Japan's 'Cool Hand Luke' moment for surface temperature

How long can NOAA or GISS continue to cook the numbers? Eventually people are going to wonder why ice is not melting at 0 degrees Celsius any longer.

Click on Gavin’s name or picture…..

The inscrutable japonese. I don’t think they will rush to be indoctrinated by the yanks unlike the UK Met who obviously saw the benefits very early.

“But they also agree extraordinarily well.”
They ruddy well should!! It’s the same data up to 2000 !!

Nick Stokes Zeke Steve Mosher chiming in to defend BEST in 3, 2, 1 ….

I stil get annoyed with the ‘warmest decade evah’ type crapola. Not just because of the fixed numbers y NASA/GISS,etc, but simply because if there is still an ongoing natural warming (a la, a recovery from the LIA or indeed a recovery from the last ice age) it stands to reason that over any period of time where such warming takes place – the last decade will nearly always be the warmest – until it reaces the ‘top’, and starts to cool (or level off) again. I suppose if we were currently reliving the 70’s the claim would be ‘coolest decade evah’?
In other words, if the climate boys accept that there is ‘some’ underlying natural warming – I believe most do (?) – then it stands to reason that the last decade will nearly always be the warmest! Why they ever mention it just astounds me. (I actually had to explain this to a geography school teacher a couple of years ago, and he conceded the point, despite trying to argue from the usual warmista stance for ages!)

You have this part in bold:
“It is also a period when many of today’s adults grew up, so it is a common reference that many people can remember.”
This is the language usage from the 1930s when the international standard for weather reporting was established (as was the 30 year period). When that was the intent, it made sense.
The only reason for using a 30 year period for what they are now doing, that is ‘climate science’ (sic), is to confuse issues. They say “many people can remember” the 1950s! Well, I do. A few of those still employed by NASA might. Still that’s a stretch. Someone wants to use a set of numbers giving a lower average base rather than using all the data because all the data will give a slightly higher average. We learned this trick in high school math class, or maybe earlier.
“Humorous,” indeed. You are being diplomatic.

Faced with Japanese data and NASA GISS data – which one is really inscrutable?

Somebody posted this on facebook. I pointed out that the warming rate from 1910 to 1940 looks faster than the warming rate from 1970 to 2000… So some of the questions I have are: weren’t human beings putting out *way* less CO2 in 1910? I mean, the automobile was barely invented back then – and wasn’t human population around 1.5 Billion? (compared to somewhere around 9 billion today). Where is the blip for the depression? Where is the spike for WW2? You say the climate doesn’t respond that quickly? Then why did this rate start in 1910? Even in this graph, they make a statement that the current rate is unprecidented… yet 100 years ago – there was an even faster rate of warming than today.
At least they are honest – no trend in the last 15 years or so Perhaps the only question their graph is, so, you aknowledge no warming for the last 15 years then? Are the true beilevers blind to this?
Starting the graph at 1910 is also misleading. What does the graph do before that? My assertion is that *something* happened to get from mile thick ice-sheets (in much of North America) to today’s relatively ice-free world. Yes, I acknowledge they have some proxy data that shows relatively gradual change over time… but what would a quick, 30 year .25 degree uptick in temperature look like in a proxy that is showing 12,000 + years? Would it even be visible?
The graph also makes a bald faced lie. Very few “deniers” believe that the climate stays at one set temperature all the time. How many times do we have to repeat “yes, it is getting warmer”.The argument has never ever been if it has been warming (depending on the start date). The argument has *always* been “how much are we responsible for”? They are liars, and should be called out as such.
These activists are only making a straw-man argument. Absolutely nobody will tell you that it isn’t warmer today than it was 12,000 years ago during an ice-age. Yes, there is a normal warming rate. Most of us will even admit that CO2 may have some small impact on temperature. They need to stick to point:What they want to do is to drive civilization back at least 100 years (and cull 8 billion people) all based on an assertion that the rate of change will increase someday, even if it is flat today…

Mike Bromley the Canucklehead back in Kurdistan but actually in Switzerland says:
January 31, 2013 at 9:16 am
“No. But NASA, and GISS, and that cheap phoney religious zealot Jim Hansen, (I’m sorry, but it really does come down to an ad hominem…he LIED with all the theatrics), have an interest, at every moment, to communicate hyperbole on the issue.”
Accusing someone of lying does not make your statement an ad hominem. In any case, most of us agree that he lied. It seems to me that he is a serial liar or deluded.

