Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #612 – Watts Up With That?

The Week That Was: 2024 09-21 (September 21, 2024)
Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org)
The Science and Environmental Policy Project

Quote of the Week: “I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.”– Richard Feynman [H/t William Readdy]

Number of the Week: 40%

THIS WEEK:

By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)

Scope: Due to a bout with the flu, the This Week section will be shorter than usual. Two important issues are addressed. First, Ross McKitrick’s demonstration that many papers claiming that increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) was responsible for rare weather events do not meet the statistical conditions to make such a claim. Second, the work of Norman Loeb and the CERES research team shows that for the past two decades, Earth’s energy flows have been out of balance. Not from increasing CO2 but from decreasing cloudiness.

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Probabilities: In 2023 the two recipients of the Frederick Seitz Memorial Award from SEPP were Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick who shared equally the $10,000 prize. They were given the award for exposing the shoddiness of the infamous Hockey-stick by Mann, et al. Both McIntyre and McKitrick have gone on to do other significant work. This Week will discuss some of the work by Ross McKitrick.

For those familiar with statistics and probability theory, one of the more disturbing efforts by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its collaborators is assigning probabilities that a certain rare event occurred because of increases in carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. This assignment of probabilities received a huge boost from a paper by Allen and Tett published in the journal Climate Dynamics in 1999.

The paper claimed that the authors formulated a procedure that was BLUE – Best, Linear, Unbiased, Estimator. They assert that the procedure met the conditions of a normal distribution, namely the Gauss-Markov conditions, If so, that allowed the extensive use of probability theory, based on that test. The paper was then cited in hundreds of papers, assigning probabilities that carbon dioxide was the cause of various rare weather events. This issue was expanded when others claimed that rare weather events will become more frequent if CO2 concentrations increase. The procedure was embodied in the work of the UN IPCC in the Third Assessment Report (TAR, 2001). It was called Optimal Fingerprinting and used to blame changing weather on CO2 emissions.

Twenty years later Ross McKitrick found an error in the work of Allen and Tett. The Climate Models are not BLUE. Allen and Tett did not test their procedure against the specific Gauss-Markov conditions that need to be fulfilled if a model is BLUE. Allen and Tett proposed a different test called RC, Residual Consistency, without offering any mathematical statements of what it tests. In 2021 the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) published a report by McKitrick explaining the issue. On page 8 of the report, McKitrick writes:

“So, in summary, Allen and Tett’s [AT99] method failed to ensure the GM [Gauss -Markov] conditions were met, and so failed to assess whether their estimates were reliable. In fact, as I argued in my paper, the Allen and Tett method, as set out in their paper, automatically fails at least one GM condition, and probably more. So, the results must be assumed to be unreliable.

In the years since its publication, however, no-one noticed the errors in the AT99 discussion of the GM conditions, no-one minded the absence of a derivation of the RC test, and none of the subsequent applications of the AT99 method were subject to conventional specification testing. That means we have no basis for accepting any claims that rely on the optimal fingerprinting method.”

The section in the GWPF titled “Replying to responses begins:

“Optimal fingerprinting has been heavily used in the climate literature for establishing attribution; studies applying it have been cited thousands of times, and it has been prominently featured by the IPCC since it first appeared. There has been nearly exclusive reliance on the RC test to defend fingerprinting analysis results. A number of commentators on my paper have tried to shrug off my criticism as unimportant or irrelevant. But if none of the issues raised in my paper ‘matter,’ then we might as well say nothing in the climatology literature matters.

More specifically, in considering any response to my paper, it will be important to note whether it actually disagrees with or disproves my arguments, or simply tries to change the subject. I anticipate that a lot of respondents will implicitly concede that my paper is correct but argue it doesn’t matter because so much time has gone by. However, as a matter of the scientific record it is important to understand and acknowledge if Allen and Tett made errors in their mathematical presentation, and whether the subsequent literature corrected them or simply carried them forward. As far as I have seen, they were carried forward, in the sense that people still to this day rely on the RC test and they still use AT99-type regression models without testing for specification errors associated with the GM conditions.

Also, and more generally, if major errors in the methodology went unnoticed for so long, it calls into question how much confidence we can have in other statistical methodologies that have been developed by climate scientists in subsequent years. Having worked on paleoclimate reconstruction methods, trend estimation and comparison methods, and now on optimal fingerprinting, I conclude that climate journals, unlike statistics or econometrics journals, seem to rely on referees who don’t know how to ask the right questions when confronted with a novel statistical method. My paper is, in effect, the referee report that Allen and Tett would have received had they submitted their paper to a statistics or econometrics journal.” [Boldface added]

See link under Challenging the Orthodoxy.

