On the Water Vapor Feedback, comments on Desser 2008 and Soden et al 2002

[blizzard1024]

Recently I have been studying the water vapor feedback amplification from a change in the Earth's temperature.

 

This is very important as all on this board know if there is going to be some small warming or more dramatic

warming from the radiative effects of increasing greenhouse gases. I read two papers.... dessler 2008b and soden et al 2002. I wish I could get to more but most are behind paywalls and I don't want to join just to read one paper in many instances! Anyway, I will start with the Desser paper. They mistakeningly titled it dessler below!! Anyway...the link is below for the paper.

 

http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/Dessler2008b.pdf

 

Dessler basically compares the climate from a "warm" state in Jan 07 to a colder state in Jan 08 which basically was a .6C drop in temperature based on the global satellite. Ok this is a good time to use what satellite data is available to see what the water vapor did during this year.

 

What he found was a moister troposphere in the warm state vs the cold state which supports the positive feedback and the climate models feedback. However what is unsettling to my scientific eye is that basically you are switching from an El Nino in 2007 to a La Nina in 2008. Figure 2 really shows this ENSO signature. This is a real problem in my mind. During El Nino there is more tropical convection and hence the convection itself leads to heating and moistening of the upper troposphere. You can see drier subsident regions from the enhanced convection in the subtropics. So it is the enhanced convection that transports heat and moisture up to the upper troposphere. Not a "feedback" in my professional opinion. Since water vapor increases in the atmosphere expotentially as temperatures go up, the tropical signals will dominate the global signal. So all he is showing here is an ENSO cycle. Not proof of a positive feedback.  Other have attacked his work saying he doesn't take into account clouds or short wave feedbacks. I did not look into this and have no opinion.

 

 

Then there is Soden et al 2002 which was a seminal paper that proved the positive feedback.

 

http://climate.envsc...denPinatubo.pdf

 

After Mt Pintubo  erupted the globe cooled and at the same time the amount of water vapor dropped which proves a cooler troposphere has less water vapor. ok looks reasonable. But when I looked at the SOI index, I found that the SOI went from El Nino  winter 1991-1992 to a weak La Nina by the end of the year. Figure 2 shows that the change in tropical convection again explains the drop in moisture in the tropics which overwhelms the global signature. The lowest water vapor coincided with late 1992 which was a weak La Nina. I see the trends in the water vapor matched ENSO pretty good. Tropical convection is dictated a lot by SST and that is how moisture and heat is released. It is a giant regulator of the Earth's climate system. I don't see how either of these papers does anything to prove one way or another that there is a positive feedback.

 

The monhly ENSO can be seen here http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml

and ccompare to Soden et al 2002 Figure 2 which showed water vapor retrievals. 

 

I also don't agree with the findings of the Paltridge attempt to show long term drying of the upper troposphere using reanalysis data. The more I learn about reanalysis data the more I have become skeptical that it can show long term climate trends, especially from pre-satellite era to post satellite era.

 

anyone else have ideas on this, I am open to a scientific discussion.

[Snow_Miser]

Recently I have been studying the water vapor feedback amplification from a change in the Earth's temperature.

 

This is very important as all on this board know if there is going to be some small warming or more dramatic

warming from the radiative effects of increasing greenhouse gases. I read two papers.... desser 2008b and soden et al 2002. I wish I could get to more but most are behind paywalls and I don't want to join just to read one paper in many instances! Anyway, I will start with the Desser paper. They mistakeningly titled it dessler below!! Anyway...the link is below for the paper.

 

http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/Dessler2008b.pdf

 

Desser basically compares the climate from a "warm" state in Jan 07 to a colder state in Jan 08 which basically was a .6C drop in temperature based on the global satellite. Ok this is a good time to use what satellite data is available to see what the water vapor did during this year.

 

What he found was a moister troposphere in the warm state vs the cold state which supports the positive feedback and the climate models feedback. However what is unsettling to my scientific eye is that basically you are switching from an El Nino in 2007 to a La Nina in 2008. Figure 2 really shows this ENSO signature. This is a real problem in my mind. During El Nino there is more tropical convection and hence the convection itself leads to heating and moistening of the upper troposphere. You can see drier subsident regions from the enhanced convection in the subtropics. So it is the enhanced convection that transports heat and moisture up to the upper troposphere. Not a "feedback" in my professional opinion. Since water vapor increases in the atmosphere expotentially as temperatures go up, the tropical signals will dominate the global signal. So all he is showing here is an ENSO cycle. Not proof of a positive feedback.  Other have attacked his work saying he doesn't take into account clouds or short wave feedbacks. I did not look into this and have no opinion.

