Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I chanced to plot up the lower tropospheric temperatures by broad latitude zones today. This is based on the data from the satellite microwave sounding unit (MSU), as analyzed by the good folks at the University of Alabama at Huntsville. Here are the results, divided into tropical, extratropical, and polar. I’ve divided them at the Arctic and Antarctic Circles at 67° North and South, and at the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer at 23° N & S.
Figure 1. Satellite-based microwave sounding unit temperatures (red line) from the University of Alabama Huntsville. Blue line shows a loess smooth, span=0.4. Data from KNMI (NCDF file, 17 Mb)
So … is this something to worry about?
Well, let’s take a look. To start with, the tropics have no trend, that’s 40% of the planet. So all you folks who have been forecasting doom and gloom for the billions of poor people in the tropics? Sorry … no apparent threat there in the slightest. Well, actually there is a threat, which is the threat of increased energy prices from the futile war on carbon—rising energy prices hit the poor the hardest. But I digress …
What else. Southern Extratropics? No trend. South of the Antarctic Circle? No trend, it cooled slightly then warmed slightly back to where it started.
So that’s 70% of the planet with no appreciable temperature trend over the last third of a century …
What else. Northern Extratropics? A barely visible trend, and no trend since 2000.
And that means that 96% of the planet is basically going nowhere …
Now, that leaves the 4% of the planet north of the Arctic Circle. It cooled slightly over the first decade and a half. Then it warmed for a decade, and it has stayed even for a decade …
My conclusion? I don’t see anything at all that is worrisome there. To me the surprising thing once again is the amazing stability of the planet’s temperature. A third of a century, and the temperature of the tropics hasn’t budged even the width of a hairline. That is an extremely stable system.
I explain that as being the result of the thermoregulatory effect of emergent climate phenomena … you have a better explanation?
My best regards to everyone,
w.
PLEASE! If you disagree with what I or anyone says, QUOTE THE WORDS that you disagree with, and say why you disagree with them. That way we can understand each other. Vague statements and handwaving opinions are not appreciated.
DATA: All data and R code as used are here in a zip file.
The headline is a bit confusing. Believers and promoters of the global climate panic are the ones who should be worried. Skeptics have no reason to stop questioning the consensus view at all. Your data interpretation merely confirms this.
My answer to your question: No – and best now to ditch the surface thermometers entirely (with all their problems), and rely on the satellites instead for accurate measurement.
But shouldn’t it have been “What me worry”? …!
Willis wrote: “So that’s 70% of the planet with no appreciable temperature trend over the last third of a century”
JK – I’d love to see how the “experts” turn this into warming with their gridding of the Earth. Is there some trick that makes warming like Mann made hocky sticks from red noise?
What happens if you merely sum those 5 graphs with proper areas weighting?
Thanks
JK
Lots of other graphs have shown a slight, but observable, rise up to 1998. Other than the N pole, I do not see any rise previous to ’98 in this graph. Any chance this is a result of your smoothing or just the short (relatively speaking) timeframe? If not, it sure belies the alarmists’ claims.
On the silly side, Alfred E. Neuman’s “What Me Worry” line immediately popped into my head upon studying the graph.
D@mn straight there’s something to worry about – when the coming Maunder Minimum peaks, everyone reading this who is older than their early 20s will be too old to fight their way to the front of the food riots.
Thats why I moved my family to the Fraser Coast in Australia – 25 degrees south, with the option of, if all else fails, walking another 10 degrees closer to the equator.
The stupid alarmists fear a 2C temperature ”rise”.
But is this even important. Temperatures should be given in degrees Kelvin (absolute) because all thermodynamic equations are in that metric. The SB formulae gives the temperature from a given amount of energy, flux, in K. So this feared rise in temperature is actually a rise from 288K to 290K which is hardly earth shattering or even important.
Get real, there are far more important things to worry about.
But Willis, you are using real data! Get the models out so that we can continue the charade that maintains thousands of climate scientists’ salaries and millions of people in fear of living on our planet. (Do I need to put sarc?)
Too tue.
When that terrible Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines the cities were evacuated in buses. The Greens response to the devastation was that the price of fuel should go up.
John Marshall says:
January 29, 2014 at 3:22 am
Forgive the pedantry, but I was taught that Kelvin was Kelvin, & there were no “degrees” about it!
Excellent post, Willis, as always.
It looks like the main negative system response to changes in the global energy budget is in the Arctic due to the vast thermal inertia of the southern oceans suppressing variability in the southern hemisphere.
If the system tries to accumulate more energy then warm water pumps further into the Arctic Ocean, melting ice as it goes and releasing large amounts of energy to space from the uncovered ocean surface.
If the system starts to lose energy the flow of warm water reduces, ice builds up and less energy is lost to space from the ice covered surface as compared to an uncovered sea surface (notwithstanding the increase in albedo).
The tropical thunderstorm belts may well be the initial negative system response but on their own they cannot deal with the vast amounts of energy in the body of the ocean.
That other energy circulates towards the poles affecting all the climate zones and jet stream tracks along the way with the ultimate consequence that the Arctic Ocean and its surroundings are the primary location for the thermostatic mechanism and not the tropics.
That is why the Arctic region shows most thermal variability as any thermal excess or deficit flows through the region on its way to space.
Meanwhile, the original cause of changes in the global energy budget is solar variability affecting global cloudiness (via the mechanism I have previously described) and thus the amount of solar energy able to enter the oceans to drive the system in the first place.
The sun determines how much of its energy enters the oceans and the Arctic provides the adjustable ‘valve’ regulating the net loss to space via changes in the circulations of both oceans and air.
Why is there such a difference between UAH and RSS ?
“So … is this something to worry about?”
Yes. You must turn over all your rights and property to the government.
You aren’t scared? Dang. We’ll find something else to scare you. How about ocean acidification?
Resistance is futile.
Two problems with this, first using the data from one lower troposphere sensor will not give you the surface temperature, that has to be derived from the total data by subtracting the stratospheric cooling these sensors also detect.
Second, you have ploted version 5.5 data, I think you will find that Roy Spencer and Christy are now up to version 5.6.
The UAH data has always been known for the multiple corrections that have had to be made over time.
And the total lack of any publically available code for how they process the sensort data.
If this reality stuff keeps up, people will get worried about the fact that they have no reason to be worried!
So that 4% warmed about a degree in 35 years? Globally, I get about .48 deg over the same period. When you look the temp changes on the scale you’re using you can see the real change in temp is rather insignificant and that the temps at the poles are so much noisier than the rest of the globe. I wonder what it would look like plotted as actual temperatures?
http://www.skepticalscience.com//pics/Arctic_SAT_Ann.jpg
Shows the Arctic rather well. (From an opposing point of view 🙂 ).
Is it only me or is there a definite wobble of ~60 years or so in the data?
Former US Senator and United Nations official Tim Wirth “we have to ride it for all its worth” a paraphrase. Now that is what we have to worry about and what we have been pushing back against for all these years.
Politicians riding science to achieve public policy goals. In the US these are many of the same people who figured out how to get banks to finance worthless home loans. Let them make obscene amounts of money doing it.
This is just straight data. Eaarly on the scientists massaged it gently, like a small female masseuse. To keep the money flowing lately they’ve been forced to hire a large gorilla to massage the data.
LT:
At January 29, 2014 at 4:30 am you ask
The answer is that they are each determinations of global average surface temperature anomaly (GASTA) and there is no definition of GASTA so each team that determines GASTA uses a different definition and, therefore, uses a different method to determine its version of GASTA.
A more useful question is why GISS changes its definition of GASTA so changes the method it uses to determine its version of GASTA most months with this this result.
Richard
Yes, but if you blow those charts up really big those little squiggly lines get really scary! I see lots of Hockey Sticks!
richardscourtney says:
January 29, 2014 at 5:11 am
LT:
At January 29, 2014 at 4:30 am you ask
Why is there such a difference between UAH and RSS ?
…each …uses a different definition and, therefore, uses a different method to determine its version of GASTA.
I prefer to look at all of the data series as though they were Proxies for the actual, unmeasurable number.
SO the methodology is simple, just like any proxy value. Take the OLS over the period of overlap, adjust the range and scale so that the OLS match as best you can and the use those factors to display all of the series together.
Basic OLS
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c274/richardlinsleyhood/OLScomparison_zpsc45498e9.png
Aligned OLS
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c274/richardlinsleyhood/OLSaligned_zps3186174a.png
Aligned series with 15 year and 60 year low pass filters
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c274/richardlinsleyhood/OLSalignedAnnualtrends_zps5603d308.png
Add to that OLS aligned data from the various series from 1979
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c274/richardlinsleyhood/OLSYearsaligned_zpsc5c155df.png
RichardLH:
At January 29, 2014 at 5:16 am in response to my post you say
Why?
There is no “actual … number” – measureable or not – for global average surface temperature anomaly (GASTA) because GASTA is not defined and has no possibility of calibration.
As I said and you quoted, each team which provides a version of GASTA uses a different definition and, therefore, uses a different method to determine its version of GASTA. They are not “proxies” for anything: they each indicate the ? which each indicates.
Comparing them is comparing apples, oranges and onions. All one can do is to report what each indicates, and I note that your graphs do that.
Please read Appendix B of this
Richard
Any forecast of CAGW by a climatologist worth his salt would predict temperatures at the North Pole to rise. It’s obvious— this is settled science, everybody knows that heat rises.
Lest there be any confusion, my previous post began with
“sarc”
and ended with
“/sarc”
Richard:
OK. So I’ll use the terminology of
Proxies to the ‘Mean global temperature anomaly’ instead. i.e. different measurements, taken with different instruments, using different procedures but all attempting to come to the same overall figure.
Happy?
But Willis according to our Met Office here in the UK
“It’s now clear that the emission of man-made greenhouse gases is causing climate change. The rate of change began as significant, has become alarming and is simply unsustainable in the long-term.”
“Warming – Climate Change the Facts” published by UK Met Offices September 2009 in the run up to the UN Copenhagen climate negotiations
http://www.worcester.gov.uk/fileadmin/assets/pdf/Environment/climate_change/DECC-MET-office-warming-brochure.pdf
Richard: Just a different way of presenting the same data as
Figure 1. Mean global temperature anomalies and trends normalized to a common start value as indicated by three teams (after Jones et al., GISS and GHCN).
using a common and well known methodology for aligning such disparate data sets. 🙂
“Emergent phenomenon” is an argument from incompetent, third-rate thinkers like Richard Dawkins, determined to push Darwinian, or undirected, evolution upon students of science, despite its by now obvious failings; back in the 1980’s, it was called “order out of chaos”, elevated to the airy status of a “meme”, and “chaos theory” was misapplied to support it (for the latter really only supports “order behind the apparent chaos”, not order produced–“surprisingly”, as Eschenbach himself emphasizes–BY chaos, or randomly-working physical processes).
But the idea fails, and fails here on a very basic level. “Emergent phenomenon” does not “explain” the “extremely stable system”–and the outstanding stability SHOULD be emphasized, as I have also done–it cannot, it is in fact logically opposed to it (“emergent phenomenon” is change, as Eschenbach’s examples well show, while “extreme stability” MEANS unchanging).
The truth, as I mentioned when Eschenbach first brought out this recycled idea here, is much simpler (but more surprising, of course, in the tattered intellectual atmosphere of current, officially unquestionable, scientific dogma), and should have been obvious by now, if science had not gone so determinedly wrong following Darwin:
“Emergent Phenomenon”, Or Design?
“Emergent phenomenon” is a desperate renaming of the observable truth, in order to avoid that truth. It is anti-scientific nonsense, which science will have to reject before real progress can be made. It is, in short, the same as saying “magic”, which science once so proudly scorned, and by which it lifted itself up out of the ancient pit of superstition and “sacred writ”.
Marion says: @ January 29, 2014 at 5:45 am
But Willis according to our Met Office here in the UK…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
And the Met Office is a running joke to most Brits. Remember the Barbeque Summer? Children Won’t Know what Snow is?
You can tell CAGW is a political con because they switched from GoreBull Warming to Climate Change to Weather Weirding as the circumstances changed.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. ~ H. L. Mencken
Gail Combs says:
January 29, 2014 at 6:01 am
…
Alternatively.
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
Napoleon Bonaparte
The graphs suggest that the tropics are very efficient at maintaining temperatures withing a narrow range, and the paleo records support this. The tropical ocean heats up, convection at the ICZ increases, the Trades strengthen, cooling the tropics. This process has maintained the tropics within a very narrow temperature range for millions of years, regardless of ice ages or CO2 levels.
The notion that AGW will change tropical temperatures is clearly not supported by the evidence.
Willis, that’s one of the most interesting charts I’ve seen for a long time. Readers need to be alerted to the scale ±3˚C whilst Roy’s plots are ± 0.7. Some observations: 1) The el Nino spikes are really only present in the Tropics data 2) the polar data is incredibly variable compared with the rest – any explanation for this? 3) the N extra Tropics do show slight warming (masked by the scale you use) 4) the significant warming in the N polar data is possibly due to active Gulf Stream, pushing further N, resulting in amongst other things loss of sea ice and increasing polar water vapour. It would be interesting to see a single plot without the polar data – i.e. the three middle panels combined.
You just gotta love a thread where H. L. Mencken is quoted. 🙂
I was never worried about global warming. It has been warming, in general, since the end of the Little Ice Age and in particular since the horribly cold 1970s. I am all for global warming as warm is much better than cold. Unfortunately for humanity, it looks like we are in for another colder time for the next few decades.
Governments love any “problem” that keeps the population ceding more power to the state to be kept safe — like allowing the TSA to grope all the women in airports. The climatologists, activists, and doom-sayers are just giving the state what the state wants to hear.
according to our Met Office here in the UK
“The rate of change began as significant, has become alarming and is simply unsustainable in the long-term.”
===============
The halt shows that the change has indeed become unsustainable. Finally the Met office gets it right.
RichardLH:
At January 29, 2014 at 5:38 am you ask me
No, I am not “happy”.
You seem to think I am making some kind of semantic point. I am NOT.
The issue is important for the reason you state in your subsequent post at January 29, 2014 at 5:51 am where you write
I asked you read Appendix B at this link
If you had read it then you would have seen it includes this where MGT means Mean Global emperature (i.e. GASTA)
And the paper also says
The paper concludes that however they are considered the different versions of global temperature time series are so profoundly different that they do NOT show the same thing and what EACH indicates needs to be specified for any of them to be useful.
I again ask you to read the paper I have again linked in this post.
Richard
Well using Nate Drake PhD ‘s view of GISS data, it sure looks like it has stopped there as well
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c274/richardlinsleyhood/NateAnimated_zps8efd1ce1.gif
Hint. If the continuation of the line is flat, then the warming has indeed stopped. And such as nice complicated filter to boot 🙂
Dear Willis:
I disagree with “everything you said” because you did not statistically torture the data. AGW is a very complex phenominon and its effects have never been revealed via simple temperature measurements. Sophisticated statistical techniques must be applied that are beyond the understanding of a simple layman such as yourself. In fact, those techniques are even beyond the grasp of clasically trained statisticians such as Steve McIntyre. You cannot hope to see “the AGW fingerprint” until you have massaged earlier temperatures downward and more recent temperatures upward. Otherwise, things like The Medieval Warm Period just make a hash of the entire thing!
markstoval says:
January 29, 2014 at 6:12 am
I am all for global warming as warm is much better than cold.
============
Without technology, humans cannot survive beyond a couple of days almost anywhere on earth outside the narrow band of jungles along the equator. We cannot eat enough food to maintain our body temperature and die of exposure.
Humans are optimized for heat. Our erect posture maximize evaporation and heat loss, while minimizing surface area exposed to the sun. This allows us to remain active for longer periods when it is hot as compared to other mammals. In contrast, survival times for naked humans in cold weather is measured in hours and minutes, while other mammals can survive indefinitely.
While the average temperature of the earth is currently around 15C, for hundreds of millions of years the average was 22C. The same temperature we heat our houses in the absence of conservation. The same temperature that leaves on trees try and maintain to optimize photosynthesis. Coincidence or a product of evolution?
Willis, one further thought. In the Arctic there is no / little GH effect in winter since there is no / little incoming solar. And so, if you could plot the temps for only the winter months and the warming trend was still there, it would strongly suggest that it isn’t GH warming but something else.
In the Newd American of all places
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/17500-u-s-agencies-accused-of-fudging-data-to-show-global-warming
Re: Gail Combs says:
January 29, 2014 at 6:01 am
“And the Met Office is a running joke to most Brits. Remember the Barbeque Summer? Children Won’t Know what Snow is? ”
Yes indeed Gail the Met Office is a running joke but to be fair the ‘Children Won’t Know What Snow Is’ is actually from David Viner at the CRU (also a running joke if it wasn’t so tragic!!)
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
But the Met Office brochure is worth reading to see all the propaganda UK residents have been subjected to.
Did you know for example that (according to the Met Office!!!)
“The term climate change usually refers to man-made changes that have occurred since the early 1900s.”
and that
“What will happen if we don’t reduce emissions?
If emissions continue to grow at present rates, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is likely to reach twice pre-industrial levels by around 2050. Unless we limit emissions, global temperature could rise as much as 7 °C above pre-industrial temperature by the end of the century and push many of the world’s great ecosystems (such as coral reefs and rainforests) to irreversible decline.
Even if global temperatures rise by only2 °C it would mean that 20–30% of species could face extinction. We can expect to see serious effects on our environment, food and water supplies, and health.”
“Are computer models reliable?