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Earth Out Of Balance: Beginning with Nimbus 7 Earth Radiation Budget (ERB) in 1978, NASA has engaged in a number of satellite programs designed to measure solar radiation, global albedo, and outgoing longwave radiation (infrared). The latest effort was begun in 1997 by CERES satellites. Norman G. Loeb heads the CERES Science Project team at the Langley Research Center. In describing CERES data, the website states:

“CERES is the only project worldwide whose prime objective is to produce global climate data records of ERB from instruments designed to observe the ERB.”

The problems faced are significant. It requires finding the difference between two huge numbers to find a small number. A small percentage error in either incoming radiation or outgoing radiation can result a huge percentage error in calculating Earth’s Radiation Budget. As discussed by Howard Hayden on the SEPP website in 10 brief essays titled Basic Climate Physics, it is the imbalance between incoming and outgoing radiation that determines whether a planet is warming or not. Short-term imbalances are not important, but imbalances lasting a decade, or more, are.

 In his newsletter, The Energy Advocate, Howard Hayden pointed out that carbon dioxide-caused global warming advocate Kevin Trenberth has tried to shift his position on the issue, asserting global heating is different from global warming. Hayden’s essay is posted on the SEPP website under Scientific Papers under “A Startling Revelation” dated May 11, 2024.

Kenneth Richards of No Tricks Zone states the Loeb et al. paper “Observational Assessment of Changes in Earth’s Energy Imbalance Since 2000” was published online by Surveys in Geophysics on May 7, 2024. The abstract states: [the electronic version is lightly edited for meaning]

“Satellite observations from the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System show that Earth’s energy imbalance has doubled from 0.5±0.2 Wm−2 during the first 10 years of this century to 1.0±0.2 Wm−2 during the past decade. The increase is the result of a 0.9±0.3 Wm−2 increased absorbed solar radiation (ASR) that is partially offset by a 0.4±0.25 Wm−2 increases in outgoing longwave radiation (OLR). Despite marked differences in ASR and OLR trends during the hiatus (2000–2010), transition-to-El Niño (2010–2016) and post-El Niño (2016–2022) periods, trends in net top-of-atmosphere flux (NET) remain within 0.1 Wm−2 per decade of one another, implying a steady acceleration of climate warming. Northern and southern hemisphere trends in NET are consistent to 0.06±0.31 Wm−2 per decade due to a compensation between weak ASR and OLR hemispheric trend differences of opposite sign. We find that large decreases in stratocumulus and middle clouds over the sub-tropics and decreases in low and middle clouds at midlatitudes are the primary reasons for increasing ASR trends in the northern hemisphere (NH). These changes are especially large over the eastern and northern Pacific Ocean and coincide with large increases in sea-surface temperature (SST). The decrease in cloud fraction and higher SSTs over the NH sub-tropics lead to a significant increase in OLR from cloud-free regions, which partially compensates for the NH ASR increase. Decreases in middle cloud refection and a weaker reduction in low-cloud refection account for the increase in ASR in the southern hemisphere, while OLR changes are weak. Changes in cloud cover in response to SST increases imply a feedback to climate change; yet a contribution from radiative forcing or internal variability cannot be ruled out.”

The Article Highlights state:

•” Satellite observations reveal that global mean net flux (NET) at the top-of-atmosphere (or equivalently, Earth’s energy imbalance) has doubled during the first twenty years of this century. The increase is associated with a marked increase in absorbed solar radiation (ASR) that is partially offset by an increase in outgoing longwave radiation (OLR)

• While ASR and OLR changes within sub-periods corresponding to the hiatus (03/2000–05/2010), transition-to-El Niño (06/2010–05/2016), and post-El Niño (06/2016–12/2022) vary substantially, NET flux changes are remarkably stable (within 0.1 Wm−2 per decade), implying a steady acceleration of climate warming

• The increase in ASR is associated with decreases in stratocumulus and middle cloud fraction and refection [? The meaning of the word is unclear] in the Northern Hemisphere and decreases in middle cloud refection in the Southern Hemisphere. The cloud changes are especially large in areas with marked increases in sea-surface temperature, such as over the eastern and northern Pacific Ocean

• Continued monitoring of Earth’s radiation budget and new and updated climate model simulations are critically needed to understand how and why Earth’s climate is changing at such an accelerated pace “

The Summary and Conclusions state:

“CERES observations show that Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI) has doubled from 0.5±0.2 Wm−2 during the first 10 years of this century to 1.0±0.2 Wm−2 during the past decade. This has led to accelerated increases in global mean temperature, sea level rise, ocean heating, and snow and sea ice melt. The increase in EEI is the result of a 0.9±0.3 Wm−2 increases absorbed solar radiation (ASR) that is partially offset by a 0.4±0.25 Wm−2 increases in outgoing longwave radiation (OLR). Since most of the energy added to the climate system associated with EEI ends up as heat storage in the ocean, changes in TOA radiation and ocean heat uptake (OHU) derived from in situ ocean data should track one another. Indeed, recently published analyses indicate that when in situ ocean measurements are supplemented with other data to fill in sparsely sampled regions, there is good agreement between variations and trends in OHU and CERES EEI for the Argo period between 2005 and 2019 (Loeb et al. 2021a; Hakuba et al. 2024, this collection).

