The headline in the Arizona Daily Star reads: “UA study: Warming oceans will also speed ice melting.” The press release from the University of Arizona reads: “Warming ocean layers will undermine polar ice sheets.”

What is really interesting is the first two paragraphs of the press release:

Warming of the ocean’s subsurface layers will melt underwater portions of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets faster than previously thought, according to new University of Arizona-led research. Such melting would increase the sea level more than already projected. [emphasis added.]

The research, based on 19 state-of-the-art climate models, proposes a new mechanism by which global warming will accelerate the melting of the great ice sheets during this century and the next.

So what is wrong with this? When water freezes, it expands, that is why ice floats; ice is less dense than an equal weight of liquid water. The researchers claim that melting of underwater ice will increase sea level. But the underwater ice is already displacing a certain volume of water. When the underwater ice melts, the resulting water will occupy a smaller volume than the ice did. How can that cause sea level to increase?

Will scientists clinging to the orthodoxy of the global warming religion say anything to get research grants?

Other research questions the basic premise of the UofA research: is the ocean warming?

See: More Evidence that Global Warming is a False Alarm: A Model Simulation of the last 40 Years of Deep Ocean Warming

Sea also:

Science Fiction from the University of Arizona?

Sea level rising?

Size matters in sea level studies

Sea Level Rise in the South Pacific – None

A soon to be published research paper from the University of Arizona states that rising sea levels will flood our southeast coast. The press release is titled: “Rising seas will affect major US coastal cities by 2100.” The research was conducted by Jeremy Weiss, a doctoral candidate in geosciences, Jonathan Overpeck, professor of geosciences and of atmospheric sciences and co-director of UA’s Institute of the Environment, and Ben Strauss of Climate Central in Princeton, N.J.

The press release says that greenhouse gas emissions will cause warming which will raise sea level by at least one meter by the year 2100. It also says that “warming will likely lock us into at least 4 to 6 meters of sea-level rise in subsequent centuries…”

In my opinion, this study is nothing more than speculative science fiction with little factual basis and it presents just another scary scenario that begs for government grant money.

I emailed Mr. Weiss asking for information on their sea level projections and asked this question: “What specific physical evidence do you have that carbon dioxide has a significant effect on global temperature?” He emailed some references to me (see below).

  On Sea Level

For sea level to rise one meter by 2,100 would require the current rate of sea level rise to more than triple beginning this year and continue for 89 years. For a review on measurements of sea level, see my blog: Sea Level Rising. Research documented in that article shows that sea level, as measured by world-wide tidal gauges, was rising 2.03 ± 0.35 mm/yr from 1904-1953 and 1.45 ± 0.34 mm/yr from 1954-2003. Satellite measurements indicate a rate of 3.2 mm/yr since 1994 with a decreasing rate since 2006. The apparent discrepancy between tidal gauges and satellite measurement is due to the fact that sea level rise is cyclic and the satellites started measuring at the bottom of a rising cycle. However, even using the higher number, it would require tripling of the currant rate of rise to produce a one meter sea level change by 2100.

In the press release, Weiss claimed to use “the most recent sea-level-rise science…” He referred me to two papers:

Pfeffer WT, Harper JT, O’Neel S (2008) Kinematic constraints on glacier contributions to 21st-century sea-level rise. Science 321:1340-1343.

The Pfeffer research was a computer modeling study but with no actual measurements. The abstract reads in part, “We find that a total sea-level rise of about 2 meters by 2100 could occur under physically possible glaciological conditions but only if all variables are quickly accelerated to extremely high limits. More plausible but still accelerated conditions lead to total sea-level rise by 2100 of about 0.8 meter.”

The other paper was: Vermeer M, and Rahmstorf S., 2009, Global sea level linked to global temperature. P Natl Acad Sci USA 106:21527-21532. This too is essentially computer modeling. I found two critiques of the Vermeer-Rahmstorf paper, one in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says their math was wrong; the other by a Senior Scientist at the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory lists multiple problems, including using out of date data and bad math.

Greenhouse gases and global warming

The “greenhouse effect” is this: solar radiation penetrates the atmosphere and warms the surface of the earth. The earth’s surface radiates thermal energy (infrared radiation) back into space. Some of this radiation is absorbed and re-radiated by clouds, water vapor, methane, carbon dioxide, and other gases. Water vapor is the principle greenhouse gas; the others are minor players. Without the greenhouse effect the planet would be an iceball, about 34 C colder than it is.

