We’ve already told you that the Russian heatwave had everything to do with weather, and not climate. NOAA agrees:
NOAA on the Russian heat wave: blocking high, not global warming
At least NASA Goddard agrees with this, sort of. – Anthony
An unparalleled heat wave in eastern Europe, coupled with intense droughts and fires around Moscow, put Earth’s temperatures in the headlines this summer. Likewise, a string of exceptionally warm days in July in the eastern United States strained power grids, forced nursing home evacuations, and slowed transit systems. Both high-profile events reinvigorated questions about humanity’s role in climate change.
But, from a global perspective, how warm was the summer exactly? How did the summer’s temperatures compare with previous years? And was global warming the “cause” of the unusual heat waves? Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, led by GISS’s director, James Hansen, have analyzed summer temperatures and released an update on the GISS website that addresses all of these questions.
This map, based on land surface temperatures observed by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, shows temperature anomalies for the Russian Federation from July 20–27, 2010, compared to temperatures for the same dates from 2000 to 2008. For more information about this image, please visit NASA’s Earth Observatory. Credit: NASA/Goddard/Earth Observatory
Globally, June through August, according to the GISS analysis, was the fourth-warmest summer period in GISS’s 131-year-temperature record. The same months during 2009, in contrast, were the second warmest on record. The slightly cooler 2010 summer temperatures were primarily the result of a moderate La Niña (cooler than normal temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean) replacing a moderate El Niño (warmer than normal temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean).
As part of their analysis, Hansen and colleagues released a series of graphs that help explain why perceptions of global temperatures vary — often erroneously — from season to season and year to year. For example, unusually warm summer temperatures in the United States and eastern Europe created the impression of global warming run amuck in those regions this summer, while last winter’s unusually cool temperatures created the opposite impression. A more global view, as shown below for 2009 and 2010, makes clear that extrapolating global trends based on the experience of one or two regions can be misleading.
The four graphs show seasonal-mean temperature anomalies relative to 1951-1980 for the most recent two summers and winters; that is, they show how temperatures during the various seasons differ from the mean temperatures from 1951-1980, which serves as a reference period. Unusually warm summers in eastern Europe and much of the United States created the impression of record global temperatures this summer (lower right), while unseasonably cool winters in the same regions had the opposite effect during winter of 2010 (lower left). For more information about this image, please visit the GISS website. Credit: NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies/Hansen
“Unfortunately, it is common for the public to take the most recent local seasonal temperature anomaly as indicative of long-term climate trends,” Hansen notes. “[We hope] these global temperature anomaly maps may help people understand that the temperature anomaly in one place in one season has limited relevance to global trends.”
Last winter, for example, unusually cool temperatures in much of the United States caused many Americans to wonder why temperatures seemed to be plummeting, and whether the Earth could actually be experiencing global warming in the face of such frigid temperatures. A more global view, seen in the lower left of the four graphs above, shows that global warming trends had hardly abated. In fact, despite the cool temperatures in the United States, last winter was the second-warmest on record.
Though calendar year 2010 may or may not turn out to be the warmest on record, the warmest 12-month period in the GISS analysis was reached in mid-2010. The lower portion of the graph shows when major volcanic eruptions have occurred with green triangles. The lowest part shows El Niño (red) and La Niña (blue) trends. For more information about this graph, please visit the GISS website Credit: NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies/Hansen
This map shows temperature anomalies relative to 1951-1980 for the summer of 2010; that is, how temperatures in June through August 2010 differed from the mean temperatures from 1951-1980. A NASA visualizer created it based on data from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. For more information about this image, visit the Earth Observatory site. Credit: NASA/Goddard/Earth Observatory
Meanwhile, the global seasonal temperatures for the spring of 2010 — March, April, and May — was the warmest on GISS’s record. Does that mean that 2010 will shape up to be the warmest on record? Since the warmest year on GISS’s record — 2005 — experienced especially high temperatures during the last four calendar months of the year, it’s not yet clear how 2010 will stack up.
“It is likely that the 2005 or 2010 calendar year means will turn out to be sufficiently close that it will be difficult to say which year was warmer, and results of our analysis may differ from those of other groups,” Hansen notes. “What is clear, though, is that the warmest 12-month period in the GISS analysis was reached in mid-2010.”
The Russian heat wave was highly unusual. Its intensity exceeded anything scientists have seen in the temperature record since widespread global temperature measurements became available in the 1880s. Indeed, a leading Russian meteorologist asserted that the country had not experienced such an intense heat wave in the last 1,000 years. And a prominent meteorologist with Weather Underground estimated such an event may occur as infrequently as once every 15,000 years.
In the face of such a rare event, there’s much debate and discussion about whether global warming can “cause” such extreme weather events. The answer — both no and yes — is not a simple one.
Weather in a given region occurs in such a complex and unstable environment, driven by such a multitude of factors, that no single weather event can be pinned solely on climate change. In that sense, it’s correct to say that the Moscow heat wave was not caused by climate change.
However, if one frames the question slightly differently: “Would an event like the Moscow heat wave have occurred if carbon dioxide levels had remained at pre-industrial levels,” the answer, Hansen asserts, is clear: “Almost certainly not.”
The frequency of extreme warm anomalies increases disproportionately as global temperature rises. “Were global temperature not increasing, the chance of an extreme heat wave such as the one Moscow experienced, though not impossible, would be small,” Hansen says.
For GISS’s full analysis, please visit:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
I don’t know about the NH at this time, but, as I have posted before, September was the coldest in ~16 years. That is across the entire east and south coast of Australia.
I didn’t know Al Gore was in Aus.
***“Would an event like the Moscow heat wave have occurred if carbon dioxide levels had remained at pre-industrial levels,” the answer, Hansen asserts, is clear: “Almost certainly not.”***
And this is substantiated how? Because he says so?
CO2 caused a blocking high?
Of course it did, Hansen says so.
