RSS MSU LT Global Temperature Anomaly for April 2008 – flat

The last six months have averaged +.046, the lowest six-monthly average since March 2000. The March 2000 six-monthly average included some figures from late 1999, so we can say that the current spell has been the coldest six month spell of the century! (relatively, that is: it is still positive after all)
The 10-year trend (since May 1998) is about +.04 degrees per decade. The trend from January 1998, which includes those high figures from Jan -April 1998, is -.04 degrees C per decade. Trends this small are essentially zip.
These figures could change. I noticed that some earlier RSS numbers have changed a little since last month.

John Van Krimpen: I believe you might actually question the source of the 1998 spike in temperature. I’m not sure, but you might. Just in case you do: The 1998 spike is the result of the well-documented and highly discussed 97/98 El Nino–the “El Nino of the Century”.

John Van Krimpen: The 1998 spike was due to the very strong El-Nina that occurred that year. And you’re right, the warming crowd went crazy that year!

Dear John Van Krimpen,
the warm year 1998 was due to the “El Nino of the century”, the strongest warming pattern in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. It explains virtually everything about the peak, is a well-known fact admitted by “both sides”, and it is certainly not being hidden by the skeptics. JunkScience likes to add the “El Nino of the century” label to the peak.
Best
Lubos

I think GISS will show a record warm april 🙂 + 0.85 C
..plce your bets..

I was wondering the other day, that the 1998 spike never seems to have been discussed in the plethora of blogs on climate.
To my old style simple mind, the spike seems an outlier of pluto or whatever it’s name is nowadays proportions. Also coincidentally it was about the time the world went AGW rabid.

The hysteria started long before then, early to mid 80s.

John Van Krimpen:
The spike in 1998 was a giant El Nino where the Pacific Ocean dumped a tremendous amount of heat into the atmosphere. You can see spikes caused by other El Ninos in the temperature series, they are just not as large. The obvious ones are at months 48, 108, 144, and 198.

UAH also in, at 0.015:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/last:12/plot/uah/last:12

Braddles,
Won’t the RSS anomalies change slightly every month until a solid baseline has been established (i.e., 30 yrs worth of data)? In other words, you can expect the RSS numbers (of the past) to vary slightly since the baseline is still being developed.

I think that I will continue to cut and stack fire wood. I agree with JVK that 98 was an outlier just as 1934ish was an outlier. And just think GISS is now revamping the older readings and the new history seems to be cooler. What a wonderful way to negate the current flat to cooling trend change. Please notice that I said trend change not trend. How can we see cooling if the past is made to appear cooler.
I am looking forward to looking at the numbers from UAB and HC and GISS. I wonder if there will be any divergence from metric to metric.
By the way the conservative group Grass fire is now on the anti AGW politically. They had an article this morning calling for the end to the hysteria about global warming using the RSS figures in their article. I think things are getting interesting and look forware to the rebuttals to the new measurements and John C’s open letter.
Bill
Bill Derryberry

Paul Clark, regarding CO2 – should we not be using the seasonal corr numbers produced by ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt ?

Morgan said: “The warmer temperatures associated with that event most certainly were held up as evidence that the globe was warming – “the hottest year on record”, and were largely responsible for kicking off the current hysteria. There was relatively little comment on the fact that this was the strongest El Nino on record”
But according to the Pogies, the El Nino was an aberration and had little if anything to do with Planet Earth’s temperature. They recently made this statement when painting the current cooldown as the result of natural variations. I’ll find the article somewhere in my stack and post the URL later.
Jack Koenig, Editor
The Mysterious Climate Project
http://www.climateclinic.com

This looks like Feb-April were a slight bump up before the next drop (like June-Aug 07). -.3 global anomaly by summer?

Ed, that was only for US temps…

The caption on the top graph, when you click to enlarge, is incorrect. It should say “1998.”
REPLY: It is a ZOOMED SECTION of the 1979-2008 graph.

