Since the mid 1980s, the majority of temperature stations in the United States USHCN network have been converted from Liquid in Glass (LiG)/Cotton Region Shelters (CRS) measurement instruments to maximum-minimum temperatures system (MMTS) instruments.
A number of researchers have suggested that the introduction of MMTS sensors has created a strong cooling bias in maximum temperatures and a moderate warming bias in minimum temperatures, resulting in an overall cooling bias in mean temps. In this post I will use the same-grid pair-wise comparison method developed earlier for UHI analysis to try and tease out the effects of sensor conversion on temperature trends in the CONUS, and examine how well USHCNv2 adjustments address any resulting bias.
The push to replace aging LiG/CRS instruments with new MMTS sensors started in the mid 1980s when
The wooden shelters had become increasingly expensive and difficult to maintain. Furthermore, NWS was also having trouble obtaining high quality self-registering thermometers at an acceptable price and an aging corps of volunteer observers found these thermometers difficult to read.
It was not particularly favored by climatologists, who worried that it might introduce discontinuities into the record. Indeed, according to Doesken 2005:
At the time, many climatologists expressed concern about this mass observing change. Growing concern over potential anthropogenic climate change was stimulating countless studies of long-term temperature trends. Historic data were already compromised by station moves, urbanization, and changes in observation time. The last thing climatologists wanted was another potential source for data discontinuities.  The practical reasons outweighed the scientific concerns, however, and MMTS deployment began in 1984.
Since the deployment of MMTS sensors, various groups have been tracking the differences in observed temps between the new devices and the old LiG/CRS sensors. Quayle et al (1991) examined various sites around the country and found that MMTS sensor introduction led to a cooling of the maximum temps by around 0.4 C and a warming of minimum temps of around 0.3 C. Similar results on a smaller scale were found by Blackburn 1993, Wendland 1993, and Doesken et al. 1995. A more recent paper by Hubbard and Lin 2006 found a 0.52 C cooling bias for maximum temperatures and a 0.37 C warming bias for minimum temperature.
While most researchers agree that the MMTS readings are probably a more accurate estimate of actual temperature than LiG/CRS, the transition poses a problem for measuring the change in temperature over time. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that the difference in readings between MMTS and CRS sensors isn’t always uniform (e.g. while the mean difference shows max cooling bias and min warming bias vis-a-vis LiG/CRS, the relationship can vary quite a bit from location to location), and by the fact that MMTS introduction in many cases involved moving the station location closer to a building due to the need for an electric cable running to the sensor (see Davey and Pielke 2005).
Lets take a look at the difference in temperature trends between MMTS and LiG/CRS stations. To calculate this, we will be assigning all USHCN stations to a 2.5×3.5 lat/lon gridcell, and identifying all gridcells that have at least one MMTS and one LiG/CRS station reporting each month for the past 40 years. By limiting our analysis to these gridcells, we will ensure that the spatial coverage of both sets remains the same. Its worth noting that the sensor identification we are using is from 2009, and all stations currently MMTS will have made the transition to MMTS sensors at a different time over the past 26 years. This means that any bias to the temperature trends introduced by sensor switching should show up in the difference between current MMTS and CRS stations.
There does not appear to be any urbanity siting bias of MMTS stations vis-a-vis CRS stations, as almost exactly half of each group is in GRUMP-designated urban and rural areas, the mean population density of each group is about the same, and the distribution of stations by satellite nightlights is also similar for both (as shown below).
If we calculate trends for all 81 gridcells that have at least one MMTS and one CRS station available, and weight each gridcell by its relative size, we get the following raw mean temperature trends:
We see a clear divergence between MMTS sensors and CRS sensors, with MMTS sensors on average reading about 0.2 C lower than CRS sensors over the past few years. To better analyze the difference between sensor types, we can examine the difference of the two curves for mean, min, and max raw data:
This shows max temp readings in MMTS stations between 0.5Â and 0.6 C cooler than CRS stations, and min temp readings around 0.1 C warmer. However, its possible that sensor types could be correlated with TOB-related biases, e.g. CRS stations might be more likely to have changing observation times over the last few decades. If we look at the same graph for TOBs data instead of raw data, we see quite similar results:
There does appear to be some correlation between TOBs adjustments and sensor types, but it is small, reducing the MMTS max cooling bias from around 0.6 C to 0.5 C and increasing the min warming bias from about 0.1 C to 0.15 C. These maximum numbers are in line with results from Hubbard and Lin 2006, though the minimum numbers are somewhat smaller.
USHCNv2 uses an inhomogeneity detection algorithm that should automatically correct for changes in sensor type. Indeed, if we examine the difference between CRS and MMTS stations in fully adjusted data (F52), the vast majority of the difference disappears:
After adjustments, the max cooling bias is reduced to around 0.1 C to 0.15 C and the min warming bias to around 0.1 C, with a slight mean cooling bias of around 0.02 C. The fact that adjustments do not completely eliminate the max and min sensor biases suggest that they may be imperfect, or that other confounding factors might be at play.
In discussing USHCNv2 adjustments, Menne et al 2009 note that:
The pairwise results indicate that only about 40% of the maximum and minimum temperature series experienced a statistically significant shift (out of ~850 total conversions to MMTS). As a result, the overall effect of the MMTS instrument change at all affected sites is substantially less than both the Quayle et al. (1991) and Hubbard and   Lin (2006) estimates. However, the average effect of the statistically significant changes (−0.52°C for maximum temperatures and +0.37°C for minimum temperatures) is close to Hubbard and Lin’s (2006) results for sites with no coincident station move.
To verify if the effects of MMTS conversion are uniform or not, we can examine the pair-wise differences in CRS and MMTS station trends from 1980-present in 77 gridcells (with at least 15 years of complete data). For TOBs data, we find:
We find that there is indeed quite a bit of variability, though the trend for max temps have an average cooling bias of 0.25 C +/-Â 0.54 C per decade and min temps have an average warming bias of 0.03 C +/- 0.85 C per decade. If we look at adjusted (F52) data, both the magnitude and the variability is much smaller (perhaps suggesting that the latter is at least in part due to exogenous factors):
Here the average cooling bias in max temps is only 0.07 C +/- 0.26 C per decade, while the warming bias in min temps is slightly larger (0.04 C +/- 0.24 C per decade).
This analysis suggests that while the effects of sensor transitions for individual stations can be difficult to separate out from all other exogenous effects, on an aggregate level there is a clear strong cooling bias to max temps and moderate warming bias to min temps introduced by the transition from MMTS to CRS CRS to MMTS sensors over the past few decades. The existing inhomogeneity adjustment methods employed by USHCNv2 appear to do a reasonably good job of removing these biases.
The title of the last two graphs should be:
“Pairwise Difference between CRS and MMTS -trends- by gridcell”
Since they show differences in trends rather than differences in temps.
Zeke,
The title of your third graph is “Pair-wise Difference Between CRS and MMTS Mean Temps” and the title of your fourth graph is “Pair-wise Difference Between CRS and MMTS TOBS Temps”. However, the legends for both graphs read “Mean TOBS”, “MIN TOBS”, and “MAX TOBS”. The data displayed in the graphs is similar but not identical. What am I missing?
The chart was correct but the labels were messed up. Its fixed now.
One problem-sure the thermometers themselves have a specific bias, but the MMTS’s were also in different locations (often closer to the observer’s house based on the surface station’s survey) which means you’ve got simultaneous discontinuities which may be of different signs-how does one handle that?
Also, when are climate scientists going to mention and correct for the bias of HO-83 hygrothermometers? Are they not going to because it goes the other direction?
http://climateaudit.org/2007/08/22/the-ho-83-hygrothermometer/
Andrew_FL,
I mention that issue briefly and link to Pielke’s paper, though the effects of changing the distance to a building are hard to quantify (e.g. more shading would cool, impervious surfaces would likely warm).
Know where I can find a list of HO-83 stations? I’d be happy to see how their readings compare to MMTS/CRS stations. Also, why does McIntyre assume that they aren’t caught by the USHCNv2 inhom detection algorithm?
Andrew:
I don’t think Zeke’s work attempts to distinguish between the change in instrument itself and the simultaneous shifts in locations. Above, we are looking at both factors combined. If I had to guess, it’s these location shifts that could be causing some of the scatter in the second-last figure.
Zeke,
The problem with Quayle 1991, Hubbard and Lin and Menne 2009 is that none of them made any effort to understand the problem. They never did any field tests or research on the discontinuities created by the change in equipment. Quayle passed the problem off as “beyond the scope of this study.” What a cop out. It’s what happens when lazy bureaucrats do not want to get off their butts and do some work.
So how do we know that there was a Tmax cooling bias in the new equipment and not a warming bias in the old equipment? The old equipment, after all, was subject to change and thus bias; Wood shelter construction with fading paint and poor airflow.
The answer to that question was the change in the range. The range between high and low temps shrunk considerably after the MMTS was installed. That range problem did not exist when the conversion was made from CRS to ASOS, and ASOS stations were not brought close to structures and other small scale urbanization like the MMTS were (due to that cable).
So the installation of the MMTS came with two changes. First, Tmin increased due to increased exposure to small scale urbanization. But a warm bias in Tmax was corrected and removed the problem with past biases… until Quayle adjusted them back to their biased levels. The problem with USHCN v2 is that it interprets the discontinuities in Tmax in the same way; it adjusts the new temps up to meet the older biased temperature because it is not sensitive enough to find a corresponding trend.
If your analysis proves anything, there is a paint bias in the CRS, and that paint bias continues to infect the temperature record.
MikeC,
I reference Doesken 2005 in suggesting that “While most researchers agree that the MMTS readings are probably a more accurate estimate of actual temperature than LiG/CRS, the transition poses a problem for measuring the change in temperature over time.”
Whether MMTS introduce a cool bias or corrected for a warm bias in past max records, the effect on the trend is the same. Either way, you end up with a lower trend than you otherwise would due to instrument changes rather than any reflection of real temps.
Zeke, No, you end up biasing the entire temperature record up by about 2 tenths, not good numbers when your background signal is supposed to be 6 tenths.
Let me do a quick toy model (in the spirit of our host):
Assume that MMTS max temps are the true temps, and that they read a constant 0.55 C lower than CRS temps (as my modeling suggests). If we have a set of stations with all MMTS sensors and another set with all CRS sensors, the trends end up being the same. But if we slowly shift a set of CRS sensors over to MMTS sensors, we significantly decrease the trend, even through we are switching from an inaccurate instrument to an accurate one.
http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j237/hausfath/Picture234.png
Zeke,
Now separate min and Tmax. Tmax was actually the corrected trend because you removed the old bias. But since you have moved your sensors to more urbanized locations, you have introduced a warm bias into Tmin (remember, urbanization shows up in Tmin more than Tmax).
… also, don’t forget that USHCN v2 does not apply the homoginization formula until after the TOB adjustment has been made
I don’t see how this matters. They’re the same thing, as it relates to the error in the resulting trends.
Seriously if going in there was concern that changing the methodology would create discontinuity why didn’t someone, somewhere make provision to run both types of sensors in parallel for a long period?
Yet another frustration!
… oops, let’s not forget, that according to the authors of USHCN v2 (Menne and Williams), there is an average miss rate of about .4… and if you look at their histograms, most of the discontinuities which are detected that are .2 and lower are false alarms… those are big numbers when the background GHG signal is .6
I know of no list-the reason Steve “assumes” that the inhomogeneity Al-Gore-Rhythm doesn’t catch that issue is because it didn’t work in Tucson according to Ben Herman.
carrot,
Not at all. The bias slowly built itself up in the old equipment but the algorithm did not detect it. When the equipment changed, Tmax suddenly dropped about half degree on average. The algorithm finds that change then looks for a corresponding trend, but the trend is too slow to detect, so the algorithm just adjusts the new temperature up. Therefore, you have permanently introduced that bias from the old equipment into the record.
Roger Caiazza (Comment#40289)
Roger,
Too much work for those on the government payroll, perhaps?
Roger Caiazza,
They did post-facto; hence the image at the start of the post. Doesken 2005 describes the results: http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/91613.pdf
.
MikeC,
As the original post says, MMTS introduction decreases max TOBs-adjusted temps by 0.55ish, increases min temps by 0.15ish, and decreases mean temps by 0.2ish vis-a-vis CRS stations.
MikeC: You’re now assuming the old LiGs had some spurious trend associated with them, instead of just an offset compared to the MMTS. I don’t know what justifies that assumption.
As for the pair-wise homogenisation missing small errors: if the errors are random, it doesn’t matter.
Carrot,
It’s not the LIG’s themselves but the shelters. The CRS shelter’s paint fades over time causing the shelter to absorb more heat. When the shelters started out, they were painted with whitewash, but as the whitewash faded the NWS had them painted with latex paint which has different absorptive properties than whitewash. Then the latex paint fades, causing the shelters to absorb more heat. All are important considerations since they are designed to sit in the sun and that airflow is held up in CRS stations and not in MMTS.
All of the studies show Tmax dropping when the equipment changed; Quayle, Hubbard and Lin, Menne 2009, Anthony Watts showed that latex and bare wood were warmer than whitewash. Even Zekes analysis shows Tmax warming in CRS stations when compared to MMTS.
… oh, and the errors are not random, there are more warm biases than cool biases
Does your last paragraph(conclusion) have the transition of instruments backwards(MMTS to CRS)? Your lead in has it CRS to MMTS.
Stephen Singer,
Good catch, fixed it.
Slick Zeke,
Zeke,
The residual mean Bias in the CRS versus F52 looks to be on the order of .05C
Odd thing is Quayle suggest a Bias of .06.
Do we have any clear description of how F52 comes about.
mikeC,
Sorry I see many unsubstantiated claims in what you’ve written
“So how do we know that there was a Tmax cooling bias in the new equipment and not a warming bias in the old equipment? The old equipment, after all, was subject to change and thus bias; Wood shelter construction with fading paint and poor airflow.”
problem is we have nothing to quantify this effect.
A warming bias in the old equipment due to fading paint,
is an interesting hypothesis, But you actually need some data
to back it up.
Start with The boulder study. there you have a MMTS next to a CRS for 20 years. Write them and ask them if they repaited the shelter and if so with what.
Also, Look at Zeke’s chart comparing CRS with F52. now think about that in context of the fading paint Idea. Notice something?
(Tmax +Tmin)/2 = Tavg?
If I have 1 hour at 10C and 23 hrs at 30C the average is 20C?
You are trying to devine tenths of a degree for non-sense numbers.
Holy cow are you guys serious?!!!
What this implies strongly is that we are basing huge decisions on doubtful data of negligible significance.
Temperature studies are a great demonstration of one of the characteristics of bad science:
Huge conclusions based on results not noticeably different from noise and well within the range of error.
Surprising though, that Zeke would post something that suggests More Global Warming. Didn’t know he was going to thow us THAT curveball. 😉
Happy Friday Everyone. It’s a beautiful day! 🙂
Andrew
Steven Mosher, Feel free to link the Boulder study… or a station number… or something… the MMS database shows 22 stations which contain the word “boulder” in their station name… and since NCDC has taken down the contact info, feel free to send me their phone number so I can call them. Also, if you are going to make the claim that there are “many” unsubstantiated claims in what I have written, then please specify them, I’ll be more than happy to provide the ref’s you seek. However, reading the studies that have been listed by me above will probably answer most of your questions.
…oh, and the F52’s need the start dates teased out of them if you want to verify the paint bias (or lack therof) in the time that MMTS has been in service… unless you are going to claim that there were MMTS’s in service in the 1960’s… getting the start dates for the individual CRS’s would be even better, assuming they even installed any new CRS’s after they started the change over to MMTS
“per decade”???
The bias due to the switch should be a one-off, not ‘per decade’. NOAA USHCN use a small positive correction in the mid 80’s see
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.html
Also you say 0.04 is slightly larger than 0.07….
PaulM,
The effects on a single station are a step change; the effects on the trend of all stations is in C per decade since the transition occurred over multiple decades.
The 0.04 is slightly larger line refers to the F52 min temp warming bias vis-a-vis the TOBs value of 0.03 C per decade.
.
Andrew_KY,
Hey, its something that is in the literature, and folks seemed skeptical of it in the comments of an earlier post, so I figured I’d look into it. If there had turned out to be no real bias and the inhom adjustments were creating spurious warming, I would have written about that as well (and, frankly, it would have been a more interesting result since its not just replicating Quayle and Hubbard and Lin).
.
Mosh,
For the F52 dataset, there slight mean cooling bias of around 0.02 C between CRS and MMTS stations. However, the data is noisy enough that its probably not distinguishable from zero. The fact that the max and min differences are not zero (and still somewhat significantly far from zero) in the F52 data is more interesting.
Mosh,
On how F52 comes about, the best I can do is point you at Menne and Williams (2009): ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/menne-williams2009.pdf
“If there had turned out to be no real bias and the inhom adjustments were creating spurious warming, I would have written about that as well”
Zeke,
“If ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ were candy and nuts…”
Why do I doubt that you’d ever do a post that doesn’t support the standard AGW line?
Maybe you could do a post on the reasons why there is uncertainty in AGW theory. Now, THAT would be some Objective Eye Candy. 😉
Andrew
Zeke, Would you be a little more detailed on the F52, perhaps your definition… or even a page and paragraph from Menne 2009… thx
MikeC,
I discussed it a bit in my UHI post awhile back:
“USHCNv2 introduced a new method for detecting and correcting inhomogeneities in station data that replaces the numerous independent adjustments used for station moves, UHI effects, and changes in measurement instruments (e.g. the shift to MMTS) in USHCNv1. The USHCNv2 inhomogeneity detection works by looking at multiple pair-wise comparisons of stations in a region to identify spurious step-changes or unusual changes in trends and correcting them to be in line with records from nearby stations. It also uses the documented station history to identify and correct for known changes in station location and instrument type.”
I’d suggest reading Menne et al 2009 (ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/menne-etal2009.pdf) and Menne and Williams 2009 (ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/menne-williams2009.pdf) for the gory details of how it works. The former has a good discussion of how well it captures sensor changes (as well as other factors).
The NOAA page says
“The shift from Cotton Region Shelters to the Maximum/Minimum Thermometer System in the mid-1980’s is clearly evident in the difference between the TOBS and the MMTS time series (red line). This adjustment created a small warming in the US annual time series during the mid to late 1980’s.”
Their adjustment occurs over about 5 years, not several decades.
Are you saying they are wrong?
So that’s just another name for the version 2 homoginity adjustment?
Paul, That’s a version 1 adjustment, when the adjustments were made on an individual basis. They’re automated now.
M Simon:
“(Tmax +Tmin)/2 = Tavg?
If I have 1 hour at 10C and 23 hrs at 30C the average is 20C?
You are trying to devine tenths of a degree for non-sense numbers.”
Trust me this idea that Tave = (tmin+tmax)/2 may seem odd at first, it did to me. But then I just went and looked at data and found that it’s a pretty good estimator of the integrated temp. Here is what is important.
1. it’s an unbiased estimator over time of the integrated
temperature. This isnt something one has to argue
from first principles, but rather something you can test.
