Investing Talk

jose.bailen@gmail.com · Guest

.....and that CANNOT be atributed to human activity (in any case,
Martian activity):

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21506814-2,00.html

Mars in global warming debate

By Leigh Dayton
April 05, 2007 12:00am

Mars surface warmed at close to same rate as Earth
Sceptics say human impact on warming a myth
International climate change report released tomorrow

CLIMATE change sceptics have seized on news that Mars is heating up to
back their claim that humans are not causing Earthly global warming.

The research comes from US planetary scientists, who suggest the Red
Planet warmed by about 0.65C from the 1970s to the 1990s, similar to
Earth's 0.6C average temperature rise during the 20th Century.

"It could be coincidental or it might be the needle in the haystack,"
said climatologist William Kininmonth, former head of the National
Climate Centre in Melbourne.

"It's an interesting observation, as it's the same time period as
Earth's temperature has been warming."

Mr Kininmonth said the research, published in the journal Nature,
showed there was enough natural climate variability to account for
global warming on Earth.

Not so, claimed Neville Nicholls, a climate scientist at Monash
University in Melbourne.

"The paper is interesting but it hasn't got anything to do with the
question of human impact on global warming on Earth," Dr Nicholls
said.

"It's not an excuse to argue that humans are not causing global
warming on Earth."

The research was done by a team led by Lori Fenton of the NASA Ames
Research Centre at Moffett Field, California.

They used a computer model based on those devised to study global
warming on Earth, adding Martian features such as a cold, airless
surface and a shifting south polar ice cap while subtracting Earth's
oceans and atmosphere.

Dr Fenton's group found that annual variation in the solar radiation
reflected from the surface of Mars - its "albedo" - contributed to the
warming by causing more blowing dust.

Over the past 30 years the dust swept clean large swaths of the
planet's surface, reducing reflected radiation.

The result was a "positive feedback loop" between dust, wind, albedo
and temperature.

"It's a nice piece of work," said UNSW climate scientist Andy Pitman.

"But there are no implications for Earth."

Professor Pitman was lead author of the climate modelling section of
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released in
February.

Professor Pitman disputed Associate Professor Franks' claim that
changes in Earth's albedo had a bigger influence on climate than
greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.

"Albedo is included in climate models," Professor Pitman said.

"It can have a local effect but cannot explain the observed warming
record."

The Nature paper comes on the eve of the second report from the fourth
IPCC review, set to be released tomorrow night.

PeterL · Guest

On Apr 4, 1:16 pm, "jose.bai...@gmail.com" <jose.bai...@gmail.com>
wrote:

jose.bailen@gmail.com · Guest

On Apr 4, 11:07 pm, "PeterL" <po.n...@gmail.com> wrote:

TK · Guest

On Apr 4, 1:16 pm, "jose.bai...@gmail.com" <jose.bai...@gmail.com>
wrote:

Mark Freeland · Guest

<jose.bailen@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1175725161.813698.297010@l77g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...

David · Guest

On Apr 4, 11:19 pm, "jose.bai...@gmail.com" <jose.bai...@gmail.com>
wrote:

jose.bailen@gmail.com · Guest

On Apr 5, 12:39 am, "TK" <sung...@gmail.com> wrote:

jose.bailen@gmail.com · Guest

On Apr 5, 9:21 am, "David" <d...@wilkinson6337.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:

darkness39 · Guest

Jose

As you are probably aware, these 'there is no global warming because
of X...' theories come round in cycles. They circulate around, and
get picked up an promulgated.

I think therefore we should go back to the last cycle of this, and see
what was said then by responsible climate scientists, as below.

D.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/10/global-warming-on-mars/

5 Oct 2005
Global warming on Mars?
Filed under:

* Climate Science
* Sun-earth connections
* Climate modelling
* FAQ

- group @ 11:21 am - (fr flag)

Guest contribution by Steinn Sigurdsson.

Recently, there have been some suggestions that "global warming" has
been observed on Mars (e.g. here). These are based on observations of
regional change around the South Polar Cap, but seem to have been
extended into a "global" change, and used by some to infer an external
common mechanism for global warming on Earth and Mars (e.g. here and
here). But this is incorrect reasoning and based on faulty
understanding of the data.

A couple of basic issues first : the Martian year is about 2 Earth
years (687 days). Currently it is late winter in Mars's northern
hemisphere, so late summer in the southern hemisphere. Martian
eccentricity is about 0.1 - over 5 times larger than Earth's, so the
insolation (INcoming SOLar radiATION) variation over the orbit is
substantial, and contributes significantly more to seasonality than on
the Earth, although Mars's obliquity (the angle of its spin axis to
the orbital plane) still dominates the seasons. The alignment of
obliquity and eccentricity due to precession is a much stronger effect
than for the Earth, leading to "great" summers and winters on time
scales of tens of thousands of years (the precessional period is
170,000 years). Since Mars has no oceans and a thin atmosphere, the
thermal inertia is low, and Martian climate is easily perturbed by
external influences, including solar variations. However, solar
irradiance is now well measured by satellite and has been declining
slightly over the last few years as it moves towards a solar minimum.