[This comment seemed to get lost earlier, sorry if this results in a duplicate through some time wormhole feature of WordPress that I’m not aware of…]
Folks,
I’ve been wondering about the difference in baselines in the four temperature series, and I couldn’t find a definitive statement of how to align them, so I’ve tried to work one out – I’d appreciate comments…
The four temperature series quote their baselines as follows
HADCRUT: Jan 1961 – Dec 1990 (30 years)
UAH: Jan 1979 – Dec 1998 (20 years)
RSS: Jan 1979 – Dec 1998 (20 years)
GISTEMP: Jan 1951 – Dec 1980 (30 years)
(Note in woodfortrees.org you quote the sample _after_ the last one in ‘to’, so it would be e.g. rss/from:1979/to:1999, and I’ll quote them like that below)
The period of comparable overlap is therefore 1979-1999. I’ve added a feature in the ‘raw data’ output of woodfortrees.org so you can see the mean of all the samples at the end. So if we look at the raw data of the 4 series for that period, we get:
Graph: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/to:1999/plot/uah/from:1979/to:1999/plot/rss/from:1979/to:1999/plot/gistemp/from:1979/to:1999
Data:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/data/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/to:1999/plot/uah/from:1979/to:1999/plot/rss/from:1979/to:1999/plot/gistemp/from:1979/to:1999
The means are as follows:
HADCRUT3: 0.146
UAH: -0.001
RSS: 0
GISTEMP: 0.238
So, allowing for a bit of rounding, UAH & RSS are both zero across that period, as we would expect. HADCRUT3 is 0.146K higher, GISTEMP is 0.238K higher.
Before anyone complains about GISTEMP reading high, this is inevitable given that its baseline includes an earlier, relatively cooler period!
So, it would seem that
GISTEMP = UAH/RSS + 0.238
HADCRUT = UAH/RSS + 0.146
and therefore
GISTEMP = HADCRUT + 0.092
I’ve heard 0.24 quoted for GISS before, so it would seem this is reasonable.
Hence we can now provide a 4-series comparison to a single baseline:
1979-1999, baselines adjusted:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/to:1999/offset:-0.146/plot/uah/from:1979/to:1999/plot/rss/from:1979/to:1999/plot/gistemp/from:1979/to:1999/offset:-0.238
and the data shows all means now roughly zero, as we’d hope:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/data/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/to:1999/offset:-0.146/plot/uah/from:1979/to:1999/plot/rss/from:1979/to:1999/plot/gistemp/from:1979/to:1999/offset:-0.238
This means we can now compare series properly:
1970 onwards, 12 month mean, baselines adjusted:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/offset:-0.146/mean:12/plot/uah/from:1979/mean:12/plot/rss/from:1979/mean:12/plot/gistemp/from:1979/offset:-0.238/mean:12
Last 10 years, baselines adjusted:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/last:120/offset:-0.146/plot/uah/last:120/plot/rss/last:120/plot/gistemp/last:120/offset:-0.238
Last year, baselines adjusted:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/last:12/offset:-0.146/plot/uah/last:12/plot/rss/last:12/plot/gistemp/last:12/offset:-0.238
(note that HADCRUT & GISTEMP aren’t out for April at the time of writing, but the link will automatically fill them in when they are)
Does this make sense? Can anyone spot any flaws in this logic? The only fly in the ointment that I can see is that the anomalies are quoted against the average of that particular month in the baseline period, so technically doing it on an annual average like this is invalid – but done globally, I can’t see it is going to make a significant difference.
Paul

UAH satellite temps are out. Small decline in April to +0.015C from +0.089C in March.
http://www.atmos.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2

SteveSadlov,
Relax…we are not all going to die.
We’re only cooling back to normal.
We’ll have a much better picture in a couple of years.
If you start feeling anxiety, just think of them IPCC climate models! 😉

Paul,
You have built an awesome tool on your website. I was reviewing similar charts earlier, but without applying the baseline adjustment. I output your data from 2001 onward to Excel and found three sources with downward trends since 2001, and GISS with an upward trend which raises the GISS alarm a little higher for me, though I’m not sure it would still be there with the baseline shift. Is it possible (without a herculean effort) to add trendlines to your graphing program?
Quick question for you statiscians out there – if GISS Temp’s baseline period ends in 1980, why would they still be ajdusting (lower) mid century data? The mean is suppose to have beeen established, so stop lowering it? Or am I missing something?