Though calendar year 2010 may or may not turn out to be the warmest on record…
Ha. Ha ha.
Well at least they’re allowing the possibility of a sufficiently large asteroid and/or meteorite impact, or a gigantically massive volcanic eruption, plunging the planet into a deadly “nuclear winter” style deep freeze under a sun-blocking atmospheric layer of particulates. Which appears to be the only possible event that’ll keep them from declaring 2010 the hottest year EVAH, despite what annoying things like satellites, actual Sea Surface Temperature measurements, and temperature records that have not been serially adjusted, homogenized, folded, spindled, and mutilated, may say.
I thought the arctic had a cool summer according to the DMH Polar Temperature chart, which actually involves recording temperatures within the arctic circle
Are these numbers and graphs including the extrapolated temperatures above 80N?
It seems most of the “warming” is there.
The secret NOAA algorithm revealed:
1. Input – target temperature
2. Input – noisy data from all over the place
3. Adjust noisy data until a match is achieved with target temperature
4. Output – target temperature
Of course, don’t forget:
5. Change historical records randomly to obfuscate the process
I was looking at US GISS numerical table yesterday and the figures look like the pre-Y2K fix numbers. Is this just a mistake or is NASA taking us for a ride again? Sorry but I don’t have the web page on my phone.
How did they manage to establish that northern hemisphere temperatures for winter 2010 (09/10 I assume) were the second warmest on record when land temperatures were consistently lower than normal across most of the NH through much of last winter? Sea surface temps (which lag land temps when the temperature is falling)?
Their ref period is of course almost as most blatantly unrepresentative of the 20th C as it’s possible to choose.
Continuously reducing historic temperatures makes analyses by GISS of current record high temps a slam dunk.
“Would an event like the Moscow heat wave have occurred if carbon dioxide levels had remained at pre-industrial levels,” the answer, Hansen asserts, is clear: “Almost certainly not.”
Almost only counts in Horseshoes & Hand Grenades.
Almost certainly says the assertion is not 100% clear.
Remember, GISS has almost no data points up in the Arctic, and almost nothing in the Southern Oceans. Antarctica consists of what, almost 10% coverage with the Peninsula and the S. Pole ??
So, we can safely say 2010 was almost the warmest summer ever, but not with 100% certainty.
Error bars, always Hansen GISS comes to the show without the error bars.
Does GISS redo the anomalies each time they change the 30 year baseline. When did it change from the warmer 1961 – 1990 period to today’s 1951 – 1980 cooler period?
As a non-scientist and sometime reader of this blog, I’m at a loss to understand the millions of dollars wasted by you scientists in studying the change in climate? Tell me why a change of .50 to .75 of 1 degree is worth such largess when we have millions of people dying of hunger and disease. I am disgusted by you scientists, you should all hang up your degrees and retire. For the average Joe out there, you have ruined your reputations and I have found you to be nothing but political shills.
One only has to read the time period for reference line to understand it’s all BS.
Basic statistics dictate you use a proper reference if you want your statistics to be trustworthy. You don’t go and change your references when you feel like it or because it makes your statistical result make the “correct” show. Correctly used, statistic, depict reality, and no matter how statistics is incorrectly used it’ll never make the lunatics version of reality into reality.
Almost certainly not = maybe/maybe not
James Hansen should be nick-named “The Waffle”.
If I am correct in reading the graphs, they indicate that this winter (Jun-Jul-Aug) for us here on the southern cost of Africa has been equal to or slightly warmer than 2009. This is not correct, and I would venture that it has been exactly opposite to what is shown, IE. 2009 was a lot warmer, with a very short winter. This year has been much milder, with periodic cold fronts from the southern ocean continuing to drop temperatures as is the norm. For sure any surfer from Jeffrey’s bay (awesome) has a better handle on winds and temperatures in this part than an entire govt. weather bureau.
“It is likely that the 2005 or 2010 calendar year means will turn out to be sufficiently close that it will be difficult to say which year was warmer, and results of our analysis may differ from those of other groups,” Hansen notes.
Ya, especially with this going on at GISS (more videos like this on the way) :
I wonder which base period they will use next… Easy to get the picture you want when you can cherry pick the “normal” temperatures to use.
GISS not differs with other data sets but it differs with itself.
I have my problems with the GISS approach, mostly based on methodological and technical reasons. That said, I think Dr. Hansen has shown a more science based attitude in his analysis; however the, “most certainly not” comment, shows this zebra has not changed its stripes.
Or rather: How cold was this summer?. This is more meaningful; there we know we are at a solar minimum.
James Hanson is a disgrace to his profession, a disgrace to NASA, a disgrace to science and a disgrace to humanity.
If 2010 fails to be the “warmest on record” you can bet your bottom Dollar they will switch it to “warmest 365 days on the record.” :o)
1DandyTroll says:
October 2, 2010 at 11:43 am
If Hansen had compared 2010 to the 1920-1950 base period (the previous warm period) it wouldn’t look so hot.
“In fact, despite the cool temperatures in the United States, last winter was the second-warmest on record.”
I find this so hard to believe that I’m tempted to investigate this claim for myself.
R. de Haan says:
October 2, 2010 at 12:18 pm
You said, not so long ago, all this was due to the comsumption of a well known substance of white color, in powder form, which makes believe the intaker he/she are the most powerful man/woman, while its effects lasts, then it follows a deep depression. However, in this case, with lots of money at their disposal, they do not reach this state and, on the contrary, are in danger of having sudden asfixia by apnea.
If we investigate seriously we can find a common origin of all these new-age theories, back in the 1960´s, a phenomenon exemplified in the lyrics of Beatles´”Imagine”, which has now become a formal and common “ideology”.