Yes. Computer models are an essential tool in understanding how the climate will respond to changes in greenhouse gas concentrations, and other external effects, such as solar output and volcanoes.
Computer models are the only reliable way to predict changes in climate. Their reliability is tested by seeing if they are able to reproduce the past climate, which gives scientists confidence that they can also predict the future.”
http://www.worcester.gov.uk/fileadmin/assets/pdf/Environment/climate_change/DECC-MET-office-warming-brochure.pdf
Richard: I did read it. Please do not assume that I do not read what has been suggested. I believe that you ARE bringing up a semantic point however.
We both agree that any figure of any sort is beyond reach, Indeed it may not have even have any real meaning.
However it is fair to say that the different approaches are all seeking to derive an answer of that type.
That is what THEY claim.
I, therefore, am suggesting that one approach would be to treaty them all as merely proxies rather than true measurements.
And then use standard proxy methodologies to achieve a true comparison and combined conclusion.
Thanks, Willis for moving the goalposts back where they belong. If you doubt paleo-proxies and want to look only at modern data, the CO2-greenhouse hypothesis requires a warm anomaly in the tropical troposphere. Everything else about weather/climate from Obama, etc., is just for tribal dominance and asset confiscation.
How many people live in the lower troposphere?
I know it includes the surface, but does go up to 17-20 km, so that vast bulk of the LT isn’t where we live.
Not a completely facetious comment, because as Izen has already shown above, the alarmist argument could still be that this doesn’t reflect what’s going on down below where we live (or even worse, the deep ocean where the heat is hiding!).
Ferdberple,
Whilst you are correct human’s need technology to survive outside the tropics, that technology is not advanced – basic hunting, farming and shelter-building (none of which require tools beyond those for the purpose) is easily enough to provide comfortable existence with small populations across much of the globe (allowing for problems such as famine and plague…). So that’s not an argument you really want to push.
Bluntly, human’s survived the last ice age in Europe (basically up to the margins of the ice), so clearly modern technology is not necessary.
everyone questions why RSS and UAH are different. They are not very different at all! I would consider them different if one measured the mean earth temperature at 280 K and the other at 290 K. That would be a big difference! But they agree well within 1 degree K. I think you are all bying into the alarmist meme that some slight change in the average temperature of the earth (how ever that is measured) will somehow be the end of us all. I find it amazing that the two very different methods yeild such similar results! I wouldn’t expect anything closer.
I don’t see the chart for the missing heat™. You seem to have completely overlooked it, and by so doing have catastrophically understated the imminent disaster facing all life on this planet. Honestly Willis, what are you like?
Now where’s that sarc tag . .
RSS and UAH are very close. Just a tiny origin offset between the two of them. A possible range correction as well.
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c274/richardlinsleyhood/OLScomparison_zpsc45498e9.png
So why not use standard proxy techniques and align them all?
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c274/richardlinsleyhood/OLSaligned_zps3186174a.png
and thus get
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c274/richardlinsleyhood/OLSalignedAnnualtrends_zps5603d308.png
I think Stephen Wilde is correct (above). It makes a lot of sense.
Gerry Parker
The worry was never about actual global warming it was about catastrophic global warming predicted by climate computer models. I was a chemical engineer for 35 years before I retired. The idea that computers can be wrong is something you can’t teach, everyone has to learn it for themselves. But in a way that’s a good thing because then you never forget it.
What part of 67-90°N is covered by satellites, what part is only guesstimated, und what part is used (or not used) by UAH and RSS for their temperatures?
IIRC there are some differences there.
Gerry Parker says:
January 29, 2014 at 7:07 am
“I think Stephen Wilde is correct (above). It makes a lot of sense.”
Possibly. The real question is why this appears to have an ~60 year cycle to it?
“Bluntly, human’s survived the last ice age in Europe (basically up to the margins of the ice), so clearly modern technology is not necessary.”
We have nearly 7 billion people on the earth at the present. Without modern technology and cheap energy the overwhelming vast majority of them would die. I hope you are not advocating that we kill off most of humanity so we can return to a primitive lifestyle.
Warm is good; cold is bad — let us not advocate living on the edge of a glacier with only a fire and animal skins.
Gail Combs says at January 29, 2014 at 6:01 am
And RichardLH says at January 29, 2014 at 6:05 am
This interesting note serves only one reason: to mollify all readers of this excellent portal after the series of embarrassing notes by W.A. on “pattern recognition”. Basically W. A. is trying to tell us that he is sane after all or after he went back on medication regimen.
Or in readable formatting…
Gail Combs says at January 29, 2014 at 6:01 am
And RichardLH says at January 29, 2014 at 6:05 am
I tend to agree with the abundance of incompetence, not malice.
After all if H. L. Mencken had really found out about an institutionally corrupt political system I’m sure he would have been conveniently disappeared.
Do I need to indicate the jest?
RichardLH:
Thankyou for your reply to me at January 29, 2014 at 6:42 am.
It has become obvious that I am failing to understand what you are saying so I am writing to ask for clarification. I explain my problem as follows..
You say I am making a semantic point when I observe that
(a) GASTA has no definition,
(b) GASTA may represent either of two understandings,
(c) GASTA has no possibility of calibration,
(d) The lack of definition means that each team computes a different metric in a different way,
(e) The lack of definition enables each team to alter the definition it uses and so to alter its previous determinations of past values of GASTA, and they often do.
(f) The different teams which provide values of GASTA do not object to their different determinations of GASTA being treated as representing the same metric.
(g) Acceptance that the different determinations of GASTA represent the same (unknown and undefined) metric prevents determination of whatever different effects are being by indicated the different teams each providing its unique metric which they all call GASTA.
I fail to understand how it is a semantic point to explain that this is the antithesis of science.
And I am completely failing to understand your points which are
If is is undefined and may have no meaning then what use is it?
The different approaches are all seeking to derive an answer of what type?
What do “THEY” claim?
Proxies of what?
How can one have a “conclusion” of something which is a “proxy” for something which is undefined and may not exist?
I would appreciate answers which would remove my puzzlement.
Richard
Very interesting how the extreme north and south poles are so unstable relative to the rest of the earth. I wonder why that is. I’ve never seen that mentioned by any of the “experts”. Seems like they are allowing the tail to wag the dog, without explaining why the tail is wagging.
“Should we be worried?”
Answer: Yes, by the rising cost of electricity, the direct result of ‘climate change’ policies and consequently having to subsidise expensive and unreliable energy ‘renewables’.
“Any other worries?”
Answer: No.
We DO have to worry – about a committed ideologue in the White House who is determined to continue using the AGW meme as his excuse for destroying the country’s energy infrastructure.
There’s the new Salem witch trials (war on coal), and more wars are to come against petroleum and even natural gas (Holdren and Podesta are gearing up for those new spates of witch-burning)
This man cannot be reached by logic, facts or even the coldest winter in 50 years right in his face. It would be laughable except for the horrific harm the AGW ideology/religion is still capable of doing in his hands.
John Marshall says: January 29, 2014 at 3:22 am
“Forgive the pedantry, but I was taught that Kelvin was Kelvin, & there were no “degrees” about it!”
I was taught that 273K was 273,000 and left to wonder what the units are.
South polar region, ‘ends up where it started.’ That’s over 35 years of data. Looks like half of a 60-70 year cycle. Also two shorter cycles between 1986 and ~2008. Loess is not a good choice that analysing cycles (not that Willis was doing that) but there seems to be something like that underlying the data.
John Christy told me recently that area was interesting, I should to find out what he’s pointing me at.
Tropics , bump in 1988, 1997, 2010 . Each of those is about 2 after solar minimum and is preceded by a slight dip. Tropical governor trying to recover energy deficit?
Zonally analyzing the reannalysis data will give you similar results. Atmospheric moisture (clouds with condensation and freezing) is contolling OLR which in turn affects surface and atmospheric temperatures. The seasonal variation is the greatest at the poles where atmospheric moisture is the least. Do a running standard deviation along with your running mean. I find that increasing CO2 concentrations at the poles possibly enhances OLR rather than having a “greenhouse effect”. CO2 is being delivered to the poles in the stratosphere. Unlike in the tropics where air rises in clouds, at the poles there is an inversion and CO2 is being delivered to the surface from the stratosphere. CO2 will radiate at the temperature of the air with which it collides. Radiation at the top of the atmosphere goes mostly to space with a lesser fraction reaching the surface to be reradiated. I think tropical clouds are controlling the atmospheric concentration of CO2.
[snip – too stupid of a trolling remark to even print, bugger off – Anthony]
N. Pol , slight downward trend since 2010 against prior rise. This is in agreement with the eased rate of melting I derived last year. That shows melting continuing at a reduced rate: aka “decelerating melting”. End of the “run-away melting” which was one possible interpretation of the limited data up to 2007. That description no longer fits the data.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/on-identifying-inter-decadal-variation-in-nh-sea-ice/
Wednesday night on Coast to Coast AM radio–a critic of temperature data manipulation:
10pm – 2am PT
Science Fraud/ Elec. Harassment
Wed 01-29
First Half: Space historian Robert Zimmerman will discuss the fraud and dishonesty which has permeated the sciences of climate and environmental studies including how scientists at NASA and NOAA have consistently manipulated the temperature records.
PMHinSC says:
John Marshall says: January 29, 2014 at 3:22 am
“Forgive the pedantry, but I was taught that Kelvin was Kelvin, & there were no “degrees” about it!”
I was taught that 273K was 273,000 and left to wonder what the units are.
===
I doubt you were taught that , you were probably looking out of the window and listening with one ear. 😉
Since precision is good in science: 273,000 would be 270k not 270K . Similarly kelvin is a unit without “degree” but not Kelvin. ie K or kelvin, not Kelvin.
Similarly kilowatt-hour is kWh , not KWh, Kwh, KwH, kWH or other ignorant variations we get just about every time someone writes about energy consumption or production.
Well done and much appreciated. Looking back at the 1980’s/90’s warming in some places, it seems obvious that this was distorted and spun into a new, permanet trend at that time that ignored what is becoming more and more obvious today.
Global climate models were programmed with the physics and equations that would extrapolate the trend out for the next 100 years and sold as settled science.
Now that this trend and that theory of CAGW has been badly busted and keeps getting worse, many of the ones selling this with convincing propoganda and misrepresentation of the science, weather and authentic empirical data are still not backing off.
What should be a discussion based purely on science and the scientific method was morphed into something completely different by one side. A battle to win approval in the minds of the billions of non scientific minds(especially with regards to climate) using marketing and brainwashing techniques effectively.
Hitler would have been impressed.
Its funny. If you look at it another way (please forgive the use of RSS rather than UAH …), you get a very different impression (UAH trend plot which can be visualized via the KNMI explorer is rather similar. btw). See the link below. So, what is going on here? Well, Willis shows the the underlying month-to-month variability. If the trend is small compared to the month-to-month variability you will probably conclude that the change is not that relevant, given that one month to the next can vary much more than the overall warming over tehse 30+ years. That’s why you will mainly see plots like the one below and rarely the one that Willis shows. How you visualize your results does matter. The figure below is much more in line with the notion of dramatic climate change then the one by Willis. Like stating that the last 15+ years were the warmest on record sounds much more dramatic than the notion that there has been no change over those same 15 years.
Well done.
http://images.remss.com/data/msu/graphics/tlt/medium/global/MSU_AMSU_Channel_tlt_Trend_Map_v03_3_1979_2013.730_450.png
Marion: Met Office propaganda:
“Are computer models reliable?
“Yes. Computer models are an essential tool in understanding how the climate will respond to changes in greenhouse gas concentrations, and other external effects, such as solar output and volcanoes.
Computer models are the only reliable way to predict changes in climate. “
They are not even a reliable way…
I wrote to them two years ago objecting to that lie. They are still presenting it to the public.
euanmearns says:
Willis, one further thought. In the Arctic there is no / little GH effect in winter since there is no / little incoming solar. And so, if you could plot the temps for only the winter months and the warming trend was still there, it would strongly suggest that it isn’t GH warming but something else.
====
Not strictly correct since there is a major heat transport from equator to poles. It could be the result of GHG effect in tropics, regulated by tropical governor and exported polewards. ie not _local_ GH effect but global GH effect.
You may then need to evaluate the feeble tropical troposheric “hot spot” that would be part of the process and evaluate whether is matched the heat transport needed. Less trivial than you suggest.
Incompetence is indistinguishable from malice when policy makers are the incompetents.
izen says . . . .
There are several shortcomings in your posting. First, there has not been stratospheric cooling since 1994 — since the last major mid-latitude volcanic eruption.
Second, lower tropospheric temperatures is the best place to analyze “global warming trends.” Not only is it the critical spot for temperatures to rise in the greenhouse gas theory, but also surface temperatures appear to be hopelessly compromised. Surface thermometers have issues with siting consistency, UHI, and observational variability. When the people with a political agenda adjust the historical data by more than the trend that is supposed to lead to catastrophe, then you have an unreliable record.
Third, there is an open and collegial relationship between RSS and UAH personnel on MSU data. The two centers come at the global warming theory from different perspectives, and we are insured by their interaction that biases are not affecting their trend data. In addition, UAH and RSS have been far more forthcoming and responsive to my inquiries than GISS and NOAA.
Richard: The claim made by the various parties is that they are representing “Mean global temperature anomalies and trends”.
Regardless if you think that is valid or possible to do.
That is what they claim they are doing.
I am purely pointing out that the true, physical, implementation of this is not possible because we do not have sufficient instruments of sufficient characteristics to, from an engineering standpoint alone, complete that task to the degree of precision required.
What we have, however, is a set of methodologies that may well represent a proxy or close approximation to that figure, derived from the various different standpoints.
Hence the approach defined and the results shown.
Jos:
At January 29, 2014 at 7:53 am you say
True, and it is equally true that it is
Cl;early, the “more dramatic” fact is also the most honest and most informative in each of these two statements.
Richard
PS Are you Tim Yeo because yesterday that sleazy dimwit demonstrated to the world that he wants to promote the same stupid point as you have?
Trend lines plotted with statistical functions always have a slope. In this case the slopes are zero. Saying there is “no trend” is different than saying the trends are zero.
Inspection of the North Pole plot may (or may not) show some kind of non-zero trend, but in the context of multidecadal trends, I’d say the North Pole plot also shows no significant warming.
To test that statement, you could show the North Pole plot to some local mathematicians without context or labels. Then they might say those data show a slight sinusoidal pattern.
The most recent data also show values not significantly different from the long term average.
BTW, I’ve recently found that the lunar effect on Arctic ice cover is found at two periods : 27.6d , lunar distance and 29.94d. The latter is a significant find since it is the synodic (visible) lunar cycle _ in the winter months_, not the annual average. This shows that the strongest influence of the new/full moon cycle is during the winter.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=756
It has already been noted by some that Dec-Jan-Feb AO index has most effect on the annual minimum in September without an physical link being proposed or why we should be looking at DJF values.
My frequency analysis shows why.
RichardLH:
I appreciate that you have replied to me with your post at January 29, 2014 at 8:12 am.
Unfortunately your reply does not remove my failure to understand what you are trying to do and why.
I broke things down to a set of questions which explained what I don’t understand and your answer does not address any of them.
Anyway, you did provide a reply. So, thankyou.
Richard
euanmearns,
http://images.remss.com/msu/msu_data_monthly.html
You can watch it happening month by month there (the “Anomaly” option).
One can also easily see exactly how “global” all this so-called “Global Warming” since 1979 has been by clicking “Trend” – and I must say, not exactly the map they promise we’ll see
bw says:
Trend lines plotted with statistical functions always have a slope. In this case the slopes are zero. Saying there is “no trend” is different than saying the trends are zero.
Good point. A far better approach is to say there is “no trend” in any climate data and then start doing some proper analysis. Virtually nowhere in climate is a trivial linear function an reasonable model to fit to the data. So there is “no trend” is the correct statement.
bw:
At January 29, 2014 at 8:17 am you say
If you choose to be pedantic then try to get it right.
Trend lines plotted with statistical functions always have a slope. In this case the slopes are not discernibly different from zero at 95% confidence. Saying “the slopes are zero” is different from saying the trends are are not discernibly different from zero at stated confidence.
Personally, I think “no trend” conveys the meaning to the chosen audience succinctly.
Richard
I think that ferdberple in his January 29, 2014 at 6:08 am post, ” The graphs suggest that the tropics are very efficient at maintaining temperatures withing a narrow range, and the paleo records support this. The tropical ocean heats up, convection at the ICZ increases, the Trades strengthen, cooling the tropics.” is on the right track. As I commented on your post about the CERRES data, it looks more and more like the Earth’s climate system is a closed loop system. Looking for the control input, I can’t find anything that is more stable than the Ocean and land temperatures within the horse latitudes. The return flow for the Hadley cells passes over this area interacts with the convection at the ICZ.
Stephen Wilde says:
“If the system tries to accumulate more energy then warm water pumps further into the Arctic Ocean, […] If the system starts to lose energy the flow of warm water reduces”
No transport of warmer water into the Arctic increases when the system is loosing energy, specifically when the AO/NAO are more negative, which typically accompany El Nino episodes.
Gail Combs says:
January 29, 2014 at 6:01 am
You forgot the best one, they warned that “this drought could last until December!” I believe it was made towards the end of February, 2012! A few weeks before the Heavens opened almost permanently! 😉
50 years ago the kelvin actually did have a °, but it lost it with the new definition in 1967: “The triple point of water is 273.16 K”.
But celsius kept its °, 0°C is defined as 273.15K.
Can’t say I’ve seen the data split into the tropics, extratropics and poles before. Thanks for digging it up and posting it.
