22 thoughts on “Albedo regulation of Ice Ages, with no CO2 feedbacks”

  1. The chart from ice cores data of temperature vs CO2 through the ice ages showing how CO2 follows temperature was always a clincher for me that the IPCC had it wrong.
    I have not seen the dust correlation included before. Assume this is published somewhere and I have missed it.

  4. This is a very convincing and far-ranging argument by Ralph Ellis and he even manages to include the effects of clouds into the mix. The Ice Ages, temperature maximum limits and CO2 variation certainly impede the CAGW CO2 theories. I hope this reaches WUWT also.

  5. You are on the right track with albedo.

    What needs to be addressed is the elevation problem. Much of the Laurentide icesheet was, at maximum, in the region of 2km thick, which due to the lapse rate makes it roughly 10C cooler than the surface without ice. If changes in air temperature caused the icesheet melt, then they would have to warm around that 10C mark. Far beyond what is proposed for Milankovich cycles and GHGs. Ergo these factors could not have melted the icesheets. In fact increasing air temperatures is an effect, not a cause.

    If air temperatures didn’t cause the icesheet melt, albedo changes must have.

    The ignored albedo factor is soot deposition. As sea levels fall coastal swamps dry out and then catch fire from lightning as we see currently in SE Asia. Although most of the current swamp drainage is man made. These then burn for decades.

    Bear in mind that around glacial maximum vast areas currently underwater were low lying swamps. Around 2 million sq km in the South China Sea alone.

    Soot deposition from burning swamps will cause quasi-periodic advance/retreat of icesheets over different timescales, which explains the significant advance retreat over shorter periods of thousands of years, as well as around 100k years. Milankovich Cycles may play a role over the longer timeframe, but I need to see a decent correlation between the two.

  6. >>Much of the Laurentide icesheet was in the region of 2km
    >>thick, which due to the lapse rate makes it roughly 10C cooler
    >>than the surface without ice. If changes in air temperature
    >>caused the icesheet melt, then they would have to warm
    >>around that 10C mark. Far beyond what is proposed for >>Milankovich cycles and GHGs.

    I don’t think that is a problem. If you look at my fig 6 in the article, that is me at 18,000 ft (6 km altitude) in October. Yes, it was freezing at night, but during the day at max insolation, you could sunbathe in swimwear. As I pointed out in the article, the important factor is not air temperature, because a weatherman’s Stevenson Screen would probably have measured freezing temperatures all day long in my fig 6 (in the shade). The important factor is the insolation of the surface dust and dirt, and in my case the rocks were quite hot on the Baltoro glacier during the day. So surface melting could easily take place on Ice Age ice sheets, if there was a dirty surface and lots of summer (Great Summer) insolation.

    .

    >>The ignored albedo factor is soot deposition.

    No need for soot deposition. As the linked article says, there was 10,000 years of dust-storms before each Interglacial warming. And this dust has been identified as Asian dust from barren lands (not soot). So now we have all the ingredients for an Interglacial warming:

    Not enough CO2 (below 180 ppm)
    Plants are starved of CO2 and die.
    Barren lands are exposed.
    Dust storms cover the ice sheets.
    Ice albedo is greatly reduced.
    And now a Seasonal Great Year’s summer season can warm the NH.

    So of course many of the 21,700-year Seasonal Great Year summer seasons are missed in the climate record, because they can only have an amplified effect: — after the low CO2, after the plant dieback, after the dust storms, and after the reduced albedo.

    Thus CO2 IS a primary controller of Interglacial warmings, but only through getting so low that vast swathes of the world’s plants die. And this is not exactly the message that the Warmists are trying to broadcast to the world. It means that the primary danger to world ecosystems is not having enough CO2, rather than having too much of it.

    The linked article:
    www.warwickhughes.com/agri15/ralph_ellis_oct15.html

    Cheers,
    Ralph

  7. Ellis, I am not convinced with your argumentation. I am very well aware of the views of Milankovich and others, but there is one important question that you are not touching and that is why did glaciations start around 3 million years ago. One explanation is the opening of the Panama isthmus closing the connection between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and changing the current patterns of both oceans distributing energy along new paths.

    There is also the theory of Nir Shaviv and Jan Veizer on the movement of our solar system through the galactic arms influencing the amount of galactic cosmic rays (GCR) reaching our planets atmosphere and cloud formation in accordance with Henrik Svensmarks research.

