Bishop Hill And another!
Apr 17, 2013 Climate: sensitivity Troy Masters is reporting that he, like Nic Lewis, has a climate sensitivity paper about to be published. And he too finds that climate sensitivity is low (but slightly higher than Lewis), although the result is not particularly well constrained:
Climate sensitivity is estimated based on 0–2,000 m ocean heat content and surface temperature observations from the second half of the 20th century and first decade of the 21st century, using a simple energy balance model and the change in the rate of ocean heat uptake to determine the radiative restoration strength over this time period. The relationship between this 30–50 year radiative restoration strength and longer term effective sensitivity is investigated using an ensemble of 32 model configurations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5), suggesting a strong correlation between the two. The mean radiative restoration strength over this period for the CMIP5 members examined is 1.16 Wm−2K−1, compared to 2.05 Wm−2K−1 from the observations. This suggests that temperature in these CMIP5 models may be too sensitive to perturbations in radiative forcing, although this depends on the actual magnitude of the anthropogenic aerosol forcing in the modern period. The potential change in the radiative restoration strength over longer timescales is also considered, resulting in a likely (67 %) range of 1.5–2.9 K for equilibrium climate sensitivity, and a 90 % confidence interval of 1.2–5.1 K.
Troy's blog post is here.
Reader Comments (9)
This paper was accepted on 9 April so does not make the cut-off for possible inclusion in IPCC AR5 (unlike Nic's paper).
Thunderbirds are Go!
Here we see the "peer review alone can save us" wing of the Not-Very-Skeptical-At-All party.
Repeat after me: Peer review is what got you all to this point in climate science--utterly adrift.
Insanity is continuing to make the same error over and over, and expecting a different outcome (CO2 Climate Sensitivity is Zero).
Idiots.
How many papers are there that state a LOW climate sensitivity is the result of their research conclusions?
Maybe a list of them would be handy to show that a growing number of papers are coming to similar conclusions about the low level of climate sensitivity.
With the broad confidence limits on all these estimates I'll go with the spread betting approach and continue to expect an ECS in the 2.5C-3.5C range.
Stable gossip that the favorite is lame is changing the odds.
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Maybe a list of them would be handy to show that a growing number of papers are coming to similar conclusions about the low level of climate sensitivity.
Apr 17, 2013 at 4:42 PM | sunsettommy
The total paper count is probably over 50 by now. You'll find most of them in the reference list at the end of this review paper.
http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/knutti08natgeo.pdf
kim
Lots of money lost after listening to stable gossip.
It really saddens me that the great Bishop Hill blog has sunk to these depths. ALL climate sensitivity figures are estimates based on models and yet because some models give lower figures than others you are all jumping up and down and celebrating instead of realising that the new estimates are no more reliable than the old ones.
Until every factor influencing climate is fully understood, it is not possible to quantify the relative effect of any of the factors that we are currently aware of.
There are an increasing number of people posting on BH who are more interested in "winning the argument" than in whether or not they speak the truth, they will grasp at any straw that might weigh the argument in their favour.
I believe in the truth and nothing less even though right now we cannot see the truth.