by Verity Jones and Tony Brown (Tonyb)
Back in October Tony asked me to help with a big idea. Searching Norwegian climate site Rimfrost (www.rimfrost.no) Tony had found many climate stations all over the world with a cooling trend in temperatures over at least the last thirty years – which is significant in climate terms. You see Tony had a grand vision of a website with blue dots on a map representing these “cooling stations”, where clicking on the dots brought up a graph of the data and the wonderful cooling trend. Would this not persuade people to look again at the notion of worldwide global warming?
I asked Tony how many stations he had in mind. “Oh two hundred or so…” He suggested breaking it down into bite-sized chunks and sending me sets of ten at a time. I was to compare the data with that on the GISS site and/or those of national met agencies where available to verify the source, and produce graphs to a standard template.
We were concerned that this could be seen as ‘cherrypicking’ nonetheless it was an attractive idea. In many cases it was not just cherrypicking the stations, but also the start dates of each cooling trend. Despite these reservations we decided to go ahead, although ultimately we have not completed the project, partly for these reasons, but also because it is a case where the journey became more important than the destination and it is worth sharing.
The first 10 (Set 1) of Tony’s target stations, which at this point I should say seemed to be a randomly chosen set, were:
- Brazil – Curitiba (1885 to 2009) Cooling 1955 to 2009
- Canada – Edmonton (1881-2009) Cooling from 1886 to 2009
- Chile – Puerto Montt (1951-2009) Cooling from 1955
- China – Jiuquan (1934-2009) Cooling all years
- Russia – Kandalaska (1913-2009) Cooling 1933-2009
- Iceland – Haell (1931-2009) Cooling all years
- India – Amritsar (1948-2009) Cooling all years
- Morocco – Casablanca (1925-2009) Cooling all years
- Adelaide – Australia (1881-2008) Cooling all years
- Abilene, Texas – USA (1886-2009) Cooling 1933-2009
The comparisons in many cases were not straightforward. While many matched GISS data, some of the graphs in Rimfrost used unadjusted data, others homogenised data. For some such as Kandalaska, there was a close but not exact match to either GISS data set. The data for Haell was clearly from the Icelandic Met Office, but I could find no match for Edmonton to any GISS series or data from Environment Canada (although having looked at Canadian data further since I am not entirely surprised). The first set took much longer than we had anticipated; however, I drew the graphs to a template and prepared to start on Set 2.
Tony also wanted a ‘spaghetti’ graph for the anomaly data of the first set, and this is where it got most interesting. In fact we were blown away by what the graph looked like. Taking these ten locations from across the globe and superimposing the anomaly data produced a sine wave-like pattern (Figure 2) with distinct cooling from the early 1940s to mid-1970s followed by warming to present; for many of the locations the older data was warmer, or at least as warm as present. Now I had seen this before with many individual stations, but it really impressed me to see the pattern matching from such far-flung locations.
But in the meantime there were other developments. Tony knew I was interested in putting the GHCN v2.mean temperature data from stations all over the world into a database. As usual, this exceeded my own knowledge and capabilities, but I had made a start and was learning as I went along. Tony, whose contacts and connections never cease to amaze me, put me in touch with a computer professional, database, web and mapping expert who was well known to commenters on The Air Vent, Climate Audit and WUWT as “KevinUK”. Kevin was also keen to put climate data into a database.
By now this was the end of November. Kevin and I rapidly established a good rapport by email and voip and, with really only a few pointers to GHCN and GISS datafiles from me (and probably lots of hindrance), he rapidly built a fully functional database. Not only that but he set about writing software to plot graphs and calculate trends from the data and put the whole lot on an interactive map – and all this in a period of about 6 weeks. It is still a work in progress, fixing glitches and preparing Version 2.0; for more information see blog post Mapping Global Warming and the website itself: www.climateapplications.com.
I did deliver 40 graphs for Tony in the end, but I was quite slow about it (and that “sine wave” pattern kept showing up again and again and stuck in my mind). Tony had moved on to researching other climate projects and Kevin’s maps meanwhile showed so much more than we ever could. With the “sine wave” climatic pattern in mind, the following maps (focussing on North America and Europe) show how climate has cooled, warmed, cooled and warmed again since 1880.
So is this “sine wave” the true climate signal? It would seem so, although we can’t expect it always to be so regular. Choosing stations that are more closely geographically located does give a more homogeneous shape to the wave.
It is most extreme in the high Arctic – Figure 4a shows the graph for six stations above 64N where the magnitude of change is +/- several degrees Celsius. Further south (e.g. Figure 4b – four stations in the US) the magnitude is smaller, and close to the equator (Figure 5, Madagascar) the magnitude is less still.
