There is a new study about Earth albedo

http://www.njit.edu/publicinfo/press_releases/release_818.php

So what’s up?

Less sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface has not translated into cooler temperatures, according to a team of solar physicists at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). The scientists, who monitor the Earth’s reflectance by measuring what is known as the moon’s earthshine, have observed that the amount of light reflected by Earth — its albedo — has increased since 2000. The result has been less sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface.

“Our findings have significant implications for the study of climate change,” said Philip R. Goode, PhD, principal investigator and distinguished professor of physics at NJIT. “The results raise questions about how global temperatures can still rise when the amount of sunlight reaching the surface has decreased.”

Emphasis mine. So another scary story, errm? In other words, global warming full speed ahead despite the “dimming” of clouds. But what is the real story?

The study is: E. Pallé, P R. Goode, P. Montañés rodriguez, SE. Koonin (2006) Can Earth’s Albedo and Surface Temperatures Increase Together? Eos, Vol. 87, No. 4, 24 January 2006

It boils all down to fig 2 with it’s original caption:

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/albedo-temp.GIF

The concern is about the leveling off of the cloud induced albedo changes after 1997 but what are the global temperatures doing? On the top left are the global GISS temp in the same period.

Source here (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/ZonAnn.Ts+dSST.txt)

Now check the correlation of those two graphs down left. Not that bad at all. So where are those renegade last few years causing that all important question “about how global temperatures can still rise when the amount of sunlight reaching the surface has decreased”?

Follow the dotted line. 1984 starts top left and the last dots are bottom right. And actually those last few dots are closest to the trend!! meaning that the last few years are behaving very closely to the general relationship between albedo and temperature.

““about how global temperatures can still rise when the amount of sunlight reaching the surface has decreased”???

But the current temperatures are not rising at all. That's only in the mind of the scaremongers. So this is baloney. Misleading propaganda for global warming. Of course the authors are honest and try there best. But they could have done what I did, just checking if it was really true. But instead they elicted to charge ahead against the imaginary anthropogenic global warming.

We now also understand why it has been a bit warmer the last few decade and a half, more sun.

Albedo relates to the reflective capacity of the earth's surface, but how is that related to its absorptive characteristics? Surely the latter is the one that would influence temperature.

Well, how important albedo is, can be seen here:

http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~kushnir/MPA-ENVP/Climate/lectures/energy/Greenhouse_Effect.html

Expression 5:

G = σTe4 = (1-A) S / 4

would give:

T = ((1-A) S / 4σ ))^1/4

Substituting A (albedo) = 0,3 and S (solar flux) = 1367.6 and s=5.67E-8 we get the well known black body temperature 254.9 K or -18C.

Now let's play with albedo in the same order of magnetude of those measured changes and decrease it with ten percent: A=0.27 then the surface temperature increases to 257.6 degrees, 2,7 degrees warmer!

So looking at those large albedo changes, the question is not, where the global warming is coming from (should be obvious); the question is, why it is only a mere few tenths of a degree the last decades? Instead of almost 3 degrees due to more sunshine as it should have been looking at radiation only.

Also this albedo change would be equal to a variation of 11 Watt/m2. And we are spending billions for Kyoto hoping to influence the 1 Watt/m2 order of magnitude changes with increasing "global warming" CO2.

anybody that is familiar with haarp technology
will question the validity of natural causes
for global warming

if I happened to be writing that article with exactly the same data it would have been something like this:

Andre et al, 2006, Earth Albedo variation dwarfs greenhouse effect, Some magazine, Vol. 87, No. 4, 24 January 2006

Abstract
We compute Earth albedo (reflectivity) in the period 1984-2004, using cloud data and coverage, confirmed by measuring reflectivity of the shadow side of the moon. We observe a remarkable decrease in reflectivity in the period 1984- 1997 followed by a gradual increase after that. Correlation of the data with global temperatures (GISStemp Hansen et al) reveals a statistical relevance of R2=0.575 apparently confirming the obvious relationship between reflectivity and temperatures.

The associated variation of energy flux in the Stefan Boltzman law with 10% albedo change, results in a black body temperature change of 2,7 K. However, since the actual temperature variation is a mere 0.6K we must conclude that Earth generates a robust negative feedback that effectively reduces the effects of large albedo changes. This result dwarfs the greenhouse gas forcing theory that considers only flux changes of an order of magnitude less

We compute Earth albedo (reflectivity) in the period 1984-2004, using cloud data and coverage
Where would such data come from? As I understand it, the data are poor with regard to the years prior to the past few. Indeed Palle et al (2006 cited above) admit "a long-term data series of the Earth’s albedo is difficult to obtain due to the complicated
intercalibration of the different satellite data and the long gaps in the series." Their workaround mentioned in the next sentence notwithstanding, I would be interested in seeing what their data looks like in a methodology section of a detailed paper.

I'm very much agnostic with regard to the alleged anthropogenic causes of climate change, and I prefer to level my skepticism at both sides of the issue. But when meteorology textbooks consistently remind us that clouds have only recently been incorporated into climate models, the anthropologist in my wonders what the quality of the data are that Palle et al are using.

Still, I would agree that their work stimulates some interesting questions.

Where comes the data from?

The original study:

Measuring the Earth’s Albedo

To derive ideal estimates of the Earth’s reflectance, it would be necessary to observe reflected radiances at all angles from all points on the Earth, which is technically impossible. Therefore, all measurements from which albedo can be inferred require assumptions and/or modelling.

During recent decades, there have been some efforts to measure the Earth’s albedo from space; but a long-term data series of the Earth’s albedo is difficult to obtain due to the complicated intercalibration of the different satellite data and the long gaps in the series. However, the availability of different albedo (and cloud) databases, and their inter comparisons, can help to constrain the assumptions necessary to derive estimates. Thus, long-term ground based estimates of the Earth’s reflectance, complementary to those from satellites, are an advantage.

Data compiled from ground-based radiometer networks and sunshine recorders show, with some confidence, that sunlight reaching the ground decreased strongly (so-called global dimming) from the 1960s through the mid-1980s [Stanhill and Cohen, 2001; Wild et al., 2005].

With greater confidence, data from the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE, a set of satellite instruments designed to measure the Earth’s energetic balance) and Earthshine (ES, ground based measurements of reflectance based on the dayside earthlight reflected from the Moon back to the night time observer, see Pallé et al. [2003] for details), show that more sunlight has been reaching the Earth’s surface from the mid-1980s to 2000 [Wielicki et al., 2002; Pallé et al., 2004; Wild et al., 2005], although the magnitude of these changes is still in dispute [Pallé et al., 2005]. Since 2000, ES observations indicate an increasing albedo [Pallé et al., 2004], whereas Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) satellite data report the opposite result [Wielicki et al., 2005].A recent intercomparison of several albedo-related data sets strengthens the case for an increasing global albedo post-2000, consistent with the original
ES result [Pallé et al., 2005].