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Joined: Aug 2006
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Thursday, August 02, 2007
By Steven Milloy

Himalayan glaciers are melting — but not nearly as fast as the fanciful notion of global warming will have you believe.

A new study in the Aug. 2 issue of the British science journal Nature found that the solid particles suspended in the atmosphere (called “aerosols”) that make up “brown clouds” may actually contribute to warmer temperatures — precisely the opposite effect heretofore claimed by global warming alarmists.

“These findings might seem to contradict the general notion of aerosol particles as cooling agents in the global climate system …,” concluded the Nature news article summing up the study.

Based on data collected by unmanned aerial vehicles over the Indian Ocean, researchers from the University of California, San Diego and NASA reported not only that aerosols warmed temperatures, but they also increased atmospheric heating by 50 percent. This warming, they say, may be sufficient to account for the retreat of the Himalayan glaciers.

Putting aside the fact that the Himalayan glaciers have been retreating since 1780 — some 70 years before the onset of the current post-Little Ice Age warming trend and 100 years before the onset of significant global industrialization — full appreciation of the significance of the researchers’ finding requires a brief trip down recent-memory lane, one, incidentally, that no media outlet reporting this finding bothered to make.

Hat tip to Dr. Roy who included a link to the summary from Nature.

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Well maybe. You have this:

http://www.physorg.com/news105010361.html

Quote:
Verdes calculated the amount of non-natural influence required to match the increases in temperature observed in the last 150 years. He plotted the influence over time. Then, he compared it to the evolution of greenhouse gasses, taking into account the cooling due to aerosols. With allowances for error, he found that influences attributable to greenhouse gasses mirror the graph of non-natural influence needed to explain the observed temperature increase of recent decades.


http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/08/070801-brown-clouds.html

Quote:
But the latest study suggests that aerosols can be responsible for regional warming. Specifically, the clouds of aerosols over India enhance atmospheric warming there by 50 percent.


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070801175711.htm

Quote:
Further, in cases where the synchronous state was followed by an increase in the coupling strength among the cycles, the synchronous state was destroyed. Then. a new climate state emerged, associated with global temperature changes and El Nino/Southern Oscillation variability.

The authors show that this mechanism explains all global temperature tendency changes and El Nino variability in the 20th century.


I don't know guys. Seems like the science is still not clear.



It's not Global Warming, it's Ice Age Abatement.
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But doesn't the IPCC say aerosols account for -0.5 W m2 of radative forcing??? http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

I guess that doesn't apply in Southeast Asia.....

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Canuck,
I got a "connection timed out" error when I tried to access the listing you posted. Do you have any better luck?

Amaranth


If you don't care for reality, just wait a while; another will be along shortly. --A Rose

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Hi Amaranth - it's a direct link to the IPCC website. I just tried to call up their homepage http://www.ipcc.ch/ and got the 404 error as well......I think they're down for the time being. That is the proper address though

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I think the point here is that there are several different aerosols. The IPCC report may be simply giving the average forcing for them all, but if the concentration of one type goes up relative to the others, then there will be a change. These brown clouds are just an example. Here in Sudbury, the amount of sulpher dioxide levels in the air was reduced gradually over the years from the smelting operations. That too will have an impact especially in the early 1990s when regulations required a large drop in emissions. I wonder if the IPCC average forcing for aerosols will need to be recalculated.

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That's what I was getting at as well.

As far as I know, the negative forcing of the aerosols was introduced into GCMs to replicate the cooling observed from the 1940's-1970's. I believe it was largely focused on sulphate aerosols, which was surmised to cause a cooling effect, by aiding in cloud formation, which increases the reflectivity of the globe. Now, it's been shown that aerosols (particulate) will also heat the atmosphere. Who woulda thunk it - dark coloured dust absorbing longwave radiation (and likely shortwave as well).

This is just another example of modellers "cranking the knob" in GCMs, without understanding the underlying processes.

Any other type of simulation model is calibrated to a specific time frame, then validated to another time frame - for the specific reason of testing whether the fundamental understanding is correct. It seems this isn't the case for GCMs.


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