Thread: Climate change negative feedback.

Nature can, selectively, buffer human-caused global warming, say scientists -- ScienceDaily

The report above describes a likely negative feedback machanism on global climuate change. It is based on cloud formation in the tropics, and results in a cooling effect to counter the warming effects of greenhouse gases.

I take no position on how true or false this idea may be, but it is of interest.

Methinks the person who wrote the description for Science Daily didn't read the paper. The abstract even.

The last sentences of the abstract read ....

Projected future SSTs appear to drive a temperature and water vapor response whose zonal structure is similar to the historical response. In the lower stratosphere, the changes in water vapor and temperature due to projected future SSTs are of similar strength to, though slightly weaker than, that due directly to projected future CO₂, ozone, and methane

If this projected projected response is "of similar strength to, though slightly weaker than, ..." the changes expected from greenhouse gases (other than water vapour), then this local buffering effect is not going to do much to affect global impacts.

Adelady

No one said it would have a major impact. What I find interesting is that respected climatologists have proposed a negative feedback machainsm exists. That is what is new.

Not new at all...it's been known as a possibility for more than 40 years. As this study shows however the data doesn't support that idea. Nor does another recent paper that looks at a large number of climate models and concludes that those that parameterize cloud impact as having little or even a positive feedback effect are turning out to validate better than others--the implication that sensitivity to doubling of CO2 is likely being underestimated and temperature changes likely to be at the high end of the ensemble estimates. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v505/n7481/full/nature12829.html


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Here's a relatively simple video by one of the authors that explains the results of the paper:
http://climatestate.com/2013/12/31/p...ientists-warn/