Roy Spencer wrote on his blog about the inverse relation that can temporarily exist between sea surface and troposphere temperatures:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/
Why the Tropospheric Temperature Variations Don’t Match the Sea Surface Temperature Variations
When there is above-normal ocean heat loss, the ocean surface cools below normal. Most of that heat loss is through evaporation. Meanwhile, the extra moisture in the atmosphere leads to above-normal rainfall, and so causes excess latent heating of the troposphere. The result is that SST cooling is accompanied by tropospheric warming, while SST warming is accompanied by tropospheric cooling.
These events occur on time scales of around 1 month, and so there is usually no long-term climate change significance to them.
2010 has been characterised by an exceptional rate of decrease in SSTs and loss of ocean heat content. Although Spencer described this atmospheric evaporative cooling (linked to precipitation) as short term, if sea surface cooling is steep for several months, then atmospheric reactive warming could also be sustained.
We need to keep reminding ourselves that essentially all climate energy is in the ocean. The ocean is where to look for long range weather / climate forecasts. The atmosphere can blow hot and cold but it is the ocean that drives multidecadal climate cycles.
I’m not reading the comments ‘cos I’m tired. I really do have difficulty believing Western Russia had a widespead 12 degrees celcius temperature anomaly for a full week. It looks to be about the size of western Europe. Is this genuine or just genuine until the truth is outed?
rbateman,
Yeah and no one would know what that period felt like… the reason the anomaly period is 1950-1980 is cause that’s when the majority of baby boomers grew up..
I wonder how they can say these things with a straight face? We know the Poles aren’t that well covered, and say what about the NP being colder than normal this summer
with the ice heading up rather spectacularly….
I call “Bravo Sierra” on this…
A tad unscientific to state that:
“Would an event like the Moscow heat wave have occurred if carbon dioxide levels had remained at pre-industrial levels,” the answer, Hansen asserts, is clear: “Almost certainly not.”
Where is the evidence for that part of the globe never having had a similar heat wave before?
The past years looping jet streams were due to the period of the 18.6 year lunar declinational cycle we are in. Last year, this, and next year the declinational angle at culmination will be close to the same as the apparent solar declinational angle at it’s winter/ summer culminations, the combining of the their two tidal bulges at Syzygy happens twice a 27 day period, developing large looping patterns in the jet streams.
We can expect to see a rerun of last winter’s stalled out blocking highs which are the produced effects of these tidal harmonics, the normal interferences of the outer planets that would break up /or augment these highs, are all occurring in the spring or the fall (April 3rd 2011) and the just past (September 20th through October 6th) periods.
So we can expect to see unimpeded rolling cycles of blocking highs across the globe during summers and winters, for the next two years at least. Maximum North lunar declination this month is~23.4 degrees and South at ~24.0 degrees, due to the effects of the outer planets being several degrees south of the ecliptic plane pulling the moon farther South than North. I expect the jet stream relative positional balance between the two hemispheres to follow the moon, since it is the lunar tidal effects that create and drive the patterns in them.
A huge tip of the hat to all those dedicated army of observers taking readings in the middle of the Sahara Desert.
Your vital work in extreme conditions, covering an area almost the size of the United States, is clearly key to Mr. Hansen being able to claim 2009-2010 as the “warmest 12 month period in the GISS analysis.”
We salute you!
“But, from a global perspective, how warm was the summer exactly?”
There cannot be a global perspective on the warmth of the summer because the NH and SH have their summers at opposite times. You could have hemispheric analyses of each respective summer, but that wasn’t presented. Where are they?
Following the link,
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2010summer/figure2.gif
I see that the average summer temp in the U.S. has not varied much more than +/- 1C in 60 years. I can certainly live with that (and did). I have suffered much greater temperature swings indoors fighting the office thermostat battles.
The Australian BOM have recently announced that the state of South Australia had a 2010 winter that was 2C BELOW normal (and I can attest to that having shivered through it).
The GISS lower right graphic shows -0.2 to -0.6 at best.
Did Hanson run out of dark blue crayon when he was colouring in Australia?
I have been doing weekly anomaly updates on my website. I use the weekly maps to try to explain the difference between climate and weather. Weather will mess up the anomaly for a week, but over the course of the summer the climate picture becomes clear.
This year’s climate was classic warm phase Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. It also started warm ENSO which is turning into an impressive cool phase (La Nina). I will be doing a full summer post in the next couple of weeks.
Have hope. The AMO warm will trend cool in the next 10 years. That is climate forecast.
http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/
thought this was interesting, but do wonder if it would be a diversion:
25 Sept: BBC: Paul Hudson: Which long range forecast do you trust?
So it’s great news that my colleague Roger Harrabin has set up a steering group to find out who we can rely on in long range forecasting, with an independent verification scheme using some of the most trusted names in weather, in association with Leeds University.
It will be interesting to see how many weather companies take up this challenge, when there is clearly a danger of loss of face should certain forecasters prove less reliable than others. But I’ve been told that those companies who decide to decline the offer to participate will be published – leaving the public to draw their own conclusions should that occur…
Here’s Roger Harrabin’s article that you can see by clicking here from BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ website.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2010/09/which-long-range-forecast-do-y.shtml
Hudson still seeing cold:
1 Oct: BBC: Paul Hudson: Another cold winter ahead?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2010/10/another-cold-winter-ahead.shtml
TO HStad saying hstad says:
October 2, 2010 at 11:35 am
As a non-scientist and sometime reader of this blog, I’m at a loss to understand the millions of dollars wasted by you scientists in studying the change in climate? Tell me why a change of .50 to .75 of 1 degree is worth such largess when we have millions of people dying of hunger and disease. I am disgusted by you scientists, you should all hang up your degrees and retire. For the average Joe out there, you have ruined your reputations and I have found you to be nothing but political shills
The difference between super heated climate from ice age climate is about 2c above and lower the 0 line (global temps) – and such changes usually takes centuries to happen. So studying a climate situation where variation of the global temps is raising rapidly, and could one that could also drop rapidly (according to some), is very important.
