Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Study finds global warming from natural cloud changes is more than 3 times greater than from 'greenhouse gases'

A peer-reviewed paper published in The Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics finds that natural changes in global cloud cover over the 21 year period 1983-2004 are responsible for at least 3 times as much global warming as has been attributed to greenhouse gases over the 104 year period of 1900-2004. The paper finds the decrease in reflectance from clouds (albedo) over only the past 21 years has accounted for a change in solar energy delivered to the Earth surface of ~ 7W/m2, whereas all greenhouse gases are claimed to only account for (assuming you believe the IPCC) a ~ 2.4 W/m2 change over a much longer 104 year period. The paper also finds that climate models do not account for these cloud changes, that cloud changes are much more variable than previously thought, and that the cloud changes are not man-made or related to greenhouse gases. The author of the paper has provided a pdf presentation of these findings, excerpted below:




Graph shows change in solar energy impacting the Earth's surface due to natural changes in cloud cover, with a peak around 1997-1998 and drop thereafter, directly corresponding to changes in global temperature seen in the Hockey Schtick header.



Note graph in this slide and the attached paper is an inverse representation of the graph in the prior slide

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