The problem with a graph like this is that they are using a bad metric. When you have a set of data like that(adjusted or unadjusted, although raw data is better) the metric should be the average of all observations- one number with with a 95% C,I. Then calculate the deviation from “normal”.

Japan has 1998 as the hottest year. As well, 4 of the data sets below agree with this, namely RSS, UAH, Hadcrut3 and Hadsst2. For further details as to how 2012 ended compared to the warmest year for each set, keep reading.
How 2012 Ended on Six Data Sets
Note the bolded numbers for each data set where the lower bolded number is the highest anomaly recorded in 2012 and the higher one is the all time record so far.
With the UAH anomaly for December at 0.202, the average for 2012 is (-0.134 -0.135 + 0.051 + 0.232 + 0.179 + 0.235 + 0.130 + 0.208 + 0.339 + 0.333 + 0.281 + 0.202)/12 = 0.161. This would rank 9th. 1998 was the warmest at 0.42. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in April of 1998 when it reached 0.66. The anomaly in 2011 was 0.132 and it came in 10th.
With the GISS anomaly for December at 0.44, the average for 2012 is (0.36 + 0.39 + 0.49 + 0.60 + 0.70 + 0.59 + 0.51 + 0.57 + 0.66 + 0.70 + 0.68 + 0.44)/12 = 0.56. This would rank 9th. 2010 was the warmest at 0.66. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in January of 2007 when it reached 0.93. The anomaly in 2011 was 0.54 and it came in 10th.
With the Hadcrut3 anomaly for December at 0.233, the average for 2012 is (0.206 + 0.186 + 0.290 + 0.499 + 0.483 + 0.482 + 0.445 + 0.513 + 0.514 + 0.499 + 0.482 + 0.233)/12 = 0.403. This would rank 10th. 1998 was the warmest at 0.548. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in February of 1998 when it reached 0.756. One has to back to the 1940s to find the previous time that a Hadcrut3 record was not beaten in 10 years or less. The anomaly in 2011 was 0.340 and it came in 13th.
With the sea surface anomaly for December at 0.342, the average for the year is (0.203 + 0.230 + 0.241 + 0.292 + 0.339 + 0.352 + 0.385 + 0.440 + 0.449 + 0.432 + 0.399 + 0.342)/12 = 0.342. This would rank 8th. 1998 was the warmest at 0.451. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in August of 1998 when it reached 0.555. The anomaly in 2011 was 0.273 and it came in 13th.
With the RSS anomaly for December at 0.101, the average for the year is (-0.060 -0.123 + 0.071 + 0.330 + 0.231 + 0.337 + 0.290 + 0.255 + 0.383 + 0.294 + 0.195 + 0.101)/12 = 0.192. This would rank 11th. 1998 was the warmest at 0.55. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in April of 1998 when it reached 0.857. The anomaly in 2011 was 0.147 and it came in 13th.
With the Hadcrut4 anomaly for December at 0.269, the average for 2012 is (0.288 + 0.208 + 0.339 + 0.525 + 0.531 + 0.506 + 0.470 + 0.532 + 0.515 + 0.524 + 0.512 + 0.269)/12 = 0.436. This would rank 10th. 2010 was the warmest at 0.54. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in January of 2007 when it reached 0.818. The anomaly in 2011 was 0.399 and it came in 13th.
If you would like to see the above month to month changes illustrated graphically, see:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:2012/plot/gistemp/from:2012/plot/uah/from:2012/plot/rss/from:2012/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2012/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2012/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2012

RHS says:
January 31, 2013 at 9:27 am
Surely there has got to be a broader data set than NOAA. My vague understanding is their distribution is terribly limited with greater than 90% of their station in the CONUS. And even then the remaining are mostly spread across Pacific Islands which is not terribly global as it leaves out the Arctic, Antarctica, Europe, Asia, India, Australia, Africa, etc, etc.

Map of NCDC Station locations, these should be only stations that have at least 240 days/year of data from 1950-2010.

It’s pretty obvious that the climate has warmed over the past few decades … what is interesting is that this warming is strongly correlated with the rate of movement of the North Pole. See here: http://www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/earthmagneticfield.htm

From 1995, the Japanese curve is very similar to both Hadcrut3 and RSS as can be seen below. That is what “agreement” looks like.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1995/plot/rss/from:1995

astateofdenmark says:
January 31, 2013 at 9:54 am
Do they have any given reason for not including the satellite data? Seems a significant oversight.

