A number of folks have been castigating GISTemp for producing an unusually high anomaly in the most recent month, especially compared to UAH. While I’m at the AGU at the moment and unable to devote too much time to this (I promise a more complete analysis of the choices GISTemp makes vis-a-vis other temp reconstructions is coming soon), I did want to point out how misguided this comparison is, baseline confusion notwithstanding.
But first, a bit of background. Over the past 30 years GISTemp has trended considerably higher than UAH, but roughly in-line (at least within the margin of error of measurements) of the other temperature datasets (RSS, NCDC, and HadCRUt). The trends of each from 1979 to present are below:
Trends 1979-present:
UAH – 0.141 C per decade
RSS – 0.163 C per decade
GISS – 0.168 C per decade
HadCRUt – 0.157 C per decade
NCDC – 0.163 C per decade
Over the past decade, however, the trends between temperature sets have diverged fairly widely. While this is somewhat expected as shorter timeframes will exhibit more variability and different temperature sets respond differently to short-term variability (e.g. satellite records during El Nino, GISTemp during high-latitude warmth, etc.), it is still worth noting.
Oddly enough, over the past decade only one temperature dataset has shown more warming than GISTemp. That dataset is UAH. The trends are shown below:
Decadal Trends Nov. 2000 to Nov. 2010:
UAH – 0.1079 C per decade
RSS – 0.0610 C per decade
GISS – 0.1072 C per decade
HadCRUt – 0.0043 C per decade
NCDC – 0.0473 C per decade
Here we see that GISTemp and UAH both have relatively high trends (though still well below the 30-year trend), RSS and NCDC have moderate trends, and HadCRUt is trending quite low.
If we want to formally test if the most recent monthly divergence between UAH and GISTemp is significantly, we can calculate the residuals by subtracting UAH from GISS and see if the most recent month (highlighted in green) lies more than two standard deviations away from the mean. We see that it is unambiguously not anomalous.
Now, a more interesting question is if GISTemp diverges significantly from other land records in the most recent month. Unfortunately, that analysis will have to wait, since as far as I know NCDC and HadCRUt have yet to report temperatures for November. Oh, and as a passing note, the baseline used here is November 2000 to November 2010. Not that it matters for any trend or residual analysis.
Good one zeke
Zeke, are you not comparing apples and oranges when you note that UAH trend as high as GISS? UAH should trend _higher_ than GISS, HadCRUt and NCDC. So, in fact Hadcru is more in line with UAH.
Niels:
Not sure I agree with this. Could you explain why you think this is true?
Carrick,
I’m guessing that Nielsen is referring to tropospheric amplification. In the tropics, the trend should be about 50% higher in the lower troposphere than the surface. But it’s smaller globally. I think the ratio should be something like 1.2 with its 2-sigma bounds including zero, so there may not be an expectation of global amplification.
Chad: “I think the ratio should be something like 1.2”. Yes, that’s what I think too.
Hi Zeke,
You say:
“Oddly enough, over the past decade only one temperature dataset has shown more warming than GISTemp. That dataset is UAH.”
Just to check that that is not a coincidental cherry-pick, does UAH also show more warming than GISS if you take 9 and 11 year periods?
Cheers!
Zeke–
Yep. When I commented that I was surprised by Nov., I was only surprised that the jump happened to coincide with time when I expected a decline. But these are common enough– monthly data are noisy.
Anyway, news reports do indicate it was warm over large parts of Asia (and not just the arctic circle.) So, it seems November was warm in some areas.
If I go by Chicago, Dec. will drop. 🙂
Lucia I would agree with you except that the media is trying to claim that this an unusually hot year and so I think Hansen is deliberately trying to show higher temperatures.
On a side note, I don’t think I ever even commented at realclimate and I am blocked. I don’t know what it is, my comments do not get posted and no message comes up explaining why.
Dr. Shooshmon, phd. (Comment#63822)
December 15th, 2010 at 8:24 am
“so I think Hansen is deliberately trying to show higher temperatures.”
Let me see if I understand this correctly – Hansen gets right in there and distorts the raw data and changes his model to get the results he desires. I see. He did a pretty poor job of doing that in April, May, June, July, August, and September of 2010, where GISS was falling way below UAH.
Dr. Shooshmon, phd. (Comment#63822) December 15th, 2010 at 8:24 am
Lucia I would agree with you except that the media is trying to claim that this an unusually hot year and so I think Hansen is deliberately trying to show higher temperatures.
Hansen uses a publicly available program and accesses publicly available databases which he has no control over so how is he “deliberately trying to show higher temperatures”? Not only that but UAH-MSU is showing 2010 in a tie for hottest year in their record with 1998 (a super El Niño year).
You should not add a linear trend for 2000 to 2010 because you start in a minimum and end in a maximum; if you want a linear trend for some reason, start in 1998 and end in 2010 (peak to peak).
As things to, it is unusually hot. What remains to be seen is:
Are we going to break records for the Jan-Dec with various metrics?
There’s no evidence whatsoever that Jim Hansen fiddled GISTemp to make this year hot. Not withstanding the arctic cold currently in my backyard, on the balance, over the globe, the earth was warmer than usual (if by usual we mean other years for which GISTemp, UAH, RSS and/or HadCRUT have records.)
I was surprised by November which moved in the opposite direction as I expected based on ENSO. I wanted to take a look at the map and see if it looked “weird”. But there was no particular weirdness relative to weather reports. Where GISS showed hot, at least some weather reports said it was record breaking hot.
I never meant to imply it was in anyway intentionally fiddled. As Phil. wrote, Hansen made his code available. The code and algorithm pre-exist Nov. 2010 by a long shot. Other people re-run the Hansen algorithm independently.
There is no way Hansen can suddenly change Nov. 2010 temps without people seeing something is very odd.
“There is no way Hansen can suddenly change Nov. 2010 temps without people seeing something is very odd.”
I think that’s a fair statement. To claim otherwise is … not very insightful.
