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CO2 Emissions Link to Temperature Trends: A Quandary?

Two scientists from the Netherlands have published a paper in the International Journal of Climatology with results not consistent with models predictions (this paper is a follow-up to an earlier paper the authors had published that we covered a few years ago). de Laat and Maurellis note that greenhouse gas (GHG) warming should be observed at the surface, and indeed, such warming appears in the surface record of the past 25 years. However, they observe that “Climate models and theory predict that enhanced GHG warming should occur throughout the troposphere” but far less warming has been observed in the free troposphere than at the surface. They write “This discrepancy between surface and free tropospheric warming is a well-documented phenomenon” and “This discrepancy opens the possibility that other anthropogenic near-surface processes may have contributed to the observed surface temperature variations.”

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... Whatever the cause, the pattern of increasing temperature in places with the greatest emissions of greenhouse gases shows up prominently in both the thermometer-based surface temperature measurements and in the satellite-based measurements of lower-tropospheric temperatures. No such pattern is suggested by the numerical models of climate.

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In this current paper, the authors apply different statistical techniques to be certain the pattern is not some peculiar artifact of a particular procedure, but not matter what technique they use, the pattern shows up over and over in the empirical records. Furthermore, they find the pattern is stronger in winter than in summer and stronger at night than in the daytime.

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The explanation is elusive at this time, but the authors conclude “Anthropogenic heat is not the only process that can or may explain the correlation between temperature trends and industrial CO2 emissions. There are a few other possible processes that may play a role: changes in land use that could change the surface albedo and also soil moisture and thus the surface energy balance and also groundwater levels; absorbing aerosols like soot, cloud cover or cloud optical properties all are potentially plausible explanations.”

The pattern the uncovered is a reminder that not all warming in a record can be ascribed to the buildup of greenhouse gases. Something is happening in areas with high CO2 emissions that is causing the surface and lower-tropospheric temperatures to rise far more quickly than other areas of the earth. Whatever the cause, it is inflating the rise in temperature observed for the planet and should be considered in any attempt to identify the temperature response to elevated concentrations of greenhouse gases.

Surprisingly, the link spatially between CO2 emissions and the rise in temperature is not consistent with model predictions!

Source: World Climate Report » CO2 Emissions Link to Temperature Trends: A Quandary?

I'm not a climatologist, and I don't play one on television either, but I see something that seems a little obvious here. Maybe someone else can point out where my logic is flawed...

Could it be that the fact that the pattern is stronger in winter than in summer, and that it is stronger at night than in the daytime might actually reflect how people in urban and suburban areas heat their homes?

My limited experience seems to indicate that it's usually colder in the winter, and that despite the insulation of my home some of that coldness creeps into it, causing me to turn up the heat in the winter. Not only that, but I've also noticed that it's generally colder outside at night than during the day. And since I'm at home during the night, I keep the heat on then as well.

I heat my home with natural gas and with a fairly efficient wood stove. Both of these heating methods produce an abundance of CO2. They also produce an abundance of comfortable heat that wouldn't otherwise be introduced into the atmosphere. I mean really, if I wasn't burning those logs to produce heat the air wouldn't be getting any warmer now... would it? I'm forced to ask, is the comfortable warmth that I feel when I sit in front of the fire in my living room caused by the chemical energy released by the burning of the wood or is it caused by the CO2 that is being released into the air by that burning?

I think that this could explain why the temperature record around my home might show a trend toward warming, as compared to say the deep woods several miles away where I'm not burning wood to produce CO2 and excess heat. I think the fact that I don't heat my home during the summer might also explain why the temperature record around my home would reflect more unnatural warming during the winter than during the summer, and why there would be more relative warming at night than during the day.

If we want to consider areas with increased industrial CO2 emissions, we could simply note that a lot of power plants that produce electricity burn fossil fuels and thereby produce CO2. And people use the generated electricity for the same reasons I burn natural gas and wood during the winter and at night.

After all, if you are actually generating heat, say by making some electrical wires get very hot and warm a home through radiance, convection and conduction, that heat has to go somewhere. My bet is that some of it goes into the air in the home, and then leaks out through windows, and that some of it escapes even through the insulated walls and roof of the home.

Could it be that part of the warming trend might actually be caused by people trying to keep warm?  Or is that just "crazy talk"?

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