I can come up with an easy justification for not including the satellite data. The graph uses a baseline of 1951-1980. We don’t have satellite data for that period (only the very end of the period), so they wouldn’t have been able to calculate correct anomalies.
Of course, if they used the same baseline as the original Japanese data, they would have been able to include the satellite data for the relevant period…

All four records show peaks and valleys in sync with each other. All show rapid warming in the past few decades. All show the last decade has been the warmest on record.

Whoops. As I read “All four records show peaks and valleys in sync with each other. All show rapid warming in the past few decades. All show the last decade…”, I expected the logical sequence to be “All show that there has been no further warming in the last decade”. I expected that because, firstly it is true, and secondly it continues to describe how global temperatures have fluctuated. But instead, it says “the last decade has been the warmest on record”.
This is what we call sophistry. That is, the statement is not in itself untrue, not an outright lie, but it is carefully designed to be deceptive. It is designed to mislead from the fact that temperatures have now stopped rising (and no climate model predicted that and current theory cannot account for that!)
This is sophistry – i.e dishonesty. Why do GISS feel it necessary to stoop to that? Does it help their case do you think?
Over at James Delingpole’s blog there is quote from famous James Lovelock, once the high priest of the global warming green movement. It says

I am James Lovelock, scientist and author, known as the originator of Gaia theory, a view of the Earth that sees it as a self-regulating entity that keeps the surface environment always fit for life… I am an environmentalist and founder member of the Greens but I bow my head in shame at the thought that our original good intentions should have been so misunderstood and misapplied. We never intended a fundamentalist Green movement that rejected all energy sources other than renewable, nor did we expect the Greens to cast aside our priceless ecological heritage because of their failure to understand that the needs of the Earth are not separable from human needs. We need take care that the spinning windmills do not become like the statues on Easter Island, monuments of a failed civilisation.

Maybe one day, in the not too distant future GISS could also become honest and encompass such humility?

I just can’t see a baseline that avoids your dataset as responsible science. its like putting all the bells and whistles AND a more powerful engine in the test-drive car but never mentioning it has 90 more HP and a better air conditioner.
Honestly the entire output becomes apples and orangutangs, two completely un-related forms of data.

Gee, they didn’t include the satellite data at all. Wonder why that is? It only has the best spatial and temporal coverage there is, it only cost a few billion to put those satellites up in space, but what the heck, what’s a few billion and the most accurate data we have compared to the fate of the world?
It would actually be very interesting to see just the post 1988 tail of this data plotted against the satellite data. The GISS and HADCRUT records, IIRC, are currently constrained by the fact that if they add any more artificial warming on at this point, the divergence from the satellites will be too great and will tip their hand. From the look of things — without much resolution at this scale — the Japanese data is much more in alignment with the satellites, and hence is actually moderately believable.
Your point on anomalies is also well made. But that is only one of the many aspects of lying with statistics in play at this point, and not the worst of them.
Looking back at the correction graph in the top article I am once again struck by the prospect of performing a statistical analysis of the corrections applied to the data, under a null hypothesis of fair and unbiased corrections that would move station readings up as often as it moves them down. After all, I can think of no good reason that readings of thermometers from long ago would be systematically biased in their errors — this violates ever so many principles of statistics. My prediction is that the p value of the existing correction set under the null hypothesis would be enough to convince any jury that they are not only biased, but openly and flagrantly biased (that is, a p value less than one in a million or thereabouts).
That actually sounds as though it would be worth a paper, or perhaps an addendum to the paper Anthony already has going on weather station siting and corrections.
rgb

n’kay… fine … but what does this graph have to do with the ‘A’ in ‘AGW’? Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that all those pretty little fluctuations are natural, nothing out of the ordinary? What good is the pretty little graph and its sinister insinuation then?