Amazing how the warming has been just a northern hemisphere phenomenon.
It will be interesting when all the polar bears and other animals in the northern hemisphere are all dead from catastrophic climate change, while the southern hemisphere remains just dandy.
richardscourtney says:
January 29, 2014 at 8:20 am
I though I summarised your point of view quite well.
You do not believe it is possible to derive a ‘Mean’ at all.
Others do.
I use their definition and observe that many disparate points of view can be best assimilated by using proxy methodology.
Greg says:
January 29, 2014 at 7:52 am
“PMHinSC says:
I was taught that 273K was 273,000 and left to wonder what the units are.
===
I doubt you were taught that, you were probably looking out of the window and listening with one ear. ;)”
Actually I was probably dreaming about girls. I think I will, however, continue to believe that a number without units (ratios excepted) are like steak without wine; something is missing. No criticism intended.
DS – thanks for link.
http://www.euanmearns.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/temp_anom_N_Pole.png
Hope this link to screen capture works, did a polar view, Dec 2010, some amazing bright spots at high latitude. And a wacky radial distribution of positive and negative anomalies that I’ve not seen before. Taking into account what Greg says, how do you account for the extreme high temp anomalies over N Canada and Greenland in Dec?
Greg Goodman says:
January 29, 2014 at 8:23 am
“Virtually nowhere in climate is a trivial linear function an reasonable model to fit to the data.”
It is valid WITHIN the range of the data, Outside of that it has no real meaning. Could be used for infilling missing values. Lousy at predictions at either end.
‘Linear trend’ = ‘Tangent to the curve’ = ‘Flat Earth’
Willis, I don’t think it would make any difference, but you shouldn’t use KNMI when you can go straight to the UAH website for the data, since the version available at KNMI is not the most up to date-version 5.5 versus 5.6.
@ Greg- 1988, 1997, 2010, are all strong ENSO events. Tropical temperatures closely correlate with ENSO.
Ulric Lyons said:
” transport of warmer water into the Arctic increases when the system is losing energy, specifically when the AO/NAO are more negative, which typically accompany El Nino episodes”
If the system is already losing energy then pumping more water into the Arctic for faster loss to space would be a positive feedback but the system feedbacks appear to be negative.
So, I think that more warm water into the Arctic must be a response to warming as a negative system response.
Of course, on certain time scales there could well be periods when the air and ocean circulation systems are out of phase but over the millennial solar cycle I think I have it right.
The AO seems to respond to solar variability as witness the recent record negative near the lowest part of the current solar cycle.
Why are your graphs so different from the browser tool?
MSU & AMSU Time Series Trend Browse Tool
http://images.remss.com/msu/msu_time_series.html
Channel = Total Lower Troposphere
Tropics (-25’S to 25’N) = +.107K per decade
North Mid Latitudes (25’N to 60’N) = +.185K per decade
North Polar (60’N to 82.5’N) = +.325K per decade
Note: if 82.5’N to 90’N were included in this analysis the increase would be even greater!
Global (-70’S to 82.5’N) =+.125K per decade
Retired Engineer John said:
“it looks more and more like the Earth’s climate system is a closed loop system. Looking for the control input, I can’t find anything that is more stable than the Ocean and land temperatures within the horse latitudes. The return flow for the Hadley cells passes over this area interacts with the convection at the ITCZ.”
That fits with my proposition that the adiabatic convective system is a closed loop due to KE converted to PE during uplift being reconverted back to KE on descent.
The two processes have to remain in balance for as long as the atmosphere is being held off the surface. Any period of imbalance results in a higher or lower atmosphere with a changed internal circulation.
That changed internal circulation is the negative system response that we perceive as climate change.
@richardscourtney and @richard LH
Actually, UAH and RSS are not measures of global *surface* temperature at all. They are measures of the temperature of a bulk atmospheric region, and effectively measure well above the surface-although the LT is closely connected to surface temperature.
However, it also is not a 1-1 connection. Rather, the global LT anomalies tend to be larger swings than the surface temperature-that is, when the surface warms, the LT warms more, and when the surface cools, the LT cools more. I took the average of GISS, HADCRUT4, and NCDC surface temperature annual anomalies (rebaselined to 1981-2010) detrended that average, and compared it to UAH LT annual anomalies similarly detrended. A simple regression suggested a best estimate for the factor by which LT anomalies vary more than the surface of about 1.44. So if either of you wants to compare UAH or RSS to the surface, you should probably divide them by such a factor first. I think that number is skewed high by GISS’s reduced interannual variance, it is probably closer to 1.2 or 1.3. Either way, the comparison done this way-comparing surface temperature trends in the official datasets, to “inferred” trends from satellites, is kind of enlightening: there seems to be a significant divergence of the trends: Satellite surface trends *inferred* from LT trends, are much lower than the official surface trends.
Stephen Wilde says:
“If the system is already losing energy then pumping more water into the Arctic for faster loss to space would be a positive feedback but the system feedbacks appear to be negative.”
Pumping more water would increase the energy loss from the system yes, but nontheless it warms the Arctic and raises the average global surface temperature, as does an El Nino.
“So, I think that more warm water into the Arctic must be a response to warming as a negative system response.”
No it causes a warming, as an El Nino also does, and they both reduce the energy of the system. They are a negative response, to a drop in solar forcing, see 1997/98 and 2009/10:
http://snag.gy/nf9SK.jpg
RichardLH:
Perhaps iot is not possible for us to stop talking past each other
January 29, 2014 at 8:55 am
You did not summarise my point, You ignored it.
Of course I “believe” it is possible to derive a mean!
I can obtain a mean of the weight of stones if I can measure their individual weights.
I can obtain a mean of the height of tides if I can measure their individual heights.
But I do not see how I can combine the mean weight of stones with the mean height of tides to determine a mean from it: of course, I could add the two values together and divide by 2 to obtain a number, but that would not be a mean. And that “others” choose to do that is no reason to accept their number.
What is “their definition”?
They do not have one: they each have a different definition so provide the equivalent of ‘mean stone weights’ and ‘mean tide heights’.
And what is your “proxy methodology”?
It seems to be normalising so the different versions of GASTA can be plotted over each other, and I fail to see what benefit that provides.
Richard
Willis, there’s an interesting paper by Kyle Swanson in GRL looking at the growing convergence of models with one another and their simultaneous divergence from reality; https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/kswanson/www/publications/GRL_selection.pdf. The Arctic really stands out as the place where dramatic warming takes place. What seems to have happened between CMIP3 and CMIP5 is that models now fit the Arctic better, but as a result fit everywhere else worse. So, as Swanson rightly points out, that suggests that the changes to the models probably didn’t even get the story behind the Arctic warming right, since if they did, they’d work just as well or better everywhere else too. Something to bear in mind when looking at these zonal trends — a strong trend in the NH high latitudes doesn’t count as some kind of “partial” vindication of the models if, in order to reproduce it, the models get worse in the tropics, extratropics and SH.
timetochooseagain:
I agree all you say in your post at January 29, 2014 at 9:32 am .
I especially agree your point
Yes!
Basically you are saying that UAH and RSS measure temperature in different sample points from GISS, HadCRUTn, etc..
But GISS, HadCRUTn, etc. also choose different sample points from each other.
So, your point applies to all the surface data sets, too.
And GISS, HadCRUTn, etc. uses a unique method for amalgamating, weighting, interpolating and extrapolating those points as a method to infer global temperature.
In other words, each of the data sets is a unique indication of a unique something and nobody knows what that something is for any of the data sets.
UAH and RSS are the most similar because they use the same sample data points with such high global coverage that they require least interpolation and extrapolation. But they differ in their methodology.
Direct comparison and/or combination of these data sets is like comparing the weights of stones to the heights of tides: there are physical reasons why there will be some relationship between the data on weights of stones and heights of tides obtained from the same beach, but nobody would claim they are the same thing.
Richard
Ulric Lyons said:
Pumping more water would increase the energy loss from the system yes, but nontheless it warms the Arctic and raises the average global surface temperature, as does an El Nino.
My point was that it does increase energy loss from the system. In doing so it warms the Arctic air through which the energy passes but it is still a net cooling response for the system.
I am talking about system energy content and not air temperatures in isolation.
“They are a negative response, to a drop in solar forcing, see 1997/98 and 2009/10:”
I find that confusing since a drop in solar forcing results in less energy in the system so faster energy losses from El Nino or a warm Arctic would compound that as a positive feedback would they not ?
The warmest Arctic temperatures and least sea ice followed three decades of El Nino dominance and that dominance was a result of reduced global cloudiness with more sunlight entering the oceans, not less.
timetochooseagain says:
January 29, 2014 at 9:22 am
Thanks, time … my problem is I wanted an NCDF file, and they don’t have one at the UAH site, unless I’m missing it.
I suppose I should just go ahead and download the year-by-year data, but it was all too messy for a late night post. I’ll write something up to scrape the data from UAH at some point.
Finally, I doubt you’d see much difference between 5.5 and 5.6. From memory the South Pole is a bit cooler as are some other areas, as well as the globe overall, but we’re talking maybe a tenth of a degree difference … however, if there is I’ll report back to you.
All the best,
w.
Greg Goodman says:
January 29, 2014 at 8:20 am
Have you spoken to E M Smith (Chiefio) and Clive Best about your findings?
They have both been working on Lunar Cycles and their effects on Climate/Tides etc.
RichardLH says: @ January 29, 2014 at 6:05 am
Alternatively.
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
Napoleon Bonaparte
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I really really wish I could agree it was just incompetence, but there is just too much evidence out there that this is part of a long term plan. As WTO director-General, Pascal Lamy bluntly stated:
That says there is a Grand Plan and the United Nations, the Bretton Woods system (World Bank and IMF), and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) (World Trade Organization) are all working in accordance with that plan and have been for close to a century.
I strongly suggest reading “Economic Interdependence and War: A Theory of Trade Expectations,” International Security, Vol. 20, no.4 (Spring 1996) it explains the reasoning behind the Grand Plan.
Believe me incompetence is much much better than fanatics with a Grand Plan, especially fanatics with lots of money and reasoning that maybe completely incorrect.
Once you understand the Grand Plan and ‘Interdependence’ then Clinton’s actions with regard to China makes a lot of more sense:
Chasing the Dragon: Clinton’s China Policy
(Back up info)
NY times: Clinton Approves Technology Transfer to China
NY times: The Nation: Open Arms; Spying Isn’t the Only Way to Learn About Nukes
Ross McKitrick says:
January 29, 2014 at 9:45 am
Thanks, Ross. You point to a huge problem with parameterized models. For example, some models are tuned to provide overall radiative balance using the clouds, by adjusting the threshold parameter for ice formation. Here’s how GISS does it:
Of course, when you do that kind of a kludge to fix one thing, it means something else goes wrong, like total cloud area … can’t win for losing. Total cloud area in the GISS model is 59%, vs 20% more clouds than that in the real world.
But the model balances so everything must be OK …
Regards,
w.
richardscourtney says:
January 29, 2014 at 9:42 am
“You did not summarise my point, You ignored it.
Of course I “believe” it is possible to derive a mean!
I can obtain a mean of the weight of stones if I can measure their individual weights.
I can obtain a mean of the height of tides if I can measure their individual heights.
But I do not see how I can combine the mean weight of stones with the mean height of tides to determine a mean from it: of course, I could add the two values together and divide by 2 to obtain a number, but that would not be a mean. And that “others” choose to do that is no reason to accept their number.”
I do apologise for the shorthand I used. I will try to be clearer.
You do not believe it is possible to derive a ‘Mean of Global Temperatures’ at all.
“And what is your “proxy methodology”?
It seems to be normalising so the different versions of GASTA can be plotted over each other, and I fail to see what benefit that provides. ”
If the different approaches look at the same problem from different points of view, then it is likely the ‘true’ figure is somewhere between them. Using proxy techniques to derive that ‘true’ figure seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Gail Combs says:
January 29, 2014 at 10:07 am
“I really really wish I could agree it was just incompetence, but there is just too much evidence out there that this is part of a long term plan”
In general conspiracies are just too difficult to organise! Believe me they always fall apart. 🙂
Marion says: @ January 29, 2014 at 6:42 am….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Oh MY! The guy who wrote that dreck had to be holding his nose to keep from being asphyxiated by the stench.
@richardscourtney-Almost, but not quite!
By way of your analogy-although it is a bit coarse-GISS, HADCRUT4, and NCDC is like an attempt to measure a sort of “average height of tides” by averaging different heights from different beachs all over the world. There is very large overlap between the beaches each samples from, but there are some beaches not sampled by any of them, and some beaches sample by some groups and not others.
But then we have the analogous RSS-UAH case: someone measures *average wind speeds* at all the beaches all over the world-and there are two groups that analyze the wind data in two different ways. But for the most part, neither group measures different sets of beaches, they both measure at all the beaches.
Now, suppose we have a *theory* or a *model* that can relate the speed of winds at beaches to the height of tides at beaches. The relationship is fairly simple, but not 1-1. But someone comparing the two 1-1 will be significantly mislead. One needs to use the theory/model to *inform* ones analysis of how the two are related to one another.
In this case, the theory and models have to do with the dynamics of the lapse rate, which suggest that we *ought* to see larger variations in the LT data. But of course, if we are good scientists, we don’t *assume* that any data is correct or any model/theory is correct. We test it.
So now in the analogy, suppose someone suggested “I think the average height of tides measured at beaches shows a spurious trend due to” some such reason. Urban Beach Islands or whatever. Being a clever person, I would say “Hey! We can test to see if this is true by using theory and data-at the same time as testing the theory and data!”. It’s simple enough, say I detrend the average tide data and the average windspeed data, the residuals show a good linear relationship, and it is in line with what the theory/models predict. I then take the non-detrended windspeed, multiply or divide by the appropriate factor to get the tide heights. And low and behold, I do in fact find that the wind data suggest less of a trend in tide heights than the tide height data say!
Or, backing out of the analogy, I find that UAH and RSS are ambiguously related to the surface temperature data in a way that we can’t say one is “right” or the other “wrong,” nor do I find that they “agree” with each other. I find specifically that UAH and RSS suggest that the surface temperature data might be *spuriously warming* at a rather high rate.
RichardLH:
I can see no purpose in continuing this ‘conversation’ because I keep asking clear and simple questions which fail to obtain clear answers.
For example in your post at January 29, 2014 at 10:39 am you quote my asking
and you reply
But that ignores one of my still unanswered questions which was
In other words I do not understand how there can be a ‘true’ figure for something which is not specified.
Richard
The 60 year cycle is probably the 55.6 year lunar cycle.
Stephen Wilde says:
“I find that confusing since a drop in solar forcing results in less energy in the system so faster energy losses from El Nino or a warm Arctic would compound that as a positive feedback would they not ?”
It is a negative feedback for surface temperatures. The point is that it is when we are in cooling mode with higher Arctic pressure and more negative AO/NAO states, that there will be greater transport of warm water into the Arctic.
“The warmest Arctic temperatures and least sea ice followed three decades of El Nino dominance…”
The Arctic temperature rise and the acceleration of sea ice loss was distinctly from 1996, with the increase in incidence and strength of negative AO/NAO episodes.
markstoval says: @ January 29, 2014 at 7:18 am
Mark you just have to take the long view. as William F. McClenney does in The Sky is Falling – or Revising the Nine Times Rule ( In an advanced course in Psychology taken some 30 years ago I learned that the human being is nine times more susceptible to rumor than it is to fact. That simple rule explains a dramatic amount of human behavior. )
Maybe our Overlords are just interested in making sure the next evolutionary leap occurs during the next glaciation…
Marion says:
“Computer models are an essential tool in understanding how the climate will respond to changes in greenhouse gas concentrations, and other external effects, such as solar output and volcanoes.”
The problem is that computer models are wildly inaccurate. For example, not one GCM was able to predict the current 17-year long halt in global warming. If models cannot predict such a major event, then it is time to stop wasting any more taxpayer dollars on them.
timetochooseagain:
I am amused by the fact that while I am struggling to understand RichardLH you say in your post at January 29, 2014 at 10:56 am that you and I only “Almost, but not quite!” agree when I fail to see any disagreement.
Perhaps it is that you say
whereas I say none of the data sets can be trusted to indicate anything about the others so they all provide indications which are “spurious” because none of them has a ‘true’ definition so none of them is ‘right’.
If so, then our difference is too trivial to be worth debating.
Richard
John Andrews says:
January 29, 2014 at 10:57 am
“The 60 year cycle is probably the 55.6 year lunar cycle.”
It could be many things. Expressed in many ways. For instance, given that we are constrained to the overall Annual cycle, it could be a mix of 50 – 60 – 70 years components mixed in a 1:1:1 ratio of randomly ordered half cycles.
Just like you often see in chaotically ordered but constrained systems.
Strange graphs Willis. If I’m reading them correctly, they each have (each zone) a +/- 0.3 deg. C scale of Temperature. Now I think those norty boys in Huntsville really meant to say temperature anomalies, rather than lower troposphere Temperature. But we have learned here at WUWT how to understand Dr. Roy’s and Prof. John’s accents, so we know what they mean.
But that is not the mystery.
Howcome; on the same scales the north pole and the south pole have whacking great peak real signal amplitudes, and everywhere else has ho-hum real signals ??
And my calibrated eye can almost detect a phase delay, between the output of your Loess filter, and what my eye says the real signal is. So that begs the question. If you extract your blue lines, from the five graphs, and put them all on the same strip, either with a color coding, or just a small vertical (Temperature / temperature anomalie) offset between them, so they don’t overlap too much; and maybe a gain increase to give a bigger signal, I wonder if there is a constant phase offset for all of them.