Since the press release said that greenhouse gas emissions (i.e., carbon dioxide) were responsible for the warming that would raise sea levels, I asked Mr. Weiss, “What specific physical evidence do you have that carbon dioxide has a significant effect on global temperature?”

At first, he emailed reference to two old textbooks and referred specifically to a chapter in one of them. I found that book online via Google Books. That chapter discusses the theoretical basis for climate modeling but presents no physical evidence to support the theory.

I asked again for sources and Mr. Weiss emailed links to abstracts of several papers in the scientific literature. It often requires a paid subscription to find the full paper online, but I did find some of them. Here are my comments on the papers Mr. Weiss referred to.

1. Harries, J.E., Brindley, H.E., Sagoo, P.J. and Bantges, R.J. 2001. Increases in greenhouse forcing inferred from the outgoing longwave radiation spectra of the Earth in 1970 and 1997. Nature 410: 355-357.

2. Jennifer A. Griggs and John E. Harries, “Comparison of spectrally resolved outgoing longwave data between 1970 and present”, Proc. SPIE 5543, 164 (2004); doi:10.1117/12.556803

These two papers use satellite data to compare the strength of the greenhouse effect at two different times. A review from CO2Science.org says:

Harries et al. (2001) analyzed the difference between the spectra of outgoing longwave radiation obtained by two orbiting spacecraft that looked down upon the earth at periods of time separated by a span of 27 years. The data utilized were obtained over a specific area in the central Pacific (10°N-10°S, 130°W-180°W) and a “near-global” area of the planet (60°N-60°S). The data were further constrained by masking out land/island areas and areas believed to contain clouds.

The results of their analysis showed a number of differences in the land-masked and cloud-cleared data, which the authors attributed to changes in atmospheric concentrations of CH4, CO2, O3, CFC-11 and CFC-12 that occurred over the 27-year period separating the times of their two sets of measurements. Hence, they concluded their results provided “direct experimental evidence for a significant increase in the earth’s greenhouse effect” over the 27-year time interval. Such a conclusion, however, is somewhat misleading, for it does not provide direct experimental evidence for a significant increase in earth’s total greenhouse effect. It does so only for the cloud-free part of the atmosphere located over a portion of the planet’s oceans. Furthermore, research that has been conducted on the cloudy portion of the atmosphere over the oceans has revealed the presence of a highly negative feedback phenomenon that is capable of totally overpowering any temperature increase forced by the rise in greenhouse gases.

Furthermore, the attribution of cause is without supporting evidence. This is interpretation bias. Another review explains interpretation bias and cites other studies which show why the Harries conclusion is unjustified.

 3. Wang, K., and S. Liang (2009), Global atmospheric downward longwave radiation over land surface under all-sky conditions from 1973 to 2008, J. Geophys. Res., 114, D19101, doi:10.1029/2009JD011800.

These researchers estimated the downward longwave radiation over land for the period 1973 to 2008. The concluding sentence from their abstract: “The rising trend results from increases in air temperature, atmospheric water vapor, and CO2 concentration.” What did they expect? When the surface warms from any cause, we should expect these results. The results still provide no evidence on the significance of carbon dioxide emissions.

4. Evans, W.F.J. and Puckrin, E., 2009, Measurements of the Radiative Surface Forcing of Climate, JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 114, D17107, 14 PP., 2009 doi:10.1029/2009JD012105.

The introduction says that these researchers used infrared spectrometers to measure the individual radiative flux of “a number of greenhouse gases”: CFCs, methane, nitrous oxide, carbon monoxide, carbon tetrachloride, nitrous oxide, and tropospheric ozone. Carbon dioxide is not mentioned, but they do show carbon dioxide in some tables. To obtain the greenhouse flux of individual gases, they used a simulation of the atmosphere. The researchers say that the total greenhouse radiation (excluding water vapor) has increased by 3.5 watts per square meter since pre-industrial times. They also say that the radiation from water vapor has doubled to over 200 watts per square meter. These data suggest that other than water vapor, other greenhouse gases in totality are minor players.

Dr. Roy Spencer, a NASA scientist, explains in a blog why measurements such as those obtained by Evans do not really show what they are claimed to show.

5. Murphy, D.M., et al., 2009, An observationally based energy balance for the Earth since 1950, JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 114, D17107, 14 PP., 2009, doi:10.1029/2009JD012105.

This paper deals with the authors’ estimate of earth’s energy balance and the assumed forcings and feedbacks of atmospheric components. The Spencer comments above and in this article apply. This paper provides no physical evidence that carbon dioxide has a significant effect on temperatures.