The better method, of course, is not to grid the world at all or to grid at a finer level. Errr..just krig it
Kriging is not necessarily justified in this case, as the underlying assumption of stationarity is clearly violated (that in fact being the point of it all). I would also be dubious about the secondary assumptions being satisfied. Kriging basically assumes a smooth landscape and by its nature will almost always underestimate peaks and valleys. As is always the case with smooth interpolant functions, actually.
Gridding the world per se is not necessarily a better answer, but adaptive tiling is not a silly thing to use. The basic issue is information theoretic — how to use the information you have most effectively without assigning it more weight and accuracy than the information at hand actually justifies. That latter bit is the tricky part. Kriging temperatures from a sparse set of stations in Antarctica is, for example, just silly. Kriging won’t fill in holes that span significant structure any more than anything else will, and nothing makes up for inadequate sampling. At best it leaves you (still) with large error bars.
But better still is to use satellites and actually cover the globe, or lay down a systematic grid. In the meantime, I continue to be amused by global temperature (anomaly) estimates that invariably do not include an estimate of the probable error. Often estimates made to several decimal places (but no error). We actually take points off student papers in physics when they put down three or four digit answers when the answer is only accurate to one or two, and we don’t take kindly to figures that plot experimental numbers without any sort of error bar.
Curiously, in climate science it seems to be the other way around. Plot not the measured quantity, but the “anomaly” compared to some presumably known baseline. Plot it without any error bars, even though the methodology used to compute it is rife with assumptions, corrections, interpolations, adjustments, and the blood of a white chicken sacrificed with a black-handled athame. When the error bars are (rarely) shown, do not let the fact that they often include the null hypothesis stop you from asserting otherwise. It’s like they actually study the book How to Lie with Statistics, and not in a good way…
rgb

Jon says:
January 31, 2013 at 10:45 am
” … what is interesting is that this warming is strongly correlated with the rate of movement of the North Pole.”
OMG! Global warming causes movement of the North magnetic pole. It’s worse than we thought!

That “365” graph is fiction.
Note the same source data (up to 1995) from
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.html
Scroll down for the USHCNv1 graphs. The adjustment methodology is clearly stated. (read the Karl et al paper from 1986). Further down you see the plot of “all” the corrections. Compare the USHCNv1 plots to the “365” chart. It’s obvious the “365” chart has had the 1910 to 1940 era data altered to be cooler and the 1975 to 1995 data are altered to be warmer, thus severely increasing the apparent warming trend.
Sometime in late 2012 the GIStemp data were given a major “adjustment” to produce large step cooling the the pre-1940 data for about 10 percent of the reporting stations. Also, large numbers of stations had post-2006 data removed completely from the timeline. Now the GIStemp servers have been down for almost a month.
If you want good data, then look at the satellite data from 1979. Look at the USCRN data. Look at the Antarctic surface stations Amundsen-Scott, Vostok, Halley and Davis since 1957

Assuming that it would be reasonable to use the most ‘reliable’ data for land temperatures I prefer to use this plot as a guideline to global temperature trends :-).
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/best/to:1980/plot/rss-land/plot/uah-land

I should have added – this is the non-hockey stick way of looking at things and I justify it on the same grounds as the original hockey stick itself (for combining sources and trimming series).

The data agree perfectly. In the fulness of time. At the appropriate juncture. A task of such analytical delicacy that the data must be left with One Of Us.
Sir Humphrey Appleby
St Dymphna’s Home For The Elderly Deranged

WOW! Almost 1 degree of warming in 130 years. Pretty scarey! Who cares if they agree or not at that rate?

Why don’t you display satellite temperatures in parallel with this. They would show that these temperature curves are falsified. First, the late twentieth century temperatures of every one of these curves are wrong. They are cheating. And except for the Japanese the twenty-first century temperatures are falsified too. They are given an extra height of 0.2 degrees Celsius which is so far off that it leads to the absurdity of 2005 and 2010 both being higher than the 1998 super El Nino. In the twentieth century, the five El Nino peaks from 1980 to 1997 in are of nearly equal height and line up horizontally. But in these curves they are shown climbing steps up a mountain that gains 0.2 degrees in height every twenty years. The Super El Nino of 1998 that follows in reality has symmetrical dips on both sides of it. In this version you can see with the naked eye that its footing rises 0.1 degrees from one side to the other. This means an additional three degrees warming per century. If you think that the agreement among these temperature curves proves they cam be trusted think again. These are not independent temperature curves as claimed. As an example, I have determined that NASA and Met Office temperatures, from two sides or the ocean, were both subjected to a mysterious computer processing which had the unanticipated consequence of leaving many high spikes in these data sets. They are located in exactly the same places on both curves. Unless an explanation is forthcoming I have to consider it as part of the conspiracy to make the public believe in a non-existent global warming.

davidmhoffer says….
So refreshing to hear someone speak of the difference between an anomaly in the dry Arctic and at the moist equator! Whenever I see a warm anomaly in the Arctic I always just see it as heat escaping to space and oppositely, a warm temp anomaly in the equator is heat accumulation (temporarily anyway.)
Data means things! Ignore at one’s peril!

