Response to John Christy’s blog post regarding ‘Klotzbach Revisited’

Guest blog by Jos Hagelaars

Dr. John Christy wrote an extensive blog post as a response to my Dutch ‘Klotzbach Revisited’ post (English version here), it is published on “Staat van het Klimaat” and WUWT. I would like to thank Dr. Christy for his interest in my writings.

I have some remarks regarding Dr. Christy’s post, which are addressed in this ‘response-post’ and are built upon some quotes taken from Dr. Christy’s response.
For reference, the original Klotzbach et al 2009 paper (K-2009 in the text) can be found here and the correction paper (K-2010) can be found here.

“Klotzbach et al.’s main point was that a direct comparison of the relationship of the magnitude of surface temperature trends vs. temperature trends of the troposphere revealed an inconsistency with model projections of the same quantities.”

This ‘main point’ is not present at all in the K-2009 paper, the only reference to real data coming from a climate model in the paper is the amplification factor, which was ‘sort of obtained’ by Ross McKitrick from the GISS-ER model. In the abstract a short conclusion is given: “These findings strongly suggest that there remain important inconsistencies between surface and satellite records.”. No word about models.

In my opinion the main point of K-2009 is the suggestion that the surface temperature record is biased. One third of the paper is made up by paragraph 2 with the title: “Recent Evidence of Biases in the Surface Temperature Record”. K-2009 explicitly state:
In our current paper, we consider the possible existence of a warm bias in the surface temperature trend analyses …

Klotzbach Revisited

Guest blog by Jos Hagelaars. Dutch version here.

The average surface temperature of the earth, measured by ‘thermometers’, are released by a number of institutes, the most well-known of these datasets are GISTEMP, HadCRUT and NCDC. Since 1979 temperature data for the lower troposphere are released by the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and Remote Sensing Systems (RSS), which are measured by satellites.
The temperatures of these two methods of measurement show differences, for instance: the NCDC data indicate a trend over land of 0.27 °C/decade for the period 1979 up to and including 2012, while over the same period, the trend based upon the satellite data by UAH over land is significantly lower at 0.18 °C/decade. In contrast, the trends for global temperatures indicate much smaller differences, for NCDC and UAH these are respectively 0.15 °C/decade and 0.14 °C/decade for the same period.

Big deal? Almost everything related to climate is a ‘big deal’, so it is of no surprise that the same applies to these trend differences. In a warming world it is expected that the temperatures of the upper troposphere increase at a higher rate than at the surface, regardless of the cause of the warming. The satellite data (UAH and RSS) do not reflect this. Why is the upper troposphere expected to warm at a higher rate and what is the cause of these trend differences between the surface  and satellite temperatures?

The temperature gradient in the troposphere / the ‘lapse rate’

When you go up in the troposphere it gets colder. This is caused by the fact that rising air will cool down with increasing altitude due to a decrease in pressure with altitude, by means of so-called adiabatic processes. This temperature gradient is called the lapse rate, a concept one will frequently encounter in papers regarding the atmosphere in relation to climate. When the air is dry, this temperature drop is about 10 °C per km. When the air contains water vapor, this vapor will condense to water upon cooling as a result of the rising of the air, which releases heat of condensation. So in this way, heat is transported to higher altitudes and the temperature drop with height will decrease. For air saturated with water vapor, this vertical temperature drop is approximately 6 °C per km.

When the earth gets warmer, air can contain more water vapor. This also has an impact on the lapse rate, since more water vapor means more heat transfer to higher altitudes. This effect on the lapse rate is called the lapse rate feedback. More heat at higher altitudes implies that there will be more emission of infrared light, a negative feedback. This effect is particularly important in the tropics. At higher latitudes, the increase in temperature at the surface is dominant, therefore the change in the lapse rate will turn into a positive feedback. See figure 1 (adapted from the climate dynamics webpage of the University of Leuven).