A. Go to the thread on TOBS at CA. look for my comments
you will find a link to JerryBs data. I think its 10 years
of 190 hourly stations. Download that data. You will see
a collection of station data that contains both Tave and the
integration temp ( delta T=1 hour ). Compare,
B. Go download CRN data. There is perhaps 5 years of data
This data is collected at a faster rate. Compare.
2. It’s an unbiased estimator of the Trend. And the trend is all
we really care about. Do the same tests as above.
3. Download ISH data. thousands of stations.
Since the data is actually out there you can see for yourself.
Or, you can read some of the papers published on the issue.
Hunter,
While I share your concern about the reliability of the data I think the better approach is to openly discuss the uncertainty and draw conclusions about its magnitude after that discussion. In the end I think ( Like Briggs ) that we will be less certain than we are today, but ( unlike others) not so uncertain that we don’t realize that it is getting warmer.
Steven Mosher,
Are you going to provide a link to the Boulder study and the specifics on the “many”?
MikeC
” Feel free to link the Boulder study… or a station number… or something… the MMS database shows 22 stations which contain the word “boulder†in their station name… and since NCDC has taken down the contact info, feel free to send me their phone number so I can call them.”
The boulder study is linked in Zeke’s text. It is one of those papers that anyone who wants to talk about MMTS should read.
I believe we discussed it long ago on CA. Essentially they have a MMTS and a CRS co located for over 20 years. This answers the following questions:
1. Is there a bias in this location.
2. How does that bias manifest itself ( tmin, tmax)
3. How is that Bias modulated by Seasons. Its different.
4. It answers the question of drift over time. The bias
has not changed at this location.
While NOT definitive the study does show that with this particular siting there is a bias and that bias is stable over time.
The study is silent on the issue of wether they have repainted
the shelter. I would think that they havent. They note for example that the MMTS has yellowed a bit so they do show awareness of the issue of transmission through various materials.
That said, you should write them. This study also does NOT address the issue of what happens when a CRS in the open field is replaced with a MMTS next to a building.
I spent a little time looking at this a couple years ago. Looking
at adjusted data for MMTS versus CRS, I did find a warming associated with the CRS from 1979 on, again small number of stations and I didnt use Zeke’s pairwise approach.. personally
I think I would use the approach Quayle used but Zeke is doing
something close to that. Dont put much weight on what I did as I was only looking for gross bias with a small dataset using a very
weak method.
” Also, if you are going to make the claim that there are “many†unsubstantiated claims in what I have written, then please specify them, I’ll be more than happy to provide the ref’s you seek. However, reading the studies that have been listed by me above will probably answer most of your questions.”
The claim is that fading paint causes measurable warming. Unsubstantiated.
1. Anthony tested the temperature of three pieces
of wood.
A. bare wood
B. Latex painted wood
C. Whitewashed wood.
he found that A recorded the highest temp, then B then C
The measures of Tmin were NOT effected. Remember that.
Second, this experimental set up was not designed to measure
what happens to the temp of the air INSIDE the box. The various
applications of paints to the wood will of course change the temperature of the WOOD, but we are interested in what happens to the air inside the wood. The wood and painted wood
of course will reflect different amount of SW radiation and to the
extent that the air inside the structure is heated by SW
you might see a small difference. The real test of course is what
actually happens inside a ventilated structure. Those results have never been posted. I wouldnt draw any conclusion from that.
You have no evidence one way or the other about the important
question. What happens inside the box.
So lets proceed. On the assumption that a less reflective ( latex ) surface leads to higher air temps inside the box than a more reflective ( whitewash ) surface, on that assumption I will note these things:
A). the bias is confined to Tmax. you can look for this. You can
also look at Tmin.
B) The actual situation is more complicated. Until 1979 the
stations were painted with Whitewash. As you know whitewash
fades. The stations are then repainted with Latex. Anthony’s set
up does not test this combination. What happens when you
take a box that has been painted for 70 years with whitewash
and then paint it with latex. What happens to its
reflection properties. If latex painted wood is .5C hotter than Whitewash painted wood ( about ) what about wood that has been whitewashed for 70 years and then covered in Latex. You
see the whitewashed wood never really becomes bare. it fades.
Does it fade to 50% ? 25% we dont know. But I would hazard that it doesnt fade to bare wood. If it retained 50% of its reflective properties then the difference between Whitewash, and
Whitewash repainted with Latex, would be more like .25C
And THATs at the surface of the wood. That says nothing about
the air in the box. Let’s assume it does translate 1 for 1 to higher
air temps in the box. That’s a .25C bias in Tmax.. which gives you a .125C bias in Tave.
Oh, and recall that Anthony’s wood test doesnt happen under
a variety of conditions ( winds, clouds, rain ) Its a sunny day
test which magnifies the effect. let me clear. I don’t doubt
that the interior temperature of a structure painted in whitewash
is cooler on average at the heat of the day, than the interior of a structure made of bare wood. Radiative Transfer equations and heat transfer equations would predict such a difference. That difference will be small and perhaps below the threshold of measurability. If you look at faded whitewash repainted with Latex, smaller still. Look at how other factors modulate this,
smaller still. Is there a bias, I suppose so, theoretically. Theoretically, we would expect SOME difference. But a measurable difference? nobody has established that.
And thinking.
I have a list of 239 ” stations”.
a. population less than 10K
b. Nightlights less than 10
c. Urban extent by grump = rural
d. Urban density by GPW < 10 people per sq km
e. not on a coast
f. not at an aiport.
One could look through that list and find those that are
CRN12. One could then divide those into MMTS and CRS.
one would look at Tmax, maybe with a paired station approach
( like Quayle) or a paired station per grid approach like Zeke.
There are some grid squares ( see the CRN studies ) that only require one station per grid. I'd focus on comparing in those
grids. You could also throw in NCEP reanalysis wind data ( but that costs money )
one could.
Oh mike, Not many. Just one. noted above
Ya Zeke I have to read Menne09.
From descriptions on the web page it was unclear if they:
A. applied the known adjustments ( TOBS and MMTS and SHAP)
and then applied a test for undocumented changes OR
B. just did a test for “changes” and adjusted.
I have a problem with the latter since you dont get good traceability on the error. With aTOBS adjustment the error
is just straightforward.
MikeC
Roger Caiazza,
They did post-facto; hence the image at the start of the post. Doesken 2005 describes the results: http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/91613.pdf
Well, Mike I found a sample day from Anthony’s test.
I’ll have a look
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/14/a-typical-day-in-the-stevenson-screen-paint-test/
Steven Mosher,
Unfortunately the page you linked made it clear that the most relevant question is not explored:
“None of these studies, however, addressed the
interesting question of long-term stability. Do the
relationships between MMTS and LIG established
in the 1980s still hold in the 2000s? MMTS
radiation shields that have been in the field now
for 20 years have dirtied and yellowed over time.
Little routine maintenance and calibration are
performed on these systems. So it is fair to ask if
any long-term changes have occurred and can be
detected.”
However, I’d say that it’s pushing it a bit saying that there is a problem with Anthony’s results because he did not test paint over whitewash since it is the outer surface which will do the absorbing.
When you finally decide to sit down and read Menne 2009, make sure to pay close attention to their histograms from their simmulations and how they compare to the real world counts. USHCN v2 is a very insensative program since the average miss is about 2/3 of the background signal that it is designed to detect… and let us not forget that misses are not limited to one per station.
Sorry Mike
“However, I’d say that it’s pushing it a bit saying that there is a problem with Anthony’s results because he did not test paint over whitewash since it is the outer surface which will do the absorbing.”
I’ve seen nothing to convince me that my concern is not valid.
But lets just say that latex = latex over faded whitewash. and lets just ignore a wide swath of the EM spectrum.
Lets just look at the evidence you have and what you want to conclude from it.
you have 1 day of temperature data. ( see the results above in the one day of data that Anthony Posted. You can go see me on that thread.
Anyways, here are some things you should note.
1. a 5-10 mph wind makes the Tmax noisy. What this means is
that differences ( biases ) are modulated by other factors.
2. The measurements do not simulate ( as I noted in my comments ) the way in which measurements are taken in the feild. A min/max sample.
3. The reported measurements do not reflect the rounding
practice taken in the feild.
Those are minor points, but let me illustrate what that one day shows.
For the “wood test” we saw no difference in Tmin and about 2F in Tmax.
Now we build a structure. What do we see;
LATEX: Tmax = 97.74 Tmin 55.92
WHITEWASH: Tmax = 96.94 Tmin: 56.21
So, if we go ahead and calculate Tave what do you have?
LATEX= 76.83
WHITEWASH=76.57
So Latex gives you a warm Bias of .26F lets say.
.1C or so.
And of course windier days will be less, cloudy days less, rainy days less..
Now, if we use the rounding rules to record the temp for this day we get this
LATEX: Tmax = 98; Tmin = 56 Tave= 77
WHITEWASH Tmax= 97; Tmin = 56; Tave = 77 ( rounding .5 up)
So again, There is a plausible physical theory that the temps will be different. Measuring the magintude of that diffrence and the various factors that modulate it is a complicated affair. But, some simple tests show the effect to be small, measurable, but small.
Apparently, there is a bunch more data. I like open data, but right now I only see one day. One day, doesnt generate a lot of doubt. it generates questions. I like questions. I think we ought to answer them, regardless of AGW.
I’m pretty sure that the paint bias will only affect Tmax (but dont quote me on that). If your calculations were correct and you came to +.5 for Tmax then that’s supported by a number of published studies. Since the raw counts in Menne and Williams 2009 show about the same number of discontinuities found by the algorithm as were station changes, then any residuals in Tmax trend between CRS and MMTS since the station changes will probably be that paint bias. Now consider that CRS stations which have not been painted and have become darker due to dirt or paint fade (which eventually turns to paint chipping) will experience a slow upward trend in Tmax over time, a trend that happens far too slow for the USHCN v2 algorithm to detect.
o Mike.
Take your Bias of Tave from that one day. lets be generous
and call it .15C warm bias for latex over whitewash. That’s July 13th when the Chico area sees its highest temps. No clouds, gentle breezes, no rain.
Now, lets just do a simple “model” of the bias.
Bias = Bias – Cloud factor -rain factor-wind factor
So for example on a cloudy day we’d expect a smaller bias
than a sunny day. So cloud factor might be 50%. on a cloudy day
the bias might be .07C. and a windy day there would be zero bias ( wind for example has a great effect on UHI ) and rain also would drive the bias to zero. So by the end of a year, your total bias is going to be less once you sample windy days, rainy days, cloudy days, pretty soon it gets diminishingly small. real, but small.
Same story as microsite bias. if half your days are windy your down to .06C. 10% rainy days?, clouds pretty soon you are down to the threshold for measurment error in a month. The Sd for measurement error is .03C per month. Awefully hard to find a small bias in that environment. Lots of N needed.
… sorry, that was for Mosh…
And add that bias onto the bias which is in Tmin by urbanization and micro-climate… misses by the algorithm and etc… they start to add up
Steven, The micro-site is going to show up in Tmin (night) and I doubt that half of your Tmin are going to be windy… and where did the .15C come from on the paint? He shows about .44 between latex and whitewash.
Steven, also, your example works for UHI, but with the paint bias we are talking about what is absorbed by the shelter and warms it’s way thyrough, not by what is being transferred from a concrete surface to a thermometer in the area.
Mike:
“I’m pretty sure that the paint bias will only affect Tmax (but dont quote me on that). If your calculations were correct and you came to +.5 for Tmax then that’s supported by a number of published studies.”
please read what I wrote. I can only find ONE published datapoint
on whitewash verus latex. ONE. that is for one day in july.
The difference in TAVE is only .27F that’s F. figure about 5/9
of that for C. call it .15C
It did NOT only effect Tmax, it effected Tmin as well. Who knows why? but that’s the one data point that Anthony Published. if you have other data point to it.
Further, you write:
“Since the raw counts in Menne and Williams 2009 show about the same number of discontinuities found by the algorithm as were station changes, then any residuals in Tmax trend between CRS and MMTS since the station changes will probably be that paint bias. ”
HUH? that’s a leap of logic and presumption that no skeptic worth his salt would make. HUH? you dont even know that people actually switched to Latex. What you have is a change in policy.
So I suppose one should survey the stations and take paint samples to be sure. At least that is what I would do before making any definitive statement about what people did or did not do. And your attribution to “probably paint”. I’m very skeptical of “attribution” studies in climate science, so I’m equally skeptical here.
Continuing:
“Now consider that CRS stations which have not been painted and have become darker due to dirt or paint fade (which eventually turns to paint chipping) will experience a slow upward trend in Tmax over time, a trend that happens far too slow for the USHCN v2 algorithm to detect.”
HUH? Well, you have a database of stations with site surveys.
How many have not been painted, for how long, how bad is it,
Seriously, one could probably go get an old faded one and add it to Anthonys set up. Untill then you have speculation. Impactand bias. sure. Measurable? probably not? accounts for all the warming? not.
MikeC (Comment#40362) April 9th, 2010 at 3:09 pm
Steven, The micro-site is going to show up in Tmin (night) and I doubt that half of your Tmin are going to be windy… and where did the .15C come from on the paint? He shows about .44 between latex and whitewash.
Mike: you keep confusing several Issues. I’m talking about the shelter test. not the wood slat test.
We are talking about the SIDE BY SIDE test that Anthony did.
SAME MICRO SITE. its a CRN1 class site. See the link to the data.
SIDE BY SIDE. about 4 feet away from each other. So the SAME MICRO SITE. this study focuses on the SHELTER BIAS. 3 shelters
one wood, one latex, one whitewash. same site. same instruments. different shelter. What’s the difference between
whitewash and latex?
Let me turn it into simple math:
Temp = Temp+ UHIbias+MicroSiteBias+ShelterBias+InstrumentBias
+ Measurement Noise.
Anthony did a side by side test. Same UHI BIAS, SAME MICROSITE
SAME INSTRUMENTS.
DIFFERENT SHELTER.
So the test measures the bias due to SHELTER
In FAHRENHEIT. the difference for the sunny day in cloudless July was ……27F for Tave. Tmax was effected, Tmin was effected.
go look at the charts. Translate that .27F into C.
Steven,
“please read what I wrote. I can only find ONE published datapoint
on whitewash verus latex. ONE. that is for one day in july.
The difference in TAVE is only .27F that’s F. figure about 5/9
of that for C. call it .15C”
If you read my comment that you quoted, you’ll notice that I specificly was referring to Tmax, the paint bias I have been discussing all along has been in relation to Tmax. Why you changed it to Tave is beyond me. And the change in Tmax when the stations change has been supported by Quayle, Hubbard and Lin, and Menne and Williams.
Steven,
“HUH? that’s a leap of logic and presumption that no skeptic worth his salt would make. HUH? you dont even know that people actually switched to Latex. What you have is a change in policy.”
Here again you are changing what I am saying. The paint bias is not only in relation to painting the box, but the fading and chipping of the paint as well.
Mike
“MikeC (Comment#40363) April 9th, 2010 at 3:12 pm
Steven, also, your example works for UHI, but with the paint bias we are talking about what is absorbed by the shelter and warms it’s way thyrough, not by what is being transferred from a concrete surface to a thermometer in the area.”
I dont think you understand what you are saying. let me make it clear.
Put a latex painted shelter over a grass surface. Blow no wind.
Put a white wash painted one next to it. Blow no wind.
Measure the temps; They will differ by some amount. call it
Tl-Tw. This is X.
Now blow a 20mph wind over that site. Do you think
that Tl-Tw will be:
A. greater than X
B. The same as X
C. Less than X.
Like I said, the shelter bias will be modulated by other factors.
Take two shelters. Latex and whitewash. call the difference between them X.. on a sunny July 13th day. Now rain on them.
is the difference > X or <X? why or why not.
The simple fact is that these small differences are there, but so many factors modulate them that it becaomes impossible to tease
out the effect on a large scale. the best one can do is increase the error bounds on the estimate.
Steven,
“HUH? Well, you have a database of stations with site surveys.
How many have not been painted, for how long, how bad is it,
Seriously, one could probably go get an old faded one and add it to Anthonys set up. Untill then you have speculation. Impactand bias. sure. Measurable? probably not? accounts for all the warming? not.”
This was your response to me discussing the effectiveness of the USHCN v2 in detecting slow trends. It cannot. The authors have discussed this in their papers and presentations. Their histograms in the 2009 paper make this point clear. I understand, as you have stated above, that you have not read Menne 2009, try reading it, you’ll be amazed at how shotty this algorithm is.
Steven,
“Mike: you keep confusing several Issues. I’m talking about the shelter test. not the wood slat test.
We are talking about the SIDE BY SIDE test that Anthony did.”
I’m aware of that, you keep changing from Tmax to Tave. No one is saying all of the warming is from the paint bias, but there are 3 published studies which show a change in Tmax … whether the CRS is changed to MMTS or ASOS
Mike:
:This was your response to me discussing the effectiveness of the USHCN v2 in detecting slow trends. It cannot. The authors have discussed this in their papers and presentations. Their histograms in the 2009 paper make this point clear. I understand, as you have stated above, that you have not read Menne 2009, try reading it, you’ll be amazed at how shotty this algorithm is.”
No, We are discussing your ASSUMPTION that it is due to paint.
For the sake of argument I’m granting you that you dont like Menne. Im granting you that for the sake of argument. for the sake of argument. because I’m not gunna run off and read menne this second. I’m saying that your assumption ( its due to paint )
is unwarrented. If you want to go look at all 1000 surveys and report back on paint, then your assumption has some basis in fact. to be clear. I can even grant you that menne is flawed and still would take issue with your assumption.
Steven,
“Like I said, the shelter bias will be modulated by other factors.
Take two shelters. Latex and whitewash. call the difference between them X.. on a sunny July 13th day. Now rain on them.
is the difference > X or <X? why or why not.
The simple fact is that these small differences are there, but so many factors modulate them that it becaomes impossible to tease
out the effect on a large scale. the best one can do is increase the error bounds on the estimate."
Of course it will be smaller, but there are 3 published studies which all came up with the same result, Tmax decreases when the station goes from the wood sheltered CRS to the small palstic sheltered MMTS or HGO… and they used averages, so the variance is going to be contained in those averages. Your examples are too small and continue to focus on Tave, rather than Tmax… if in fact the entire decrease of .4 were due to a paint bias (whether that bias is related to fading whitewash or changing to latex), then the effect on the record is a warm bias of .2 when ;the improper Tmax adjustment is applied. That is 1/3 of the entire signal thought to be associated with GHG warming.
Mike
“We are talking about the SIDE BY SIDE test that Anthony did.â€
I’m aware of that, you keep changing from Tmax to Tave. No one is saying all of the warming is from the paint bias, but there are 3 published studies which show a change in Tmax … whether the CRS is changed to MMTS or ASOS”
I am trying to isolate the issue to shelter bias. Stick with that.
Shelter bias has only ONE STUDY. That study has ONE data point.
that study controlled for Site bias: ( same site) Instrument Bias
( NISt calibrated sensors) That study showed a difference in
Tmax, TMin, And hence Tave. the Tave bias was .27F
MikeC,
The change in Tmin due to the CRS to MMTS transition is smallish (~0.1 to 0.15 C). It may be due to the instrument itself (e.g. MMTS simply reporting a higher min), or to location change (more impermeable surfaces), or to bias in the CRS record (paint, etc.). The latter two can be somewhat ruled out by looking at the Boulder study, where the MMTS sensor is co-located with the CRS sensor, and the difference in readings between the two stay relatively constant over time.