“There’s no evidence whatsoever that Jim Hansen fiddled GISTemp to make this year hot.”
Lucia,
Pardon me for asking, but what kind of evidence would show that Hansen fiddled vs. not fiddled?
Andrew
Andrew_KY–
Any of the following would be evidence if it were to exist:
Evidence that Hansen visited some measurement stations and fiddled with the thermometers so the local agencies would provide “hot” temperature to downstream groups. (Have you heard any reports of Hansen visiting siberia and putting hair dryers near the thermometers to make them read “hot”?)
Evidence that Hansen accessed GHCN records change it to suit himself. (It would now no longer match local weather records, but.. oh well…)
Evidence that Hansen changed his algorithm this year, tweaking it so that GISS now gave “hotter” trends this year. (There isn’t any evidence of this. If he did this, Nick Barnes at CCC would suddenly wonder why his numbers don’t match GISS.)
Thanks Lucia,
It’s my understanding that GISS adjusts already adjusted data by policy, so Hansen wouldn’t have to go anywhere to fiddle it, except for to his office.
Andrew
Niels,
UAH/RSS should be slightly higher than land temps globally, though as Chad mentioned the error bars cross 0 so we aren’t really sure. Tropical amplification is more clearcut.
.
AngusPangus,
Actually for 9 or 11 year trends the difference is even greater:
Nov 1999 to present:
UAH – 0.189 C per decade
GISTemp – 0.168 C per decade
Nov 2001 to present:
UAH – 0.068
GISTemp – 0.040
That said, trends over periods this short are highly sensitive to the start date, so take it with a grain of salt. There is a good reason why climate tends to focus on long-term trends!
.
Lucia,
What might be more interesting is to compare the month to month differences between UAH and GISTemp. But that’s a rather different question, and eyeballing it suggests that the September to October changes are more divergent than October to November. In general, we should keep in mind that the effect of ENSO on land records seems to lag the effect on tropospheric measurements by a few months, so divergence in readings during an El Nino to La Nina transition should not be too unexpected.
.
Alexej Buergin,
While I agree that a peak to peak analysis in the presence of a strong cyclical ENSO signal is somewhat more appropriate for examining trends, it doesn’t really change the comparative analysis of one temperature series (GISTemp) and another (UAH) over the period. Additionally, because the satellite response to the 1998 super ENSO diverged so greatly from the surface temperature response, it could create a somewhat misleading comparison.
I think all the hot air will settle, some of us are just reacting to the spin put on these monthly figures by GISS themselves
I do think the statement by GISS has some interesting admissions re the difficulties of measuring global temp amidst natural variation of polar ice, does this apply to the other methods and how much are all the coastal stations affected the same way?
PKERR,
The fundamental question for arctic areas where temperature measurements are not available (or areas covered by sea ice which may have SST measurements unrelated to actual air temperatures) is how to deal with them. Most datasets simply leave them out, which effectively assigns them the global mean temperature in as far as they contribute to global mean temperature calculations. This is probably not very accurate, as we have reasonably good evidence that the arctic is warming faster than the global average. GISTemp, on the other hand, uses the nearest land stations and interpolates their readings out to 1200 km if stations are not available (though the weight of the interpolation in the global temp reconstruction decreases as a function of distance away from the real station). This may somewhat overestimate warming in arctic areas if sea-ice covered areas are warming more slowly than adjacent land.
The actual warming rate for the region likely lies somewhere between the two, though I’d suspect that its closer to (but somewhat below) GISTemp’s version than the global mean temp assumed by HadCRUt and NCDC.
Andrew_KY (Comment#63833) December 15th, 2010 at 11:42 am
Thanks Lucia,
It’s my understanding that GISS adjusts already adjusted data by policy, so Hansen wouldn’t have to go anywhere to fiddle it, except for to his office.
Andrew
Then you don’t understand at all because to achieve this deception he would have to change the data at source so that everyone else running versions of his code would get the same result. As I pointed out here earlier Nick posted the cc-Gistemp values a day before GISS did themselves and got the same answer.
You’re allowing your personal bias to cloud your judgement and make unjustified personal slurs.
Phil,
Not if Nick is part of the conspiracy 😛
Phil,
You are missing the point, so let me help you a little by asking you a question.
Do you know if the GISS adjustments to the adjustments make their Squiggly Lines more a correct representation of the actual temperature somewhere or do their adjustments make their results less reliable?
Andrew
Just an observation:
Apart from the GISS peak in early 2001, the two graphs are remarkably similar from then on until mid-2007, at which point they appear to diverge quite frequently to a relatively large degree. Any ideas as to why this would be? The difference is quite stark…
lucia (Comment#63829) December 15th, 2010 at 10:38 am
“There’s no evidence whatsoever that Jim Hansen fiddled”
Hansen et al 2010, just published 14 December 2010
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2010/2010_Hansen_etal.pdf
[59]Our new concatenation procedure
[105]Figure 20 illustrates the effect of changes in the
USHCN data that occurred when we switched (in November
2009) from USHCN version 1 to USHCN version 2
Just from a laymen’s perspective, everytime Hansen changes the methodology in response to criticism we end up with the previous warming was better then we thought but the current warming is worse then we thought.
Andrew_ky
What adjustments to the adjustments?
GISS uses a method they described long ago. They draw from the same data available to everyone. There are some “features” of GISS that make it funny to watch month by month — it’s funny to watch past temperatures change. But that’s an explained feature of the method and we all know how and why it happens. It’s not Hansen sitting in his room deciding to make some past year warmer or colder. He didn’t know the precise future monthly temperatures when he concocted the method.
So, it’s one thing to criticize the method based on the known features. It’s another to imagine that somehow, Hansen is sitting in a room fiddling numbers. He’s not. There is a algorithm. If you get the reported data, you put it in the algorithm, you get the same numbers.
harryw2–
Hansen isn’t in charge of USHCN data. Obviously, he’s going to switch to the never version thought better by those who create that data set. I don’t think that can be called Hansen “fiddling” and the choice would hardly seem dictated by any desire to make 2010 “hottter”, and so able to report a record.
