Writing from Starbucks WiFi in Sacramento. Still have all my hair, but have to drive 90 miles home now as I just dropped off the server for re-rack at the CoLo
As I promised for tonight, www.climateaudit.org has regained life.
– Anthony
Writing from Starbucks WiFi in Sacramento. Still have all my hair, but have to drive 90 miles home now as I just dropped off the server for re-rack at the CoLo
As I promised for tonight, www.climateaudit.org has regained life.
– Anthony
Good job Anthony.
Thank you. You, and many of those whom you help or enable, have taught me a lot.
Your work is valuable. I hope you look at your visage in the mirror every morning, smile, and say with pride, “You do good work!”
Mark Young
That was directed at Anthony.
Nothing personal, jeez.
:O
😀
Reply: I’m just a squire. He’s the knight ~ charles the moderator aka jeez
The withdrawal symptoms were tough going… but not as tough as your heroic efforts, I’m sure.
Love the website. Question, well actuall two. Firstly, do you know of any places online that have temperature records for various stations around the world, especially in desert areas, that can show the minimum temperatures of those areas over time?–Secondly, I ask because I had a thought, most areas have cloud, water vapor, oceanic, mountain or vegetation or human influences which skew their temprature records and make it hard to detect the actual supposed CO2 signal for warming. I thought that since deserts tend to have little water content, little outside influnce, and are excellent radiators of long-wave radiation at night, their rises (or probably, different trends) of minimum temperatures ought to give away the true CO2 signal if there is one. Your thoughts?
Try:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v2/v2.min.Z
They also have an ‘adjusted’ version at the same location. It is v2.min_adj.Z and of course the mean is at v2.mean.Z and the max is v2.max.Z with both available in ‘adjusted’ forms as well.
I’ve documented some of this at:
chiefio.wordpress.com under the GHCN topic.
That would be at:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/02/24/ghcn-global-historical-climate-network/
I also wonder why deserts aren’t studied more closely. If I understand the process correctly, the lack of water and resultant evaporative cooling is what creates the desert. Evaporation (or the lack of it), then, would be appear to be a significant forcing. I’ve not seen much study on this.
Possibly one reason is that living out there doing experiments is expensive, hazardous, and for those accustomed to peering at computer screens in air conditioned luxury, doing “field work” is unpleasant.
It’s a rising trend among recent university graduates in most field oriented sciences – lifestyle is more important than vocation.
So the trend is to remotely controlled sensors etc via satellite telemetry, providing they don’t fall out of the sky or crash up there), and then if the equipment fails, its a little more than a 90 mile drive to fix it. And occupational, safety and health regulations are starting to make field work very, very expensive, if on occasions, impossible.
Deserts also have longer term weather pattern variations that are noted in oral stories as well as historical manuscripts and geologic soil layers. Anything less than these more dramatic changes, such as those viewed in timescales of decades, is likely due to oceanic, jet stream, and trade wind influences that oscillate in these shorter time spans. The slight rises each season that look like CO2 are, IMO, likely due to the fact that these natural events oscillate (swing up and down) and this oscillation continues on its course (up or down) till it runs out of steam, and then starts swinging the other way.
Jacob,
I have a question; regarding your comment, that “deserts are excellent radiators of long-wave radiation at night.”
Who the hell turns on the long-wave radiator at night and turns it off in the morning when the sun comes out ??
Have you given some thought as to how much better at long-wave radiation these deserts are in the blinding light of the noonday sun. Now that is when they really perform.
It is a popular misconception that the tropics heat the planet, and the poles cool the planet; nothing could be further from the truth.
The hottest places on planet earth (at around +60 deg C surface temp) actually cool the planet at a rate 12 times faster than the puny cooling rate (long-wave emission) that occurs at the coldest places on earth (Vostok at as low as -90 C at night)
The deserts and Urban Heat Islands are amongst our best friends, if heating is our problem.
George
Well done and thanks. It shows your commitment is strong, much stronger than ours, keyboard resistance cheerers.
Definitely a moment or two of worry. Thanks so much, Steve.