    The single most important factor keeping our planet at a rather uniform temperature suitable for life throughout its entire history is the fact that Earth is a water planet. It is the three phases of water (solid, liquid and gas) and the thermal interaction that keeps our planet at 25 +/- degrees centigrade.

  9. A theory (or hypothesis) is a theory that must be verified or falsified; this is the next step rather than comparing to other theories and propositions which only in fantasy might appear to be better or not.

    Two points (please excuse my English), 1: Milankovich cycles appear to have been vindicated by paleo- / archaeology / geology, and paleo- / archaeology / geology appears to have been vindicated by Milankovich cycles. If there’s to be any use for either subject / phenomenon then any mutual dependence of argument has to be cut clear and disentangled without subterfuge.

    Into the other direction, 2: I think that one (or more) Seasonal Great Years have to be decomposed in such a way that, say, the most recent can be checked against finds in paleo- / archaeology. How about the east (of Nile valley) Sahara during Holocene (~12ka) and further into Tarantian times (~135ka). Can there be prediction of finds for these time-frames?

  10. >>Boris
    >>one important question that you are not touching that
    >>is why did glaciations start around 3 million years ago.

    Actually, I do cover that at the end of my paper.

    There is only one primary reason why the Great Year forcing would not be present 3 mil years ago, and that is if there was no orbital eccentricity. Why that should be so, I do not know, and I have not really investigated that yet as it is not important to the theory.

    The theory stands and it explains the Ice Ages when we had Ice Ages. To say my theory does not explain events outside the Ice Ages is a tad unfair, because that is not its purpose. But it is true to say that if there was little or no orbital eccentricity, there would be no Great Years, and therefore no variation between Ice Age and Interglacial. (Although the 41k year obliquity might just be able to force an Ice Age or two, just as it forced temperature fluctuations 3 mil years ago.)

    Ralph

  11. >>Wazsah
    >>Bob Foster’s year 2000 paper, The Global Refrigerator – And
    >>Now A Switch ? addresses why planet earth became dominated by ice sheets.

    Typical sloppy thinking by modern science. He says:

    “A lesser greenhouse effect means a cooler globe.”

    But if you look at my fig1, the standard CO2 vs Ice Age temperature graph, you will see the very opposite. When CO2 hits a minimum (minimum greenhouse) the world warms. When CO2 hits a maximum (max greenhouse) the world cools.

    How on earth do we get from that indesputable observation to the lazy statement that: ” a lesser greenhouse effect means a cooler globe?”

  12. Ralph,
    How would you explain the obvious lag in CO2 concentration actually following temperature. Look at the high resolution graph on : joannenova.com.au/globalwarming/graphs/VostokIceCores400000Kmed.jpg
    Surely you would agree that a change in temperature will lead to a change in atmospheric CO2, i.e. CO2 does NOT cause a change in temperature. As Joanne Nova and many prominent scientist do point out a rise in temperature will cause out-gassing of CO2 from the oceans and a cooling ocean will absorb CO2, but these processes take time. Thus the often cited lag of up to 1000 years.

    You yourself point out under Feedback Strength: “So water vapour plus clouds will regulate temperature like a thermostat”. I fully agree, so where do you need your albedo? You continue by stating “And if proven correct, this theory [initiated originally by Svensmark] alone destroys the CO2 global warming industry. I agree that surface albedo will have a role but surely not to the same degree as clouds, whether influenced by volcanism, CME’s (coronal mass ejections), or cosmic rays as suggested by Shaviv et al..

    I also feel that you exaggerate the role of dust. In your Fig 8 the dust concentration in the ice is very low (in ppm’s). I recall from my early geology lectures that for example the Malaspina Glacier was an example of slowly flowing ice covered by a growing forest.

    Also your mention of barren land in front of a retreating glacier is not that obvious, because we know that the retreat of the last continental ice sheet of northern Europe (Weichselian) was rapidly covered by grasses, etc and later followed by bushes and trees. I have no information that plant life in front of the terminus was lacking due to low CO2 as you point out???

  13. Ralph, you write: “But if you look at my fig1, the standard CO2 vs Ice Age temperature graph, you will see the very opposite. When CO2 hits a minimum (minimum greenhouse) the world warms. When CO2 hits a maximum (max greenhouse) the world cools.” Not quite true: You forget the lag that CO2 follows temperature and not the other way round. look at Joanne Nova’s detailed (high res) graph: joannenova.com.au/globalwarming/graphs/VostokIceCores400000Kmed.jpg

    Furthermore, during low temperatures CO2 is absorbed by the oceans and when temperature rises the gases are liberated and as Joanne N points out on average the lag is from several hundred to 1000 years.

