[This was originally posted in 2013 on Judith Curry’s site and was authored by CASF member, Steve McGee. We have included it here as part of the CASF Archive. Posted on December 26, 2013 | 169 Comments]
by Steve McGee
In science, one likes to have more examples than theories. – Dusan Djuric
Those words, spoken whimsically about cosmology, apply to climate science as well. The theory of the sensitivity of climate to the radiative 
forcing imposed by a doubling of carbon dioxide suffers from a lack of observed, repeatable examples. Paleo-climate studies carry with them the uncertainty of the proxy data and unmeasured assumptions on which they are based. Studies regarding the forcing from volcanoes and other transient events may not be repeatable for some time. However, Lindzen et. al. 1995 (link ) and Ramanathan and Inamdar in Frontiers of Climate Modeling, 2006 (link ) each have pointed out that the seasonal variation of earth temperature is quite large and possibly a surrogate for climate change. With this in mind, I set out to determine how the seasonal variation Continue reading “Seasonal Radiative Response”