A new study from Scripps at UC San Diego claims proof of greenhouse gas warming by means of changes to the clouds. The paper is behind a paywall, so the reasoning is not accessible, but the media releases will ensure wide repetition.

From the news release July 11, 2016 (here)
Clouds Are Moving Higher, Subtropical Dry Zones Expanding, According to Satellite Analysis
Scripps-led study confirms computerized climate simulations projecting effects of global warming

Inconsistent satellite imaging of clouds over the decades has been a hindrance to improving scientists’ understanding. Records of cloudiness from satellites originally designed to monitor weather are prone to spurious trends related to changes in satellite orbit, instrument calibration, degradation of sensors over time, and other factors.

When the researchers removed such artifacts from the record, the data exhibited large-scale patterns of cloud change between the 1980s and 2000s that are consistent with climate model predictions for that time period, including poleward retreat of mid-latitude storm tracks, expansion of subtropical dry zones, and increasing height of the highest cloud tops. These cloud changes enhance absorption of solar radiation by the earth and reduce emission of thermal radiation to space. This exacerbates global warming caused by increasing greenhouse gas concentrations.

The researchers drew from several independent corrected satellite records in their analysis. They concluded that the behavior of clouds they observed is consistent with a human-caused increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and a planet-wide recovery from two major volcanic eruptions, the 1982 El Chichón eruption in Mexico and the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines. Aerosols ejected from those eruptions had a net cooling effect on the planet for several years after they took place.

Barring another volcanic event of this sort, the scientists expect the cloud trends to continue in the future as the planet continues to warm due to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. (My bolds)

Another Example of Lop-sided Myopia and Confirmation Bias

The report above violates basic physics, resulting in a gross distortion. Two points are critical. When it comes to clouds, the greenhouse gas that matters is H2O, not CO2. Any IR effects are 96% due to the presence of water vapor and the droplets in the clouds.

And even more importantly, as Dr. Salby illustrated (here), the net effect from clouds is cooling, not warming.

Net cloud forcing is then −15 W m−2. It represents radiative cooling of the Earth-atmosphere system. This is four times as great as the additional warming of the Earth’s surface that would be introduced by a doubling of CO2. Latent heat transfer to the atmosphere (Fig. 1.32) is 90 W m−2. It is an order of magnitude greater. Consequently, the direct radiative effect of increased CO2 would be overshadowed by even a small adjustment of convection (Sec. 8.7).

This is confirmed by other researchers, such as I. Koren, G. Dagan, and O. Altaratz. From aerosol-limited to invigoration of warm convective clouds. Science, 2014; 344 (6188) here.

They then looked at another source of data: that of the Clouds’ and Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) satellite instruments which measure fluxes of reflected and emitted radiation from Earth to space, to help scientists understand how the climate varies over time. When analyzed together with the aerosol loading over the same area at the same time, the outcome, says Koren, was a “textbook demonstration of the invigoration effect” of added aerosols on clouds. In other words, the radiation data fit the unique signature of clouds that were growing higher and larger. Such clouds show a strong increase in cooling due to the reflected short waves, but that effect is partly cancelled out by the enhanced, trapped, long-wave radiation coming from underneath. (My bold)

More info on clouds is here:Climate Partly Cloudy 

Summary

Once again, atmospheric physics is willfully distorted in order to get a headline and burnish credentials in support of man-made climate change. They promote a myopic and lop-sided picture to frighten a public mostly ill-equipped to see through their mumbo-jumbo.

Every day there are reports like this:

An annual breach of 2 degrees could happen as soon as 2030, according to climate model simulations, although there’s always the chance that climate models are slightly underestimating or overestimating how close we are to that date. Writing with fellow meteorologist Jeff Masters for Weather Underground, Bob Henson said the current spike means “we are now hurtling at a frightening pace toward the globally agreed maximum of 2.0°C warming over pre-industrial levels.”

That abstract, mathematically averaged world, the subject of so much media space and alarm, has almost nothing to do with the world where any of us live. Because nothing on our planet moves in unison.

Start with the hemispheres:

Notice that the global temperature tracks with the seasons of the NH. The reason for this is simple. The NH has twice as much land as the Southern Hemisphere (SH). Oceans have greater heat capacity and do not change temperatures as much as land does. So every year when there is almost a 4 °C swing in the temperature of the Earth, it follows the seasons of the NH. This is especially interesting because the Earth gets the most energy from the sun in January right now. That is because of the orbit of the Earth. The perihelion is when the Earth is closest to the sun and that currently takes place in January.

Using round numbers, the Northern Hemisphere (NH) half of the total surface combines 20% land with 30% ocean, while the SH comprises 9% land with 41% ocean. With the oceans having huge heat capacities relative to the land, the NH has much more volatility in temperatures than does the SH. But more importantly, the trends in multi-decadal warming and cooling also differ.

Climates Are Found Down in the Weeds

The top-down global view needs to be supplemented with a bottom-up appreciation of the diversity of climates and their changes.

 

The ancient Greeks were the first to classify climate zones. From their travels and sea-faring experiences, they called the equatorial regions Torrid, due to the heat and humidity. The mid-latitudes were considered Temperate, including their home Mediterranean Sea. Further North and South, they knew places were Frigid.

