Just a little something he threw together
Guest Post by David Middleton
First the breath-taking headlines…
- Scientists Report Faster Warming in Antarctica, New York Times (WUWT commentary)
- West Antarctic Ice Sheet warming twice earlier estimate, BBC
- West Antarctica warming much faster than previously believed, study finds, NBC
- Western Antarctica is warming three times faster than the rest of the world, Grist
Oh noes out the wazzoo!!!
What could possibly have caused such an out-pouring of Mr. Bill impersonations?
Apparently this did…
Central West Antarctica among the most rapidly warming regions on Earth
David H. Bromwich,1, 5 Julien P. Nicolas,5, 1 Andrew J. Monaghan,2 Matthew A. Lazzara,3 Linda M. Keller,4 George A. Weidner4 & Aaron B. Wilson1
Nature Geoscience Year published: (2012) doi:10.1038/ngeo1671
Received02 May 2012 Accepted15 November 2012 Published online23 December 2012
Abstract
There is clear evidence that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is contributing to sea-level rise. In contrast, West Antarctic temperature changes in recent decades remain uncertain. West Antarctica has probably warmed since the 1950s, but there is disagreement regarding the magnitude, seasonality and spatial extent of this warming. This is primarily because long-term near-surface temperature observations are restricted to Byrd Station in central West Antarctica, a data set with substantial gaps. Here, we present a complete temperature record for Byrd Station, in which observations have been corrected, and gaps have been filled using global reanalysis data and spatial interpolation. The record reveals a linear increase in annual temperature between 1958 and 2010 by 2.4±1.2 °C, establishing central West Antarctica as one of the fastest-warming regions globally.
[…]
The manufactured “record reveals a linear increase in annual temperature between 1958 and 2010 by 2.4±1.2 °C.” That’s a 50% margin of error on the reconstruction that supposedly corrected the recording errors.
I haven’t purchased access to the paper (nor do I intend to); however, the freely available supplementary information includes a graph of their reconstructed temperature record for Byrd Station. It looks very similar to the NASA-GISS graph that doesn’t show any significant recent warming trend.
The NASA-GISS data (GHCN & SCAR) for Byrd Station are in two segments: 1957-1975 and 1980-2012. The 1957-1975 series depicts a moderately significant (R² = 0.19) warming trend of about 1.0 °C per decade. The post-1980 series depicts a statistically insignificant (R² = 0.01) trend of 0.3 °C per decade.
Bromwich et al., 2012 get their 2.4 °C of warming from 1958-2010 (0.4 °C per decade) by stitching together the fragmented data sets. If I just combine the two NASA-GISS series, I get a trend of about 0.4 °C per decade…
But, almost all of that warming took place before 1988. And Byrd Station has seen no warming (actually a slight cooling) since 1991.
Furthermore, the corrected temperature record of Bromwich et al., 2012 appears to actually depict more cooling since 1991 than the uncorrected data…
Bunkum. First mistake: One data point. Further mistakes: Filling in the gaps with outright fabrications. How this ever passed [strike]peer[/strike] pal review….oh never mind. Undisguised alarmist glitzerature.
Sorry but what did you expect? The truth? The truth does not put food on the table.
Now we can see, There is more science in the wierd-tip ads that in some peer-reviewed articles. The Mayans were right.
Looks like a good opportunity for someone in the UK to register a formal complaint to the BBC for not researching their stories properly…
Here’s the retraction and apology from the BBC:
“Our most sincere apologies to all those we may have misled by the article on historical temperatures from the Byrd station in western Antarctica.
Our headlines may have suggested unusual warming in western Antarctica which may have alarmed some readers, when in fact there was little or no warming. It is not the BBC’s task to investigate obvious data manipulation, as occurred here, but to always accept the results of peer reviewed publications at face value.
It is BBC policy to always publish corrections, especially on the sensitive subject of climate change, where we often make mistakes simply because we never read, or understood, the original source material. The BBC is here to inform and not alarm, to educate and not mislead, and as such we have internal directives forbidding the publication and distribution of any and all unfounded news stories designed to alarm the uninformed general public.”
Sarc off/
Nature Geoscience -what a joke mag. Does anyone know if there is a list of science publications which have reliable quality control on what they publish? Please advise.
You just can not trust real data. It might give the wrong impression.
“in which observations have been corrected”
are these people related to Hansen ??.. blood brothers, whatever ???
sorry, but how the **** do they know the observations were wrong, and which direction to “correct” (lol) them ???????
WUWT sorted this out within 24 hours of the BBC scare story…well done Anthony. All we need is a msm report to back it up. I have contacted two UK daily’s…no sign of the correction just yet but we live in hope. After all the Mail did publish the MET Ofiice graph showing a lack of warmig for the last 15 years.
“The fact that temperatures are rising in the summer means there’s a prospect of WAIS not only being melted from the bottom as we know it is today, but in future it looks probable that it will be melting from the top as well,” he said.
Can someone tell me if this is even physically possible? What is the ambient temperature in the Antarctic, even with “rising” summer temperatures?
“Here, we present a complete temperature record for Byrd Station, in which observations have been corrected, and gaps have been filled using global reanalysis data and spatial interpolation.”
“observations have been corrected” = actual measurements have been replaced by made-up values that look better.,
“gaps have been filled using global reanalysis data and spatial interpolation” = we guessed some numbers where measurements were missing.
Science?
The truth does not put food on the table.
Oh, but it does. For the daisies.