Regional patterns of CERES ASR, –OLR and SST trends are similar, particularly over the North Pacific, off the east coast of North America and west coast of South America. Time series of global mean anomalies in SST, ASR, and –OLR also share similar features. In each case, twelve-month running average anomalies are relatively constant prior to 2010 (“hiatus” period), increase markedly (decrease for –OLR) prior to the 2015–2016 El Niño event (“transition-to-El Niño” period), and remain relatively flat after this event (“post-El Niño” period). Despite marked differences in global ASR and global –OLR trends between these sub-periods, NET trends remain strikingly within 0.1 Wm−2 per decade of one another. Since climate stabilization requires the climate forcing or net radiative imbalance to restore to zero, an increase in Earth’s radiative energy imbalance implies an acceleration of climate change rather than a continued, steady heating implied by a constant imbalance (e.g., von Shuckman et al. 2023). However, we note that NET radiation exhibits appreciable internal variability at interannual time scales. A longer observational record is needed to determine how robust these findings are.

We compare global trends in TOA fluxes of CRE alongside an alternate approach that uses the CERES FluxbyCldTyp (FBCT) product to isolate the cloudy and clear-sky contributions to all-sky TOA flux trends. While the trend in net CRE is weak due to compensation between –SW and –OLR components, the trend for the cloudy sky contribution is appreciable due to a large positive trend in –SW (i.e., reduced cloud refection) and negligible –OLR trend. The latter is comparable to what is obtained using the PRP method and thus provides a better framework than CRE for assessing the radiative impacts of cloud changes. Further refinement would be required to account for cloud masking contributions in cloudy areas. Isolating the cloud contribution also requires removing the contribution from effective radiative forcing (aerosol-cloud indirect effects and greenhouse gas adjustments), which is highly uncertain.

When the cloudy sky contribution is stratified by cloud type, we find that decreases in low and middle cloud fraction and refection [? meaning] and reduced refection from cloud-free areas in mid-high latitudes are the primary reasons for increasing ASR trends in the NH. Low cloud changes are primarily from Sc between 20° and 42°N; while Sc, SCT and Cu [? meaning] all contribute to the low cloud ASR increase between 42° and 60°N. In the SH the increase in ASR is primarily from decreases in middle cloud refection and a weaker reduction in low cloud refection. Increased thermal emission in cloud-free conditions combined with high cloud changes contribute most to the increase in OLR.

Climate model AMIP simulations suggest that the larger ASR increase observed during the CERES period is due to additive contributions from effective radiative forcing (ERF) and climate response to warming and its spatial pattern; while the weaker OLR change is associated with compensation between increasing ERF from continued emission of well-mixed greenhouse gases and increased infrared cooling to space relating to the radiative response to warming (Raghuraman et al. 2021; Hodnebrog et al. 2024). Model-based attribution of the CERES results are limited in number because the CMIP6 protocol ends in 2014. The new atmospheric model intercomparison project (AMIP) simulations proposed as part of CERESMIP (Schmidt et al. 2023) will provide updated model simulations through 2021 and will use input data sets, greatly expanding opportunities to assess model performance and attribution of the observed EEI trend.”

So, Earth has been out of balance for the past two decades, not from CO2 but from changes in cloudiness. The reduction in cloud cover explains deep ocean warming better because infrared energy from radiative warming does not penetrate the ocean’s surface beyond one millimeter. However, due to mixing the ocean surface is generally taken to mean the first 10 meters of depth.

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Number of the Week: 40% When Mark Mills interviewed John Ardill, the Vice President of Global Exploration at ExxonMobil, Mills revealed an important statistic: today 40% of global oil output is from offshore wells, and deepwater wells are the fastest growing source of new oil production. Ardill addressed the steps that ExxonMobil is taking to assure its massive undertaking in Guyana, South America, is done safely. To address energy concerns, Ardill emphasized the well-run oil companies need clearly stated problems, not solutions imposed on them by governments.

Censorship

Gag on Climate Reporting Is Another French Obscenity

By Vijay Jayaraj, CO2 Coalition, Sep 11, 2024