The weird signal amplitude dis crepancy, is doubly weird, because it looks same at both poles (other than smoothed “trend”) yet we know that the north pole, has a huge; 18-20 ppm, annual CO2 cycle amplitude, compared to just 6 at ML, while the south pole is totally different with almost none (well about a -1 amplitude; (out of phase with north).
So how do the Huntsville chaps explain the quiet of the three middle earth zones; versus all the polar racket ??
I thought a Loess, was some sort of landslide associated with volcanos, or mudslides ??
richardscourtney says:
January 29, 2014 at 10:56 am
“Proxies of what?”
OK. terminology change (only)
‘Close approximations to an underlying factual property that it is technically difficult to express as a single number. Different views may provide slightly different approximations’.
Go it now?
LT says, January 29, 2014 at 4:30 am:
“Why is there such a difference between UAH and RSS ?”
Well, it is just seemingly so. In reality they would globally track each other to near perfection all the way from 1979 to 2013 if only the two teams did one (1) small adjustment each. UAH needs to lift the midsection of its timeseries (1992-2005/06) en bloc by 0.06 degrees, while RSS should lift its final section (post 2005/06) in a similar manner by 0.03 degrees. That’s it. After that it all fits. No more fundamental difference or discrepancy:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1979/to:2005.67/offset:-0.07/compress:3/plot/rss/from:2005.67/offset:-0.04/compress:3/plot/uah/from:1979/to:1992/compress:3/plot/uah/from:1992/to:2005.67/offset:0.06/compress:3/plot/uah/from:2005.67/compress:3
dbstealey says:
January 29, 2014 at 11:08 am
“The problem is that computer models are wildly inaccurate.”
I doubt that. They do demonstrate the difficulty in building things from the detail up rather than combination down. Inside view or outside view.
Like trying to model fluid flow by tracing each individual atom. Can be done but it is a LOT of computing power and very difficult to get right.
Ah, but kind sir Willis, you have accumulated data for “the arctic” as only two entities: from 67 – 90 north, and from 67 south to 90 south. We do have now daily temperature summary (an average of several stations and observatories at 80 north latitude) from the DMI since 1959.
Four relevant observations:
Up north.
1) Since 1959, the summertime (melt season, solar “observation” season when SW radiation actually can get down to the surface, days when the sun is above the horizon, days when the air temperature is above 273 K) daily temperature at 80 north has been constant. Further, the std deviation during that whole time has been as close to zero as one can plot. That the “true” ice-and-water-covered Arctic” (not the highly-interpolated tundra/taiga/forested land area from 67 to 72 north but the actual 2 degree band centered at 80 north) has a constant temperature throws much suspicion on any claims that any “hidden heat” could be transported to that area around 80 (or past!) 80 north.
In July 2010, a reader here at WUWT showed that the average melt season DMI daily temperature across that 80 north band were actually declining since 1959, and have been declining faster since 2001 even as CO2 levels have steadily risen!
2) The winter temperatures reported in DMI’s 80 north latitude show very, very striking differences: The standard deviation of air temperatures in winter is much higher (almost 8 degrees during a time when the average daily temperature is only -25 degrees. Further, average winter temperatures are getting higher over time. It is only the YEARLY average Arctic temperatures (summer (which is declining slightly) combined with winter (increasing much more when the sun don’t shine!) that leads anybody to conclude “Arctic temperatures are increasing” …. And even that conclusion that isn’t true for Arctic ocean and islands (the area above 72 north) but for the land-covered-with-more-trees between 60 north and 72 north.
3) The south should be divided into the southern ocean (55 south to 70 south) and the continental Antarctica (70 south to the pole) or about 17.4 Million km^2. The first will be regularly covered with sea ice (part of the time – expanding from 70 south to 60 south latitudes every year) and a massive ocean heat sink all of the time.
The other area will be a “near constant” solid ice-covered land mass (14.0 million km^2 of ice-covered rock + 3.5 million sq km’s of ice shelf) always reflecting sunshine.
4) It is only that single tiny pennisula sticking into the ocean near Cape Horn that is warming down south. the rest is either static or declining. And all the while CO2 is increasing steadily, each of the past 3-1/2 years the Antarctic sea ice is steadily increasing towards Cape Horn.
What is the SI unit of “psychological susceptibility”, and what instrument do you measure it with ??
I believe that Ricky Ricardo, was absolutely correct, when he called that dismal science ; “pee-sick e-atry” with the accent on the “sick”.
Well psychology, is somewhat more credible; excuse me, that is, it can be. But it often is as credible as statistics.
Willis
Good article as usual. I’m not too clear on what you mean when you say “no trend”. It seems to me that there is a trend and it is that there is no significant change in temperature. Or do you mean that in a statistical analysis there is no correlation with time and temperature?
just some guy says: @ January 29, 2014 at 7:27 am
Very interesting how the extreme north and south poles are so unstable relative to the rest of the earth. I wonder why that is.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
LESS TROPOSPHERIC WATER VAPOR.
Because the poles are cold the air can hold much less water vapor. Water modifies the temperature making day time highs lower and night time lows higher. The Antarctica is the driest continent on earth. BTW
This graph of the Arctic from last year (2013) shows how even the temperature is during the Arctic summer when water can evaporate and how erratic it is during the cold winter: (click on 2013 to get last years graph)
Astronomers with IR telescopes go to the Antarctica to avoid the water vapor. link
Excellent post Willis! Beautifully illustrates the bigger picture perspective in this “debate”.
RichardLH:
Thanks for trying to break through my mystification with your post at January 29, 2014 at 11:16 am which answers my question “Proxies of what?” by saying
No, I don’t have a clue what the “underlying factual property” is when it is not defined and the different teams each assesses it differently. Hence, I fail to see how there can be an approximation to THE “underlying factual property”. Are they each assessing the same thing merely because they call it the same thing?
For example, two people looking at a garden may each say they can see movement. But one may see daffodils waving in the wind and the other sees fairies flying over the grass. Is either seeing what the other sees, or is either or both of them seeing something else? A definition of movement is needed.
Richard
“””””…..RichardLH says:
January 29, 2014 at 11:19 am
dbstealey says:
January 29, 2014 at 11:08 am
“The problem is that computer models are wildly inaccurate.”
I doubt that. They do demonstrate the difficulty in building things from the detail up rather than combination down. Inside view or outside view.
Like trying to model fluid flow by tracing each individual atom. Can be done but it is a LOT of computing power and very difficult to get right…..”””””
Well Heisenberg says you can’t even keep track of one single atom; let alone zillions of them.
So if the computer models are not “wildly inaccurate” as dbstealey asserts; why are there 13 of them (or is it 17), and no two of them agree with each other; let alone agree with the planet earth?
Do each of those computer models come from a different parallel universe, where the laws of physics are different from ours, and each other’s ??
I use computer models; have done for over 40 years. Not even once, did a system manufactured from the results of my modeling, ever fail to perform the way my model predicted it would. Well some of them eventually crapped out due to lousy manufacture, or QA, but if they turned on, they worked as designed.
Many of those situations, I made the model, as well as the system I designed with it.
None of them was a climate instrument or system. Some of them have sold in the billions; you are probably using one right now.
richardscourtney says:
January 29, 2014 at 11:35 am
“No, I don’t have a clue what the “underlying factual property” is when it is not defined ”
Temperature is defined as what happens when the atoms in a body vibrate faster or slower.
Larger groups of them with unequal combinations will have a much more difficult to determine, but still valid, ‘average temperature’.
The Globe is the ultimate (for humans) problem. Deriving the ‘Average Temperature’ for that requires approximations.
george e. smith says:
January 29, 2014 at 11:41 am
“None of them was a climate instrument or system. Some of them have sold in the billions; you are probably using one right now.”
And quite a few used summary statistics (averages) to produce output for human consumption no doubt. Often with filters to remove ‘noise’ from ‘signal’. I too have done the odd model in my time.
Done a lot of things.
Willis; on your emergencies, you described how thunnerstorms transport huge amounts of energy to the upper reaches of the atmosphere, thereby bypassing the GHG gauntlet. I agree, great refrigerators are thunderstorms and hurricanes.
So given that all that energy, bypasses the H2O, CO2, and also probably, or possibly, the O3, then how does it radiate to space, if some folks insist that the normal atmospheric gases; N2, O2, and Ar, don’t radiate thermal radiation.
Now I agree, they aren’t BB radiators, because they are too low in molecular density, to be total absorbers; but so long as they can still collide with each other; they carry accelerating charges (transiently) and therefore they emit thermal radiation.
george e. smith , I was going to drop a comment here but it’s closed: http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/why-weather-has-a-60-year-lunar-beat/
You may find this relevent:
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=756
harrydhuffman (@harrydhuffman) says:
January 29, 2014 at 5:58 am
“
HDH, you are so full of it. Willis has suggested and ,over time, provided evidence for, a ‘control mechanism’ that accounts for pretty much everything we have seen so far in terms of GSTA. Change the atmosphere and watch the ’emergent phenomena’ shift 15 minutes ‘earlier’. He makes a good case.
You, OTOH, are the equivalent of “witch craft is responsible”. You are exactly the kind of idiot that ‘warmists’, or whatever they are called these days, point to as being representative of ‘climate deniers’. You, and you are not alone, are a f*cki*g shambles that I’m ashamed to post on the same thread as.
As we might sing at an English football match …
Are you AlecM? Are you AlecM? Are you ‘dogs nose’ in disguise?
Seriously. You think Darwin was wrong? Hansen knows nothing about Venus? Jesus on a fxcking Dinosaur HDH… Will you ever accept the fact that we need people like you like we need ‘The Environmental Lobby’.
You are an embarrassment. Were it my blog then you and the ‘Dragon Slayers’ would have been out of here a long time ago. The only problem with this site is that Anthony is way to polite. He really doesn’t want to ‘moderate’ like ‘realclimate’. Me, well you would be out of here as fast as every other idiot troll.
Or, HDH, mental illness is not always diagnosed early enough in those who see ‘The Truth’. This leaves them free to frequent internet blogs as adults. Blabbering on about the mistakes that ‘Einstein’, ‘Darwin’ and every other individual has ever made. Medication time HDH?
Do us a favour and start your own crystal magic blog where people can see you for what you actually are. Anthony should have banned you from day one. He is a better man than I.
If a mod is really bored … could you fix me blockquotes in my post above please?.
[I don’t moderate … but I do fix things. Fixed. =w.]
“So given that all that energy, bypasses the H2O, CO2, and also probably, or possibly, the O3, then how does it radiate to space, if some folks insist that the normal atmospheric gases; N2, O2, and Ar, don’t radiate thermal radiation.”
Convection bypasses the main mass of spectral blocking GHGs but they are still present in stratosphere.
RichardLH:
re your post at January 29, 2014 at 11:46 am.
I know what temperature is.
Temperature is an intensive property. Intensive properties cannot be averaged.
However, as I explained to you above, one possible explanation of Mean Global Temperature is
The problem with that is the assumption of unity specific heat and unity density is not true. Therefore, none of the determinations of your “underlying property” provides an average temperature because none of them assesses humidity and none of them assesses atmospheric thermal expansion. They only take temperature measurements and combine them.
So, whatever your “underlying property” is, it is not temperature although it is derived from temperature measurements.
Richard
richardscourtney says:
January 29, 2014 at 12:10 pm
“I know what temperature is.
Temperature is an intensive property. Intensive properties cannot be averaged.”
However the change in them can for sure. That delta is an expression of the energy added or lost.
Just as a thermometer is an average of all of the atoms inside it. And changes in those contents reflect changes in the energy it sees. An averages of those changes expresses rate of energy flow.
Yes: I’m worried about the fact that some “scientists” are running around like Chicken Little over this data. I’m worried about the reputation and integrity of science as well as any misguided policies that may come to be from Chicken Little advising our politicians. I don’t think that story ended very well for the chickens if I recall right.
Alan the Brit says:
January 29, 2014 at 3:59 am
John Marshall says:
January 29, 2014 at 3:22 am
Forgive the pedantry, but I was taught that Kelvin was Kelvin, & there were no “degrees” about it!
That’s quite right. I haven’t got a degree to my name. Absolute zero.
@richardscourtney- Er, I’m afraid I think we *do* disagree. For example:
“I say none of the data sets can be trusted to indicate anything about the others so they all provide indications which are “spurious” because none of them has a ‘true’ definition so none of them is ‘right’.”
I am not at all clear why you think the satellite datasets have a “wrong definition” of what they attempt to measure: the weighted average temperature of a particular part of the atmosphere. This seems like some absurd tilting at windmills sort of stuff to me.
I do happen to think UAH is “right” about the rate of atmospheric temperature changes in the last 35 years, to within published uncertainties. I *do* think that data can be trusted. I *do* think we can use the datasets, and theory, to check each other. If you don’t think so, I think you really ought to explain why.
So far it sounds like you are droning on under some misconceptions about what the datasets measure or how they can be connected to one another. This is understandable, the alarmed have spread a lot of disinformation about satellite temperature data. It’s probably a good idea to go back to John Christy and Roy Spencer’s actual publications on these subjects.
@Kristian-You really need to stop spreading that ignorant disinformation. Gross, criminal negligence of proper analytical procedure, really.
RichardLH:
This is pointless. I politely ignored your providing a description of temperature of a solid as being the description of temperature of a gas, and I gave you an explanation of why your “underlying property” cannot be temperature although it is derived from temperature measurements. You have replied with your post at January 29, 2014 at 12:15 pm.
I cannot be bothered to go through latent energies of evapouration, condensation, melting and freezing. Suffice it to say that temperature does NOT indicate energy, and also temperature change may or may not indicate energy flow.
So, I am discontinuing this conversation.
Richard
Willis you say – [My conclusion? I don’t see anything at all that is worrisome there.]
My articles show UAH has a severe warming drift compared to RSS (and surface groups) in various global regions. So until UAH resolve this, that is what could “worry” me.
Three articles from last month – first over Australia.
Warming departure in UAH lower troposphere satellite temperatures compared to RSS over the period 2005-2006
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=2496
Similar to Australia in 2005-06 – large grid box in southern Africa shows huge warming departure in UAH lower troposphere satellite temperature anomalies compared to RSS
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=2501
Difference between UAH and RSS satellite lower troposphere T anomalies has a distinct step change 2004-2005 over the USA 48 States – not as marked as Australia
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=2554
richardscourtney says:
January 29, 2014 at 12:26 pm
“Suffice it to say that temperature does NOT indicate energy, and also temperature change may or may not indicate energy flow.”
The temperature of a body indicates the energy that flows in and out of that body averaged out over the time the reading is taken. Usually in balance for accurate readings.
Changes in that value reflect changes in the energy of the environment in which a body is placed.
Some changes, such as , condensation, melting and freezing, do reflect energy flow without very large changes in temperature. At a minute level however there is still change happening. Otherwise the change in state will not happen.
“So, I am discontinuing this conversation.”
bye.
timetochooseagain:
In your post at January 29, 2014 at 12:26 pm you say to me
The determinations of RHH and UAH are not of a defined metric which depends on the arbitrary choice(s) of weightings.
I am certain that the RSS and UAH data sets do provide indications of changes to temperatures of atmospheric layers, but their accuracy and their precision cannot be known because they cannot be independently calibrated for their global and hemispheric results. Importantly, I am certain that the RSS and UAH data sets cannot be indicative of whatever it is that the surface compilations of GASTA indicate.
I have studied the GASTA data sets over several years.
Please read Appendix B of this and note its signatories.
I do not “tilt at windmills”. I have much better things to do.
Richard
@wazsah-It is very bad practice to assume that the dataset which warms more must be the one that is wrong. The real problems in those areas are almost certainly caused by the drifting of satellites used by RSS, that they then correct for incorrectly. Around that time, UAH was using the Aqua satellite as a stable “backbone” for the dataset, which does not require drift correction.
The same thing happened around 1992 globally, except it was RSS warming relative to UAH. And RSS was wrong there and they are wrong now.
http://devoidofnulls.wordpress.com/2014/01/13/the-curious-case-of-noaa-12/
timetochooseagain says:
January 29, 2014 at 12:46 pm
“The same thing happened around 1992 globally, except it was RSS warming relative to UAH. And RSS was wrong there and they are wrong now.”
Which is why I choose to OLS all of the series over their time of overlap and derive a common view..
Basic OLS
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c274/richardlinsleyhood/OLScomparison_zpsc45498e9.png
Aligned OLS
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c274/richardlinsleyhood/OLSaligned_zps3186174a.png
Aligned series with 15 year and 60 year low pass filters
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c274/richardlinsleyhood/OLSalignedAnnualtrends_zps5603d308.png
[photobucket website giving “out of service” message. Mod]
@richardscourtney-“The determinations of RHH and UAH are not of a defined metric which depends on the arbitrary choice(s) of weightings.”
The weighting profiles are very well defined. I have no idea where you get an impression to the contrary.
“I am certain that the RSS and UAH data sets do provide indications of changes to temperatures of atmospheric layers, but their accuracy and their precision cannot be known because they cannot be independently calibrated for their global and hemispheric results.”
What the heck does this mean? The instruments on board the satellites are calibrated in a well understood manner. If you mean to suggest that one cannot independently check the temperature trends, well, that is just wrong. We have weather balloon datasets, these are independent sources of temperature through various layers of the atmosphere, they agree pretty well with the LT data when weighted to the LT profiles.
“Importantly, I am certain that the RSS and UAH data sets cannot be indicative of whatever it is that the surface compilations of GASTA indicate.”
