One of the best things about WUWT is the number of eyes and minds at work, multiplying the efforts. This is interesting. Now that the 1998 El Nino is disappearing off the 10 year scale, things are looking a bit different
From “crosspatch” in comments:
NCDC now has December 2008 in the database. Annual North American temperature since 1998 (11 years of data) is falling over the period at a rate of 0.78(F)/decade or 7.8(F)per century. At this rate we will be in an ice age within 5 decades. If you can get the graphic, the heavy black like is the average over the century 1901 to 2000.
Here is the graphic from their automated graphics generator linked to their database:
Source: National Climatic Data Center
While the link he provided is only a result, I’m sure he’ll share the method in comments to this post.
UPDATE: He has indeed, see below. Try your own hand at it. The trend will likely flatten a bit with the removal of 1998 from the 10 year set. Of course you could pick any number of scales/periods and get different results. The point being made here is that the last 10 years hasn’t met with some model expectations.
Also I have corrected in the text the reference to Centigrade when it was actually Fahrenheit, note the (F). NCDC being an arm of the US government operates on the English unit system whereas most other organizations use metric, and thus Centigrade. I’ve made the mistake myself, so has NASA, who famously lost a Mars probe when they botched orbit entry calculations by use of Metric and English units on different science teams.
UPDATE2: Some folks are erroneously thinking that this graph above represents a global trend, it does not. Read on.
It represents US data from NCDC. Also there has been the usual complaint that “10 years isn’t long enough to determine any useful trend”. Perhaps, but when NASA’s James Hansen went before congress in 1988 to declare a “crisis in the making”, there had only been about 10 years of positive trend data since the PDO flip in 1978. It seemed adequate then:
In the graph above, note that the GISS station data does follow the Hansen C scenario, but that we are currently well below it.
Yes we really do need longer data periods to determine climate trends, 30 years is the climatic standard, but you can also learn useful information from examining shorter trends and regional trends.
To generate the graphic I made:
Leave the “Data Type” field at “Mean Temperature”
Select “Annual” from the “Period” field pull down
Select “1998″ as “First Year To Display”
and click the blue “Submit” oval at the below the data entry form.
and again hathaway is always right as the goalposts are moved and D Archibald wrong
http://www.solarcycle24.com/ (sorry for being sarcastic…). D Archibald will still be much closer I reckon at 40
Uh oh, temperatures are normal.
Choose an exceptional year and make a trend line from that point – brilliant! How can you generate that graph for a 20 year trend? 30 years? 50 years?
And shouldn’t the trend line be within the data shown? Why is it below the actual temps?
I’m just waiting for the cries that this is only a regional trend, since this is from the U. S. National Climatic Data Center, not a true Global record rendering. Even more, that the cooling trend is only due to the last two years’ aberration , and ten years do not a climatic trend make.
Gavin? Tamino? I’ve stated the party line for you, and your cue has been said, so please stroll in from the wings now.
A Snowy Owl has been seen in Cornwall, first time since 1948.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/7806553.stm
Surely a sign of “Global Cooling”!
Where at NCDC is the data located?
To generate the graphic I made:
First navigate here
Leave the “Data Type” field at “Mean Temperature”
Select “Annual” from the “Period” field pull down
Select “1998” as “First Year To Display”
and click the blue “Submit” oval at the below the data entry form.
Note that the narrative at the main page has not been updated yet for December but the December data is in the database. You can do a comparison of all Decembers and notice that it now includes December 2008. Yesterday it went only to 2007. You will note that this December is the 35 coldest since 1895 at about 1C below the 1901-2000 average temperature for North American Decembers.
oops, those temperatures are in F not C. Sorry, I am more used to seeing degrees Celsius when working with climate data and didn’t look closely at the units.
“Choose an exceptional year and make a trend line from that point – brilliant!”
Well, actually it is 11 years, I just did 2008 – 10 wanting to see a decade of data. It should be 1999 which only shows -4.9F/century trend. My apologies.
The point wasn’t in picking any particular year to show things being any worse, I was simply trying to show the past 10.
I wonder about the scorce of this temperature data considering the change in urbanization (rural versus urban) since 1900 and scientific location and maintenance of measuring equipment.
