…PLUS AN OBVIOUS ERROR IN THE NEW NOAA ERSST.V4 PAPER
Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
We’ve discussed NOAA’s new ERSST.v4 “pauses-buster” sea surface temperature reconstruction in a number of posts this year. They are linked at the end of this post. We can add yet another curiosity to the list…this time relating to the global ERSST.v4 data during the first half of the 20th Century. Additionally, there is an error in a new paper about the NOAA ERSST.v4 that I want to discuss as well.
This post was prompted by a paragraph in NOAA’s recent paper about the uncertainties of their ERSST.v4 sea surface temperature reconstruction. That paper is Huang et al. (2015b) Further Exploring and Quantifying Uncertainties for Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature (ERSST) Version 4 (v4), which is presently available (paywalled) as an Early Online Release. Two things in the following paragraph caught my eye (my boldface):
A recent study (Karl et al. 2015) indicated that the trend of globally averaged SST in ERSST.v4 in the most recent decades (0.99°C century-1; 2000-2014) is as large as in the longer period of 1951-2012 (0.88°C century-1). Figure 6b shows the histogram of the trend during the longer period. The trend ranges from 0.7°C to 1.0°C century-1, which is higher than the long term trend shown in Figure 6a, indicating stronger oceanic warming since the middle of the 20th Century. Factor analyses indicate that the major contributor to this trend uncertainty is the ship-buoy adjustment (the 9th parameter; Fig. 7b).
FIRST, THE ERROR IN THE NEW HUANG ET AL. (2015b) PAPER
For the period of 1951-2012, Karl et al. (2015) listed the trend of 0.088 deg C/decade (0.88 deg C/century) for their “old” ERSST.v3b data, not the “new” ERSST.v4 data. The 1951-2012 trend for the “new” ERSST.v4 data shown in Table S1 from the Supplementary materials for Karl et al. (2015) is listed as 0.100 deg C/decade (1.00 deg C/century). Their Table S1 is included as my Table 1. NOAA repeated that “typo” throughout Huang et al. (2015b).
Table 1
Looks like the peer reviewers missed an obvious mistake.
In Figure 1, I’ve added vertical red lines to Figure 6 (SSTa trend uncertainty histograms) from Huang et al. to show the data trends listed in Karl et al. (2015) for the periods of 1951 to 2012 and 2000 to 2014. (Refer again to Karl et al. Table S1, my Table 1.) I’ve also shown the 0.88 deg C/Century trend that was erroneously listed in Huang et al. (2015b) for the period of 1951 to 2012.
Figure 1
Curiously, but not surprisingly, the actual sea surface temperature data trends align with, or are near to, the extreme high end trends in the uncertainty histograms.
And if you’re wondering about the ERSST.v4 data trend for the period of 1901 to 2014 (Cell a in Figure 6 from Huang et al. 2015b), the data for the latitudes of 60S-60N (global excluding the polar oceans) present a linear trend of 0.073 deg C/decade (0.73 deg C/century)….once again toward the high end of the histogram. (Data available through the KNMI Climate Explorer.)
SO THE WARMING RATE FOR 1951-2012 IS HIGHER THAN THE RATE FOR 1901-2012
The above quote from Huang et al. (2015b) included (my brackets):
The trend ranges from 0.7°C to 1.0°C century-1 [for the period of 1951-2012], which is higher than the long term trend shown in Figure 6a [for the period of 1901-2014], indicating stronger oceanic warming since the middle of the 20th Century.
There’s nothing unusual about global sea surface temperatures since 1951 having a higher warming rate than the data since 1901. All sea surface temperature and night marine air temperature datasets (end products) available from the KNMI Climate Explorer show that simple relationship. See Figure 2. The difference between the shorter-term (1951-2012) and the longer-term (1901-2012) trends depends on the dataset.
Figure 2 (Typo Corrected in ERSST.v3b Graph)
Figure 2 (and Figures 3 through 5) include global (60S-60N) ocean surface temperature anomalies referenced to the period of 1971-2000, from top to bottom:
- NOAA’s ERSST.v4 Sea Surface Temperature (NOAA’s new “Pauses-Buster” data)
- NOAA’s ERSST.v3b Sea Surface Temperature (NOAA’s “old” data)
- UKMO’s HadNMAT2 Night Marine Air Temperature (Which NOAA uses to adjust their ERSST.v4 data to account for ship-based temperature biases, from buckets and ship inlets)
- UKMO’s HADSST3 Sea Surface Temperature (An uninterpolated product used in the UKMO HadCRUT4 global land+ocean surface temperature product), and
- UKMO’s HadISST Sea Surface Temperature (the most-often-used sea surface temperature dataset used in scientific studies, even though it has the lowest warming rates.)
Huang et al. included trends for the periods of 1901-2014 and 1951-2012, using two different end years. For ease of illustration, I ended the data for both periods in 2012. That also agrees with the periods shown in Table 2.5 from Chapter 2 of the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report. The exception to the 2012 end year is the HadNMAT2 data, which run through 2010 because the dataset ends then.
The data suppliers account for sea ice differently…thus the use of the latitudes of 60S-60N.
In the quote above, Huang et al. (2015b) are suggesting that global warming is accelerating. But Huang et al. (2015b) failed to note something important.