It really bugs me when long term temperature plots are measured against a 30-year average when it is pretty common knowledge the PDO/AMO are near 60-year periods. Why can’t they use the 1950-2010 average? How would that affect the plot? How about using only stations which conform to the WMO siting requirements – how would *that* affect the plots? etc. etc. etc.

Arno Arrak says:
January 31, 2013 at 4:24 pm
As an example, I have determined that NASA and Met Office temperatures, from two sides or the ocean, were both subjected to a mysterious computer processing which had the unanticipated consequence of leaving many high spikes in these data sets.
However with GISS, there seems to be more going on. For example, three weeks ago, the warmest ever monthly anomaly on GISS was January, 2007 where the anomaly was 0.89. (It still reads 0.89 on WFT since it has not updated GISS for December yet.) However at the following, that number has been raised to 0.93 over the last 3 weeks.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
On the other hand, Hadcrut4 had January, 2007 at 0.818 both last month and this month as their highest monthly anomaly. Can you tell me exactly what the GISS people discovered about a record from 6 years ago that they did not share with the Hadcrut4 people?

I included a table in my recent powerpoint presentation for Wattsupwiththat comparing the global temperature anomalies between agencies. I developed the idea from an observation I made several years ago about a 0.5°C difference between HadCRUT and NASA GISS annual temperature one year. What intrigued me was that this almost equalled the claimed 0.6°C increase over 100+ years Jones made in the 2001 IPCC Working Group I Report. It suggested this was abnormal and therefore by implication caused by humans.
This figure, along with the hockey stick, was the second major claim of human influence in that Report. It effectively formed the blade of the stick. The actual figure Jones used was 0.6°C ±0.2°C, in other words a 33% error range, which means the number is effectively meaningless.
Despite this, both parts of the hockey stick became the bulwark of the argument for energy and economic policies for most of the world. Further, we were denied access to data from which both pieces were constructed so a complete standard scientific test for reproducible results is not possible. Was policy ever based on two more discredited pieces of information?

sunshinehour1 says — exposing GHCN as the hothead in CAT crowd —
hothead? Climate hotheads? Climate hotheads shouting out their apocalyptic message of a fiery doom???
Hotheads!!!!!! Now there is a great word for referring to the alamrists! Demeaning and accurately descriptive of their behavior. Hotheads.
That hothead Hansen. Hothead alarmism. No sane person could fail to recognize that the hotheads of climate alarmism are best ignored. He is just another hothead. Just more hothead exaggeration. Etc.
That is definitely a word with potential. It should become part of the standard skeptic rhetoric.
Hothead! Got to love it!
Eugene WR Gallun

rgbatduke says:
January 31, 2013 at 1:12 pm
“Curiously, in climate science it seems to be the other way around. Plot not the measured quantity, but the “anomaly” compared to some presumably known baseline. Plot it without any error bars, even though the methodology used to compute it is rife with assumptions, corrections, interpolations, adjustments, and the blood of a white chicken sacrificed with a black-handled athame. When the error bars are (rarely) shown, do not let the fact that they often include the null hypothesis stop you from asserting otherwise. It’s like they actually study the book How to Lie with Statistics, and not in a good way…”
Rgbatduke sums it nicely. However, the athame is used to draw the magic circle but not for actual cutting.

When all of the data sets use mostly the same sources and then apply the same biased adjustments, why would we think that they would not be in sync. They all have the same political goals.

Eugene WR Gallun says:
January 31, 2013 at 7:44 pm
Wow! Your poetry is rather good.

Eve:

The fact that there is not a higher spike in the 1930′s than now, shows the graph to be wrong.

BINGO!
End of required discussion.

RACookPE1978 says:
January 31, 2013 at 11:09 pm
///////////////////////////////////////////////////
At the heart of the AGW claim is one of some energy imbalance. We therefore need to look at energy not temperature. The only valid metric would be to look at RH adjusted figures, alternatively sea water temperatures.
The data is simply not fit for purpose. Ignoring all the basterdisation through repeated adjustments, the problem with siting issues, station drop outs, the proper evaluation of UHI, the length of the data set and the lack of uncertainty/error bars, it is not evaluating the heart of the claim. No genuine science would work off such data.