Steven,
“No, We are discussing your ASSUMPTION that it is due to paint.
For the sake of argument I’m granting you that you dont like Menne.”
No, I am arguing that the paint bias is a real possibility. There are many lines of evidence which support it but no lines of evidence which refute it. As for Menne, I don’t know the guy personally, but I am not impressed by his work when he comes up with a formula to correct a horrible data set to find a .6 GHG signal where the formula misses discontinuities, on average, of .4 degrees.
Zeke,
That is not what the study says and I quoted it above and will requote…
“None of these studies, however, addressed the
interesting question of long-term stability. Do the
relationships between MMTS and LIG established
in the 1980s still hold in the 2000s? MMTS
radiation shields that have been in the field now
for 20 years have dirtied and yellowed over time.
Little routine maintenance and calibration are
performed on these systems. So it is fair to ask if
any long-term changes have occurred and can be
detected.â€
Steven,
“I am trying to isolate the issue to shelter bias. Stick with that.”
Okay, so stick with that portion of the paint bias, which consists of Anthony’s side by side test… but… dont forget that there is, in addition, a problem with the color of the box fading, becoming darker.
Tave is .27… what is Tmax and Tmin?
Mike:
“Of course it will be smaller, but there are 3 published studies which all came up with the same result, Tmax decreases when the station goes from the wood sheltered CRS to the small palstic sheltered MMTS or HGO… and they used averages, so the variance is going to be contained in those averages. ”
I am talking about the shelter bias . in order to unconfound the result. You brought up the paint issue. So I am addressing the paint issue and ONLY the paint issue. Not studies in which the instruments and the shelters were changed. The PAINT issue and only the paint issue. You claimed that fading paint (latex paint) in CRS led to an increase in CRS. I am trying to show you based on the ONE DATA point “published” on this that
1. Fading paint or latex paint is
A. not a big issue
B. Likely to be Much less than .15C for Tave.
You asked me what you got wrong and I am focusing on that.
You claimed it was shown that switching to latex ( and or faded paint which hasnt been tested) leads to warming. I’m showing you
that the ONE data point ( one sunny day ) showed a bias of .27F
to Tave and a bias in Tmax and Tmin. And that All things considered we can look at this as a peak bias. wind will effect it downward and will rain. In chico where the test was done 10% of the days are rainy. In portland?? you get the point. We dont see a rise from 0C to .6C because of fading paint.
“Your examples are too small and continue to focus on Tave, rather than Tmax… if in fact the entire decrease of .4 were due to a paint bias (whether that bias is related to fading whitewash or changing to latex), then the effect on the record is a warm bias of .2 when ;the improper Tmax adjustment is applied. That is 1/3 of the entire signal thought to be associated with GHG warming.”
Wrong. You claimed a fact. the fact you claimed was that changing paint biases the record. There is only one data point
that addresses this issue. from one location on one day.
Further, if you want to focus on Tmax that is fine. But we measure (Tmax+Tmin)/2.. which means all biases to Tmax get cut in half. Modeluate that bias by wind and rain and clouds.. even smaller.
Finally, you are talking about the LAND record. Lets stipulate that the land record shows a .6C increase in the last few decades.
lets stipulate that .15C of this Tave is due totally to paint changing. problem? 70% of the global is water. Problem? the
UAH record is largely in agreement with the land record. and it dont care about paint. Put it this way. The various errors on the ground are constrained by the estimates from UHA.
Zeke,
“The change in Tmin due to the CRS to MMTS transition is smallish (~0.1 to 0.15 C). It may be due to the instrument itself (e.g. MMTS simply reporting a higher min), or to location change (more impermeable surfaces), or to bias in the CRS record (paint, etc.).”
Zeke… you quoted Menne 2009 above as Tmin being +.37C when changing from CRS to MMTS… where the heck are yoou now getting .1 to .15????
MikeC,
Fair enough, I misread the graph caption. The paper only shows two years of comparisons. It rules out location shifting, but not changes in sensor condition.
MikeC,
I get 0.1 to 0.15 C from comparing the average min temps over the past 5 years from CRS and MMTS stations for 81 2.5×3.5 lat/lon gridcells with at least one station of each type. Hence the graphs in the original article.
Zeke,
“Fair enough, I misread the graph caption. The paper only shows two years of comparisons. It rules out location shifting, but not changes in sensor condition.”
DUDE! You’re honest, you rock!
Zeke,
“I get 0.1 to 0.15 C from comparing the average min temps over the past 5 years from CRS and MMTS stations for 81 2.5×3.5 lat/lon gridcells with at least one station of each type. Hence the graphs in the original article.”
Fair enough, but I will place a lot more credibility on the figures that were in the published studies where many more stations were observed… so perhaps, propper attribution would be a better idea next time.
Steven,
“I am trying to isolate the issue to shelter bias. Stick with that.â€
Okay, so stick with that portion of the paint bias, which consists of Anthony’s side by side test… but… dont forget that there is, in addition, a problem with the color of the box fading, becoming darker.
Tave is .27… what is Tmax and Tmin?
1. I linked to the site. go read the chart.
2. I posted the Tmax and Tmin above. read the thread.
3. The issue of the boxes getting darker.
I just finished reviewing all 1000 site surveys. I looked at every BOX ( CRS). None show a darkening. a small handful show paint chipping. I know of NO side by side test that quantifies the heating due to darkening. NONE. If a box APPROACHED the state of bare wood the difference would be this:
( again, one silly data point but its all you have for YOUR
claim about the paint effect )
Whitewash: 76.57
Latex: 76.83 (+.26F)
Wood: 77.41 (+.58F) (++.84F)
So worst case in 1979 if people stopped painting screens altogether and we ended up with bare wood today ( we HAVENT)
you would have a .84F bias MAXIMUM, but as you admit this gets
decreased by windy days, rainy days,
If They all switched to latex and kept them painted then you are talking about a .26F bias, MAXIMUM
And now you want to thrown in a speculation about dirty screens.
it could be gremlins.
Look. there is a fundamental difference between caring about transparency in data and transparency in methods and calculating estimates with the best available data and methods, and just throwing up speculative untested assumptions. I think this much is clear. The evidence that it is getting warmer is more convincing than the evidence that paint bias accounts for any substantial or even measurable part of the warming. If I thought it was warming by 1C, I might allow that this estimate included
a potential error for changes in shelters over time, but that allowance would not exceed .1C and that’s being very generous.
BTW. How many CRS are there in the 1000 stations in the US?
Steven,
steven mosher (Comment#40378)
No doubt, the one portion of the paint bias which you are discussing, will be smaller than the whole. But the USHCN does not adjust Tave, it adjusts Tmin and Tmax. Second, the portion (or the total paint bias as discussed by me) is going to be too small AS IT DEVELOPS OVER TIME. But the discontinuity created when the change in equipment occurs is not. So the algorithm corrects the new temps up, not down. Second, I do not care about the ocean temps, the USHCN v2 has nothing to do with ocean temps. But when you have all of these little errors adding up, it makes a difference in the end. When Menne Williams 2009 says the increase of .6 they have detected in the US record is consistent with the .6 they believe to be from GHG’s, then you have a big problem. HUGE … ENORMOUS
Steven,
“And now you want to thrown in a speculation about dirty screens.
it could be gremlins. ”
No Steven, it was brought up in the Boulder study which YOU linked. Haven’t you even read it? This is getting pretty bad. You are asserting yourself into a discussion where you have not even read the literature and making accusations against people who are repeating points made in the very papers YOU are linking to.
steven mosher (Comment#40340) Thank you for your thoughts.
This is what I think- that however warm we decide, finally, that it has gotten, it is unimportant and is telling us nothing about the likelihood of a climate catastrophe.
If we are jiggling around worrying about what type of paint the box is painted with, I submit to you that the underlying trend ain’t squat.
And this is great discussion, as significant as the vital questions regarding angels dancing on pin heads, is perfectly representative of the heart of AGW:
Much ado about basically zip.
We have spent billions on people who claim that CO2 has driven the world climate to a catastrophic change, and that change is hidden in the dull paint of an old box, or the difference between a wet bulb and dry bulb thermometer.
Do you realize how friggin’ big a stack of money we have flushed away chasing changes indistinguishable from noise?
And this holds true on every issue of AGW: ice, storms, wind, rain, snow, glaciers, etc. etc. etc.
We have been sold a whole bunch of tulips that each cost the equivalent of an average year’s wage.
This is utter garbage. And we have allowed it to go on for decades now.
How embarrassing for a society that claims to be so clever.
I submit to you that if thermometers, satellites (MSU, AVHRR, GRACE, IceSAT, JASON, etc), ships and buoys, radiosondes, glaciers, tide guages, and phenological records all show or imply warming, then the world really is warming even if each data source has its own problems. “Utter garbage” is the notion that such problems throw the whole theory into chaos and prove that the world has been defrauded of billions of dollars.
I find this renewed interest in the global temperature record fascinating, and I am sure that we will get much better products as a result whether they are produced by “skeptics”, “luke warmers” or “warmists.” But it is shear irrational folly for anyone to believe that there will be a significant reduction in calculated temperature trends. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the trends are slightly increased when more sophisticated analyses are developed.
cce (Comment#40392) April 9th, 2010 at 11:16 pm
” all show or imply warming”
Besides the word “imply” making me laugh, ALL of those things do not show warming!
Some places may be warmer, others are not warmer at all but have been cooler (LIKE WHERE I LIVE) ; and I would bet most places have hardly no change at all.
It would be like saying you know what the “global average rainfall” should be down to fractions of an inch by clumping and massaging data from thousands of places with totally different geology; and then go claiming “global average rainfall” is broken/different/changing from “what’s on record” or “what’s normal”. That is total BS!
“Global Average Temperature” is a scam. It is a made up meaningless number. There is NO SUCH THING.
“Global Average Temperature†is a scam. It is a made up meaningless number. There is NO SUCH THING.
Hi liza,
I totally agree and not only that, somehow, someway, this meaningless number means that I should start trusting liars and criminals and Progressively Enlightened Liberal Geniuses and Ultra-Smart Political Leftist Opportunists to lead me into pretending to control the climate and then making more meaningless graphs about it.
Pardon Moi if I’m a teensey-weensey bit skeptical. 😉
Andrew
Andrew_KY (Comment#40402) April 10th, 2010 at 8:27 am
Hi ya! Heck you are in great company with your skepticism I think. 😉
I can quote the late great Dr. Michael Crichton during a public debate with alarmists…
““I mean, haven’t we actually raised temperatures so much that we, as stewards of the planet, have to act? These are the questions that friends of mine ask as they are getting on board their private jets to fly to their second and third homes. [LAUGHTER]“”
LOL. The hypocrisy, the errors in the science and conduct of people who believe in it, including the scientists, the money involved,and overall ridiculousness in general is just staggering. What is the “force” behind all this that keeps this nonsense alive? is my question!
I was looking at “ScienceNetDaily” and the “global warming” section they have there this morning (after cce’s comment ) The “news” articles about everything under the sun AGW for the last 10 yrs or so there is madness. Some even conflict each other as the years go by. AGW makes more rainfall/less rainfall, sea is warming/sea is cooling, C02 makes plants grow faster/more C02 not good for plants; on and on…ugh.
AGW the hypothesis, the perfect propaganda tool, the reason for all because you can cherry pick data, argue over paint chips, and blame everything and anything you can imagine on some made up average; plotted as fractions of 1 degree of temperature; for the whole planet! 🙂
Zeke,
Are you able to tease out the start date, kind of like they did with Quayle? In other words, only use data from the stations after the change. Quayle started their data at each station 6 months after the change because some observers did not actually start reporting the new MMTS temps right away. That way we can get an idea whether or not there is a trend after the stations change, and not a trend that is affected by new MMTS’s coming on line.
In this case, you can just take a mean of the difference, perhaps the January following the change can be month one, or if the change occurred after June, then use the second January as month one. I’d suggest using January as month one to eliminate any seasonal biases.
liza,
The question becomes then, why do some have the devotion to the idea of AGW when it’s so obvious that the leaders of the AGW movement don’t even take the idea seriously?
Maybe a devotee will chime in with an answer. Let’s watch and see. 😉
Andrew
MikeC:
“No doubt, the one portion of the paint bias which you are discussing, will be smaller than the whole. But the USHCN does not adjust Tave, it adjusts Tmin and Tmax. ”
Since Tave = (Tmax+Tmin)/2. you are adjusting Tave when you adjust Tmin and Tmax.
“Second, the portion (or the total paint bias as discussed by me) is going to be too small AS IT DEVELOPS OVER TIME. But the discontinuity created when the change in equipment occurs is not. ”
That’s not my point. My point is simply this. You tried to claim that a difference existed because of a paint bias. I’m arguing that this claim is unsubstaniated. While real the bias may be undetectable.
“So the algorithm corrects the new temps up, not down. Second, I do not care about the ocean temps, the USHCN v2 has nothing to do with ocean temps. But when you have all of these little errors adding up, it makes a difference in the end. ”
I am pointing out the math.
For the sake of illustration: If the ocean goes up 1C and the land goes up 1C the global average is 1C. If the Land is biased by 50%
and “reaalyy” only goes up .5C.. the global average is .85C
The global average is insensitive to mistakes in the land record.
Even MORE insensitive to mistakes made in the US.
“When Menne Williams 2009 says the increase of .6 they have detected in the US record is consistent with the .6 they believe to be from GHG’s, then you have a big problem. HUGE … ENORMOUS”
Ah no. even if the US were inconsistent with .6C you would not
have a problem.
MikeC.
First. Wrt to the dirty screens. We are talking about the CRS.
As I said I know of no study that establishes a bias for the CRS becoming dirty.
1. You claimed that anthony showed a bias in his paint versus wood.
2. I pointed out that the actual “study” supplied one sunny day
of data.
3. You brought up fading, paint chipping, and getting dirty.
The paper you point to has one revelvant quote:
MMTS
radiation shields that have been in the field now
for 20 years have dirtied and yellowed over time.
Little routine maintenance and calibration are
performed on these systems. So it is fair to ask if
any long-term changes have occurred and can be
detected.
Further when I first pointed out at this study I pointed out to you that it looked at the issue of bias over time. perhaps you didnt read it. For example you claimed in one comment that the article said nothing about data past 2000.
Lets cut to the conclusion:
“From the very first year when the MMTS was
installed at the Fort Collins weather station back in
1984, MMTS has consistently measured lower
daily maximum temperatures[than the CRS] with the largest
differences occurring in winter. Daily minimum
temperatures showed very small differences but
with a consistent seasonal cycle. The patterns
that were first observed in 1984 and 1985 continue
to be repeated each year. Twenty years later, the
patterns of MMTS-LIG temperature differences
remained largely unchanged.
[ no change over 20 years ….maybe you didnt read
it ]
The MMTS-LIG daily
maximum temperatures differences are smaller
now than they were in the early years of the
intercomparison, but the average monthly change
has been less than 0.1 deg F. It is possible that
with aging and yellowing of the MMTS radiation
shield that there is slightly more interior daytime
heating causing recent MMTS readings to be more
similar to LIG temperatures.
[ And please dont divert the discussion away from paint]
But in a larger
perspective, these changes are very small and
would be difficult to detect and explain, except in a
controlled co-located environment. Vary small
(less than 0.1 deg F) changes in MMTS-LIG
minimum temperatures have also been observed,
with MMTS slightly cooler with respect to LIG. The
mean annual MMTS-LIG temperature differences
are unchanged.
Just as in the early years of the
intercomparison, we continue to see months with
larger and smaller differences than the average.
These are likely a function of varying
meteorological conditions particularly variations in
wind speed, cloud cover and solar radiation.
These are the factors that influence the
effectiveness of both the MMTS and LIG
radiations shields. Clearly, fresh snowcover
continues to affect MMTS-LIG differences and
contributes to MMTS daily maximum temperatures
showing the largest differences with LIG during the
winter months. The overall conclusion is that no
significant change in the relationship between
So, MikeC. I repeat my claim. You’ve got no evidence that
changes in paint [ fading, chipping, changing formulations, getting dirty] has biased the record. The evidence I was able to find for you indicated that :
1. If there is a paint bias, on the worst day its minor.
2. There is a 20 year study that looks at a paired set up of MMTS
and LIG. no change in bias. so, screens yellowing, and paint
fading.. not a detectable thing not something that can be corrected for.
“with aging and yellowing of the MMTS radiation
shield that there is slightly more interior daytime
heating causing recent MMTS readings to be more
similar to LIG temperatures. But in a larger
perspective, these changes are very small and
would be difficult to detect and explain, except in a
controlled co-located environment. Vary small
(less than 0.1 deg F) changes in MMTS-LIG
minimum temperatures have also been observed,
with MMTS slightly cooler with respect to LIG. The
mean annual MMTS-LIG temperature differences
are unchanged.
The “land” could be 100° in one place and 0° in another on this planet during summer. The average degree “number” you get between those places is MEANINGLESS steven mosher (Comment#40407) . Adding more places doesn’t make it mean anything more either.
It gives you no meaningful information AT ALL except to freak people out who don’t know any better.
Yes, we should all believe everything Steven Mosher has to say on the subject. He has not read any material. He has created at least four strawmen. He does not have a clue how USHCN works. He starts screaming gremlins when a point is brought up in a source he provided. And on. And on. And on. MikeC: Give it up. There is no use arguing with the ignorant and intellectually dishonest. Steven Mosher has lost all credibility in my book; and his.
Jon:
It is odd…
I’ve always wondered why it is there are so many on both sides in the AGW debate whose debating style resembles the flinging of grade-school playground taunts?
Seriously I don’t think Jon has even read what Steven wrote. Speaking of losing credibility and intellectual dishonesty….
Jon,
I actually did read the study, before I even came to this thread, long ago, when we first started looking at the MMTS issue.
and after I pointed it out to MikeC. If anyone didnt read it it was him: When above he quoted the paper:
“Steven Mosher,
Unfortunately the page you linked made it clear that the most relevant question is not explored:
“None of these studies, however, addressed the
interesting question of long-term stability. Do the
relationships between MMTS and LIG established
in the 1980s still hold in the 2000s? MMTS
radiation shields that have been in the field now
for 20 years have dirtied and yellowed over time.
Little routine maintenance and calibration are
performed on these systems. So it is fair to ask if
any long-term changes have occurred and can be
detected.â€
What he fails to mention is THIS:
1. the paper DID in fact
look at the issue post 2000. See the conclusions.
2. the quote refers to the MMTS yellowing. Now you read back
though everything I wrote and you will see that I am SPECIFICALLY talking about the paucity of data on the PAINT
issue. specifically and in detail. Paint and the CRS.
As I pointed out, there is no study on fading paint or dirty CRS that quantifies the impact. But I’ve havent read everything. MikeC was refering to the yellowing of MMTS– a little plastic beehive. See the picture in the paper
To recap the argument. Mike waved his arms about fading paint being the cause of CRS warming. I said his claim was unsubstanted. He refered to Anthony’s wood experiment.