Two events in the Antarctic that a climate scientist should consider:
– Solar activity and the Antarctic’s magnetic field move in synchronism but in a counter-phase (solar up – Antarctic down and vice versa)
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AntarcticSunEarthLink.htm
– Circumpolar current – by far the world’s strongest ocean current. Its waters and the atmosphere have an 8 year temperature cycle) ACW-Antarctic circumpolar This wave propagates westward against the current but ultimately ends up travelling eastward, due to the massive size of the ACC, at a slower rate than the mean flow. The wave circles the earth every eight to nine years (White and Peterson, 1996). It has a long wavelength (wavenumber=2) resulting in two crests and two troughs at any given time. The crests and troughs are associated with massive patches or pools of warm water and cold water respectively. The areas can be thousands of kilometers long. The warm patches are 2 to 3°C warmer than the mean sea surface temperature (SST) and the cold patches are 2 to 3°C cooler than the mean SST.
http://www.spacedaily.com/images/antarctic-circumpolar-wave-bg.jpg
It definitely is not science it is conjuring. They should apply to join “The Magic Circle”
Even Tom Curtis at unSkeptical pseudoScience and Wiki-Weasel Connelley at his Stoat blog have been sufficently embarrassed to call foul on this alarmist “Christmas Special” Especially the misleading press release with the falsely captioned figure – and the BBC’s slavish falling for it hook line & sinker.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/West-Antarctica-warming-more-than-expected_NCAR.html#88891
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2012/12/25/you-cant-blog-on-christmas-day/
Nevertheless – it did the trick with the mainstream media Christmas news scheduled as planned.
Mission accomplished.
They could have published a compendium of incontrovertible proof that cagw was not occurring and as long as the headline said Worse than we thought the media would have gone full on OH Noes.
Has Joelle Gergis spawned?
This is like a mad re-run of the ‘Boys from Brazil’.
Sorry I could not say anything about the science of this paper. There wasn’t any!
Did anyone already plug the Bromwich et al 2012 Byrd data into the O’Donnell et al 2010 Antarctic reconstruction program ?
http://www.climateaudit.info/data/odonnell/
It would be interesting to see if the O’Donnell conclusions still hold after this much more accurate Byrd station temperature record reconstruction.
After all, O’Donnell et al’s own reconstruction at Byrd was highly questionable, since it was based upon temperature trends from stations a 1000 km away across the Ross sea, which arguably have next to nothing to do with the temperature trends at Byrd.
Peer reviewed?
Poor Middleton thinks its Ice Age 🙂
Looking at the last graph struck me something that companies with corrupt executive suite typically do — namely — if a bad quarter is imminent then might as well dump all accounting shenanigan one had been carrying on the books into that quarter; and take the beating on the stock price and get it out there.
In this paper, it seems since the global temperatures have barely budged in the last 16 years, might as well take whatever little heating we have had and put it in the previous decades and then wait for a paper to come along to “explain” the lack of warming caused by CO2 or some such. Or wait for the warming to start again and note its presence and ignore recent history.
Here, we present a complete
temperaturerecord forByrd Stationour bank account, in which observations have been corrected, and gaps have been filled using global reanalysis data and spatial interpolation. The record reveals a linear increase inannual temperatureour bank account balance between 1958 and 2010 by2.4±1.2 °C$500,000,000, establishingcentral West Antarcticaour bank account as one of the fastest-warming regionsgrowing globally.They should try the same thing with their bank account, but I don’t think it would pass the laugh test at their local bank.
I pist my pants really I did when I was reading the article. At first it’s a standard AGW propaganda peace but then when you look more closely you see so much stupidity that you can’t belief this is science but ya it still is called that way.
So I went on to find, I did not know what but I was searching the net for more.
I found this. I couldn’t find the link or this is the link but they replaced it whit a les dangers tekst.
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_22256350/ncar-study-west-antarctic-ice-sheet-warming-twice#ixzz2GFJBq100
Researchers have been unable in the past to make great use of readings from the Byrd Station, established in 1957, because of incomplete observations there because it has not been continuously inhabited.
A year-round automated station was put in place in 1980, but even that has been subject to frequent power outages, particularly during the extended polar night, when its solar panels are unable to recharge.
Interesting peach of studie.
First man him self need to look the thermometer to get the data. He could only do so a small amount of time because of the fact that the post is only inhabited when? Yes indeed the warmer period en that’s only a small period also. So the data range is very small. Take in consideration that the man properly was not that need whit data gendering en you find the dataset very unreliable.
But there is more.
In 1980 they have seen the light and found it better to stage a automated station. Unfortenetlie this one get is power from solar panels en guess what? They don’t work most of the year because of the leg of sun. And when is the sun not shining? Yes in winter.
So its clear that the data is only from the warm period. If you stick the ends to getter you will see automatically en increase of temperature because all the cool bits arnt there.
Then if you consider the fact that there could be some rumbling around AKA fudging the data you gen almost be clear that there is no warming at all but even a firm cooling instate.
Then in the Netherlands came the news that the UK metoffice came whit the prediction that 2013 will be 0,57 degrees warmer then this year.
Link. http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2012/2013-global-forecast
So the alarmist make a joke off them selfs.
Sorry mist a peace A year-round automated station was put in place in 1980, but even that has been subject to frequent power outages, particularly during the extended polar night, when its solar panels are unable to recharge.
Am I right in surmising that this is the only station showing such warming? If so wasn’t this picked up on by the reviewers? If not is the journal using suitably qualified reviewers?
Can anyone please enlighten me? Is the NASA GISS data for Byrd station raw data, or has it already been adjusted in some way?
I found the same things and have a copy of the paper. Essentially, this paper represents an attempt to use the 2011 updated AWS data and paste it onto the manual data to find a trend. Although the initial submission of the paper had effort put into AWS data, in its final form O’Donnell 10 was just a correction to S09 math. If the data changes, it will change the result.
I downloaded the recent AWS and Manual data from Byrd, ran an anomaly calc and subtracted from Bromwich 12 results. I got a perfect match at all points where data existed. I have spent no time on the infilling, but I am very skeptical of the infilled series quality.
I received the old AWS data from Nic Lewis and subtracted from the new, and found that the corrections were about 1 C up and then 1C down later. Basically they are very large. The Bromwich paper discusses some of the rationale behind the corrections but does not provide enough information to replicate them.
The whole point is that if the corrections are reasonable, then the non-infilled result is probably reasonable. The infilling of gaps is questionable at best.
Oh, and the thermometer data (not infilled) shows about 2C over 52 years where the paper reports 2.4 with infilled data.
RealClimate Bore Hole 1126. “What Bromwich at al. have shown is that Byrd Station is actually cooling in the last 2 decades. Warming, if any, happened in the 1980s. It is inconsistent with other studies showing recent warming at the same location.”