As an example, a lowering of 1c on the average US temps means a very bad year for crops while winter resort will get a boom. The other way around is also true but for different assets.
The problem is not really that it would be very warm or very cold, the problem is the rate of such change in the global climate. Going one way or the other on multiple centuries allow nature to adapt, but getting such changes in decades is a sure bet for catastrophic ecological issues – most of them not apparent to the naked eyes, but ask any fisherman what happen when temps are getting too warm (unusually hot).
So that’s the reason so much efforts are made to record and analysed the situation. And it’s the same thing if you believe either in global cooling or global warming.
While I’m fairly cynical of the reality of AGW – I have to admit that here – in the mid south of the US, we’ve had an extraordinarily hot summer. Worst I can remember in the 15 years I’ve lived here.
My parents in Idaho talk about how cold of a summer they’ve had there.
While weather isn’t climate – sometimes it surely seems that something odd is going on. I can understand how someone living where I do when blame the summer on GW.
Enneagram says:
October 2, 2010 at 1:11 pm
If we investigate seriously we can find a common origin of all these new-age theories, back in the 1960´s, a phenomenon exemplified in the lyrics of Beatles´”Imagine”, which has now become a formal and common “ideology”.
Faster that previously imagined. Subliminal messaging, I am guessing.
Sounds suspiciously like what was, back then, termed a ‘rush’.
Is it really worth reading the propaganda anymore? Everbody knows they lie, so what’s the point.
I don’t recall if it was this website, or at icecap.us, but I read a discussion that (if I recall correctly), talked about the low solar activity and an affect to to the higher levels of the atmosphere, affecting air currents and the jet stream, and the north/south position of the jetstream. This allowed a high pressure to remain stationary over Russia for quite some time, which resulted in the high temperatures.
I think the article also talked about the low temps in South America being a result of the southern jet position because of the low solar activity.
If anyone could point out the article (and/or correct me if I haven’t described it properly), please do. And the point is, if it was more due to solar activity, it could have happened in the not-to-distant past, not ‘almost certainly not’ as Hansen said. What about the midwest US In the 1930s, when temps of 110 – 115 were occurring.
A few hundred years ago, several hundred years ago, if it occurred, who would have reported on it? How do we know it didn’t?
……….The frequency of extreme warm anomalies increases disproportionately as global temperature rises. “Were global temperature not increasing, the chance of an extreme heat wave such as the one Moscow experienced, though not impossible, would be small,” Hansen says.
==============
He seems to be talking himself into smaller and smaller boxes.
Personally, I like to think we are still in an age of discovery.
Martin C says:
October 2, 2010 at 3:59 pm
NASA says the big loopy loops jet streams are caused by low solar activity.
I believe something like this occured in the 1880’s/90’s, as they had barometers to follow the SLP over land and somewhat at sea. AMA fellows should be able to tell us more about this. We got any inhouse?
Fred Pearce says “Sorry, Patchy, but time is up.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1317160/In-the-planet-Patchy-Acclaimed-science-writer-Fred-Pearce-calls-head-bungling-climate-change-boss.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
Clearly time for another round of “Save the Pachauri” – perhaps Richard Curtis could do a short film for him?
@Amino Acids in Meteorites.
Please, no more videos cluttered up with Google ads.
I amazed friends and family when, in the warm summer of 2007 (eastern Canada) I predicted a very cold winter to follow. I was basing it on the fact that the SH had had a very cold winter (during our summer) with snow in Johannesburg, S. Africa, Buenos Aires, heavy snows in NZ and Australian ski fields etc. I was emboldened to then predict cool summers and more cold winters and I actually sucessfully altered theweathernetwork.com two week forecasts by subtracting up to 2C from their trend beyond the first week because of their strong AGW leanings. Their typical forecast would be reasonable for the first few days and then, presumably to make up for the cooler first week the trend would bend up to compensate, only to be revised back downwards a week later with a new rising tail tacked onto it. I emailed them and told them what I was doing and that my forecasts were outperforming theirs because of their AGW bias. Yeah, I know this is only weather. However, with 250 children freezing in Peru, fish and crocks dying of cold in rivers in Ecuador, domestic and wild animals dying in Brazil in places where frost was until then unknown in modern times, a cold sleety World Cup in South Africa, etc. I’m calling for the coldest winter in the NH in decades (lets say 50 years). Anyone want to join the contest. It will make the winter interesting as was the attention paid to the arctic ice extent minimum just past. Maybe Steve Goddard would like to lead this if he reads this.
It’s an amazing display of your ability to spin anything within an inch of it’s life on this site that you would have the chutzpah (not to mention the delusions of grandeur) to present a report from GISS as stark as “agreeing with you”.
What’s more amazing is that your readership (now THERE’S a declining trend line for you!) are so gullible as to swallow your tripe without question.
I have to wonder just what Messer Watts will have to turn his attention to in ten or twenty years time once this confected campaign against science finally pops impotently, like the vacuous bubble it always was, and the rubes have all drifted away. Will he sink to obscurity, grow old and bitter, shamed by the world for the role he played in denying the undeniable?
Or will he be resilient and defiant, like a cockroach that rises again to scurry off and fight another day, find another cause to latch onto, more scientists to hound and misrepresent, building up a new legion of mindless bots to roam the internet doing his bidding. Proselytizing for Jesus, perhaps? He’d make a good attack dog for the creationists and ID’ers. Or maybe he could start denying mobile phones cause cancer, just in case they do so he’ll be able to get in on the ground-floor by doing the lucrative bidding of mobile phone companies by waging a war of public opinion against potential future class actions.
I’m sure there’ll be a future for him, there’ll ALWAYS be evil industries seeking to downplay scientific findings that impact their bottom line, there’ll ALWAYS be a market for inflated ego’s who can whip up mobs of stupid but very passionately dedicated ‘useful idiot’ who can then be deployed to harass scientists and generate noise on the internet and flash mob politicians to give the impression that a group of fringe nutcases are actually a genuine popular movement within the community.
