Climate Models Get Blindsided by Halo Effect

It's getting harder every day for climate modelers to explain why their models predict more warming than actually occurs. One of their excuses recently turned to vapour thanks to NASA GSFC scientists' work.

In their current analysis, Marshak and Varnai found that the bright sky effect was stronger on the sunlit sides of clouds or when the clouds were denser.

Because more light reflects off a denser or sunlit cloud, this suggests that the clear sky brightness near clouds is caused by extra light reflecting off the clouds sideways and then scattering again between the particles in the clear sky area before reaching the satellite. "It's essentially extra energy bouncing off the clouds that enhances the glow of the clear sky," he says.

This effect – called 3D radiative interaction – had been previously identified as a factor cranking up the sky's brightness, but the new data elevates it to the most important factor. This, in turn, means that many estimates of aerosol density may be plain wrong, because most clear sky analyses are close enough to clouds to be affected by the effect, says Marshak.

"Overestimating aerosol density means that climate models will be wrong if they assume a certain amount of aerosol is needed, when in fact it is less," says Varnai. "Given how much climate modelling relies on satellite data such as this, it is important that we figure out how to interpret it correctly." _NS

What this really means is that climate modelers do not understand the dynamics of Earth's heat balance well enough to model climate accurately. Richard Lindzen has an idea or two about where they may be going wrong.

The earth’s climate (in contrast to the climate in current climate GCMs) is dominated by a strong net negative feedback. Climate sensitivity is on the order of 0.3°C, and such warming as may arise from increasing greenhouse gases will be indistinguishable from the fluctuations in climate that occur naturally from processes internal to the climate system itself. _WattsUpWithThat

In other words, climate models over-predict heating because they have the feedbacks of Earth's normal heat dynamics completely backward. Modelers try to hide their mistake behind phantom particulates. But climate model predictions are diverging from real temperature observations more wildly every year. The grifters cannot obscure the real science forever -- even with clowns in the White House.

H/T Tom Nelson