 

Then there is Soden et al 2002 which was a seminal paper that proved the positive feedback.

 

http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/SodenPinatubo.pdf

 

After Mt Pintubo  erupted the globe cooled and at the same time the amount of water vapor dropped which proves a cooler troposphere has less water vapor. ok looks reasonable. But when I looked at the SOI index, I found that the SOI went from slightly El Nino (which was their baseline for water vapor content), to a weak La Nina. Since their baseline was a weak El Nino, the difference between that and a weak La Nina is not insignificant as they claim. The change in tropical convection again explains the drop in moisture in the tropics which overwhelms the global signature. Once the El Nino signature came back so did the water vapor. I see the trends in the water vapor matched ENSO pretty good. Tropical convection is dictated a lot by SST and that is how moisture and heat is released. It is a giant regulator of the Earth's climate system. I don't see how either of these papers does anything to prove one way or another that there is a positive feedback.

 

I also don't agree with the findings of the Paltridge attempt to show long term drying of the upper troposphere using reanalysis data. The more I learn about reanalysis data the more I have become skeptical that it can show long term climate trends, especially from pre-satellite era to post satellite era.

 

anyone else have ideas on this, I am open to a scientific discussion.

 

Boundary Layer Humidification will occur with a warming world, because a warmer atmosphere can hold more water than a cooler atmosphere. This is basic physics. What is not settled is how the humidity will change in the Upper Troposphere. This is where the climate sensitivity to humidity changes is very high because the concentration of water vapor at such altitudes is very low, and only a small increase would create a strong positive feedback, because of the logarithmic properties of the Greenhouse Effect. Some of the strongest evidence that the Positive Water Vapor feedback is overstated comes from measurements of the rate of warming in the Middle to Upper Troposphere. This is where numerous papers have confirmed that the vertical amplification predicted by models from the strong negative lapse rate feedback is exaggerated or is not even there.

 

This is significant because the negative lapse rate feedback is highly correlated to an even stronger positive water vapor feedback in the models. If the negative lapse rate feedback is exaggerated, then the water vapor feedback is also exaggerated.

 

 

In the Middle and Lower Tropical Troposphere as a whole, models grossly exaggerate the rate of warming. They over simulate the rate at which the Tropical Middle Troposphere should have warmed by a large amount. This is where GCMs generally have predicted the largest amount of warming because of the negative lapse rate feedback resulting from the positive water vapor feedback.

 

[f2tornado]

Excellent discussion, snow. I saw that Christy plot in a different thread and it spiked my curiosity on the topic given implications, or lack thereof, to tropical glaciers. As such, I read a number of papers including the Fu one you linked over the past few weeks. There is enough research by separate authors with essentially the same results to strongly suggest, in my opinion, the GCMs have a flaw and that flaw likely being the water vapor feedback is not as strong as suggested. The obvious question is why? None of the authors seemingly take a stab at it. The only compelling argument I've seen is from a non peer reviewed discussion by Bill Gray the hurricane guy. http://typhoon.atmos.colostate.edu/Includes/Documents/Publications/grayschwartz2012.pdf The nutshell version is this: C02 warming will increase evaporation thereby increasing tropical rainfall. This results in more subsidence in areas surrounding the storms. More subsidence results in lower RH values leading to more IR transmission to space. Is this the case? Paltridge et al. [2009] suggest the tropical atmosphere is drying using radiosonde data http://www.drroyspencer.com/Paltridge-NCEP-vapor-2009.pdf while Hatzidimitriou et al. [2004] suggest an increase in the tropical mean outgoing longwave radiation.  http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/4/2727/2004/acpd-4-2727-2004.pdf Chou and Lindzen [2005] inferred there was a strong negative feedback. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009GL039628/abstract;jsessionid=7CFD6F5915EFE3E0DF11FEB5D92CD52C.d03t03 What does it all mean? If the GCMs are too sensitive with positive water vapor feedback then they are overestimating the magnitude of warming in the future barring some other poorly modeled variable making up the difference. This is the battle between "skeptics" who suggest a doubling of CO2 resulting in as little as 0.3C rise in global temps and "alarmists" calling for 3.0C or more per doubling. It's all about the H2O.