I have a comment about CO2 beeing back on track, it isn’t.
CO2 has shown a significant decrease in growth rate for april, as you could expect with lower global temperatures.
Here are the last 5 years of april CO2 meassurments.
Year _ Month _ CO2(ppm) _ increase(ppm)
2002 _ 4 _ 374,93
2003 _ 4 _ 377,75 _ 2,82
2004 _ 4 _ 380,42 _ 2,67
2005 _ 4 _ 382,18 _ 1,76
2006 _ 4 _ 384,69 _ 2,51
2007 _ 4 _ 386,37 _ 1,68
2008 _ 4 _ 387,19 _ 0,82
AS you can see the growth from april to april is much lower than previous years. Lower temperatures yeilds in a lower CO2 increase in atmosphere.
The increasing CO2 level follows the temperature much more closely than anthropogen CO2 emissions.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2056/2471196255_c3318ee700_o.jpg
So considering those facts this years annual increase will be much lower than previous years due to lower global temperatures. We may see as small increase as 1-1,5 ppm this year.

And so now Gore is using the Burma cyclone to trump his agenda. Al Gore Calls Myanmar Cyclone a ‘Consequence’ of Global Warming.
He chases disasters with his rhetoric like a city lawyer chasing ambulances. And the saddest part is that it is a bald-faced lie.

Rod Duke said: Two German physicists have constructed a very convincing argument against AGW. It is guite lengthy but I can find no errors in their logic. Their math is beyond my abilities to verify so you’re on your own with it.
I read this last year when it first appeared and again last January. Although I have a math and chemistry background, I found it quite a challenge. The Pogies hammered the authors when it was first published, even though they probably didn’t understand a word of it.
Jack Koenig, Editor
The Mysterious Climate Project
http://www.climateclinic.com

Oops! I confused SH with tropics. Apologies, you are right.

Basil,
You somewhat stole my thunder. At work today (don’t tell anyboby), I plotted RSS data using the following data:
NH minus Tropics (20 / 82.5)
Tropics (-20 / 20)
SH minus Tropics (-20 / -70)
World (-70 / 82.5)
The MONTHLY trend was the following (multiply by 120 to get decadal trend):
Data Source: Monthly Trend Decade Trend
NH minus Tropics (20 / 82.5) 0.0029 0.348
Tropics (-20 / 20) 0.0014 0.168
SH minus Tropics (-20 / -70) 0.0005 0.060
World (-70 / 82.5) 0.0015 0.180
Thus, it appears that the following is true (especially seen when plotted):
– World trend is essentially the same as the Tropics trend. There are very few occasions in the last 30 years where they part. Actually, the last 7 months has been a big exception.
– Very little warming in SH (minus tropics)
– A lot of warming in NH (minus tropics)
– Tropics appears to be the average between NH (minus tropics) and SH (minus tropics)
One last thing, I plotted NH (minus tropics) against SH (minus tropics). I wish I had the time to figure out how to do tinypics. Anyway, here is what’s interesting. NH and SH temp anomalies (minus tropics) are pretty much aligned between 1979 and 1994. Then, 1994 onwards, there is this huge split between them, especially since 1999 (post El Nino). This is unparalled in the history of satellite-derived data. I can’t explain it except for:
a) less aerosols over the land masses of NH causing preferrential heating,
b) land heats quicker than ocean under a hotter sun (NH land >> SH land), c) changes in land use (NH land>>SH land),
d) localized CO2 effect (from industrial activity in NH), preferential absorption of CO2 in oceans (SH ocean>>NH ocean), better atmospheric convection in SH, and finally, better negative feedback mechanisms in SH due more ocean,
e) solar effects that preferentially affects the atmosphere over land masses.
I encourage everyone to do the plots themselves (again, I wish I had time to learn tinypics). Gotta run.

McGrats / Jack Koenig: As a physicist, I can tell you that the Gerlich & Tscheuschner paper (which I believe is the paper by German physicists that you refer to) is complete and utter garbage. (And, by the way, it not only claims to disprove AGW but the entire greenhouse effect period, which makes me wonder if it is only a matter of time before someone writes a paper arguing not only that CO2 does not cause warming but that the molecule does not even exist.) Actually, a very smart fellow who I went to grad school with, Arthur Smith, has written something that tears most of it apart: http://arxiv.org/abs/0802.4324
In addition, their argument that the greenhouse effect violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics is such nonsense that, if I were in academia rather than industry and taught an undergraduate physics course (maybe even a first year one), I would give my students a simple radiation problem that would lead them through showing how silly this claim is.