The last paragraph:

Lastly, which the annual average daily Rise/Fall is almost a perfect match, when looked at on a daily basis, you can see it change as the seasons progress, yet are almost identical over the year.

was suppose to be:
Lastly, while the annual average daily Rise/Fall is almost a perfect match, when looked at on a daily basis, you can see it change as the seasons progress, yet are almost identical over the year.

richardscourtney;
Presenting global temperature anomalies reveals the global warming since 1900 which is of interest
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I understand the intent. If anomalies had a linear relationship to energy flux, I would have no objection. But they do not. The relationship is that P varies with T^4. This gives us the possibility of (for example) and anomaly of +2 from a very cold regime averaged with an anomaly from a very warm regime of -1. If the baselines used were -40 and +40, the result would be an average anomaly that is positive while the change in energy flux is negative. The change in the cold regime becomes over represented, the warm regime under represented, and the information derived tells us nothing about change in energy balance. The whole CAGW debate centres around the supposed change in energy balance at surface caused by CO2 increases. Since anomaly data does not and can not provide this information, it is not fit for purpose. The continued use of anomaly data in this fashion is particularly stunning given that converting baseline temps to w/m2 is a trivial matter, as is then calculating anomalies in w/m2 which would deliver precisely the information we are trying to track, the effect of CO2 increases on w/m2 at surface.

I’m surprised…using GISS to align RSS & UAH hardly changes the previous graph. This has 36 month averages instead of the 60 month averages on the previous graph. Just looking for something that looks like what the climate365 graph used, don’t see it at 12, 13, 36 and 60 month averages.
http://i50.tinypic.com/nnjnuu.jpg

davidmhoffer says:
February 1, 2013 at 7:17 am
richardscourtney;
“Presenting global temperature anomalies reveals the global warming since 1900 which is of interest.”
It is one thing to use anomalies as rules of thumb that can serve as guides to discovery but it is quite another thing to use them as evidence. All sciences use heuristics to simplify daily work but when presenting conclusions and the evidence for them they do not present heuristics.
Anomalies are at several removes from anything that can be reasonably called a direct measurement of some feature of the environment. Davidmhoffer gives an excellent example above. What we cite as evidence for our claims must have some direct connection to actual measurements. Otherwise, we surrender all empirical constraints on theorizing. If we do that, we might as well buy our own climate supercomputer.
On more than one occasion, I have expressed my admiration for richardscourtney’s posts. In this rare case, his post could benefit from a bit more work.

Your post and all the comments above reveal two important realities:
1. The debate surrounding our ever changing climate, with regard to moot anthropogenic influence, is irrelevant because current climate behaviour displays anomalies that are so insignificantly tiny that scientists are reduced to argument over differences of fractions of a degree in any comparison of data sets. I.e. If humankind really is affecting global temperatures, the result is negligible.
2. There are many interested parties who rely on funding, livelihood, academic reputation and recognition based on the concept of CAGW that they are constrained into, as has been remarked upon several times above, “cooking the books”.
The real problem for humankind, and most other organisms, is that several “uncooked” data sets indicate a recent trend of FALLING global temperatures. There is no question that lower global temperatures would be far more detrimental to our biosphere than fractional warming. Unfortunately, the very agencies in a position to detect and publicize such a trend are so busy trying to prove warming for the reasons given above that they will not merely overlook it, they will actively conceal it.

Reblogged this on This Got My Attention and commented:
What exactly is the trend in temperatures?

davidmhoffer says:
February 1, 2013 at 7:17 am
richard verney says:
February 1, 2013 at 1:35 am
Your posts highlight two different potential metrics to measure something physically meaningful. David is suggesting an average of T^4 which, assuming roughly uniform emissivities, would produce something proportional to the average rate of energy dissipation. Since T^4 weights high temperatures more heavily than low ones, the current T metric is effectively overweighting the cold areas from this perspective.
One problem with a T^4 metric (aside from the emissivity question): This is more-or-less proportional to the outward energy flux from the surface, but some of that flux is going to be reflected back by GHGs. So, it doesn’t really tell us the rate at which energy is leaving the Earth. Does this make T^4 particularly well suited for measuring the effect of GHGs? Something to ponder…
Anyway, Richard’s idea is to weight by RH, because the heat capacity of wet regions is greater than that of dry ones. Because of this, a 1 degree change of temperature in wet regions produce greater energy retention than a 1 degree change in a dry area. From this perspective, the current T metric is overweighting the changes in dry regions. It is possible for the T metric to show a significant rise, without any significant change in overall atmospheric energy storage.
Which of these two metrics is better, and which regions are we overweighting with the T metric: cold ones, or dry ones? Does it matter? Cold regions tend to be dry ones, but dry ones are not necessarily cold ones (e.g., Sahara). Should we be looking at a T^4 metric, or an RH one?