A final point – with the exception of the Madagascar graph, which was prepared for a blog post (link), all these graphs were part of different sets (the first 40 stations for which data was examined). Although the original data was chosen for its cooling trend this, in many cases, results from warmer temperatures in the period 1930-1940 than present.
The wave pattern is still present in many data sets worldwide, no matter what the overall trend. In some the date of the onset of warming or cooling is later or earlier, depending on location – as would be expected with the oceans moving warmth around the globe. In others however the wave pattern is not present or is obliterated by something – in these sets should it be present or not? Is it wiped out by anthropogenic effects on the temperature record such as growth of cities and even small rural communities though the otherwise cooling 40s, 50s and 60s?
For us the take-home message of this study was simply how widespread and consistent the wave pattern is, and this, ultimately is very convincing of the veracity of the arguments against CO2 as a primary cause of current warming. From the physics I don’t doubt it has a role in warming, but its role needs to be disentangled from the large magnitude natural climate swings that are clearly present all over the world – a pattern that is not widely disseminated.
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Wow. Well Done to all of you involved in the project!
What an eye-opener to see how the unadjusted temperatures play out…
Isn’t this well-known? The standard explanation for this is of a long-term CO2-driven warming trend which was temporarily opposed by sulphate-driven cooling. Both mechanisms are solidly grounded in experimental observation and in theory. If you want to chuck that out of the window, you have to:
1) Explain why CO2 doesn’t produce warming, given its known radiative characteristics
2) Explain why sulplates don’t produce cooling, given their known reflective characteristics
3) Suggest a convincing physical process generating a sinusoidal change in surface temperature
4) Explain why the same sinusoidal trend is *not* observed in longer-term data series such as ice core data, tree ring series, etc.
It is intriguing to see how many attempts there are to describe temperature history in terms of a single `one size fits all` cycle.
You can tell rather little about the cause of warming from the temperature records alone. You have to consider the forcing histories, both natural (solar, volcanic, etc.) and anthropogenic (greenhouse gases, aerosols etc.).
The sine wave is pretty simple really, it follows the PDO trend and as Scaffetta and others have noticed it also follows the solar velocity power waves. A similar solar modulation pattern is also a close fit.
A truly beautiful expose. So much for Government Science.
The nit-picking (and worse) will likely be fierce, but please don’t let it dissuade you from continuing with this work. Much more may come of it than is already apparent. All three of you have my admiration for the effort you have put into this.
/dr.bill
Thanks Verity and Tony for this illuminating work!
I have wanted to do something similar for some time – but not having the skills. I found the same pattern (which I called a ‘double hump or camel, rather than a hockey stick) in the Arctic in research during 2006 for my book (Chill, 2009), where I examined 32 coastal or near coastal stations from the GISS network – not by anomaly but by actual average annual temperature. My criteria were stations with an uninterupted record from about 1900 to present – thus showing the previous Arctic warm period. By 2004, only one station in Greenland showed higher temperatures in recent times than in the 1930-40 period. The sine wave was apparent in nearly all stations with slight differences in timing – from Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Spitsbergen and Russia.
Repeating the same exercise this year, with records to 2009/2010, out of the same 32 stations, 23 had higher temperatures in the previous warm period; seven were close in each period or slightly above in the later period; and two were significantly higher in the later period.
And this in the climate zone that has apparently recorded a 3-4 degrees Celsius anomaly and which leads the global warming trend!
A lot depends upon how an anomaly is calculated with reference to a base period – Hadley, for example, use 1961-1990, which includes a large portion of the ‘trough’ between the two humps and thus will make modern temperatures look anomalously high.
I don’t doubt the current accelerated ice-loss on the ice-cap in Greenland or the ‘record’ low of sea-ice, but have yet to see adequate comparisons with what was happening in 1930-1940 when instrumentation was more limited. Nor do i discount the possibility that Greenland is strongly affected by the build-up of warmth in the North Atlantic – but the latter is also a cyclic phenomenon, and the Atlantic is now losing heat rapidly as the cycle turns.
Thanks again for the clarity of your work and the huge effort entailed.
richard telford says:
“You can tell rather little about the cause of warming from the temperature records alone.”
Maybe not. But it’s a damn good place to start.
This is excellent work, Tony and Verity. Now, if I may go off topic somewhat, Tony posted about visiting a school recently, talking about CO2. I’d love to hear more about this – how do I contact you? Or, if you ask them , would the moderators please give you my email address? Many thanks, Dave.
Peter Ellis refers to the sulphate cooling phenomenon – a factor in all the climate models to 2007, when the IPCC admitted, but did not publicise, could not have caused the cooling from 1945-1975 – which was a global pattern even in areas free from pollution. There are three key papers in the 2005 issue of Science – Pinker, Wielicki and Wild, all of which show the true nature of ‘global dimming’.