Jacob,
You can try CO2 Science:
http://www.co2science.org/data/ushcn/ushcn.php
Also, click on the DATA link on the menu bar to get to world temps.
Thanks.
Thank you, Anthony, for your dedication to the cause. Did you add a fan or two? I’m another one who favors large enclosures with extra fan room…
REPLY: I replaced two that were running slow. Fans are maxed out in the box. – Anthony
Cool dude, err should that be hot man!
fans blow. use this instead
http://www.spikynorman.dsl.pipex.com/CrayWWWStuff/Criscan/Cray2towers.jpg
Congrats! Good show.
Hope you are taking the bus and not traveling as a single occupant vehicle, BTW do you have any idea how much CO is expended to get you that cup of coffee?
You did use this opportunity to switch to a low draw power-supply with energy saving stand by mode and auto-sizing routers right?
You better off-set ASAP!
Sorry just trying being a green for a minute… that was rather disturbing…I think I need a long hot shower until the tank is cold, then a drive up the coast in my 8 Cylinder low-mileage hi-performance car before bed.
Wow, I am going to make a killing on the 12 step program I am developing. (Environmental Paraniods Anonymous) or EPA for short.
Sorry I had some cough syrup earlier…
OOT (Off Off Topic?) Canadian Prime Minister Harper is still the man, watch his comments on “The Kudlow Report”
sample “…that economic reality will hit those policies pretty hard…”
Link through my Blog, ( Shameless self promotion) …
like I always say have the USA make a list of what they do not need from Canada and I will stop it at the border myself.
A remarkably selfless act by a very busy proprietor of a small business struggling to survive in an economic recession induced by boundless greed! (who also runs gratis one of the most interesting and informative web logs in the world).
A truly admirable human being!
Richard
My sentiments, exactly.
You’re one helluva a guy, Anthony.
And a very busy one too.
Good job Anthony and Thank you.
Well done Anthony!
Keep hitting the tip jar folks.
It’s one way to show our appreciation.
I see you’ve already made the recommendation…
But it doesn’t hurt to remind people as I have below.
For a moment I was afraid that was a photo of Anthony after finishing the repair… then I came to my senses. Mostly. 😉
I’m so glad to see the server back and happy. Thanks, Anthony, for the hard work!
Quite fitting using a comedy spoof of an early science fiction novel to announce the return of CA. Seems deliciously ironic!
Clearly you need more experience fixing computers. Then it would just seem normal. 🙂
For example, back in my PDP-10 days [self snip out of deference to readers who don’t like “puzzling things in … technology”]
REPLY: I used to run about 50 PDP 11/03’s, a PDP11/10 and a PDP 11/70 – Anthony
I have a running PDP-11 in the other room. My tiny company still uses it for bookkeeping, and the occasional revisit to ancient project work. Aside from occasional maintenance on the 9-track tape drive, it has survived for over 20 years… just try to get that kind of lifetime out of a PC!
I’m sure there’s a forum somewhere for war stories from the good ol’ days of the PDP-10…
This makes me suddenly feel very old – I used one during the early 1970’s!
Dr., sir, I have the brain, ‘Abby Normal’.
Mary,
Just to show what I meant in my post yesterday about nesting, I will reply to you.
Oh dear, get a life!
That’s what nesting encourages you see.
Exactly what I was thinking, since CA makes statistical climate scientists seem little better than mad doctors.
Thanks a lot for the efforts, it is good to see CA back online!
Now if only the NOAA responded as rapidly and effectively with the upkeep of the USHCN surface stations as you have
with the server problem.
NOAA,
hope you read this. I’d be happy as a taxpayer if you responded just a quarter or a fifth as fast in repairing your surface stations.
Really, this type of commitment and mobilisation deserves us going to the tip jar!
Mary,
If you want to see real comedy, visit some US surface stations. Brought to you by the NOAA!
http://www.surfacestations.org/odd_sites.htm
It would be funny if it wasn’t paid by us taxpayers.
Is the Arctic melting already?
