A trio of climate change

Three papers that caught my eye:

* Injecting sulfate particles into stratosphere won't fully offset climate change According to the study, injecting sulfate into the atmosphere may cool the tropics and keep them cooler, but it wouldn't have so much effect on the polar regions. Hence sea level rise continues, I suppose. But they also point out that there could well be "surprises" from the whole enterprise. The key point is that it is no panacea to climate change:

"There is no way to keep the climate the way it is now. Later this century, you would not be able to recreate present-day Earth just by adding sulfate aerosols to the atmosphere," McCusker said. 

*  Cosmic rays not looking convincing:    A decade long study of solar related galactic cosmic ray flux indicates no co-relation with clouds:

We identify no statistically significant correlations between cloud anomalies and TSI/GCR variations, and conclude that solar related variability is not a primary driver of monthly to annual MODIS cloud variability. We observe a net increase in cloud detected by MODIS over the past decade of ~0.58 %, arising from a combination of a reduction in high – middle level cloud (−0.31 %) and an increase in low level cloud (of 0.89%); these long term changes may be largely attributed to ENSO induced cloud variability.

Skeptics who dream about cosmic rays being the secret influence which hasn't yet been credited in climate change seem to be losing an argument, yet again.

*  "Missing energy" not really missing at all?    A new study indicates that there's enough uncertainty in ocean heat measurements that the energy that Trenberth said was "missing" may not be missing at all:

Here we present a revised analysis of net radiation at the top of the atmosphere from satellite data, and we estimate ocean heat content, based on three independent sources. We find that the difference between the heat balance at the top of the atmosphere and upper-ocean heat content change is not statistically significant when accounting for observational uncertainties in ocean measurements³, given transitions in instrumentation and sampling. Furthermore, variability in Earth’s energy imbalance relating to El Niño-Southern Oscillation is found to be consistent within observational uncertainties among the satellite measurements, a reanalysis model simulation and one of the ocean heat content records. We combine satellite data with ocean measurements to depths of 1,800 m, and show that between January 2001 and December 2010, Earth has been steadily accumulating energy at a rate of 0.50±0.43 Wm⁻² (uncertainties at the 90% confidence level). We conclude that energy storage is continuing to increase in the sub-surface ocean.

Judith Curry, the Uncertainty Queen of climate change scientists, thinks comments made by Trenberth about this are some sort of quasi vindication of her "ooh, it's all so uncertain we shouldn't be doing anything yet" stance, and there is a long thread that starts with her snark as follows:

If Kevin Trenberth is concerned about the uncertainties then he should stop ranting about deniers.

Exaggerating uncertainty to defend your own scientific papers from criticism, and then turning around to denigrate as a “denier” anyone who is uncertain and questions the IPCC’s overconfident assertions, is hypocritical IMO.

 And Chris Colose comments further down about Curry:

She doesn’t seem to be able to grasp that large uncertainties in some area do not preclude high confidence in others, or may not even be relevant to others. She continues on her philosophical rants about ‘uncertainty’ while not publishing a specific scientific example that has withstood criticism (e.g., Hegerl et al’s response to her “monster” paper). Nor does she seem to realize that just making stuff and saying “things are uncertain!” is not useful contribution, and coupled with many other scientific sins is the reason for the label “denier,” not the observations that science isn’t perfect. You can’t throw 100 darts against the wall, hope one sticks, and say “see, told you!”