[Snow_Miser]

Excellent discussion, snow. I saw that Christy plot in a different thread and it spiked my curiosity on the topic given implications, or lack thereof, to tropical glaciers. As such, I read a number of papers including the Fu one you linked over the past few weeks. There is enough research by separate authors with essentially the same results to strongly suggest, in my opinion, the GCMs have a flaw and that flaw likely being the water vapor feedback is not as strong as suggested. The obvious question is why? None of the authors seemingly take a stab at it. The only compelling argument I've seen is from a non peer reviewed discussion by Bill Gray the hurricane guy. http://typhoon.atmos.colostate.edu/Includes/Documents/Publications/grayschwartz2012.pdf The nutshell version is this: C02 warming will increase evaporation thereby increasing tropical rainfall. This results in more subsidence in areas surrounding the storms. More subsidence results in lower RH values leading to more IR transmission to space. Is this the case? Paltridge et al. [2009] suggest the tropical atmosphere is drying using radiosonde data http://www.drroyspencer.com/Paltridge-NCEP-vapor-2009.pdf while Hatzidimitriou et al. [2004] suggest an increase in the tropical mean outgoing longwave radiation.  http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/4/2727/2004/acpd-4-2727-2004.pdf Chou and Lindzen [2005] inferred there was a strong negative feedback. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009GL039628/abstract;jsessionid=7CFD6F5915EFE3E0DF11FEB5D92CD52C.d03t03 What does it all mean? If the GCMs are too sensitive with positive water vapor feedback then they are overestimating the magnitude of warming in the future barring some other poorly modeled variable making up the difference. This is the battle between "skeptics" who suggest a doubling of CO2 resulting in as little as 0.3C rise in global temps and "alarmists" calling for 3.0C or more per doubling. It's all about the H2O.

 

Thanks for posting the Hatzidimitriou et al. paper F2. I find this section particularly interesting in the paper:

 

"Analysis of the inter-annual and long-term variability of

the various parameters determining the OLR at TOA, showed that the most important

contribution to the observed trend comes from a decrease in high-level cloud cover

15 over the period 1984–2000, followed by an apparent drying of the upper troposphere

and a decrease in low-level cloudiness."

 

The decrease in Low Cloud Cover would suggest a positive feedback, because Low Clouds cool the Earth overall. However, high clouds warm the Earth overall, and a decrease in high clouds would mean that more radiation would be reaching the TOA, thus providing a negative feedback, and perhaps some support to Lindzen's Iris hypothesis. The drying of the upper troposphere is even more interesting, since that would suggest that the upper tropospheric water vapor feedback would dampen any warming, instead of amplifying it. Of course, there are other factors that may have an impact on the results, such as ENSO. ENSO creates large OLR changes, so it may be influencing the results somewhat. Interesting paper nonetheless.

 

I think 0.3 Degrees C is too low of an equilibrium sensitivity though. That would have meant a tremendous forcing would need to have been present during the 20th Century 0.7 Degree C warming trend. Likewise, we've warmed no where even close to how much we should have warmed with a higher sensitivity like 3 Degrees C. Advocates of large scale future warming argue that aerosols are masking some of the warming. This is true, but the aerosol forcing is likely on the lower side during the late-20th Century, thus it shouldn't be masking much warming. Skeptics argue that there is a strong natural contributor to the 20th Century Warming, and thus, climate sensitivity to CO2 is less, since not all of the 0.7 Degree C warming is anthropogenic.

[f2tornado]

There's a lot of info and citations in the guts of tropical ice papers including some discussion on teleconnections.

 

Rabatel et al [2013] is perhaps the most recent http://www.the-cryosphere.net/7/81/2013/tc-7-81-2013.pdf

"During the 1974–2005 period, outgoing long-wave radiation (OLR) decreased in the inner tropics, suggesting an increase in convective activity and cloud cover, whereas in the outer tropics, the opposite trend is documented (Vuille et al., 2003). This pattern is consistent with precipitation trends in the same period".

 

Here is yet more discussion by Chen et al. [2002] supporting the basic cloud/OLR hypothesis. http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2002/2002_Chen_etal_2.pdf

"Satellite observations suggest that the thermal radiation emitted by Earth to space increased by more than 5 watts per square meter, while reflected sunlight decreased by less than 2 watts per square meter, in the tropics over the period 1985–2000, with most of the increase occurring after 1990.