They aren’t *supposed* to be! They measure something different. But this doesn’t mean we can’t use them to check one another, if we do so *intelligently*, properly applying theory and models.
Doing so indicates some of the data are probably wrong. I get the sense you think all the data are wrong, or have an equal (zero) probability of being correct, to within published uncertainties. I could not disagree more.
Willis here is a link to some R code to retrieve the UAH temp data (monthly) if that is any help
UAH code
@RichardLH-You can’t just apply scale factors to attempt to force the long term trends to agree with one another. You end up getting backwards results.
@timetochooseagain, January 29, 2014 at 12:26 pm:
You sound like ‘Andrew’ at Roy Spencer’s site. Coincidence?
You seem religiously convinced that UAH is ‘right’ and that RSS is ‘wrong’. Are Spencer and Christy infallible gods while the people at RSS are incompetent morons in your world? It sure sounds like it.
Listen, UAH is the only global dataset that shows a significant upward trend since 2001/02. UAH is the only global dataset that lets global temperatures fall back down after the lift in 1990/91 and the Pinatubo dent thereafter, that in practice do not show a step up after the El Niño of 1987/88 and La Niña of 1988/89.
UAH is the outlier in both these cases.
I’m not spreading ‘misinformation’ here. I refer only to what the data actually tells us.
george e. smith says:
January 29, 2014 at 11:14 am
Interesting question, George. I was surprised as well. Upon reflection I concluded that there were several reasons. 1) Size 2) Cohesions 3) Lack of GHGs
The polar regions are each only about 4% of the surface area. Also, they are pretty much self-similar. So in the tropics you have one place hot, one cold, and they average out. But the polar areas, from a combination of size and physical connectedness, tend more to all move one direction or the other.
Finally, the lack of water vapor means that in some circumstances they can lose heat quite rapidly. Mostly, though, it’s from the fact that any such small connected area will have greater variability than a larger, widespread area.
SInce the variability is roughly proportional to the square root of the areas, a back-of-the-envelope calculation is that we’d expect the poles (4% of total area) to have on the order of three times the variability of the tropics (40% of total area).
w.
timetochooseagain says, January 29, 2014 at 12:46 pm:
“The same thing happened around 1992 globally, except it was RSS warming relative to UAH. And RSS was wrong there and they are wrong now.
http://devoidofnulls.wordpress.com/2014/01/13/the-curious-case-of-noaa-12/“
Ok, so it is you. No, in 1992 UAH is clearly wrong (compared to every other global dataset, land and ocean) in bringing temperatures post 1992 too far down. No question about it. I urge everybody to just look at the data. After 2005/6 RSS definitely goes a bit low, so should be adjusted up accordingly. But UAH timeseries needs to be lifted en bloc between 1992 and 2005/6. That will effectively wipe out the discrepancy in trend 2001/2-13 between UAH and the rest of the pack.
RichardLH says:
January 29, 2014 at 12:15 pm
HAIYEEE … no, RichardLH, changes in temperature can no more be averaged than temperatures can, despite the fact that we do it all the time. If we were smart we’d convert it all to W/m2 fluxes, do our averaging, and convert back to temperature.
The problem is that temperature is not conserved, while W/m2, being a measure of energy, IS conserved.
w.
BarryW says:
January 29, 2014 at 1:17 pm
Thanks, Barry. I went ahead and wrote my own … found out that the difference between V5.5 and V5.6 wasn’t visible to the naked eye in Figure 1, as I’d suspected.
Appreciated,
w.
@Kristian-No, you continue to spread completely inaccurate nonsense.
“What the data shows us” is something you haven’t sufficient braincells to actually understand, as evidenced by your continuing to make invalid comparisons.
I have *shown* that you are dead *FLAT WRONG* and you continue to spew ignorant, incorrect nonsense. You should get lost.
timetochooseagain says:
January 29, 2014 at 1:39 pm
“@RichardLH-You can’t just apply scale factors to attempt to force the long term trends to agree with one another. You end up getting backwards results.”
Interesting. You can do this with proxies but not with measurements. Even though it aligns them all to a common standard in the process.
RSS and UAG are purely a 0.1c offset over their overlap period. And there is a very tiny adjustment needed to bring their range scale into line as well.
Takes care of the different methodologies quite well without having to go line by line through them.
As to thermometers and satellites, there seems no reason not to do the same.
They ARE supposed to be representing the same basic underlying property after all. As these are all anomalies rather than absolutes it should work just fine. After all rate of change = rate of change.
How else do you suggest we calibrate them?
Willis Eschenbach says:
January 29, 2014 at 2:03 pm
“no, RichardLH, changes in temperature can no more be averaged than temperatures can, despite the fact that we do it all the time.”
If I put a thermometer is each room in my house, I can derive a perfectly good ‘average air temperature’ out of them.
If I track the changes in those thermometers I will be pretty accurate in the energy I supply to the house as well, if losses are being kept approximately constant.
Kristian says:
January 29, 2014 at 1:55 pm
If you think you are correct, I urge you to make your case to Spenser and Christie. After all, they’ve spent thousands and thousands of hours contemplating those exact questions in painful mathematical detail, and you’ve spent … well, hours on it at least, and that without even looking at the underlying equations they’ve used and the issues they’ve identified.
So you may be right … but I’m not buying your claims until S&C do.
It’s easy to say “three people say yes and one person says no, so the one person must be wrong” as you have done … but we all know that’s not the case in general. Far too often, the one guy is right and all the rest are wrong.
In addition, you can bet that S&C have looked long and hard at the discrepancies you mention between their work and that of RSS … as have the RSS guys. So for you to come along and blithely announce that you’ve solved the conundrum, and that the “UAH timeseries needs to be lifted en bloc between 1992 and 2005/6” … well, I don’t think that is what passes for science in the world of RSS and UAH.
But heck, Kristian, please get back to us and let us know what S&C have to say about your theory …
w.
@RichardLH-“Interesting. You can do this with proxies but not with measurements. Even though it aligns them all to a common standard in the process.”
No, can’t do that either, not if there may be spurious biases in the data. Mannian method, Mannian result.
“They ARE supposed to be representing the same basic underlying property after all.”
Not quite. See comments above, I’ve been pretty clear on this. Did you notice that you *increased* the extent to which the satellites have greater variability than the surface?
“How else do you suggest we calibrate them?”
If you *really* want to infer surface trends from satellites, you need to first take them over the same period (1979-2013) take annual averages for all, detrend each, and then average the like kinds of detrended data, and then do a regression-you should get a coefficient for detrended surface data as a predictor of satellite data of about 1.44. Divide the satellite data by this factor. Here’s your comparison:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1979/offset:-0.125051/mean:12/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1979/offset:-0.021648/mean:12/plot/uah/from:1979/offset:0.229543/scale:0.69526565634609873044979098651821/mean:12/plot/rss/from:1979/offset:0.122699/scale:0.69526565634609873044979098651821/mean:12
Huh. The trends differ!
timetochooseagain says:
January 29, 2014 at 2:26 pm
“No, can’t do that either, not if there may be spurious biases in the data.”
Well lets say you have a new measuring instrument with unknown properties. How would you go about calibrating it so that it produces reliable figures?
Lets say you cant touch it or place known ice/water melting points around it, just take its output and compare it to your reference set.
Apply common heating/cooling to both and….. OLS align the two sets of readings by range and scale and voila you have a calibrated instrument.
I’m just doing the same 🙂
RichardLH says:
January 29, 2014 at 2:16 pm
Nobody said that thermometers are not useful for approximations. However, the idea that one temperature per room gives a “perfectly good” average air temperature brings up the question, “good for what”?
Now, people are claiming an average temperature for the entire globe good to a tenth of a degree … do you think one thermometer per room will give you that accuracy for your house?
However, that’s not the main problem. What you seem to be missing is the difference between an extensive property and an intensive property. For example, mass is an extensive property. If you double the amount of something (the extent), then the value of all extensive properties will double.
Temperature, in the other hand, is an intensive property. If I get one glass of water from the tap, it has the same temperature as two glasses of water from the tap, despite the fact that the mass has doubled.
The problem with intensive properties is that inherently they can’t be averaged. Or rather, they can be, but the answer may be meaningless. Color is an intensive property, but the question “what is the average color of the American flag” doesn’t yield meaningful information.
The reason that intensive properties can’t be averaged is that we quickly leave reality. Let’s average 4 masses, of 20, 30, 30, and 40 kg, To do that, we first find the total mass, which is 120 kg. So if we put them all together, that’s their mass … and then we divide it by 4.
Now lets try the same with temperatures of 10°C, 20°C 30°C and 40°C. We add them up and proudly say “The total temperature of the four items is over boiling, its one hundred and twenty degrees.” So if we put them all together, that’s their temperature … you see the problem? YOU CAN’T ADD TEMPERATURES TOGETHER because the result is meaningless, it says nothing about the real world to say their total temperature is over boiling … which means that you can’t average temperatures either.
All the best,
w.
@Willis Eschenbach-Yup, John Christy *has* written on the spurious shift of RSS relative to UAH. Here is the relevant paper:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JTECH1937.1?prevSearch=christy&searchHistoryKey=
Note what they say about the 1992-1994 period (the transition of the addition of NOAA-12 into the data.
@RichardLH-“Well lets say you have a new measuring instrument with unknown properties. How would you go about calibrating it so that it produces reliable figures?”
I sure as heck wouldn’t try to make it agree with another instrument, measuring a different thing, that might be wrong.
I explained something you could do instead. I showed what that comparison looks like.
timetochooseagain says:
January 29, 2014 at 2:26 pm
OLS aligned data sets from the various sources over their overlap period.
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c274/richardlinsleyhood/OLSTracesaligned_zps6d702275.png
timetochooseagain says:
January 29, 2014 at 2:38 pm
“I sure as heck wouldn’t try to make it agree with another instrument, measuring a different thing, that might be wrong.”
They are supposed to tracking the same thing, the change in Global Temperature since 1979. Even if they are using different parts of the same system, unless you want to suggest some part is warming/cooling at a different rate than the other…. OLS seems like the way to go.
TimC says:
January 29, 2014 at 3:15 am
– – – –
But shouldn’t it have been “What me worry”? …!
===
I skipped a few score posts – but I, too, recognise the Alfred E. Neumann [sic] thread.
Auto
@RichardLH-Look at your own chart. Look how much larger the swings in LT data are relative to surface data. Do you see you’ve done something wrong here?
“They are supposed to tracking the same thing, the change in Global Temperature since 1979.”
No! They aren’t! For the like, nine billionth time!
“unless you want to suggest some part is warming/cooling at a different rate than the other”
You mean like what happens *every* time there is an El Nino, *every* time there is a La Nina, *every* time there is a volcanic eruption? No, gosh, assuming that they would change at different rates is just silly, even though they literally change at different rates all the time.
And guess what? Turns out that theory and models also agree that they should change at the same rate. Gosh, who’d a thunk it, huh?
And theory and models agree with the comparison of interannual variations: the troposphere is more variable-and should warm and cool more-than the surface. Wow, *really?* I’d have never guessed that should happen, even though it happens all the time.
And then if I take the fact that that happens all the time, and use *that* to cross calibrate them:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1979/offset:-0.125051/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1979/offset:-0.021648/plot/uah/from:1979/offset:0.229543/scale:0.69526565634609873044979098651821/plot/rss/from:1979/offset:0.122699/scale:0.69526565634609873044979098651821
Gosh, how *completely different* the picture looks!
RichardLH-”Well lets say you have a new measuring instrument with unknown properties. ”
Well if it has “unknown properties” it can hardly be used to measure anything !
Willis Eschenbach says:
January 29, 2014 at 2:34 pm
“The reason that intensive properties can’t be averaged is that we quickly leave reality. Let’s average 4 masses, of 20, 30, 30, and 40 kg, To do that, we first find the total mass, which is 120 kg. So if we put them all together, that’s their mass … and then we divide it by 4.”
Mass is an extensive property!
Willis writes:
“Now lets try the same with temperatures of 10°C, 20°C 30°C and 40°C. We add them up and proudly say “The total temperature of the four items is over boiling, its one hundred and twenty degrees.””
10+20+30+40=100, but that’s the sum, the average is 25:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_average_of_10_20_30_and_40?#slide=1
timetochooseagain:
I make technical points and arguments and you have replied at January 29, 2014 at 1:07 pm with bluster and self-refuted assertion.
I wrote
and you have replied with this misrepresentation
I said the the determinations are not of A DEFINED METRIC. I did not say the weighting profiles are not well defined. And I DID say the the weightings are arbitrary. Simply what I said is true, and what you pretended I said is bollocks.
I said
and you have replied
It means there is no possibility of calibration for the indicated results of temperatures of atmospheric layers. The accuracy and precision of a measurement cannot be known in the absence of a calibration standard. Instrument error may be assessed on the satellites but that is only one source of error. Indeed, you stated this in a previous post at January 29, 2014 at 12:46 pm where you wrote
I made no mention of the trends: your mention of them is a red herring.
As you say, the RSS and UAH can be adjusted to agree with the radiosonde data and that gives some confidence in the MSU data from the satellites, but it does not afford calibration for the compiled layer temperatures for the globe and hemispheres because the balloons have limited coverage.
I wrote
and you have replied
OK. We agree they “measure something different” and, therefore, they aren’t *supposed* to be” indicative of the surface-derived data. So, why the explanation mark when we agree?
Importantly, how does one compare them “intelligently” when they “measure something different”, and there is no clear definition of the GASTA determinations, and those determinations often change? What possible “theory and models” enables that comparison, guesswork or prejudice?
And you conclude saying
Well, disagreement with your own misrepresentations does seem to be your forte.
Measured data need to be reliable and have known accuracy and known precision. The UAH and RSS data are reliable because they can be compared to the balloon data, but they have no known accuracy and precision because they are not calibrated and are known to drift.. Hence, the UAH and RSS data can be uuseful but are not a true measurement.
The various versions of GASTA are not reliable – they change because their definitions change almost monthly – and they have no known accuracy and no known precision have no because they are not calibration. They have potential use, but at present their use is likely to mislead.
You seem to think bluster is an alternative to rational argument and information. I could not disagree more.
Richard
OOPS!
I wrote
The various versions of GASTA are not reliable – they change because their definitions change almost monthly – and they have no known accuracy and no known precision have no because they are not calibration.
but I intended to write
The various versions of GASTA are not reliable – they change because their definitions change almost monthly – and they have no known accuracy and no known precision because they are not calibrated.
Sorry.
Richard
“Mass is an extensive property!”
I think that was his point.
Now why are we interested in these “averaging temperatures” ? Because we then look at how the “average temp” has changed over time and decide whether the world is getting warmer and whether we need to worry about it. Then we talk about radiative “forcing” of some gases and how sensitive said average temp is to radiative change.
So what we are really trying to do is measure energy content, not temperature, and that is extensive.
So the question becomes how good a proxy is temperature for energy content. The first thing that becomes apparent is the need to looking at similar masses for each sample. If we add two pots of water one at 10C and the other at 20C, we have no idea of the resultant temperature (the average temperature) unless we know the volumes. If we add two pints of water at those temps we can predict the answer.
The first thing to notice is the need to area weight the temperature grid cells
Then SST may tell us something about energy content outside of oceans that are ice buckets, where we need to look at ice area, or more correctly volume.
Air is more tricky because of pressure and humidity. Since meteorological measurements are done by pressure level not altitude , the pressure angle roughly taken care of. Humidity remains a confounding variable.
However, from that it quickly becomes obvious that surface air temperature where pressure and hence density varies does not work. Averaging air temps really does not work too well.
The flip side of the physics is that most people live in surface air temperature and it is what ultimately “matters”. Number of people affected is an extensible property and can be averaged.
“””””…..Willis Eschenbach says:
January 29, 2014 at 1:50 pm
george e. smith says:
January 29, 2014 at 11:14 am
… Howcome; on the same scales the north pole and the south pole have whacking great peak real signal amplitudes, and everywhere else has ho-hum real signals ??
Interesting question, George. I was surprised as well. Upon reflection I concluded that there were several reasons. 1) Size 2) Cohesions 3) Lack of GHGs……””””””
Well your theory is testable Willis; since you have all the data.
What if you re-divide your earth into five EQUAL AREA zones, instead of the unequal areas you used. You know how to do that; you just divide the polar diameter of the earth by five, and make each zone that tall (about 1584 miles). A cylinder circumscribing a sphere has the same area as the sphere (2pi.R x 2R =4pi.R^2) And any length segment of the cylinder, has the same area as the underlying surface of the sphere, even the polar caps.
I think that’s on page IIIL in Euclid; maybe it’s page XXIX. Too long since I did it.
Not that I want to load you up with work; but you’re not doing much of anything anyhow; are you ??!
But such a change might scramble the “local” climate of the zones compared to yours, and muck up the effect you were looking for. Well just a thought.
g
harrydhuffman:
I don’t believe your definition of “emergent phenomenon” is consistent with common usage. You say that an “emergent phenomenon” is one that is changing. In the article at http://redwood.berkeley.edu/w/images/5/5e/Scott2004-reductionism_revisited.pdf, though, an academic mathematician explains that an “emergent phenomenon” is one in which a portion of the cause and effect relationships are non-linear.
What is striking about figure 1 is the huge increase in variation amplitude at the poles.
Is part of this a limitation of satellite data? Is the satellite geostationary? If so, does the acute angle of observation of the poles and the longer path through the atmosphere lead to higher error variation?
Thus, is all this variation real?
