Nikolov & Zeller: Misrepresentation of Critical Satellite Data by IPCC

Summary

The NASA Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) Project has been providing state-of-the art satellite data on Earth’s reflected solar and emitted thermal radiation along with several cloud parameters for over 2.4 decades now. These observations are crucial for the quantification of global climate dynamics and proper evaluation of climate drivers. CERES data have shown that the Earth’s average annual absorption of solar energy increased by 2.0 W m^-2 from 2000 to 2020 (and by 2.7 W m^-2 between 2000 and 2023) due to a decrease in planetary albedo, which was mostly driven by a reduction of low-level clouds. For comparison, according to the IPCC AR6, the total anthropogenic forcing from 1750 to 2019 was 2.72 W m^-2 (Forster et al. 2021, Section 7.3.5.2). Hence, the solar forcing measured over the past 2.4 decades has the same magnitude as the anthropogenic forcing estimated by models for the past 27 decades!

A close read of Chapter 7 in the Working Group I Contribution to the 2021 IPCC Report reveals that, not only was the measured albedo-controlled solar forcing ignored as a climate driver in the Report’s conclusions, but Section 7.2.2 in Chapter 7 contains Figure 7.3, which shows opposite trends of reflected solar and outgoing thermal flaxes to those observed by CERES. This article presents the results from our investigation of the IPCC’s Fig. 7.3.

After examining the IPCC data repository at GitHub.com and communicating with two lead authors of Chapter 7, we found that the CERES global anomalies of reflected shortwave and outgoing longwave radiation have been multiplied by -1 in the computer code employed to generate Fig. 7.3. This caused inversion of the long-term trends of these key climate parameters. Dr. Matthew Palmer, one of the authors of Section 7.2.2, admitted in an email message that this trend inversion was intentionally done, but failed to provide a convincing justification for it.

The results from the trend inversion of CERES radiation data in the IPCC AR6 are highly consequential. Thus, Fig. 7.3 creates a false impression that the solar forcing played no role in recent warming and the rising concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases caused a retention of heat in the climate system by impeding the outgoing LW radiation. The truth is that the solar forcing explains the entire tropospheric warming since 2000, and there is no sign of “heat trapping” by greenhouse gases. Had the IPCC acknowledged the increase of Earth’s sunlight absorption in the 21^st Century, this would have invalidated the Report’s central assertion that human carbon emissions were the main driver of climate in recent decades. In conclusion, it appears that radiative flux anomalies in Fig. 7.3 were manipulated and a discussion about long-term CERES trends in Section 7.2.2 was intentionally omitted, because the actual observations present a significant empirical challenge to the UN’s political Agenda set by Resolution A/RES/43/53 in 1988 to promote Anthropogenic Climate Change.

1. Introduction

The 6^th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR6) concluded “It is very likely that well-mixed GHGs [greenhouse gases] were the main driver of tropospheric warming since 1979” (IPCC, 2021; p.5). This statement implies that all known climate forcings have properly been evaluated using the available data, and GHGs have been found to exert a disproportionally large radiative effect on the Global Surface Air Temperature (GSAT) over the past 45 years. However, a close examination of Chapter 7 of the Working Group I (WG1) Contribution to the IPCC AR6 (Forster et al. 2021), which discusses the Earth’s energy budget, climate feedbacks and climate sensitivity, reveals that the observed decrease of Earth’s albedo and the corresponding increase of absorbed shortwave radiation by the Planet for the past 20 years have not been taken into account as contributors to the recent warming. Section 7.2.2 of Chapter 7 entitled “Changes in Earth’s Energy Budget” acknowledges that there have been multidecadal periods of significant decreasing and increasing trends in surface solar radiation (SSR) called “global dimming” (i.e. from 1950s to 1980s) and “global brightening” (after 1980s), respectively. The report states: “There is high confidence that these [SSR] trends are widespread, and not localized phenomena or measurement artefacts.” Indeed, the existence of such dimming and brightening multi-decadal periods has been acknowledged by science for more than 10 years (Stanhill et al. 2014; Yuan et al. 2021), but the IPCC AR6 provides no global estimate of the observed positive trend in SSR since 1980s and its impact on GSAT. Instead, the Report simply states “The origin of these trends is not fully understood”.

With respect to the top-of-the-atmosphere (TOA) solar fluxes, Section 7.2.2 of the IPCC AR WG1 offers no analysis of the substantial decrease in Earth’s shortwave reflectance since 2000 observed by the NASA Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) project (Loeb et al. 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021) and also reported by other research teams (e.g. Dübal & Vahrenholt 2021; Stephens et al. 2022). The Report does not discuss the observed 2.0 W m^-2 increase in solar-energy uptake by the Planet from 2000 to 2020 nor its contribution to the recent warming. What is even more puzzling, Subsection 7.2.2.1 of the IPCC AR6 WG1 Contribution features graphs in their Fig. 7.3 (on p. 936) showing an increasing reflected solar flux and decreasing outgoing thermal flux since 2000 that are supposedly based on CERES data. However, these trends are opposite of what CERES has actually measured and directly contradict results reported by prior studies. This article presents findings from our investigation of Fig. 7.3 in the IPCC AR6.

New study disputes Hunga Tonga volcano’s role in 2023-24 global warm-up

The plot thickens, since our recent post: Hunga Tonga volcano – the stratosphere heating controversy. Javier Vinos argued (re. the sudden warming): ‘any other candidate should have to demonstrate its ability to act abruptly with such magnitude before being seriously considered.’ In this new study ‘analysis revealed that the eruption resulted in more energy leaving the climate system than entering it, thereby inducing the slight cooling effect’. The question of the ‘unaccounted for’ heat remains, with this paper trying to steer the discussion back to greenhouse gases, boosted by a pinch of El Niño. The snag there is that the ‘extra’ warming started before the El Niño, and no unusual spike in so-called greenhouse gases at that time has been reported, as far as we know.
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New research from a collaborative team featuring Texas A&M University atmospheric scientist Dr. Andrew Dessler is exploring the climate impact of the 2022 Hunga Tonga volcano eruption and challenging existing assumptions about its effects in the process, says EurekAlert.

The remarkable two-day event, which occurred in mid-January 2022, injected vast amounts of volcanic aerosols and water vapor into the atmosphere. Historically, large volcanic eruptions like Tambora in 1815 and Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 have led to significant cooling effects on the global climate by blocking sunlight with their aerosols.

However, Hunga Tonga’s eruption presented a unique scenario: As a submarine volcano, it introduced an unprecedented amount of water vapor into the stratosphere, increasing total stratospheric water content by about 10%.

AI-powered weather and climate models are set to change the future of forecasting, researchers say

Expensive setup, but ‘faster and cheaper’ forecasts is one of the claims. Whether they’re somehow better, particularly the AI-backed climate models, than existing models is another matter. This article features one of the latest ones under development, suggesting it may be able to do more than existing models in some areas of forecasting.
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A new system for forecasting weather and predicting future climate uses artificial intelligence (AI) to achieve results comparable with the best existing models while using much less computer power, according to its creators – says The Conversation (via Phys.org).

In a paper published in Nature, a team of researchers from Google, MIT, Harvard and the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts say their model offers enormous “computational savings” and can “enhance the large-scale physical simulations that are essential for understanding and predicting the Earth system.”

Biggest flare of Solar Cycle 25

Major Farside Solar Flare

Spaceweather concludes: ‘The source of this blast will rotate around to face our planet a week to 10 days from now, so stay tuned.’

Saharan dust regulates hurricane rainfall, say researchers

Dust in the atmosphere can work in different ways – ‘at high concentrations, dust shifts from boosting to suppressing rainfall’, it seems. In a recent post on the present North Atlantic hurricane season here, we quoted a news article saying ‘over the next few weeks…there will be fewer cyclones due to the persistent dry air and dust from the Sahara.’ A researcher here says of hurricane and other weather predictions: ‘I don’t think dust has received sufficient attention to this point.’
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New research underscores the close relationship between dust plumes transported from the Sahara Desert in Africa, and rainfall from tropical cyclones along the U.S. Gulf Coast and Florida, says EurekAlert.

Giant plumes of Sahara Desert dust that gust across the Atlantic can suppress hurricane formation over the ocean and affect weather in North America.

But thick dust plumes can also lead to heavier rainfall – and potentially more destruction – from landfalling storms, according to a July 24 study in Science Advances. The research shows a previously unknown relationship between hurricane rainfall and Saharan dust plumes.

Southern Ocean absorbing more carbon dioxide than previously thought, study finds

The role of nature’s ocean carbon cycle is found to have been ‘substantially’ underestimated by the latest research, challenging climate model simulations. This was mostly from summer data, and further efforts to get better winter data are ongoing. Another reality check for overblown climate obsession.
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New research led by the University of East Anglia (UEA) and Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) has found that the Southern Ocean absorbs more carbon dioxide (CO2) than previously thought, reports Science Daily.

Using direct measurements of CO2 exchange, or fluxes, between the air and sea, the scientists found the ocean around Antarctica absorbs 25% more CO2 than previous indirect estimates based on shipboard data have suggested.