Comment by Berényi Péter — 26 Dec 2012 @ 4:39 PM
It was a comment to The heat is on in West Antarctica by Eric Steig, boreholed properly as all inconvenient but true propositions are supposed to at that site.
BTW, I have painstakingly re-digitized Figure S10 of the Supplementary Information and the trend mentioned above turns out to be -1.74°C/cy.
If this is how one of the most rapidly warming regions on Earth looks like, the rest should be cooling even faster, should not it? (I am fed up with bloated headlines in scientific journals that contribute nothing to science but are designed to be picked up by MSM zombies disinclined to check the background.)
so Antarctic scare story- false,
Kilamanjaro ice loss- nothing to do with AGW, currently putting on ice,
Himalayan glaciers- another false story currently putting on ice,
Frogs dying in S America- nothing to do with AGW
All James Hansen prediction from the 1980s- wrong.
@ Dodgy Geezer
I have complained – although I struggled to get it into the 1500 characters allowed by the BBC to complain online.
Here it is:
The 2.4C increase in average annual temperature 1958 to 2010 is subject to a 50% error margin of + or – 1.2 degrees. Mentioning this takes one more sentence.
See the supplementary information for this paper. Almost all of the warming took place before 1988 and there has been no statistically significant warming (in fact cooling) since 1991. See – http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/extref/ngeo1671-s1.pdf. The BBC reports warming for a period when there is cooling.
The article quotes a co-author – “What we’re seeing is one of the strongest warming signals on earth” – without mentioning uncertainty, without assessing the method of filling in the Byrd station data, (essentially guesswork), giving a statistically insignificant (R2=0.01) trend of 0.03 degrees per decade post 1980.
“The authors say they are confident that the data from Byrd Station is representative of the region …. for a considerable distance.”
Might some perspective be given, say that the WAIS is 8 times larger than the whole of the UK, an area of 765000 sq miles? Is that confidence justified and if so on what basis?
The authors say they are unable to say if any warming is by humans. McGrath quotes these scientists stating that in their “opinion” it is probably human caused and that “some of it IS influenced by human acts”. No comment on how scientific these scientists are being in voicing such an “opinion”?
The paper overall does not say what McGrath reports. This is not about “warmist” or “skeptic”, but an obvious inability to take a science paper, consider it, and give a reasonable and accurate report of its contents and findings with some intelligence applied to them by the correspondent or journalist.
This is not journalism or reporting, but, deliberate or not, advocacy.
@Rob Decker
“After all, O’Donnell et al’s own reconstruction at Byrd was highly questionable, since it was based upon temperature trends from stations a 1000 km away across the Ross sea, which arguably have next to nothing to do with the temperature trends at Byrd.”
What do you think they did in this paper to infill the missing temps? And how do you think NASA-GISS extrapolate temps with their 1200km grids?
Hockey stick graph- gone to AGW heaven,
The post-1980 series depicts a statistically insignificant (R² = 0.01) trend of 0.3 °C per decade.
I hope you mean .03, because .3 is rather significant….
And yet more linear regressions. The only function this field knows apparently. Y=mx+b. I’m sure the real world works that simply.
Rob Dekker,
That will be O’Donnell, 2013. It’s even worserer than we thought!
mitigatedsceptic says:
December 27, 2012 at 2:11 am
“Peer reviewed?”
More like steer reviewed, you know, a bunch of bull with no balls to it.
The derision this “science” deserves is almost more than I can fathom. As Triumph the puppet dog might say, “Another peer-reviewed climate paper… for me to poop on.”
Look, it’s simple. All they’ve got left is catastrophic sea level rise from the Greenland Ice Cap(which sits in a bowl) sliding into the sea, or the WAIS suddenly falling into the sea.
With Catastrophic AGW wisping into willows and plain vanilla AGW being recognized as a good thing, with Climate Change being accepted as normal, with Climate Weirding being disproven statistically, the clandestine coterie of climate have fooled themselves into thinking the people will fall for this. Sure, it is easy to picture, but is it easy to happen?
============================
David,
In their Supplementary Table S1 they report a post-1980 decadal trend of 0.51+/-0.52C. Although not statistically significant, it is in fact a bit larger than their 0.47+/-0.23C decadal trend for the whole period. Do you know where this discrepancy with your results comes from?
Thanks,
Mikel
BBC puts up these articles and rarely allows any reader feed back comments anymore.
They get way with posting misinformation all the time & there is little anyone can do about it.
It would be nice to see a full page retraction or another major media source take them to task but it never happens
MattN says: December 27, 2012 at 4:22 am
The post-1980 series depicts a statistically insignificant (R² = 0.01) trend of 0.3 °C per decade.
I hope you mean .03, because .3 is rather significant…
Not with R² = 0.01
The BBC article is so misleading… I have complained to the BBC about the presentation…
See complaint below:
The article references a paper detailing how a temperature record from a single weather station in West Antarctica was reconstructed and then showed a significantly higher rate of warming than in the rest of the continent. This is not a critique of that paper which has its own flaws. This is a complaint about the map at the top right of the article which has the following caption: “The data from Byrd Station shows rapid warming on the west Antarctic ice sheet” The map is in fact a contour map showing the correlation coefficient between the temperature record at Byrd and the other stations in Antarctica, by definition, the value of the correlation coefficient at the Byrd station will be 1. Every other station in Antarctica has a correlation coefficient of 0.3 or less… this is a rather moderate level of correlation and suggests that rebuilding the temperature record based on the other weather stations will be unreliable. The fact that there is a massive red bulls eye at the Byrd station is a mathematical certainty, the size of the bullseye is a function of the spacing between the weather stations and the mapping software. The big red bulls eye is wholly unrelated to the warming derived from this reconstruction. To use this map and to then label it with the caption is to deliberately mislead, and shows the bias in reporting of issues relating to AGW.
The R² equaling 0.01 makes the trend insignificant. This essentially means that the 0.3 °C per decade trend only explains 1% of the variation in the time series. All of that 0.3 °C per decade is driven by the 1.0 °C per decade trend from 1957-1975.