[Snow_Miser]

There's a lot of info and citations in the guts of tropical ice papers including some discussion on teleconnections.

 

There was research done, which showed that during the warm phase of 15 intraseasonal oscillations, high ice clouds decreased with response to warming, which would provide support for Lindzen's Iris hypothesis, since longwave cooling occurs as a result of the Earth able to radiate more efficiently to the TOA.

[FloridaJohn]

How do these new studies square with the paleoclimate studies? In other words, if history shows one value for climate sensitivity, then why would it be lower in the future? What has changed?

 

[Snow_Miser]

How do these new studies square with the paleoclimate studies? In other words, if history shows one value for climate sensitivity, then why would it be lower in the future? What has changed?

 

 

Correct me if I am wrong, but to my knowledge, a lot of paleoclimate studies calculate sensitivity values based off of the forcings they believe caused the past climate changes. If studies claim that the Orbital Forcing caused large swings in temperatures in the geologic record, then of course you will get high sensitivity values, since the Orbital Forcing is a small forcing, but the temperature response is large. However, if a large forcing, such as a large change in Cloud Cover from GCRs caused those large swings in temperatures in the geologic record, then you will get a lower climate sensitivity. A lot of empirical observations indicate that Climate Sensitivity is likely lower than 3 Degrees C.

 

For example, we have been rapidly falling out of the confidence range for Higher Sensitivity forecasts over the past 10-15 years, and to this date, we still do not have a sound answer with why this is happening.

 

 

The IPCC notes that in the GCMs, with only the Water Vapor, Albedo, and Lapse Rate Feedbacks we would see an equilibrium doubling of only 1.9 Degrees C:

 

"Using feedback parameters from Figure 8.14, it can be estimated that in the presence of water vapour, lapse rate and surface albedo feedbacks, but in the absence of cloud feedbacks, current GCMs would predict a climate sensitivity (±1 standard deviation) of roughly 1.9°C ± 0.15°C (ignoring spread from radiative forcing differences)."

 

However, the GCMs all have a positive cloud feedback. This means that the majority of the amplification in the computer models comes from one of the least certain feedbacks. The IPCC further notes:

 

"The mean and standard deviation of climate sensitivity estimates derived from current GCMs are larger (3.2°C ± 0.7°C) essentially because the GCMs all predict a positive cloud feedback (Figure 8.14) but strongly disagree on its magnitude."

 

F2 and I have gone over a lot of evidence that indicates that the Water Vapor feedback may be at least partially exaggerated, based off of the exaggerated Lapse Rate feedback. This means that even the 1.9 Degree C value may be too high. If the Cloud Feedback is negative, then the sensitivity would be lower than 1.9 Degrees C. Perhaps a lot lower than 1.9 Degrees C. There is some rough observational evidence supporting a negative Cloud Feedback that has been published over the last year or so.

 

From Caldwell et al. 2012:

 

"Differences in EIS and EIS change between GCMs are found to be a good predictor of current-climate MLM cloud amount and future cloud change. CMIP3 GCMs predict a robust increase of 0.5–1 K in EIS over the next century, resulting in a 2.3%–4.5% increase in MLM cloudiness. If EIS increases are real, subtropical stratocumulus may damp global warming in a way not captured by the GCMs studied."

 

Cho et al. 2012:

 

"Results show that the regression slope appears to be significant only with SST least-affected by cloud radiative forcing, for which SST needs to be obtained as daily average over cloud-free regions (ΔSST_clear). The estimated value of ΔOLR/ΔSST_clear is 15.72 W m⁻² K⁻¹, indicating the presence of strong outgoing longwave radiation in response to surface warming. This atmospheric cooling effect is found to be primarily associated with reduced areal coverage of clouds (−14.4% K⁻¹)."

 

 

From Davies and Molloy 2012:

 

"If sustained, such a decrease would indicate a

significant measure of negative cloud feedback to global

warming, as lower cloud heights reduce the effective altitude

of emission of radiation to space with a corresponding cooling

effect on equilibrium surface temperature."

 

If these studies are correct, and the Cloud Feedback is negative, this means that the sensitivity is likely lower than 1.9 Degrees C for an equilibrium doubling. Perhaps quite a bit lower.