Joel Shore,
Did you read page 89? The authors had some choice comments regarding realclimate.org. Apparently, the two parties were in contact with each other prior to the paper being published. I taught radiative heating once in an enginering class. Some of the ideas in the paper don’t seem to square with what I remembered teaching. But, I do remember this (at least for engineering calculations): at low temperatures (such as the atmosphere), conduction and convection are vastly more important for heat transfer than radiative heat transfer. But, I suppose the difference in temperature between the earth and outer space is pretty high, which makes radiative heat transfer important (as it happens on a dry, clear night that cools quickly after the sun is down). Interestingly, the Stefan-Boltzman equation can be used very easily to approximate the maximum surface temperature for the earth (roughly 130-135 F), which does occur in a few places around the world. Anyway, the uncertainties in the climate models regarding cloud cover, convection, etc. are much larger than any forcing effect of CO2, so I have never understand why those guys at RC.org are so smarmy about their models in the first place.

The quote from the paper Joel linked was from the bottom of page 8.

Chris,
As you describe it, sounds like most of the warming took place from 1994 – 1998. Maybe it was all due to the El Nino?

KuhnKat,
You seem to have a lot of confusions about the G&T paper. First of all, let me clarify that when I said that the paper was “garbage”, I did not mean everything in it is wrong. What I meant is that what is in it is either well-known or wrong. (In particular, many…maybe even most…of their mathematical calculations are probably correct but the interpretation of them is wrong, in fact, sometimes bizarrely wrong.) The statement that real greenhouses operate by a different mechanism than the atmospheric greenhouse effect is an example of something that is correct but is also well known (see, for example, the last paragraph in the “Basic mechanism” section of the Wikipedia article on the greenhouse effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect ).
I don’t know how you use the term “RED HERRING” and “strawman” to describe Arthur’s paper where he very specifically notes what part of what they say (which is basically the “meat” of their paper) he demonstrates is wrong. And, you frankly admit to not being able to “parse the math”. G&T are very clear in claiming that they have falsified “the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse effect”, as can be seen from the title of their paper and their abstract. Admittedly, there are lots of different arguments (or unsupported statements) in that very long paper and Arthur did not attempt to address all of them, but he addressed most of the ones that they seemed to emphasize as most important, e.g., in their abstract.
As for your question, “By the way, would you explain to me how CO2 can ADD energy?? Otherwise I think their claim about the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics probably holds”: The CO2 does not add energy but helps retain energy in the same way that a heat shield can do so. They claim that it is impossible for this to happen without violating the 2nd law of thermodynamics because they say it involves a flow of heat from a colder place (the upper troposphere) to a warmer place (the earth’s surface). However, their statement is incorrect as the net flow is still from the earth’s surface to the upper troposphere and then out into space. The existence of a radiatively-active troposphere just makes this rate of loss of heat from the surface slower. One can in fact come up with very simple radiative physics problems that demonstrate the same effect. For example, take a blackbody sphere at a constant temperature that represents the sun. Put a concentric blackbody spherical shell around it (that will be analogous to the earth) and then either put or leave out a second larger radius blackbody spherical shell around it (to be analogous to a radiative-active troposphere). Assume this is immersed in empty space (T=0). Then, it is a simple 1st-year physics problem to calculate the temperature of the 1st (earth-analog) shell both with and without the presence of the 2nd shell. One finds that this shell is warmer when the 2nd shell is present even though the 2nd shell is at a lower temperature than the 1st shell. By their arguments, this would violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which is proposterous.
As for your question “they can not POSSIBLY mean that the amount of outgoing radiation decreases permanently, can they??? What would be the mechanism??? More CO2 simply means more possible ‘stepping stones’ for the outgoing radiation. That is, it is DELAYED, not STOPPED!!!”: Well, it depends what you mean by “permanently”. It is more than just delaying the outgoing radiation. The net effect of CO2 is to cause the outgoing radiation from the earth to be emitted higher up in the atmosphere where it is cooler. And, as a result, the earth as a whole (including the atmosphere) behaves as a blackbody emitter having an average temperature of around 255 K, rather than the average surface temperature of 288 K. In other words, the surface temperature of the earth is 33 K warmer than its blackbody temperature. This, in the most basic sense, is the atmospheric greenhouse effect.
Now, to the question of permanence of a radiative imbalance produced by an increase in greenhouse gases: No, such a radiative imbalance will not be maintained indefinitely. What will happen is that the earth’s atmosphere will slowly heat up until it is at a temperature such that the outgoing radiation again balances the incoming radiation. And, this is how a rise in greenhouse gas concentrations causes an increase in the earth’s temperature. (So, the summary is that the rise in greenhouse gases causes radiative imbalance which causes global warming to restore the radiative balance.) Note, however, that there is a lot of thermal inertia, particularly due to the oceans, so that this warming takes a long time (say a “half-life” on the order of a decade to several decades).
Your statement “We simply do not have enough CO2 to cause significant warming even if it ALL managed to ABSORB heat rather than reradiate it!!” is simply wrong. A doubling of CO2 levels, with no feedbacks is enough to produce about 1.2 C of warming. You are correct that the water vapor feedback (and other feedbacks like the ice albedo feedback) are what then raise the estimate climate sensitivity to doubling from about 1.2 C to about 2 to 4.5 C. As for your speculations about there being extensive negative feedbacks in the water cycle, this is rather far afield from the G&T paper but let’s just say that some such feedbacks have been speculated about but there does not seem to be good evidence for them…and strong negative feedbacks seem incapatible with our current understanding of the oscillations of the earth’s climate in the past, such as the ice age – interglacial cycles.

