Climate models missing black carbon and resultant CO2 emission

20 11 2008

H/t to Leif Svalgaard

Savanna fires occur almost every year in northern Australia leaving behind black carbon that remains in soil for thousands of years. Provided by Grant Stone QCCCE
Click for larger image Grant Stone, QCCCE

Savanna fires occur almost every year in northern Australia, leaving behind black carbon that remains in soil for thousands of years.

(PhysOrg.com) — A detailed analysis of black carbon — the residue of burned organic matter — in computer climate models suggests that those models may be overestimating global warming predictions.
A new Cornell study, published online in Nature Geosciences, quantified the amount of black carbon in Australian soils and found that there was far more than expected, said Johannes Lehmann, the paper’s lead author and a Cornell professor of biogeochemistry. The survey was the largest of black carbon ever published.

As a result of global warming, soils are expected to release more carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere, which, in turn, creates more warming. Climate models try to incorporate these increases of carbon dioxide from soils as the planet warms, but results vary greatly when realistic estimates of black carbon in soils are included in the predictions, the study found.

Soils include many forms of carbon, including organic carbon from leaf litter and vegetation and black carbon from the burning of organic matter. It takes a few years for organic carbon to decompose, as microbes eat it and convert it to carbon dioxide. But black carbon can take 1,000-2,000 years, on average, to convert to carbon dioxide.

By entering realistic estimates of stocks of black carbon in soil from two Australian savannas into a computer model that calculates carbon dioxide release from soil, the researchers found that carbon dioxide emissions from soils were reduced by about 20 percent over 100 years, as compared with simulations that did not take black carbon’s long shelf life into account.

The findings are significant because soils are by far the world’s largest source of carbon dioxide, producing 10 times more carbon dioxide each year than all the carbon dioxide emissions from human activities combined. Small changes in how carbon emissions from soils are estimated, therefore, can have a large impact. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : No Comments »

Categories : Uncategorized

How not to measure temperature, part 74

19 11 2008

Sometimes, words fail me in describing the absolute disregard of the placement of NOAA official climate monitoring sites. For example, this one in Clarinda, Iowa submitted by surfacestations volunteer Eric Gamberg:

Click for larger image

The MMTS temperature sensor is the short pole next to the half pickup truck.

For those of you that don’t know, this station is located at the wastewater treatment plant there. I’ve written many times about the placement of stations at WWTP’s being a bad idea due to the localized heat bubble that is created due to all the effluent coming though. The effect is especially noticeable in winter. Often you’ll see steam/water vapor in the air around these sites in winter, and more than one COOP observer has told our volunteers that snow sometimes does not stick to the ground at WWTP’s.

The larger pole appears to be a gas burnoff torch for excess methane. I can’t say how often it is activated (note the automatic ignitor circuit on the pole) but I can tell you that putting an official NOAA climate thermometer within a few feet of such a device is one of the worst examples of thoughtless station placement on the part of NOAA I’ve ever seen. Here is an example of a methane burn-off device at another WWTP.

020806_methane_flare_pipes

click for larger image

We’ll probably never know what the true temperature is in Clarinda because untangling a measurements mess like this is next to impossible. How many days was Tmin and/or Tmax affected at this location by gas burnoff and to what magnitude? We shouldn’t have to ask these questions.

And, adding insult to stupidity, the GISTEMP Homogenization adjustment makes the trend go positive, especially in recent years: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 83 Comments »

Categories : climate_change, ridiculae, weather_stations

Update on the Verhojansk Russia Meteo station and data

18 11 2008

There’s been a lot of interest in this station from my post on “pipes”. Finding it from Google Earth has been a challenge since the lat/lon provided by meteorological agencies is rather coarse.