[blizzard1024]

This video uses the El Nino to La Nina temperature change in the tropics and subtropics which are largely driven

by changes in tropical convection. Tropical convection leads to heating and moistening of the middle to upper

troposphere. His graph is an artifact of ENSO, not evidence of a positive water vapor feedack. See my original post

on this topic. You may disagree, but convection transports a lot of heat and moisture to the upper troposphere.

During El Nino there is more tropical convection, hence more heat and water vapor. It's the convection that

is doing this, not a positive water vapor feedback. This is a fundamental error in his approach here in my

opinion. 

 

Soden's work (and others too) show a drop in water vapor with temperature after Pinutabo erupted

and this is pretty much accepted as scientific fact. BUT again, the drop in water vapor and temperature

coincide with a weak El Nino at the time of the eruption transitioning to a La Nina. Same error in my opinion.

Does not prove a positive water vapor feedback. I see a real problem here with high climate sensitivities. Just

my scientific opinion. 

[skierinvermont]

Blizzard I partially agree with some of your criticisms of the Desser study.. I don't believe they have fully proven that ENSO is not responsible for more of the water vapor variations than they are saying. However you have misstated the results of the Pinatubo study. The Pinatubo study shows that atmospheric drying persisted long after Pinatubo through multiple ENSO phase changes. The drying cannot be attributed to the initial switch from El Nino to Nina which actually did not occur until a full year after the eruption. The initial year was actually characterized by warming in ENSO. Early 1991 before Pinatubo was neutral. El Nino developed in the second half of the year peaking at a trimonthly ONI of 1.6 in January of 1992, which would ordinarily cause moistening of the troposphere. Instead, there was strong drying of the troposphere in direct opposition to the ENSO signal.

 

Again, SL cluttering the thread with false information.

 

His first chart showing little to no warming in the mid to upper troposphere omits several of the most accurate balloon and satellite sources and instead on relies on several outdated studies with known but uncorrected errors. I have provided evidence of this to him previously, but he persists in using the false misleading chart. Again demonstrating why science is best left to scientists and not biased internet posters. 

 

His other chart showing a that temperatures have fallen outside the confidence interval of models is also false and completely made up. Current temperatures remain within the 95% confidence interval of climate models. 

[Snow_Miser]

The notion that the tropical vertical amplification is exaggerated in GCMs is backed up by multiple peer reviewed studies, radiosondes, satellite measurements from RSS, satellite measurements from NOAA, and satellite measurements from UAH. This is evidence that the negative lapse rate feedback is overestimated in the models, thus implicitly stating that the water vapor feedback is overestimated in the models.

Secondly, skier's claim that the charts are wrong, and denial that we haven't warmed nearly as much as forecast can easily be refuted, since he likes to claim that observations are "made up" when they don't support his preconceived ideologies.

[blizzard1024]

Blizzard I partially agree with some of your criticisms of the Desser study.. I don't believe they have fully proven that ENSO is not responsible for more of the water vapor variations than they are saying. However you have misstated the results of the Pinatubo study. The Pinatubo study shows that atmospheric drying persisted long after Pinatubo through multiple ENSO phase changes. The drying cannot be attributed to the initial switch from El Nino to Nina which actually did not occur until a full year after the eruption. The initial year was actually characterized by warming in ENSO. Early 1991 before Pinatubo was neutral. El Nino developed in the second half of the year peaking at a trimonthly ONI of 1.6 in January of 1992, which would ordinarily cause moistening of the troposphere. Instead, there was strong drying of the troposphere in direct opposition to the ENSO signal.

 

Again, SL cluttering the thread with false information.

 

His first chart showing little to no warming in the mid to upper troposphere omits several of the most accurate balloon and satellite sources and instead on relies on several outdated studies with known but uncorrected errors. I have provided evidence of this to him previously, but he persists in using the false misleading chart. Again demonstrating why science is best left to scientists and not biased internet posters. 

 

His other chart showing a that temperatures have fallen outside the confidence interval of models is also false and completely made up. Current temperatures remain within the 95% confidence interval of climate models. 

In Dessler's study, the tropical troposphere dried between the El Nino and La Nina phases. Figure 2 in the paper I linked too shows El Nino (Jan 07) minus La Nina (Jan 08) and Jan 07 was warmer and moister. So the La Nina of January 1992 would be drier also too, wouldn't it?? I made a mistake on Dessler's name. It is Dessler  not Desser!!!! cheers. 