Ah, the future, what will it hold?
REPLY: Heh. Cooling. Being close to the southernmost part of Australia, you’ll feel it first. Let’s talk again around 2015. Perhaps by then you’ll learn to read what I actually said, that NOAA reports the heatwave being due to a blocking high, and the NASA report (not me) partially agrees with it:
We’ve already told you that the Russian heatwave had everything to do with weather, and not climate. NOAA agrees:
NOAA on the Russian heat wave: blocking high, not global warming
At least NASA Goddard agrees with this, sort of.
No mention of “agreeing with me” in there bub, but nice to read your flames anyway. This might help. Cheers.
– Anthony
Tom in Florida asked, “Are these numbers and graphs including the extrapolated temperatures above 80N? It seems most of the ‘warming’ is there.”
That’s the GISS-enhanced polar amplification. They does much more than extrpolate data north of 80N. They delete SST data in Arctic and Southern Oceans in areas where there is seasonal sea ice, then extend the Land Surface data (with its higher trend and variability) out over the oceans. Discussed that in this post:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/05/giss-deletes-arctic-and-southern-ocean.html
RE: R. de Haan says:
October 2, 2010 at 12:18 pm
“James Hanson is a disgrace to his profession, a disgrace to NASA, a disgrace to science and a disgrace to humanity.”
I agree.
Amino Acids in Meteorites: There is little difference between GISS and the other two surface-based datasets between 60S and 60N. The graph is from an upcoming post (I’m still writing part 2):
http://i52.tinypic.com/o72d76.jpg
And if you average the NCDC and GISS data and average the two TLT datasets, and then scale the TLT data…
http://i52.tinypic.com/30rxydy.jpg
…the surface data diverges after the 1997/98 El Nino, indicating the surface data and TLT data have different ENSO aftereffects. And that’s the subject of the upcoming post.
Second warmist, fourth warmest, ninth warmest in 130 years at an anomalous 0.6C. Doesn’t anyone get the joke? Presumably they have these ranking from the depths of the little ice age in the 17th-18th Century so why not say for over 300 years? The trouble with this type of unscientific nonesense is if the temps were to continue to fall globally (annual basis) as they have for the past decade for the next decade, they could still say the 12th warmest, the fourteenth warmist, the nineteenth warmest in 330 years.
John Kehr: “This year’s climate was classic warm phase Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.”
I’m always perplexed by warm phase versus cold phase of the AMO with respect to global temperatures. Doesn’t the fact that the North Atlantic SST anomalies dropped faster than global temperatures from 1945 to 1975 and rose faster than global temperature anomalies from 1975 to 2005, for example, actually determine the contribution of the AMO?
Gary Pearse says:
October 2, 2010 at 5:24 pm
Given the sea surface temps progression to colder, the Arctic freezing up very fast, the table appears to be set for a really bad one for the NH. Nature, being fickle, will send that stuff wherever it pleases. Just be glad the the Arctic is nowhere near as cold as the Antarctic. Poor S. America really got hammered this last winter.
RE: Connor @ 5:41
I once got on a horse that got all angry and belligerent like you. She had a burr under the saddle pad and having removed that she became a very functional animal. So, check for burrs and see if that doesn’t help.
This is in reply to enneagram. Before you go on about formal and common ideology get your fact’s straight. The beatles did not write ” Imagine ” john lennon did and he wrote it in the 70’s. Ok now you can talk.
Here’s a link that contains a comment (following it) that documents earlier Russian heat waves.
Here are some other recent WUWT threads on the Russian heat wave. Somewhere in them are additional comments like the one above:
Source: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2010summer/
Now GISS is not only second-guessing the climate but what the public thinks too. And this is a government agency of scientists? Look how they twist the words, ‘appropriate’, their appropiate, ‘probably’, and ‘almost’. Now you know for sure this is not from real scientists.
Jack Edwards – you said
QUOTE
While weather isn’t climate – sometimes it surely seems that something odd is going on. I can understand how someone living where I do when blame the summer on GW
UNQUOTE
Please do NOT worry.
When I was a boy long ago, the climate was crook too.
I can’t remember if it was too hot or too cold or too wet or too dry.
But it was very worring and we all blamed it all on THE BOMB.
Or more correcly on atomic bomb testing in the Pacific.
But whatever the problem – it eventually ended.
The weather just resumed its old habit of being too hot, cold, wet AND dry.
So we forgot all about it.
Until that is the IPCC took up the good fight, or do I mean fright?
And we all became so worried about the CLIMATE CHANGE once again.
Relax it’s just climate in very small letters.
And the climate is always changing, as you’ll eventually know.
John F. Hultquist says:
October 2, 2010 at 7:24 pm
RE: Connor @ 5:41
I once got on a horse that got all angry and belligerent like you. She had a burr under the saddle pad and having removed that she became a very functional animal. So, check for burrs and see if that doesn’t help.
======================
Well said! And repeated here for effect.
-Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Roger Knights says:
October 2, 2010 at 7:34 pm
“Would an event like the Moscow heat wave have occurred if carbon dioxide levels had remained at pre-industrial levels,” the answer, Hansen asserts, is clear: “Almost certainly not.”
Here’s a link that contains a comment (following it) that documents earlier Russian heat waves.
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Wow. Thanks for repeating that. Material copied and saved.
Even a letter from Tchaicovsky describing the suffocating peat fires.
I live to the ENE of one of the largest peat bog swamps on the east coast of the USA.
In the summer of 2008, 1.7 million people were choked by Code Red and even Code Purple EPA quality air.
It was disgusting….and potentially “suffocating”.
But the same thing happened in the 1920s…..well before the “CO2 excuse” could be used.
Part of the cycle….of living downwind from so much slow-burning fuel.
Hansen, a publicly-funded official, is already on a noose when it comes to his reputation. How low will he go?