We are going to be setting records as it warms, and these will tend to be set during El Nino years. So… yeah. There’s a good chance will set one in 2010 and not 2011. If we don’t set one in 2010, then look to 2012 or 2013.
Given the different methods of computing records sometimes will break the GISS record but not HadCRUT or NOAA. Sometimes we’ll break a HadCRUT but not GISS. Sometimes, we’ll break all three in the same year.
Zeke: “The fundamental question for arctic areas where temperature measurements are not available (or areas covered by sea ice which may have SST measurements unrelated to actual air temperatures) is how to deal with them.”
SST measurements are not unavailable all year round. As Bob Tisdale explains, land stations are also what is used by GISS at times of the year when the ice has melted and SST measurements _are_ available – ie the arctic area is treated as if it was land – or permanently sea-ice covered.
Zeke: “GISTemp, on the other hand, uses the nearest land stations and interpolates their readings out to 1200 km if stations are not available (though the weight of the interpolation in the global temp reconstruction decreases as a function of distance away from the real station). This may somewhat overestimate warming in arctic areas if sea-ice covered areas are warming more slowly than adjacent land.”
I don’t know about temperature when an arctic sea area is ice covered but at times of year when the area is not ice covered, it maintains a relatively stable temperature (SST) compared to land stations. Bob Tisdale explains:
“The Arctic Ocean SST anomaly linear trend is 0.082 deg C/ decade, while the linear trend for the land surface temperature anomalies is 0.68 deg C/decade. And as a reference, the “combined†GISTEMP Arctic temperature anomaly trend for that area is 9 times the SST anomaly trend.”
http://i46.tinypic.com/1zpheme.jpg
I don’t think we need to speculate that the GISS procedure overestimates warming in the arctic area. It will also overestimate a cooling trend, I think 🙂
“land stations are also what is used by GISS at times of the year when the ice has melted and SST measurements _are_ available”
Obviously you can’t use one set of the stations for part of the year and a different protocol for another part of the year. That’s how you get artifact in your measurements. Rigor 101.
“What adjustments to the adjustments?”
Lucia
GHCN is an adjusted data set and GISS makes more adjustments.
Right?
Andrew
Thanks Zeke ,
back to watching the weather for me, temperatures are going to plummet in Europe this comming week if the forecast is correct
Andrew_KY (Comment#63839) December 15th, 2010 at 12:22 pm
Phil,
You are missing the point, so let me help you a little by asking you a question.
Do you know if the GISS adjustments to the adjustments make their Squiggly Lines more a correct representation of the actual temperature somewhere or do their adjustments make their results less reliable?
Andrew
No I’m not missing the point, which is that you don’t like Hansen and will behave like a Jackass and tell any lies to defame him.
Case in point above, since the data used is unadjusted your statement about ‘adjustments to the adjustments’ is false, hopefully you’ll have the decency to stop spreading that particular falsehood?
“Current Analysis Method
The current analysis uses surface air temperatures measurements from the following data sets: the unadjusted data of the Global Historical Climatology Network (Peterson and Vose, 1997 and 1998), United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) data, and SCAR (Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research) data from Antarctic stations. The basic analysis method is described by Hansen et al. (1999), with several modifications described by Hansen et al. (2001) also included. Modifications to the analysis since 2001 are described on the separate Updates to Analysis.”
Andrew_KY:
Wrong. GISS using the unadjusted data (except in occasions where unadjusted data doesn’t exist).
Robert:
I think it would be no problem to combine them together, as long as you have a mask for arctic ice coverage and if Arctic buoy measurements exist. Prior to circa 1980 there wasn’t a systematic measurement of ice surface coverage, and I don’t think buoy measurements went to much further back in time that that either (somebody please correct me if I’m wrong).
So that isn’t an option here. Otherwise they probably would have made the effort to doing it that way.
eh? Which station do you mean by the parenthetical?
GISS takes adjusted data from USHCN. If they wanted to use unadjusted US data, they could do that too, and users of ccc-giss can easily make that modification. It takes unadjusted data for the rest of the world. For St Helena and Lihue only, it applies a manual adjustment for a discontinuity. And then they do the nightlights adjustment.
That’s it, for land stations.
Given how conceptually simple GISTEMP is, I don’t understand why there is so much confusion over the basic mechanics of what they do.
lucia (Comment#63844
Every record will be broken if we wait long enough. But it takes courage to prognosticate a record for 2012 or 2013 (Hansen was more careful and said Manhatten would be flooded in 20 years; that was back in 1988).
So when we check if arctic summer ice has really totally disappeared in 2013, as has been prognosticated, we will at the same time have a good look at UAH. Suspense is ensured.
“The data for each station in the USHCN are subjected to the following quality control and homogeneity testing and adjustment procedures…”
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.html
GHCN-Monthly Version 3 (Beta Release)
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
National Climatic Data Center
Homogeneity Adjustment
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ghcnm/v3.php?show=data_access
Andrew
Anyway, this guy says GISS adjusts data for Down Under:
http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2010/02/05/giss-manipulates-climate-data-in-mackay/
Andrew
Anyway, I’d like to point out that neither Phil or Lucia answered simple questions of mine that would require them typing 4 words or fewer.
For Example:
“Andrew,
Yes”
or
“Andrew,
No.”
or
“Andrew,
I Don’t Know”
Andrew
Anyway, I feel like my man bender posting little commenties a hundred times in a relatively small amount of time. 😉
Andrew
Andrew–
Phil and others answered your question almost instantly. Why should I answer it too?
Lucia,
I asked Phil if he knew if the adjustments made the numbers more or less reliable. A response, but no answer.
I asked you ‘Right?’ about adjustments on adjustments? No answer.