Byrd Station almost undoubtedly warmed quite a bit as atmospheric CO2 climbed from 315 to 330 ppmv. Then it warmed a tiny bit as CO2 rose from 330 to the “safe” level of 350 ppmv. It has not warmed since CO2 entered the CAGW zone and climbed above 390 ppmv.
My trend is from the GHCN/SCAR data from NASA-GISS. It’s a simple linear regression. I didn’t calculate a standard deviation; but the R² of 0.01 leads me to believe that the error bar would be pretty large.
I did not have access to B12’s data; but any time the MoE is as large as or larger than the trend, I tend to discount it.
And we’ve got a weather station that’s showing a maximum summer temp below -10C!, and that was in the early 1970s.
Now, when I was at school, we were taught that ice melts at 0C.
A comment in General.
Any, any paper on AGW that is pay-walled should automatically dismissed. We Taxpayers have already PAID for the research and work {cough, cough}, and we should not have to pay again.
Unless there is some reason to assume that a logarithmic, exponential or other type of function would better capture the trend, linear regressions are generally the best choice.
Ideally, it would be great to have about 3,000 years of instrumental data. That way you could take it into the frequency domain and identify the natural cyclicity. Then you could fit a Gaussian filter to it and demonstrate that there are no actual secular trends in the temperature data.
A note on the title of this post: I forgot to include one. The title of “Mr. Fix-it” is really funny because I am totally helpless when it comes to fixing things around the house. My “tool kit” consists of duct tape, bungee cords, zip-ties and rubber bands… 😉
When the warm turns, the bill will come due for these claims they’ve put on their “credit” card–not only the authors, but the journals and the MSM. Who will ever believe them again?
As Adam Gallon says:
December 27, 2012 at 6:37 am
And we’ve got a weather station that’s showing a maximum summer temp below -10C!, and that was in the early 1970s.
Now, when I was at school, we were taught that ice melts at 0C.
==========================================================
I am with Adam, or am I missing something ? What about the fact that it does not matter what the average temperature is, it matters how many hours the ice sheet is above 0C for it to contribute to rising sea level. And subtract from those hours the number of hours the sea is below the freezing point, creating new ice. I did not see any of the averages above 0C. You could assume an increase in average temperatures means an increase in melting hours, but you would need proof for that assumption. Oops, used the “p” word, that is a bad word in Mannian climate science. And we all know about about “assume.”
David Middleton says: “Unless there is some reason to assume that a logarithmic, exponential or other type of function would better capture the trend, linear regressions are generally the best choice.”
Thanks for an interesting article but this last statement is just main-stream climate stupidity.
You don’t fit a linear “trend” or any model because you don’t know what else to use therefore it must be “best”. You make a model that you think may mean something and fit it.
If you can’t think a model that may mean something, you don’t fit one , it’s that simple.
If the term “linear trend” was banned from climate science 95% of them would be out of a job. The 5% that remained may be capable of producing some science.
Berényi Péter says,
“(I am fed up with bloated headlines in scientific journals that contribute nothing to science but are designed to be picked up by MSM zombies disinclined to check the background.)”
This got me thinking.
Partly for the fun of it, and partly as a teaching mechanism, WUWT could have a yearly program like the Academy Awards. However, the awards will be for mis-deeds, in the spirit of the Darwin awards. If there’s a budget for it, you’d want a big stage, emcees dressed in Tuxedos and formal gowns, lots of glitters, maybe even some singers (of parodies) and mime/dancers (featuring the Hot to Trotters; they could do stuff like rhythmically touch ice statues and pretend that they’ve been burnt; another variation, inspired by the opening scene of 2001, A Space Odyssey, is that the dancers could be dressed as scientists, and touch an ice slab, which them causes them to de-evolve, pronto. You’d know they de-evolved, because they’d start dancing like monkeys).
We could call these the Climate Catastrophe Awards. Categories would include:
1) The Dupe-ee (or Dupe-ease) Category, awarded to a newspaper or magazine, for most misleading headline. (I’d vote for NYT/”Scientists Report Faster Warming in Antarctica”)
2) Hot Air Category, for the most Hansen like (i.e., super catastrophic) prediction by a scientist
3) Blood and Gore Category, highest number of distinct errors (which remind us of wounds) within a given piece of work. You could also call this the Inconvenient Truths Category.
4) No Blood, Just Gore Category, for most disgusting statement by a climate catastrophist. The pedophilia insinuation will have stiff competition from the Parncutt’s Nazi-like death wishes.
5) Exxon-Mobil Big Blank Check Category, for researcher who deserved the biggest check from Exxon-Mobil for the past year, but actually got nothing from them. In addition to a statue, a big, 3 foot blank check from Exxon-Mobil will be printed up and filled out, awaiting only the CEO’s signature
Hey, if I could have got away with crap like this in high school and college in the late sixties and early seventies, I could have been a PhD and a Nobel Laureate.
Man Bearpig says:
December 27, 2012 at 2:39 am
Am I right in surmising that this is the only station showing such warming? If so wasn’t this picked up on by the reviewers? If not is the journal using suitably qualified reviewers?
Keith Guy says:
December 27, 2012 at 2:41 am
Can anyone please enlighten me? Is the NASA GISS data for Byrd station raw data, or has it already been adjusted in some way?
I do not have all of the raw numbers with me right now, but as I recall, only the West Antarctica area is “warming” – the rest of Antarctica is getting substantially colder over time – particularly the higher very cold central plateau well away from the water. The water, of course, closely surrounds the peninsula where this ONE thermometer (used to be) located.
NASA-GISS automatically (and without outside auditing nor manual oversite) changes EVERY past record every month based on today’s (most recent) light readings because Hansen is trying to “smooth” every available long-term record into a wide a spacing as possible . I can’t prove it, but I have no reason to think Hansen’s algorithm – which adjusts past temperature records based on today’s latest reading and today’s light values, while editing out past records that have intervals or gaps and smoothing the data between stations up to 1200 km – does anything different for the Antarctic than it does for central Tennessee.
Vuckevic: – Circumpolar current – by far the world’s strongest ocean current. Its waters and the atmosphere have an 8 year temperature cycle) ACW-Antarctic circumpolar This wave propagates westward against the current but ultimately ends up travelling eastward, due to the massive size of the ACC, at a slower rate than the mean flow. The wave circles the earth every eight to nine years (White and Peterson, 1996). It has a long wavelength (wavenumber=2) resulting in two crests and two troughs at any given time. The crests and troughs are associated with massive patches or pools of warm water and cold water respectively. The areas can be thousands of kilometers long. The warm patches are 2 to 3°C warmer than the mean sea surface temperature (SST) and the cold patches are 2 to 3°C cooler than the mean SST.
http://www.spacedaily.com/images/antarctic-circumpolar-wave-bg.jpg
That graphic is very interesting. The Antactic is the only place in the world where the tides propagate as more or less straight waves, like they are going somewhere instead of turning around in circles around an antidrome.
Secondly the fact that this is a double wave is also suggestive of a tidal phenomenon.
Something fairly regular seems to happen at the other end as well. Though seems a bit longer.
http://i49.tinypic.com/xudsy.png
David Middleton says:
December 27, 2012 at 6:43 am (responding to)
David Middleton: Please name one trend of any magnitude in climate science over any time frame that is linear. EVERY temperature record is cyclical – from the air under a passing solar eclipse over a 15 minute period, to the daily rise and fall of temperature overnight, to the seasons to rainfall to snow and ice extents, to the century-long little ice ages between the 110,000 year glacier cycles that repeat themselves over a 4,000,000 year cycle – the ONLY linear relationship in the earth’s history is Hansen’s
T(t) = Mann(CO2) + b
David M and P Solar – with respect: before thinking about how to ‘capture a trend’ should one not consider whether or not there really is any reason to suggest that there is any trend at all? If, as IPCC has hinted years ago, climate is chaotic – i.e. is not state determined (the coming state is not determined by its current state) why should we expect to find any trend at all? Imposing a trend on a heap of numbers is a private psychological exercise and little to do with understanding the ‘nature of things in the real world’.
Please forgive the compression of this argument; I am sure you get my drift? There’s a lot of this about – grabbing at trends without first trying to determine whether or not the system is chaotic. The ghastly truth is that much science is (inadvertently) fraudulent in this respect.
As Nurse said – science is all we have to hand – what he did not say was -‘ be prepared to be surprised!’
I agree that the application of linear regressions to cyclical functions is wrong. The problem is that you almost never have sufficient instrumental temperature data from which to build a model to demonstrate the millennial –scale cyclicity.
If you look at the non-Hockey Stick Northern Hemisphere reconstructions (Moberg, Loehle, Esper, Ljungqvist, etc.), it’s pretty easy to build a model because you can actually identify the millennial-scale cycle. Davis & Bohling (2000) identified numerous Holocene cycles in the GISP2 ice core using Fourier analysis. The dominant cycle had a period of approximately 1,000 years. The ~60-yr cycle was the most prominent sub-centennial oscillation.
The Antarctic instrumental records are too short to show even the 60-yr cycle. The global instrumental records (HadCRUT) clearly show the 60-yr cycle; but are way too short to show any of the longer period cycles. The apparent secular trend obtained by linear regression is the upward leg of the millennial cycle.
I agree with you. The problem is that almost all of the instrumental climate data are of too short a duration to “see” that cyclicity.
See this WUWT post of mine for a discussion on this topic.
These are as “raw” as you can easily download from NASA-GISS.
The station selection menu has three options:
1) GHCN v3 (adj) + SCAR data
2) After removing suspicious records
3) After GISS homogeneity adjustment
I selected the first option. These are not raw data; but they have not been “homogenized.”
oeman50 says: (December 27, 2012 at 7:16 am)
> I am with Adam, or am I missing something ? What about the fact that it does not matter what the average temperature is, it matters how many hours the ice sheet is above 0C for it to contribute to rising sea level.
Is the air temperature (that is being measured) a good proxy for the temperature of the ice?
I would have thought that the air temps being above 0C would melt ice very slowly, wouldn’t the rate of ice melting be more of a function of the temperature of the ice itself and the amount of sunlight energy it is absorbing?
” Carlyle says:
December 27, 2012 at 1:24 am
You just can not trust real data. It might give the wrong impression.”
That about sums it up. People with a cause can’t stand the truth.
While there is a great deal of stochastic variability, the climate of the Holocene has had very clear patterns of climatic oscillations (quasi-periodic fluctuations). In my opinion, the best, most succinct analysis of these patterns is:
Davis, J. C. and Bohling, G. C. (2000), The Search for Patterns in Ice Core Temperature Curves. Environmental Geosciences, 7: 213–214. doi: 10.1046/j.1526-0984.2000.74003-3.x
A version of this paper can be found in Lee Gerhard’s Geological Perspectives of Global Climate Change.
mitigatedsceptic says:
December 27, 2012 at 8:22 am
long term, we need to be able to “work it completely through” from first principles and with EVERY factor and EVERY relationship completely defined. At that time, we can run computer models that will predict the future weather, and over time, the future climate.
Short term? Why not use a physical model that WORKS over the period we do have some sort of data for?
In other words, build a “Stonehenge-quality analog calculator” that predicts the seasons and keeps track of solar and lunar positions over a period of centuries to within one morning per year. Granted, we would build that “calculator” with a spreadsheet and pixels rather than granite and hillsides, but that’s only because hillsides are not very mobile, and can prove difficult to edit”
But, Stonehenge is more accurate after 5000 years than the IPCC and 23 supercomputers are after 5 years!
you don’t have to know Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity nor Newton’s law of Gravity nor Copernicus’ orbits nor Kepler’s rules nor even Aristotle’s epicycles and their useful fudge factors to “plot” the stars, moon, and sun rise positions to know the seasons and when to plant and when to harvest.
Right now, all we need is “good enough” …. Given time, the theory will follow.
Right now, we need to know if the long-term warming period and the 60 year short AMO-PDO-Arctic cycle that see us warming up from the Little Ice Age but cooling from the Medieval Warming period and Roman Optimum will end in 2000, 2060, or 2120.
mitigatedsceptic says: David M and P Solar – with respect: before thinking about how to ‘capture a trend’ should one not consider whether or not there really is any reason to suggest that there is any trend at all?