This experiment is well known to me. You can visit the thread years ago and see my comments on it.
I quoted the numbers from that “study” that study looked at three conditions: Bare wood, latex painted shelters, whitewashed shelters. It did not look at dirty shelters, faded shelters, shelters that were once whitewash then painted over with latex.
The problem that Anthony found was that NOAA had changed in 1979 from repainting shelters with whitewash to repainting with latex. Latex has different reflection properties due to its chemical makeup. He suggested that this may cause a bias. I think anyone who looks at the physics understands that this is a PLAUSIBLE concern. What is needed to quantify that concern is a test. Anthony ran such a test. He reported 1 days worth of data
on the difference between bare wood, latex and whitewash. He didnt test faded whitewash, or chipped paint or painting latex over faded whitewash. But he did test what I said he tested.
What he found was a slight difference under certain conditions.
I’m arguing that Mike is jumping to conclusions ( not being skeptical and not being rigorous ) when he claims that the changing of paint on a CRS “causes” a measurable bias. That’s
a testable hypothesis, not a fact. I showed him the only
numbers that exist to my knowledge.
I’m open of course to being persuaded. There are good physical reasons to believe there could be a bias. There are also compelling arguments that imply the bias will not be measurable except in a highly controlled environment.
Finally, I think its largely a waste of time to hunt for faint signals.
But if one is going to look for faint signals then the design of
experiments is crucial.
If one is skeptical about the accuracy of the land record, then there are better ways to spend ones time. I’ll give that advice to myself, and make this my final word. If you want to know the fruitful areas of inquiry they are:
1. metadata accuracy
2. proper calculation of the errors due to:
A spatial sampling
B adjustments.
3. Detection and correction of undocumented changes.
4. Data provenance.
These are the issues that people should be focusing on.
“I’ve always wondered why it is there are so many on both sides in the AGW debate whose debating style resembles the flinging of grade-school playground taunts? ”
Carrick,
Because that’s what the real battle of AGW comes down to. The same tribe vs. tribe conflict that has repeated itself throughout history. I know that you like to discuss the science Carrick, which is fine with me. I find exploring the climate fascinating, so please continue. But you and I both know that’s not what the bigger debate is about.
Andrew
Watts never finished his paint study or even shared all the data that he had generated. It’s a prime example of him throwing something out, hyping it, then not finishing it (or going back and repudiating some of the hype).
This kind of stuff is a clear example why we SHOULDN’T pay attention to blog science. The stuff is not really science, it is advocacy and chat.
FYI: Watts confounded thermoeter to thermometer variation, with paint type since he only used one of each. It took me a while to explain the concept to him. Then he whined money. He still probably doesn’t realized he could switch sensors in the enclosures and deal with this issue. Nor did he even bother having someone review his design before jumping out and
“let’s put on a show”ing. Furthermore, he seemed unaware of other work done on sensor to sensor comparisons where the experiments used 3 of each type sensor (to deal with concern above).
The guy is bad news in ethics and brains. You all should slam the hell out of him instead of being so chummy. You’re being chummy with someone who is intellectually dishonest.
But of course his paint blogging served its purpose and has contaminated some minds (it’s PR, not science). Who cares that the work didn’t get done, since some FUD was spread!
Liza
“The “land†could be 100° in one place and 0° in another on this planet during summer. The average degree “number†you get between those places is MEANINGLESS steven mosher (Comment#40407) . Adding more places doesn’t make it mean anything more either.”
Let me see if a small analogy can help. I want you to imagine
a very large pool of water.
http://onearthtravel.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/worlds-largest-pool-4.jpg
Now: at the near end of this pool is a heater. it sucks cool water from the far end of the pool and heats it to 80 degrees and injects it into the near end.
At the start of the day the far end of the pool is at 60 degrees
and the near end is at 60. You turn the heater on.
You look at both thermometers. one reads 60 the other 60.
Make a guess at the temperature in the middle of the pool.
Can you? can you estimate it? How? If I guessed 75, would you
bet I was wrong? is there something you know about how heat moves around that tells you I’m likely to be wrong? would you guess 60? why? Could we test your guess against mine?
The day wears on. More warm water is pumped into the near end.
a couple hours later the far end is at 65 degrees and the near end is at 75. Can you guess the temperature in the middle of the pool. would you guess 85? would you guess 62?
Would adding a thermometer in the middle of the pool help you guess? would that guess be better than with 2 thermometers.
To be sure, the temperature of air varies a lot more than the temp of water. there is a lot more spatial variablity. But that variability is pretty well understood.
here is how people go about figuring it out. In the USA there are
THOUSANDS of thermometers around the country, (imagine like a thousand thermometers in that pool.) You average them all together.
You come up with a number: 14C then you track that number for
50 years. Say that it goes down to 13.5C.
So that;s your data set. 10,000 stations for 50 years. with the average moving from 14C to 13.5C
Now comes the neat part: Now you remove stations from that list of thousands.. you remove 2000, 3000, 4000, and you compute the same numbers. Guess what? they still come out at 14C and 13.5C. In fact, you have to get to less than 260 stations or so before your accuracy falls below .1C per decade.
isnt that amazing! now with the pool we could make a good guess at the temperature anywhere because the spatial variability is not that high. a few thermometers would work. having thousands would be overkill. We could test this. Put 1000 in that pool, measure how the pool heats. Then we could take that same data and test for how many thermometers we actually need to characterize the temperature at any arbitrary point. Same thing is done with the air temps.
liza,
“I would bet most places have hardly no change at all. ”
You would bet wrong. Some of those data sources directly measure warming. Thermometers on land have nothing in common with radiosondes in the air. They both show warming. MSU measurements of the troposphere have nothing in common with AVHRR measurements off sea surface temperature. They both show warming. ICESat has nothing in common with GRACE. They both show mass loss of the ice sheets which implies warming. TOPEX and Jason measured/measures SLR which implies warming ocean water and melting of land based ice. Photographs of melting glaciers have nothing in common with studies involving phenological changes. They both imply warming. All of these sources have their own problems but to dismiss them all and claim that warming can’t even be measured goes well beyond “skepticism.” It is a refusal to accept fact.
I did not say “the study”. I said “the material”. You conveniently forget that you admitted not reading Menne 2009 which is how USHCN2 works. This post and much of what was said had to do with what is in Menne 2009. You now spin this whole conversation around a study that you linked but has no relevance to the discussion as there is no record of the Ft. Collins box being painted before or after your bee hive was added. At the same time, you conveniently forget that the single data pint from Watts is called “A typical day” in the title of the article. And on. And on. And on. Were you this loose with the facts in your book?
cce:
That isn’t true.
Mass loss means that melt + evaporation > precipitation.
Global warming predicts greater precipitation (everything else being equal), especially in arctic/antarctic climes. So at higher altitudes in Greenland and Antarctica, for example, AGW scenarios can predict mass increase not loss/i>.
I surveyed a half dozen or so MMTS sites for Anthony’s website, including talking with custodians who knew the pre-MMTS sites. My impression from the ones I surveyed was that MMTS sites were located closer to trees and other vegetation than were the pre-MMTS sites. Trees mean shade in daylight (lower max) and resistance to ground heat loss at night (warmer min).
And, trees grow, so that any effect will change over time. What a mess.
Andrew_KY:
Andrew, those of us who actually do science know that a) global mean temperature is well defined and b) it can be measured successfully even with an imprecise network of sensors.
If what you are saying when you agree with puerile nonsense like “Global Average Temperature†is a scam. It is a made up meaningless number. There is NO SUCH THING,” is something more like “I oppose socialistic solutions to AGW and by the way I don’t find the case convincing”, perhaps you should say that instead of resorting to what amounts to a passive-aggressive defense of that position.
Jon:
So that’s why 2/3s of the post passes by before Menne 2009 even appears?
Lots of bluster from Jon. No substance.
“Andrew, those of us who actually do science know that a) global mean temperature is well defined and b) it can be measured successfully even with an imprecise network of sensors.”
I’m sorry, Carrick, but the ‘those of us who do science’ argument is as fallacious as declaring that global mean temperature derived from faith-based data means something.
Andrew
There’s nothing fallacious about it.
There’s a well defined meaning to “global mean temperature” and the methods for measuring are well studied.
if anything you are employing a reverse appeal to authority by arguing that your position is equally valid because it is arrived at from ignorance rather than knowledge.
The precise definition of “global mean temperature” is one that I can write down, and anybody with a background that includes mathematics would be able to understand and confirm as a self-consistent definition. It certainly is no “SCAM” ™. From this definition, closure can be made to its estimation using a finite number of measurements of the surface temperature field. I suspect there are many here on this blog who could do a similar job.
Anybody without the mathematical background to comprehend it is out of luck, but other than this “personal problem” on the part of those individuals, there is no “appeal to authority” in the statement the “global mean temperature” is a meaningful and measurable quantity.
So to say there is such a definition and it can be measured is not the same thing as appealing to authority, quite the opposite. It is to say I can lay the cards out and you can examine them for yourself, if you yourself possess the tools to do so.
In any case, the method for challenging the authority of the statement “global mean temperature is both meaningful and measurable” is to learn the math and science necessary to comprehend the definition and its employment in global climatology. If you want to challenge the statement on that level, a precise mathematical description of the problem can be laid out for you (and others) and you can show us “where it went wrong”. And that’s how it gets done in science, not by passive aggressiveness or personal attacks or even well crafted rhetoric.
Re: Carrick (Apr 10 14:36), Re: Carrick (Apr 10 16:48), Re: Carrick (Apr 10 17:41),
Very good points, well stated and argued.
you can show us “where it went wrongâ€
Carrick,
This isn’t right either. You have it backwards. It’s up to the scientist (who wants us to believe him/her) to show us ALL the science, ALL the data, and ALL the information regarding the subject, warts and everything and why it’s right and/or wrong or both or neither. I am under no obligation to show anybody anything.
‘Scientists’ have a responsibility to inform the non-scientist honestly, since it’s the Scientist who insists they know more about the subject. So, educate, don’t advocate. Climate Science has not only failed to educate, it has failed to even maintain a distinction between the two ideas. It’s a silly mess.
Andrew
“There’s a well defined meaning to “global mean temperature†and the methods for measuring are well studied.”
LOL!
Andrew_KY:
Move your boundaries very often?
What was at question what the statement by Liza that you agreed to, namely:
You can try shifting the argument from there if you’d like, but the veracity of this statement and how we know it to be true or false is what is in question.
If you make a statement in a public forum like:
I can hold you to that statement and its implications even if you aren’t a scientist.
Sorry, neither you nor Liza get a free pass on poor or juvenile behavior.
Sorry Carrick, please give me the benefit of the doubt and assume I am not being passive-aggressive, but could you write the “precise definition” of global mean tempreature down for me and then I can see whether my 35 year old mathematics degree has left me with enough sense to understand it. My trawling has indicated that there does not seem to be a consensus on what a GMT is, and given the uneven distribution and time discontinuities of the stations and measurements, I find it hard to get a sense of how accurate the estimations might be.
“You can try shifting the argument from there if you’d like”
I am not shifting the argument. I am responding to YOUR comments, dude!
Andrew
This is all BS Carrick and Nick. That number is a thought experiment and NOT THE REAL WORLD. It’s not a “mathematical problem” and you don’t need a mathematical background to understand why. The problem is that that “average” number gives you no meaningful information about anything. Do I have to go cut and paste the range of temperatures just one point on the planet can have at any given time, or how about for just a month? How about the North Pole for starters?
Besides the fact that you are measuring these temperatures over such short time intervals it is really telling you NOTHING about the earth’s vast geological record and “global mean temperature”. You are extrapolating information from a made up number. Sheesh, your are arguing tenths of a degree over just decades. And there is the UHI effect too, that could be more then those tenths of a degree you are arguing over! There is NO IDEAL correction factor for that effect either. There is a North Hemisphere bias in the “global” temperature data too. All Bologna.
Re: cce (Comment#40418) April 10th, 2010 at 3:54 pm
So what,it was cold in the Little Ice Age and then it got warm.
Steve Mosher, you were typing while I was. My comment above goes for you too! 😉
The earth isn’t a swimming pool and you cannot give me the “average temperature” of the Pacific ocean and be taken seriously. You guys don’t get it. You are living in a physics experiment and not the real world.
Hi Carrick – sorry if this is pedantic but can I check with you on this Global Mean Temperature thing? The distinction between meaning and definition bothers me. Yes GMT has a definition as used in climate science and it has values which can be compared year against year etc. However beyond allowing that level of comparison I’m not sure what it actually “means”.
For example do you think an increase in GMT means that the global energy content has risen? Or just one particular layer of the atmosphere contains more energy? If it does mean that more energy is present can we conclude anything about where it has come from? Or anything else? Again, for example, look at the unsmoothed data from 1990 – 2000 here:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
Can we really say what those step changes mean?
In the context of a layman’s view I think the latter type of “meaning” might be the more “meaningful” 🙂
Jon, The ad hom comments twards Steven Mosher are completely out of line. The debate and the science are not served when you get into personal attacks… but then so are the arm waving comments.
So where were we…
This was a post and a discussion about the temperature network converting from CRS to MMTS…
What have we accomplished…
When the CRS changed to MMTS, Tmax fell about half a degree and Tmin rose abut .37 degrees (Menne and Williams 2009)
CRS to ASOS, Tmin fell about half a degree, but in this case, so did Tmin.
The MMTS results are backed (generally) by Quayle et al and Hubbard and Lin.
Anthony Watts has posted a single “typical” day’s data which may explain the fall in Tmax but not the rise in Tmin(MMTS), and explain the fall in Tmin and part of the fall in Tmax (ASOS) due to a paint bias related to resurfacing CRS from whitewash to latex.
The Boulder study, which turned out to be the Ft Collins study, (Doskin 2005) is inconclusive because there is no data to show that the box there has been painted, before or after the MMTS was put in. But they do show a change in compared temps of less than .1C.
Menne 2009 shows that discontinuities of .4 will be missed by the USHCN v2 algorithm about half of the time.
Did I miss anything?
Oh… and that we wouldn’t be having this discussion if Quayle, Hubbard n Lin or Menne had studied what caused the discontinuities in the first place.
David, the definition is pretty simple.
Start with T(theta, phi, t) where theta = lat, phi = long, and t is time.
Simply compute the integral over the surface of the Earth then divide by 4 pi (this is assuming spherical geometry, the real Earth’s surface is more complex, but that can be discussed if you want.)
Its extension to measurements on a finite number of locations can be viewed through approximation theory. The question of how accurate the estimates are is a statistical question but it is still well posed and has a well defined answer, even if we have yet to fully lay out the uncertainties involved.
MikeC thanks for the synopsis! I appreciate your level head.
Carrick: “the real Earth’s surface is more complex”
Really? LOL
curious:
It isn’t a great metric for measuring global energy content, especially since maybe 90% of it is stored in the oceans (anybody remember the number more precisely?)
You are raising a useful distinction between meaning and interpretation.
In terms of the step changes, it is certainly plausible for a given set of forcings and feedbacks, there are multiple “stationary points” in global climate. Thus one might start with the climate oscillating about one stationary point, perturb the system via e.g. a volcanic eruption, and have it end up in a separate warmer/cooler equilibrium point.
Something to think about on these lines is the Earth’s albedo is about 30%, most of that due to water in its various form. You could imagine two stationary points with different internal heat content simply by considering two different patterns of global ocean atmospheric circulation, each with a slightly different amount of snow cover and/or cloud cover. What is certainly the case is the warmer climate stationary point would have to have a lower net albedo for the same external forcings and internal feedbacks.
Andrew_KY:
Actually you weren’t, you completely changed the subject.
Standard rhetorical trick.
Thanks Carrick, but I’m afraid I have reservations about the idea of a global average albedo too! I have a lot of sympathy and respect for the global thermostat piece Willis E did at WUWT. IMO the whole earth’s system is subject to dynamic pulsing input and at any individual time and location the climate experienced is a combination of the local direct input and whatever transient of the global climate field passes through it. The step changes in GMT over short periods should IMO be a subject for greater scrutiny and I think that Geoff Sherrington has put quite a bit of time into investigation of the 1998 peak. Much to learn and if I had the time and motivation I’d be trying to get to grips with Tom Vonk’s chaos theory views. I read Koutsoyiannis’s work a while ago and I’m not sure that the system does oscillate around a stationary point until perturbed, but at this point I’m out of my depth!
It’s late and I’m calling it a night but if you can propose any forcings which would produce the step changes in the reported GMT from 1990 to 2000, I’d be interested to know what they are?
Re: curious (Apr 10 19:20),
Me too, but possibly not for the same reason. Albedo as a function of latitude is very important as the distribution of solar radiation is also a function of latitude. You can calculate an average albedo and even measure it using the light reflected by the part of the moon not illuminated by the sun or by a satellite in high orbit. But you can be led down the garden path by calculating a change in albedo at high latitude from increased ice cover, say, and then averaging albedo and using that to calculate total insolation. You have to calculate absorbed incoming radiation as a function of latitude first then average that over the whole surface.
curious:
Huh?
It’s the ratio of light reflected from the Earth to the light incident to it. How much simpler of a concept can one get?
And it’s easily measured in principle, see e.g. Project EarthShine.
The global thermastat idea assumes there is one “set point” for temperature.
Step changes are explained most easily by multiple stationary points in climate. Suppose you have climate oscillating about one metastable point with a slowly increasing forcings… then something comes along to perturb it… e.g., volcano or ENSO.
What will you see? The temperature getting booted out of its metastable state then relaxing back to the “closest” metastable state (very loose description here, sorry).
In fact we do see this. RSS version of the temperature in the lower stratosphere. 1983 was the Mt Etna eruption and 1993 the Pinatubo erruption. In this case, you see the climate “relaxing” to a cooler temperature after the impulsive act of each eruption.
(Recall this cooling is expected in the models.)
DeWitt, I agree with what you say of course. I would go further to say, I think curious is referring to “interpretation” again not “meaning”.
global albedo can be defined and measured, but like all global metrics, its application to climate is perilous if one does not exercise great caution.
Certainly global albedo is useful in describing things like global energy balance. Curious raised the question of how one determines whether the heat energy content of the Earth is increasing or not….
The “conceptually straightforward” method is to measure the energy going in versus the energy going out. If there is less energy coming out than going in, the heat energy content is increasing. And this can happen for a lot of reasons, including increase in GHG, changes in global cloud coverage (=global albedo) and so forth. The integration just has to be done properly, as DeWitt cautions.
Again, The Science of Doom blog has a lot of good stuff on that, so I direct curious there for discussions on that. They definitely would be within somebody at curious’s level to comprehend, though some of these get rather technical (meaning just that you have to read the same paragraph several times to get its full meaning…that’s standard in physical sciences literature though).
I typed the wrong year for the Pinatubo erruption. It was in June 1991. Etna errupted a series of times from March-August, 1983 and it was preceded by an eruption of El Chichon in April, 1982 (I had to go back and look that up).
With the RSS data I showed above, it is easy to see that we have a sudden “step like” function from Pinatubo’s single cataclysmic event followed by a relaxation to a new set point. For Etna’s multiple eruptions, you get a much more “rounded” climb to a peak temperature followed by a similar relaxation to a new set point.
