From the James Hansen is just wrong department comes some inconvenient data, data that Dr. Hansen or anyone in the media could have easily looked up for themselves before writing irresponsible stories like this one:
Former Virginia State Climatologist Dr. Pat Michaels, in a guest opinion on WUWT said:
Hansen claims that global warming is associated with increased drought in the US. This is a testable hypothesis which he chose not to test, and, because PNAS isn’t truly peer-reviewed for Members like him, no one tested it for him.
I have [examined] drought data [that] are from NCDC, and the temperature record is Hansen’s own. His hypothesis is a complete and abject failure.
I’ve looked at the data too, and I agree, Hansen’s hypothesis is a dud, and in no way supported by NOAA’s own data to be “scientific fact”. But, because it has been spread by an irresponsible and incurious media, its is a dangerous “dud”.
Let’s go to the data…
In my research regarding why I didn’t think the July 2012 USA Temperature of 77.6F was a record (compared to July 1936 of 77.4F), I spent some time trying to understand how they computed the value, since NCDC offers no way to replicate it and so far has not responded to my query about how it is done.
In conjunction with a switchover to happen next year from simple division averages (TCDD) to gridded averages (GrDD, which they say will be more accurate) NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) offers a visualization tool to plot all sorts of data for the continental USA (CONUS). From NCDC’s U.S. Climate Divisions page:
A visualization toolkit was created to help users examine snapshots of both datasets for the comparison period (i.e., through December 2009). The tool allows the user to select criteria which are of interest and investigate the comparisons themselves. Parameters included in the toolkit are temperature, precipitation, and a variety of drought indices. Changes in monthly, seasonal and annual variability can be examined through the use of the interactive time series plots. In addition, slope (trend) values by decade and 30-year period may also be added to the output plots. This allows the user to take a closer look at the behavior of the data at a variety of smaller time scales throughout the record.
Unfortunately, they don’t have 2010-2012 data online, and I could go to the NCDC FTP site and get the remaining data and plot all of it, but since many people on the alarmist bandwagon don’t trust data plots from skeptics, I thought the fact that these are unmodified 100+ year plots from NCDC directly outweighed the 3 years of data they didn’t provide.
Here’s some screen caps output direct from that visualization toolkit. You can visit it and exactly replicate any of these for yourself.
First, CONUS temperature:
No surprise there. In my opinion, GHCN and all of its airport weather stations tends to make the present warmer than the past, with 1998 being warmer than 1934. But that’s another old story. My real interest in this essay is in precipitation trends and drought trends which don’t go through as many issues with equipment, siting, adjustments, as temperature does.
Here’s national precipitation:
Some people say the precip is down in the summer months due to “increasing drought”, that’s unsupported by the data:
Like with CONUS temperature, there’s an upward trend annual precipitation, and essentially no trend in summer months. This is curious, because if as Dr. Hansen is quoted as saying regarding U.S. Droughts…
“This is not some scientific theory,” Hansen told The Associated Press in an interview. “We are now experiencing scientific fact.”
…you’d expect a downward trend in U.S. precipitation. Interestingly, as shown in the plot above, the driest period for precipitation in the USA is 1951-1956, followed by a big upswing.
But precipitation totals alone is not a measure of drought, soil moisture and other factors figure in too. Let’s look at some drought data. Using NCDC’s visualization toolkit, I’ve plotted the major drought indices based on the Palmer Drought Index. Here’s a description of these indices from NCDC’s page on the current Palmer Index:
The Palmer Z Index measures short-term drought on a monthly scale.
The Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) (known operationally as the Palmer Drought Index (PDI)) attempts to measure the duration and intensity of the long-term drought-inducing circulation patterns. Long-term drought is cumulative, so the intensity of drought during the current month is dependent on the current weather patterns plus the cumulative patterns of previous months. Since weather patterns can change almost literally overnight from a long-term drought pattern to a long-term wet pattern, the PDSI (PDI) can respond fairly rapidly.
