New research suggesting that cloud cover, not carbon dioxide, causes globalwarming
is getting buzz in climate skeptic circles. But mainstream climate scientists dismissed the research as unrealistic and politically motivated.
"It is not newsworthy," Daniel Murphy, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) cloud researcher, wrote in an email to LiveScience.
The study, published July 26 in the open-access online journal Remote Sensing, got public attention when a writer for The Heartland Institute, a libertarian think-tank that promotes climate change skepticism
, wrote for Forbes magazine that the study disproved the global warming worries of climate change "alarmists."
However, mainstream climate scientists say that the argument advanced in the paper is neither new nor correct.
The paper's author, University of Alabama, Huntsville researcher Roy Spencer, is a climatechange
skeptic and controversial figure within the climate research community.
"He's taken an incorrect model, he's tweaked it to match observations, but the conclusions you get from that are not correct," Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, said of Spencer's new study.
Spencer's research hinges on the role of clouds in climate change. Mainstream climate researchers agree that climate change happens when carbon dioxide traps heat from the sun in the atmosphere, much in the same way that a windshield traps solar heat in a car on a sunny afternoon. As the planet warms, a side effect is more water vapor in the atmosphere. This water vapor, known to most of us as clouds, traps more heat, creating a viscous loop. [Earth in Balance: 7 Crucial Tipping Points
Spencer sees it differently. He thinks that the whole cycle starts with the clouds. In other words, random increases in cloud cover cause climate warming. The cloud changes are caused by "chaos in the climate system," Spencer told LiveScience.
In the new paper, Spencer looked at satellite data from 2000 to 2010 to compare cloud cover and surface temperatures. His comparisons of his data with six Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models showed, he said, that the models are too sensitive (meaning some variables, such as warming, increase at the slightest change in other factors) and that carbon dioxide is not likely to cause much warming at all.
However, no climate scientist contacted by LiveScience agreed.
"I cannot believe it got published," said Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Several researchers expressed frustration that the study was attracting media attention.
"If you want to do a story then write one pointing to the ridiculousness of people jumping onto every random press release as if well-established science gets dismissed on a dime," Schmidt said. "Climate sensitivity is not constrained by the last two decades of imperfect satellite data, but rather the paleoclimate record
Spencer agreed that his work could not disprove the existence of manmade global warming. But he dismissed research on the ancient climate, calling it a "gray science."