HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (July 26, 2011) — Data from NASA’s Terra satellite show that when the climate warms, Earth’s atmosphere is apparently more efficient at releasing energy to space than models used to forecast climate change have been programmed to “believe.”

The result is climate forecasts that are warming substantially faster than the atmosphere, says Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist in the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.

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If the record temperatures in 1998 and 2010 were caused by two strong El Ninos, they were not caused by our emissions of carbon dioxide.

One or the other, but not both

Our warming nerve has been over-stimulated. Every time we hear of warming we get defensive and/or afraid for the future.

But there’s an important feature to the latest “record high” years we would do well to remember — humanity had nothing to do with them.

Dr Roy Spencer discusses the 2010 global average temperature on his web site, concluding that the difference between 2010 and the previous record high year, 1998, is hardly worth mentioning.

In 1998, the world experienced the greatest El Nino ever recorded, pushing temperatures to a new record.

In 2010, the world again experienced a very strong El Nino. Fuelled by that alone, 2010 might have been another record year but for the end-game intervention of a very deep La Nina, which immediately dragged temperatures down so they did not exceed the high temperatures of 1998.

But it’s rather obvious that neither record year owes anything to man-made global warming. The high temperatures were caused by the natural cycles of the ENSO.

This is non-controversial and nobody denies it.

If anyone disputes this, and says it’s all been “exacerbated” by our emissions of CO2, they must answer this:

In 2010, the global average temperature anomaly was about +0.411 °C. How much of that was caused by human emissions?

If human emissions were responsible for, say, 0.4 °C over the last hundred years (which is disputed), that’s the same as an annual increase of 0.004 °C, which was neither here nor there in determining whether 2010 set a record temperature.

Be neither guilty, nor afraid.

Does this new method perform better than the IPCC?

NIWA, where are you?

The Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, is calculated from the monthly or seasonal fluctuations in the air pressure difference between Tahiti and Darwin.

In July last year three climate scientists published a paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research. “Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature” concluded that nature, not man, was responsible for “recent global warming.”

The paper, by John McClean, Chris DeFreitas and Bob Carter, shows that what the SOI does now, the temperature will do in between five and eight months’ time.

Simple. But does it work to predict global temperatures? Read more… »

How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists

I’ve reposted Roy’s announcement because the book sounds stunning and because of the penetrating comments he makes, such as:

The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists. By Dr Roy Spencer, who’s been a tenacious sceptic of anthropogenic global warming for many years. Click for previews at Amazon.

Read more… »

Spencer – finding unsuspected climate processes

In a dramatic recent article on his blog, Clouds Dominate CO₂ as a Climate Driver Since 2000, Roy Spencer sets out clear evidence for internally-forced changes in the climate system. An internal forcing is a feedback, as when a change in temperature causes some other change which itself also changes the temperature.

For example, when temperature rises, it may cause an increase in atmospheric water vapour; that water vapour may condense into clouds, which in turn, by reflecting the incoming sunlight back to space, may cause the temperature to drop.

Such a process might be termed a thermostat, a natural regulator, keeping the temperature within its natural bounds, much as it has done for half a billion years and more.

In our example, the forcing was a temperature increase and the feedback was a temperature decrease – a negative feedback, moving the temperature in the opposite direction from the forcing. A positive feedback would move the temperature in the same direction as the forcing.

To date, the IPCC assumes two vital things: that climate sensitivity is high and internal forcing (feedback) is positive.

I do not follow every detail that Dr Spencer describes, but, after challenging these two assumptions and showing them to be wrong, his conclusion pulls no punches.

Emptiness of AGW theory

Dan Satterfield is an experienced TV meteorologist in Huntsville, Alabama—the town which is also home to the world-famous team led by Dr Roy Spencer that tracks the Earth’s temperature with satellites.

Despite his credentials, despite the fact that he deals with climate information every day and despite the fact that he parrots warmist dogma and calls it “climate science”, Dan evinces no actual knowledge of climate facts. And confronted with that fact, Dan finally confesses (by retreat) that he cannot debate the issues on which he claims to be passionate. In withdrawing, he demonstrates the emptiness of the AGW hypothesis.

When the audience strikes back, he cannot mount a defence. His incompetence is great, though he had poor material to work with. Still, alas, he doesn’t make a notable opponent; he is only today’s. One down, thousands yet to go.

Dreary and detailed

Dan’s post tries to describe the imagined “psychology” of “the deniers of climate change”, rather than accepting that there do actually exist real-world observations which fail to support the AGW hypothesis. Everybody believes the evidence of their own senses, and it has nothing to do with having a particular psychology.

What follows is dreary and detailed; I write it because I can, not because I imagine anyone will hasten to read it. Oh—and because I care about the truth. Observing Mr Satterfield squeezing and pinching the truth of global warming out of shape inspires me to pen this lone refutation, dreary and uninspiring though it may be, whose only reward might be a faint righteousness. Read more… »

Spencer claims that climate sensitivity has been “grossly overestimated” because of confusion over cause and effect between cloud cover and temperature. All the computer models now wrongly treat cloud cover as a positive feedback, amplifying warming. But some clouds directly cause warming (a forcing) and are not the result of warming (a feedback). He gives details and says they’re having to fight to get it published. more…