The hydrological impacts of drought (e.g., reservoir levels, groundwater levels, etc.) take longer to develop and it takes longer to recover from them. The Palmer Hydrological Drought Index (PHDI), another long-term drought index, was developed to quantify these hydrological effects. The PHDI responds more slowly to changing conditions than the PDSI (PDI).
Here’s the plots, note that for the Palmer Index, negative values correlate to drier conditions, and positive values show wetter conditions. First PDSI:
And since some people will argue that summer months are the most affected:
The flatness of the Palmer Drought Severity Index, compared to the upward trends of temperature and precipitation, strongly suggest no correlation between CONUS temperature and CONUS drought severity. But let’s not stop there, let’s examine the other PDI data types.
Here’s the Modified Palmer Drought Severity Index, the operational version of the PDSI, which was defined in Heddinghaus and Sabol (1991).
Here’s the same data by months:
For summer months, the century scale trend is slightly down. But there is still no large century scale trend in drought.
How about the Palmer Hydrological Drought Index?
Still essentially flat. Note that while there are slight upward trends in the divisional data plots (suggesting less drought), NCDC says this is erroneous, and will introduce the new gridded method in 2013. The GHCN values are flat.
How about the short-term Palmer Z Index? Maybe Hansen’s drought correlation is hiding there?
Still pretty much flat, though there’s a spike in the monthly plot for 2009 that beats 1915. As we know, a couple of months of dry conditions does not a long-term trend make.
How about the summer months for the short-term Z-index?
Short term summer months Z index is slightly down in the last 114 years. But not largely so, certainly nothing like the inverse correlation with CONUS temperature we’d expect to see if Hansen’s hypothesis was true.
Pat Michaels, in his previous WUWT opinion piece, noted that Hansen is making a claim that global temperatures are driving U.S drought, and did a scatterplot to gauge correlation between Hansen’s own GISS temperature data (GISTEMP) and the U.S. Palmer Drought Severity Index with annual data through 2011:
There’s no correlation: zero, zip, nada. If there were, you’d see the dots align along a diagonal line, there’s not even a hint of that. Of course proponents might say that but, but, but, 2012 was a terrible drought. Yes, it was, it is, but a few months of a not yet complete year of data does not a long term trend make. And, we’ve seen worse in the past.
In a Tweet today, NYT reporter Andrew Revkin agrees, drawing attention to this Sunday essay Hundred Year Forecast – Drought (which he didn’t write), saying:
This 21 century reconstruction of rainfall for New Mexico, done by Henri D. Grissino-Mayer, University of Tennessee, in the paper “A 2,129-Year Reconstruction of Precipitation for Northwestern New Mexico, USA,” 1996; David M. Anderson, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Climatic Data Center. Full details here.
This paper suggests that what New Mexico experiences today, isn’t really any different from what it has been experiencing in the past, when CO2 levels were far lower. In fact, for the most recent period, New Mexico has had greater rainfall:
PNAS should withdraw the paper, and NASA should fire Dr. Hansen for promoting an opinion unsupported by data as “scientific fact”.
In God we trust. All others show the data.
Could this be a case of confirmation bias, eloquently described by Matthew Ridley in the WSJ recently?
Kurt in Switzerland
Broken link?
“From NCDC’s U.S. Climate Divisions page:”
REPLY: Fixed thanks, A
Andrew Revkin gets it right, sometimes, and Hansen hasn’t been right yet.
I clicked on the screenshot of that article and was shocked to see the photo of Hansen. He should take better care of himself. I’ve seen more flattering police mug shots. The article says he is a man often called the “godfather of global warming”. The Godfather, right.
I notice in that news story that the story sticks closely to blaming “global warming” and hardly mentions greenhouse gases. Who knows, the next story may be that the earth has warmed since the Little Age! or that the earth has warmed since the last Ice Age. Shocking, we must act now!
Kurt in Switzerland says:
August 12, 2012 at 11:44 am
Could this be a case of confirmation bias, eloquently described by Matthew Ridley in the WSJ recently?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Well yes, it could be.
And Obama could be a closet conservative.
So as the data don’t support their claims, they’re going to change the way we view it?
DaveE.
The Hansen Mann school of scientific bull **** continues. makes me wonder if science class for them was a bottle of Elmer’s glue, some charts, and mimeograph machine..
As I said in the previous thread. All of Hansen’s output should be attributed to NASA as he is funded by them and repeatedly states that he is ‘a NASA Researcher’. The posting would have more effect if it was titled:
“NASA is just wrong: Proof that there is no increased drought in the USA tied to temperature”
“We are now experiencing scientific fact.”
That’s the point I’m afraid you all missed, ladies and gents. Only properly trained and spiritually enlightened scientists can experience scientific facts; the rest of us have to make do with simple, lowly, plain-vanilla facts, like those shown in the graphs.
Droughts happen when there is no rain, and there is no rain because lack of evaporated water (clouds) which in turn it is due to a colder climate.
If global warming were true we would have much more evaporation-more clouds- more rain….
GISS under James Hansen routinely changes the past record. Very dishonest, no?
REPLY:No, not exactly. To be fair, most of that happens at NCDC due to USHCN adjustments. GISS is a user of that data product, so adjustments propagate to their output products as well. – Anthony
Ian W says:
August 12, 2012 at 12:42 pm
…………..The posting would have more effect if it was titled:
“NASA is just wrong: Proof that there is no increased drought in the USA tied to temperature”
——————
Ian, I like it.
“You can visit it and exactly replicate any of these for yourself.”
That’s science.
Some highlights:
“Inference does not lead infailibly to truth.”
“Science is shared knowledge, knowledge whose discovery can be replicated by others”
“the demarcation criterion between science and non-science is falsifiability”
As I’ve pointed out earlier, Hansen is also in conflict with the IPCC on this point. As quoted by Roger Pielke Jr: “… in some regions droughts have become less frequent, less intense, or shorter, for example, central North America …” http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.no/2012/08/ipcc-lead-author-misleads-us-congress.html
Wow they’re quick. It only took two months.
In June James Lovelock was the “Godfather of global warming”
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/06/22/green-drivel
Since he changed his mind it looks like they’re re-writing history and quietly taking his title and giving it to James Hansen.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/08/04/climate-change-real-scientist.html
Within six months people will have forgotten James Lovelock was the godfather of global warming. Dare I say 1984?
We need to send some of those Mars landers to Earth to get the honest Abes @ur momisugly NASA into the loop. Rent is so $$$ up here down a couple blocks from Tom’s diner that I also wonder why NASA hasn’t developed floating city extensions with underwater workspace us entrepreneurs can sign up for? The reactor needed to power it could be safely buried in bedrock, down below. Who scuttled the Atomic Age? Jimmy did, @ur momisugly NASA. Be careful whose space probe you cancel, next time, dear voters, lest you create more Venus envy in budding psychopaths with dear old tree hugger constructed personalities, safely sheltered by literal Muslim pride activism @ur momisugly NASA.gov brought to you by oil money funding of political campaigns and lobbying, I suspect. Solution? Drain the swamp of funny money influence by drilling enough fossil fuel to export like crazy. Duh!
This was from an article in June:
“Two months ago, James Lovelock, the godfather of global warming, gave a startling interview to msnbc.com in which he acknowledged he had been unduly “alarmist” about climate change.”
And now we have this:
The research by a man often called the “godfather of global warming” says that, from the 1950s through the 1980s, the likelihood of such sweltering temperatures occurring was rarer than 1 in 300. Now, the odds are closer to 1 in 10, according to the study by James Hansen.
Proof
If you don’t support the “Team” not only will you not get published, you will lose your “title”.
First, let’s remember our condolences to the Phelan family.
Here we go again, more ‘statistical” lies from NASA’s James Hansen.
For one, I forecasted this year’s drought in advance, in my Astromet Seasonal 2012 Climate Forecast, published in March and can say with 110% certainty that the drought is NOT caused by man-made global warming.”
The cause?
It’s the SUN, stupid.
For years, that’s all I’ve been saying, that global warming is caused by the Sun. That follows the laws of physics.
And, nothing has changed.
The Sun warms and cools the Earth. The laws of physics, and no one – not even James Hansen – can change that. Ever.
