August Seas Warmest in at Least 120 Years

I don't disagree. But another month of record high temps simply adds to data which confirms that the climate is warming.

That does not seem to agree with the data tochatihu has provided.

That said, Roger Pielke Sr. does have some interesting theories on climate change, notably that global average temps aren't what we should be focusing on but the affects of other pollutants have a greater effect on local climates - so that instead of focusing primarily on CO2, other pollutants should be receiving more attention.

That said, he co-authored a paper which has an image which illustrates the effects of various pollutants, our knowledge of their effects and how much we believe those pollutants affect climate:



So it sees pretty clear that CO2 and CH2 (methane) have the largest warming affects and their effects are very well understood. So it makes sense to me that with that information we should be focusing on the pollutants that we understand the best and have the greatest effect on climate.

But it also makes sense that we should be investing in research into the effects of other, less understood pollutants as well.

Edit: Speaking of diverting attention to other pollutants:

Green Car Congress: Cutting Non-CO2 Pollutants Can Delay Abrupt Climate Change; The “Fast Action” Climate Agenda

 

I actually disagree regarding the significance of ocean surface temps, even if we get another month or more of warmer than normal SSTs. The surface temps may simply reflect circulation changes and may or may not represent what the climate overall is doing. Certainly 0-700 or 0-2000 meters of ocean heat is much more relevant.

That said, I agree Pielke has not discounted CO2 as having an effect on climate. And I agree with that. However, after following him for years, I think I can state a few points from his position as being:
a) CO2 is one of many anthropogenic forcing agents (some being positive and some negative, the net magnitude not fully known)
b) other natural variations / forcings may be as important or more important than CO2 and other anthropogenic factors
c) the precision of GCMs (climate models) is vastly overstated by the IPCC and over-relied upon by politicians.

With regard to the last point, one has only to look at the chart you presented that looks at the radiative forcing effects of various factors to see that 75% of the factors have a "very low level" of scientific understanding. And yet the Al Gore's of the world say "the science is settled". How can that be?

 

Pielke's own chart I posted above shows otherwise. The only one that may have as large an effect as the "well understood" greenhouse gases are aerosols - and they may have a large cooling effect.

The chart has error bars showing the possible magnitude variance. Even looking at the extreme ends of those bars, the well understood gases (aside from aerosols which I mentioned earlier) are by far the most significant. Maybe he's changed his stance since then (the paper was published in 2005) - I'm not sure.

BTW - did you not bother to read the link in my last post after my edit?

 

I wouldn't attribute the chart only to Pielke. My recollection is that it was produced as part of a NAS report on climate change, to which Pielke was a contributor. And just so I don't misquote him, here is what Pielke says about natural factors:

• Research has shown that the focus on just carbon dioxide as the dominate human climate forcing is too narrow. We have found that natural variations are still quite important, and moreover, the human influence is significant, but it involves a diverse range of first-order climate forcings, including, but not limited to the human input of CO2 (e.g. see NRC, 2005 and Kabat et al, 2004). These other forcings, such as land use change and from atmospheric pollution aerosols, may have a greater effect on our climate than the effects that have been claimed for CO2 (e.g. see);

Clearly too, as you (and Pielke) note, the effect of aerosols could be as great or greater than CO2, in the opposite direction.

My original comments are based on an email exchange I had with Dr. Pielke several years ago in which I suggested that CO2 may be responsible for something on the order of about 30% of climate change, to which he seemed to agree. However, in retrospect I will say it is not clear whether he meant he agreed it was 30% of the total or 30% of human-caused factors. Regardless, he does seem to believe natural factors to be "quite important".

 

In the interest of full disclosure, I have just read that there is an error from NODC in their dataset, so Ocean Heat Content apparently has NOT dropped as steeply as previously noted in the most recent month, although the relatively flat / unchanged level over the past several years still holds.



In other news, Sea Surface Temps have declined back to their "normal" range since the "record level" in August:



I wonder if the abrupt reversal of the August SSTs will get the same media coverage as the August "record". Somehow I doubt it.

 

Thanks Tim, could you also help me understand the y-axis label of your NODC charts? GJ/m^2 means gigajoules per square meter to me, and that just can't be right. A gigajoule is very large.

 

Apparently NODC provides its data in terms of 10^22 Joules, while KNMI provides Ocean Heat Content data in GJ/m^2. I can't speak to the details - but maybe someone more familiar with the data could.