I do think you should take a serious look at the water vapor feedback being positive as it is in the models. This seems unlikely to me for many reasons but the most obvious one is that if it was true, previous periods of high CO2, much higher than today, would have caused “catastrophic” warming events which they clearly didn’t.
Net feedbacks pretty much must be negative or must change to negative as temperature rises or the entire paleo record is totally wrong. A mighty good case can be made that there is no evidence of any positive feedback in the recent past especially if your temperature data set has not been … (Hansenized?)

Wondering Aloud: Thanks for your response.
Just a couple of further comments:
(1) It is the troposphere (especially the lower and, perhaps, mid-troposphere) that is supposed to be warming at least as much as the surface, not the stratosphere. In fact, the stratosphere should be cooling as it has been, and in fact this is a signature that the cause of the current warming is greenhouse gases rather than, say, solar irradiance changes (which would cause the stratosphere to warm too). Admittedly, interpretation of the stratospheric cooling is somewhat complicated by the fact that ozone depletion also contributes to stratospheric cooling, although I think the best estimates are that there is more cooling seen than can be accounted for purely by ozone depletion. As for the tropospheric warming, the discrepancy between prediction and data from the satellites used to significant but, now, with corrections to the satellite data and a longer record, this discrepancy seems to have disappeared (within error bars) at least on a global scale; in the tropics, some unexplained discrepancy remains.
(2) I am not sure why you think that the paleo record is compatible with a negative feedback. The scientists who study the paleo record, e.g., who have actually tried to use the Last Glacial Maximum or other paleo evidence to estimate the climate sensitivity, come up with estimates compatible with net positive feedbacks. In fact, here is a paper that argues that the climate sensitivity based on paleo evidence suggests the climate models may be, if anything, UNDERESTIMATING the climate sensitivity: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/sci;306/5697/821 Note, by the way, that a positive feedback does not imply an instability, as some seem to think, unless that feedback exceeds a certain value. For feedbacks less than that value, what you get is a magnification of the warming but no instability…and that is what the estimates of climate sensitivity give. (There is a close relation between positive feedbacks and infinite series and an instability corresponds to a diverging infinite series but a magnification occurs for a converging infinite series like 1 + (1/2) + (1/4) + (1/8) + …, which converges to, and thus gives a magnification of, 2 to the effect.)