This is all hand-waving of course (needs a real model calculation) but it does show some consistency with changes in forcings.
This also illustrates the danger in trying to enforce a linear relationship between the forcings and the response of climate to those forcings.
Re: liza (Apr 10 18:21),
The Dow Jones Index is an average. It includes stocks worth hundreds of dollars, some worth a few cents, some rising, some falling, miners, banks etc. The average price of a share is not very meaningful, so the DJIA, as in climate, is expressed as an anomaly (by proportion) relative to a certain date.
Plenty of people find the DJIA meaningful.
Nick,
Be careful with your analogy to the Dow Jones. In reality, very few finance professionals find the Dow meaningful. It suffers from a fatal flaw in that it is not cap weighted – it is an anachronism from a long passed age. People relying on Dow numbers tend to be uninformed lay investors. I’m not sure this is the message you are going for.
If we are going to extend the finance analogies, the “return on the market” question (which we can equate to global temperature trends) has proved one of the most intractable problems in all of finance. Roll raised his famous critique (that a market portfolio is unobservable) back in 1977 and it has still not been satisfactorily resolved. Of course, analogies can be dangerous and market returns are not temperature trends, so we should be careful when we try make points through strained comparisons.
Re: brid (Apr 10 21:47),
Indeed, S&P 500 would be a better analogy.
Carrick and DeWitt – thanks re: albedo. My use of “idea” was perhaps ambiguous! My concerns are both the value of the global average and the dynamic nature of it. The point DeWitt makes about the need for it to be latitude specific was one of my first concerns with it, I also think its value needs to be latititude specific too – for example is it land or water as a first rough cut? Looking at a globe between the tropics I make it roughly 20% of the area is land and it’s distributed asymetrically wrt the equator and the Greenwich meridian. To my mind this is all relevant to how the dynamics of the weather/climate system responds to the solar input it receives. In addition, Willis’s work illustrates the power of albedo’s dynamic nature: OTTOMH a 1% error in albedo will easily outweigh the forcing commonly assigned to CO2. As an aside a while ago I think I saw Lucia make reference to the energetic content of dynamic fluids and I still wonder about this – there is a lot of KE in the atmosphere and oceans and I wonder how this relates as a possible “sink” for additional energy input to the earth’s system.
Thanks re: Sci of Doom – not visited there for a while, I’ll have another look along with the other links from Carrick.
curious (Comment#40456) April 11th, 2010 at 4:13 am
“In addition, Willis’s work illustrates the power of albedo’s dynamic nature: OTTOMH a 1% error in albedo will easily outweigh the forcing commonly assigned to CO2.”
That sentence and Dewitt’s comment about the moon made me think of things like this:
“Surprising Scientists, Full Moon Is Found to Play Role in Warming the Earth
By MALCOLM W. BROWNE
Published: March 10, 1995
In a paper being published today in the journal Science, researchers at Arizona State University at Tempe present evidence that the full Moon raises the temperature of Earth’s lower troposphere by more than 0.03 of one degree Fahrenheit. This region of the troposphere extends from the ground to an altitude of about three and a half miles….
It is likely, he said, that the main mechanism is infrared radiation from the Sun reflected by the Moon toward Earth, coupled with infrared radiation from the Moon itself. Although infrared radiation from the Moon is only one-100,000th as intense as the infrared arriving directly from the Sun, much of this radiation is absorbed in the lower atmosphere and tends to heat it.
Visible light from the Moon also probably affects global temperature, the Arizona group said, although lunar light is only a millionth as strong as direct sunlight.
The importance of the discovery, Dr. Balling said, is that the phase of the Moon must now be taken into account in analyzing short-time global temperature records. As many scientists have long suspected, he said, the Moon may exert an influence on atmospheric circulation patterns, and therefore on weather.
“Up close, the Moon looks as dark as asphalt, but it reflects more radiation than you’d think,” Dr. Balling said.
On the other hand, lunar effects on terrestrial weather could be indirect; the Moon’s tidal influence on Earth’s atmospheric circulation, a lunar distortion of Earth’s magnetic tail, or a lunar influence on the fall of meteor dust into the atmosphere have all been suggested as possibilities.”
Hee hee. Who knows what domino effect the full moon has after visiting our sky for a few nights? After the hockey stick (1998), the science papers and “dynamic nature” of this planet’s wobbly dance around the sun (along with the other bodies we share space with) got so so boring. 🙂
I appreciate those who are trying to convince that an “average global temperature” number the way you are using it; temperatures of places with completely different geology, all clumped together and averaged out, besides the data lacking from the SH etc, problems with surface stations etc, none of these things calibrated with each other etc, to represent a whole planet, down to fractions of one degree; has any real meaning or useful information, but it just isn’t so. That’s just spin!
By the way:
“Carrick (Comment#40442) April 10th, 2010 at 7:01 pm
Andrew_KY:
I am not shifting the argument. I am responding to YOUR comments, dude!
Actually you weren’t, you completely changed the subject.
Standard rhetorical trick.”
I see no trick here (except with average temperature!) Andrew_KY and I were talking to each other you jumped in. You didn’t answer the question he posed about those who promote AGW not taking it seriously (the hypocrisy of their behavior too). And he predicted that no one would. And on top of it you say “Sorry, neither you nor Liza get a free pass on poor or juvenile behavior.” Sheesh it is NOT poor nor juvenile to see what we see about everything AGW. Who do you think you are? But Al Gore and the rest of the believers who promote this belief and their behaviors (Al Gore throwing out the person who asked him about polar bear populations from the room comes to mind and the over the top legislation we are being slammed with in California comes to mind too!) Sheesh. There’s a word I like and it is “discernment”. I believe lots of people lack the ability to discern what is really going on and I don’t think it is my husband A WORKING IN THE REAL WORLD, PUBLISHED,ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENTIST, nor Andrew_KY, nor myself and many many many other people who are scientists and even not!
liza,
I think when historians look at the AGW movement, they will find it humorous to find that so many people with so much education were worrying over tiny changes in dubious data and confabulating them into proof of anything at all.
At least in tulipomania victim’s gardens got the benefit a pretty flower in the spring. With AGW all we victims get are graphs that show nothing other than what we project on to them.
Thanks hunter! I agree. I try to laugh about it now. I use LOL’s in my posts whenever I can too! 🙂
Curious, as I pointed out, there is meaning and value to the concept of global albedo. It’s useful as part of a global energy balance equation.
Global mean surface temperature has a well defined meaning, it can be reliably measured, and it does have value as a measure.
For example, it is about the only quantity who’s value is known well enough to constrain the model over periods greater than 30 years. That is of value.
It is may be viewed as a proxy for global heat energy because the surface of the atmospheric layer is of course in contact with the oceans, and though admittedly there are many confounding factors here (the biggest is the presence of atmospheric ocean oscillations), those confounds can be appropriately treated in a statistical sense (Lucia has made some progress there) and the main influence of them is to decrease the statistical power of the measure.
There may well be problems with how the data are actually measured, and of course there are, the network is ad hoc in the sense it wasn’t built to measure global mean temperature. But there is a confound here too…problems with the system that affect its intended use (namely for meteorological monitoring and prediction) do not necessarily affect its use in monitoring global climate.
It is indeed is an argument that many of us have arrived at independently, that 1) the anomaly method “cures many ills” wrt to application of the meteorological network to climate (there are various levels of theoretical “proofs” of this) and 2) many of the remaining “warts” do not add enough uncertainty back into the final product of global mean temperature to render it an unusable metric.
Finally, I encourage you to reflect on the philosophical issue than when making measurements, the product is a distribution characterized with a mean plus an uncertainty, it is never just a “number”. Moving the central value about amounts that are small compared to the uncertainty don’t meaningfully affect the experimental outcome. Measured “global mean temperature” is not a number over time, it’s a number + an uncertainty bounds.
I view it as part of the immaturity of this field that few if any researchers who publish values routinely include any form of uncertainty analysis with those numbers. Indeed, even for group of people replicating these numbers, Zeke, Jeff ID, Nick Stokes, et al., uncertainty analysis is something they need to start including in their studies.
Even if you are neglecting effect of land usage changes (which I include UHI in), elevation effects and so forth, you still need to quantify the effect of leaving them out! And one thing too few people have considered is the effect of ocean-atmospheric oscillations (e.g., el Nino) in a sparse network of sensors.
Liza, I’m not that interested in getting into a food fight with you today, but your constant “appeals to authority” to your husband is a bit unseemly. There are plenty of people here who have relevant experience, and for many the experience is more relevant than his. (Snark is not a substitute for substance, except in Hollywood).
At the risk of being a bit of a show-off, here is a 10-m met tower of my own design (three wireless met stations at 1-m, 5-m and 9-m, two 3-axis sonic anemometers at 2-m and 10-m):
my tower about 1-hour after sun set.
And yes, this is peer-reviewed published research.
So yeah, I’d say I bring a bit of relevant experience to the table here. But I recognize that there are many other people here who bring valuable insight from their own backgrounds (including I might add “lay people” like curious).
When I was leaving Mass this morning I saw a bumper sticker on the car ahead of me on the road that said:
“Global Warming is a HOAX.”
And I laughed and thought to myself, “Hey, that’s exactly what I think!”
😉
Andrew
Of course, Andrew. Finding people who agree with you ahd sharing love for each other and throwing things at the enemy trie is what most of the AGW blogger commentators do (on either isde). There are a few that actually do analysis (but still geared to helping their tribe and selectively done and reported in a skewed manner). There are very few that are genuiniely scurious and wand to do tests and learn things whichver way it cuts. Eugene Volokh has commented about this a lot at VCl. It’s a traint of epople in ppolitical shows and blogs. It’part of why I call y’all hoi polloi.
MikeC
“The Boulder study, which turned out to be the Ft Collins study, (Doskin 2005) is inconclusive because there is no data to show that the box there has been painted, before or after the MMTS was put in. But they do show a change in compared temps of less than .1C.”
1. That’s why I asked you to contact them to see about this to support or not support your hypothesis.
2. Was that .1F or .1C?
At some point, when I get around to it ( writing R code now)
I will see if I can pull instrument data and station histories into
an accessible metadata file.
Also I posted a kml file of the MOST rural files I could find. that is rural by every measure I could imagine. But I still need a way to get the CRN12345 for all 1000 stations that Anthony surveyed.
“There are plenty of people here who have relevant experience, and for many the experience is more relevant than his.”
Carrick you are the one who referred to anybody’s background mattering first. You started the “food fight” Do you want us to just take and shut up? No way.
First you said :”“I’ve always wondered why it is there are so many on both sides in the AGW debate whose debating style resembles the flinging of grade-school playground taunts? —
Andrew_KY (Comment#40414) who explained very well why what we think matters after you jumped into the conversation;yet you continue to hold an attitude that you are above us and keep on comparing people to children. And you still IGNORE the fact that AGW promoters including scientists are acting even worse and also ignore all the hypocrisy.
you said this too:
“Andrew, those of us who actually do science know that a) global mean temperature is well defined and b) it can be measured successfully even with an imprecise network of sensors.”,,,blah blah.
See you brought up “those of us that actually do science” (And is it just me that thinks that statement is lacking because it doesn’t say anything about “average global temp” or “global mean” whatever you call it is USEFUL INFORMATION for anything at all.)
AND anybody can “do” science Carrick. It’s not a thing beyond anybody’s grasp; it is a set of protocols to help DISCERN what’s happening in the world around us any time we want to. AND Climate scientists fail miserably at it IMHO. Plus the attitude of those same scientists as seen in the climategate emails could also be referred to as grade school mentality too; not to mention the creepy politics and money involved, indoctrination of children… on infinity. “We will stop the rising seas!”
You actually claimed AGW caused/predicted cooling up there too and you are dead serious. You are all over the place. You also said “And that’s how it gets done in science, not by passive aggressiveness or personal attacks or even well crafted rhetoric.” Not climate science! That’s exactly how it gets done.
Good for you on your published work.
I take pictures of my thermometer outside, with the digital camera; with date and time stamp here in southern california every time it goes below “Normal” I have been doing it ever since its been getting colder and colder in the winter, And I have been doing it for a few years now. I have a picture where the temp was so cold the red line was not there anymore. I have more then one where the temp was 0 degrees.
WWWWWWWWWWWWOWWWWWWWWWWWWW… is TCO sober thiis morning or did he find the right dosage. That is the first sober comment I can remember from him.
LOL MikeC!
Liza,
“The earth isn’t a swimming pool and you cannot give me the “average temperature†of the Pacific ocean and be taken seriously. You guys don’t get it. You are living in a physics experiment and not the real world.”
Liza I was trying to illustrate by example what the “meaning” of the average temperature is. I could of course do the same thing with the air. Let me make the point simply. The “average” is your best estimate of the temperature at any given place.
Lets assume you live on the east coast and it 50F there.
I live on the west Coast and its 60F here. Can you guess what
the temperature is in Kansas? Knowing NOTHING but these two
data points, what is your best guess? That is what guess will be least wrong? would you guess -50F would you guess 212F
I’d guess 55F. but I know this would not have a very good chance of being exactly right.
Now, suppose I add another thermometer in Tennesse. and its
55 in tennesse. What’s my guess now? Hmm, Now I have three data points all a certain distance from Kansas.. So I create a weighted average. and I guess again. How much closer to the real temp in Kansas will I get? WIll my guess be better or worse. Will I KNOW MORE ( be able to make more skillfull guesses ) than somebody who says ” you cant guess the temperature in kansas”
I add a 4th station in Texas, a fifth ..
The average temperature exists.
Steven,
And that’s why I asked you for some info on them so I could contact them… etc, so if ya get a station ID, that would be a good start… but if ya look at it, it aint a CRS, it’s one of the old bureau boxes, so it would have to have been painted.
I’ve also had the kids pull the data and did some Tmin pairwise for those stations, I only got 7 pairs but everything worked out as expected… even very small heat islands produced trends
I already have the CRN 1 and 2 sites categorized for urbanization… that may be a good start… they are from the Menne 2010 list. I also have the first half of the station list spreadsheet… it should be ok for sampling at least… and we have the menne 2010 list with all of the 1s and 2s.(that’s on note pad so if you wanna dl that to R and make a spreadsheet that would be good.)
steven mosher (Comment#40471) April 11th, 2010 at 11:21 am
And I am saying that number doesn’t have any meaningful information. It could be snowing; or raining, windy, or foggy or cloudy too from one data point to another. Husband says it’s a terrible example. As soon as you go over the Rockies from the west coast the reasons for weather or temperatures is totally different for the midwest and the reason for weather or temperatures is also way different for the east coast as well -the geology. Even if the “average” works out when you pick points to “guess” when and where it tells you nothing, it’s a useless number except like I said, for scaring people. And why do you have to guess what the temperature is any way?? LOL
“The “average†is your best estimate of the temperature at any given place.”
Wait. The average is high temperature plus the low temperature divided by 2 at a location. Now, you say it’s an estimate?
The Earth is too big and to complex for the “average” temperature to mean anything at all. Plus all the other problems the grid has and arguing over tenths of a degree. A whole 0.12 degrees since 1995 says Phil Jones. The hockey stick graph keeps getting shorter and shorter.
FWIW a visual example of the range of albedo’s due to geography can be had by putting Masqat, Oman and Tubuai Island, French Polynesia into Google Earth. Does anybody know if the GCM models have a location related albedo look up? Surely it matters? On these two points (one Tropic of Cancer the other Tropic of Capricorn) one would expect different results for North hemisphere vs. South hemisphere summers?
IMO around the line of the north and south tropics the bias to land in the north is less severe but still noticeable and I’d guess at this level at least it must be in the models?
Apologies to Lucia for OT. I guess it’s still discussing bias of a sort but snip if desired.
curious,
It’s been explored but it’s still relatively new and there are still problems even categorizing it
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch2s2-5.html
MikeC:
As I’ve pointed out trends from UHI aren’t a problem:
The issue at hand is whether the UHIs produce a bias in the global mean temperature estimators, and not whether they mereely affect the regional temperature trend, which they will have to do.
Curious, I guess my point is, you can always write down a system of equations:
Q = L_incident * (1 – a) – L_radiated
where Q is the net rate of heat energy exchange to (from) the Earth and a = 0.3 is the mean albedo.
Still if you wanted to consider regional effects, look at dQ = q dA for any point on the surface, then just integrate over the surface of the Earth. You can include the rotation of the Earth and whatever other effects you would like.
These will affect the definition of global albedo, but it is still a defined, meaningful term. Arther P Smith has a nice treatment of the GHG effect here that would be basis for such a detailed analysis. a_eff(t) is AP Smith’s generalization of albedo…with a rotating planet and irregular surface/cloud coverage in general there is a diurnal modulation of albedo. If you consider annual cycles, there is of course an annual cycle too ….
Liza, as I said, I don’t have time for food fights right now.
What I will say though in response to your “anybody can DO science”, is this is not generically true.
Specifically to address the definition, method of measurement and interpretation of global mean temperature, one does need a certain level of analytic skills, ones that are lacked by probably 85-90% of of the general population. When one argues based on rhetoric as you have, you are at best are presenting hand waving arguments, and at worst are not meaningful arguments at all.
You have to have a certain proficiency with math skills to “play this game”, sorry but it is how it works. I am saying nothing about your or your vaulted husband’s skills, merely was is needed to actually address the question. One doesn’t actually DO science using clever rhetoric, that’s reserved for auto showrooms and the like. And with that adieu…I have software I have to finish for work.
MikeC and Carrick – thanks, both useful links. I’ll do some reading.
I am assuming that those people who say that the average temperature for the earth is meaningless also say that we cannot know the temperature of the sun, or Venus, or Neptune or the cosmic background radiation. They, after all, are temperature averages, often taken from objects much larger than the tiny earth. Do they argue that saying that the concept of a temperature for the sun is ‘meaningless’?
I think it’s “interesting” that Watts:
A. Had no problem with Steve McI doing numerical analysis with his to date results, which helped the cause…but then when JohnV did a superior study (using area gridding, something which Id and the like seem to love) and the results did not help Watts, he didn’t like it. And then he locked up all the DATA!
B. He’s changed the goal posts on when he will do analysis (75%, 80%, what)?
C. He has NOOOO intuitive or numerical sense of sampling theory to see how LITTLE an additional data point helps understand a population when you have the kind of coverage that he has.
D. He touted the in process results and “scandalous photos and the like” with all kinds of amateur on the web publication…then LOCKED up the data (when he didn’t like the analyses being done) and promised to write a paper.
E. He still has no pre-print to show us a year after promising one. What is his hold up?
F. He made all kinds of accusatory snark about the effect of pretty far away air conditioners, but never measured one. And did not listen when an ASHRAE qualified HVAC engineer gave a back of the envelope calc that showed little effects. (Note, I’m not saying it’s impossible that the air conditioners 20 feet away have an effect, just that Watts has no cause being so certain of it and making it the de fault hypothesis).
G. He said he was doing an open source and collaborative project, then locked up the in process results! (When early returns on analysis were not helping him.) That work is not really even all his. this is scandalous.
————————-
The next time y’all are operating as allies, socializing, emailing behind the scenes, helping each other out run your blogs, allowing moderation and posting ability….think about who you are collaborating with.