A number of commenters, especially Jeff C. and George M. have zeroed in with the help of land photos they’d discovered, such as this one from a travel company that offers trips to the “pole of cold”:

Stevenson Screen at Verhojansk Meteo Station looking ENE

Another image of the brown wood slat covered building which houses the office is here:


Click for larger image

Note the two pole barns in the distance from the Stevenson Screen photo and the field of view. It seems that we have located the station in the far northeast side of town at 67.565°N 133.413°E Here is the corresponding Google Earth image with my addition of the field of view lines: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 84 Comments »

Categories : weather_stations

Nevada USHCN Station Surveys are done

16 11 2008

Thanks to the work of dedicated volunteers, we continue to complete surveys of the 1221 USHCN climate stations in the USA. Last week thanks to a business trip, I was able to complete the final two stations in Nevada:  Wells, and Austin.

You can see all the Nevada USHCN station surveys here in my online database. Note that in the map above, Wendover is in UTAH, not Nevada. Some interesting things to note about Nevada USHCN stations that I learned:

  • With the exception of ASOS stations at airports, most USHCN stations are within a half mile or less (in some cases like Mina, less than 100 yards) from major highways and Interstates.
  • Even the most remote stations, such as Austin, are within a few feet of a building. All stations in Nevada are very near some type of human influence.
  • With the exception of some Stevenson Screens/mercury thermometers used as a backup all USHCN stations in Nevada have primary instruments converted either to MMTS or ASOS systems.
  • As you can see in the map above, there is a vast area not covered by USHCN stations.
  • Boulder City and Wells have closed in the last five years, but I surveyed them anyway to find out where the sensors had been placed.
  • The Nevada Department of Transportation has an extensive network of automated weather stations with better coverage than USHCN, but most of the data is short term and in all cases, measured within 50-100 feet of the roadway.
Loniestroad.jpg

US 50 "The Loneliest Road in America"

Nevada was one of the toughest states to complete, due to it’s size and the remoteness of some stations such as Austin, which is an old mining town along the “loneliest road in the USA”, US 50.

Volunteer Russ Steele surveyed a good number of stations last summer, Craig Limesand got Golconda, Chip Edin did Battle Mountain, and I surveyed the remainder.

Despite such tedious trips, there are personal rewards to this work. For example I shot some great photos on the way to Austin. This is US50 in central Nevada looking east:

us50-to-austin-nv-512
Click for larger image

And this superb sunset on the return trip after surveying Wells. I took this photo from the side of Interstate 80 just west of Lovelock:

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 72 Comments »

Categories : fun_stuff, weather_stations

GISS, NOAA, GHCN and the odd Russian temperature anomaly - “It’s all pipes!”

15 11 2008

UPDATE: A good photo of one of the Russian stations has been found, see below after the “read more” link.

As most readers know by now, the problematic GISTEMP global temperature anomaly plot for October is heavily weighted by temperatures from weather stations in Russia.

gistemp_after_october_correction

GISTEMP 11-12-08 - Click for larger image

Like in the USA, weather stations tend to be distributed according to population density, with the more populated western portion of Russia having more weather stations than the less populated eastern areas such as Siberia. To illustrate this, here is a plot of Russian Weather Station locations from the University of Melbourne:

russian_met_stations
Click picture for larger image, source image is here

Interestingly, the greatest magnitude of the GISTEMP anomaly plot for October is in these mostly unpopulated areas where the weather station density is the lowest. While I was pondering this curiosity, one of the WUWT readers, Corky Boyd, did a little research and passed this along in email:

…Posters at Watts Up have commented on the ongoing consistently high anomalous temperatures from Russia. I have noticed this too.  In light of the erroneously posted data for October, I took a look at the monthly NCDC climate reports back to January 2007.  By my eyeball estimate the results from Russia are almost all on the high side. .  Some I classified as very highs are massively high.  Of the 21 months reported, only 2 appeared to be below average.

Category 2007 2008 (9 months)
Very high                     6                        4
High                            3                        1
Average                      2                        3
Low                            0                        1
Very Low                    1                        0

Is there a way to validate or invalidate GISS data  by comparing it to RISS?   Does it strike you as odd that the verifiably erroneous data has shown up in the same area that was suspect in the first place?  Could there be a pattern?