Based on empirical observations, Köppen (1900) established a climate classification system which uses monthly temperature and precipitation to define boundaries of different climate types around the world. Since its inception, this system has been further developed (e.g. Köppen and Geiger, 1930; Stern et al., 2000) and widely used by geographers and climatologists around the world.

Köppen and Climate Change

The focus is on differentiating vegetation regimes, which result primarily from variations in temperature and precipitation over the seasons of the year. Now we have an interesting study that considers shifts in Köppen climate zones over time in order to identify changes in climate as practical and local/regional realities.

The paper is: Using the Köppen classification to quantify climate variation and change: An example for 1901–2010
By Deliang Chen and Hans Weiteng Chen
Department of Earth Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Hans Chen has built an excellent interactive website (here): The purpose of this website is to share information about the Köppen climate classification, and provide data and high-resolution figures from the paper Chen and Chen, 2013: Using the Köppen classification to quantify climate variation and change: An example for 1901–2010 (pdf)

The Köppen climate classification consists of five major groups and a number of sub-types under each major group, as listed in Table 1. While all the major groups except B are determined by temperature only, all the sub-types except the two sub-types under E are decided based on the combined criteria relating to seasonal temperature and precipitation. Therefore, the classification scheme as a whole represents different climate regimes of various temperature and precipitation combinations.

Main characteristics of the Köppen climate major groups and sub-types:

Major group	Sub-types
A: Tropical	Tropical rain forest: Af Tropical monsoon: Am Tropical wet and dry savanna: Aw, As
B: Dry	Desert (arid): BWh, BWk Steppe (semi-arid): BSh, BSk
C: Mild temperate	Mediterranean: Csa, Csb, Csc Humid subtropical: Cfa, Cwa Oceanic: Cfb, Cfc, Cwb, Cwc
D: Snow	Humid: Dfa, Dwa, Dfb, Dwb, Dsa, Dsb Subarctic: Dfc, Dwc, Dfd, Dwd, Dsc, Dsd
E: Polar	Tundra: ET Ice cap: EF

Temporal Changes in Climate Zones

This study used a global gridded dataset with monthly mean temperature and precipitation, covering 1901–2010, which was produced and documented by Kenji Matsuura and Cort J. Willmott from Department of Geography, University of Delaware. Station data were compiled from different sources, including Global Historical Climatology Network version 2 (GHCN2) and the Global Surface Summary of Day (GSOD).The data and associated documentations can be found at http://climate.geog.udel.edu/climate/html_pages/Global2011/. 

In the maps below, the Köppen classification was applied on temperature and precipitation averaged over shorter time scales, from interannual to decadal and 30 year. The 30 year averages were calculated with an overlap of 20 years between each sub-period, while the interannual and decadal averages did not have overlapping years. Black regions indicate areas where the major Köppen type has changed at least once during 1901–2010 for a given time scale. Thus, the black regions are likely to be sensitive to climate variations, while the colored regions identify spatially stable regions.

 

Major group Time scales
Interannual (%) Interdecadal (%) 30-year (%)
A                45.5                    89.0                 94.2
B                45.1                    85.2                 91.8
C                35.3                    77.4                 87.3
D                30.0                    83.3                 91.0
E                78.2                    92.8                 96.2

The table and images show that most places have had at least one entire year with temperatures and/or precipitation atypical for that climate.  It is much more unusual for abnormal weather to persist for ten years running.  At 30-years and more the zones are quite stable, such that is there is little movement at the boundaries with neighboring zones.

Over time, there is variety in zonal changes, albeit within a small range of overall variation:

Chen and Chen Conclusions

By using a global gridded temperature and precipitation data over the period of 1901–2010, we reached the following conclusions:

• Over the whole period (1901–2010), the mean climate distributions have a comparable pattern and portion with previous estimates. The five major groups A, B, C, D, E take up 19.4%, 28.4%, 14.6%, 22.1%, and 15.5% of the total land area on Earth respectively. Since the relative changes of the areas covered by the five major groups are all small on the 30 year time scale, the agreement indicates that the climate dataset used overall is of comparable quality with those used in other studies.
• On the interannual, interdecadal, and 30 year time scales, the climate type for a given grid may shift from one type to another and the spatial stability decreases towards shorter time scales. While the spatially stable climate regions identified are useful for conservation and other purposes, the instable regions mark the transition zones which deserve special attention since they may have implications for ecosystems and dynamics of the climate system.
• On the 30 year time scale, the dominating changes in the climate types over the whole period are that the arid regions occupied by group B (mainly type BWh) have expanded and the regions dominated by arctic climate (EF) have shrunk along with the global warming and regional precipitation changes.

Summary: The Myth of “Global” Climate Change

Climate is a term to describe a local or regional pattern of weather. There is a widely accepted system of classifying climates, based largely on distinctive seasonal variations in temperature and precipitation. Depending on how precisely you apply the criteria, there can be from 6 to 13 distinct zones just in South Africa, or 8 to 11 zones only in Hawaii.

Each climate over time experiences shifts toward warming or cooling, and wetter or drier periods. One example: Fully a third of US stations showed cooling since 1950 while the others warmed.  It is nonsense to average all of that and call it “Global Warming” because the net is slightly positive.  Only in the fevered imaginations of CO2 activists do all of these diverse places move together in a single march toward global warming.