[skierinvermont]

In Dessler's study, the tropical troposphere dried between the El Nino and La Nina phases. Figure 2 in the paper I linked too shows El Nino (Jan 07) minus La Nina (Jan 08) and Jan 07 was warmer and moister. So the La Nina of January 1992 would be drier also too, wouldn't it?? I made a mistake on Dessler's name. It is Dessler  not Desser!!!! cheers. 

 

January 1992 was not a La Nina, the trimonthly ONI was +1.6 which is a strong El Nino. The troposphere should have been very moist, but instead it was very dry because of strong cooling associated with Pinatubo.

[skierinvermont]

The notion that the tropical vertical amplification is exaggerated in GCMs is backed up by multiple peer reviewed studies, radiosondes, satellite measurements from RSS, satellite measurements from NOAA, and satellite measurements from UAH. This is evidence that the negative lapse rate feedback is overestimated in the models, thus implicitly stating that the water vapor feedback is overestimated in the models.

Secondly, skier's claim that the charts are wrong, and denial that we haven't warmed nearly as much as forecast can easily be refuted, since he likes to claim that observations are "made up" when they don't support his preconceived ideologies.

 

It is not backed up by peer-reviewed studies. It is proposed by fringe scientists like Spencer and Christy in pseudo scientific journals or in journals where their work would not get proper review. 

 

Actual peer-review work on the subject shows that radiosonde and satellite measurements have overlapping uncertainty bars with model expectations. See Thorne 2010 http://www.arl.noaa.gov/documents/JournalPDFs/ThorneEtAl.WIREs2010.pdf. Proxy data (thermal wind speed) agrees well with model expectations for lapse rates, warming, and moistening of the tropical troposphere (see Allen and Sherwood http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~joel/g280_s09/recent_atmosphere/allen_sherwood_ngeo08.pdf)

 

Thorne 2010 concludes regarding both radiosonde and satellite data "The uncertainty of models and observations is currently wide enough, and the agreement of trends close enough, to support a finding of no fundamental discrepancy between observations and the model estimates throughout the tropospheric column. 

[f2tornado]

It is not backed up by peer-reviewed studies. It is proposed by fringe scientists like Spencer and Christy in pseudo scientific journals or in journals where their work would not get proper review. 

 

Actual peer-review work on the subject shows that radiosonde and satellite measurements have overlapping uncertainty bars with model expectations. See Thorne 2010 http://www.arl.noaa.gov/documents/JournalPDFs/ThorneEtAl.WIREs2010.pdf. Proxy data (thermal wind speed) agrees well with model expectations for lapse rates, warming, and moistening of the tropical troposphere (see Allen and Sherwood http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~joel/g280_s09/recent_atmosphere/allen_sherwood_ngeo08.pdf)

 

Thorne 2010 concludes regarding both radiosonde and satellite data "The uncertainty of models and observations is currently wide enough, and the agreement of trends close enough, to support a finding of no fundamental discrepancy between observations and the model estimates throughout the tropospheric column. 

 

There's a variety of authors in a variety of publications addressing what snow discusses. Next, what the heck is a pseudoscientific journal? Is the definition a journal that offers papers that do not necessarily conform to your paradigms? The argument is extremely weak. Further, labeling someone a "fringe scientist" is nothing more than loaded language that does absolutely nothing to advance the debate. That's okay though. Science needs folks on the fringes to further drive debate and knowledge advancement. If everyone agreed then there would be little reason to conduct scientific research in the first place. You post some informative stuff here but sarcastic drivel like what you wrote above impairs your credibility as an objective observer.

 

Christy, J. R., B. M. Herman, R. Pielke Sr., P. Klotzbach, R. T. McNider, J. J. Hnilo, R. W. Spencer, T. Chase, and D. H. Douglass (2010), What do observational datasets say about modeled tropospheric temperature trends since 1979?, Remote Sens., 2, 2148–2169, doi:10.3390/rs2092148

 

Douglass DH, Christy JR, Pearson BD, Singer SF. A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions. Int J Climatol 2008, 27:1693–1701

 

McKitrick, R. R., S. McIntyre and C. Herman (2010) “Panel and Multivariate Methods for Tests of Trend Equivalence in Climate Data Sets.” Atmospheric Science Letters, 11(4) pp. 270-277, October/December 2010 DOI: 10.1002/asl.290

 

Seidel, D.J., Free, M. and Wang, J.S. 2012. Reexamining the warming in the tropical upper troposphere: models versus radiosonde observations. Geophysical Research Letters 39: 10.1029/2012GL053850.