The bottom line here is that Mr. Weiss could not provide unequivocal evidence to support the thesis. A point not addressed by any of the papers which mentioned some effect of carbon dioxide is that human emissions of carbon dioxide make up less than 5% of the total amount in the atmosphere. This makes the claim that human emissions are causing warming even more spurious. Much of science is speculation which investigates the what-ifs, but so is science fiction.

The headline from the University of Arizona News, and many other news outlets said, “Twentieth-Century Warming in Lake Tanganyika is Unprecedented.” The headline from Brown University press release (home of the lead author) said, “Brown Geologists Show Unprecedented Warming in Lake Tanganyika.”

Well, not exactly. The title of the study referred to is “Late-twentieth-century warming in Lake Tanganyika unprecedented since AD 500,” published in Nature Geoscience (16 May 2010). Even that more modest claim doesn’t tell the whole story.

First some background. Lake Tanganyika occurs within the East African Rift, which is a divergent tectonic plate boundary that is gradually separating East African countries from the main continent. The rift contains both active and dormant volcanoes. The lake is 418 miles long and 45 miles wide. Its average depth is 1,870 feet with a maximum depth of 4,820 feet. Portions of the lake are claimed by Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, and Zambia. Fishing the lake provides a major food source for people in the surrounding lands. There is concern that lake warming will disrupt the fish supply.

The abstract of the paper concludes, “Our records indicate that changes in the temperature of Lake Tanganyika in the past few decades exceed previous natural variability. We conclude that these unprecedented temperatures and a corresponding decrease in productivity can be attributed to anthropogenic global warming, with potentially important implications for the Lake Tanganyika fishery.”

The questions I had upon reading this were: 1) Are the temperatures really unprecedented? 2) Do they exceed natural variability? 3) What is the evidence that the warming was caused by anthropogenic global warming? 4) Could there be some other cause of fish decline?

The researchers studied lake sediment cores going back 60,000 years and by using proxies deduced a temperature record for the lake surface temperature. In the current study, the researchers said that during the last 1,500 years, temperature varied between 22.5º C and 25.7º C, and that in the last 50 years the temperature rose by 1.6º C.

However, in 2008, these same researchers published a paper in Science (Vol. 322. no. 5899, pp. 252 – 255) which said the lake surface temperature fluctuated between 27° and 29°C over the last 60,000 years according to their interpretation of lake sediment cores.

I emailed a co-author of the paper, a UofA professor, asking for an explanation of this apparent discrepancy. He replied by referring me to the website of the lead author at Brown University. There, she explained that there was a problem in calibration of the temperature proxies. She presents a graph showing the records after recalibration. It is reproduced below. It should be noted that there are two separate core sample locations. The more recent core was taken closer to shore than the older, longer record. The more recent record initially shows cooler temperatures where the two records overlap. The researchers attribute this discrepancy to upwelling cold water from deeper in the lake. So which record is closer to the real surface temperature?

According to the lead author’s own data as shown on the graph, it is obvious that the current temperatures are not unprecedented, nor do they exceed natural variability. The title of their paper is technically correct only if one accepts cherry-picking start dates.

That leaves the question about the cause of the warming. The UofA scientist replied to my email, “our record only demonstrates a lake surface temperature history, not the cause of that history.” The allegation of an anthropogenic cause, a major conclusion of the paper, was made without any supporting evidence, just speculation.

I am wondering why the paper abstract contains the conclusions it does. Is it time for some scary scenarios to promote more study and more funding?

This whole study purports to be about lake surface temperatures, but it contains very few such measurements from the lake surface. From my reading, the researchers deduce surface temperatures from only two core sample locations. As the NOAA satellite graphic below shows, on any given day, at any given time, the variation in lake surface temperature can be as much as 4º C in different parts of the lake, and that equals or exceeds the entire range of temperatures found in the studies. It would seem, therefore, that any temperature record derived from sediment cores could vary greatly depending on location. Since this study had just two sample locations, it makes one wonder if it gives a true representation of actual conditions.

And about the fish. The current paper says that warming is causing a decline in fish abundance. Yet an earlier study, of which the UofA scientist was a co-author, says the fish decline is caused by land disturbance. “Watershed deforestation, road building, and other anthropogenic activities result in sediment inundation of lacustrine habitats.” “Our faunal analyses suggest that all three taxonomic groups are negatively affected by sediment inundation but may have varying response thresholds to disturbance.” (Citation: Conservation Biology, vol. 13, no. 5, Oct. 1999).