To: Willis Eschenbach & Kristian:
UAH was clearly wrong in 1992. UAH adjustments for drift had shortcomings. These shortcomings were easily identified because of the openness of their data and calculations (contrary to other temperatures series of that time). When the shortcomings were identified, Christy and Spencer made the appropriate corrections and came out with a new version – a warmer trend. Later, RSS also had shortcomings; and because of the openness of its data set and a collegial relationship, Christy and Spencer were able to help RSS make appropriate corrections, and RSS came out with a data set that was warmer! Yes, Christy and Spencer help RSS increase its trend, and RSS came closer to the UAH trend.
@richardscourtney, January 29, 2014 at 3:59 pm:
timetochooseagain/Andrew is all about bluster. Glad you see that too, Richard.
Probably what should be done is area weight the whole lot , then you can take the latitude bands you want. 😉
However, that’s not the main problem. What you seem to be missing is the difference between an extensive property and an intensive property. For example, mass is an extensive property. If you double the amount of something (the extent), then the value of all extensive properties will double.
Temperature, in the other hand, is an intensive property. If I get one glass of water from the tap, it has the same temperature as two glasses of water from the tap, despite the fact that the mass has doubled.
Thanks Willis for this enlightening comment on extensive and intensive properties. This provides just the terminology I have been looking for to address an issue in my work, concerning regions of interest in 3d image analysis.
Greg:
I write to thank you for your post at January 29, 2014 at 4:13 pm.
Yes! Thankyou!
I tried to say that upthread and clearly failed.
Richard
I am rather puzzled as to why President Obama has not been informed of the 17 year pause in global warming.
Honestly, his SOTU address comments about the climate made him look like the dumbest President ever.
And as for his “climate change is a fact” comment, well that’s like saying water is wet!
@richardscourtney You accuse me several times of misrepresentation, implying malice. This would require me to understand WTF you are talking about first. Since easily half your reply is jibberish to me, that’s clearly impossible.
“I make technical points and arguments and you have replied at January 29, 2014 at 1:07 pm with bluster and self-refuted assertion.
I wrote
The determinations of RHH and UAH are not of a defined metric which depends on the arbitrary choice(s) of weightings.”
and you have replied with this misrepresentation
The weighting profiles are very well defined. I have no idea where you get an impression to the contrary
I said the the determinations are not of A DEFINED METRIC. I did not say the weighting profiles are not well defined. And I DID say the the weightings are arbitrary. Simply what I said is true, and what you pretended I said is bollocks.”
Again. WTF is a”well defined metric”? The weighting functions are a result of satellite viewing angles, they aren’t arbitrary.
“I said
“I am certain that the RSS and UAH data sets do provide indications of changes to temperatures of atmospheric layers, but their accuracy and their precision cannot be known because they cannot be independently calibrated for their global and hemispheric results.”
and you have replied
What the heck does this mean? The instruments on board the satellites are calibrated in a well understood manner. If you mean to suggest that one cannot independently check the temperature trends, well, that is just wrong. We have weather balloon datasets, these are independent sources of temperature through various layers of the atmosphere, they agree pretty well with the LT data when weighted to the LT profiles.
It means there is no possibility of calibration for the indicated results of temperatures of atmospheric layers. The accuracy and precision of a measurement cannot be known in the absence of a calibration standard. Instrument error may be assessed on the satellites but that is only one source of error. Indeed, you stated this in a previous post at January 29, 2014 at 12:46 pm where you wrote
It is very bad practice to assume that the dataset which warms more must be the one that is wrong. The real problems in those areas are almost certainly caused by the drifting of satellites used by RSS, that they then correct for incorrectly. Around that time, UAH was using the Aqua satellite as a stable “backbone” for the dataset, which does not require drift correction.
The same thing happened around 1992 globally, except it was RSS warming relative to UAH. And RSS was wrong there and they are wrong now.
I made no mention of the trends: your mention of them is a red herring.”
WTF else would we be talking about?
“As you say, the RSS and UAH can be adjusted to agree with the radiosonde data”
Now who is misrepresenting? I’ve said no such thing. And no such thing is done. Adjustments are made without reference to independent data. That’s what makes them independent. It sounds like you are a victim of disinformation against the satellite data.
“and that gives some confidence in the MSU data from the satellites, but it does not afford calibration for the compiled layer temperatures for the globe and hemispheres because the balloons have limited coverage.”
Okay, A. Good agreement where we can check can’t be associated with “everywhere else is nonsense and we can’t say anything” that’s not how the instruments or the processing methodology works. B. Look up the Rossby Radius some time.
“I wrote
“Importantly, I am certain that the RSS and UAH data sets cannot be indicative of whatever it is that the surface compilations of GASTA indicate.”
and you have replied
They aren’t *supposed* to be! They measure something different. But this doesn’t mean we can’t use them to check one another, if we do so *intelligently*, properly applying theory and models.
OK. We agree they “measure something different” and, therefore, they aren’t *supposed* to be” indicative of the surface-derived data. So, why the explanation mark when we agree?
Importantly, how does one compare them “intelligently” when they “measure something different”, and there is no clear definition of the GASTA determinations, and those determinations often change? What possible “theory and models” enables that comparison, guesswork or prejudice?”
See numerous posts above of mine.
“And you conclude saying
Doing so indicates some of the data are probably wrong. I get the sense you think all the data are wrong, or have an equal (zero) probability of being correct, to within published uncertainties. I could not disagree more.
Well, disagreement with your own misrepresentations does seem to be your forte.
Measured data need to be reliable and have known accuracy and known precision. The UAH and RSS data are reliable because they can be compared to the balloon data, but they have no known accuracy and precision because they are not calibrated and are known to drift.. Hence, the UAH and RSS data can be uuseful but are not a true measurement.”
Pure sophistry!
“The various versions of GASTA are not reliable – they change because their definitions change almost monthly – and they have no known accuracy and no known precision have no because they are not calibration. They have potential use, but at present their use is likely to mislead.”
On the contrary, we can specifically trace the problems with them.
“You seem to think bluster is an alternative to rational argument and information. I could not disagree more.
Richard”
You seem to have less idea what I am saying than anyone could what you ate saying. If that’s possible.
Willis Eschenbach says, January 29, 2014 at 2:20 pm:
“But heck, Kristian, please get back to us and let us know what S&C have to say about your theory”
Thanks, Willis, but I’m afraid I don’t have any ‘theory’ on this. I have mentioned what I’ve mentioned here and shown the data several times on Spencer’s site. He has yet to answer. He probably won’t. And that’s fine with me.
All I’m doing is looking at the data and pointing out what I see. It’s not like I aspire to change the world doing it …
Willis Eschenbach says, January 29, 2014 at 2:20 pm:
“Far too often, the one guy is right and all the rest are wrong.”
Yup, I know. Well said.
timetochooseagain says, January 29, 2014 at 2:10 pm:
“@Kristian-No, you continue to spread completely inaccurate nonsense.
“What the data shows us” is something you haven’t sufficient braincells to actually understand, as evidenced by your continuing to make invalid comparisons.
I have *shown* that you are dead *FLAT WRONG* and you continue to spew ignorant, incorrect nonsense. You should get lost.”
You really are a funny character, Andrew.
Greg says:
January 29, 2014 at 3:02 pm
“Well if it has “unknown properties” it can hardly be used to measure anything !”
timetochooseagain says:
January 29, 2014 at 3:00 pm
“@RichardLH-Look at your own chart. Look how much larger the swings in LT data are relative to surface data. Do you see you’ve done something wrong here?”
OK. Instrument calibration lab:
Four or more different thermo resistors connected to some resistance bridges, amplifiers, displays etc.
One high quality calibrated thermometer.
One common tank in which they all sit which has a constantly varying temperature but a stirrer which tries to keep all the sources at a resistors approximately the same temp and which cycles up and down constantly because of varying heating/cooling inputs.
Two amplifiers connected to one of the resistors. Unknown slight differences between the two amps.
Described calibration methodology assuming that there is a large amount of noise in all the signals and about the only thing you can be sure of is that they are all showing the same, underlying trends up and down cyclically.
If you can come up with something other than OLS for range and offset over the entire set of readings then….
We will leave aside philosophical questions as to if they do really represent temperature and the like.
No.
%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fen.wikipedia.org%252Fwiki%252FGeographical_zone%3B1100%3B849) but the divisions chosen are reasonable and make physical, logical sense with respect to the single most important physical influence on climate changes: the sun’s solar elevation angle each day.
Other divisions are possible of course (see:
Between -23.5 and +23.5 latitudes (the Tropics of Capricon and Tropic of Cancer) the sun will cycling from directly overhead to 23.5 degrees below each year. One could could choose “tropics” as +/- 30 degrees since the sun is still very close to overhead, but 23.5 is adequate.
On the other end, 67.5 latitude is the other end: the sun is below the horizon part of theyear, and continually above for part of the year. I would use 70 degrees (southern bound of the arctic ocean, northern bound of the antarctic continent, but 67.5 is definite point.
If there are different trends between tropical, temperate, and arctic zones, the ones selected might as well be the most simplest choice. More appropriate than 5 arbitrary divisions. And, if you choose 5x bands, how are you going to do it? 5x equal areas? Equal solar exposure in all five? Equal radius angles from the center – leaving different areas in each still?
Willis, when I look at the same break up of the NCDC global summary of days surface data, I get the same results.
“Howcome; on the same scales the north pole and the south pole have whacking great peak real signal amplitudes”
Sample size. Ie very small number of samples.
JBJ says:
January 29, 2014 at 3:38 pm
Gosh, imagine that, who would have guessed that? Oh, wait … I did. Maybe that’s why I said, in the same comment you quoted from,
w.
Kristian says:
January 29, 2014 at 4:39 pm
Say what? Clearly you have a theory. You told me you thought they needed to, what was it … OK, here is your theory:
Heck, you not only have a theory that there is a problem with their data, you have a solution:
So … go tell Roy Spencer and John Christy about your theory that they are wrong and you know how to fix it, and let us know what you find.
(You do know, I hope, that this is a polite way to say that I think you’re talking nonsense … and that if you think you are not, if you think your claim is real, then you are in the wrong place. If you think you’ve discovered a flaw in S&C’s work, you should take it to them and discuss it, because my thread is the wrong forum to try to make your point … )
w.
george e. smith says:
January 29, 2014 at 4:13 pm
“What if you re-divide your earth into five EQUAL AREA zones, instead of the unequal areas you used. ”
Because the heating input profile to those areas would be wrong?
You do know why the lines on the globe are where they are don’t you? The bit about the sun being directly overhead at some point in the year and the other about it not being seen at all some or visible all of the time as well?
The issue of humidity in regard to temperature has been raised here. I had a discussion with the building manager in our office today. My desk is next to a window which extends down to floor level. Recently I have noticed a lot of moisture on the lower (metal) window frame. Sometimes the adjacent carpet is wet also. Some colleagues suspected a leak but I felt condensation was the more likely cause.
The building manager confirmed that it is condensation. Above my window is an air conditioning unit. Apparently this has been adjusted recently to increase the humidity in the air. The goal of this is energy – and money – saving, the latter magnified by green tax incentives here in Belgium. He explained that the perception or experience of warmth is the same at lower temperature and higher humidity, as at higher temperature and lower humidity. And that it cost less energy and money to achieve the “warmth-feel” the first way, i. e. with more humidity and lower temperature.
I did not argue but was surprised by this. I would have thought that increased humidity would mean it cost more energy to heat the air. Did the lower temperature more than offset the higher humidity?
Does any of this have implications for climate and global energy budgets? Any comments would be welcome.
Willis, Kristian has spouted his nonsense theory on Roy’s blog already, and Roy has ignored him. You are right that he is talking nonsense, but there really is no reason to be polite about it.
“Should We Be Worried?”
Yes. We’re doomed. If not from Global Warming, then from something else. We might not have found it yet, but it’s there. Just you wait and see.
daddylonglegs,
1. The high humidity air is more efficient at transferring energy to your body than the low humidity air.
2. Your body is more efficient at cooling itself at lower humidity.
These two factors together mean that you perceive greater warmth from the high humidity air than the low humidity air even though the high humidity air technically contains less energy.
Willis Eschenbach says:
January 29, 2014 at 4:58 pm
“Gosh, imagine that, who would have guessed that? Oh, wait … I did. Maybe that’s why I said, in the same comment you quoted from,”
So you “guessed” it … interesting 🙂
Willis Eschenbach says, January 29, 2014 at 5:08 pm:
“(You do know, I hope, that this is a polite way to say that I think you’re talking nonsense … and that if you think you are not, if you think your claim is real, then you are in the wrong place. If you think you’ve discovered a flaw in S&C’s work, you should take it to them and discuss it, because my thread is the wrong forum to try to make your point … )”
Here we go with the ‘Nobel prize’ type argument again …
Willis, it is not a ‘theory’ to say that according to the available data, UAH is clearly the odd series out. That is pointing out fact. An explanation of why would be a theory.
How S&C or anyone else want to deal with this if at all, frankly I do not care. And I really don’t care about what you think is nonsense either. I guess it bothers me probably as much as it bothers you that I think your cowboy spoutings on basic thermodynamics are nonsense. And if you don’t like me simply pointing out what I see in UAH (and/or RSS) data, then don’t write a post on UAH data. I was directly answering a question posed by commenter LT. Take it with him if you have a problem with this particular subject …
@Kristian-Given you’ve had the fact that you are wrong and your comparisons are meaningless nonsense explained to you dozens of times already, you shouldn’t be dragging it out on this, or any other thread. Again, you need to get lost. Your brain already has.
RoHa says:
January 29, 2014 at 5:33 pm
“Should We Be Worried?”
Yes. We’re doomed. If not from Global Warming, then from something else. We might not have found it yet, but it’s there. Just you wait and see.
==========================
The global warming Hobgoblin is dead
Long live the ocean acidification Hobgoblin
(although it won’t be a long life)
george e. smith says to RichardLH:
“So if the computer models are not ‘wildly inaccurate’ as dbstealey asserts, why are there 13 of them (or is it 17), and no two of them agree with each other; let alone agree with the planet earth?”
Thank you, george. Once more: not one of the multi-$million [or is it multi-$billion?] GCM’s was able to predict the biggest climate event of the past twnety years: the 17-year long halt to global warming. They were all wrong.
I understand that models have their uses. But they also have their limitations.
MattS
Thanks.
It looks to me, from those graphs, as if the Great Global Thermostat is still in good working order. It is certainly in far better working than all of the CAGW computer models, anyway.
JBJ,
Willis didn’t ‘guess’, he was pointing out his prior comment:
“For example, mass is an extensive property.”
Giving an example is not making a guess.
It doesn’t say anywhere in the article or on the charts whether this is in degrees F, C, or K, but that doesn’t much matter.
If you add up the 5 temperature changes from the 5 graphs, you get +2 degrees. Divide that by 5 for the 5 graphs (just to be arbitrary) and you get +0.4 degrees for the 35 years observed. That figures out to be ~ 0.114 degrees per decade, and whether that is F, C, or K , it’s not enough to worry about.
@John Marshall
Allow me to interfere, a bit late , but….
The fear about 2 deg temperature rise…. FOBIA it is called. What do we and people fear?
The planet Mars for iron and war has got 2 satelites, PHOBOS & DAIMOS. meaning war is followed by fear and horror.
Just think of that. That ought to be efficient and fruitful astrology.
But we ought to understand it and make up our minds in a realistic way. That is a very traditional and proper medicine against both fear and horror. This is psychology and philosophy and quite important.
Yesterday I met an American at the climate- surrealist-and denial meeting in Oslo. He was quite reasonable, and most probably out for the same errands, to try and spy on the Norwegians in their taverns and on their peculiar behaviours and opinions.
We also discussed temperatures and degrees and scales, and I told him what I have found out about it.
First Olaf Rømer who propably invented the long glass and mercury thermometer, and caibrated it to zero in salted snow, and to +120 in boiling water, and interpolated linear between that, taking it for granted that both his arbitrary tube and the creeping coefficient of mercury is linear.
A certain Fahrenheit did actually stand there next by in the lab learning, and spying on Ole Rømer. Then Fahrenheit went home and did the same, but he calibrated zero at sharp, salted snow, and hundred in freshly warm piss. never forget that. And both references are,………….shall we say dubious or obscure or shall we say inaccurate?
But nevermind,…
The great astronomer Celsius Upstairs at the University of Uppsala at tyhe royal observatory there, made a glass and mercury thermometer and calibrated 100 in fresh and pure wet snow, and Zero in boiling water. And made a linear scale between called “Centigrades” because CENTO = 100 in LATIN. Celsius also carefully noticed the barometric pressures.
And gave that thermometer to the great swedish systematic Pythagorean and scientist Carl von Linnaeus, who needet it in his heated greenhouse for the welfare of his long series of pottery plants in that long greenhouse.
Carl von Linneus found that up near the stove he had boiling water and down at the other end of the greenhouse it was freezing in the winters of old Uppsala, so he simply took and turned that “centigrade” scale from Celsius around. Thus what we work with and tend to believe in is acually not Celsius but in the great Prof.Dr.Carl von Linnaeus himself.
But, what we should rather keep an eye on in the spirit of Linnaeus and Celsius is pure wet snow and pure boiling water, and care to look also at the barometer like Celsius did. And to all those plants, like Linnaeus did. Then we are better calibrated.
The Kelvin scale is rather invented by Robert Boyle who had the Mercury U- tube Barometer right from ……Torricelli… a very fameous and clever pupil of …Gallileo Gallilei himself. But Boyle examined what happens and how it looks if there is some air above the mercury at the closed end of the U- tube. And found that Pressure and volume is “inversely proportional” and proportional to an obscure magnitude T for temperature, Obscure….. but quite real,…..