Oh…and H (or maybe part of D): What the heck was that book he put out with the Heartland Institute? A bunch of photos? What was the point of it? He’s locked up all the data. He’s behind on analysis. He says people shouldn’t use the results to date and publish that…then he puts out that chapbook?
carrick, that was in a whole different context… long story
Andrew_KY,
I think that the in the main the leaders on AGW *do* take it seriously. Tim Flannery, for instance, offsets all his travel; James Hansen protests at coal stations; Al Gore donates significant amunts of time and money to this area, including setting up and funding the Alliance for Climate Protection, with the profits from his books going to this organisation.
Are there hypocrisies? Sure. While I have done a bit, I am a hypocrit in that I have not done enough. One of the main problems is that we are so used to doing things in particular ways that there is a huge amount of intertia involved, even for ‘true believers’. It took me a while to accept vegetarianism, for example, and I still have cravings for chicken or steak or seafood from time to time. And owning a car would make things more convenient at times. And when I am cold, it is often too easy to crank up the heat rather than throwing a jumper on. (Reading Calvin and Hobbes reminds me, though. :))
And I have no problem with people making money. Indeed, one of the things that I hope for is that very soon vast amounts of money will be able to made out of solar and wind power. Money is a powerful motivator and has pushed through more change, positive and negative, in the last century than all other factors, imo. When we get the money on my side of the argument, the problem will be solved very quickly.
Unfortunately, that will not happen for a while …
“you continue to hold an attitude that you are above us and keep on comparing people to children. . . AGW promoters”
Yeah, AGW promoters are irritating, but do you know what’s really intolerable? Those round-earth promoters. They thoughtless flaunt their round-world ideology in everything they do, and they completely fail to show proper respect for the flat-earth (amateur) science-esque folks.
How can we respect round-earthers if they can’t devote themselves to a respectful and serious debate with the flat-earth side?
And don’t tell me the earth’s surface is, on average, curved. Just look around: there are mountains with steep inclines, valleys with steep declines, etc. The “average curvature” is totally meaningless.
Robert,
Nice try at turning tables, but you still get an ‘F’.
AGW promoters are selling the idea that CO2 is causing an apocalypse that is even now under way.
This thread is discussing whether or not the color paint on a temperature box could be masking a significant part of the evidence for this apocalypse.
It is not much of an apocalypse if it can be lost in the bias due to a quality of paint. Just like storm strength, sea level increases, rain and drought, AGW offers a set of predictions that when examined prove to be false. That sounds like the AGW community is the one using specious comparisons to global averages to claim the earth is flat than are the skeptics.
I would suggest that the infantile reasoning you are offering is much more appropriate to flat earth belief than the reasoning of skeptics.
And I would point out that the AGW true believer community holds much more in common with other well documented popular manias and popular delusions of the past.
David Gould,
Hansen also calls for the criminalization of climate dissent and endorses books that call for using terrorism and violence against those ‘systems’ that stand in the way of implementing climate policy he demands.
Are you comfortable with the leadership of the IPCC enriching themselves off of the policies they are promoting to the world’s governments?
And offsets are rather dubious, if you read up on those things.
On balance the AGW leadership only takes seriously flying first class to expensive tax payer funded conferences and making demands and agreements they know from the start will not only fail to be implemented but would make no difference if they were.
But yes, the money is on your side of the argument. The AGW promotion industry is a huge multi-billion dollar per year enterprise.
“Al Gore donates significant amunts of time and money to this area”
David Gould,
Does Big Al ‘donate’ enough time and money such that his lavishly self-indulgent lifestyle is affected?
Does Dr. Jimmy Handsome protest because he really thinks Coal is Deadly or is he an attention-seeking climate celebrity who fancies himself a political advocate?
The other guy I never heard of. Who is he? Who cares?
Andrew
David Gould (Comment#40482) April 11th, 2010 at 5:32 pm
and others.
Sure we can “estimate” but down to tenths of one degree like you think you did for the Earth now and then regulate and tax us lowly citizens for it? No! We need hundreds of thousands of sensors or more (not just thousands), evenly spaced over the land and sea, all calibrated with each other for a long period of time; on this planet to make such claims and have them be “real”.
It is also much easier to gaze at another planet or sun and see it’s wobble, tilt etc, and things coming at it or from it while standing on another planet! And the sun? NASA’s web pages even say we don’t know enough about it. And then there’s clouds…
Al Gore wrote a book about the environment a long time ago and he still moved into a house with eight bathrooms (and I even remember reading there is a zinc mine on the property) Even after his movie came out; he used more energy in that house in a month then the the AVERAGE household for did for his area in a year. “Do as I say, not as I do”. Heck, if my father, like Al Gore’s made money from tobacco, politics and oil (and other things “evil”), and I was running around the world in private jets, telling people how they should live (for whatever reason) even if I donated some of the mega cash I made to charity, you’d think of me in all kinds of ways. Especially if I threw a person out of the room when I was giving a speech just because he asked me a question I didn’t like. It’s so easy to “become” some one that special when you have all that good stuff isn’t it? http://www.grizzlybird.net/greenparenting/al_gore_house.jpg
“James Hansen protests at coal stations”
Okay but how does he live and what does his house look like?
See what I mean about discernment? Really, its like you guys are all numbers and cannot visualize anything. For instance: the sun is the size of a grape fruit and planet earth is a tip of a ball point pen in comparison (and even the earth being THAT SMALL you’d need almost a million sensors to make such claims about the “average” temperature! a whole 0.12 degrees since 1995 says Phil Jones.)
Robert, “theidiottrakker” I want to ask, did you track yourself? 😉 hee hee.
“When we get the money on my side of the argument”
Already happened, FYI.
Andrew
No, we don’t. It’s called sampling, it’s a well understood statistical art.
“No, we don’t. It’s called sampling, it’s a well understood statistical art”
bugs,
How about you and your friends can play your little pretend climate game amongst yourselves and whoever doesn’t want to play, can choose not to participate. Deal?
Andrew
Liza:
This is the analytic part of science I was referring to. There is no way you can estimate what sort of coverage you need for the sensors without knowledge of the statistical methodology, and then, without detailed application of it to this problem. Even for the case of somebody like your husband, there is absolutely no way he would know the number of sensors needed, how accurately they would need to be calibrated, nor anything else without the sort of detailed modeling people started doing back in the 1980s.
In any case, the method for challenging the authority of the statement “global mean temperature is both meaningful and measurable†is to learn the math and science necessary to comprehend the definition and its employment in global climatology. If you want to challenge the statement on that level, a precise mathematical description of the problem can be laid out for you (and others) and you can show us “where it went wrongâ€.
.
Well the statement can be challenged 🙂
Just for the sake of argument .
1) The quantity is not measurable . It is computed from a finite number of OTHER quantities which are measurable . So if one wants to be scientifically accurate , one would say that it is well defined and computable . But not directly measurable . One should not say that f(x) is measurable because x is .
.
2) The quantity is meaningful . Or not . Everything depends on the implicit assumption meaningful for what . Clearly in most cases it may be garbage and in some cases have a limited usefullness .
As long as one doesn’t specify meaningful for what , the statement is empty .
In particular for purposes of energy transfer it is not meaningful . Neither conduction nor convection processes depend on such a quantity .
As for the radiation , the quantity f.ex for the Moon is somewhere around – 30°C .
This value is not meaningful for the total radiated energy .
Of course in the limit of an isothermal body in radiative equilibrium one can understand its asymptotic meaningfullness for radiation .
But as most bodies we deal with are neither isothermal nor in radiative equilibrium nor in a steady state , the quasi isothermal approximation is not specially meaningfull .
Personnaly I think that this quantity is even misleading because once it exists , people want to use it and as it is about the only quantity that is available and well defined , they race to computer toy models with unreasonable assumptions like equilibrium etc .
It is here that it “goes wrong” for me .
Thank you Tom Vonk!
I just read this:
In interviews with the Washington Post, Edward Weiler, the agency’s associate administrator for science, said that NASA’s Earth Science budget will get a $2.4 billion, or 62 percent, increase through 2015.
Using these new funds, the program plans to launch as many as 10 new missions, collecting information about ocean temperatures, ice coverage, ozone depletion — and the effects of carbon dioxide on these and other elements of the planet.
“The key to Earth system science is to make multiple measurements more or less simultaneously of many different quantities — that’s the only way we can understand how the various processes that define Earth system interact,” Michael Freilich, Earth Science Division director, told the Post.
Apparently the science isn’t settled! (sheesh)
Liza – I hope they’ve an experimental design and specification for that lot! Look how busy a few thermometers keep us all! 🙂
Thanks also to Tom Vonk – though I guess this means I will have to pick up a chaos book at some point… 🙁 Tom, if you are still around – do you have an comment on a reasonable way to look at the annual step changes in GMT? For example to my mind the very fact it is making erratic step changes both positive and negative is an indicator the quasi equilbrium model does not fit or there is a flaw in the application of the metric. Is this reasonable? You seemm to be saying it is? Can it tell us anything else? For example is the peak of 1998 in anyway related to a physical event, or sum of events, or is it a statistical accident of undeterminate origin? I tend to think that with the right expectation and understanding GMT must offer us some diagnostic capability and I have a suspicion this could be useful for behaviour between hemispheres. Again, a hat tip to Geoff Sherrington who I recall expressing views on the relevance of hemispherical differences some time ago. Also, as before, I recognise I’m out of my depth!
Andrew-KY and Hunter your comments weren’t there when I posted mine. Weird. Thank you guys too.
I read this comment on another blog this morning and it sort of fits for a response to bugs:
“Hey Dr. Honeydew, go grab Beaker, and get back into your lab and find stuff. And stop trying to make policy!” LOL
Tom Vonk:
You are not using measurable as that word gets used in the scientific community. If you can obtain a number with a meaningful estimate of uncertainty, that quantity is “measurable.”
You mean “directly measurable” which is a distinction without a difference in this case.
If you are using a mercury thermometer to measure temperature you are not measuring temperature but volume change of mercury.
Nobody in their right mind would say you can’t “measure” it because you aren’t directly measuring temperature.
No, there are three issues here not one.
There is
1) can it be defined?
2) can it be measured?
3) can it be used to test/constrain theory?
This isn’t like interpretive dance where the introspective question of whether it has meaning to you is important. It can be defined, it can be measured, and it can be used to meaningfully constrain AGW models.
Objectively the answer to all three is “yes”.
Again this isn’t interpretive dance criticism, you don’t get to pick a context in which it is “meaningful to you”.
A measurement is useful if it achieves the purpose which all measurements in science are intended to achieve: Namely constrain theory and/or model.
The fact that it may not have a simple theoretical interpretation does not undermine its value in this respect.
curious (Comment#40502) April 12th, 2010 at 8:45 am
Liza – I hope they’ve an experimental design and specification for that lot! Look how busy a few thermometers keep us all!
No kidding! 🙂
Where’s the theory? It’s a model! No a hypothesis! No a model! Ahhhhh.
🙂 LOL
liza:
A model is a specific implementation of a theory.
You can’t have a model if you don’t have a theory.
Where’s the theory?
it’s partially described here. It’s actually a series of theories, measurements, data, analysis, conclusions. Not just one. Climate “theory” is really a framework upon which many theories get hung.
“You are not using measurable as that word gets used in the scientific community.”
Carrick,
A measurement is always measurement and a calculation is always calculation. In other words, they are always two different things, even if you’d personally like to think of them as the same.
Andrew
curious:
For what it’s worth, I am as sure that Tom is wrong about climate being chaotic as he is that it is so. I think Tom suffers from the “carpenter syndrome”, in which if what you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
(I think there may be periods of extreme driving where it becomes chaotic, but I don’t think it is a ubiquitous feature of climate.)
Andrew_KY:
Nonetheless there is a specific meaning to the word “measurement” as it gets used in science. If you disagree with this, you need to dig out a book on measurement theory and explain to me (us) where I (we) are wrong.
Tom was thinking “direct measurement”, but even his “direct measurement” wasn’t a direct measurement, it requires a calculation to calibrate the thermometer.
A calculation is “1 + 2 = 3”, it isn’t the same thing as a measurement direct or inferred.
Thanks Carrick – this settled science is strong stuff! Just wait ’till that shopping list that Liza flagged up is let loose! 🙂
For instance, to measure something (like the temperature), you have to have a measuring device. To calculate an average you no longer use the measuring device.
Andrew
“Nonetheless there is a specific meaning to the word “measurement†as it gets used in science.”
Carrick,
Just for clarification, are you stating that science defintion of measurement and the common public agreed upon definition for measurement are different?
Andrew
Andrew_KY:
Actually, you can compute averages using an analog system “measuring device”.
An aspirated thermometer is an example of this. It is pulling air across the thermometer, effectively averaging the temperature throughout a volume of air surrounding the instrument.
Almost all scientific values are inferential (not direct). Length and mass and a few other fundamental quantities can be directly measured, most everything else is “indirect” in some sense. That means it needs a model + calculation in order to “infer” the “true” value of a quantity.
Further, even with global mean temperature, you could measure the spectra of emitted light from the surface of the Earth from a long enough distance that the entire planet was contained in a single pixel, and you’d be measuring the average temperature of the Earth: The “color” is related to “temperature” using Planck’s Law, in the same way that the mercury volume is related to temperature via thermal expansion. Conceptually there is no difference. And by the way, we don’t do this for the Earth routinely, but we measure the average surface temperature of stars “all of the time” using exactly this method.
Generically though, it is as I’ve stated, any quantity, and that includes surface global mean temperature of the Earth, for which you can obtain a central value plus an uncertainty, is a “measurable quantity”. And obtaining the central value plus the uncertainty is a form of “measurement” of that quantity, regardless of indirectly it was obtained.
Andrew_KY:
That almost always is the case.
Science chooses very specific meanings to words that it borrows form common language. I’m pretty sure most lay people have never computed a confidence interval in their life, but try and present your measurements at a scientific
meaningmeeting without the error bars (or equivalently in some fields, the “noise floor”), and see what happens to you!An example of average (integration) over time: A mercury thermometer has a thermal inertia associated with it, so very rapid temperature fluctuations get averaged over time (note to pedantic types: I didn’t say anything about “unweighted average”).
“even with global mean temperature, you could measure the spectra of emitted light from the surface of the Earth from a long enough distance that the entire planet was contained in a single pixel, and you’d be measuring the average temperature of the Earth”
But what would that mean to the places on the earth where that number is completely irrelevant and has no meaning?
You are attempting to impart meaning on something in one context, but in another context it has no meaning.
Andrew
Andrew_KY:
Why exactly do you think this is a problem, exactly?
Surely you’re heard of “scientific terminology” before.
If you were more careful with your neighbor’s space heater, you’d have no reason to ever return it. >.>
“Science chooses very specific meanings to words that it borrows form common language.”
You mean like when I borrow my neighbor’s space heater and give it back to her broken? 😉
I’d say that borrowing words and changing their meanings is a problem.
Andrew
“Whether it had no “meaning†or is “irrelevant,†that is something you can’t just assert, and have it be true.”
Carrick,
Likewise you can’t take a number and just assert it has meaning. You have to demonstrate what the meaning is.
Andrew
Andrew_KY:
True, but I’ve already done that in this case (surface global mean temperature acts as a constraint on GCMs…). And more to the point, it’s been beat to death in the scientific literature that I bet neither you nor Liza have ever read.
“Surely you’re heard of “scientific terminology†before.”
Yes. But if the Climate Science Community is going to involve the public, they have an obligation to the public to be honest and say, “These are the words we are going to use, x, y and z and they don’t mean what you think they mean or the common understanding of them is changed for this x, y or z purpose. They now mean this…”
Andrew
“surface global mean temperature acts as a constraint on GCMs…”
OK Carrick, what is this supposed to mean to me?
Andrew
Andrew_KY (Comment#40517) April 12th, 2010 at 10:06 am
I keep picturing a alien traveller reading a tour guide book planning for vacation on Planet Earth, seeing the “average temperature” stated for the whole world; and thinking “I’ll just pack a sweater.” or something like that. Hee hee.
Carrick (Comment#40516) April 12th, 2010 at 9:56 am
I’ve been reading for years. And you are still talking about model. Models only let you have so many parameters and that ain’t the real world. Just look at SteveMac’s discussions on how they handle the MWP at the IPCC. And people were alive then and wrote things down; there IS an historical record for it.
And when you mention time; there’s another place you lose me.
Geologic time is vast. The climate data you are working with is pretty much 0 data to conclude what is happening now or not is “unusual”.
We are at the peak of “warm” on the Milankavitch cycle graph in time; nobody knows what happens at the surface or what happens to climate (ocean currents; ice at the poles;magnetic fields, ozone; etc etc) while the orbit changes shape “what it feels like or when it starts” and it is happening as we speak-or as on that graph; what the climate may do per decade as the line goes downhill toward cold; even if we are living in just “a few years” of the cycle. The Earth has many other wobbles too. No one knows what the “climate” or “average” temperature of the Earth looked like per decade when the Little Ice Age set in either. Ice ages can happen in just a few years if the ice sticks and you are worried about fractions of one degree warmer?
This is just an example of TIME and it’s “meaning” in my head and in my thoughts in regards to “climate” per decade and what’s going on in the models (which model just a peep of geologic time)
Andrew_KY:
In general that gets done. But if you’re (same goes to me) going to consume the results of a particular scientific community, you also have some obligation to understand their lingo.
This is a two way street.
See Lucia’s comparisons of the GCM (global climate model) simulation results to global mean temperature as an example of this.
“In general that gets done. But if you’re (same goes to me) going to consume the results of a particular scientific community, you also have some obligation to understand their lingo.”
Carrick,
If the Climate Science Community wants to engage the public and acquire the belief of the public, THEY have the one-way obligation.
Andrew
Liza:
That’s why it’s called a “model”.
Seriously, the point of science is to distill the real world and describe it with as few pieces of information as possible.
Nobody in science would hold any credence to a model that had a semi-infinite number of parameters.
In terms of your discussion of the Milankavitch cycle, that isn’t really that relevant here. We aren’t talking about slow shifts in orbital alignment here, we’re discussing the consequences of emitting large quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere.
How well you understand the relationship between climate and the Milankavitch cycle has almost nothing to say about what the impact of a sudden “step function” change in CO2 level in the atmosphere.
Anyway, you don’t know what I’m “worried about” since I have never told you. But the issue isn’t what has happened till “now”, because almost everything prior to 1980 in global climate is explained by entirely natural drivings (human generated CO2 is thought to be nearly balanced till then by the cooling effects of human generated sulfates). All things being equal (in my opinion), we are only responsible for a few tens of a degree C in temperature change since the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850.
The issue is what happens in 50 years when instead of 28 billion metric tons of CO2 per year, we’re pumping out over 100 billion tons annually. It’s not the +0.2C or so change that we’ve had on climate that matters, it’s the future changes on its impact on environment that need to be fully addressed.
Andrew_KY:
In a representative democracy like the US, they have an obligation to explain clearly to the policy makers. They aren’t answerable directly to you.
Beyond that, obviously you and I disagree on this. You can’t choose willful ignorance (meaning in this case not bothering to learn to speak their language) then blame them if you don’t understand what they mean.
