Scientists find evidence for climate change in satellite cloud record

a reply to: Bone75

But a far cry from the 125 meters climate change scientists are "predicting".

Please (cite) that prediction.

a reply to: Phage

Is that not what they're insinuating when they say the last time CO2 levels were this high sea levels were 125 meters higher than they are right now.

Personally I don't think that's even possible.

a reply to: Bone75

So, you made it up.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: Krakatoa

Sure sounds like they removed data, and only then saw it match up with the expected results in the simulations.

That's what happens when you look for keywords instead of reading and understanding what is actually said.

Trends are not data, they are the result of data analysis. Because of the wide variation in quality and type of data from various satellites previous techniques of analysis which did not take that variation into account showed trends that didn't make sense.

Wouldn't 30 years out of billions, just be a trend?

Norther America used to be covered by a glacier. Think about how much climate change that required, then the glacier was deported back to Canada, then it snuck back across the boarder only to be deported back, and then that sneaky tracker came back again. As of today, it was sent packing way up north, but someday it will come back. Probably through TPP

a reply to: thinline

Wouldn't 30 years out of billions, just be a trend?

That doesn't make much sense the way you worded it but I've heard the sentiment often enough. Two points:
1) We weren't here billions of years ago so it doesn't really matter to us what happened billions of years ago.
2) Just because climate changes without human influence, it does not mean that human influence does not affect the rate of change.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: Krakatoa

Unless I misunderstood the story as presented.

Yes. You pretty much did. No data was removed.

From the article

"After the spurious trends were removed

a reply to: cuckooold

I see. So the models that deniers always say are wrong are actually correct? Hmmmm... Interesting. Verrrrrry Interesting.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: thinline
2) Just because climate changes without human influence, it does not mean that human influence does not affect the rate of change.

This needs to be repeated over and over and over again until people finally let it sink in.

Everyone's getting hung up on the data manipulation. Can't we just all agree the earth's climate goes through changes? The real hangup is the "man-made" part. Earth's climate has changed throughout history. It's changing now. How is this not understandable by everyone?

originally posted by: Bone75
a reply to: Phage

Is that not what they're insinuating when they say the last time CO2 levels were this high sea levels were 125 meters higher than they are right now.

What the scientists are insinuating is that there is an enormous amount of climate change which is yet to occur on account of the greenhouse emissions which have already taken place.

Like heating the oceans and melting Greenland.

We just turned up the broiler to "Roast" but the dish has only been in the oven a few seconds.

Personally I don't think that's even possible.

Personally I think we should listen to people who study physical evidence for a living.

originally posted by: Krakatoa

The corrected data cannot be used for studies of globally averaged cloud change, however, because the methods employed remove any real cloud variability occurring on global scales together with spurious variability

Norris, Joel. R. (2014). Empirical Removal of Artifacts from the ISCCP and PATMOS-x Satellite Cloud Records

Have you read the source data or just the resulting synopsis? Taking this corrected data and attempting to use it in a long-term climate assessment was openly not recommended by the originator of the data.

Using "globally averaged cloud change" is not recommended---notice 'globally averaged'. Clearly, Norris and Evan, aren't saying "don't use this data for climate in any form", because otherwise why would they be doing the analysis?

Was "globally averaged cloud cover" used as a distinguishing statistic in the current climate analysis or not?

And do you realize that the lead author of the new climate paper in _Nature_, Joel R Norris, is the same lead author of the artifact removal paper whose admonition you quoted? Did he have sudden amnesia?

www.nature.com...

The origin of the problem is made clear in the abstract:

This is because observational systems originally designed for monitoring weather have lacked sufficient stability to detect cloud changes reliably over decades unless they have been corrected to remove artefacts4, 5

There is the matter of satellite instrumentation stability and cross-satellite instrument calibration---it is much harder technologically to maintain an absolute standard over decades vs a relative standard. Consider your digital camera. Can you guarantee that a certain absolute photon flux at a certain set of frequencies will always produce exactly the same signal? And your camera is in orbit for years, subject to strong heating/cooling cycles every orbit as well as high radiation and magnetospheric storms?

Climate change is inherently a long-term predictive process. In addition, the data set used was for a very short time as well.

1980's to 2000's, so from 21 to 30 years.

stand with my claim of "bad science" here.

Do you have anything more specific?

Perhaps you could address this with the editors of Nature if you believe so.

I believe this is extremely unlikely to be a problem---_Nature_ reviews are quite rigorous and it is likely that the anonymous reviewers had intimate knowledge of both climate models and processing of satellite data.

This episode also shows how skeptics who believe they are really well-meaning are virtually always out of their depth compared to professional scientists working in the field.

originally posted by: thinline

Norther America used to be covered by a glacier. Think about how much climate change that required, TPP

Interesting that you bring that up. The Milankovitch cycle (astronomical) which induces the Ice Ages resulted in a net decrease of solar forcing by 0.45 W/m^2. That is out of a total of 1366 W/m^2. There are other effects from eccentricity though.

The total anthropogenic heating forcing in the 20th century is substantially larger than 0.45 W/m^2 and there will be more coming.

So the level of external influence necessary to cause enormous climate shifts in the historical record is about the same magnitude or even less than that from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

Scientists have looked at these numbers decades ago---there is a reason why they are pretty damn concerned.

a reply to: Phage

If faulty data was used to construct the model, then shouldn't the model change along with the corrections in the data?