A scientist, he is not.
-Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Shouldn’t GISS update their reference points? 1951-1980 is so last century; most/all but GISS should be using 1971-2000 by now.
How is it allowed for Hansen to make adjustments all by himself without revealing his formulations for others to see, yet at the same time he interprets his own homogenized data? Has the world never heard of this thing called conflict of interest, or at least the appearance of conflict (which is often worse than a real conflict of interest).
It’s exactly like putting the fox in charge of security at the chicken coop!
Norm in Calgary says:
October 2, 2010 at 9:10 pm
Shouldn’t GISS update their reference points? 1951-1980 is so last century; most/all but GISS should be using 1971-2000 by now.
How is it allowed for Hansen to make adjustments all by himself without revealing his formulations for others to see, yet at the same time he interprets his own homogenized data? Has the world never heard of this thing called conflict of interest, or at least the appearance of conflict (which is often worse than a real conflict of interest).
It’s exactly like putting the fox in charge of security at the chicken coop!
=========================
I hear ya and you are spot on.
But he [Hansen] can get away with it right now because his boss is _________.
Notice he only let loose his true colors until after our current administration was elected in power.
Every since then, he has had free reign: Coal protests abroad, bad GISS Arctic data at home and abroad…arrests….same thing.
A scientist he is not. And a taxpayer-funded public servant he is not.
He should be tried.
-Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
High temperatures around Moscow were caused by the blocking anticyclone and enhanced by forest and peat bogs fires during that time. Why the area outside the forest fires cooled down?
Can’t they use their brains? Have they one?
Wow,
I like previous comment from savethesharks. very much on point.
I had initially planned to address the following comments and will do by reference
Robert says:
October 2, 2010 at 1:37 pm
rbateman,
Yeah and no one would know what that period felt like… the reason the anomaly period is 1950-1980 is cause that’s when the majority of baby boomers grew up..
——
Excuse me, is that how a scientifically based anomaly period is chosen? What baby boomers? And how do you know they grew up? Tell us why that is a scientifically discernable period to base your prejudice upon? Please share your credentials, they look exceptionally weak from here. Power on – I suppose.
Last week, my neighbors’ two goats found a way into their vegetable garden and, predictably, devoured all cabbages.
Letting Dr. Hansen analyze global temperatures is akin to inviting your goats into your kitchen garden.
Set the wolf to guard the sheep!
I must correct my comment. I asked James Hansen about the 1951 to 1980 base period
for anomalies. He says that it has always been that. All the 1961 to 1990 base periods that
I could find do not come from GISS. Sorry to question Dr. Hansen on that issue. He says it
doesn’t affect the temperature change, only the zero point. But I would think it would give
the impression of greater warming than would the warmer base.
Two comments
1. Take away the temporary El Nino effect and you have little or no temperature anomaly in the first half of this year.
2. De-manipulate and de-strangle the historic GISS temperature data, plus make proper allowance for recent UHI, and there is probably little or no temperature anomaly.
If you have ever lived through a period of extreme weather in some part of the world – I have several times – the one thing you can rely on is a concensus of opinion that severe climate change is happening.
Hansen MUST be made to resign from his position, right along with ALL of his sycophant cronies at GISS.
Until then, the initials ‘GISS’ shall come to mean ‘Government Instituted Sully Science.
The frequency of extreme warm anomalies increases disproportionately as global temperature rises. “Were global temperature not increasing, the chance of an extreme heat wave such as the one Moscow experienced, though not impossible, would be small,” Hansen says.
With temperatures or anything else, assuming a normal distribution whose standard deviation does not increase as the mean increases, it’s certainly true that the frequency of events greater than the mean increases disproportionately as the mean increases. (This is because a constant-width vertical strip of the area under the curve has a greater area as it is nearer the center.) But this is very general. It does not tell us by how much the frequency of events like the Russian heat wave should increase with a given increase of the global temperature, not even roughly. In fact, it does not even tell us that that the increase of frequency occurs; for all we know, the shape of the distribution changes; that’s an empirical question. So the statement is nothing more than a math lesson, for lack of a better term.
Maybe I should have said “…whose standard deviation does not decrease…”
In mid 200x, people were quick to talk about last year being the hottest on record. In late 200x years while global temps were dropping, they were quick to talk about the previous 10 years being the hottest on record (and then decade). Now they’re talking about the first 8 or 9 months being the hottest on record or the previous 12 months.
I’m really getting tired of that and may start lashing out at reporters who promulgate such cherry picking. Haven’t figure out what to do about the scientists. I know Hansen won’t listen, but there might be hope for others.
“Unfortunately, it is common for the public to take the most recent local seasonal temperature anomaly as indicative of long-term climate trends,” Hansen notes. “[We hope] these global temperature anomaly maps may help people understand that the temperature anomaly in one place in one season has limited relevance to global trends.”
Right, a local seasonal anomaly cannot really be taken as indicative of long-term climate trends = as evidence for “climate change” due to CO2, except when at the same time it can also be taken as evidence for “climate change” due to CO2:
“Would an event like the Moscow heat wave have occurred if carbon dioxide levels had remained at pre-industrial levels,” the answer, Hansen asserts, is clear: “Almost certainly not.”
You simply have not lived long enough yet to experience the normal swings in weather. It takes far longer than a mere 15 years of experience to witness anything close to the typical variations in weather in any given locale. In Los Angeles County I did not use the air conditioner for most months of the year. Only in months like July-September was it necessary to use the air conditionaer…until about 1978-79. Year after year the heat made it necessary to use the air conditioner earlier and later through the year. By 1995 it was necessary to use the air conditioner 11 months of the year, instead of the previous 1.5 to 3 months per year. In 1978, I wore a heavy jacket in December through February. By the late 1980s, the jackets stayed in the closet unused throughout the winter. Now, in the years of 2009-2010, the jackets have come out of the closet, and the air conditioner is no longer being used 11 months of the year. Conditions are returning to what we were experiencing more than thirty years ago.