AK: all of your questions can be answered at the site pointed to by crosspatch. You can do annual as well as specific months.
7.8C per century ???? A continuation like that would prove me to have an extreme talent for modeling future global temperatures. If that rate were to continue then my temperature reconstruction (in response to Mann’s Hockey Stick) would become an extremely accurate bit of work. Should my “HockeyDip” ( The Excluded Data / HockeyDip LINK ) become reality would the entire approach to climate ‘science’ be changed? If you understand my words with the graphs then of course the answer is no…. not really.
For a more serious response. I see several scenarios where we could very likely face conditions similar to the LIA. The next couple of decades should provide science with a natural change to learn from and everyone to experience.
ak,
How can you generate that graph for a 20 year trend? 30 years? 50 years?
I did a graph from that site from 1939 to 2008 for December… -0.01f/decade. So, absolutely no warming or cooling for 70 years. How’s that for a trend?
Nice one crosspatch!
Are global temperatures from December 2008 already available somewhere?
This again? Really?
REPLY: Cowardly snark again? Really?
WOW !!! Even the 1900-2000 trend is FLAT !!!!
I’m always bothered by these “trend” Lines. It seems quite common to simply join the first point to the last point with a straight line, and call that the trend.
So presumably there is some climate master theory that says climate always progresses linearly from one state to another.
Almost all of the real physical phenomena I am familiar with tend to change from one state to another with an exponential decay transition, for the simple reason that the processes driving the change tend to generate a restoring force that is proportional to the deviation from equilibrium.
It also seems to me that the average value from 1901 to 2000 is quite irrelevent as a reference level for what has been happening since 1998.
The ten year time scale may be unreasonably short in the climate world, given that we have hard observation evidence of definite changes that have taken, and are taking place within the system. I don’t have a problem with Croospatch putting the green line on the long term average as he has. The angular difference is clear to the eye, and it doesn’t distract from the recent data. But if the start point were 20 or 30 years ago, the trend would be somewhat different, and the recent (since 2005) movement might look more ominous; sort of an upside-down Hockey stick.
2009 is likely to be an intriguing climate year as 2008 was.
I thought this was interesting:
http://climvis.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/cag3/hr-display3.pl
one cooling cycle (1940 – 1970) and one warming cycle (1970-2000) … again essentially no trend.
“ak (09:31:36) :
Choose an exceptional year and make a trend line from that point – brilliant! How can you generate that graph for a 20 year trend? 30 years? 50 years?”
Ok, then what is the proper starting point, defend your selection
“I wonder about the scorce of this temperature data”
The main page says:
So the data in the database is probably biased warm judging from Mr. Watts’ survey findings to date. The more recent data is probably being biased warmer than the oldest data.
So sprach VG (09:21:41): “…and again hathaway is always right as the goalposts are moved…”
Golly, guys, what’s Hathaway supposed to do, commit Hairy Kerry? If the weatherman predicts 100°F, and it snows instead, does he close up shop? No! He simply predicts something lower for tomorrow. Life goes on. Sooner or later, he’ll get it right. Do you suppose that guy who wrote, “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN!” never wrote another headline? No! You seem to think Hathaway has to get it right every time. That is a misconception. He’s there to make an intelligent guess based on NOW. He’s doing the best he can, under the circumstances. Sooner or later, he’ll get it right. Right?
what a difference a year makes – 1997-2007.
@crosspatch, seeing as how this was given it’s own blog entry, i thought some sort of significance was being placed on this subset of data. anyway, the entry has brought to light (for me at least) this fun tool! thanks for sharing.
While one can set different periods and get different trends from the dataset available, it is unmistakable that the climate models of 7 to 10 years ago which were used to scare the crap out of thinking people worldwide are now proven inaccurate.
Thinking people (a minority on this planet, and especially so among consumers of western media) need to step back and rethink past assumptions. One replaces assumptions with facts as time proceeds (or at least modifies the assumptions). That is what thinking people do.
Problem is we have a self feeding alarmist industry that is now in the fact distortion / rejection business. Meanwhile, the planet’s most vulnerable populations will feel the effects of a cooling cycle much more than of a warming one. But nothing will be done to prepare because too many “scientists” need to save face and preserve a meal ticket.