 

Stephen Po-Chedley and Qiang Fu 2012 Environ. Res. Lett. 7 044018

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/7/4/044018

 

The following argued against the Douglass conclusions by showing observed data is within two standard deviations of the mean yet some observational sets fall outside this 2SD window in the mid-levels and the rest are on on the brink...

 

Santer, B.D.; Thorne, P.W.; Haimberger, L.; Taylor, K.E.; Wigley, T.M.L.; Lanzante, J.R.; Solomon, S.; Free, M.; Gleckler, P.J.; Jones, P.D.; Karl, T.R.; Klein, S.A.; Mears, C.; Nychka, D.; Schmidt, G.A.; Sherwood, S.C.; Wentz, F.J. Consistency of modelled and observed temperature trends in the tropical troposphere. Int. J. Climatol. 2008, doi:1002/joc.1756

[blizzard1024]

January 1992 was not a La Nina, the trimonthly ONI was +1.6 which is a strong El Nino. The troposphere should have been very moist, but instead it was very dry because of strong cooling associated with Pinatubo.

   

 

 

I looked at the data again and yes Jan 1992 was an El Nino, but looking at figure 2 of Soden et al 2002 you will see water vapor is relatively high still and then plunges

becoming low during the weak La Nina phase late in the year. I amended my post.  

 

The data I used for ENSO is here...  http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml

 

Compare the monthly data to Soden et al 2002 Figure 2 and you will see the drop is related to an El Nino going to a weak La Nina.... I knew I had the right idea. But thanks for

correcting my error. 

[Snow_Miser]

It is not backed up by peer-reviewed studies. It is proposed by fringe scientists like Spencer and Christy in pseudo scientific journals or in journals where their work would not get proper review. 

 

 

What a dishonest remark. There are many papers in the peer reviewed literature that you were either choosing to ignore, or were simply ignorant about.

 

Varostos et al. 2013:

 

"For this purpose, we calculate the trends of the upper-minus-lower tropospheric temperature anomaly differences (TAD) for both the measured and modeled time series during 1979-2010. The modeled TAD trend is significantly higher than that of the measured ones, confirming that the vertical amplification of warming is exaggerated in models."

 

If you notice, this paper was published in Geophysical Research Letters, and neither Christy nor Spencer were co-authors.

 

Fu et al. 2011:

 

"IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) AR4 (Fourth Assessment Report) GCMs (General Circulation Models) predict a tropical tropospheric warming that increases with height, reaches its maximum at ∼200 hPa, and decreases to zero near the tropical tropopause. This study examines the GCM-predicted maximum warming in the tropical upper troposphere using satellite MSU (microwave sounding unit)-derived deep-layer temperatures in the tropical upper- and lower-middle troposphere for 1979–2010. While satellite MSU/AMSU observations generally support GCM results with tropical deep-layer tropospheric warming faster than surface, it is evident that the AR4 GCMs exaggerate the increase in static stability between tropical middle and upper troposphere during the last three decades."

 

This paper above not only refutes Thorne et al. 2010, but it is also published in a peer reviewed journal, and neither Christy nor Spencer are co-authors.

 

Po-Chedley and Fu 2012:

 

"It is demonstrated that even with historical SSTs as a boundary condition, most atmospheric models exhibit excessive tropical upper tropospheric warming relative to the lower-middle troposphere as compared with satellite-borne microwave sounding unit measurements."

 

Neither Christy nor Spencer were a co-author of this article either.

 

Your post is flat out wrong, and it is clear that you didn't bother to do any research to see if your claim was correct before you made such an embarrassing comment.

[Snow_Miser]

You post some informative stuff here but sarcastic drivel like what you wrote above impairs your credibility as an objective observer.

 

He already lost that credibility when he made a remarkable claim that the data from a peer reviewed study which I posted had been fudged and manipulated. This is not the only time he's done this, as he claimed that the NCDC observations and previous forecasted projections from the chart I posted above were made up.

It should be embarrassing for him that claims like this have to be made in order to continue to support a viewpoint.