Andrew
Sorry, I forgot we’re pretending that history started when we were born. Does anyone know what earth’s average historical temperature is? People can say that 2010 is a hot year all they want but referencing the period beginning 1979-present is really stupid considering that it is equivalent to about a mili second in the earth’s lifetime (paraphrasing Robert Laughlin). Now, since we know that the MWP was warmer, I can go ahead and say that 2010 has been warmer than some years but still unimportant. Temperature was higher before with no human ghg emissions. The gw theory stills stands on thin, chopstick legs. Additionally, I will not accept the GISS graph because I find the surface stations measurements to be suspect. If other people find them to be reliable, that is fine. However, please understand that they are extremely flawed and lack the accuracy of satellite measurements.
I love how we “know” it was warmer in the middle ages, but we can’t trust those unreliable thermometers, unlike satellites which are “accurate” except for those huge differences in global and zonal trends amongst the five independent analyses. But hey, if it was warmer at sometime in the past, then AGW is a fraud. Like Seitz’s bosses used to say, nonsmokers get lung cancer too.
cce
By way of example, the Vikings’ name for Newfoundland was “Vinland” [“Wineland”], and Greenland got its name because the Viking sailors/settlers founds its coastal regions not only free of snow but supporting plant life. We know from historical litterary sources that not only the Romans some 2000 years ago [RWP] but also during Chaucer’s time [MWP] grapes were grown [and wine was made] in Scotland. So far I have not heard of this being the case at present, and so it was likely warmer than today on both those occassions. As I have pointed elsewhere, official US maps show that over 90% of Alaska’s glacier melt occured between 1790-1860, when CO2 ppmv values by all accounts were nowhere near todays. These examples are matters of record [albeit not thermometer records..] and not of speculation.
It might also be of interest to have a look at the NASA data on UHI effects presented at the recent AGU meeting. Contrary to what the IPCC have wanted us to believe [based on Jones’ and Wang’s discredited paper] NASA shows that UHI is very real indeed and can reliably be quantified using satellite technology. As the surfacestations.org project showed beyond much discussion, much of the land based station data is corrupted by UHI effects.
Also of interest is the Laken, et. al. paper published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics [Nov, 2010] that provides evidence for the Svensmark hypothesis that there exists a causal relationship between GCRs [Galactic Cosmic Rays] as modulated by solar activity and cloud formation around the Earth, and thus our climate. A presentation, also at the AGU meeting, on the early results of the CLOUD project at CERN also provides evidence for Svensmark’s argument and Spencer’s work on the role of clouds.
The more one reads and connects the dots, the more it becomes evident that the CO2 based AGW story line is simplistic in the extreme.
Who said CO2 is the only forcing? Only ‘skeptics’ that I can recall.
Bugs,
We’ve been there before, several times in fact. Like me others too have pointed out to you that it is not the skeptics but rather the IPCC who have repeated “ad nauseam” that man-made CO2 causes global warming. Of course there are other forcings: why not start with clouds like Svensmark and Spencer?
It would be nice to read a credible explanation for the 1790-1860 Alaska glacier melt which occured during the star-up of the Industrial Revolution. I don’t have one, and neither did the US officials I spoke with at Glacier Park.
“CO2 based AGW story line is simplistic in the extreme.”
Understatement!!!!! 🙂
tetris:
We’ve been on this road before too.
In spite of being presented evidence to the contrary, you continue to repeat this falsehood that the IPCC claims that only CO2 is responsible for global warming.
Yeah how much of a TENTH OF A DEGREE is AGW? lol
Carrick,
Are you at this stage of the game still seriously suggesting that climate models are evidence for ANYTHING? When at its congress last year, following a debate led by the doyen of modellers -Latif- the WMO concluded that the predictive value of GCMs is close to zero [GCMs can’t even past-cast, let alone forecast], as have several peer reviewed papers over the past couple of years, most recently in the Journal of Hydrology [in October, if my memory serves me correctly].
I repeat, it is not the skeptics, but rather the IPCC’s “scientific” dogma that holds that it is the CO2 produced by man, principally by using hydrocarbon fuels, that is the key cause of global warming/climate change. It has to be, because without making CO2 THE culprit, there is no political argument for pushing back the [N.B.] developed economies’ use of abundant hydrocarbon energy sources. Hence the Kyoto Protocol, which is a seriously political document, based on “message driven, cherry-picked “science”. AGW/ACC was never about the merits of the “science”, but all about a political scheme aimed at transfering wealth from the developed to the developing economies. If you still don’t believe that, please don’t believe me. Just look up the brazenly for-the-record statements to precisely that effect by IPCC officials in the run-up to the Cancun confab.
That said, as a skeptic I will tell you a] that of course there are other forcings: let’s just start with one of the most compelling ones: clouds.
b] of course there is climate change; we have had some 5 billion years of it. One would be an utter fool to question that. However what I do question – after having followed the AGW/ACC story in detail for some 10 years, is that man is the principal cause of any warming purportedly observed over the past century and change. For one, fact remains we don’t even have a proper handle on what that increase might actually have been [0.7C? Or less, perhaps? There is no evidence for more.] That is what half the threads at the Blackboard are about. And secondly, there are several other prima facia more compelling explanations for whatever fluctuations we have seen, starting with natural variability.
I’m sure you are familiar with Ockham’s “Razor” or Lex Persimoniae, which freely translated to our times would say: “when hearing the sound of thundering hooves, think horses not zebras” [William of Ockham, living in the 14th century, would of course not have known about zebras..]. Or on a somewhat more serious note, let’s listen to Issac Newton: ” We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. Therefore, to the same natural effects we must, so far as possible, assign the same causes.”
If one internalizes Ockham’s and Newton’s way of looking at things, one can not be other than a skeptic, because man-made CO2 recedes far into the background as an explanation for anything.
Amen.
Tetris, I’m not sure what the point of this long-winded comment is.
You are making claims about what the IPCC says or doesn’t say. My point is those claims are demonstrably false.
If you want to be seen as a credible skeptic, the first thing you need to do is get right what is claimed by the science. The second is to not (in a science venue) impute motives for why people believe what they believe, or why they are pushing a particular viewpoint.