    You do correctly point out under Feedback Strength: “So water vapour plus clouds will regulate temperature like a thermostat and keep the Earth temperature stable within tightly set bounds”. This is exactly what Svensmark has been promoting many years ago. he also pointed out that solar mass ejections (SME), galactic cosmic rays (Shaviv’s galactiv arms etc) all explain why cloud cover varies in time efficiently to regulate Earth temperature far beyond your albedo issues.

    I also feel that you exaggerate the role of dust as a climate regulator.

  15. If your comment does not appear – you can email me sanur2007(the usual symbol)warwickhughes.com – tell me the exact name you used.
    The anti-spam gizmo is capricious – even my own comments get caught. But if you include more than 3 links – that is usually certain to go to the spam queue – and long comments have an increased risk of not appearing too.

  16. >>Boris
    >>How would you explain the obvious lag in CO2
    >>concentration actually following temperature.

    CO2 takes no part in the Interglacial process, and merely lags temperature as a consequence of outgassing. It is irrelevant.

    .

    >>So where do you need your albedo.

    The albedo is required to provoke a temperature response in an ice-world. The Ice Age is very stable, and can resist a great deal of GY summer insolation, as we can see. But the one thing that it is very sensitive to, is a reduction in ice-sheet albedo. Thus albedo as a feedback is at its most powerful in an Ice Age, but provides only a small response in the modern Interglacial world.

    .

    >>The concentration of dust is low.

    Yes, but there is more than 10,000 years of it. So as the Interglacial proceeds, more and more dust arrives at the surface. So the few ppm becomes concentrated 1,000 fold, or perhaps 5,000 fold, as the ice sheets melt.

    In addition, those ppm are at the poles. The dust levels at lower latitudes may be 100 or 1000 times as great. Taken together, those few ppm might become 20% of the ice volume.

    Ralph.

  17. >>I also feel that you exaggerate the role of dust
    >>as a climate regulator.

    I think you mistake my point. Albedo is primarily an Ice Age regulator, not a climate regulator. So dust/ice albedo plays a much reduced role in the modern world, because there is very little ice to change the albedo of.

    However, the important point is that the CO2 forcing feedback of 1.5 wm2 for a doubling of CO2 (3.0 incl water vapour) was derived in part from the Interglacial warming response. If the primary factor in Interglacial warming is actually albedo, then the forcing feedback of CO2 is greatly reduced – perhaps as little as 0.15 degrees for a doubling of CO2. And this would mean that in the modern world Co2 plays little or no role in climate, and the main feedback is the cloud thermostat.

    Ralph

  18. At last someone else noticed the possible dust albedo reversal as the initiator of deglaciation theory! However you are still missing the the extra special sauce! 🙂
    Why did ice ages only begin 2 million years ago?
    The answer lies in the formation of the ismuth of panama that blocked the zonal flow of water and rerouted it to the meridional pattern (the gulf stream/thermohaline circulation) Increased energy flow from the highly insulated tropics to the weakly insulated poles increases energy loss (like a car engine/radiation system) while simultaneously increasing albedo due to extra cloudiness due to increased air mass mixing. Then there is extra special sauce. If you look at the north atlantic you will notice that is roughly triangular. An important part of the thermohaline circulation is the dense saline water that sinks at the sea ice formation boundary where the process of freezing seawater release dense brine. Due to the triangular shape of the north atlantic, the colder it gets the greater the area of sea ice and brine formation and the stronger the THC and colder it gets, the positive feedback loop! Note this still complies with energy minimisation laws as the earth is just flipping between a high sensible heat enegy/ low kinetic heat energy system and its inverse. Of course to break the cycle you now have dust albedo reversal that just happens to disrupt the thermohaline circulation by releasing masses of melt water. Now we have a fully complete mechanism of ice ages (in theory)

  19. >>Why did ice ages only begin 2 million years ago?

    The Panama theory is incorrect. And we know this because obliquity oscillations suddenly become dominant before 2 m years ago. No amount of isthmus closing can prevent the precessional Great Year being the dominant insolation controller on the Earth.

    The only thing that can stop the Great Year, and that is a lack of orbital eccentricity. No eccentricity – no difference between the Great Summer and the Great Winter. As to how or why the orbital eccentricity should be reduced before 2 m years ago, well that is another question entirely…. 😉

    Ralph

  20. A link to Ralph Ellis’s paper was just posted at another blog. I read the paper, finding the link to dust intriging. I do however have a few points Ralph Ellis might wish to consider.