When I asked the team at NCAR in February of this year, why they still held to the old story in their models, he simply was unaware of those papers and the IPCC retraction! The next IPCC report will make interesting reading – this is a little-known problem that the standard modellers seem anxious not to have aired!
Peter EllisIf you want to chuck that out of the window, you have to:
1,2,3,4, etc
JK: Or you have to compare that sine curve to the solar cycle data and see how good the match is.
Thanks
JK
Lovely work, Verity and Tony.
I’ve long felt the need to go back to individual station records whose metadata we know well enough, or whose locations haven’t changed, and have stayed truly rural. And only then to start carefully adding stations with UHI issues where the UHI can be assessed from guides like McKitrick or John Daly or this amateur survey or this Russian survey.
Here we see the 30-year cycle that is solar-related and that Akasofu extends even further back (IIRC). It can no longer be deemed “not related to the Sun” because of UHI contamination of the correlation.
I’m not a “lukewarmer” insofar as I believe (on the wide-ranging and commonsense evidence I’ve studied) that our contribution via CO2 is too small to measure. This is based on the evidence of the vastness and thermal inertia of the oceans, Henry’s Law, and the solar correlation that reappears when UHI etc are properly accounted-for. And though the lukewarmers are certainly helping get the science back on the rails, by challenging the alarmism, IMO the science needs to go further than what lukewarmers need, in order for its integrity to be regained.
Every call for looking afresh at the data does help.
Peter Ellis:
1) Explain why CO2 doesn’t produce warming, given its known radiative characteristics
Suppose Spencer’s feedback estimate is right, and CO2 doubling only amounts to about 0.6 degrees of warming. Then current CO2-induced warming is only ~0.2 degrees, i.e. hardly detectable.
2) Explain why sulplates don’t produce cooling, given their known reflective characteristics
There are two problems here: First, sulphate emissions and soot emissions are correlated, and the latter produces warming. Second, it’s not clear that sulphate emissions really have dropped (they have increased sharply in India and China from about the same time they dropped in the U.S. and Europe).
3) Suggest a convincing physical process generating a sinusoidal change in surface temperature
4) Explain why the same sinusoidal trend is *not* observed in longer-term data series such as ice core data, tree ring series, etc.
I think climate is far too complex to show anything resembling a sinus graph over longer periods.
Isn’t this well-known? The standard explanation for this is of a long-term [thank you, Peter Ellis] recovery from the Little Ice Age coupled with a multi-decadal cyclic signal similar to the PDO (see Akasofu’s http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/20/dr-syun-akasofu-on-ipccs-forecast-accuracy/ ).
Geoff Sharpe: The sine wave is pretty simple really, it follows the PDO trend……
I believe Roy Spencer also has something to say about cloud cover tracking PDO and temperature.
riskaverse says:
September 4, 2010 at 5:22 am
Geoff Sharpe: The sine wave is pretty simple really, it follows the PDO trend……
I believe Roy Spencer also has something to say about cloud cover tracking PDO and temperature.
What does he say?
Is cloud cover a driver or consequence?
I started looking at New Mexico temperature data several years ago to see whether we had joined the global warming trend. During the last 30 years NM had been warming but I found the same oscillation in the temperature data in this region. It seems to be about a 60 year cycle and I agree with Geoff Sharp that it is a multi-decadal PDO trend that is tied to solar modulation noted by Scaffetta. Girma Orssengo in his WUWT post in April of this year showed this same cycle using IPCC global temperature data supplied by the CRU of the Hadley Center. Using that projected trend, he predicted that from 1900 to 2100 that we will see a total global temperature increase of 1.2 deg C. El Paso, TX shows a 60 year cycle from 1949 to 2009 even though the cycle has a several degree upward trend in average temp due probably to UHI effects. I live in Las Cruces, NM (just north of EP) and our temps here tend to be 5 to 10 degrees less than EP. There are not too many sites in NM that have more than 60 years of good data (with no missing months or years) but Cimarron NM has over 100 years of data and is a rural site that shows this cycle and has no warming trend. Of the 60 NM sites that I looked at (all raw data obtained off the web from the Western Climate Center) there were many with a flat trend and a few with cooling trends. Many had the 60 year cycle in them. Rather than the warming that we have seen for the past 30 years, I predict that the next 20 or 30 years here in the northern hemisphere (probably even globally) will cool. My NM data already shows a flat trend so the next 10 years will tell the tale.
Bernie McCune
It looks to me like the data for Abilene may be off. The summer of 1980 was incredibly hot everywhere in Texas, but that isn’t reflected in the graph. I know it’s an annualized number, but still it looks fishy to me.