Last year as I was worked on my seasonal forecast for 2012 and was nearly ready to publish my public service forecast, I knew when the heat waves, lack of rains and then the resulting drought would arrive this year that people such as Hansen would use this drought to proclaim the following, as Hansen surely did in the CBC piece Anthony Watts highlighted, titled ‘DROUGHT SHOWS GLOBAL WARMING IS A SCIENTIFIC FACT, NASA researcher’s study ‘reframes the question,’ UVic professor says.’
I fully expected to AGW ideologues state this in the media. After Hansen, you will then see the AGW dominoes fall right into line with pronouncements worldwide saying what Hansen has said. Expect to read more of these AGW lies in the media and the Internet over the coming months.
But, everything that Hansen said in that article is not true. It simply is not and can never be.
The misrepresentation of what drives our climate – the laws of physics – are completely ignored by Hansen, who obviously believes the fantasy of man-made global warming but not the Second Law Of Thermodynamics – active and in operation to this very day?
Think of it. A scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York who is also a professor at Columbia University continues to be acclaimed for something that does not exist?
Something that can never happen on Earth because the laws of physics say so?
To publish such an article with any kind of objectivity, common sense and balance has been quite pervasive throughout mainstream media for years on the fallacy of ‘man-made global warming’ (aka “climate change”) though more news organizations are now waking up from their deep climate slumber.
We all know that anthropogenic global warming ideology has been nothing more than a giant ponzi scheme hoisted onto upon the world – costing tens of billions that could have been put to much better use elsewhere.
Careerist ideologues like James Hansen love to pounce on climate/weather events whenever they think that they can dupe the media and the public into believing their lies to support their ideologist agenda.
James Hansen is the chief ideologue who attempts to teach this ideology at university where he can tell students what to think.
Hansen is telling them NOT to believe in the laws of physics.
Hansen is telling them not to believe their own eyes. Hansen is telling them lies.
Curiously, Hansen did not forecast a drought for this season. Hansen does not prove that he knows how to forecast the climate and weather in the real world. He has never done this.
But what Hansen has done before is to pontificate on ‘man-made global warming’ but he never produces a seasonal climate forecast – that’s 3 months of climate – in advance.
Rather, what Hansen says he has done, here in his ‘study’ – is to obscure the true causes of the current drought based on his “statistics that are not your “typical climate modelling” and blames the heat waves purely on global warming?
That’s what ideological climate modelers do, they base their ‘statistics’ chosen to fit their desired outcome, to then pronounce their desired ideology as fact when it is fiction.
The true verifier of all climate and weather forecasts is Mother Nature. She has the last say on all forecasts.
That’s what I call the laws of physics: Mother Nature.
Moreover, how can Hansen even presume to apply his ‘statistics’ at this time when the drought is not over?
The drought has started, yes, but it is not over. So just how can Hansen presume to then judge what will happen when we are not at the end of this current drought? That is when the ‘statistics’ are then formulated. To look back and count.
But Hansen does not forecast seasonal climate weather, so how can he look ahead? He uses statistics on events like the ongoing drought which is not over?
We are in the midst of the drought and still taking down all the numbers.
So how is Hansen able to ascertain what says about this drought with statistics – that’s the numbers – when all the numbers are not yet in? How is that possible?
I forecasted this drought, not using statistics, but by astronomical means, in advance. I wrote published my seasonal forecast in advance of the summer/fall 2012 seasons. That’s six months. See -> http://solarcycle24com.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=globalwarming&action=display&thread=1929
This, after a good spring planting season where American farmers in the corn-belt had planted a record corn crop. Those who did not listen to the long-range climate forecast were then shocked to see the drought arrive this solar year, as forecasted.
Moreover, the current spreading drought is caused by the lack of precipitation extending over regions of the United States. It was then acerbated by warmer-than-normal temperatures by means of heat waves as I forecasted would happen this year.
The drought is ongoing at the time of writing in August 2012. It is not over; so we cannot apply statistics at this time, as Hansen has done, to say that ‘global warming’ – rather than the SUN – is the cause.
That is essentially what Hansen is saying here. He is denying the laws of physics.