The responsibility goes both way for communication, any communication, including I might add interpretive dance. 😉
Obviously nobody expects you to understand how to write your own model, but effort to understand the terminology is required on your part too, if you want to be a meaningful part of the debate.
“In a representative democracy like the US, they have an obligation to explain clearly to the policy makers. They aren’t answerable directly to you.”
Carrick,
If they want a vote that’s partially based on my understanding of Climate Science they sure are.
If you are trying to say that politicans should be the gateway to scientific understanding for the public, you need some serious, serious, correction, dude. 😉
Andrew
“human generated CO2 is thought to be nearly balanced till then by the cooling effects of human generated sulfates” . Is that the scientific meaning of “thought” and “nearly” or the normal use one?
“I keep picturing a alien traveller reading a tour guide book planning for vacation on Planet Earth, seeing the “average temperature†stated for the whole world; and thinking “I’ll just pack a sweater.†or something like that. Hee hee.”
liza,
I have a Bill Cosby sweater that the aliens can borrow. They have to promise to bring it back undamaged, though. On second thought, they can keep it. 😉
Andrew
“How well you understand the relationship between climate and the Milankavitch cycle has almost nothing to say about what the impact of a sudden “step function†change in CO2 level in the atmosphere.”
Yes I do. 22 or more full on Ice advances and retreats in the last million years-despite C02 or not. You still show me you have no grasp of time on this planet!
The temperature in the United States has been warming since it’s birth. It was fought for during a time called the Little Ice Age. This was over 200 yrs ago, and you don’t know what “climate” looked like per decade before or after. Now with your computer model it’s a “sudden step function” change ; 0.12 degrees since 1995 says Phil Jones; and that’s a number derived from statistical manipulation of thermometer readings not calibrated to each other; and so there’s problems with it; plus the UHI factor is not well understood enough; we don’t know enough about the sun and clouds, and they just discovered a new super hot vent miles down on the floor of the sea; and we are going to spend billions more a NASA for “our understanding” and for more measurements yet this “rise” of 0.12 degrees is not normal because you plugged some numbers into your computer and humans emitting C02 did it. Okay! 🙂
I think you’ll find that the USA is a Republic, so sovereignty resides in the individual citizens, not in any random group of elected representatives.
Carrick
Thanks for the explanation of your point of view, and the basic stats tutorial. It seems that the average temperature is something that can be defined, provided we agree an elevation above land or sea level, but it’s far more questionable whether the current coverage and accuracy of instrumentation give us usable point-in-time data, let alone a credible view of the trend – which does not appear to be linear, or even close to it – over a period of time. One of the problems with your reliability measures is that there are always implicit assumptions about the underlying distribution of the data, and should these not be valid the measures may fail. (There was an error at WUWT today where an article described global temperature as “obeying” a distribution).
In my view we need a lot more sensors, particularly at sea and in higher latitudes, and it will be a long time before we can do much with the data. All this stuff about paint, and even the surface stations project, is neither here nor there in absolute terms – it is lost in the general uncertainty and only serves as an indicator of the integrity of the measurers, or otherwise.
I’m worried about your apparent conclusion that natural factors explain past history, but not the last 30 years, and therefore CO2 must be the difference. Doesn’t seem any more coherent logically than saying it was God that did it, as people used to with any phenomenon they could not explain with the technology to hand. As far as I understand the models, they have been fitted carefully to past data, using numerous parameters over which there is quite a range of assumptions, so of course they would fit the history. Like stock market “chartist” approaches or RMS hurricane loss models, the fact that they fit old records is no proof that they describe the overall process accurately.
Finally, I guess your scary comment about 150 billion tons of CO2 is an extrapolation from the last 15 years or so of emission growth at 3% rather than 1% due largely to the Chinese economic miracle. As we in the West have shown, we cannot afford to buy all the goodies they are making, so the idea that they can continue to grow at this rate is pretty far-fetched, and if you look at the direct non-CO2 environmental consequences they are suffering, it is unlikely that their land and air could tolerate such vast industrialisation. The only real threat is if African countries get governments that want to develop industries rather than just stealing.
Andrew_KY:
To the extent that funding is set by these elected officials, not you, they are the gateway.
And you personally don’t select them, you just get a voice in their selection. They could tell you to go take a hike, and as long as everybody else besides you was satisfied with them, they’d still get elected.
And, Chuckles, “republic” is a synonym for “representative democracy”. How do you think it works?
You personally vote for every appropriation bill? If not, there is a representative who does this for you, so the special interest groups court him not you.
Are you guys really from Earth? I’m starting to wonder.
“To the extent that funding is set by these elected officials, not you, they are the gateway.”
Carrick,
I wasn’t talking about funding. I was talking about understanding.
Is this another case of you thinking things are the same when they are actually different? 😉
Andrew
David, my point is there is a process for determining the number of instruments needed. Your or my opinion, not informed by the process, aren’t that relevant to the conclusion of “what is the right number of instruments”. In fact there is a nearly 30 year old body of peer reviewed scientific papers. One may choose to disagree with them, but at the minimum, if you wish to seriously debate this issue, you need to study them and see where their failings are, if you disagree with their conclusions.
Secondly it is not “my conclusion” that “natural factors explain past history, but not the last 30 years, and therefore CO2 must be the difference.” Far from it. To the extent that I accept CO2 as a greenhouse gas, it has to do with measurement (but not temperature).
Thirdly, China and the other developing world will continue to develop at some point whether we are there to buy their goods or not. How do you suppose we developed? We didn’t have an “uncle sam” to buy our goods and products.
The 150 billion tons of CO2 annually is based on a completely different logic than you described. It is based on an estimate of of the number of years for the developing world to reach our current level of industrialization. 50 may be too generous or too conservative, but it’s my “best guess”.
Secondly, one recognizes that CO2 is a proxy for economic activity (which is why the US with just 5% of the worlds population but has nearly 30% of the world’s economic activity and outputs 20% of its CO2 or so).
If you take the current per capita CO2 emissions in the US as an estimate for what a developed nation would be emitting in CO2 per capita, normalize it to current population that gives you an order of magnitude estimate of the CO2 production for a fully developed world (I use current just as a rough correction for “business as usual” correction to future CO2 efficiency).
My questions for you are, 1) why do you think it is implausible that China would not be industrialized by then and 2) why do you think given recent industrialization, would you expect them to be more efficient than the US (as with China, they likely will be relying on coal).
Side news, China is currently an net importer of economic goods. Maybe this is short term (for now), but it is a turning point of sorts.
Andrew_KY:
You don’t elect them by yourself Andrew.
You guys are being argumentative now.
Cya
Liza, I do understand the implications of the LIA (e.g., glacial met).
But again this has nothing to do with whether CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas and says little about what the impact would be of a large increase in the amount of atmospheric CO2 on climate.
http://joannenova.com.au//globalwarming/graphs/us_post_causes_global_warming_lrg.jpg
Andrew
Andrew_KY,
I prefer Leprechauns. Well, and causation. Also, if you are going to have 0 ppm CO2 as the x-axis, you should also have 0 K temperature as the x-axis to be fair. 😛
Positive proof of Global Warming
http://hairlarious.files.wordpress.com/2006/10/global-warming.jpg
Zeke,
I like Gnomes and my preferred Squiggly Lines look just as convincing as yours. And Hoi’s Proof pic… well, far be it from me to argue with persuasive evidence like THAT. 😛
Andrew
It is also much easier to gaze at another planet or sun and see it’s wobble, tilt etc, and things coming at it or from it while standing on another planet!
.
and
.
A measurement is always measurement and a calculation is always calculation. In other words, they are always two different things, even if you’d personally like to think of them as the same.
Andrew
.
well, with comments like that, i am not surprised that even the computers are revolting and giving me an error after each post:
.
Warning: Division by zero in /home/ludiary357/rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/themes/centered-daleri-sweet/comments.php on line 89
Re: sod (Apr 12 14:51),
Yeah…. I was using poor practice and tweaking something in comments while the blog was live. Pros wouldn’t do it…. but, well… this is a blog.
Carrick
First, sorry I misconstrued your answer – too many people argue ad ignorantiam and I took you for one of them.
Now attempts to answer your questions:
1) They are industrialised already. I think their conventional pollution problems, which are massive, will act as a constraint on their emissions long before they can quadruple to the US per capita level. They don’t have enough room or air to all have SUVs and aircon like the US.
2) As above, they will have to be. They don’t have a choice, and necessity, rather than Intergovernmental panels, subsidies, or cap-and-trade, is the mother of invention.
So far as the rest of the world is concerned, Western Europe is stable to down at half the US level, and population growth and wealth are strongly negatively correlated around the world, so either population rockets to 12B or people use 8-10T per capita, but not both. So my guess is absolute max 80B by 2050. However I am too old to bet you on it, as I will not be around or if I am I won’t remember.
But we’re supposed to be talking about temperature measurement here, so that’s my lot.
David, I guess my view is that the main driver of CO2 is coal-fired power plants, not SUVs. People will be forced to go away from petroleum over time, the law of scarcity rules here. Coal however is extremely plentiful, it could be thousands of years before the supplies of that are depleted.
I intended for my number to be “ball-park” (I’m not sure you can do much better than that), but I would be very surprised if peak output is just 80 B. I’m pretty sure I’ll live long enough to see us break that level. I’d be really surprised to live long enough to see peak CO2 emission level.
The main trouble with your arguments are that you are assuming that the pollution issues is going to limit their growth. It will do so only to a limited amount, they will be forced to deal with cleaning up their factories, which slows it down. Without some major change in how we use our technologies (like CO2 sequestration or carbon neutral alternatives) we are looking at very large CO2 emissions (compared to now). I just don’t see any plausible “out” for this.
I doubt Lucia minds us not talking about temp here, she is good about jumping in and boxing ears (I have one that still smarts from last time).
sod (Comment#40547) April 12th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
It is also much easier to gaze at another planet or sun and see it’s wobble, tilt etc, and things coming at it or from it while standing on another planet!
Much as I hate to engage you, do me a favor and tell me why that statement is wrong.
Re Al Gore, as a percentage of his income he contributes far more to the issue than I do, for example. As to Hansen calling for criminalisation, you wanted evidence that the leaders of the AGW ‘movement’ take things seriously. That is pretty strong evidence that he takes things seriously …
Flannery is an Australian scientist. He is a leader in my country (I know it is tricky realising that there are places outside the US, but believe me: the science is settled on that one. ;))
“Al Gore, as a percentage of his income he contributes far more to the issue than I do, for example.”
Got numbers, David? So we can compare his and yours? 😉
“As to Hansen calling for criminalisation, you wanted evidence that the leaders of the AGW ‘movement’ take things seriously.”
When Jimmy hijacks a Death Train to stop it’s Deadly Mission, then we can talk ‘seriously’.
“Flannery is an Australian scientist.”
Again, who cares?
Andrew
David (Comment#40549) April 12th, 2010 at 4:41 pm
“…… 1) They are industrialised already. I think their conventional pollution problems, which are massive, will act as a constraint on their emissions long before they can quadruple to the US per capita level. They don’t have enough room or air to all have SUVs and aircon like the US…….
So far as the rest of the world is concerned, Western Europe is stable to down at half the US level, and population growth and wealth are strongly negatively correlated around the world, so either population rockets to 12B or people use 8-10T per capita, but not both. So my guess is absolute max 80B by 2050. ”
David, I find these reasonable observations. Is there somewhere you have gone into this in more detail, or better yet, a place where I could ask some questions? These issues seem a bit away from Lucia’s purview – but interesting even so.
Andrew_KY,
So you think that the vast majority of those who claim they are anti-abortion and talk about a holocaust occurring are not actually serious about their beliefs unless they blow up abortion clinics? I have to disagree. Protesting and voting are serious enough for me.
As to numbers, my contribution would not really be in terms of income. Rather, my contribution is in a few tonnes of carbon annually. So, a few tonnes for an income of around 60,000 US dollars. If we price carbon at $100 a tonne, maybe you can credit me with $500 or so – round it up to $600 to set it at one per cent of my income.
I do not know Al Gore’s income, but his net worth is around $100 million, probably a bit more. Assuming some canny investing and adding in some book income and speaking fees, we can give him an income of perhaps $25 million a year. Make it $30 million.
He donated around $700,000 in 2008 to “the cause”, plus any money from his book. Not sure how much it sold, but I am sure it brought in at least $300,000. That is $1,000,000 out of an income of $30 million. More than triple my ratio. Now, in 2009 he did not have that $700,000. So it would have dropped back. But in 2010 he has another book. So, it will come back up again.
As to who cares, you were asking about how I, a lowly footsoldier in the evil scheme to take over the world and make the rest of you subordinate to the collective ubermind, viewed the seriousness of those I view as the leaders in the master plan. Flannery is one of those whom I view as a leader in this area. His seriousness is clear to me. As you asked the question – and you seemed to place some emphasis on its significance – I was assuming that *you* care.
Re: Carrick (Apr 12 17:51),
IPCC SRES A1-AIM, which I think is wildly optimistic about the amount of recoverable fossil fuels, estimates peak emissions of CO2 at around 60 Gt CO2/year between 2050 and 2060. A1C-AIM, which is completely insane, assumes that CO2 emission will be ~80 Gt/year between 2040-50 and 130 Gt/year between 2090-2100. A1C-AIM assumes a coal consumption level ten times the 2000 level in 2100. We should be so lucky. The UK was assumed to have hundreds of years of coal reserves until suddenly they didn’t and most of the mines were closed. China is importing coal from Australia. At current energy prices, it costs $0.02-0.03/mile to ship a ton of coal by rail in the US. As energy costs go up, so will the shipping cost. We’ve already used up most of the high quality coal. As coal quality goes down, shipping cost/btu of heat value goes up. I guess we could cover Wyoming with coal-fired power plants and build ultra-high voltage DC transmission lines to the rest of the country, but what’s the rest of the world going to do?
DeWitt, I just don’t see it. Even based on proven reserves, there is probably 150 years of fuel, with some of the largest reserves being in China. Here’s Wikipedia’s take on it.
It’s fully sourced.
Carrick,
That wikipedia article suggests that coal reserves will run out in 2065, assuming that the growth in consumption that we have seen over the last little while continues. (2.5 per cent increase in consumption per year). If our coal use stabilises now, then we have around 150 years left. I suspect that the era of fossil fuel power will be over before the end of the century.
David, that’s just 2006 proven reserves, which is just a fraction of total recoverable coal. This includes just the fraction of known reserves that can be recovered using early 21st century technology. We could well have 1000 years of coal left, even if we factor in a fully industrialized world and continued improvements in recovery technology.
I agree with DeWitt (and David Unnamed_LastName) that what is likely to happen is prices will continue to rise on coal but I wouldn’t count on a shortage of fossil fuels as a means of capping CO2.
I agree that we could have any amount of coal left. But I was pointing out that proven reserves only amount to 150 years worth under the extremely unrealistic assumption that coal demand has reached a plateau. 50 odd years seems to be a more realistic number – for, as you have said, proven reserves.
I do not count on a shortage of fossil fuels as a means of capping CO2. I do not think that we will move to a non-carbon economy until late this century (a move that will be the result of price differentials more than anything else) – too late to avert much suffering, unfortunately.
And my point 150 years is also extremely unrealistic because it includes only proven reserves. In the US projectiomns, it’s definitely given as 150 years allowing for continued growth of demand, by the way.
Unlike you, I am not so certain how much “suffering” is caused by warming as opposed to cold weather (read up on the LIA, you’ll find many periods of extended human misery occurred from cold, which was abated by punctuated interludes of warming). I am moved less by the certainty of suffering (I don’t see it certain at all) but by the fact we cannot say with any certainty exactly what will happen.
Given this is our only boat in a deep cosmic ocean, I think that is an awfully big thing to gamble on.
Carrick,
Where in the discussion on wikipedia does it say that around 150 years of US reserves is allowing for continued growth in demand? (I cannot see that stated anywhere).
During the LIA, for example, the human population did not approach what it is today. Our current agriculture in particular is based around certain relatively predictable climatic patterns. Altering that agriculture is not a trivial task, particularly for countries without the resources of, for example, the United States or Australia. This is, imo, going to be the main source of suffering. Food prices will rise. I will be fine, being a relatively well-off individual in a relatively well-off nation. I can cope easily with higher food prices. Others, not so much.
Re: Carrick (Apr 12 21:52),
As long as we’re using Wikipedia as a primary reference, here’s their take on peak coal.
And from your link:
[my emphasis]
A rate of increase of 2.5% is a doubling time of ~30 years. So A1C-AIM projects a somewhat higher rate of growth. Production rate is the last thing to peak. The rate of new discoveries peak on the order of a few decades earlier than production. IIRC, it was the peak in discovery of new oil in the lower 48 in the 1950’s that led Hubbert to predict the peak in production in the 1970’s.
New technology in coal mining is something like bigger dragline cranes or mining machines. Their main contribution is to minimize labor cost. Considering that you can build a large house in the bucket of current cranes, you can’t build them much bigger. They’re so big now that when a pit has been exhausted, they just abandon them. Gasification in place will never happen. It’s too dangerous.
Curious :
.
Tom, if you are still around – do you have an comment on a reasonable way to look at the annual step changes in GMT? For example to my mind the very fact it is making erratic step changes both positive and negative is an indicator the quasi equilbrium model does not fit or there is a flaw in the application of the metric. Is this reasonable? You seemm to be saying it is? Can it tell us anything else?
.
Well there are several comments .
I am not saying that observing an arbitrary time series at a particular time scale (a year in your example) is something meaningful . Nor that it is or should be a “metrics” of anything .
Starting from the foundations , I observe that I have an out of equilibrium dissipative non linear system .
Such systems have always chaotic solutions .
And indeed we already know that the system is chaotic at short time scales .
So the theory of non linear dynamics (e.g “chaos theory”) is the relevant framework to ask questions . I could also choose equilibrium thermodynamics as framework but it is less relevant because the system is clearly not in equilibrium .
A chaotic system will live on an attractor in the phase space and there are many papers studying the “climate” attractor .
If I consider temperature as one of the dimensions of the attractor , my time series is a projection of the dynamical trajectory on one specific axis (temperature) – think geometry with a volume projecting on a coordinate axis .
So the properties of the series on all time scales from minutes to decades will reproduce (some) of the properties of the full dynamics (the volume) .
It will indeed contain “step changes” and approximative self similarity .
But to go farther , I’d suggest that you familiarize yourself with hamiltonian mechanics (this introduces most of the necessary mathematical concepts) and then go to non linear dynamics (f.ex a good introduction is
http://www.amazon.com/Nonlinear-Dynamics-Chaos-Applications nonlinearity/dp/0738204536/ref=sr_1_1e=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271148587&sr=1-1)
.
Carrick
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You missed the 🙂 in my post .
Actually I didn’t care for your statement because it is a tautology depending on the definintions you give to the words “measurable” and “meaningful” .
In the scientific community of my origin , QM , the words “measurable” and “observable” have a very precise definition . Nobody had ever said that a hamiltonian was “measurable” or , by extension , that any f(x,y,z…) is “measurable if x,y,z … is .
But you are free to define something else , it doesn’t really matter for measures done in practice .
Same thing for “meaningful” .