There also seems to be a 60 year cycle in Klotzbach and Gray’s Hindcast versus Observed Net Tropical Cyclone chart (1950 to 2007) published in their 2 June 2010 report. If so there should be a dropping trend in NTC during the next 30 years. The next 10 years will tell the tale. Observed NTC in 1950 was 250 dropping to below 50 in the mid 1970s and 80s and recently (2005) peaking at 275. 2006 was slightly below 50 and 2007 was 50.
Don’t want to get too crazy about all this cyclical stuff but does seem to jump out at you without looking too hard.
Bernie McCune
Great data–it shows what geologists have been saying all along. Your curves almost exactly match the glacial and PDO records over the same period, i.e., cooling from 1880 to about 1910, warming from 1910 to about 1945, cooling from about 1945 to 1977, warming from 1977 to 1999, slight cooling since 1999. Glaciers advanced during the cool periods and retreated during the warm periods. One of the nice things about the glacial record is that it goes back thousands of years, well before CO2 could have possibly been a factor, and is verified by the isotope record from the well-dated Greenland ice core. Yes, there is indeed a sine curve fluctuation of climate change, not only from your data, but also over the past 500 years in the ice core data. I’ve plotted the Greenland isotope data and it shows a regular oscillation of warm and cool periods for the past 500 years, with a 27 year average period that matches the PDO and glacier fluctuations (you can see this on my website).
Your data is extremely interesting because it quantifies what the glacial and isotope records tell us about climate fluctuations and, in the process, tells us that climate changes are independent of CO2 (i.e., natural variations).
I’ll add one more item to refute Peter Ellis’ item 1). Ferenc Miskolczi and his theory of a constant GHG effect.
http://www.suite101.com/content/no-greenhouse-effect-in-semi-transparent-atmospheres-a243477
Via my website (click on my name) I collect historic temperature records. There are far more records not listed than are listed for a variety of reasons, but the upshot is that viewing the old records show distinct climate cycles with a climatic shift out of the Little ice age in 1698 and a generally warming trend since then. However this did not appear to be universal throughout the record, and I suggested to Verity that it would be interesting to find if there were any areas that bucked the warming trend- other than those cited by the IPCC-if so, where they were located.
She was able to take a mass of data that I researched and turn it into a comprehensible visual picture and add her excellent comment .
This is the IPCC view on any cooling;
“However, the updated data shows only very limited areas of year-round cooling in the north-west North Atlantic and mid-latitude North Pacific. Over 1901 to 2000 as a whole, noting the strong consistency across the land-ocean boundary, most warming is observed over mid- and high latitude Asia and parts of western Canada. The only large areas of observed cooling are just south and east of Greenland and in a few scattered continental regions in the tropics and sub-tropics.”
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports//tar/wg1/057.htm WG1″ (Please read full section for context) Previously the IPCC had confirmed the only signs of cooling were in South Greenland and some areas of the tropics.
The notion of a single global temperature is, to me (and I believe Verity and Kevin) somewhat bizarre, whether it is measured in anomalies or actual readings, as this concept averages out all data and disguises a lot of noise in the temperature signal through siting problems, land use changes, stations moving (often to airports) and uhi not being properly accounted for. In my view, sticking together a hugely variable number of ever moving stations with inherent problems and calling that a highly accurate global temperature only serves to confuse the debate as the warming signal will overwhelm the cooling one when the trend IS warming and the noise helps to accentuates that trend.
As I say, if records are old enough you can follow the ups and downs of a natural cycle. Depending on where you intersect it you will find either a cooling, static or warming trend. This paper was intended originally to find those in the cooling cycle which still exist despite IPCC’s assertions, but whilst many of us may find the idea of a natural cycle to be self evident it is something that the IPCC do not consistently factor in to their climate models. They believe the reasons for the current general warming can only be explained by C02 increase, because that is what their models are programmed to find..
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/SixtyYearCycle.htm
http://www.heliogenic.net/2010/03/26/scafetta-on-the-60-year-temperature-cycle/
The net result of all this is that some parts of the world appear to be running counter cyclical to most of the rest of the world which is (or has been) warming and these cycles are not being properly accounted for in models. There appears to have been a general warming cycle of around 300 years to date, on which this shorter 60 cycle old cycle is overlaid and I am sure there are further wheels within wheels that will reflect the cycles of the PDO, AO and solar factors..
I am intrigued to find out more about those areas that are cooling as this may help to give us more clues as to why some areas are warming, whilst Verity is intrigued by the sine wave like pattern that has emerged and will I hope want to investigate this further.
We have come to believe the IPCC mantra that we are experiencing ‘Global’ warming, when the real position appears to be much more nuanced than that.
tonyb
You two are great! Thanks for showing what independent collaboration can do.
John
DaveF
You can contact me by clicking on my name to go to my website and then going to the contact point at the foot of the page.
Tonyb