This drought is caused by the conditions in space. That is where our Earth lives and the Sun is the cause of all global warming. Why? Because the laws of physics say so.
For scientists like James Hansen to reject the laws of physics is not a issue of climate science, or skepticism, nor even ideology – but more a matter of mental health.
– Theodore White, astrometeorologist.Sci
First, let’s remember our condolences to the Phelan family.
Here we go again, more ‘statistical” lies from NASA’s James Hansen.
For one, I forecasted this year’s drought in advance, in my Astromet Seasonal 2012 Climate Forecast, published in March and can say with 110% certainty that the drought is NOT caused by man-made global warming.”
The cause?
It’s the SUN, stupid.
For years, that’s all I’ve been saying, that global warming is caused by the Sun. That follows the laws of physics.
And, nothing has changed.
The Sun warms and cools the Earth. The laws of physics, and no one – not even James Hansen – can change that. Ever.
Last year as I was worked on my seasonal forecast for 2012 and was nearly ready to publish my public service forecast, I knew when the heat waves, lack of rains and then the resulting drought would arrive this year that people such as Hansen would use this drought to proclaim the following, as Hansen surely did in the CBC piece Anthony Watts highlighted, titled ‘DROUGHT SHOWS GLOBAL WARMING IS A SCIENTIFIC FACT, NASA researcher’s study ‘reframes the question,’ UVic professor says.’
I fully expected AGW ideologues to say this in the media during the drought that was coming. After Hansen’s statements, you will see the AGW ideologues fall right into line with pronouncements worldwide saying what Hansen has said. Expect to read more of these AGW lies in the media and the Internet over the coming months.
But, everything that Hansen said in that article is not true. It simply is not and can never be.
The misrepresentation of what drives our climate – the laws of physics – are completely ignored by Hansen, who obviously believes the fantasy of man-made global warming but not the Second Law Of Thermodynamics – active and in operation to this very day?
Think of it. A scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York who is also a professor at Columbia University continues to be acclaimed for something that does not exist?
Something that can never happen on Earth because the laws of physics say so?
To publish such an article with any kind of objectivity, common sense and balance has been quite pervasive throughout mainstream media for years on the fallacy of ‘man-made global warming’ (aka “climate change”) though more news organizations are now waking up from their deep climate slumber.
We all know that anthropogenic global warming ideology has been nothing more than a giant ponzi scheme hoisted onto upon the world – costing tens of billions that could have been put to much better use elsewhere.
Careerist ideologues like James Hansen love to pounce on climate/weather events whenever they think that they can dupe the media and the public into believing their lies to support their ideologist agenda.
James Hansen is the chief ideologue who attempts to teach this ideology at university where he can tell students what to think.
Hansen is telling them NOT to believe in the laws of physics.
Hansen is telling them not to believe their own eyes. Hansen is telling them lies.
Curiously, Hansen did not forecast a drought for this season. Hansen does not prove that he knows how to forecast the climate and weather in the real world. He has never done this.
But what Hansen has done before is to pontificate on ‘man-made global warming’ but he never produces a seasonal climate forecast – that’s 3 months of climate – in advance.
Rather, what Hansen says he has done, here in his ‘study’ – is to obscure the true causes of the current drought based on his “statistics that are not your “typical climate modelling” and blames the heat waves purely on global warming?
That’s what ideological climate modelers do, they base their ‘statistics’ chosen to fit their desired outcome, to then pronounce their desired ideology as fact when it is fiction.
The true verifier of all climate and weather forecasts is Mother Nature. She has the last say on all forecasts.
That’s what I call the laws of physics: Mother Nature.
Moreover, how can Hansen even presume to apply his ‘statistics’ at this time when the drought is not over?
The drought has started, yes, but it is not over. So just how can Hansen presume to then judge what will happen when we are not at the end of this current drought? That is when the ‘statistics’ are then formulated. To look back and count.
But Hansen does not forecast seasonal climate weather, so how can he look ahead? He uses statistics on events like the ongoing drought which is not over?
We are in the midst of the drought and still taking down all the numbers.
