--> Abstract: Satellite Evidence against Global Warming Being Caused by Increasing CO2, by R. W. Spencer; #90090 (2009).

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Satellite Evidence against Global Warming Being Caused by Increasing CO2

Spencer, Roy W.1
1 Principal Research Scientist, University of Alabama - Huntsville, Huntsville, AL.

Eight years of the latest NASA satellite measurements of variations in both the Earth’s radiative budget, and in lower atmospheric temperature, suggest two important conclusions related to the global warming issue. The first is that the sensitivity of the climate system is much lower than the IPCC climate models suggest, that is, the climate system is dominated by negative feedbacks. A model analysis of the signals present in the satellite data reveals that previous satellite estimates of sensitivity were both too high, and too variable, because the contaminating effects of internal radiative forcing by clouds were not removed from the satellite data before diagnosing feedbacks. The claim that internal radiative forcing by clouds is large is demonstrated not only from its unique signature in the satellite data, but also from all 18 IPCC climate models that we analyzed, all of which show clear evidence of such cloud fluctuations. Since short-term feedbacks from satellite data are not necessarily the same as the long-term feedbacks associated with global warming, it is shown that the short-term feedbacks in several of the IPCC model also match their long-term feedbacks in response to greenhouse gas forcing. This is evidence that the satellite results apply to the global warming issue. If climate sensitivity is indeed low, then increasing carbon dioxide concentrations are insufficient to cause the observed warming in the last 100 years. An alternative explanation for the warming is provided in the form of satellite measurement of the modulation of global oceanic low cloud cover by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. The sign and magnitude of the observed cloud modulation by the PDO is exactly what our Monte Carlo experiments predicted would provide the best match to variations in global average temperatures since 1900. Taken together, these results suggest that the IPCC’s claim that global warming is mostly manmade is, at best, premature.

 

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90090©2009 AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition, Denver, Colorado, June 7-10, 2009