The Southern Ocean plays a major role in absorbing CO2 emitted by human activities, a process vital for controlling the Earth’s climate [Talkshop comment – according to one hypothesis]. However, there are big uncertainties in the magnitude and variability in this flux.

Metallic minerals on the deep-ocean floor split water to generate ‘dark oxygen,’ new study finds

Report: “It appears that we discovered a natural ‘geobattery,'” Geiger said. “These geobatteries are the basis for a possible explanation of the ocean’s dark oxygen production.” But it raises an issue for deep-sea mining of rare earth minerals for batteries etc., potentially in the same zone. When researchers revisited a deep sea area mined in the 1980s they found a ‘dead zone’, contrary to expectations of a marine recovery.
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An international team of researchers, including a Northwestern University chemist, has discovered that metallic minerals on the deep-ocean floor produce oxygen—13,000 feet below the surface, reports Phys.org.

The surprising discovery challenges long-held assumptions that only photosynthetic organisms, such as plants and algae, generate Earth’s oxygen.

But the new finding shows there might be another way. It appears oxygen also can be produced at the seafloor—where no light can penetrate—to support the oxygen-breathing (aerobic) sea life living in complete darkness.

UK climate strategy under scrutiny at ‘landmark’ court case

In today’s world you can sue your own government if you don’t like some aspect of the weather. It doesn’t matter if an offending weather system blew in from a thousand or more miles away, it’s now a politician’s job to make the weather just right for you. Such is the alarmist position based on a greenhouse theory of trace gases dominating the global climate.
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The British government on Tuesday faces an unprecedented legal challenge for allegedly failing to protect people, property and infrastructure from the likely [Talkshop comment – some say, others don’t] effects of climate change, says Phys.org.

Environmental campaigners Friends of the Earth and two men whose lives have been affected by rising temperatures have brought a two-day case at the High Court in London.

The case is the first of its kind in Britain and comes after criticism of the government’s climate change risk management strategy and a landmark European court ruling against the Swiss state.

Friends of the Earth and the co-claimants will argue that Britain’s National Adaptation Programme to protect against soaring temperatures, flooding or coastal erosion is inadequate and unlawful.

“For the first time in UK legal history, the High Court will have to determine whether the government’s policy to adapt to climate change is lawful, including as to whether our clients’ human rights have been breached,” said lawyer Rowan Smith.

“This is truly a landmark climate change case, which is likely to have far-reaching implications for generations to come.”

Could geo-engineering help save the planet? – asks BBC weather presenter

The notion that ‘saving the planet’ is required at all is taken for granted by climate alarmists and promoted at every opportunity – like this one. They then indulge in a variety of control fantasies, but note the question mark in the title. Many others are wholly unconvinced that ‘manipulating the climate’, as the article describes it, is in reality anything more than unnecessary gambling on the poorly understood effects of short-term interference with weather systems.
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If we can’t control rising global temperatures by drastically cutting carbon emissions, could something called geo-engineering be a way to cool the planet? – wonders the BBC’s lead weather presenter.

In what is already a £103bn ($135bn) industry, scientists around the world, including in the UK, are researching geo-engineering – ways of manipulating the climate to tackle global warming.

Some experts are concerned there are too many risks associated with it, fearing it could mess with global weather patterns or actually warm some regions, not cool them.

As the industry grows, so have conspiracy theories.

With CO2 Levels Rising, World’s Drylands Are Turning Green

It’s well-known that higher CO2 concentrations encourage plant growth (up to a point). Ask a commercial grower. But in these days of climate alarmism good news isn’t welcomed by its backers. More carbon dioxide at the global scale boosts the carbon cycle, but climate obsessives want to suck some of it out of the atmosphere, using vast amounts of valuable energy.
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Southeast Australia has been getting hotter and drier, says Fred Pearce @ Yale360.

Droughts have lengthened, and temperatures regularly soar above 95 degrees F (35 degrees C). Bush fires abound. But somehow, its woodlands keep growing.

One of the more extreme and volatile ecosystems on the planet is defying meteorology and becoming greener.

And Australia is far from alone. From Africa’s Sahel to arid western India, and the deserts of northern China to southern Africa, the story is the same.

Oil protesters jailed after M25 blocked

Ignore the law, pay the price for your actions, regardless of opinions and climate theories. As UK prisons are already full they won’t be locked up for very long. The world uses about 100 million barrels of oil a day for many purposes, including lubrication of wind turbines.
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Five environmental activists who organised protests that brought part of the M25 to a standstill over four days have been jailed, reports BBC News.

Forty-five Just Stop Oil protesters climbed gantries on the motorway in November 2022, forcing police to stop the traffic, in an attempt to cause gridlock across southern England.