We do know from basic physics that CO2 is an important source of radiative driving of climate. Increasing CO2 increases that driving. Everything else being equal, more CO2 equals a warmer climate.
Beyond I guess I’m not that interested in arguing politics or policy at this point. In fact the “AGW/ACC was never about the merits of the ‘science’, but all about a political scheme aimed at transfering wealth from the developed to the developing economies” meme itself just falls flat with me.
From my perspective we should to the science here (meaning what is known, and what is claimed), and to reserve the political diatribes for other venues.
Carrick,
By appealing to the authority of the IPCC, you are introducing politics into the discussion, as they are a political organization.
Andrew
Tetris,
You seem to be convinced that the enormous amounts of carbon that was sequestered by natural processes over millions of years and that has now been suddenly and massively released into the atmosphere as CO2 is totally unrelated to recent and rapid measured increases in global temperature, observed melting of sea and land ice, and measured increases in heat content of the oceans. Really?
You seem instead to cling to even less elaborated and more unproven hypotheses such as clouds – you say with such assurance that it is likely clouds, but definitively not CO2. Or “natural variability” – what is the forcing agent in your natural variability to cause such rapid change? Please, just off the top of your head – give us any model (that more than a handful of climate scientists subscribe to) that has the same quantitative force of science behind it as does the enhanced greenhouse effect.
Andrew:
My point was, if you are going to make claims about what the IPCC says, you need to get it right as to what they actually do claim.
And that’s appealing to the authority of the IPCC?
Carrick,
Have it your way. You don`t want to talk politics, only the science. Fine. But as several others, including Andrew_KY, have pointed out, you can not on the one hand appeal to the IPCC -which it should be clear by now is NOT a scientific organization but a political one, and then use them to make point about the science.
Science. Alright. I will grant you that atmospheric physics is not the subject of my PhD, but this much should be clear to everyone by now. Given the very small spectrum in which CO2 acts as a trap to energy radiating back out through the atmosphere, there has to be an amplifier or booster to account for the purported increase in CO2-caused temperatures. I trust we are on the same page here Carrick. The IPCC, while not liking to address the issue of clouds or water vapour, has sort of, looking between your fingers so to speak, said that water vapour has a boosting role, which then explains the core and crucial role of man-made CO2. Problem is of course that the role of clouds, the most obvious and evident form of water vapour, would then have to have a positive sign in the equation. However, based on what is transpiring, no pun intended, that is very probably not the case. And please note that I gave you references to scientific findings that point in that direction.
And, might I add, for all intents and purposes half of the threads on the Blackboard are about our lack of consistent, solid temperature data on which to base a scientific discussion about what is actually happening.
So to the point, since you were asking. Climate models are evidence of absolutely NOTHING, and it seems to me that you have systematically avoided addressing any of the facts, questions or overarching issues that I have attempted to put to the fore, so it would be nice if you could start by doing some of that perhaps with the 1790-1860 Alaska glacier meltdown.
The RWP, the MWP and the LIA are a matter of historical record. Forget about thermometers. There are way more compelling records. Like maybe Bruegel`s paintings, Dickens novels and, say, what happened to Napoleon and his Grande Armee in 1812.
I am sorry that you found my previous rejoinder long winded, and you will probably find this one to be too. At least they have the merit of having a bit more content than your “piss off“ to me last week. That said, if, like you did when you held up the validity of GCMs as evidence, at this stage of the game you are still somehow arguing that Mann`s Hockey Stick is evidence for anything other than a carefully constructed scientific fraud, then this exchange is over.
In which case I wish you happiness with your faith. Because, to take the liberty of paraphrasing Newton: science it is certainly not.
Cheers.
Owen,
If you want to approach the argument at the classic simplistic AGW level of massive amounts of “sequestered carbon“ suddenly being released into the atmosphere due to man`s use of hydrocarbon energy sources, and nothing else, then how about the the “inconvenient“observation that man lives on land that happens to occupy at best 20% of the globe. The rest is water in some form or another.
As to your points: there has been no “statistically significant“ increase in global temps since at least 1998. Even our good fraudster Phil Jones has said as much on the BBC, no less. There is no demonstrable accelaration in increase of sea levels. The increase has been going on for the past 12000 years. If you have verifiable evidence to the contrary, pls provide. Melting ice at the Poles. As of today, we have ice levels in the Artic that while below the 1979-2000 average, are certainly not evidence of an ice free North Pole any time soon. Antartica, has set new ice records for the third consecutive year. US government data shows that 90% of the glacier loss in Alaska occured between 1790 and 1860…
And the “inconvenient truth“ is that the best available data – Argos- shows no signs of increasing temps in the ocean. Again, if you have better info, pls provide so we can all share.
Tetris,
“there has been no “statistically significant“ increase in global temps since at least 1998.”
Same old horse manure. There has been clear, statistically significant warming from 1978 (beginning of satellite data) to the present as is shown by all 5 major indices (NOAA, GISS, RSS, UAH, and HADCRUT) occurring at a current warming rate of greater than 1.5 degrees C per century. There has also been a clear significant warming in the past 100 years. The data is smacking you in the face and you still can’t see it (please take of those ideological blinders).
Your short-term “science” that you parrot can lead to just about any result. Take a look at the Wood for Trees index data for the time periods below, all three of which show measurable cooling:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:2001/to:2009/plot/wti/from:2001/to:2009/trend
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:1987/to:1996/trend/plot/wti/from:1987/to:1996
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:1980/to:1986/trend/plot/wti/from:1980/to:1986
Thus, looking at 3 short term windows you could say that we have had demonstrable cooling in 23 of the past 30 years. Never mind the fact that the average global temp has jumped ca. 0.45 degrees in that 30 year period.
The warming trend is so clear that only a confirmed distortionist would suggest otherwise.
