New NASA data undercuts climate models


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Some new NASA data shows something interesting on the climate front- more heat escapes from Earth than predicted, a lot more.

Remote Sensing paper....

Forbes rather gleeful article...

NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth's atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.

Study co-author Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA's Aqua satellite, reports that real-world data from NASA's Terra satellite contradict multiple assumptions fed into alarmist computer models.

"The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show," Spencer said in a July 26 University of Alabama press release. "There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans."

In addition to finding that far less heat is being trapped than alarmist computer models have predicted, the NASA satellite data show the atmosphere begins shedding heat into space long before United Nations computer models predicted.

The new findings are extremely important and should dramatically alter the global warming debate.

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The University of Alabama in Huntsville works with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (also in Huntsville) on many of its studies and posted this -

http://www.uah.edu/news/newspages/campusnews.php?id=564

Climate models get energy balance wrong, make too hot forecasts of global warming

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (July 26, 2011) -- Data from NASA's Terra satellite shows 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.

The previously unexplained differences between model-based forecasts of rapid global warming and meteorological data showing a slower rate of warming have been the source of often contentious debate and controversy for more than two decades.

In research published this week in the journal ?Remote Sensing,? Spencer and UA-Huntsville's Dr. Danny Braswell compared what a half dozen climate models say the atmosphere should do to satellite data showing what the atmosphere actually did during the 18 months before and after warming events between 2000 and 2011.

"The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show," Spencer said. "There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans."

Not only does the atmosphere release more energy than previously thought, it starts releasing it earlier in a warming cycle. The models forecast that the climate should continue to absorb solar energy until a warming event peaks.

Instead, the satellite data shows the climate system starting to shed energy more than three months before the typical warming event reaches its peak.

"At the peak, satellites show energy being lost while climate models show energy still being gained," Spencer said.

This is the first time scientists have looked at radiative balances during the months before and after these transient temperature peaks.

Applied to long-term climate change, the research might indicate that the climate is less sensitive to warming due to increased carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere than climate modelers have theorized. A major underpinning of global warming theory is that the slight warming caused by enhanced greenhouse gases should change cloud cover in ways that cause additional warming, which would be a positive feedback cycle.

Instead, the natural ebb and flow of clouds, solar radiation, heat rising from the oceans and a myriad of other factors added to the different time lags in which they impact the atmosphere might make it impossible to isolate or accurately identify which piece of Earth's changing climate is feedback from manmade greenhouse gases.

"There are simply too many variables to reliably gauge the right number for that," Spencer said. "The main finding from this research is that there is no solution to the problem of measuring atmospheric feedback, due mostly to our inability to distinguish between radiative forcing and radiative feedback in our observations."

For this experiment, the UA-Huntsville team used surface temperature data gathered by the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Great Britain. The radiant energy data was collected by the Clouds and Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) instruments aboard NASA's Terra satellite.

The six climate models were chosen from those used by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The UA-Huntsville team used the three models programmed using the greatest sensitivity to radiative forcing and the three that programmed in the least sensitivity.

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interesting, soit absobs a lot, then releases it ... and the cycle repeats ...

did i get this right? CO2 traps heat then helps in releasing it?

also, there is a net gain overall?

the models are getting more complex by the day but it is a chaotic system (however you want to define it)

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strange that we are letting out more heat however, we are setting records with heat lol. perhaps they are related.

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Heat records are short term weather, climate is long term physics.

Also interesting was the NASA result from a couple of months ago that the sun is going into a long term reduction in output, which could result in cooling for a few decades. The Russians predicted this a few years ago and the warming crowd laughed - but no more.

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strange that we are letting out more heat however, we are setting records with heat lol. perhaps they are related.

We are only setting records since we started recording them, which in real terms is no more than a blink of an eye when it comes to the climate.

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personally, i think the facts matter way more than who's presenting them, but fyi there are some allegations of bias:

from the yahoo article:

James M. Taylor is senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute

The Heartland Institute on SourceWatch

Greenpeace's ExxonSecrets website lists Heartland as having received $676,500 (unadjusted for inflation) from ExxonMobil between 1998 and 2006.
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Stealing the headling from BA "The Forbes article is based on a paper published in the journal Remote Sensing (PDF). The first author of this work is Roy Spencer ? one of the extremely few climate scientists who denies human-caused climate change, so more on him in a moment ? and his work has been shown to be thoroughly wrong by mainstream climate scientists."..

so i trust this "Data" as far as i can throw Roy Speeeenceeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrr

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I was following some of the links and looking around for info on Roy Spence, co-author of the report. I tripped across some charts of the max and min temperatures of Alabama. They show the highest/lowest temps of any weather station in the state. The numbers go back to 1884 and have stayed relatively the same for the last 116 years.

Alabama Temperatures - Max Temp - Min Temp

I realize that that's only one state but wouldn't global warming be reflected in something like this? The way people are talking, I'd expect the numbers to be up 2 - 3 degrees but they don't reflect that. And the winter's numbers are consistent, as well.

These are numbers that can't be skewed. The temps are what they are. I'd like to see more data like this compiled from all over the globe. Pick a bunch of locations and check their readings for the last 100+ years and see where the warming can be seen. If the world is truly warming, I'd like to see where.

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