Judge Christopher Hehir said Roger Hallam, 58, Daniel Shaw, 38, Louise Lancaster, 58, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, 35, and Cressida Gethin, 22, had “crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic”.

Climate change is making days longer, scientists ‘discover’ – but only since 2020?

We’re told this hinges on the combined effects of rising sea levels and reducing polar ice. But such effects don’t come with ’caused by’ labels attached. Also the *shortest* day in the last half century occurred in June 2022, according to this article: ‘Over the past few decades, Earth’s rotation around its axis – which determines how long a day is – has been speeding up. This trend has been making our days shorter; in fact, in June 2022 we set a record for the shortest day over the past half a century or so. But despite this record, since 2020 that steady speedup has curiously switched to a slowdown – days are getting longer again, and the reason is so far a mystery.’ Why is the claimed switch from faster to slower around 2020 being assigned to climate effects that have been going on for the best part of 200 years, according to greenhouse gas theorists? (Footnote: link to study at end of this article by the authors).
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Rising sea levels caused by climate change are making the Earth “fatter” at the equator – slowing down its rotation and making the days longer, reports Sky News.

As polar ice caps have melted, water has shifted from the poles to the equator, “significantly” increasing how oblate – or fat – the Earth is since 1900, and lengthening its days.

Adding a few milliseconds to a 24-hour day may not sound much, but it has “implications for precise timekeeping and space navigation”, the authors of the study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said.

The pace of change is higher than at any point in the 20th century, they found.

North Atlantic hurricane season not as active as predicted, so far

In April the BBC was reporting an alarming forecast, as they put it. They said of the approaching storm season that ‘It could be one of most intense on record with up to 23 named storms predicted.’

But as of now, things have gone relatively quiet after 3 early storms including hurricane Beryl. The Guardian’s Weather Tracker today tries to explain it:

The early formation of storms such as Alberto, Beryl and Chris in late June and early July was facilitated by warm waters and a lack of dry air in the mid layers of the atmosphere. However, since Beryl’s track through the Caribbean and into the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic basin has been relatively quiet. Sometimes dry Saharan air can inhibit the formation of tropical disturbances and cyclones which rely on a moist atmosphere for storm development, leading to a reduction in tropical weather activity in the Atlantic Ocean. This will apparently be the case over the next few weeks when there will be fewer cyclones due to the persistent dry air and dust from the Sahara.”

Dry Saharan air doesn’t sound like anything unusual, as it’s over a desert, but others may know better. Not wishing to put a curse on anyone potentially in the firing line of such storms, but could at least some of the leading forecasters have got over-excited again?
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Image credit: sanibelrealestateguide.com

No drama: thawing permafrost likely to happen ‘ in step with climate change’, study says

Claims and theories of a ‘ticking timebomb’ get defused, although the study talks up other supposedly avoidable, or at least partly preventable, issues with melting permafrost in a warming world. But in an earlier (2021) study: Increasing Pleistocene permafrost persistence and carbon cycle conundrums inferred from Canadian speleothems, it was found that ‘interglacial greenhouse gas concentrations were relatively stable throughout the Pleistocene, suggesting that either permafrost thaw did not trigger substantial carbon release to the atmosphere or it was offset by carbon uptake elsewhere on glacial-interglacial time scales.’ The 2021 study data from certain periods ‘suggests that greenhouse gas concentrations during these interglacials were relatively insensitive to permafrost thaw’, again negating or casting doubt on alarmist ideas about likely consequences.
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Permafrost soils store large quantities of organic carbon and are often portrayed as a critical tipping element in the Earth system, which, once global warming has reached a certain level, suddenly and globally collapses.

Yet this image of a ticking timebomb, one that remains relatively quiet until, at a certain level of warming, it goes off, is a controversial one among the research community, says Science Daily.

Based on the scientific data currently available, the image is deceptive, as an international team has shown in a recently released study.

Thick sea ice flowing from Arctic Ocean shortening shipping season in Northwest Passage, analysis finds

The authors say this is ‘the result of an increase in older, thicker ice flowing south from the Arctic Ocean, due to increased melting under climate change of the oldest Arctic sea ice’. In their analysis they note ‘a false sense of optimism regarding the practical usage of the Northwest Passage from purely climate model based studies.’ Another warmist notion bites the dust but, needless to say, the finger of suspicion points at the usual designated suspects i.e. extra trace gases in the atmosphere. So instead of blaming humans for making the NWP more accessible, the same blame is in effect applied for making it less so. Natural variation can’t get a look-in.
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An increased amount of thick sea ice flowing south from the Arctic Ocean shortened the ice-free shipping season in several parts of the Northwest Passage between 2007 and 2021, according to an analysis in Communications Earth & Environment.