See http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/12/16/comparing-temperature-data-sets/#more-3206 for an excellent discussion of global temperatures
Owen,
No, the upward temperature curve that started around 1977-78, which happens to correspond more or less with the advent of satellite data, proves absolutely nothing. Any which way!
Between 1947 and 1977 global temperatures fell over a 30 year cycle. This not a matter of debate, it is matter of record. Britain is at present experiencing winter conditions that even the oh, so politically correct Met Office is now comparing to those seen during the 1962-1963 winter when parts of the English Channel froze over; and that was half way through the curve. No ferry traffic between Dover and Calais or between Hoek van Holland and Harwich. There were several miles of frozen North Sea off the Dutch coast. I don`t know where you live or how old you are, but that is a verifiable matter of record. How about some old 16mm film.
Of course there has been warming over the last century, nad longer than than that. It takes quite a while to unwind from the last major ice age and even from the LIA. Are you really telling all of us here that UAH is indicating 1.5C degree of warming per century. Maybe check with Lucia or Roy Spencer; I may have missed something.
As far a the distortionist comment, I can share that I used to be somehwat of contortionist: walk around on my hands with my feet behind my head. Too old and wise now; don`t do that anymore since I`ve learned to respect the laws of physics…..
Meanwhile, why don`t you provide all of us here with some positive and verifiable proof that man-made CO2 is the real culprit in AGW or ACC, as in a lab experiments currently ongoing at CERN to show whether Svensmark`s and by extension Spencer`s science is right or wrong.
x= 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
y= 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5
tetris says that y has not increased since x=5
Owen says horseshit, y has increased since x=1
The sweet logic of AGW
tetris (Comment#63921) December 17th, 2010 at 2:18 pm
As to your points: there has been no “statistically significant“ increase in global temps since at least 1998.
Actually there has been, if you read the rest of Phil. Jones’s answer you’ll see why!
Phil,
if you still think Phil Jones is a crebile source for anything other than fabrications – essentially everything he is supposed to be recognized for as a `climate scientist -`Wang and the UHI `research` comes to mind- has been shown up to be based on message-based cherry picking – I have a slightly used bridge i would like you to buy from me. Really good bridge, hardly used…
According to his defenders, when Phil Jones says “there has been no signficant warming in the last 15 years”, he doesn’t actually mean “there has been no significant warming in the last 15 years”. Just like “hide the decline” doesn’t mean “hide the decline”, and “delete the e-mails” doesn’t mean “delete the e-mails”.
Quite a way with words he’s got.
Rather than visiting the usual clearinghouses for global warming disinformation, I suggest “skeptics” read the NRC report “Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years.”
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11676&page=4
In particular:
“Large-scale surface temperature reconstructions yield a generally consistent picture of temperature trends during the preceding millennium, including relatively warm conditions centered around A.D. 1000 (identified by some as the “Medieval Warm Periodâ€) and a relatively cold period (or “Little Ice Ageâ€) centered around 1700. The existence of a Little Ice Age from roughly 1500 to 1850 is supported by a wide variety of evidence including ice cores, tree rings, borehole temperatures, glacier length records, and historical documents. Evidence for regional warmth during medieval times can be found in a diverse but more limited set of records including ice cores, tree rings, marine sediments, and historical sources from Europe and Asia, but the exact timing and duration of warm periods may have varied from region to region, and the magnitude and geographic extent of the warmth are uncertain.
[…]
[recent unprecedented warming] has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on ice caps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years. Not all individual proxy records indicate that the recent warmth is unprecedented, although a larger fraction of geographically diverse sites experienced exceptional warmth during the late 20th century than during any other extended period from A.D. 900 onward.”
That is what we know about the “Medieval Warm Period” and “Little Ice Age.” There is good evidence for “The Little Ice Age” — probably caused by a combination of low solar activity (with both direct and indirect effects) and high volcanic activity. As far as the MWP is concerned, in order for medieval warming to be comparable to recent warming, it would have to have happened all over the world and at the same time. The evidence is not there. All the paintings in Europe will not tell you what the temperature was on the other side of the Earth. We know that the North Atlantic was warm from a variety of historical and proxy evidence. That means Greenland. That means Europe. Tell us something we don’t know.
And please, we know precisely how Greenland got its name:
“In the summer Eirik went to live in the land which he had discovered, and which he called Greenland, ‘Because,’ said he, ‘men will desire much the more to go there if the land has a good name.'”
–The Saga of Erik the Red
http://www.sagadb.org/eiriks_saga_rauda.en
Grapes were not grown in Scotland in Roman times. There is no evidence of that. They were grown in England, as they are today.
UHI exists. But the fact that every instrument capable of measuring or inferring temperature shows warming would suggest that the world is warming. Radiosondes, ship measurements, buoys, tide gauges, satellite altimetry, GRACE, satellite SST, satellite MSU — they all show warming, and they are all reasonably consistent despite large uncertainties inherit in each method. UHI isn’t contaminating MSU. It isn’t contaminating AVHRR. The best “skeptics” can do is claim that the world isn’t warming enough in the right places (i.e. the “hot spot”) but they conveniently ignore any data that contradicts this view.
If cosmic rays change cloud cover, that doesn’t help “skeptics” because the trend for cosmic rays (and the sun) is in the opposite direction to explain observed warming. A small detail, I know.
The warming caused directly by a doubling of CO2 is about 1.2 degrees. Relatively simple mathematical models will tell you that. What skeptics hope beyond all hope is for fairy god mother feedbacks that magically cancel out this warming and certainly don’t add to it, heaven forbid. They talk about global conspiracies to bring about the New World Order but they don’t consider, not even for a moment, that they might be wrong, and all that additional water vapor just might cause more warming. And besides, maybe the clouds will cancel it out? There’s no evidence of that, of course, given a half a degree of warming in the past 30 years, but hey, let’s wait another 30 years and maybe the evidence will finally show itself. Sorry, no.
cce,
Well said.
Owen (Comment#63922) shows three periods with cooling trends. Only one, the current, is not associated with the cooling effect of stratospheric volcanos.