Bart says:
February 1, 2013 at 12:32 pm

but some of that flux is going to be reflected back by GHGs.

While this is what theory says, a hand held IR thermometer pointed into the sky on a clear 35F day, reads under the minimum scale of the device less than -40F. While everything around reads some various appropriate temp, including the bottom of clouds.
If there’s anything being reflected back it isn’t causing any warming.

Bart;
Should we be looking at a T^4 metric, or an RH one?
>>>>>>>>>>>>
Both. Per your comment, this is a rather complex matter. As the saying goes, make the problem as simple as possible, but not simpler. By averaging anomaly data the problem has been over simplified to the point that the data is close to meaningless.

James Hansen Busies Himself
Creating A Third World Holocaust
That hothead Hansen’s
Radiative reflux?
Just Charlie Manson’s
Helter Skelter redux
Realities will
Not reorder his mind
Delusions that kill
Leave all reason behind
i am sure this is of no interest to anyone but me but I have altered the phrase “Atmospheric reflux” to “Radiative reflux”. i had thought of both choices and proceeded to choose the wrong one. Technically “radiative reflux” accurately describes the greenhouse effect — radiant energy from the earth is reflected back towards the earth. A reflux is bascially a backward flowing. “Atmospheric reflux’ also describes the greenhouse effect but in a more general way and can be mistaken to imply that “air” is the moving component when it is not.. It was a poor choice of words that I thought would make the poem simpler but instead just screwed it up.
Hansen and Manson share the same apocalyptical fascinations — and both have messiah complexes. And both are highly dangerous. The worlds of their implemented visions would be a living hell for the majority of humanity. They are two peas in a pod.
Eugene WR Gallun

Theo Goodwin says:
January 31, 2013 at 10:09 am
Yes, using anomalies is a great way of side tracking a science. Maybe some day climate scientists will switch from anomalies to some measurable feature of the environment.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<,
No. Here's how that shakes out: you get a job. I get a job. Somebody else says
"You guys go work… I'll stay here indoors and take money to check the weather,
because you're stupid and have gotten trapped and can't get away from paying me to do it. You guys hurry up and get out of my way, rabble!"
"I'm trying to get to to the Weather Center, and do MY work, and YOU'RE in the way. And the next time you tell me to show you what I'm doing, I'll SUE you; and the GOVERNMENT will stand behind me because I'm a government employee!"
Money is taken from your check to pay this lifestyle to exist.
Therefore you will not be having more relevant science. You'll be having more
Gubmunt Psignts.
And you'll pay
or they'll ruin your life
releasing government authorized and sanctioned press releases,
that you're evil, an enemy to the country, and a prime reason the war on
_________ is failing;
and that you're a danger to yourself,
your children,
and to all Mannkind, saying something different than they say.
Because they're government employees.
The people who tell you now
and have for 75 years: that pot's heroin
and you're so stupid
they're going to finally,
have to take over all your medicine,
before you mess this up
worse than you already have.

davidmhoffer at February 1, 2013 at 7:01 pm, in http://wattsupwiththloat.com/2013/01/31/japans-cool-hand-luke-moment-for-surface-temperature/#comment-1214413

I did the same to Jan P Perlwitz a while back. We were debating the recent Briffa paper and he was making the claim that you had to be a climate scientist to understand it. So instead of debating the paper with him further, I asked him which part of the paper could not be understood by a first year physics or stats student and why. Suddenly silence from Perlwitz. He responded to other comments in that thread, but studiously ignored me though I repeated the question three times.
The silence speaks loudly.

The only thing that speaks loudly here is your lie about me behind my back in this thread here, in which I have not been participating until now. I never have said that one had to be a climate scientist to understand some Briffa paper, which ever you are referencing here, or any other paper for the matter of fact. What is the purpose for which you are telling this lie?