If any f(x,y,z …) with x,y,z … being observables and f some function is “meaningful” because it is computable and constrains some theory , then any arbitrary function is “meaningful” because you will always find a theory which would be constrained by such a function .
Admittedly this theory might be a crackpot theory but it would still be constrained by this particular function .
Again you are free to define it like you want , it won’t change the science .
Curious :
Sorry the link didn’t pass so I try again :
http://www.amazon.com/Nonlinear-Dynamics-Chaos-Applications-nonlinearity/dp/0738204536/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271148587&sr=1-1
If I can’t get it right , you will find it easily by searching S.Strogatz at Amazon .
Tom, I strongly suspect you have mastered the art of spouting words that you have no understanding of. The words are excellent, the logic and meaning, not so much.
Thanks Tom – comment and book tip appreciated.
Bugs
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Tom, I strongly suspect you have mastered the art of spouting words that you have no understanding of. The words are excellent, the logic and meaning, not so much.
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This will be my first and last comment on one of your posts that following a fast survey never contain anything interesting anyway .
Don’t assume that because you don’t understand something , nobody uderstands it .
There are obviously large parts of science that you have no clue of but be very sure that there are many people who have .
The right method to get a clue if interested is to ask questions .
Ad hominems are the wrong method .
So in the case that you are able to ask interesting questions about this particular field , I recommend you the same book that I recommended to Curious .
Link above .
“Don’t assume that because you don’t understand something , nobody uderstands it .”
I understand enough to know that you don’t understand any more than I do. The scientists studying climate are well aware of the chaotic system they are studying. Rather than just saying it’s chaotic and no more need be said about it, they are also studying the physical bounds of the system and coming up with models that do a skilful job of recreating the earths climate. Come up with a climate record that does not even have initial conditions, the physical processes they use are enough to get them close to the reality we have measured.
“So you think that the vast majority of those who claim they are anti-abortion and talk about a holocaust occurring are not actually serious about their beliefs unless they blow up abortion clinics?”
David,
Of course they are serious. An abortion kills a child. I don’t think it gets more serious than that.
Pretending to fight an imaginary problem like Global Warming… I don’t think that is serious.
Andrew
Tom Vonk:
Measurable has a somewhat different meaning in theoretical physics/applied math than it does here. Like you, I am a physicist and am familiar with that definition as well.
For a variable to be measurable in an experimental since, you do need to be able to establish uncertainty bounds. The reason is, the intent of experiment is to obtain observations than constrain theory, and values with no uncertainty bounds by definition cannot do that.
“Meaning” isn’t a scientific term as far as I’m concerned, but if you used it in the context of an objective measure, then the answer to “does GMT have meaning? should not depend on whether has meaning for a particular introspective question “does it have meaning for XXX”. My only point is true to the philosophy of objective measurement, introspective questions should play no role in determining the quality or value of a particular measure.
I would say if a measurement was made to constraint climate theory, then it would be meaningless if it cannot constrain climate theory.
Having said all of that, if you can establish that a measurement is valid (there is an uncertainty associated with it), it is not a tautology that it has meaning in the context of the experiment in which it was made. If the measurement fails to constrain theory, I would describe it as meaningless, even if you can make pretty graphs from it.
I guess you are assuming if you aren’t personally versed in the usage of a particular word, they must be making it up?
“And few have put as much money behind their advocacy as Mr. Gore and are as well positioned to profit from this green transformation, if and when it comes.”
Al Gore donated money to the cause? Big Woop. How about all that money is just for show, and he is really just investing. He still has eight bathrooms-so he’s not that serious. He flies all over the place to “give talks” for money when he could sit in front of a camera and project his image on a screen anywhere-same with all the big “climate” gatherings. Ever see the photographs of the types of vehicles parked in the parking lot of the building he gives his talks at? I have. It’s hilarious and total hypocrisy.
And promoting AGW is a scheme to “take over the world” David. Everything about it regulates the heck out of people’s lives and even threatens to burden people in places where modern conveniences don’t even exist yet. Legislation in California right now puts all kinds of burdens and control over us here including things like whether we are allowed to sell our own homes or not. One form of legislation on semi-truck emission reductions puts burdens on everything-this state is large!; and the “scientist’ from the air board who wrote this legislation lied about his degree. Turns out he got his degree from a fake online University. They passed the legislation anyway because it “sounded right” and he didn’t get fired yet!
And do you think a politician should profit from legislation they get passed? Because many of them right now are positioned to do so. There’s more hypocrisy and motives behind the promotion of the AGW then anybody can even keep track of. Meanwhile China is building tons of windmills, environmentalists and Senators (D) are blocking the building of solar panels in the California desert-and the fed is gonna spend mega tax dollars to “further our understanding” of climate at NASA.
Carrick (Comment#40528) April 12th, 2010 at 10:57 am
Liza:
I’ve been reading for years. And you are still talking about model. Models only let you have so many parameters and that ain’t the real world
That’s why it’s called a “modelâ€.
Seriously, the point of science is to distill the real world and describe it with as few pieces of information as possible.”
Ha, people always look at me weird when I say that a model is nothing more than a data compression scheme.
Liza: a model lets you take a huge pile of observations ( many bits) and represent them ( more or less) with a mathematical abstraction. When those formulas take the form of something that is derivable from a “physical” “law” we call it a “physical model.”
MikeC
I’m putting the last couple weeks of work into a complete R based metadata ebvironment. had to learn R. what a bear.
had some funny stuff happen ( like writing routines for functions that already exist ) but one I got the metadata into a proper R structure the programming became a snap.
There is a bunch of GEOstats stuff I want to do, but that’s a huge learning curve. Anyway, First I’m going to try to put a proper metadata front end onto Roman’s stuff and nicks stuff.
Then add more metadata. I have the code for generating Google earth tours, I’m thinking of making those more elaborate, but Kml is like greek to me. And the satillite data ( 3Gb) is gunna force me to get a proper dev platform ( mac laptop crashed on some huge R files I was playing with)
“Seriously, the point of science is to distill the real world and describe it with as few pieces of information as possible.—
That’s not true SteveMosher! Holy cow.
liza (Comment#40474) April 11th, 2010 at 11:47 am
“And I am saying that number doesn’t have any meaningful information. It could be snowing; or raining, windy, or foggy or cloudy too from one data point to another. Husband says it’s a terrible example. As soon as you go over the Rockies from the west coast the reasons for weather or temperatures is totally different for the midwest and the reason for weather or temperatures is also way different for the east coast as well -the geology. ”
Of course its a meaningful number. I stood outside in the sun.
Its warm, like 67. I notice some shade 30 feet away. Do I know the temperature there? no, I’m not measuring it. Is it 1000 degrees in the shade 30 feet away? no. how do I know that?
is it -40 30 feet away in the shade? no. how do I know that? can I estimate the temperature over there? sure. I guess less than 67.
will I be exactly right? of course not. can I make a guess and test it? sure. I can even guess that my entire neighborhood is 67. My local measurement and my knowledge of physics gives me good reason to believe that I will be more or less correct. The MEANING of a GATA is merely this: It’s the best guess at what you would measure if you measured at a place that is not currently measured. Now as the distances get greater your guesses become less accurate. Your statement, that adding more thermometers give you no better information is simply wrong. We can test that.
“Even if the “average†works out when you pick points to “guess†when and where it tells you nothing, it’s a useless number except like I said, for scaring people. And why do you have to guess what the temperature is any way?? LOL”
You dont have to guess. You can just say. “its 67 here in the sun, I dont have any idea what its like in the shade because I’m not currently measuring it.” But, when you decide to walk across town, and its 67 out, do you carry a down jacket because you are agnostic about the temperature 5 miles away? probably not. You probably use your local knowledge to forecast the temperature 5 miles away. you are ALWAYS guessing what the temperature will be, except when you are staring at a thermometer. And you use your knowledge of past temperatures to modify your behavior. Its 60 at your house. You are walking down to the beach at dusk. Do you carry a jacket? remember that time you didnt? do you carry an umbrella when it looks like rain.
If you understand the GATA to mean “temperature at a distance
from me” then it’s easy to understand its meaning.
It’s 20C where you are now. Now predict T(az,R) where az is a random azimuth from you (Direction) and R is a distance. with NO other information your best guess is…. Now, add this fact:
3000 temperature stations placed around the world averaged together give you a figure of 14C. Now guess. Will your guess be better? does the figure 14C provide information? Will your guess be right? of course not. If R=2ft, will you guess 20+14/2? nope.
why not? If R get really big say 3000 miles, whats your best guess?
So, very simply, the GATA does not measure an entity. there is no “thing” being measured. nevertheless the measure does contain information. That can be shown very easily by comparing results between two procedures of estimating temperature at a distance, one uninformed by GATA and the other informed by it.
“distill the real world and describe it with as few pieces of information as possible”
Huh?
You mean like “very bad”? lol
Andrew
SteveMosher, take all that you said and then remember you are arguing over, regulating people, taxing them, fining them, and putting them out of business with FRACTIONS of one degree temp rise for the whole darn world on a graph over just few decades of a 4 billion year old complex, dangerous, dynamic planet’s climate record. The margin for error in with your all your “guesses” can be greater then or equal to that warming! If that doesn’t sound crazy to you; not to mention your definition of science; there’s is no hope! LOL.
liza,
Mosh is arguing about the science, not the politics. Ideally one’s ideological views shouldn’t have any bearing on one’s perception of physical reality. Alas, more often than not they do.
“And promoting AGW is a scheme to “take over the world†David. Everything about it regulates the heck out of people’s lives and even threatens to burden people in places where modern conveniences don’t even exist yet.”
The “Burden” of living in a low CO2 economy is coming either way, when fossil fuels run out. All that is being proposed is moving that event forward.
Zeke I think Mosh’s politics aren’t that much different then mine, but just take the “political” part out of what I said and the point still stands! (since when are taxes anything but not well received? The world has gone nuts).
And bugs, yes it’s moving along as planned:
The Wall Street Journal reports: “The United States, through the U.S. Export-Import Bank, has issued a ‘preliminary commitment’ of $2 billion and more if needed” to Petroleo Brasileiro SA, a Brazilian government-owned oil exploration and development corporation known as “Petrobras.”
Petrobras is exploring and developing what has been described as the “huge offshore discovery†of Brazil’s Tupi field in Santo Basin near Rio de Janero. According to reports, the site could yield as much as 1 million barrels of oil per day.
The Soros Fund Management LLC holds a stake in Petrobras in the amount of $900 million as of Dec. 31, 2009.
The Soros Fund is headed by U.S. naturalized-citizen George Soros, a multi-billionaire who describes himself simply as an investor.
BTW Zeke, ever try to say something like that to the folks at Real Climate? I wish somebody would!
Hey, I just want to say thanks lucia for letting me spout off so much. I really do appreciate the freedom and it really is all in good spirit!
Steven, Ok, make sure to leave a column on your spreadsheet for mean wind direction and speed and something for the density of the local urbanization… that’s probably going to be the metric… the google earth mapwork you already did is saving tons of time
MikeC,
Adding metadata is easy, now that I have a bit of R under my belt.
Did you find the NCEP reanalysis data on the wind direction? I haven not downloaded it yet( found it though), but I think it will be very important to look at. Looking back at Parker I think he handled the wind in an odd way I’ve got some references hanging around WRT wind speed and UHI. At some point need to get back and read Menne..
liza,
One thing that has bothered me about this is the way that people immediately look at the politics of the issue. Steve McIntyre is a liberal. Tom Fuller is a Liberal. I’m a Libertarian. We don’t discuss politics.
I hope that the science can just be the science. I think that by being open with our data and methods we take “some” of the politics out of it. I could’nt even tell you what Zeke’s politics are, I don’t care. he shares his code. That means he shares his power. That builds trust. If more people ( read mann, cru, santer, scarfetta) had taken his path the situation would be slightly less politically charged. In fact, i wonder why RC doesnt do a post on what the community is doing (clear climate code for example )
WRT taxes and all that stuff. I’m less and less impressed with principaled rants against taxes. Too easy. Judith Curry sent me a copy of this book. I recommend it to everyone as it shows how the problem can be dealt with on a local level. And in my mind the closer the decision makers are to the real local problem the more likely you are to get a result that works. The press for global action ( a founding presupposition of the IPCC) has led to inaction.
https://secure.ametsoc.org/amsbookstore/viewProductInfo.cfm?productID=45
Steven, I haven’t even started looking for the wind info… hopefully it’s monthly… USHCN v2 also adjusts seasonally so having that info will be helpful… can u get me a link to the NCEP wind data?
Its NOAA data,
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/data.ncep.reanalysis.derived.html
There are other resources as well
steven mosher (Comment#40677) April 14th, 2010 at 10:19 am
Yep we don’t differ hardly at all. I am not against taxes, just stupid taxing willy nilly where the money just disappears into nowhere ( We still get taxed in California for an earthquake that happened when I was ten) Anyway…
Part of the reason this science being pushed so fast as “settled” makes a lot people angry not just me/husband/and lots of other folks I know all smart good people-the conduct of the scientists does too. Don’t get me started on the regulations proposed here…
I try to use money local all the time so I think I know what you mean. Scaring people, indoctrinating children is bad too, the whole thing equals bad to many many reasonable people. I still believe in human/American ingenuity though! Dr. Curry made semi political/labeling comments all the time at CA(or used to).
BTW I found a GCM paper online which I label “BGW (before global warming, hee hee) . If I read it correctly there is a parameter for “soil moisture content” in the model.
“A GCM Simulation of the Climate 6000 Years Ago”
Two 10-yr integrations of the UGAMP GCM are presented. Each has a full seasonal cycle, T42 resolution, interactive land and sea ice, and prescribed sea surface temperatures. They differ in that one integration represents present day climate (PD) and the other has a perturbed orbit and reduced atmospheric concentrations of CO2 appropriate to the climate of 6000 years ago…
Says:
The model includes the following physical parameterizations. The radiation scheme is that of Morcrette (1990) and includes a predictive cloud scheme based on relative humidity criteria (Slingo 1987). The gravity wave drag scheme of Palmer et al. (1986) is used. The vertical advection uses a total variance diminishing scheme (Thuburn 1993). An important modification included in this version of the model is that the convection scheme is based on the work of Betts and Miller (1986).
Surface albedo and roughness length are prescribed, but land-surface temperature and soil moisture content are calculated using a three-layer diffusive soil model. There is a no-flux boundary condition at the bottom of the soil model (approximately 6 m thick). This is essential for paleoclimate simulations because it allows the surface temperature to respond fully to forcing rather than being tied to some current climatology on long timescales. The model sea surface temperatures are prescribed and are the same in both PD and 6k runs, a reasonable assumption for the mid-Holocene, and are based on the data set of Alexander and Mobley (1976).
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/1520-0442%281997%29010%3C0003%3AAGSOTC%3E2.0.CO%3B2
Steven, trying to post back to you is not working!
Trying again:
steven mosher (Comment#40677) April 14th, 2010 at 10:19 am
Yep we don’t differ hardly at all. I am not against taxes, just stupid taxing willy nilly where the money just disappears into nowhere ( We still get taxed in California for an earthquake that happened when I was ten) Anyway…
Part of the reason this science being pushed so fast as “settled” makes a lot people angry not just me/husband/and lots of other folks I know all smart good people-the conduct of the scientists does too. Don’t get me started on the regulations proposed here…
I try to use money local all the time so I think I know what you mean. Scaring people, indoctrinating children is bad too, the whole thing equals bad to many many reasonable people. I still believe in human/American ingenuity though! Dr. Curry made semi political/labeling comments all the time at CA(or used to).
BTW I found a GCM paper online which I label “BGW (before global warming, hee hee) . If I read it correctly there is a parameter for “soil moisture content” in the model.
“A GCM Simulation of the Climate 6000 Years Ago”
Two 10-yr integrations of the UGAMP GCM are presented. Each has a full seasonal cycle, T42 resolution, interactive land and sea ice, and prescribed sea surface temperatures. They differ in that one integration represents present day climate (PD) and the other has a perturbed orbit and reduced atmospheric concentrations of CO2 appropriate to the climate of 6000 years ago…
Says:
The model includes the following physical parameterizations. The radiation scheme is that of Morcrette (1990) and includes a predictive cloud scheme based on relative humidity criteria (Slingo 1987). The gravity wave drag scheme of Palmer et al. (1986) is used. The vertical advection uses a total variance diminishing scheme (Thuburn 1993). An important modification included in this version of the model is that the convection scheme is based on the work of Betts and Miller (1986).
Surface albedo and roughness length are prescribed, but land-surface temperature and soil moisture content are calculated using a three-layer diffusive soil model. There is a no-flux boundary condition at the bottom of the soil model (approximately 6 m thick). This is essential for paleoclimate simulations because it allows the surface temperature to respond fully to forcing rather than being tied to some current climatology on long timescales. The model sea surface temperatures are prescribed and are the same in both PD and 6k runs, a reasonable assumption for the mid-Holocene, and are based on the data set of Alexander and Mobley (1976).
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/1520-0442%281997%29010%3C0003%3AAGSOTC%3E2.0.CO%3B2
stephen mosher:
LOL. That’s one way to put it.
Liza,
Do you understand what a parameterization is?
steven mosher (Comment#40768) April 15th, 2010 at 10:08 am
Yes I do. Are you referring to your definition of “the point science again?” I still disagree with it. The things you describe are not the point of (or reason for) science. Parameters are model constraints or your experimental capabilities at the time etc, not “the point of science”. Or in other words, the “point” of science is one thing; the steps you take to practice it is another thing entirely. You wouldn’t make scientific observations and “describe them with as few pieces of information as possible†would you? 🙂
ah liza, then you dont understand parameterizations. that’s ok.
start here and see if you can figure out how this is related to your problem
http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/04/09/sensible-heat-latent-heat-and-radiation/#comments
steve, how rude!
Why don’t answer my question? You just promote your blog instead? And that page is just arm waving if you can’t answer it. And nothing I said was incorrect.
I don’t see ANY science degree in your bio at amazon. Do you have one? If not, I think I’ll stick to talking to someone who actually walked the walk and earned it -including running computer models that lives right here in my house! I am not trying to be rude; but I am beginning to think you don’t know what you are talking about especially if you can’t answer my question about observation! ( and so does this scientist I know so well! ) Getting kind of creepy really!
“but I am beginning to think you don’t know what you are talking about”
liza,
I’ve found out over the years that people who believe in Global Warming only assert their talking points… their argument always degenerates into the absurd if pressed, so they have to take a break, drink some more Kool-Aid and them come back refreshed with more assertions. 😉
Have a nice weekend!
Andrew
Andrew_KY (Comment#40866) thanks I’ll just stick to just talking to you too. shhhhhh 😉 (what I see over and over here is that the simplest details mean everything :like a fraction of one degree “average” global temp rise per month, or a radiative equation; or the timeline of Climategate emails etc; yet when you point out other details they miss or they may assign less important roles to in history, climate or geology, etc and they could be mistaken about them etc (plus the fact that this planet is vast and complicated anyway and so are people!) they either dismiss you and those details or they go silent like you say. Meanwhile as we speak one little volcano erupts and havoc no one is prepared for unfolds…wow) You have a nice weekend too!