But the CA thread was about an earlier paper D10 by Dessler (discussed here. Along the way there are lots of complex variables, but the answer comes out real.ĭiscussion has been stirred by a recent paper SB11 by Spencer and Braswell 2011, discussed here, here, here, and a Instead of looking at correlations, he proposed in effect to find an impulse response function which will transform temperature (T) into that quantity ΔR_cloud (or dR) by convolution: There's lots to be said about whether these notions are true, but in this post I want to talk about a kind of analysis proposed by commenter Bart at that site.
There is a contention, favored by Spencer and Lindzen, that ST may be affecting clouds, which is a kind of feedback, which in fact is spoken of as a forcing. There has been a lot of interest in the thread at CA which started out looking at correlations between a figure that notionally expresses (unreliably) the part of TOA radiant energy flux attributable to clouds and surface temperature.