    #1. Since the northern hemisphere, especially at high latitudes, is the critical factor, the Greenland ice cores are more appropriate when looking at the effect of decreasing solar insolation during the Holocene. Unlike the Antarctic ice cores, the Greenland and other northern temperature proxies show an accelerated decrease in temperature during the last few thousand years with an overall decrease of ~ 3C. (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

    Modern warm period

    #2. Warwick Hughes has very kindly posted information written by Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski (6). Lucy Skywalker has also posted information by Jaworowski and others.(7) The long and short of it is the CO2 record as now accepted by establishment science is as tainted by politics as the temperature record. CO2 was never as low as the air bubbles in the ice cores show because the CO2 migrated out of the air bubbles into the water within the ice structure. Whole samples of crush ice yield much higher results. (C3 plants like trees starve at 220 ppm. This number too was ‘adjusted’ to fit the political narrative with carefully contrived studies as support.)

    #3. This does not however negate dust as a major forcing. Instead of plants dying because of straight CO2 starvation they die due to drought, exacerbated by the low levels of CO2. C4 plants evolved to deal with this duall stress. Thus the Wisconsin Ice Age had major deserts (8)
    EUROPE –Europe had a large ice sheet covering Scandinavea, then steppe-tundra – dry, cold climates a bit further south and in southern Europe, a dry, almost semi-desert steppe.

    ASIA — Central Asia had a large area of extreme desert conditions surrounded by semi-desert. Siberia was much more arid than today, with steppe-tundra and polar desert Ice masses were found in north-western Siberia.

    NORTH AMERICA — Alaska was a polar desert extending across the far north of Canada to the southern edge of Greenland. In the USA and Canada the southern edge of the ice sheet was mostly tundra, dry tundra or semi desert.

    SOUTH AMERICA — South America had temperate desert and semi-desert, mainly in the south.

    AFRICA — Africa was about half extreme desert surrounded by a strip of semi-desert. Much of the rest was grassland followed by savanna

    AUSTRALIA — Central Australia was a large area of extreme desert with drifting sand dunes surrounded by semi-desert. To the north was grasslands. A land bridge connected Australia and New Guinea; this was apparently covered in open grasslands or scrub.

    This landscape especially as the Great Year headed toward summer and those northern deserts thawed a bit produced plenty of dust.

    #4. What is quite interesting is the switch from the dusty Wisconsin Ice Age to a non-dusty Holocene happened within a few years according to Dr. Richard B. Alley. This would indicate a major switch in climate possibly having to do with the oceans warming/increased solar insolation/monsoons rains suddenly encouraging plant growth. One only has to see a desert after a rain to understand how quickly the change can happen.. (9)

    Dr. Richard B. Alley observations:

    “‘You did not need to be a trained ice core observer to see this,’ recalled Alley. ‘Ken Taylor is sitting there with the ECM and he’s running along and his green line is going wee, wee, wee, wee – Boing! Weep! Woop! And then it stays down.’ Dust in the windy ice age atmosphere lowered the acidity of the core to a completely new state. ‘We’re just standing there and he just draws a picture of it,”‘Alley said.”

    …and then it was Alley’s turn at the ice. “It slides across in front of me and I’m trying to identify years: ‘That’s a year, that’s a year and that’s a year, and – woops, that one’s only half as thick.’ And it’s sitting there just looking at you. And there’s a huge change in the appearance of the ice, it goes from being clear to being not clear, having a lot of dust.”

    FROM:
    Climate Crash: Abrupt Climate Change and What it Means for our Future by John D. Cox, (John Henry Press, an imprint of the National Academies Press, ISBN: 0-309-54565-X, 224 pages, 2005),

    REFERENCES:
    (1) climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/robock/MillerArctic.pdf
    (2) adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007AGUFMPP11A0203F
    (3) www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033589411001256
    (4) www.sott.net/article/279874-The-End-Holocene
    (5) edmhdotme.wordpress.com/2015/06/01/the-holocene-context-for-anthropogenic-global-warming-2/
    (6) www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/
    (7) www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Scientific/CO2-ice-HS.htm
    (8) www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/nerc.html#maps

    (9)Monsoons
    www.sciencemag.org/content/308/5723/854.abstract
    hol.sagepub.com/content/23/8/1123.abstract
    www.sciencemag.org/content/324/5925/377.abstract

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.