So how is Hansen able to ascertain what says about this drought with statistics – that’s the numbers – when all the numbers are not yet in? How is that possible?
I forecasted this drought, not using statistics, but by astronomical means, in advance. I wrote published my seasonal forecast in advance of the summer/fall 2012 seasons. That’s six months. See -> http://solarcycle24com.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=globalwarming&action=display&thread=1929
This, after a good spring planting season where American farmers in the corn-belt had planted a record corn crop. Those who did not listen to the long-range climate forecast were then shocked to see the drought arrive this solar year, as forecasted.
Moreover, the current spreading drought is caused by the lack of precipitation extending over regions of the United States. It was then acerbated by warmer-than-normal temperatures by means of heat waves as I forecasted would happen this year.
The drought is ongoing at the time of writing in August 2012. It is not over; so we cannot apply statistics at this time, as Hansen has done, to say that ‘global warming’ – rather than the SUN – is the cause.
That is essentially what Hansen is saying here. He is denying the laws of physics.
This drought is caused by the conditions in space. That is where our Earth lives and the Sun is the cause of all global warming. Why? Because the laws of physics say so.
For scientists like James Hansen to reject the laws of physics is not a issue of climate science, or skepticism, nor even ideology – but more a matter of mental health.
– Theodore White, astrometeorologist.Sci
I am reposting this comment that I entered in near the end of the comments on my original piece. One reader, SRJ, had suggested it would be better for me to have compared US temperatures to the Palmer Index. Here it is:
SRJ–
I’ll go you one better. What we are really interested in is how much US drought behavior is explained by global warming, [as Hansen clearly is stating that US droughts are being enhanced by GLOBAL warming]. [The problem is the PE term in the PDSI is partially determined by temperature, so it is a truism that warmer than normal readings will lower the normalized PDSI]. So, first let’s regress GLOBAL temperature anomalies and US temperature anomalies. The r-squared is .33 (adjusted).
Then we can use the temperatures fit by the regression and compare them to the national PDSI. The explained variance is ZERO.
Now, let’s regress the residual from the global-US fit–i.e., the NON-global warming component of the US record, on the national PDSI values. While the r-squared is low–.045–because of the sample size, that is signficant, indicating that it is the NON-global warming component of the global GISS temperatures that is related to drought here, and NOT the global warming component.
I caution you that the regression statistics are very smarmy due to obvious intercorrelation in the temperature history, and that the residual degrees of freedom are surely less than n-1-1.
After 40+ years as a field geologist, I think I have a pretty clear (and humbling) idea of the scientific method: Observation, Hypothesis, Verification/Validation, and Revision. There is no Final Answer, no Consensus, no Settled Science.
The historical record is incomplete, the processes are only partially known, and the best explanation of all facts at any point in time is just that – nothing more – subject to further testing.
Egomaniacs like Hansen drive me nuts because they fundamentally corrupt the title/concept of Scientist for political/personal reasons to claim special authority in public debate.
There is phenomenal arrogance behind the presumption that, because some small part of a highly chaotic system can be reduced to a mathematical expression, only scientists can understand and interpret the results and state implications for public policy. When so-called scientists cross this line and presume to claim moral/intellectual authority in policy discussions, they cease to be scientists. They become political hacks.
The money and fame that have accrued to “climate science” have largely corrupted the investigative sciences in the field.
This is so, so, so deeply sad.
Years, probably decades, will be needed to reverse these perversions of the scientific method.
I’d like to read what Demetris Koutsoyiannis has to offer about the current drought and precipitation records. No matter what his message, we could be sure that it’s strictly honest and rigorous. If he agreed with Jim Hansen, so be it.
Juraj V says:
August 12, 2012 at 11:38 am
In God we trust. All others show the data.
**********************************************
I realize your comment is a take-off of an old cliche’ , but nonetheless; who’s god are you placing your trust in? There are literally hundreds to choose from. All of them invented by people. I would demand data from any of them.
One of the first things I read this morning circa 06:30 EDT.
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/08/10/hes-100-wrong-but-climate-scientist-is-99-certain-droughts-are-caused-by-man-made-global-warming