. We discovered how to do this with satellites before anyone else did. You can see this very strongly in the administration. Secretary of State John Kerry comes out and says it’s like denying gravity. The attack on skeptics was ramped up in the past month. It was a very orchestrated plan having the congressional investigation (by U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Arizona).
AL.com: How do you respond to the perception that 97 percent of scientists agree on climate change? (The Wall Street Journal in 2013 reported on the “myth” of the 97 percent).
Christy: The impression people make with that statement is that 97 percent of scientists agree with my view of climate change, which typically is one of catastrophic change. So if a Senate hearing or the president or vice president says 97 percent of the scientists agree with me, that’s not true. The American Meteorological Society did their survey and they specifically asked the question, Is man the dominate controller of climate over the last 50 years? Only 52 percent said yes. That is not a consensus at all in science.
Then when you look at the core of that question, the core is do you believe that man has some influence on the climate. I don’t know anyone who would say no to that. Who are the 3 percent who didn’t agree with that? Roy and I have both made the statement that we are in the 97 percent because we believe in some (man-made) effect. It wasn’t quantified and it wasn’t this dangerous thing. That wasn’t part of the question.
Spencer: Whoever came up with that, it was very powerful. It was a good idea. It was very misleading, but it was a good idea. There are different ways people handle that. I use the angle that based on the way they come up with the 97 percent, John and I could be considered part of the 97 percent. This is where things get all muddy. They call us global warming deniers. It’s a great soundbite except what do we exactly deny? Or the science is settled. OK, what science is settled? You never hear the specifics.
“That’s the great thing about politics. People throw out these platitudes and you could read into them whatever you want. It’s so generic or non-specific in the thing that they’re saying that you can interpret it anyway you want. You turn it into your own thing because you fill in the details. So being a global warming denier, the truth is we don’t know global warming. The science is settled? Well, some of it is. Adding CO2 to the atmosphere probably adds some warming. The science on that is pretty solid. But then the devil’s in the details. How much warming does it actually cause? It makes a huge difference.
AL.com: When you hear about the catastrophic effects of climate change, data from reputable organizations such as National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) or NASA is frequently cited. How do you respond to that?
Christy: NASA, NOAA, EPA, DOE, those are agencies. Agency leaders are appointed by the government, by the current administration. They do not represent objective independent scientific organizations. They can’t. They are appointed by the head. They try. People who come out with different views in their organizations are found to be squashed. There is an agenda in those agencies, so it does not surprise me when they go full bore on something like climate change. They are marching to the drum of the administration. It’s always been that way. But this administration has been extremely opaque. When you try to go provide information to EPA like these pictures, they will just dismiss it. They will come up with their findings and will not provide you with background for information so that you will know they made a scientific finding.
There are skeptics in NASA and NOAA, a good number. But they are quiet. They know in this administration, they don’t speak out.
Spencer: I know that they’re not unbiased. Most of them probably really do believe we’re destroying the earth. When I talk to scientists who should be objective over a beer at the end of the day, I will argue with them and their final position will always be, ‘Yeah, but we need to get away from fossil fuels anyway.’ Where did that come from? Are you an expert in alternative energy sources and what they cost? How many poor people are you going to hurt? How many more people are you going to make poor through energy poverty because they are paying five to 10 times as much for their energy?
These guys in government are not unbiased and they have pressures from above. Those organizations, NASA and NOAA, they are part of the executive branch. So the White House has some influence over what direction they go. The heads are political appointees so you have political influence from the top down on scientists. And that’s a problem.
2) David Whitehouse: Arctic Ice Decline: A New “Pause”?
Global Warming Policy Forum, 31 March 2015
The decline in Arctic sea ice has become an iconic symbol of global warming. You don’t have to look far on the internet to find predictions by scientists, campaigners and commentators about how soon the region will become ice free in the summer. Unfortunately for those predictions, the Arctic ice has not been listening.
The Arctic sea ice has probably reached its greatest extent for this year. It usually occurs at the end of March – last year it was March 21st. There have been some reports that this year’s maximum extent was the lowest since satellite monitoring began in 1979, and it certainly looks low hovering around 13 million km2 for over a month, see Fig 1 (click on image to enlarge). But looking back over past behavior its maximum extent was similar last year and in 2011 and 2005-7 (Fig 2). Hence this year’s extent is not that unusual being similar to that observed ten years ago!