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/climo&hot.html
It would seem that somehow the SST temperatures are also dependent on the SSMI sensor and is consequently in a state of collapse too.
And OCO (Orbiting Carbon Observatory) just had a launch failure.
Perhaps NOAA is using the same DMSP satellite that both NSIDC and Cryosphere Today use which resulted in questionable sea ice readings.
On the other hand, the readings from the AMSR-E satellite don’t seem to be showing the same problems, although they seem to be showing some reductions around the edges. See images here:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/index.htm
Perhaps there is some compaction of sea ice happening, rather than significant melting. The sea ice extent they show has decreased from this winter’s high (so far) of 14, 204 million km² to yesterday’s preliminary reading of 13, 942 million km². There’s still about a month to go before serious melt begins. So far the numbers seem to be hovering around 2004 & 2005 values.
The current image seems to match Cryosphere’s 2/23 image, see http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=02&fd=22&fy=2009&sm=02&sd=23&sy=2009
I.e. west half of Hudson’s Bay melted, all of Greenland’s western coast is open.
Oh – the northwest passage looks like it might be open. 🙂
Sigh.
HA! i love that movie. also great job with both website anthony
Great work! Not knowing the setup, I was concerned for permanent information loss.
Does the server use RAID 1 (or similar) to protect against information loss by disk failures? Are there other hardware redundancies built in? Just wondering — a couple yes/no are all the feedback my wondering is worth.
Merci.
This man does it all.
Anthony – it could be worse, and very much on topic:
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSTRE51N23M20090224
I just heard on NECN that it crashed into the ocean near Antarctica. Ironic!
Actually “Young Fhrankensteen,er.Frankenstein, ” was a bit of genius by the great
Mel Brooks.It was a homage to the 1930’s monster flicks.One of my favorites.
“Abby who?”…
“Abby Normal…”
BTW good show Anthony!..
Slightly off topic — has James Hansen started to endorse the role of the sun? He seems to be using it as a partial reason for why 2008 wasn’t so warm. Here’s a press release from yesterday:
Public release date: 23-Feb-2009
Contact: Leslie McCarthy
leslie.m.mccarthy@nasa.gov
212-678-5507
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
2008 was Earth’s coolest year since 2000
Climatologists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City have found that 2008 was the coolest year since 2000. The GISS analysis also showed that 2008 is the ninth warmest year since continuous instrumental records were started in 1880.
The ten warmest years on record have all occurred between 1997 and 2008.
The GISS analysis found that the global average surface air temperature was 0.44°C (0.79°F) above the global mean for 1951 to 1980, the baseline period for the study. Most of the world was either near normal or warmer in 2008 than the norm. Eurasia, the Arctic, and the Antarctic Peninsula were exceptionally warm (see figures), while much of the Pacific Ocean was cooler than the long-term average.
The relatively low temperature in the tropical Pacific was due to a strong La Niña that existed in the first half of the year, the research team noted. La Niña and El Niño are opposite phases of a natural oscillation of equatorial Pacific Ocean temperatures over several years. La Niña is the cool phase. The warmer El Niño phase typically follows within a year or two of La Niña.
The temperature in the United States in 2008 was not much different than the 1951-1980 mean, which makes it cooler than all the previous years this decade.
“Given our expectation that the next El Niño will begin this year or in 2010, it still seems likely that a new global surface air temperature record will be set within the next one to two years, despite the moderate cooling effect of reduced solar irradiance,” said James Hansen, director of GISS. The Sun is just passing through solar minimum, the low point in its 10- to 12-year cycle of electromagnetic activity, when it transmits its lowest amount of radiant energy toward Earth.
The GISS analysis of global surface temperature incorporates data from the Global Historical Climatology Network of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climate Data Center; the satellite analysis of global sea surface temperature of Richard Reynolds and Thomas Smith of NOAA; and Antarctic records of the international Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.
“GISS provides the ranking of global temperature for individual years because there is a high demand for it from journalists and the public,” said Hansen. “The rank has scientific significance in some cases, such as when a new record is established. But rank can also be misleading because the difference in temperature between one year and another is often less than the uncertainty in the global average.”