So what is causing Martian climate change now? Mars has a relatively
well studied climate, going back to measurements made by Viking, and
continued with the current series of orbiters, such as the Mars Global
Surveyor. Complementing the measurements, NASA has a Mars General
Circulation Model (GCM) based at NASA Ames. (NB. There is a good
"general reader" review of modeling the Martian atmosphere by Stephen
R Lewis in Astronomy and Geophysics, volume 44 issue 4. pages 6-14.)

Globally, the mean temperature of the Martian atmosphere is
particularly sensitive to the strength and duration of hemispheric
dust storms, (see for example here and here). Large scale dust storms
change the atmospheric opacity and convection; as always when
comparing mean temperatures, the altitude at which the measurement is
made matters, but to the extent it is sensible to speak of a mean
temperature for Mars, the evidence is for significant cooling from the
1970's, when Viking made measurements, compared to current
temperatures. However, this is essentially due to large scale dust
storms that were common back then, compared to a lower level of
storminess now. The mean temperature on Mars, averaged over the
Martian year can change by many degrees from year to year, depending
on how active large scale dust storms are.

In 2001, Malin et al published a short article in Science
(subscription required) discussing MGS data showing a rapid shrinkage
of the South Polar Cap. Recently, the MGS team had a press release
discussing more recent data showing the trend had continued. MGS 2001
press release MGS 2005 press release. The shrinkage of the Martian
South Polar Cap is almost certainly a regional climate change, and is
not any indication of global warming trends in the Martian atmosphere.
Colaprete et al in Nature 2005 (subscription required) showed, using
the Mars GCM, that the south polar climate is unstable due to the
peculiar topography near the pole, and the current configuration is on
the instability border; we therefore expect to see rapid changes in
ice cover as the regional climate transits between the unstable
states.

Thus inferring global warming from a 3 Martian year regional trend is
unwarranted. The observed regional changes in south polar ice cover
are almost certainly due to a regional climate transition, not a
global phenomenon, and are demonstrably unrelated to external forcing.
There is a slight irony in people rushing to claim that the glacier
changes on Mars are a sure sign of global warming, while not being
swayed by the much more persuasive analogous phenomena here on
Earth...

darkness39 · Guest

http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/theres-global-warming-on-mars-too.html

(HTML links embedded in the original to follow up references)

There's Global Warming on Mars Too

(Part of the How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic guide)

Objection:
Global warming is happening on Mars and Pluto as well. Since there are
no SUV's on Mars, CO2 can't be causing Global Warming.

This is quite rich. One hundred years of weather station temperature
data all over the globe and these guys still don't buy it. Three
photos of one piece of ice on Mars and they have no doubts! As for
Pluto, it hasn't even completed one orbit in the 150 years we've been
reading the thermometers here on Earth! Still, avoid the temptation to
laugh out loud...

Answer:
Warming on another planet would be an interesting coincidence but it
does not necessarily have to have the same cause. The only relevant
factor the Earth and Mars share is the sun, so if the warming were
real and related it would have to be due to the sun. The sun is being
watched and measured very carefully back here on earth and it is not
the primary cause of the current climate change.

As for this alledged finding, there is very little evidence to go on
when it comes to discerning a global climate change on Mars. The only
evidence out there that I am aware of is a series of photographs of a
single icey region in the southern hemisphere that shows melting over
a two year (~1 martian year) period. Here on earth we have direct
measurements from all over the globe, widespread glacial retreat,
reduction of sea ice and satellite measurements of the lower
troposphere up to the stratosphere. To compare this mountain of data
to a few photographs of a single region strains credulity. In fact,
scientists studying Mars believe this is a regional change caused by
Mars' own orbital cycles.

See Global Warming on Mars? from Real Climate for more details.

As for Pluto, a cursory glance at Pluto's orbit and atmosphere reveals
how ridiculous it is to draw any conclusions about climate, much less
climate change, from two occultation observations 14 years apart way
out there in the ice cold and lonely Kuiper Belt!

Back to Mars, here is a nice and succint way to compare the available
evidence:

On Earth, we have poles melting, surface temperature rising,
tropospheric temperatures rising, permafrost melting, glaciers world
wide melting, CO2 concentrations increasing, borehole analysis showing
warming, sea ice receding, proxy reconstructions showing warming, sea
level rising, sea surface temperatures rising, energy imbalance, ice
sheets melting and stratosphere cooling which leads us to believe we
have GHG driven global warming.

One Mars we have one spot melting which leads us to believe...one spot
is melting.

David · Guest

On Apr 5, 9:26 am, "jose.bai...@gmail.com" <jose.bai...@gmail.com>
wrote:

jose.bailen@gmail.com · Guest

On Apr 5, 12:15 pm, "David" <d...@wilkinson6337.freeserve.co.uk>
wrote:

kaspakhine · Guest

On Apr 5, 1:11 am, "jose.bai...@gmail.com" <jose.bai...@gmail.com>
wrote:

darkness39 · Guest

On Apr 5, 1:53 pm, "jose.bai...@gmail.com" <jose.bai...@gmail.com>
wrote:

jose.bailen@gmail.com · Guest

On Apr 5, 6:19 pm, "kaspakhine" <kaspakh...@hotmail.com> wrote: