I had started on an essay to describe this meteostatistical failure last night, but Lucia beat me to it, so the credit goes to her. She’s a sharp lady. Besides the fact that short term weather events are not climate you can’t apply the coin flip statistical logic to it like Weather Underground’s Jeff Masters did, citing a calculation that suggests a one in 1,594,323 chance heat wave. Lucia reduces this probability estimate calculation to rubble and writes:
In fact– the entire reason weather forecasting is possible at all is that we know weather patterns persist. Master’s calculation is based on the assumption weather patterns do not persist!.
As we’ve said many times before , the Eastern US heat wave was a result of a quasi-stationary blocking high pressure pattern that persisted a few days. It has already moved on and has been absorbed in the weather noise.
But the wailing about the significance of the recent heat wave has reached a fever pitch, blinding rational people who should know better in their quest to show that climate and weather are the same thing. They aren’t, and they never will be. The same folly of opinion occurred two years ago in the summer of 2010 during the Russian Heat Wave, with many of the MSM and pundits saying that its was a sure case of global warming affecting the weather. Then, NOAA published a peer reviewed paper holding global warming/climate change blameless, basically saying it was nothing more than a persistent weather pattern. A follow up paper by other scientists confirmed it was due to natural variability. But the people who believe that AGW will be dangerous and world changing can’t let go of the idea when it comes to blaming short term weather patterns on global warming.
Dr. Jeff Masters wrote of the recent heat wave:
Each of the 13 months from June 2011 through June 2012 ranked among the warmest third of their historical distribution for the first time in the 1895 – present record. According to NCDC, the odds of this occurring randomly during any particular month are 1 in 1,594,323. Thus, we should only see one more 13-month period so warm between now and 124,652 AD–assuming the climate is staying the same as it did during the past 118 years. These are ridiculously long odds, and it is highly unlikely that the extremity of the heat during the past 13 months could have occurred without a warming climate.
Lucia writes:
What this really is is a meaningless statistics.
and adds:
Let’s tweak Dr. Master’s rather imperfect calculation by retaining his assumption that “climate is staying the same as it did during the past 118 years” but accounting for “persistence”. More specifically we will assume that there is non-zero serial auto-correlation in the monthly data. Since he used “white” noise, I’m going to pick the next simplest model: Red noise (i.e. AR1 noise.)
She runs her calculations and concludes:
Taking the mean of the series, I found that “assuming the climate is staying the same as it did during the past 118 years” the probability of 10% ± 0.4% the final 13 months would fall in the top 1/3rd of historic temperatures observations.
A 1 in 10 (10%) probability is a statistical galaxy away from a one in 1,594,323 chance.
And even other warmists agree, Lucia adds in this update:
Update: I googled to read who’d blogged. Michael Tobis commented:
Actually that’s bad form from both Masters and NCDC.
1.6 million (more precisely, 1,594,323) to one is just the thirteenth power of 1/3, which overstates the case to the extent that successive monthly anomalies are correlated. (Also the 1/3 is somewhat arbitrary and could be a cherry pick, but leave that aside). I don’t doubt that something very odd is going on but the number represents a common elementary statistical error and is in this case excessively alarmist.
Is this the first time MT and I have agreed on something?
Unfortunately, the damage is done, and Dr. Jeff Masters million to one lie is all over the net, aided by an unquestioning press.
Read Lucia’s full explanation here.
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I like using the bowling average as illustration……a bowlers average is the sum of all the games bowled divided by the number of games bowled, so the average is like the climate, in that it is the math summation of the past results and gives an approximate GUESS as to what the next game that bowlers bowls should be(close to the average from the past)……..some seem to think the average is what drives the next games bowled when in reality it has no control on any level over that next game…….the climate is no way controls the weather and the climate does NOT CHANGE until AFTER the weather has changed ans the change has held for a long period……..just like the bowling average it does NOT change until AFTER the bowlers scores have changed…….the climate is what we expect to see the weather is what we DO SEE and the weather is what controls the climate, and the climate has no control on any level over the weather.
this explains why Masters and cohorts still speak of global warmING even after 15 years of flat temps – simply, they believe every Jan 1st the world starts again at 0K…
Anthony–
I [used] autocorrelation for global data. This may have been a huge blunder! It seems the value for the lower 48 is much lower. So, I’m revising numbers. Using red noise, the probability for this event is likely to be quite low. (It’s still true Master’s assumed no autocorrelation and that will have an effect. But his value may be closer than mine– at least if we model using red noise.)
You…eh…also gonna post her second update here soon, right?
Following the same logic, the chance that the average annual temperatore falls in the top half (ie. a consecutive 12-month period is above average) would be one in 4,096. So, we can expect things to be above average only once every 40 centuries. Yet the observation is that it’s above average half the time, or 1 in 2. Proof of a coming catastrophe!
The statistics are not the biggest problem here. This is a classic post-hoc fallacy. The best thought experiment to help understand a post hoc fallacy is the question “with all the possible ways that the universe could have formed, what is the probability that it formed the way it did?” The answer is unity. It formed the way it did. Probability should not be applied to events in the past.
Just more proof that there’s no convincing case for AGW if you have to dive to the bottom of the barrel and trot out already refuted “evidence” to score even a fraction of a point in the public debate. If there was anything better at hand, they’d use it.
The fanatics for alarm over CO2 have sacrificed their science, their statistics, and their moral integrity for their cause. When you are hellbent on saving the planet, all caution is thrown to the wind.
What a sorry spectacle they make to us now, and will make to themselves as they look back on this disgraceful period of madness. Praise be to such as Lucia and Anthony, and a good few others, for their quick work and effective dissemination of calm, correct, and coherent analyses in the midst of it.
Bill Taylor:
I prefer to think of it as: the climate function is the integral of the weather function.
Quite apart from all the statistical arguments, just the very fact that Masters is basing his odds on assumption (that no rational person would ever make) that “the climate is staying the same as it did during the past 118 years” shows him to be a Charlatan of the worst kind. It’s like natural variability – particularly natural warming – doesn’t exist. He’s parroting the old strawman that warming is in itself proof of AGW. He’s qualified enough to know better than that. So I say again without reservation: Charlatan.
Whatever the probability for such a string of temps is for the assumption of no climate change whatsoever over 118 years (Anthony note that Lucia has a second update which is revising the initial calc), it is not very informative. Who claims no climate change whatsoever over the last 118 years? Only the fictional “denier” strawman fabricated by the Chicken Little Elite.
Try the calc again, with a climate that has a period 60 yr cycle for surface temp, and a very modest (say … 0.5C per century or so) non catastrophic, entirely natural warming trend. Then see how often upper 1/3 anomalies can cluster into a 13 month string near the end of a 118 year period that coincides with the top of a cycle. That will dramatically alter the odds, vs the “no climate change whatsoever for 118 years” assumption that only imaginary people make.
Lies, damned lies, and climate statistics.
Lucia’s most recent update: Wow! I didn’t realize the US temperatures had such low serial auto-correlation! I obtained data for the lower 48 states here:
http://www7.ncdc.noaa.gov/CDO/CDODivisionalSelect.jsp
Based on this, the lag 1 autocorrelation is R=.150, which is much lower than R=0.936. So ‘white noise’ isn’t such a bad model. I am getting a probability less than 1 in 100,000. I have to run the script longer to get the correct value!
Question…. because I’m a bit busy at the moment, else I’d go check myself. Are they also ignoring the fact that the U.S. is only 1 point on the globe out of a possible 63 other places on the globe? (1.6% of the total area). Wouldn’t it be likely that this occurrence would happen somewhere on the globe at any given interval? Isn’t this the game that they play?
While I believe the U.S. is a special place, it isn’t special in this regard.
He(Masters) just wants the money. It is that simple.
So what is the high pressure blocking? Is it preventing convection? I presume the heat still radiates away from a heat wave.
They know full well that the weather is not the same as climate (30 years+). I am not a weatherman or a calamatologist and even I know the weather is not the same as climate. They know the jig is almost up and they will do anything to keep the scammed funds rolling in. What a joke.
Heck, even the Warmist George Monbiot knows this. He didn’t think his words would come back to haunt him though. Thank God for the internet.
And in the same newspaper recently we have “wilful stupidity” as George puts it.
Did I mention that boreal forest fires have been in decline since the end of the Little Ice Age? Heh, he.
One has to wonder how Jeffrey Masters ever got a PhD. in the first place. Are they handed out as booby prizes?
Any particular weather event has a probability of essentially zero. This means that one must very disciplined when gauging how unusual a weather event truly is.
C02 is flawed science , the warming by man is very real. Building development is supposed to reflect or protect from solar radiation or buildings will be radiated and generate extreme heat.
Keep the warming issue simple, we aren’t supposed to warm the atmosphere or it changes weather. Take a look at 2 time-lapsed IR videos, one from outside and the other showing how people are cooked by their buildings. http://youtu.be/EA3py3us5VM
Take a look at this information and see how massive energy waste is used responding to symptoms. The cold refrigerated air is laying on the floor. http://youtu.be/366vfsCRpMA
Once you generate this heat, it is here to mix. Forest Fire smoke from Russia is in Canada, the heat generated by buildings circulated the globe as well and changes weather.
Reblogged this on Truth, Lies and In Between and commented:
You knew that they would start whining about global warming as soon as the summer hit with a heat wave.
They never disappoint there, do they?
Here’s WUWT’s rebuttal.
I’ve wondered about that. It seems to me that the NWS forecasters systematically err on the side of assuming a faster change of regime. Wind always lasts longer than they think, cold snaps last longer than they predict, etc. Their models don’t seem to “learn” from actual patterns of persistence.
This reminds me of an anecdote about Richard Feynman. He once began a lecture by saying something like, “As I was walking across the parking lot on my way here, I looked down and saw a car with a license plate number of ZY28KL. Now what are the odds of that happening?”
It’s ironic that a solar minimum is thought to lead to more such blocking events, along with record cold temps, currently being set in the other hemisphere, including the South Pole itself.
The Warmistas can wail about the ‘record’ extremes of heat waves and droughts, as well as of floods, all of which are actually due to blocking events made more likely by the solar minimum, but the alarmist mythology blames them on CO2 while it ‘ajusts’ the cold temps out of existence.
P.S:
To even mention Colorado forest fires is rank environmentalist hypocrisy, since its their insane forest regulations that created those tinderboxes.
1 in 1,594,323: the odds that Michael Tobis and Anthony Watts agree on something.
“Anthony–
I [used] autocorrelation for global data. This may have been a huge blunder! It seems the value for the lower 48 is much lower. So, I’m revising numbers. Using red noise, the probability for this event is likely to be quite low. (It’s still true Master’s assumed no autocorrelation and that will have an effect. But his value may be closer than mine– at least if we model using red noise.)”
But does it really matter? I play poker and there’s a very low probability of every hand I play coming out just as it does among a 6 man table. But so what? I’m probably missing something as this stuff is certainly not my forte.