The authors suggest this could mean the Northwest Passage is unlikely to become a viable alternative to traditional shipping routes, despite previous hopes that it may become viable due to global warming, says Phys.org.

The Northwest Passage (NWP) is a commercial shipping route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans that runs through the Arctic Circle north of North America.

Through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago (CAA), it splits into a southern route and a shorter, preferred northern route. The length of the shipping season—the period during which the route is navigable for certain ships—for the entire NWP has been changing due to global warming.

Alison Cook and colleagues used sea ice charts from the Canadian Ice Service to calculate the number of weeks per year that each 10-kilometer section of the routes through the CAA was navigable by a PC 7 class ship (capable of safely traveling through ice up to 70cm thick) between 2007 and 2021.

China’s renewable energy surge strains power grid – a warning to ‘net zero’ advocates

The UK equivalent of China’s restrictions on renewable power generation would mean even larger constraint payments than the current £billions, and even bigger increases in costly transmission lines than already happening or planned. But that’s the implication of pushing ever harder for mythical net zero targets, resulting in greater fluctuations between excessive electricity and shortage of it. China can at least rely on its plentiful coal generation capacity, but the UK can’t.
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China’s record-breaking deployment of wind and solar capacity has worsened regional power imbalances, forcing the country to idle increasing amounts of renewable generation when it overwhelms local consumption, says Reuters (via OilPrice.com).

New government regulations aim to reduce the amount of renewable generation that has to be abandoned by increasing long-distance transmission links and better coordinating generation plans across provinces.
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Increased penetration of intermittent renewables is making it harder to manage a nationwide transmission system that was already struggling with large regional imbalances between generation and load.

Hunga Tonga volcano – the stratosphere heating controversy

H/T Climate Etc. (Judith Curry’s blog)
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By Javier Vinós: The climate event of 2023 was truly exceptional, but the prevailing catastrophism about climate change hinders its proper scientific analysis. I present arguments that support the view that we are facing an extraordinary and extremely rare natural event in climate history.
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Of course, we cannot conclude that the warming was caused by the volcano, but it is clear that it is by far the most likely suspect, and any other candidate should have to demonstrate its ability to act abruptly with such magnitude before being seriously considered.

So why do scientists like Gavin Schmidt argue, without evidence or knowledge, that the Tonga volcano could not have been responsible? If the effect were cooling, the volcano would be blamed without a second’s hesitation, but significant natural warming undermines the message that warming is the fault of our emissions.

Full blog post: Hunga Tonga volcano: impact on record warming — @ Climate Etc.

Ominous appointments: Ed Miliband and Pat Vallance

Britain has a new government, and its Prime Minister has appointed new cabinet members. Of particular interest to Talkshop readers are the positions of energy and science. Here’s the news. Our new Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero is Ed Miliband. This is the guy who guided the Climate Change Act of self harm through parliament in 2008.

Study examines ‘pacemakers’ of highly variable ancient Nile floods, finding similarities to present times

The study finds that ‘flood variability was paced by similar climatic forcing as today’. The historical data suggested an ‘as yet unidentified driver on multi-decadal timescales’. The Sahara wasn’t a desert during the North African humid period that’s the subject of the study. These periods are known to have occurred regularly over long timescales. As well as El Niño influences, a 30-40 year cycle was also evident in the records. Using climate models to create scenarios for year 2100 has its issues.
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Global warming as well as recent droughts and floods threaten large populations along the Nile Valley, claims Phys.org.

Understanding how such a large river will respond to an invigorated hydrological cycle is therefore a pressing issue. [Talkshop comment – wherefore ‘therefore’?]

Insights can be gained by studying past periods with wetter and warmer conditions, such as the North African Humid Period 11 to 6 thousand years ago.

Increased atmospheric moisture over Africa may dampen the ‘seeds’ of Atlantic hurricanes

Claims of future increases in hurricane activity and/or intensity may have to be revised, if the results of this US NCAR modelling exercise can be relied on. Is this pointing to a negative feedback, or is it just a slower formation stage? Further investigation needed, but model evidence at least is mounting.
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Increased atmospheric moisture may alter critical weather patterns over Africa, making it more difficult for the predecessors of many Atlantic hurricanes to form, according to a new study published this month.

The work is published in the Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, says Phys.org.

The research team, led by scientists from the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR), used an innovative model that allows for higher-resolution simulations of hurricane formation than ever before.

This allowed researchers to study the effects of increased regional moisture over Africa, which is the birthplace of weather systems that later produce hurricanes over the Atlantic.