The extent of minimum sea ice is also doing something very interesting – there are hints of a “pause.”
When satellite observations of Arctic ice extent began in 1979 it was obvious that a long-term decline was already underway. That decline appeared to be monotonic until the mid-2000s when, for a while at least, it seemed to have accelerated. The ice extent in the summer of 2007 was a record low, and was accompanied by cries from some quarters of imminent collapse.
The same was said in 2012 when another low was observed. However 2012 was an unusual year as an intense storm occurred in August and its effects on concentrating the ice cover can be clearly seen in the data. Likewise 2007 was an exceptional year.
We now know that year had what was later called an “unusual atmospheric pattern,” that is clear skies under high pressure that promoted a strong melt and at the same time winds brought warm air into the region.
These exceptional years became statistically important as using them to guide a straight line through the Arctic ice decline made its gradient even steeper.
A New “Pause?”
Examining the sea ice extent data for the past eight years it is obvious that there has not been any statistically significant downward trend, even though there is more noise (interannual variability) in the data. There are interannual variations but they do not form a trend. For the 2002 – 2006 period the annual differences are mostly in the extent of maximum and not minimum ice cover. The period 1990 – 1996 displays much more interannual variability. The main difference between the ice-curves is that in recent years there has been an increase in the gradient around the beginning of June.
Of the general decline and the interannual variability how much is due to external forcing and how much to internal variability? Estimate from climate models give about equal measure to forcing and internal variability, Kay et al (2011), Stroeve et al (2012). That 50% internal variability is almost never illustrated graphically when presenting Arctic ice data.
That the minimal extent of Arctic ice has “paused” is admitted by Swart et al (2015) “…from 2007–2013 there was a near-zero trend in observed Arctic September sea-ice extent, in large part due to a strong uptick of the ice-pack in 2013, which has continued into 2014.”
Swart et al (2015) maintain that “cherry-picking” such short periods can be “misleading about longer-term changes, when such trends show either rapid or slow ice loss.”
History Repeating?
The situation with this “pause” in Arctic ice reminds me of the early days of the annual average surface temperature “pause.” When it was first raised, around 2007 with then an estimated 5-year duration, it was dismissed as being cherry-picking and being well within the internal variability of the models, Researchers then looked at similar periods throughout the surface temperature data and the climate models and asked what the likelihood was of a period of no change, just like what Swart et al (2015) have done for the Arctic ice. Back in 2008 the UK Met Office said that climate models regularly showed eight-year pauses but not ten years. Then it was a ten-year pause and, of course, the models were able to explain that after all, and so on even as many viewed the “pause” as increasingly problematical. The analytical approach to the “pause” in Arctic ice is repeating that of the surface temperature “pause.”
Something may indeed have changed in the pattern of Arctic ice melting. The decline that was already in progress when satellite observations were started in 1979 show that Arctic ice was shrinking even before human effects were strong (Fig 3), although the decline between 1979 and about the mid-1990s is not that significant! The extent of minimum Arctic melting may have paused over the past eight years. It will be interesting to see if it continues in the future. But whatever happens the big question will remain. Is it caused by internal variability masking continuing human-induced-sea-ice loss? Or has internal variability over decadal periods since 1979 been misinterpreted as human-induced decline?
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3) Greg Jones: Grasping For Pause-ible Deniability On Climate Change
The Federalist, 30 March 2015
Climate change has a major problem on its hands: the Earth’s average surface temperature has failed to significantly increase in nearly two decades, and all this despite ever-increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Unlike the globe, this controversy has been simmering for the past several years. Skeptics have increasingly pointed to the pause as proof they were right all along while the warming faithful’s reaction to the ever-mounting evidence provides a perfect case study in modern psychology’s Five Stages of Loss and Grief.
Stage 1: Denial. When observers began to sound the alarm on a lack of rising temperatures as predicted by climatologists’ computer models, the climate-change crowd simply refused to acknowledge the data. “The ‘pause’ in global warming is not even a thing,” declared The Guardian.