That was what I was saying , sorry if I was not clear enough.
Good – I did not make the correct inference from your posting – sorry!
Now if such systems as climate behaviour are so complex in structure and strictly chaotic in behaviour, common sense (perhaps not too common in the lab?) would dictate that here is a limit to human knowledge that cannot be overcome by appeal to the current causal paradigm and it will not yield until a new paradigm is on offer. Consider this problem in the same light as a flat-earther who cannot explain why an ideal cannon ball shot off in any direction returns to him from exactly the opposite direction. Everyday experience has taught the flat-earther that his paradigm is robust and produces predictable forecasts of most phenomena but the paradoxical cannon ball is simply beyond the limits of his knowledge and must remain so until he changes his viewpoint to accepting the round world hypothesis. From my limited experience, I know of no paradigm that could help unravel the paradox of chaotic systems and help us predict their future behaviour. Maybe chaotic systems are just florid examples of the long-standing problem of inductive inference that so troubled 18th C. but which has been side-tracked ever since then.
Anyway – to be brief – I am coming to the conclusion that no one can predict how climate will change and that politicians who listen to climate scientists are being conned. I do not want to judge whether or not the climate scientists are wanton fraudsters or simply ignorant or poor trying to earn a crust by riding a passing bandwagon; but whoever they are, whatever their motives, they are doing humanity a great disservice.
RACookPE1978 says: In other words, build a “Stonehenge-quality analog calculator” that predicts the seasons and keeps track of solar and lunar positions over a period of centuries to within one morning per year.
God damn, even Stone Henge doesn’t use linear trends. Just shows how far back climate science has regressed. (An it’s not a linear regression, it’s exponential !)
David Middleton
“…Unless there is some reason to assume that a logarithmic, exponential or other type of function would better capture the trend, linear regressions are generally the best choice.”
I guess my education as a Physical Chemist taught me to empirically derive or develop from first principles the “correct” functions. For interpolation purposes one can default to linearity if the data supports, but for understanding of the underlying mechanisms or any attempt of extrapolation one must use the proper function and it’s unlikely anything is strictly linear.
If this field of climatology wants to predict the future they simply have to quit with the linear extrapolations.
richard says: December 27, 2012 at 3:53 am
“….The paper overall does not say what McGrath reports. This is not about “warmist” or “skeptic”, but an obvious inability to take a science paper, consider it, and give a reasonable and accurate report of its contents and findings with some intelligence applied to them by the correspondent or journalist…..This is not journalism or reporting, but, deliberate or not, advocacy….”
This is simply ‘propaganda science’ – the message is decided and the headlines are written with little regard to the story.
One study, a single station, infilled and adjusted records, most warming occurred before 1988 …. and that is enough to justify headlines such as these?:
“Faster Warming in Antarctica..” ..” West Antarctic Ice Sheet warming twice earlier estimate….” “West Antarctica warming much faster than previously believed….” ” Western Antarctica is warming three times faster than the rest of the world…”
I’m really a bit surprised that intelligent CAGW proponents don’t cringe at this sort of thing, but seemingly they all see this as good science and good scientific proof.
I agree with you.
The problem is that there aren’t enough instrumental temperature data, particularly in places like Antarctica, of sufficient record length from which to derive the correct (cyclical) functions.
The Byrd Station data are what they are. The slope was steeper before 1975 than it was after. If you break it up into segments, as I did, the Gorebots will accuse you of “cherry-picking.” If you apply a polynomial or quadratic function, the Gorebots will accuse you of over-fitting. There’s enough data for a proper spectral analysis, to identify the long-term cyclicity.
Should be: “There’s not enough data for a proper spectral analysis, to identify the long-term cyclicity.
David L says:
December 27, 2012 at 9:37 am
Certainly true.
IF – and as the esteemed Dr Robert Brown at Duke has pointed out – if we knew everything and every deptail about every factor affecting the world’s climate over even a 100 year span (much less a 1500 year span over 1-1/2 long term cycles) then we could begin programming the real solution (the real analysis) from first principles. That IS the right way to do it.
But we cannot. We simply do not know enough to begin thinking we can define enough variables to define enough restraints, constraints, and relationships between the restraints to calculate “climate” from first principles.
Further, the world’s climate is so varied, so random that it varies by +/- 0.2 degrees even in the satellite record over intervals as short as 3 months! Therefore, real world, every “proxy” and thermometer readings for the past 2000 years need to be “plotted” with a +/- 0.25 “Gray Line” of “average trend before any decision can be made about long-term cycles.
A “real world” analog-equivalent as the CORRECT combination of the correct series of cyclic influences will begin the process – and note always that NOT all of these cycles will be a uniform sinusoid of mathematically perfect cosine waves of exactly even periods!!
This “almost good enough” or “Poor Robert’s Almanac” summation of two, three, or five simple cyclical approximations is all that is what is needed over the next 15 to 30 years. We are looking for a beginning, that first plot of the Atlantic rift zone and the Pacific rim of Fire and the Ethiopian fracture zone and the seafloor earthquakes before we can start projecting continental drift and calculate plate tectonic movements.
That, plus a better agreement of when the Medieval Warming Period, the Roman Optimum, and their previous cycles actually occurred.
I don’t think any automated weather station is going to last very long in this area. They quickly get buried in snow, blown-down by the wind or sink into the ice as the components warm up in the Sun and melt the ice below its connection stands.
Look at this large crane left at Byrd station.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kool-kini/3290311282/
I’m in the Evil O & G industry myself. One of the things my wicked overlords insist is the sniff test. In this case they would have asked me if, as the raw data doesn’t show the same trend as the “fixed” data, if I hadn’t detected a hint of sulphur wafting around.
Of course, being Evil, afterwards they would not have terminated my services exactly. They would have redirected me into Marketing. Which appears not too dissimilar to Climatology.
David Middleton
“…Unless there is some reason to assume that a logarithmic, exponential or other type of function would better capture the trend, linear regressions are generally the best choice.”