And there we have it. When the centigrades of Linnaeus definition is placed alongside with the Torricelli- Boyle gas- thermometer, we get the KELVIN- scale.
Beat that!
I find that scale more and more practical. It rules for natural gases, and rules in a very practical way for heat irradiation and for visible heat irradiation colours that I have to judge quite carefully by eye and by hand measurement. and by the fameous Bolzmann T^4 rule.
For heating with a stove, for glasswork and for pottery, and for casting and welding of metals, and ruling further for a candle, for incandescent lamps, and for the sun. And for the inner solar system.
Thus we are calibrated.
That reasonable amercan could agree indeed. Better take notice of reliable signals of nature and rather do respect and recommend that, when we discuss temperatures. And propagate that orientation and way of living and of judging and of seeing it.
It probably is a quite proper medicine against both PHOBOS and DAIMOS. Thus also proper Astrology and Royal diplomacy of MICROCHOSMOS.
The bathing waters of southern California for instance do come out very close to 300 K quite exactly, thus also very practical as a natural reference. And the very fameous Big Bang that is all around does keep allmost quite exactly 3 K, thus also easy to remember.
Working in the spirit of the old masters you see is better than believing in the experts.
“”””””……RichardLH says:
January 29, 2014 at 5:09 pm
george e. smith says:
January 29, 2014 at 4:13 pm
“What if you re-divide your earth into five EQUAL AREA zones, instead of the unequal areas you used. ”
Because the heating input profile to those areas would be wrong?
You do know why the lines on the globe are where they are don’t you? The bit about the sun being directly overhead at some point in the year and the other about it not being seen at all some or visible all of the time as well?…..”””””
Help me out here Richard LH.
Willis and I were both perplexed by the zonal signal difference. Willis opined that it might relate to his chosen polar areas, are much smaller than his tropical zone.
So I asked Willis; what if he makes the areas equal; thinking he might take the data and do that.
And then you respond thusly: “”..Because the heating input profile to those areas would be wrong?..””
What on earth does that have to do with what I suggested to Willis ??
Also; that data is about anomalies. Not about Temperatures, so what the heating input profile is, is quite immaterial. That is the whole idea of the anomaly concept..
And I submit that the heating input profile to ANY area, is precisely what it is supposed to be.
“””””…..No. …..”””””
So says RACookPE1978.
Sheesh !! I ask Willis what if he does a simple (different) analysis (if he cares to.)
And folks I didn’t even ask say “no”..
Well I asked Willis; not Richard LH, nor RACookPE1978. So why don’t the two of you , take a long walk on a short pier.
If Willis isn’t inclined to do it to find out what happens; that’s fine with me; I figured he might be curious enough to try it. But I do understand he has his own things to do.
But for the life of me, I can’t imagine why anyone else would object to my asking.
3×2 says:
January 29, 2014 at 12:05 pm
harrydhuffman (@harrydhuffman) says:
January 29, 2014 at 5:58 am
“
Emergent phenomenon” is an argument from incompetent, third-rate thinkers like Richard Dawkins, determined to push Darwinian, or undirected, evolution upon students of science, despite its by now obvious failings; back in the 1980′s, it was called “order out of chaos” […]
HDH, you are so full of it. Willis has suggested and ,over time, provided evidence for, a ‘control mechanism’ that accounts for pretty much everything we have seen so far in terms of GSTA. Change the atmosphere and watch the ‘emergent phenomena’ shift 15 minutes ‘earlier’. He makes a good case.
You, OTOH, are the equivalent of “witch craft is responsible”. You are exactly the kind of idiot that ‘warmists’, or whatever they are called these days, point to as being representative of ‘climate deniers’. You, and you are not alone, are a f*cki*g shambles that I’m ashamed to post on the same thread as.
As we might sing at an English football match …
Are you AlecM? Are you AlecM? Are you ‘dogs nose’ in disguise?
Seriously. You think Darwin was wrong? Hansen knows nothing about Venus? Jesus on a fxcking Dinosaur HDH… Will you ever accept the fact that we need people like you like we need ‘The Environmental Lobby’.
You are an embarrassment. Were it my blog then you and the ‘Dragon Slayers’ would have been out of here a long time ago. The only problem with this site is that Anthony is way to polite. He really doesn’t want to ‘moderate’ like ‘realclimate’. Me, well you would be out of here as fast as every other idiot troll.
Now 3×2, I would agree that HDH’s comment came out of left field. Nor do I buy the notion that emergent phenomena are necessarily nonsense.
But before you invest yourself too much into protecting Darwin, you should know that much of what he theorized, from the “tree of life” to the simplicity of turning chemicals into life, does not match the evidence. The lack of transitional forms in the fossil record prior to the Cambrian explosion has not, contrary to his expectations, been filled in by further search. Even the modern neo-Darwinian synthesis using modern genetics is coming under increasing criticism from biologists because the mechanisms of mutation and drift fail to account for the innovations clearly seen in the fossil record.
For example, a 2011 paper in the journal Biological Theory stated, “Darwinism in its current scientific incarnation has pretty much reached the end of its rope.” In 2009, Eugene Koonin of the National Center for Biotechnology Information stated in Trends in Genetics that there are major problems in core neo-Darwinian tenets, such as the “traditional concept of the tree of life” and the view that “natural selection is the main driving force of evolution.” Said Koonin, “the modern synthesis has crumbled, apparently, beyond repair” and “all major tenets of the modern synthesis have been, if not outright overturned, replaced by a new and incomparably more complex vision of the key aspects of evolution.” Koonin concludes, “not to mince words, the modern synthesis is gone.”
I could go on with the problems of achieving the functional folding proteins by chance processes to accounting for the complex specified information necessary for biological innovation, but that’s enough.
Agreed, this was the wrong time & place for HDH to make some of his remarks. But if criticism of Darwin shows a person is crazy, we’re gonna have to send a lot of biologists to the loony bin.
As for the “small number of samples” someone suggested as a cause of the signal amplitude.
Hansen says anomalies are correlated out to 1,000 km, so one sensor every 2,000 km, is all you need.
So you only need one sensor in each of Willis’s polar zones. That’s plenty of samples; according to Hansen.
Hansen is wrong. The difference is the averaging of large collections of number vs a small collection. At least numbers that vary in this case from weather. The larger the collect the smoother the average is. I saw this exact thing when working with the NCDC gsod data set, and the arctic and antarctic where the main place it shows up.it also shows up when you process “smaller” area’s both Africa and Australia in some years shows the same thing, and then you look at the sample count, you find only a small number of samples, and in many cases these stations sample a fraction of the year.
timetochooseagain:
I am replying to your offensive twaddle at January 29, 2014 at 4:38 pm.
You blatantly misrepresented my words,
You presented red herrings.
You made statements which you have yourself refuted in previous posts in this thread.
And you pretended to not understand anything you did not agree.
Then you accuse ME of sophistry!!!
You are an anonymous, dishonest and disruptive time-waster. I will have no more to do with you.
Richard
george e. smith says:
January 29, 2014 at 11:24 pm
“And I submit that the heating input profile to ANY area, is precisely what it is supposed to be.”
Yes of course. The input curve function for the Polar regions is exactly the same as for the Tropics, just scaled a little.
By the way, you have worked out that the Min + Max / 2 only holds true for half wave rectified equal time sine waves haven’t you? Really bad maths outside of that value. Over or under, not right. Needs a different divisor for all the other cases.
george e. smith says:
January 29, 2014 at 11:43 pm
“Sheesh !! I ask Willis what if he does a simple (different) analysis (if he cares to.)
And folks I didn’t even ask say “no”..
Well I asked Willis; not Richard LH, nor RACookPE1978. So why don’t the two of you , take a long walk on a short pier.”
I prefer step wise integrating functions myself, You know averages over longer and longer timescales. Just like most RMS based power circuits do all the time.
RichardLH says:
January 29, 2014 at 12:56 pm
[photobucket website giving “out of service” message. Mod]
Just verified it is still working for me. Can you please recheck this? I’ll post to snag,gy as ell if equired.
snag.gy as well if required. (sorry)
@carbomanton (?)
I did not say I feared a 2C rise in temperature it was the rise claimed by that arch alarmist James Hanson.
2C is not even important when you consider diurnal changes, seasonal changes.
Consider this:- take the coldest temperature measured in Antarctica, -80C and the hottest from the Arabian Desert, +70C at the surface the average of those two is not +14C which is the optimum temperature alarmists claim. That max/min data could happen on the same day at the same time.
Arguing temperature is like arguing about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. It is HEAT that is important and that vital metric is not measured.
Hi Willis,
Stefan Mitich has a web site :-http://globalwarmingdenier.wordpress.com/climate/
In this he details that the troposphere expands when heated ,cools when colder. A basic law of physics , things expand when warmer ? (apart from water) .So when heated atoms soar to the top of the Troposphere where they are cooled, top of the Troposphere is at -90c.fall and because this is happening every nanosecond there is a worldwide auto regulation of overall temperature. Now I do not know enough on any subject to say that this is a better view than your own or a worse one , but I would love it if someone could explain to my why this simple mechanism is wrong?
Because of this rapid (immediate) expansion and contraction ,resulting obviously in vertical and horizontal winds ,their is a persistent phenomena of distribution of heat from the surface to the stratosphere and cooling in the reverse direction, only local effects can be said to be weather and this is why the Troposphere around the Equator is some 5 k higher than that of around the poles. I like to learn , so please someone , point out the absurdity of this ,hypothesis or is it just a fact. At any rate , please take a look at the Mitich website. Either he is mad or the sanest man on Earth.
@Mi Cro.
Agree in part. It would help if there was complete data coverage then a more meaningful average MIGHT be arrived at. Africa has about 1200 temperature stations, perhaps correctly set and maintained, but the WMO say that Africa needs 12000 to cover that continent accurately. Antarctica has single figure stations though more are claimed most are impossible to find due to snow cover.
So do we have enough data to formulate an accurate state of climate now? NO.
There are a few years where my data set (gsod) has only one or two stations providing less than a full year of data, when averaged it shows a large spike in the over all average. And even now at least in gsod, I’d be very surprised if Africa has more than a thousand or so stations.
george e. smith says:
“Howcome; on the same scales the north pole and the south pole have whacking great peak real signal amplitudes, and everywhere else has ho-hum real signals ??”
For much of the year the temperatures are impacted by highly variable circulation rather than regular daily sunshine.
Mi Cro says:
January 30, 2014 at 4:38 am
“I’d be very surprised if Africa has more than a thousand or so stations.”
So why bother interpolating (guessing) the ‘field’ in between? Trust Nyquist and just track the changes in the sample points we have. If they are representative enough we will get a ‘true’ answer.
If not, then at least we won’t add any more ‘distortion’!
Somewhere along the way they thought they could/should. I started the work I did to look at two things, how much of yesterdays temp increase was lost over night, and what did the station measurements say, not the model of surface temps that were mostly fabrication.
Both of these show no warming trend, some years are up, others are down. Richard if you haven’t followed the link in my name, I have about 6 different blogs I did on this work, lots of charts.
Here’s the sample count by year for Africa
YEAR SAMPLE
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946 79
1947 718
1948 1414
1949 125
1950
1951
1952
1953 2569
1954 2762
1955 2944
1956 3095
1957 9235
1958 13914
1959
1960 2465
1961 3046
1962 3692
1963 3872
1964 4177
1965 3559
1966 3411
1967 4875
1968 14270
1969 730
1970 728
1971 365
1972
1973 31389
1974 34755
1975 36933
1976 38190
1977 40606
1978 40653
1979 44378
1980 41476
1981 45291
1982 29863
1983 40596
1984 41876
1985 40943
1986 42346
1987 40894
1988 42465
1989 39687
1990 41520
1991 40781
1992 39483
1993 42823
1994 44120
1995 45342
1996 46036
1997 44244
1998 40252
1999 41525
2000 44409
2001 45230
2002 46235
2003 46697
2004 47935
2005 49059
2006 45159
2007 46403
2008 47805
2009 46213
2010 54570
2011 52880
2012 53821
9999 1806928
9999 is the total number of samples used. GSoD has 262 stations in total for Africa, but samples are erratic, samples are erratic for all of the stations globally, again at least in this data set. But let me know I got a copy of the CRU data, and compared station lists, they were almost identical, unfortunately CRU only had an average, and no counts.
I’m not sure where this came from ?
Here’s the counts for Antarctic:
YEAR SAMPLE
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950 95
1951 251
1952 1
1953
1954
1955
1956 780
1957 2551
1958 2350
1959 1791
1960 1830
1961 1831
1962 1870
1963 1817
1964 1565
1965 1515
1966 1226
1967 1226
1968 1214
1969 1200
1970 978
1971 991
1972 929
1973 1183
1974 1135
1975 1203
1976 1082
1977 1475
1978 2283
1979 2867
1980 3216
1981 3258
1982 3114
1983 3757
1984 4218
1985 3935
1986 4182
1987 4381
1988 4538
1989 4074
1990 6730
1991 8687
1992 9477
1993 8560
1994 10026
1995 9927
1996 12708
1997 13947
1998 13375
1999 11936
2000 12644
2001 14423
2002 15006
2003 14461
2004 15196
2005 15955
2006 14725
2007 19014
2008 20645
2009 21312
2010 22379
2011 21676
2012 20181
9999 408902
Oh, many of these stations don’t provide anywhere near a full year’s data, this also really tweaks a yearly average when compared to a set that is mostly stations with a full year’s samples.
G.E. Smith: “Hansen says anomalies are correlated out to 1,000 km, so one sensor every 2,000 km, is all you need.”
which of course is total BS when step from land into a region that is basically an ice bucket, where huge amounts of energy are going into and out of phase changes. That means there can be substantial heat flux with minimal change is surface temperature.
There is probably no clearer case where you CANNOT assume temperature is even an approximate indication of the extensive property energy that would give some credence to the idea of averaging, correlation or projection.
Projecting land temps out over sea-ice is just the latest of a long heritage of deliberate deception perpertrated by Hansen that goes back at least as far as the 1988 congressional hearing where he took out the air-con the night before the hearing.
G.E. Smith::”So I asked Willis; what if he makes the areas equal; thinking he might take the data and do that.”
He also posted the code to retrive and plot the data. I imagine it would not be too hard to tweak a couple of constants in his code to produce what you want to see.
Mi Cro says:
January 30, 2014 at 5:34 am
“Somewhere along the way they thought they could/should.”
And ignored Nyquist into the bargain (even though they often quote him).
I suppose this comes fro wanting to compare it to the model output which is an area function. So they need an area function to compare it too. Comes from all those nice contour plots that weather men do as well.
It is just that all it does is add some (random?) weighting factors to the points they have which just muddies the picture.
Sort of like a jpg rather than a bmp/raw with a variable and estimated compression factor across the image.
It adds the “modelers” bias on what he thinks the interpolated temperature should be. What I produce is based exclusively on measurements, but it’s not a “Global” average, as you mentioned it would allow them to compare temps. If temps were spatially linear, maybe it would be valid, but temps are organized by weather systems, they have fronts. Every one of the temperature series does this.
And when you look at the measurements, there is no strong Co2 signal.
See
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/29/important-study-on-temperature-adjustments-homogenization-can-lead-to-a-significant-overestimate-of-rising-trends-of-surface-air-temperature/#comment-1554490
for my thoughts on Max – Min /2 as opposed to true ‘continuously’ sampled RMS values for temperature and then step wise integrated down to the periods required, Hour, Day, Month, Year, Decade.
A continuous measurement would be nice, but it doesn’t exist for past measurements, and everyone wants to see a series from as long ago as possible, the reality is prior to about 1974, surface temp series are mostly made up, gsod is okay back to the 40’s-50’s, but there are lots of spikes due to being under sampled.
I do a lot of stuff with Tmin/Tmax and when you get a decent sample the results look pretty clean.
I do get comments about TOB, but since I produce a difference for each station everyday, as long as they do the same thing, you get a reasonable difference, and then random changes get swamped out with averaging large collections of numbers.
Mi Cro says:
January 30, 2014 at 6:07 am
“temps are organized by weather systems, they have fronts. ”
And they are mobile. Which is the thing I believe is missing in the way the weighing factors are calculated to date. They should vary hour by hour, day by day, to reflect the transition of warmer/colder air between the sampling points.
Sort of like using motion compensated mpg rather than fixed jpg compression. (I do HATE compression algorithms – they do nasty things to images – and the current climate science interpolation is compression back in the very, very early days).
Mi Cro says:
January 30, 2014 at 6:15 am
“A continuous measurement would be nice, but it doesn’t exist for past measurements, and everyone wants to see a series from as long ago as possible, the reality is prior to about 1974, surface temp series are mostly made up”
Well if you take what you have and use very long averages on them to remove the noise, say < 15 years, then what you get out of the data MUST be climate. Sampling errors or not.
🙂 Yes you do, the problem is it doesn’t really show anything. Follow my name and go look, lots of stuff there to look at. Warmists, and some skeptics tell me I’m wrong, I’ve made some mistake. I have published my code, and the data is freely available, and I have lots of cross examinations.
Mi Cro says:
January 30, 2014 at 7:37 am
“:) Yes you do, the problem is it doesn’t really show anything.”
It does show that there are some long period signals present in the data we have to date. Ones right in the >30 years window for climate.
A ~60 year which shows up in lots and lots of data sets and a +100 year which shows up in part in there too.
Then there are 1000 year ones and so the list for longer and longer periods goes on.