Corky also sent along a series of images depicting global near surface and ocean temperature anomalies from NOAA. Here is the most recent one from September 2008: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 297 Comments »

Categories : Science, climate_change, weather_stations

Questions on the evolution of the GISS temperature product

14 11 2008


Blink comparator of GISS USA temperature anomaly - h/t to Zapruder

The last time I checked, the earth does not retroactively change it’s near surface temperature. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 416 Comments »

Categories : Science, climate_change

Weblog Awards

14 11 2008

Last year there was a crazy Florida style hanging chads-keep-voting-after-the deadline event pitting Climate Audit and Bad Astronomy and their legions of readers against one another. The judges declared a tie, after being unable to sort out the post deadline voting mess.

This year I hope they will have better quality control.

So here you go, nominate your favorite science blog (or any other blog type you frequent) and we’ll see if the voting goes smoothly, or if adjustments are needed at the end.

Ric Werme points out: Note from the nomination rules:

# The number of nominations a blog receives is irrelevant. One nomination is enough…
# Rather than add a “me too” nomination for a site you’re encouraged to use the “+” icon to indicate your preference for nominees. The “+” ratings are one extra piece of information the finalist selection panel can use to help generate the finalist slates in each category.

Have fun.


Comments : 23 Comments »

Categories : Announcements

GISS’s Gavin Schmidt credits WUWT community with spotting the error

13 11 2008

I was driving in the middle of Nevada when all this happened, and was offline the entire time. So I can’t claim any credit here.  But, it sure is nice to see that the collection of people who visit and post here have had an impact. I offer my particular thanks to WUWT contributor John Goetz. It seems Gavin agrees. I’m up early this morning on my trip back home, and I was quite surprised to find this on RC. See this comment from Gavin Schmidt on Real Climate:

You and McIntyre are mistaken. The first intimation of a problem was posted on Watt’s blog in the comments by ‘Chris’ at around 4pm EST. By 7pm in those comments John Goetz had confirmed that the NOAA file was the problem. Notifications to the GISTEMP team of a problem started arriving very shortly after that, and I personally emailed them that evening. However, no action was taken until the next morning because people had left work already. They had decided to take the analysis down before 8.14am (email time stamp to me) since the overnight update to the NOAA file (uploaded 4.30am) had not fixed the problem. McIntyre’s intervention sometime that morning is neither here nor there. Possibly he should consider that he is not the only person in the world with email, nor is he the only person that can read. The credit for first spotting this goes to the commentators on WUWT, and the first notification to GISTEMP was that evening. - gavin

John Goetz writes later in RC comments, it appears that Steve McIntyre at least raised the consciousnous level with his first blog posting: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 167 Comments »

Categories : Announcements

Corrected NASA GISTEMP data has been posted

12 11 2008

After GISS’s embarrasing error with replicating September temperatures in the October analysis, the NASA GISTEMP website was down for awhile today (at least for me).

This evening, the new gridded data was posted, and I generated a world temperature anomaly map with the new data. It clearly has some changes in it from the previous erroneous version.

See below:

gistemp_after_october_correction

GISTEMP 11-12-08 - Click for larger image

You can plot your own here at this link to GISTEMP’s map maker

Now compare the above corrected version with the erroneous one below: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 174 Comments »

Categories : Uncategorized

Another dumb climate stunt from NBC - climbing Kilimanjaro

11 11 2008

You may recall NBC’s Today show sending out their correspondents to all ends of the earth to highlight “climate change”.

'Today' host Matt Lauer reported from Jakobshavn Glacier in the Arctic last year.

‘Today’ host Matt Lauer reported from Jakobshavn Glacier in the Arctic last year.

Ann Curry headed to Antarctica for 'Today Heads to the Ends of the Earth'

Ann Curry headed to Antarctica for ‘Today Heads to the Ends of the Earth’

Well, they are at it again. From the New York Daily News:

“Today Goes to the Ends of the Earth,” kicking off on Nov. 17, will have anchors Matt Lauer, Meredith Vieira, Al Roker and Ann Curry headed to four different locations across the globe.

Each anchor’s location will not be revealed until the first day of the series, though Today show spokesman Jim Bell promises that anywhere is possible.

From my insider TV sources the TYSPY.com newsletter they tell me Ann Curry will be going to Mount Kilimanjaro: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 120 Comments »

Categories : climate_change, media, ridiculae

« Previous Entries