<div>
<p><span class="storyTitle"><font size="4">Five posts today is over the 2 or 3 a day informal limit... So that's it folks!</font></span></p>
<p><span class="storyTitle"><font size="4">--------------------------------------</font></span></p>
<p><span class="storyTitle"><font size="4">Deep Solar Minimum: NASA:</font></span></p></div>
<div><a href="http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/01apr_deepsolarminimum.htm">http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/01apr_deepsolarminimum.htm</a></div>
<div>--------------------</div>
<div>I don't mean to imply this solar minimum should be significantly cooling the oceans right now. The climate time lag effect must be considered. It takes time to warm the oceans, and also to cool them. But the solar forcing argument for current climate warming is not supported by data from satellite measurements of solar activity in recent decades:</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Page 11-14 at report below from NASA's climate scientist James Hansen on solar activity and climate:</div>
<div> </div>
<div><a href="http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2008/20080804_TripReport.pdf">http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2008/20080804_TripReport.pdf</a><br></div>
<div>Info on climate time lag effect:</div>
<div> </div>
<div><a href="http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climate-time-lag.html">http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climate-time-lag.html</a></div>
<div>--------------------</div>
<div>The record global ocean high temperature of the past few months is the result of decades of heat absorption by the oceans, from greenhouse gas warming, according to the NOAA led study referenced below:</div>
<div> </div>
<div><a href="http://climateprogress.org/2009/10/10/skeptical-science-global-warming-not-cooling-is-still-happening-ocean-heat-content/">http://climateprogress.org/2009/10/10/skeptical-science-global-warming-not-cooling-is-still-happening-ocean-heat-content/</a></div>
<div>
<p>The planet is heating up, thanks to human-generated emissions of greenhouse gases. But as a new NOAA-led study, “<a href="http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009JD012105.shtml"><font color="#339966">An observationally based energy balance for the Earth since 1950</font></a>” (subs. req’d, release <a href="http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/prrl/2009-24.html"><font color="#339966">here</font></a>) concluded:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[S]ince 1950, the planet released about 20 percent of the warming influence of heat-trapping greenhouse gases to outer space as infrared energy. Volcanic emissions lingering in the stratosphere offset about 20 percent of the heating by bouncing solar radiation back to space before it reached the surface. Cooling from the lower-atmosphere aerosols produced by humans balanced 50 percent of the heating. <strong>Only the remaining 10 percent of greenhouse-gas warming actually went into heating the Earth, and almost all of it went into the ocean.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Note that this <em>Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres</em> study was done “without using global climate models.”</p>
<p><img border="0" alt="" src="http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/Total-Heat-Content.gif"></p>
<p><em>Figure 1: “Total Earth Heat Content [anomaly] from 1950 (Murphy et al. 2009). Ocean data taken from <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7198/abs/nature07080.html" target="_self"><font color="#339966">Domingues et al 2008</font></a>.”</em></p>
<p><em>------------------------------------------</em></p>
<p><a href="http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009JD012105.shtml">http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009JD012105.shtml</a></p>
<p id="title">An observationally based energy balance for the Earth since 1950
<div style="DISPLAY: none" id="texttitle"> </div>D. M. Murphy
<p></p>
<p class="affiliation">Chemical Sciences Division, Earth System Research Laboratory, NOAA, Boulder, Colorado, USA</p>
<p class="author">S. Solomon</p>
<p class="affiliation">Chemical Sciences Division, Earth System Research Laboratory, NOAA, Boulder, Colorado, USA</p>
<p class="author">R. W. Portmann</p>
<p class="affiliation">Chemical Sciences Division, Earth System Research Laboratory, NOAA, Boulder, Colorado, USA</p>
<p class="author">K. H. Rosenlof</p>
<p class="affiliation">Chemical Sciences Division, Earth System Research Laboratory, NOAA, Boulder, Colorado, USA</p>
<p class="author">P. M. Forster</p>
<p class="affiliation">School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK</p>
<p class="author">T. Wong</p>
<p class="affiliation">NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia, USA</p>
<div class="abstract">
<p>We examine the Earth's energy balance since 1950, identifying results that can be obtained without using global climate models. Important terms that can be constrained using only measurements and radiative transfer models are ocean heat content, radiative forcing by long-lived trace gases, and radiative forcing from volcanic eruptions. We explicitly consider the emission of energy by a warming Earth by using correlations between surface temperature and satellite radiant flux data and show that this term is already quite significant. About 20% of the integrated positive forcing by greenhouse gases and solar radiation since 1950 has been radiated to space. Only about 10% of the positive forcing (about 1/3 of the net forcing) has gone into heating the Earth, almost all into the oceans. About 20% of the positive forcing has been balanced by volcanic aerosols, and the remaining 50% is mainly attributable to tropospheric aerosols. After accounting for the measured terms, the residual forcing between 1970 and 2000 due to direct and indirect forcing by aerosols as well as semidirect forcing from greenhouse gases and any unknown mechanism can be estimated as −1.1 ± 0.4 W m<sup>−2</sup> (1<i>σ</i>). This is consistent with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's best estimates but rules out very large negative forcings from aerosol indirect effects. Further, the data imply an increase from the 1950s to the 1980s followed by constant or slightly declining aerosol forcing into the 1990s, consistent with estimates of trends in global sulfate emissions. An apparent increase in residual forcing in the late 1990s is discussed. </p>
<p>------------------------------------------</p></div>
<p><em>Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett</em></p></p></div>