Steven Mosher commented a while ago (July 12th, 2008 at 7:45 am):
“IÂ’m going to look at this in an entirely different way. It would appear that the 8 year time peroid between 2001 and 2008 will have a negative slope. That is, the 8 year slope will be negative, assumming that the first 6 months of 2008 is a good predictor of the last six months ( june, july is good predictor)Anyways, assume that at the end of 2008 we have a negative slope for the 8 year span of 2001 -2008.What to make of this?1. Climate coolists: Its the end of AGW, AGW is wrong, models are wrong, radiative physics is wrong, we are entering an ice age. That hand is Doyle BrunsonÂ’s 10-2.2. Climate Warmists: itÂ’s the weather. we have no explaination. It happens all the time. there is no information in an 8 year trend. none. is there information in an 8 year trend? Well, one approach to that problem is to bicker about error bars. Another approach is to see in the actual record, lets say the past 100 years, how often we see a negative trend over an 8 year peroid. Is it common? is it rare. If its RARE, then information theory tells me it has a HIGH information content. But thats just my take on things.So. I went to look at all 8 year trends from 1900 to 2007 ( 2008 isnt done) Here is what you find
1. Every Batch of them ( save 1) is associated with volcanic activity. In the early 1900s, in the 6os,in the 70s, in the 80s in the 90s. If you find a 8 year negative slope in GSMT, You had a volcano.This is a good thing. It tells us the science of GW understand things.
2. The SOLE exception is the batch of 8 year negative trends in the mid 40s. Now, until recently GCM [klimamodeller] had not been able to match these negative trends (hmm) BUT now we find that the observatiion record, the SST bucket/inlet problem may be the cause of this apparent cooling trend.So, from 1990 to 2000, a time when C02 was increasing we find that on rare occasions we will see 8 year trends that are negative. The cause: volcanos, and bad SST data. Now, look at beyond 2000 and the last 8 years. negative trend. Any volcano? nope. any bucket problems?err nope. So for the first time in 100 years you have a negative slope that is not correlated with either volacanoes or bad observation data. That looks interesting. Wave your arms and cry weather?ThatÂ’s not science. Thats like waving your arms and crying weather when it gets warmer. The appeal to ignorance. We have a cooling regime. a cooling regime that is not associated with volcanoes and not associated with data errors. I think Thats interesting and meaningful. Dont know what it means, but its the kind of thing you want to investigate rather than shrug off.”
The trend has not yet reversed and the remarkable trend isn’t caused by volcanic cooling:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:2001/to:2010/plot/wti/from:2001/to:2010/trend
Niels,
You chose 2001 -2010 to try to make a point. If I choose 2000-2011 (one year in either direction), http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:2000/to:2011/plot/wti/from:2000/to:2011/trend, I come to the opposite conclusion.
The warming signal, although persistent, is smaller that the shorter term natural variations (enso, nao, pdo, etc) that introduce significant noise. As you can see from our arbitrary selections above, short term conclusions are able to be easily manipulated. Wait 10 years and if the trend from 2000 is still negative, we’ll have something to talk about.
The time you selected for your plot, by the way, is characterized by smaller than previous (1980-2000) el nino phases and a higher frequency of la nina phases .(http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/klaus.wolter/MEI/)
I hope Santa brings you all some sanity!
Holy cow. Grown men freaking out about tenths of a degree you can’t even point to on a globe. Get a grip!
C02 has NEVER EVER driven the climate on this planet. The planet wobbling back and forth and orbiting the sun changes the climate. And if you think the sun is constant and never changes…well like I said; I hope Santa brings you all some sanity on Christmas Day.
Carrick,
It is appealing to authority because you are clarifying what they say in order to defend what they say. In that particular comment you may have not defended what they say, but you have many times in the past, so that’s what I was going on.
Now, if you are clarifying what they say in order to subject what they say to further scrutiny and not to necessarily take sides, that would be different. Perhaps that is what you are doing now, I do not know for sure. In that case I would be incorrect in my conclusion. 😉
Are you still in a place where you are defending the official pronouncements of the IPCC? Just some of them?
Andrew
Owen (Comment#63940) December 18th, 2010 at 7:30 am
You chose 2001 -2010 to try to make a point. If I choose 2000-2011 …
As I said in Comment#63828, the only way to not pick cherries is to select peak to peak (1998 to 2010); otherwise even a sine-curve will have a trend.
But I admire Owen and woodfortress for already being able to use the temperatures from 2011. The sweet facts of AGW.
Owen (Comment#63940)
You cherry-picked three cooling trends to point out that there is nothing unusual about the latest cooling period. I pointed out to you that there is. It is not associated with volcanoes.
If you want to attribute the latest temperature stagnation to ENSO, then you have to attribute at least some of the previous warming on ENSO as well.
Andrew:
So if I agree with something somebody says that is “appealing to authority”? Or if I have agreed with it in the past, and point out that somebody got their position wrong, then that’s appealing to authority?
This is appalling logic, Andrew.
Point to which “official pronouncements of the IPCC” I defend, and we can start from there. Links help.
Niels A Nielsen (Comment#63947)
December 18th, 2010 at 10:04 am
Owen (Comment#63940)
“You cherry-picked three cooling trends to point out that there is nothing unusual about the latest cooling period. I pointed out to you that there is. It is not associated with volcanoes.
If you want to attribute the latest temperature stagnation to ENSO, then you have to attribute at least some of the previous warming on ENSO as well.”
Agree completely. But ENSO can drive neither a long-term warming or cooling unless it ceases to be an oscillation.
Anyway, appealing to authority looks more like using a particular authority (Glen Beck, NY Times, etc) as “proof” of the verity of ones comments.
Defending what somebody says, sounds like you are agreeing and giving reasons why.
Alexej Buergin (Comment#63946)
December 18th, 2010 at 9:39 am
Owen (Comment#63940) December 18th, 2010 at 7:30 am
“You chose 2001 -2010 to try to make a point. If I choose 2000-2011 …
As I said in Comment#63828, the only way to not pick cherries is to select peak to peak (1998 to 2010); otherwise even a sine-curve will have a trend.