Joel,
then you agree that we have to have more warming in the upper trop before we can have the enhanced greenhouse effect go catastrophic??
I believe the OBSERVATIONS, even if there is some error still in them, simply do NOT support a large change happening any time soon. In fact, the observations support the Germans in that the temps generally get cooler with elevation. I believe the correct scientific method is to modify your theory when the FACTS contradict it!!
Please do not start the semantic war about Greenhouse Effect. The original Greenhouse Effect was based on preventing CONVECTION, not capturing IR!!! This is a common misunderstanding and causes problems talking about the issue. It is why I try to use Enhanced Greenhouse when referring to the CO2 theory. They ARE NOT THE SAME!!!
The Germans are specificaly correct in that their paper is titled “Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects in the Frame of Physics.” In other words, claiming that they claim to falsify the Greenhouse Effect is FALSE. This is the Strawman I am talking about. They do not claim to disprove the Greenhouse Effect or the standard theory for the habitability of the earth, only the IPCC and other warmers Enhanced Theory.
By the way, the reradiation of the IR is so fast there is typically no real time lag in its leaving. Not much of a heat shield if the CO2 doesn’t ABSORB the IR. If it does in appreciable amounts (warming trop faster than surface) then you would have convection and conduction to remove the heat. Also, unless you are over a desert where there is little water vapor the CO2 has little effect as the water vapor gets the energy directly.
I notice that you also used a poor analogy of how GG’s are supposed to work. A heat shield?? Again, poor analogies and labels are part of the problem with conceptualizing the issue!!!
By the way, repeating the arguments do not change them. The GG in the atmosphere is NOT equivalent to a black body sphere (mostly holes in the bandwidth) and they NEVER claim that the atmosphere does NOT keep the earth warm. Again they claim that CO2 and other GG in conditions anywhere approaching the earths atmosphere CAN NOT RETAIN ENOUGH HEAT TO CAUSE A CATASTROPHE!!! The IR is reradiated too quickly for there to be any large temp increase under earth conditions among other reasons.
Basically their paper sticks with known physics and does not ADD to it with poorly conceptualised models of the atmosphere that would require GG to perform in unknown ways.
You state that the doubling of CO2 will cause 1.2 to 2 to 4.5C with other feedbacks. I believe when the Germans wrote the paper the IPCC were still claiming almost twice that amount WITHOUT feedbacks other than CO2 itself. Maybe the IPCC are coming to believe in real physics also??
Would you like to address the question of how much the second doubling will raise the temps?? Personally I would LOVE a 4.5C average warming over the next 200 years for my great great grandkids!!
I will jump into your other discussion about the paleo record. CO2 apparently has been over 1000PPM. If the feedback from GG including water vapor is so strong, how do we explain that their is no record of a disastrous warming?? It would also appear that it has been rather cold with these levels. After the first 2 doublings there is no appreciable effect left. I do not believe there is any paleo record of an earth since the dinos that we could NOT have enjoyed with modern technology.
Another issue with the theory is the lack of Ocean Warming. The unphysical “reflection” of IR from GG to the surface should be warming it. The Aqua system has not found elevated temps. So, no atmospheric signature, no ocean signature. Only SOME indication of melt as both Greenland and Antarctica appear to be gaining mass while melting at the edges. Please, pray tell, where are all the indications of the ENHANCED Greenhouse Theory?? If there is no retained heat in the atmosphere and none in the oceans, apparently there is NONE. Only the original physical model that gives a more linear warming. No catastrophic warming.
By the way, you do know that there are at least 2 other papers in the last year that give a much lower sensitivity to GG???
http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf
http://met.hu/doc/idojaras/vol111001_01.pdf
They are both closer to the Germans than the IPCC. You might also want to take a look at this if you haven’t already:
http://www.dailytech.com/Researcher+Basic+Greenhouse+Equations+Totally+Wrong/article10973c.htm
It is an article about the second paper and explains the equations including one of the same points the Germans make. The IPCC math includes an INFINITE atmosphere (apparently easier to solve the equations). Here again is a well known scientist showing that the original IPCC math is problematic with energy balance equations.

Chris, Pierre Gosselin:
I raised my question because I noticed that the timeline between 1998 and 2007 seemed to point towards a relative stable range of between .1 and .5 (with 1999 through early 2001 being a rise to the “stable range” and mid 2001 to 2007 holding steady). Suddenly we get a drop of .4 to the negative portion of the graph. Not only that, but the spring rise seems to be stalled.
Hence my question: Is this an outlier, or a clue of things to come? (a cooling down over the next few years?)
Just so you know, I do believe in human-caused global warming, but am definitely aware of the solar minimum of the middle ages, the power of volcanoes, and what I’m calling the Pollution effect (think China’s coal dust polluting the states of California, Washington and Oregon). And even without the evidence of a built-in limit of how warm the atmosphere can get (which does intrigue me), it wouldn’t surprise me to see the Pollution effect of this winter multiplied by the seeming disappearance of sunspots (cooling of the sun) and the volcano down south over the next year or two to overwhelm whatever warming we may have caused and hit us with some severe winters and cool, wet summers.

