Contributed by: filbert Thursday, March 26 2009 @ 04:02 PM CST
In the new study, they combined satellite data of dust and other particles with existing climate models to evaluate the effect on ocean temperature. They calculated how much of the Atlantic warming observed during the last 26 years can be accounted for by concurrent changes in African dust storms and tropical volcanic activity, primarily the eruptions of . . . in Mexico in 1982 and Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991.
In fact, it is a surprisingly large amount, Evan says. “A lot of this upward trend in the long-term pattern can be explained just by dust storms and volcanoes,” he says. “About 70 percent of it is just being forced by the combination of dust and volcanoes, and about a quarter of it is just from the dust storms themselves.”
The result suggests that only about 30 percent of the observed Atlantic temperature increases are due to other factors, such as a warming climate. While not discounting the importance of global warming, Evan says this adjustment brings the estimate of global warming impact on Atlantic more into line with the smaller degree of ocean warming seen elsewhere, such as the Pacific.
Emphasis mine. It would seem to me that saying that 70% of the observed warming of a feature as large as the Atlantic Ocean, given the carbon-phobia gripping large swaths of the public discourse, goes a long way towards “discounting” the so-called anthropogenic global warming hysteria.