A good documentary, although rather alarming for most:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6TTglyaFVY

Full version (1-piece) is here:

http://www.freedocumentaries.org/teatro.php?filmID=254&lan=en&size=big

Oh God!

I knew about Global Dimming, but that it might be so much greater. Ouch. Its hard to believe that a reduction in surface solar levels of that scale wasn't picked up sooner. Suggestions of 10% decline in solar at the surface is MASSIVE.

If this stands up, it perhaps supports something I have wondered about for some time. Could the relative hiatus in warming since 2000 be due to the rise of industry in developing countries, particularly in China. If you have ever been there, the air can be fillthy.

Since aerosols are relatively short lived, this would suggest that dimming should have a bigger impact in the NH. So the underlying temp difference between North & South would be greater. Are the models under-estimating the temperature buffering impact of oceans in the SH.

At some point, this needs a post.

You know, the same ideas plague my thoughts as well.  We have global dimming.  We have a deep solar minimum.  We have have a very gradual negative orbital forcing (Miller 2010). 

Then I go back to Dana's take down piece on Lindzen that shows climate sensitivity up close to 3C.  If China starts cleaning up, which they're trying to do, and we get the sun kicking back in...  climate sensitivity numbers might end up looking higher than we've seen so far.

Not pretty. 

It's as you say: every variable under the sun (including the sun) has been acting to hold the line on global temps in spite of the ramp-up in global temps.

Like an Alpine downhill skier taking a tight turn too fast: one leg is splayed out and gone & all that's left is a thin knife-edge barely gripping a slippery slope...

If we clean up the air at the same time as the sun wakes up and the Arctic summer ice goes...

Game Over, Man!

If this stands up, it perhaps supports something I have wondered about for some time. Could the relative hiatus in warming since 2000 be due to the rise of industry in developing countries, particularly in China. If you have ever been there, the air can be fillthy.

Glenn, have you seen this? Worldwide Sulfur Emissions Rose Between 2000-2005, After Decade of Decline

Semi-interesting thought.

Sea levels are rising, so we have a heat imbalance. But atmospheric temperatures have been rising at a relatively limited rate recently. Water vapour and cloud feedbacks are quite strongly tied to atmospheric temperatures.

The solar minimum, a decline in mean ENSO activity since the '90s have cut atmospheric temperature rises and prevented some of the feedbacks from kicking in. If global dimming is more significant than we thought, then sensitivity is much higher.

On the plus side, India, China etc are going to take a while to clean up and we'll see other countries industrialising and slowing it down so we've probably got a few decades of relatively minor temperature rises... I hope.