Chris,
The traditional explanation of the GW crowd is this:
The Southern Hemisphere is dominated by water, whereas the NH has a closer balance of land and air. The ocean responds more slowly to changes in temperature than the land. So, the warming would be slower where the ocean dominates. Air currents tend to move laterally around the globe, and between the upper latitudes and the tropics, but rarely from longitudinally from one hemisphere to the next. So, SH temperatures are affected by the preponderance of ocean in the SH, even over land. This all seems like a hypothesis that is reasonable enough to examine.
The GW crowd uses the disparity in NH vs SH temperatures to suggest that the SH is a running mean of sorts. And when temperature increases are constant, a running mean makes for a lagging indicator, and so the GW corwd is saying that the NH is more indicative of future changes than the SH. But the problem with the notion of oceanic temperatures as a running mean is that a running mean continues to move in one direction even after an abrupt change in the input. (Think of how they’ll say that unemployment claims are down, but the four-week running mean of unemployment claims is up.) The fact that the SH is leading a reversal of GW makes no sense at all.

superDBA – You do ask an interesting question.
>Is the accuracy of the measuring instrument and technique really
>1/1000 of a degree C? It doesn’t seem to make much sense to talk
>in such numbers unless it is.
It is important to note that calculating an anomoly of .001 is not the same as measuring to 1/1000 of a degree. There is only 1 significant digit in .001 which is a fair number regardless the precision of the original measurements. I’d be interested to see if all of the calculations are reported with this in mind.

JS:
Your reply to my points casts them in the most favorable light possible. Your illustration is worthless beyond 7th grade science class.
I don’t believe your study of physics could have included Thermodynamics at all, as you have not addressed a single material critcism.
Put up or run away before we taunt you anew, Sir.

I would be more likely to believe that Argos was in error if there wasn’t contraversy regarding estimates of, and projections for sea level rise:
http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/2007_20-29/2007-25/pdf/33-37_725.pdf

re: getting papers into major journals
I have been down that path. It is a backroom-dealing, turf-guarding, jealousy-rules endeavor that left me desperately wanting a bath and forever jaded against the Ivory Tower research departments of our institutions of higher learning. My first submission was to a journal that had as its editor an investigator that was studying the very thing I was studying (but I finished my study first thus submitted first). Needless to say, it was not published in his journal. Unless you have lived the process, don’t call it some kind of merit measure. It is decidedly not.

Vince Noir: I don’t know where the heat is…which is why it is a bit of a mystery. The sea level rise data suggests the heat is continuing to go into the ocean. The Argo data is suggesting it hasn’t. One of these sets of data must be wrong (or being misinterpretted). Hence the mystery. Such mysteries are not uncommon in science…and this one will presumably be resolved in the next few years.

Cohenite: I’ve tried arguing on the basis of Wein and Beer, too, but above a certain percentage they cause rapid forward feedback, undue excitation, an increase in lapse rate and imminent collapse.

Gary: You continue to miss the point. My point is that their argument about the violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics does not in any way depend on the emissivity. If you think it is, go to the section where they talk about it and show us where it comes in.
I am not saying that a blackbody is a good analogy for CO2 in the atmosphere but merely that I have shown you an elementary radiation problem that exhibits all of the same characteristics that G&T argue means that the atmospheric greenhouse effect violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Is that so hard to understand…Or, are you just pointing out irrelevancies because you have no real counterargument to this?