We are witnessing these same kinds of changes in many other locales besides Los Angeles. We come from the Midwest where you need the heat and humidity to grow good tomatoes; and we have lived and traveled extensively in other locales ranging from the Appalachians to the Pacific Northwest and far beyond, experiencing their weather trends over many years. Assignments in meteorology have also provided a unique perspective from which techniques and methods of meteorology were observed and experienced.
When Hansen and his ilk loudly proclaimed a year as the hottest year ever in the Midwest and listeners echoed those claims, I could only laugh at the lot of them. In June 1967 we cut, baled, and put up hay in the barn during a not unprecedented heat wave. The temperature in the shade next to the hay field was about 105F-110F. The temperature underneath the barn’s steel roofing was 135F on the thermometer tacked onto the post where we worked. On Christmas Day about 1962 we played baseball in the afernoon in our short sleeve shirts a short distance from St. Louis, Missouri, because it was too hot to wear a jacket. The next Christmas was a very cold and miserable day.
You do not know what it is to be hot in Alabama, Arkansas, or Georgia unless you experienced the Summers of 1934 and 1935. There is a reason why folks living in proximity to the Mason-Dixon line called them the Dog Days of August in 1935 and again during the the cooler period of 1966. Live long enough and pay close attention to the weather, then you’ll see what real variations in weather are like.
When the PDO / AMO flip from hot to cold, there is a huge excess of heat built up in the oceans and the air over the poles starts to cool dramatically. For a few years we get to live in “Lava Lamp World” as large blobs of heat leave the equatorial oceans and head for the poles. At the same time large blobs of cold leave the poles and head back to the equator.
The net result is simultaneous blobs of red and blue on the maps depending on what blob is over your head.
This isn’t ‘global warming’. Rather it’s “long time lag global heat loss” as we watch a 60 year cycle with 18 year time lags work off the hot phase of the oceans and move to a cold phase.
At it’s core, it is a simple confusion of temperature for heat.
@AUssieDan
>>But it was very worring and we all blamed it all on THE BOMB.
Hah! Thanks for the reminder! When I was little (ie. in the ’60’s) we used to notice the same things, except we blamed them on the Soviets and their weather modification experiments beaming some kind of weather ray at us to mess things up and make our lives miserable (usually too hot).
Hansen’s & GISS’s credibility have slipped so much since the Climategate fiasco that what would have been taken in stride a few years ago is looked up as having an ulterior motive, the great “Climate Capitalism Ponzi Scheme”. Today I find I cannot look upon this material and think of it as the scientific truth of the matter. Hansen has had control of GISS for far too long, and GISS has become just another kind of EAU Con Job.
Now when I look at GISS data I ask: why use the 1951-1980 reference period; why x, y, and z; and, how did GISS fill in all the missing data for the Arctic and Antarctic, Canada, Russia, etc. for the past 131 years, the same way they do it today? Nope! No Confidence! It may all boil down to what I think of Hansen today. But, even if he were to depart this afternoon, it would probably take a few tens of years to bring back that old sense of blind faith in a US Government, NASA, Scientific operation such as GISS, maybe. Climategate sure changed the way folks think about climate and the folks trying to sell it like a pig in a poke.
HOW CLIMATE IS CHANGING ?
Massive Arctic ice island drifting toward shipping lanes The biggest Arctic “ice island” to form in
nearly 50 years — a 250-square-kilometer behemoth described as four times the size of Manhattan —
has been discovered after a Canadian scientist scanning satellite images of northwest Greenland spotted
a giant break in the famed Petermann Glacier.Canada.com – Aug 07 10:16am
In another research, using Autosub, an autonomous underwater vehicle, researchers led by the British Antarctic
Survey have captured ocean and sea-floor measurements, which revealed a 300 meter high
ridge on the sea floor. Pine Island Glacier was once sitting atop this underwater ridge,
which slowed its flow into the sea. The warm water, trapped under the ice, is causing the
bottom of the ice shelf to thaw, resulting in continuousthinning and acceleration of glacial
melt. Lead author Adrian Jenkins said, “The discovery of the ridge has raised new questions
about whether the current loss of ice from Pine Island Glacier is caused by recent climate
change or is a continution of a longer-term process that began when the glacier disconnect
from the ridge”. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100620200810.htm
Not only warm water, but also concentrated Magnesium Chloride =7,100 p.p.m & Sodium
Chloride= 31,000 p.p.m. (de-icing agents) trapped under the ice, is causing the bottom of the
ice shelf to thaw, resulting in continuous thinning and acceleration of glacial melt
(under water glacier cutting).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fGHlEBvKYw&sns=fb
Last Winter, Australian Glaciologist, Neal Young, declared that more than 300 icebergs are
floating in the East Antarctica.
DISINTEGRATED ICE SHELVES DISINTEGRATION DATES
Worde Ice shelf March 1986
Larsen A Ice shelf January 1995
Larsen B Ice shelf February 2002
Jones Ice Shelf 2008
Wilkins Ice shelf March 2008
If the Ice shelves are disintegrating during WINTER, it is not SUN or CO2.
U.N. Secretary General, BAN KI-MOON recently declared that ” Let me be clear, the thread of
Climate Change is real “.
“The Climate is changing” said JAY LAWRIMORE, Chief of Climate Analysing at the National
Climate Data Center in Asheville, N.C. “Extreme events are occuring with greater frequency and
in many cases with greater intensity”.
The current Climate Change is due to the following:-
1. Mushrooming of Sea water desalination systems in the Middle East: Discharging of desalination
& Cleaning chemicals & Concentrated brine into Oceans & Seas.
2. Artificial Island developments in the Arabian Gulf since 1985: dredging, drilling, dynamiting &
excavation of sea floor shifted Magnesium Chloride, Sulfur & Sodium Chloride.