Stage 2: Anger. Take Slate’s Phil Plait, for instance: “As I, and many others, have pointed out time and again, all they [those that point to the pause] have is noise. The problem is, they’re loud, and they have convinced some media they have something to say (c’mon CNN, really?) when really they don’t.”
Stage 3: Bargaining. A popular rebuttal, and one espoused by the Washington Post, held that using 1998 as the beginning date for a supposed “pause” was cherry-picking data. Because ’98 was an El Nino year, it was hotter than most, and therefore an unfair starting point. Or if not that, then the heat was in the oceans. Or whatever.
Stage 4: Depression. Despite the good news that global warming had stayed steady or even possibly declined, the media could only focus on the idea that 2014 was supposedly the hottest year ever recorded, despite plenty of subjectivity surrounding the data.
As anyone that has struggled with grief knows, however, these emotions are necessary. Only after hitting rock bottom can the healing begin, which brings us to
Stage 5: Acceptance.
Has Climate Change Alarmism Hit Rock Bottom?
Now, after a roller coaster of emotions and barrage of media tantrums, it seems the issue is settled, sort of. In a recent paper in the journal Science, a team of researchers actually acknowledges the pause and attempts to explain it. But it’s not just any team—it includes prominent climate-change crusader and plaintiff to right-wing pundits Michael Mann.
Mann’s endorsement of a pause is about as close to acceptance as possible, the theological equivalent of Richard Dawkins saying, “Okay, so maybe there’s a God.” It was Mann that created the infamous “hockey stick” graph so often referenced by the climate-change crowd.
But Mann’s admission comes with a qualifier. Oscillations in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans have created what he conveniently labels a “false pause,” and when it has run its course global warming will accelerate even faster than it never did before. When does this Mad Max-style scenario start? Well no one can say for sure, but it’s coming, just you wait.
Not surprisingly the media was quick to trumpet Mann’s theory, and the impending doom it predicts, rather than any admission of an actual pause.
“The Pause in Global Warming is Finally Explained,” Scientific
American assures us; “The global warming slowdown is real—but that’s no reason to question climate science,” sneers the Washington Post; “Scientists now know why global warming has slowed down and it’s not good news for us,” proclaims a recent headline on Quartz.com.
Let’s Accept the Skeptics’ Arguments, But Not Their Conclusion
As is often the case with predicting the climate, however, the certainty proclaimed in the headlines is anything but certain. This isn’t the first time researchers have attempted to explain what they have previously denied. To date, there are more than 52 scientific theories attempting to solve the pause that doesn’t exist, from a lazy sun to trade winds to the wrong types of El Niño’s. But for some reason Mann’s explanation is the one; 53 is apparently the magic number.
Yet Mann’s paper blames the pause on ocean currents that have been simulated in climate models for years. And the “natural variability” that he refers to is exactly what many skeptics have proposed just might be missing. In fact, very qualified researchers have been insisting that the role of the sun—you know, the star that warms the planet—has been vastly understated.
Mann’s paper encapsulates perfectly the issue between skeptics of climate change and the hard-core believers: something in the models is always missing that is later found. What was wrong last time has been corrected, even though last time nothing was wrong. The same models that are considered gospel always come up short, only to be revised as gospel yet again.
Everyone understands that climate change research is tricky; countless variables constantly interacting with one another at ever-changing time and distance scales. And studying the Earth’s climate is indeed a worthwhile pursuit. But there is nothing scientific about denying actual, physical data, in this case the global average temperature over two decades. And nothing is academic or open-minded about demonizing an entire portion of the population pointing out the obvious by labeling them “deniers” as if they doubt the Holocaust.
If climate science is to truly progress, we need real acceptance that areas of the research are flawed. And that’s okay; refining and improving experiments lies at the very heart of scientific endeavor.
Don’t expect full acceptance anytime soon, however. In fact, a recent Nature paper defends the accuracy of the very models that failed to predict the very pause that didn’t exist that now does exist but only because the models were wrong. No, this is not a Zen koan: it’s modern climate science.
But it doesn’t have to be.