Linear regressions are certainly the easiest to compute but as mitigatedsceptic and P. Solar indicate, in order to justify using linear regression an assumption as to the existence of a trend, let alone the nature of that trend, has to be made. Mr. Middleton, with whose work I am always impressed, refers to “other types of function” which would include such complex dynamical systems as fractals.
When addressing David L.’s suggestion that “EVERY temperature record is cyclical”, David Middleton says
“I agree with you. The problem is that almost all of the instrumental climate data are of too short a duration to “see” that cyclicity.”
The same argument surely applies to the assumption of linearity.
RB says:
December 27, 2012 at 1:30 am
“The fact that temperatures are rising in the summer means there’s a prospect of WAIS not only being melted from the bottom as we know it is today, but in future it looks probable that it will be melting from the top as well,” he said.
Can someone tell me if this is even physically possible? What is the ambient temperature in the Antarctic, even with “rising” summer temperatures?
Here are the monthly temperature averages for Byrd. Dec is the warmest months with -14.2C. I doubt air temperatures ever get above 0C.
http://www.levoyageur.net/weather-city-BYRD-STATION.html
Note the absence of a lag between the summer solstice and maximum temperatures. This tells us that solar insolation directly drives surface temperatures and we can infer the ‘warming’ resulted from decreased clouds.
The WAIS will lose ice from the surface by sublimation at temperatures well below zero, depending the amount of solar insolation it receives. To call this ‘melting’ is misleading and poor science. But necessary to put into peoples minds that increased atmospheric temperatures from increased GHGs is the cause of ice loss, when it clearly isn’t at these temperatures.
I wish that was true; but it isn’t.
The instrumental record (HadCRUT) captures about 160 years’ worth of data, all of which is on the up-slope of the millennial scale cycle. It should appear to have a linear secular trend, just like this fragment of a sine wave has an apparent linear secular trend (R² = 0.9945).
The only apparent cyclicity in HadCRUT4 above the 11/22-yr period is at the third harmonic (~54-yr period). I think this corresponds to the ~60-yr period identified in the GISP2. You simply can’t see the millennial cycle in the instrumental data. The Antarctic data are of too short a record length to even see the 50-60-yr cycle.
I know the Holocene climate is cyclical. It sticks out like a sore thumb in the Greenland ice cores and in the non-Hockey Stick reconstructions. But, the instrumental data simply have too short of a record length.
Can I just say that in the context of BBC scandals, the term Mr ‘Fix it’ has very negative associations. I wouldn’t want it next to my name.
kim says:
Look, it’s simple. All they’ve got left is catastrophic sea level rise from the Greenland Ice Cap(which sits in a bowl) sliding into the sea, or the WAIS suddenly falling into the sea.
Whilst a lot of attention is being paid to temperature what appears to be missed is that an ice shelf is going to subject to cyclic mechanical forces due to tides. Is it possible for something akin to “metal fatigue” to occur in ice?
I have seen no mention of the changes in the Earth’s gravitation that, for whatever reason, are taking place all the time. I assume these are taken into account in the models and that in discussing sea level anomalies, gravitational effects are discounted in favour of AGW?
What peer review process and what journalism? The Mayans did get that qualitative ending right.
Resourceguy says:
December 27, 2012 at 2:42 pm
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
I agree.
What I find most worrying (and damning) in this whole affair is the quality (or rather lack thereof) of the peer review system. If it lets through papers of this quality, what hope is there for science in this field?
Reblogged this on The GOLDEN RULE and commented:
This article shows how the warmist “science” cons the public.
( Abstract
There is clear evidence that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is contributing to sea-level rise.)
Is the Ice Sheet a floater, or supported on land?
If it is a floater they have got it wrong from the start.
“David H. Bromwich,1, 5 Julien P. Nicolas,5, 1 Andrew J. Monaghan,2 Matthew A. Lazzara,3 Linda M. Keller,4 George A. Weidner4 & Aaron B. Wilson1”, me and you and a dog named Boo.
Never in the field of science was so little owed by so few to so many (sorry Winston).
“These results argue for a robust long-term meteorological observation network in the region.”
More funding? And more papers? The Beat goes on, and on,……… into retirement…..
Vukcevic , I just scanned for some more info on CPW and found this on french CNRS site, mortality of Emperor Penguins who apparently don’t like not being cold enough!
http://www.cebc.cnrs.fr/ecomm/En_ecomm/WWL_po03.html
Now as soon as I saw that I see two waves not one. If you note the small peaks in ’73 and 82 you will realise it’s two cycles of about 5.5y and 6.25 ? years (not the 4 or 5y claimed by the penguin pokers). Now I don’t know if penguins make good thermometers but those numbers rang a bell.
I recently looked at Pacific and Atlantic autocorrelation:
http://i45.tinypic.com/23lgrix.png
The most obvious short cycle in N.P. is 22y / 4 =5.5 y ; there also seems to be an obvious beating of two close cycles, estimating the null to be about 39y at 6.5 cycles, that makes 39/6.5=6.0y
So 5.5 and 6.0y in N.P.
Flip up to the Arctic and look at rate of change sea ice coverage:
http://i49.tinypic.com/xudsy.png
and there’s a cycle of 5.4 y. That is by far the most sensitive and hence accurate measurement of the bunch, I would say that is correct to better than 0.1y in the period.
I would guess that the N.P. and penguin frequencies could easily be that value too.
P. Solar says:
December 27, 2012 at 7:50 am
Re:: – Circumpolar current
………..
Something fairly regular seems to happen at the other end as well. Though seems a bit longer. http://i49.tinypic.com/xudsy.png
…………..
Here
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/EMFspectrum.htm
spectral analysis shows those links with the common frequencies, but by far strongest component is of the same period as in the solar magnetic field (Hale cycle).
@ Vukcevic,
The Hale cycle correlates fairly well with the peak at the 8th harmonic (~20.4 years) in the HadCRUT4 power spectrum.
BBC replied to my complaint – Mr McGrath himself.
The reply to the complaint is worse than the article.
Apart from thanking me for getting in touch, the reply comprises 2 sentences that say 1) the same report appeared in the NYT, Daily Mail, Reuters and others and a reading of those would lead to the same view as the BBC’s about the paper’s contents and conclusions. And 2) that he suggests that if I have any other questions about thepaper I should contact the journal that published it.