The geographic position of the Arabian Gulf, Ocean circulations bringing it to Arctic & Antarctic Oceans
during Monsoon seasons along with hot water of the Middle East.
Those who are having the Oceans water Analysis since 1980 will WIN the Climate WAR. Concentrated
7,100 p.p.m. of Magnesium Chloride & 31,000 p.p.m. of Sodium Chloride are detected in the Arabian Gulf.
These are De-icing agents which are helping to disintegrates the Arctic & Antarctic Ice shelves. Now
International Desalination Association (IDA) formed a committee to investigate about it.
If we enforce strict Environmental regulations, recover MgCl3 and NaCl3 at Straight of Hormosa and
Straight of Gibraltar and recover those at closed eddies of Baffin Bay & Green Land Sea. Sea ice & Ice
shelfs in Arctic & Antarctic are Natural Air Conditioners of the Planet EARTH. When more ice in both
Poles, the third Pole, as Scientists described, Himalayas will have abundance of ice and Snow & Bolivi
will have more Glaciers & water.
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In the 1960s–1970s there were magazine articles floating the idea of towing icebergs from the Arctic to places like Los Angeles to harvest for fresh water supplies. Killing two birds with one stone, they wanted to deflect an oncoming return to an ice age climate and supply freshwater to the arid communities of the American Southwest.
@ JPeden 6:01 AM Oct 3
Hansen isn’t saying that the Moscow heat wave is evidence of climate change due to CO2. He’s saying something that sounds like he’s saying that it’s evidence of climate change due to CO2.
The “prominent meteorologist” with Weather Underground should be fired, or ridiculed.
REPLY: I strongly disagree. He may be unaware of the issue, since he covers thousands of stations with automation. And, it works correctly some of the time. I’ve dropped him and email earlier today. Let’s see what he has to say. – Anthony
Actually, at one point just a bit ago on his blog, the “prominent meteorologist” at WU declared, “The period January – July was the warmest such 7-month period in the planet’s history…”
I will admit to having made sport of that on our blog ~ T-Rex picture and all, even though I know he means well. It was just too much.
(And Juraj, he can’t be “fired”, because WU is HIS.)
Ausi Dan says: “I can’t remember if it was too hot or too cold or too wet or too dry.
But it was very worring and we all blamed it all on THE BOMB.
Or more correcly on atomic bomb testing in the Pacific.”
Yes. During the late sixties and early seventies my Grandmother used to blame storms and weather on the space program. “They’re shooting those rockets up there and messing up the weather! We didn’t have weather like this before!”
Even as a teenager, I found her assertions, uh, unconvincing.
By the way, my Grandmother was a very nice lady, but she was agood example of how someone can get stuck in a mental belief system. She never accepted that people went to the moon.
Grandmother: “Jason, you KNOW they didn’t go to the moon!”
Me: “Why do you not think they didn’t go there?”
Grandmother: “Because NO ONE can GO to the MOON!”
Of course, these days, it’s more like:
CAGW: “You KNOW that the Moscow heat wave was due to Global Warming!”
Me: “Why do you think that?”
CAGW: “Because THAT’S what GLOBAL WARMING DOES!”
Oh! Speaking of how my Grandmother blamed bad weather on the space program…
One of my recurring guilty joys took place after the end of the Apollo program. Every time we had bad weather, I would announce to her, “I can’t believe how bad the weather is! Ever since we stopped going to the moon the weather has been messed up!”
“Were global temperature not increasing, the chance of an extreme heat wave such as the one Moscow experienced, though not impossible, would be small,” Hansen says.
Well. We have 130 years of decent, if not well distributed and if not needing a lot of massagings, temperature data. Historically Russia has had a number of terribly hot summers and raging fires as a consequence. So have other places. For Hansen to say this based on data, the event must be without equal or even near equal. Hell, not even half-equal. Doesn’t seem to be a statement based on data. You don’t need to be a Phdk kor statistician to see that. But I bet if you prefer your models to data, you could say that.
Perhaps we should call the IPCC/NASA climate models “Elmo”, after the cute Sesame Street character. When we were children, whatever Elmo said was true and in our best interest. We didn’t question Elmo. Elmo the Computer (Program). Of course, that would suggest James Hansen as Burt. He was the authoritative ‘adult’ and worried all the time, too.
Elmo and Burt: Saving Our Planet One Alarm at a Time!
Jason Calley says:
October 4, 2010 at 7:08 am
Ausi Dan says: “I can’t remember if it was too hot or too cold or too wet or too dry.
But it was very worring and we all blamed it all on THE BOMB.
Or more correcly on atomic bomb testing in the Pacific.”
Yes. During the late sixties and early seventies my Grandmother used to blame storms and weather on the space program. “They’re shooting those rockets up there and messing up the weather! We didn’t have weather like this before!”
Your grandmother notwithstanding I’ve yet to see a convincing explanation of why the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons after WWII could not have injected enough particulates into the stratosphere to have caused some global cooling.
tree hugging sister says:
October 4, 2010 at 6:17 am
Actually, at one point just a bit ago on his blog, the “prominent meteorologist” at WU declared, “The period January – July was the warmest such 7-month period in the planet’s history…”
Although of course if you use the definition of ‘history’ as implying a written record (hence ‘prehistory’) then it’s not so crazy.
You can attempt to twist it with either definition, and it is still an absurd and outrageous falsehood.
Yeah, like the incineration of the cities and villages, the dust clouds from the Battle of Kursk, and oil tanker sinkings and fires had nothing significant to do with it, just the nuclear weapons tests? You wouldn’t by any chance be displaying a myopic political bias and promotion of a particular worldview and political agenda, would you?
What goes up must come down!
– – – – – – – –
Forecasters say this winter could be the coldest Europe has seen in the last 1,000 years.
http://rt.com/prime-time/2010-10-04/coldest-winter-emergency-measures.html