Climate Skeptics and the rest of us will be praying that our Suns activity can take a rest holiday for several thousand years, because the 2014 start of the year climate bad news came in early. A UNSW team just published a study in Nature, that has upped the all important likely range of Climate Sensitivity, by improvements in the predicted behaviour of clouds with warming. Global warming has just become more certain.
See http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/31/planet-will-warm-4c-2100-climate
or http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/global-temperatures-to-increase-20140101-3055g.html
Here is what little I know about the importance of clouds in climate models. Clouds are important, because their upper area reflects higher frequency radiation from the sun back into space, stopping it from becoming the lower frequency kind that is trapped by greenhouse gases. It has been hard for climate scientists to model exactly how cloud behaviour will change at higher temperatures. Cloud formation isn't modelled directly, but is usually modelled using descriptive physical parameters in global circulation models, to avoid huge calculation overheads, even on the super-computers of today. These parameters change as average atmosphere water vapour content rises in the lower troposphere with global warming, and will vary in distribution around the globe, with latitude, air conditions, altitude, season and with underlying land or sea conditions. The total amount, location, duration and type of clouds affect the earth's radiation balance, by being a partial reflective shield from the sun.
The UNSW team indicates that many of the previous big climate models, and all previous future global warming predictions, used a range of values for cloud parameters that were too optimistic. The models then gave results that overestimated the amount of reflective cloud formation with increased global temperature. The new paradigm predicts that more solar radiation will arrive at the surface than before. This will lead to more global warming for the same amount of CO2 emissions, or increased climate sensitivity. It is a prediction of a bigger amplification feedback of global warming. Proponents of geo-engineering solutions by global aerosol spraying, will also have to adjust their numbers upwards.
This really puts a bit of a damper on Maurice Newman's climate change science denouncements in yesterdays (2013) "The Australian". - http://parracan.org/article/tony-abbott-maurice-newman-climate-science-denial-front-group-highest-level-australia
I can imagine that in the best human "shoot the messenger" tradition, the Coal-Ignition Abbott government will try to reduce funding to all Universities doing climate science research.
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