“Unless there is some reason to assume that a logarithmic, exponential or other type of function would better capture the trend, linear regressions are generally the best choice.”
The problem is that people can’t resist extrapolating their linear trend. It’s understandable when someone with little mathematical education discovers Excel’s Add Trendline and figures that Apple stock will be $1,000,000 per share in a year. But even folks with lots-o-math in their backgrounds, like Foster (F&R 2011), can’t resist extrapolating a straight line into the future.
This isn’t as much of a problem with non-time-series, since we intuitively know that saying a 1-ton human should be 60 feet tall is unrealistic extrapolation. But, as F&R 2011 shows, it’s easy take a couple of decades worth of data, do a linear regression, and extrapolate it decades into the future.
Henry@Wayne2
I determined that all of warming can be explained naturally by the 88 year Gleisberg solar cycle
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
.See also my last comment there
…..so there is no man made global warming….
So if you know the underlying natural trend, which happens to follow a sine wave curve,
then, to make things interesting for the popular press,
you can chose the date from whence it starts showing the (predictable) linear downward trend,
for example here from 2002:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2013/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2013/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2013/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2013/trend/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2013/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2013/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2002/to:2013/plot/gistemp/from:2002/to:2013/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2013/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2013/trend
they can then start looking at that trend and begin to start worrying….
David Middleton
http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/hadcrut4gl/detrend:1/window/fourier/magnitude/from:2/to:50
Henry@David
there is no indication of the units of measurement?
Henry@RB
I also complained, here in Holland where I am visiting, at the Volkskrant, which ran the same article. We will see if they will print my letter. As I always say: you can bring a horse to the water but you can not make him drink. There are none so blind as those who do not want to see.
I am sure they will find out one day…
1942 +88=2030
http://www.google.co.za/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=winter42.wpl&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fxa.yimg.com%2Fkq%2Fgroups%2F21524100%2F12735163%2Fname%2Fwinter42.wpl&ei=zpnYULnHFoGV0QWiqYDIDg&usg=AFQjCNHrFgVwHqxPBwLeTxbtc-3hGjHq_g&bvm=bv.1355534169,d.d2k
@HenryP,
It’s in the frequency domain. The x-axis represents harmonic cycles and the units would be cycles per ~162 years. The y-axis is magnitude/amplitude. The dominant peaks occur at the third (~54-yr) and eighth (20-yr) harmonics.
Should be: “The y-axis is magnitude (amplitude).”
David Middleton
“The instrumental record (HadCRUT) captures about 160 years’ worth of data, all of which is on the up-slope of the millennial scale cycle. It should appear to have a linear secular trend, just like this fragment of a sine wave has an apparent linear secular trend (R² = 0.9945).”
When I first came across trigonometry at school we we taught a very simple test to help in distinguishing between a staight line and a curve. With 160 years of data it is possible to divide the data into three periods of, say 53 years each and to determine the gradients of each of the three. Are these similar? If they are then there is a good chance that a linear approximation is sufficiently accurate. If not then this is an obvious indication either of the existence of some much shorter cycle (or cycles) overlaying the millenial or that there is no cyclicity at all and chaos prevails.
Perhaps, as climate scientists are fond of 30-year periods, we should repeat the exercise with five consecutive, but independent, periods of 30 years each. But sceptics know that 30-year oeriods are too short to provide any real evidence and anyway this has already been done and the 30-year gradients have been found to differ significantly. As David Middleton says “.. the instrumental data simply have too short of a record length”.
By the way thanks for the enjoyable debunking of Bromwich et al.
the post-1980 series depicts a statistically insignificant (R² = 0.01) trend of 0.3 °C per decade
Henry says
I think that should be (R2=0.10)?
David says: It’s in the frequency domain
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/27/antarctic-warming-courtesy-of-mr-fix-it/#comment-1184717
Henry says
you cannot have cycles both on the y and x ?
Climate is dominated by the Gleisberg cycle which is 88 years, which, it seems, you did not even plot?
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
David Middleton says:
December 28, 2012 at 6:49 am
@ Vukcevic,
The Hale cycle correlates fairly well with the peak at the 8th harmonic (~20.4 years) in the HadCRUT4 power spectrum.
Hi David
I would put it the other way around; here are some of my thoughts on the subject:
– 21.3 Hale cycle years period is the primary component
For the moment I would say that ENSO is 4th harmonic of the primary (harmonics being higher in frequency, i.e. shorter periods).
– 16 years could be the Earth’s core-crust internal resonance (possibly triggered by the Hale cycle) equal to the propagation time in either direction, ref: Hide & Dickey),
16 year period is the strongest component in the Arctic temperature spectrum, while on the opposite side in the Antarctic it’s second harmonic (about 8 years) appear to be the Circumpolar temperature wave’s period.
– All ‘components’ in between are products of cross-modulation.
You and many others may have good reasons to disagree, and that is fine with me.
Re above: Here is the link
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/EMFspectrum.htm
Black Pearl (December 27th; 5.33 a.m.) has it spot on.
Back in September the BBC’s Environment correspondent, David Shuckman, ran a piece (with no opportunity to comment) on both the blog and on tv, about the Arctic ice ‘melting at astonishing speed’.
We all know that this was due to a strong storm breaking the ice up – and then of course not a peep when the ice re-formed ‘with astonishing speed’ in October. Now seems to be right on course for a very normal winter (courtesy of Norsex satellite graphs).
But – hey – no story when its normal, is there..?
This paper by Bromwich et al. is possibly the worst ever to have been discussed here at WUWT. It is so bad its evil. Wishful thinking is raised to the level of
“data”. It represents a decay in scientific thinking and the experimental basis of science that was established at a high personal price by the likes of Regiomontanus, Galileo, Brahe, Copernicus, Vesalius, Hook and Newton. More is at stake (at the stake?) here than merely the climate debate.
One is required to conclude that a corrected projection with a 50% margin of error hardly qualifies as science. This level of “science” could be reached using a dart board or tarot cards.