All these need to recognised and accounted for before you try looking at the shorter term stuff below decadal.
Analyse from the longest down, not the shortest up. Like not trying to model fluid flow by tracing each atom!
I think trying to dig trends out of temp data prior to 1974(ish) is hard, prior to 1950 much harder, prior to 1940 close to worthless. The most sampled place in the world in the US after 1974, everything else is questionable. This is also not to say that there aren’t other thermometer records that are good, but as a collection for a large (continent sized) area, they are lacking. Again, I’m familiar mostly with GSoD, and the various published results(CRU, BEST, GISS, etc).
Now, I get that we have some paleo data that has some value, I don’t think there’s anyway to extend that into the thermometer era, without it being contaminated by the bias of whoever is blending them, definitely mixing apples and tomatoes, both can be red and round, but they aren’t the same.
Mi Cro says:
January 30, 2014 at 8:41 am
“I think trying to dig trends out of temp data prior to 1974(ish) is hard, prior to 1950 much harder, prior to 1940 close to worthless.”
Well a simple, binary chop 15 year low pass filter says this
http://s29.photobucket.com/user/richardlinsleyhood/media/OLSTracesaligned_zps6d702275.png.html
true, but this implies the temp series used for input are real, and I think very likely the real error bars get very large, maybe even larger than the value.
Guys , please listen. You are contemplating
Your navels instead of looking at the big picture
Totally understand your adherence to graph this , graph that, your reliance on this or that . Please stop diminishing what each of you consider s in your area to be hugely important subject and look at physic s basic level.
The Earth is a stable condition, subject only to Internal forces and the Constant emissions of the Sun. Actions within the Troposphere and the stratosphere regulate our condition
Seriously, we are not that important. We are a result of conditions. .. not the cause
Andy, In general i agree with you.
It’s simpler than this, it’s the clouds. A clear sky on a cold day (thirties) when there’s little moisture in the air, is somewhere around -40F (-60F near 0F). The only place Co2 blocks emissions is 14-16u out of a huge window open straight to very very cold skies.
I’ve seen temps drop after Sunset of 5-10F/hour, when it’s clear out.
Oh, and what’s one of the big unknowns in GCM’s, clouds…
dbstealey says:
January 29, 2014 at 8:47 pm
JBJ,
“Willis didn’t ‘guess’, he was pointing out his prior comment:
“For example, mass is an extensive property.”
Giving an example is not making a guess.”
What were his words again? “Gosh, imagine that, who would have guessed that? Oh, wait … I did.”
Mi Cro says:
January 30, 2014 at 9:08 am
“true, but this implies the temp series used for input are real, and I think very likely the real error bars get very large, maybe even larger than the value.”
The advantage of a large numbers of samples! Can overcome a lot of problems. The only way that old data manipulations affect things very much is the slope of the >60 year trend will back off a little. I can live with that.
Number of sample by year in GSoD.
Mi Cro: Do you have any r code for downloading the various data set for monthly/daily means?
I did all of my work in sql, since I use that to migrate data for a living.
I did put it here.
Mi Cro says:
January 30, 2014 at 10:06 am
“Number of sample by year in GSoD.”
I did something similar before giving up on BEST. Just too sparse early in the record to make a decent sampling surface.
I looked at the 1*1 cell coverage as that is what the maths is in.
(A very cylindrical set of glasses for temperatures – need cos(lat) all the time to get weightings right! Tricky to be certain in code- too many places for error.)
+ 10’s of billions of dollars wasted chasing a warming trend in data that’s to sparsely sampled to actually mean anything.
Mi Cro says:
January 30, 2014 at 10:12 am
“I did all of my work in sql, since I use that to migrate data for a living.
I did put it here.”
Thanks for that. SQL is great for data, not so hot for statistics and graphic display.
I am thinking I need to go and learn R and move away from my long (way too long) attachment to C++ and C#. And no-one needs assembler any more, sob, sob.
Mi Cro says:
January 30, 2014 at 10:15 am
“+ 10′s of billions of dollars wasted chasing a warming trend in data that’s to sparsely sampled to actually mean anything.”
I think that it is ironic that in all probability you can just do with using the deltas on the sampling points you have directly without all the complex interpolation work and end up with a more accurate answer!
This is what I’ve attempted, and I think it shows something of value, but the incumbents are well entrenched.
Mi Cro says:
January 30, 2014 at 10:34 am
“This is what I’ve attempted, and I think it shows something of value, but the incumbents are well entrenched.”
They do appear to have some very blinkered thinking.
Means are fine up until Yearly then from then on they are BAD, BAD, BAD.
A form of discrimination for filters! Too long and your not allowed in.
A step wise integral has always described the area under the curve. It’s an average, nothing more.
So a simple low pass filter set at the timescale that Climate signals are supposed to be in reveals a long term cycle of ~60 years which lots and lots of the literature says is there and NO-ONE will even contemplate that they it exists.
A residual that is then left indicates a +100 year something, could be due top CO2, could be due to other things, probably some of one and some of the other.
But you are not ALLOWED to point out the ‘Emperors New Clothes’.
JBJ says:
January 30, 2014 at 9:30 am
Google “satire”, JBJ. The phrase “Who would have guessed that …” is a very common satirical expression meaning “It’s clear to everyone except you that …”
It does not mean the person actually guessed the answer. English is funny that way.
w.
I see very slight upward linear trends in the graphs for the tropics and the SH extratropical zone.
For numerical figures, the degree/decade trends by zone in UAH are:
N. Polar: .44
N. Extratrop: .26
Tropics: .07
S. Extratrop: .09
S. Polar: 0.00
Source: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc_lt_5.6.txt
Donald L. Klipstein says:
January 30, 2014 at 9:08 pm
Thanks, Donald. I have divided the world in the traditional manner—Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, and the Arctic and Antarctic circles. This gives the following exclusive bands in my graph:
NoPol 67N-85N
NoExt 23N-67N
Trpcs 23S-23N
SoExt 23S-67S
SoPol 67S-85S
The dataset you use has a very different split, both overall and in the location of the splits. From the website:
NoPol 60N-85N
NoExt 20N-85N
Trpcs 20S-20N
SoExt 85S-20S
SoPol 85S-60S
Part of the problem with their split is that the sections are not exclusive – their polar section is a subset of their extratropics.
In any case, as you might imagine, since their polar sections are averaged in with the extratropics their results are somewhat different from mine mine.
Best regards,
w.
Willis Eschenbach says:
January 30, 2014 at 12:03 pm
JBJ says:
January 30, 2014 at 9:30 am
“Google “satire”, JBJ. The phrase “Who would have guessed that …” is a very common satirical expression meaning “It’s clear to everyone except you that …””
Google “sarcasm” Willis … I was pulling your leg 🙂
That’s what I call a laudible and sound presentation: understandable and the data made easily available – to everyone. Good Job!
BTW: did the “Mann et al” comment the “extremely stable system”???
“The dataset you use has a very different split, both overall and in the
location of the splits. From the website:
NoPol 60N-85N
NoExt 20N-85N
Trpcs 20S-20N
SoExt 85S-20S
SoPol 85S-60S
Part of the problem with their split is that the sections are not exclusive
– their polar section is a subset of their extratropics.
In any case, as you might imagine, since their polar sections are averaged
in with the extratropics their results are somewhat different from mine
mine.”
I also used the dataset
http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc_lt_5.6.txt
and, due to the overlapping in latitude of Extratropical an Polar zones,
have subtracted the Polar contributions from the Extratropicals ones, so
obtaining an Extratropical anomaly between 20° and 60° both North and South.
I found (“www.zafzaf.it/clima/uah/uahhome.html) a decreasing trend
for the 0°-60°N “Temperate zone”. Such a belt is not too much different from
your (23°-67°N) selection and, I think, not so different to reverse the sign
of the trend. More, as you noted above, I’m sure that the use of 5.5 or 5.6
version of data sets cannot give any practical difference. So, I’m asking
why the (20-60)°N belt shows that behaviour I’ve never heard of before, and
why your data don’t show the same.
Regards. Franco
Sorry, the correct url of my site is http://www.zafzaf.it/clima/uah/uahhome.html
Willis @ here
A few people have calculated the trends for various zones (cited UAH directly) and given figures. Except for the S Pole, they are positive. It’s hard to tell anything from your graphs because the data is so squished.
In any case, as you might imagine, since their polar sections are averaged in with the extratropics their results are somewhat different from mine mine.
Have you posted the figures you came up with for each division? Could you do so, so that we can see how much they differ from the decadal trends given at UAH?
(I’d do it myself if the data were in plain text format)
In anticipation, thanks.
LOL, you should try making those graphs a little bigger, then we could see that you’re knowingly pushing a phony conclusion. Are you going to correct the post now, or are you really just a liar?
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/02/04/tiny-graphs/
Dwayne Hoover says:
February 4, 2014 at 2:29 pm
Dwayne, why should I pay any attention to a man calling me a liar, when that man doesn’t have either the balls or the common decency to spell out what he thinks I lied about?
You get nothing from me. I provided the data and the code. If you want bigger graphs, fine, make all of them you want.
Next, I’m banned at Tamino’s place, the laughingly-titled “Open Mind”, because he didn’t like my scientific questions and statements. He doesn’t have the balls to allow me to ask the unpleasant questions, so he hides where I can’t comment, and from there, surrounded by toadies and sycophants like yourself, he calls me a liar …
And you are as cowardly as he is. Rush back to your master, lickspittle, and tell him of my krool words …
w.
barry says:
February 4, 2014 at 7:09 am
Thanks, Barry. The graphs are all to the same scale. I chose the smallest scale that could contain the variations at the poles.
The problem is not that the graphs are small. The problem is that over the last third of a century, the lower tropospheric temperature in about 90% of the planet has never varied by more than plus or minus one-third of one percent … now, I could blow that third of a percent way up, but I wanted to present it to a realistic scale. That kind of stability in a natural system is astonishing.
People in the future will find it hilarious that folks in the early 21st century agonized so much about such a trivially small temperature change. Yes, the trend in the tropics is positive … the question is, is it significant? Is it something we should worry about? I say no.
In the graph at the head of the post, the width of the blue average line is about a tenth of a degree. The average tropical tropospheric temperature hasn’t varied by that much in a third of a century. Rather than obsessing about whether that invisible trend is positive or negative, we should obsess about discovering the details of the natural systems that have kept the tropics that amazingly stable …
w.
Franco Zavatti says:
February 4, 2014 at 5:33 am
Franco, I regret to say your link to your work doesn’t function, so I can’t explain why you get a negative result. As far as I know, trends in all parts of the NH extratropics are positive.
w.
I provided the data and the code.
Unfortunately I don’t have NetCDF software or the ken to use it, and I believe most people here would be in the same boat. Could you post the data in text form? Alternatively, if you could simply post the linear trends for each zone (preferably with uncertainties), that would help establish your points and provide a qualitative comparison with the trends that UAH give.
If anyone else can make use of the data form as posted, perhaps they could provide the linear trend values for Willis’ zones? I’ve read every comment and no one appears to have done so.
Franco,
If I understand you right, you have subtracted higher anomalies/trend from lower one/s, so you are going to get inverse results. In fact, I can see from comparing your subtracted graph to the polar one above it, most of the anomalies are inversely correlated, particularly for extreme values. That can’t be right. Change the sign of each value to get a better estimate.
“Franco, I regret to say your link to your work doesn’t function, so I can’t explain why you get a negative result. As far as I know, trends in all parts of the NH extratropics are positive.”
Willis,
my second comment had the correct link. Anyway it is
http://www.zafzaf.it/clima/uah/uahhome.html
Me too knew about positive trends in NH and this is the reason for my comment.
Someone here suggested I could not subtract Polar (60-85)° from Extratropical (20-85)° belts, due to some unclear reason (like a different weighting on areas), but I cannot find any valid support for that.
Franco
Franco,
Using your method, you’re going to get bad results. Consider this hypothetical:
If there is trend of 0 at the equator, and we have a perfect sphere where temperature trends rise by latitude fairly evenly, then let’s say extratopical (20-85) is 0.3C/decade and an even greater trend for Polar (60-85) at 0.5C/decade. The trend from 20-60 is going to be positive but less than 0.3C/decade. However, if you subtract the NoPol trend from the Extratropical trend, you’re going to get -0.2C/decade instead of something between 0 and 0.3C.
Do you see the problem?
Same with anomalies.
Look carefully at your chart and the polar one above it. They are almost perfectly inversely correlated – virtually mirror images except for the size of the variance. If you change the sign of the (20-60) anomalies you’ll get a better (but not perfect) result. Correlation will improve by nearly 100%.
If you changed the sign of the (20-60) trend in our hypothetical, you’d have 0.2C/decade, which is a much likelier answer.
barry says:
February 4, 2014 at 9:26 pm
Barry, I didn’t provide the exact numbers for the various zones specifically because I want people to use their eyes and their minds. Take a look at the trend for the tropics in Figure 1. Some people are obsessing over whether that is positive or negative. The answer is, it is far too small to make a difference.
Visually, just looking at Figure 1, I’d say the following:
Arctic: ~ 1.5 degrees in ~ 30 years, call it half a degree per decade
NoExt: ~ .6 degrees, 0.2° per decade
Tropics: too small to tell
SoExt: ~ .3 degrees in ~30 years, call it 0.1° per decade
Antarctic: too small to tell.
Here are the actual figures in the same order, in degrees per decade:
[1] 0.51
[1] 0.24
[1] 0.07
[1] 0.1
[1] 0.01
I read above that Tamino is accusing me of lying because he doesn’t like the scale of my graphs … guess he should learn to use his eyes. The graphs are perfectly adequate, as my estimates above show.
Like I said … I wanted to encourage people to use their eyes and their good judgement, and to stop obsessing over minuscule differences.
In any case, because we are indeed a full-service gas station, I’ve posted up the month-by-month figures for the five zones as a fixed-width text file called “UAH by zone.txt” here for your further enjoyment …
And just to make Tamino happy, here’s his expanded-scale view of the tropics:
It was terrifying there for a while, the tropical temperatures were going through the roof …
w.
Franco,
Using your method, you’re going to get bad results. Consider this hypothetical:
If there is trend of 0 at the equator, and we have a perfect sphere where temperature trends rise by latitude fairly evenly, then let’s say extratopical (20-85) is 0.3C/decade and an even greater trend for Polar (60-85) at 0.5C/decade. The trend from 20-60 is going to be positive but less than 0.3C/decade. However, if you subtract the NoPol trend from the Extratropical trend, you’re going to get -0.2C/decade instead of something between 0 and 0.3C.
Do you see the problem?
Same with anomalies.
Look carefully at your chart and the polar one above it. They are almost perfectly inversely correlated – virtually mirror images except for the size of the variance. If you change the sign of the (20-60) anomalies you’ll get a better (but not perfect) result. Correlation will improve by nearly 100%.
If you changed the sign of the (20-60) trend in our hypothetical, you’d have 0.2C/decade, which is a much likelier answer.
Barry,
I effectively computed (lower-higher) anomalies getting the inverse results and didn’t note the inverse correlation. Thank you for the advice. Franco
Thanks, Willis. Your results are similar to UAH, which is not unexpected and corroborative. Thanks, too for the text data. Much appreciated. I’ll tinker around with it in Excel.
Franco, you’re welcome. The way you had done it still seems intuitively correct, and I’ve kept mulling it over. My advice amonts to subtracting extratropical from polar, which seems intuitively incorrect. It’s been interesting to think about for someone with a very ordinary maths education.
barry says:
February 5, 2014 at 4:42 pm
barry and Franco, you can derive the individual results from the merged extratropical and polar sections. It’s a weighted average, done as follows. I’ll call the three portions polar, extratropics, and middle
First, you need the area of the zones. UAH divides it (from memory) into 20° to 85° for extratropics, and 60° to 85° for the poles. That makes the middle the zone from 20-60°.
Next, we need the areas. The area of a latitude zone bounded by latitudes A and B as a fraction of the global surface is ( sin(A) – sin (B))/2. So their polar zone 60-85 has an area of .065, the middle zone from 20-65° is 0.327, and the extratropics from 20-85° is the sum of those two, 0.392.
This means that the polar area is abut 1/6 (0.166, or 17%) of the full 20-85° extratropics, and the middle area in between the poles and the tropics is about 5/6 (.834 or 83%) of the total.
We know the average of the extratropical area 20-90°. We know the average of the polar area 65-90°. We know the areas. The average of the middle area is found from the equation:
(1/6) * Polar average + (5/6) * Middle average = Extratropical average
This solves to
Middle average = (Extratropical average – .166 * polar average) / 0.833
Regards,
w.
“barry and Franco, you can derive the individual results from the
merged extratropical and polar sections. It’s a weighted average, done
as follows. I’ll call the three portions polar, extratropics, and middle
First, you need the area of the zones. UAH divides it (from memory) into
20° to 85° for extratropics, and 60° to 85° for the poles. That makes the
middle the zone from 20-60°.
Willis,
Thanks for the accurate reply. I’ve prepared both plots and fit parameters
following your schema, with slightly different numbers due to the size of
the middle zone (you used 20-65°; the value is 20-60°, so not 0.166 but 0.199
or 1/5 or 20%). These files are here,
highlighted in brown.
My mistake was to think the data (it’s wrong, but let’s say
temperature) would refer to unit area (they speak about “grids”) at the given
altitude (e.g. low troposhere), something like the surface brightness
of the galaxies in Astronomy, so that I could add (subtract) all the data,
the area weights beeing provided by people at UAH and included into the measure.
Regards.
Franco