###
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2008_temps.html
Written by:
Leslie McCarthy
Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Great pic to introduce the topic.
By the way, speaking of funny and humor, the alarmists and their followers seem not to know what is funny and have no sense of humor. Must be hard for them to go through life that way.
Thanks Anthony, for your work and dedication.
Off topic but the Carbon Observatory Satellite is lost for failure to reach orbit. I’m sure this will feed some conspiracy theory somewhere.
Drudge linked it below:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=av6QSiI5BuOI&refer=us
thanks
Ed
Let’s start one. Hansen’s first overt act of civil disobedience.
Nasa´s global warming satellite lands in ocean…http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090224/ap_on_sc/sci_carbon_satellite
Nasa´s global warming satellite lands in ocean.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090224/ap_on_sc/sci_carbon_satellite
Nice job Anthony, just another example where maintaining of hardware is crucial to the production of good data. Perhaps NOAA and its affiliates can learn for this experience and dedication to rapid corrections and repairs.
Thank you for your work and dedication,
Bill Derryberry
Thanks Anthony,
Invaluable.
OT: Climate Sat Fails Launch
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123548383188959177.html
Orbiting Carbon Observatory
Just in time to investigate this cover-up; I guess the new CO2 monitoring satellite didn’t say what they wanted >hee hee hee<
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/02/24/nasa.launch/index.html
Uhhh the latest image of the sun seems to me to be showing a sunspot region, but the count is 0…. Am I missing something???
In the top left hand corner of the sun… image from 24-02 at 14:24
Ramming a satellite into the earth is the most violent form of data correction yet… this science is getting dangerous!
Re: Alex (07:30:48) :
Yep, the magentographic shows a clean Cycle 24 configuration for this high latitude NH sunspot group. It’s amazing how quickly these spots can come out of nowhere.
good to see this site up and running again.
I think this service is particularly valuable for mann’s and steig’s students, as they are given a chance to find out what, how bitterly low the scientific levels and standards are taught in their classrooms and laboratories.
“”” Ross Berteig (11:01:39) :
I have a running PDP-11 in the other room. My tiny company still uses it for bookkeeping, and the occasional revisit to ancient project work. Aside from occasional maintenance on the 9-track tape drive, it has survived for over 20 years… just try to get that kind of lifetime out of a PC!
I’m sure there’s a forum somewhere for war stories from the good ol’ days of the PDP-10…”””
Nah sissy stuff ! why aren’t ya using a PDP-8; now that is a ne plus ultra computer.
But I do admire your fortitude in staying with the -11, rather than drinking the M$ coolade !
George
Anthony:
I bet I could still do a SYSGEN of M+
REPLY: Eww!
George E. Smith (17:20:24) :
Careful – my father designed a multiprocessor industrial control computer (think power plants) and claimed it was so easy to program that a 12 year old could do it. Since I was 12 at the time, he proceeded to teach me how to program the I/O processor. 25 bit (sign + 6 BCD digits), executed off a drum, germanium transistors. That was in 1962. One system monitored an Australian power plant for 30 years. In its latter years people used a PC spreadsheet to optimize instruction and data layout on the drum.
George E. Smith (17:20:24) :
The ’11 has served us well, but since DEC sold most of itself to Intel and Compaq, and the original VMS team created the NT kernel for MS, the Wintel world carries some of the heritage from the glory days. Its the prospect of switching from systems that still work and are paid for to something new that costs money that keeps the ’11 running today. Mind you, our productive work is done entirely on PCs these days, and the bits of it that run in PCs (the rest runs in deeply embedded processors, often with no OS at all) runs under Windows.
Bringing the topic back to something resembling the what this blog is actually hosted for, I am pretty sure that is a big factor in why we keep tripping over ancient code and equipment as we survey the methods and practices of climate science. Change costs money, and as Anthony is documenting, premature change can cost you the whole value of the experiment you didn’t know you were performing. (MMTS was pushed at least 15 years too soon for technology.)