JS:
“violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics does not in any way depend on the emissivity”
G&T’s raising the 2nd law is entirely focussed on the back-radiation issue, providing chapter and verse of its importance to AGW theorists(sic), you are misrepresenting their argument to imply otherwise. I brought up emissivity.
“I am not saying that a blackbody is a good analogy for CO2 in the atmosphere”
Not for CO2 and not for the atmosphere as a whole. Don’t use the analogy, it is invalid as an heuristic at any level.
“I have shown you an elementary radiation problem that exhibits all of the same characteristics that G&T argue means that the atmospheric greenhouse effect violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics”
You showed us nothing re: G&T, and you cannot. You simply granted their point on back-radiation, that it cannot heat the surface and proceeded to a non-physical fantasy which purported to explain a putative retarded gradient in the IR radiative fluence through the atmosphere.
“Or, are you just pointing out irrelevancies because you have no real counterargument to this?”
Like pointing to the failure of MSU and Aqua satellite data to give any evidence of your retarded gradient? How is this irrelevant?

Gary: It is useless to argue this point with you since it is clear you haven’t even read the relevant section of G&T. I suggest you look at their section 3.9.3.
And, by the way, although it is actually irrelevant to the current discussion, I am curious how you got your number of 9*10^-4 for the emissivity (/ absorptivity) of CO2. As you no doubt know, emissivity and absorptivity are wavelength-dependent…and in this case, strongly wavelength dependent since CO2 has specific absorption bands. Since skeptics have often argued that the bands are saturated already (as an excuse to rule out any significant effect of CO2 on radiative absorption without actually doing the calculations that show otherwise), it seems unlikely to me that the absorptivity is so low in these bands.

cohenite: Re: the critique of Schwartz, you seem to have grabbed on to one sentence, and because of some data that is very new and may well be wrong or represent only a short-term fluctuation, you dismiss the entire critique. In fact, the critique of Schwartz presented there does not really rely on the ocean data at all. Perhaps you should read it in detail and then tell us what parts you disagree with and why.

Washington universities are doing studies on vineyard susceptibility to cold. They are either hedging their bet re agriculture expansion of warm weather crops into traditionally cold weather areas (that are enjoying momentary global warming), or some folks in the ivory towers up there think that cold is a-comin. I noted too that 2007 American wine will be rather expensive as bottled supplies dwindle fast (you should be seeing 2007 on shelves now), since crops were, in places, less than half what they were at their peak due to cold weather. Some estates did not produce 2007 estate wine because they didn’t have any 2007 grapes from their fields. In stead, they used grapes from warmer areas for their non-estate labels. Think what the 2008 crop will be like. The models not only didn’t work for Antarctica, they sure didn’t work for upper US wine production.

Many estimates of reserves are questionable because the owners of those reserves are naturally wanting to paint a rosier picture than is the case. It is also difficult to estimate reserves because extraction cost are a running average. Easy reserves are mined first, which provides cheap finished products. Harder to extract reserves are mined last, leading to much more expensive products. Because of the media’s reluctance to explain the technicalities of oil production, the general public thinks reserves are reserves are reserves. Most folks don’t know that oil prices in the news are quoted only for the sweet, suck it up with a straw, crude oil that takes just a relatively small amount of refining to turn it into gasoline. They also think that all we need to do is pump more oil out of the ground or find unknown pockets of the sweet stuff that blows out of the top of a well and haul it to a refinery in order to reduce the price. They may not understand that refineries were built to refine sweet oil into gasoline, not oil sands or shale. In some cases, oil shale looks like rocks and is mined in an open pit. Refining this stuff is a whole ‘nother ballgame. That kind of refinery is another kind of refinery all together. We don’t have very many of those kind. Its like when we stopped chopping down the big trees. Suddenly we needed to build saw mills that could handle smaller trees.
The bottom line is that I think sweet oil is at peak. The other stuff isn’t. But the other stuff isn’t very attractive as a business because it is very expensive and complicated to turn it into a finished high grade product for general consumption at the gas pump. When I hear comments like, “All we have to do is drill in Alaska if we can just tie up the greenies”, I wonder whether or not people will always be so gullible.

While HadCrut is still outstanding, the GISS data is now available. April was 0.41. Now we can check Paul Clarke’s updated graph:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/last:12/offset:-0.146/plot/uah/last:12/plot/rss/last:12/plot/gistemp/last:12/offset:-0.238
Looking at that graph, I don’t see the new GISS data. I found the data at this link:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
John M Reynolds

HadCRUT brought January down from 0.056 to 0.053 while GISS changed both January and March. As of 2008/05/02 GISS had 2008 12 26 67 but is now 2008 13 26 60. — John M Reynolds