But I admire Owen and woodfortress for already being able to use the temperatures from 2011. The sweet facts of AGW.”
Alexej,
I know that you really want to use the peak of that 1998 el nino to anchor the temperature pattern for the past 12 years. You can do that if you’d like. I’d rather use long-term signal averaging myself – best for removing higher frequency noise from a low frequency signal.
Owen (Comment#63951)
But if you want to show “that there has been no warming in the last dozen years”, you HAVE to take a dozen years and not thirty.
Let us not forget: According to IPCC the world is warming by at least 0.2°C per decade.
liza (Comment#63943) December 18th, 2010 at 8:00 am
Where in the historical record was there a population of 6 billion people pumping CO2 into the atmosphere at a rapid rate?
This discusses CO2 as a driver of climate. http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-higher-in-past.htm
As for apparently small temperature change, you are ignoring the fact that a small average rise will consist of short bursts of extremes that make up that average. Many animals live on the edge of their temperature range, and even one day of extreme temperatures can help lead to extinction.
http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/eserv/UQ:135282/A629_Welbergen.pdf Page 421 has an interesting graph. A temperature that is extreme suddenly has a whole colony being decimated in the rage of just a few degrees.
bugs (Comment#63954)
If one of 3000 air-molecules is CO2, that is bliss. If one of 2500 is CO2, that is catastrophy.
A couple of notes:
1) GHGs (Methane and CO2) drove the Paleocene/Eocene thermal maximum. In most other cases, increasing GHG are an amplifying feedback of other temperature change. Barring an extremely unusual volcanic event (as was likely the case for the PETM), the environnment usually does not decide to pump out CO2 and other GHGs above and beyond what it is absorbing.
2) According to UAH, which is presumably approved by “skeptics” and free of the dreaded urban heat island effect, the period between January 1999 and November 2010 was 0.18 degrees warmer than the previous 143 month period. In turn, that period was 0.14 degrees warmer than the 98 months prior to that (the beginning of the UAH dataset). I haven’t done the statistics, nor would I know how, but I’d wager that the warming within each one of these periods is not “statistically significant.” Therefore, according to skeptics, the world hasn’t warmed in 32 years! I’m a genius!
We are talking about change, and the ability of the ecosystems to change and adapt to what is, in geological terms, rapid change. Look at the link to the flying foxes. One day of extreme temperatures, that will only add a small amount to the average, is enough to cause a massive die off in a colony.
cce,
Please share with us your evidence of ghg’s driving the Palocene/Eocene thermal maximum.
Please also tell us when the environment decides to do anything?
As to your last claim, I was not aware misrepresenting other people’s arguments was a definition of genius.
Re: hunter (Dec 18 23:05),
Umm, the quite large decrease in the 13C/12C ratio in bulk carbonate, benthic and planktonic foraminifera from sea floor cores that is the defining point of the PETM? See for example http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~jzachos/pubs/Zeebe_etal_ngeo578.pdf and references therein. That particular paper suggests that CO2 alone was not sufficient to explain all of the temperature increase, but it surely played a part. The evidence is so strong that it would be more appropriate for you to find references to support the position that CO2 played no role. Good luck with that.
hunter (Comment#63966) December 18th, 2010 at 11:05 pm
cce,
Please share with us your evidence of ghg’s driving the Palocene/Eocene thermal maximum.
You could start here: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/316/5824/587.abstract
Hunter,
Re: PETM. Google Scholar is your friend.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_q=paleocene+eocene+thermal+maximum&num=10&btnG=Search+Scholar&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_occt=any&as_sauthors=&as_publication=&as_ylo=&as_yhi=&as_sdt=1&as_subj=phy&as_sdts=27&hl=en
Within the snippets on the first page, I see a comets and “regional uplift” offered as possible reasons for the release of greenhouse gases, which then initiated warming. As far as the Earth’s decision making process is concerned, you’ll have to ask its therapist. Or, preferably, you could grasp the point I was making. “Usually doesn’t” means never. Like the rich man passing through the eye of the needle, it doesn’t happen all that often. Something else causes the release of GHGs. Usually warming, creating a feedback. Sometimes weird geological events. Sometimes weird humans.
You mean misrepresenting someone doesn’t make me a genius? I guess I don’t have what it takes to spread a meme. Case in point, Phil Jones’ “no statistical warming since 1995.” It is mirepresented here, there and every where. Repeatedly. Again, and again. Without shame. They consider themselves clever, but they are not.
According to “skeptics” it is never currently warming. It only warmed in the past. It did warm, but now it’s not warming any more. From point A to present. See, no statistically significant warming! Phil Jones said so!
AGW theory does not predict “statistically significant” warming over short time periods. But forget that. Throw it down the memory hole. After all, it isn’t warming.
I wish the ‘skeptics’ would make up their minds. It’s not warming, but, if it is, it’s a good thing it’s warming.
Oh yes the PETM.
You have to go back 50 million years and that’s all you’ve got? LOL
Yet it got warm enough to melt ice sheets 3 miles high covering half the planet at least 22 separate times- just in the last 2 million years. 100,000 years ago Greenland was ice free (I do believe).
Besides the PETM was the dawn of mammals! Am I supposed to be upset or scared by that??
First of all, UAH responds to ENSO and similar effects much stronger than any surface dataset, thus comparing the past decade between the datasets you must remember to pick ENSO-neutral intervals.
In this case, 2000’s was more like a La Nina year. Calculating trend from 2000-2010 in UAH will definitely show a larger trend than any surface dataset.
If you check since 1998 instead (quite ENSO-neutral interval, doesnt account for AMO etc though), GISS shows almost double the trend comparing tu UAH, and other datasets significantly lower.
One reason behind UAH being warmer than RSS might be better Arctic/Antarctic coverage. There might have been some warming, but not as much as GISS is trying to fool us.