THE WARMING RATE FOR 1901-1950 IS ALSO HIGHER THAN THE RATE FOR 1901-2012
Figure 3 includes trend comparisons for the five ocean surface temperature products, but this time comparing the warming rates for 1901-1950 and 1901-2012.
Figure 3 (Corrected typo on HADSST3 graph)
The “ew” “new” and “old” NOAA sea surface temperature products show slightly higher warming rates for 1901-1950 than they do for 1901-2012. On the other hand, the UKMO’s HadNMAT2, HADSST3 and HadISST show noticeably higher warming trends for the early period of 1901-1950.
ONLY THE NOAA “PAUSES-BUSTER” DATA SHOW A LOWER WARMING RATE IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY
Figure 4 compares the warming rates for 1901-1950 and 1951-2012 for the 5 ocean surface temperature products.
Figure 4 (Corrected typo on HADSST3 graph)
With the “old” NOAA ERSST.v3b data, the warming rates for the early (1901-1950) period are comparable to those for the later period (1951-2012). The early period has a slightly higher warming rate than the later period in the HadNMAT2 and HadISST datasets…though it could be argued that they’re comparable. The HADSST3 data have a noticeably higher warming rate in the early period.
The exception is NOAA’s new ERSST.v4 “pauses buster” data, which show a noticeably lower warming rate in the first half of the 20th Century.
DIVIDED INTO TWO EQUAL-LENGTH (50-YEAR) PERIODS
Someone is bound to note that we’re not comparing periods of equal length. So, for Figure 5, I ended the later period in 2000, breaking the 20th Century in two.
Figure 5 (Corrected typos in ERSST.v4 and HADSST3 graphs.)
THE DATASET USED BY NOAA FOR SHIP-BASED BIAS ADJUSTMENTS DOES NOT SUPPORT THE LOWER WARMING RATE IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY
Figure 6 compares the warming rates for the periods of 1901-1950 and 1951-2010 using the global (60S-60N) HadNMAT2 and the new NOAA ERSST.v4 “pauses-buster” sea surface temperature data. NOAA adjusts their ERSST.v4 sea surface temperature data using HadNMAT2 night marine air temperature data to account for ship-based temperature measurement biases (buckets of various types and ship inlets).
Figure 6
Curiously, NOAA’s ERSST.v4 data have a noticeably lower warming rate than the reference HadNMAT2 data during the first half of the 20th Century (and a noticeably higher warming rate from 1951-2010). Those additional tweaks are the reasons why the NOAA ERSST.v4 are the outlier, showing a lower warming rate in the first half of the 20th Century than for the period from 1951-2012.
CLOSING
Did NOAA adjustment (modify, tweak, manipulate, etc.) their ERSST.v4 “pauses-buster” sea surface temperature data during the first half of the 20th Century so that the ocean surfaces showed a slight acceleration in global sea surface warming for 1951-2012? The other ocean surface temperature datasets don’t show the same disparity over those two time periods. If fact, the UKMO’s HADSST3 dataset (which like ERSST.v4 is also adjusted for bucket, ship inlet and buoy biases) shows a noticeably higher warming rate for 1901-1950 than for 1951-2012.
ADDITIONAL POSTS ABOUT NOAA’S NEW ERSST.v4 “PAUSES-BUSTER” SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE DATA
In previous posts at WattsUpWithThat and at my blog ClimateObservations, I’ve discussed the new NOAA “pause-buster” sea surface temperature dataset (ERSST.v4) a number of times since the publication of Karl et al. (2015)—latest to earliest:
- Busting (or not) the mid-20th century global-warming hiatus
- Pause Buster SST Data: Has NOAA Adjusted Away a Relationship between NMAT and SST that the Consensus of CMIP5 Climate Models Indicate Should Exist?
- Open Letter to Tom Karl of NOAA/NCEI Regarding “Hiatus Busting” Paper
- More Curiosities about NOAA’s New “Pause Busting” Sea Surface Temperature Dataset
- NOAA/NCDC’s new ‘pause-buster’ paper: a laughable attempt to create warming by adjusting past data
UPDATE
Many thanks to those readers on the cross post at WattsUpWithThat who found all of the typos. My apologies.
With regular data metamorphosis in no time we’ll have a 45 degree inclination line, so no trend lines will be required.
data metamorphosis … great term that well describes crimatological statatistics.
BTW It’s snowing here!
That’s nothing, it’s snowing in New Mexico.
And it explains a lot.
After data metamorphosis, the data flaps its wings and causes Global Warming!
MarkW
I’ve just seen a news item from Texas and New Mexico, hm,,,global warming, more like onset of a new ice age.
I’d favor “data spawning” over “data metamorphosis”.
New Mexico is quite a bit above sea level on average, something like 6000ft. From memory, with each 1000ft increase in altitude there is a 1 degree C drop in temperature. Isn’t New Mexico where many of the high altitude telescopes situated?
Neither term brings to mind the actual process behind the ‘adjustments’.
It is still data corruption forced into unnatural relations that go far beyond incestuous.
So… Data sodomization then?
I am in Alamogordo, in south-central NM, near the White Sands Desert, at about 4000 ft. and it is snowing. That’s not that unusual, but that’s the point, isn’t it?
There’s a bell-shaped curve of actual weather events around the central tendency of all climate averages. Even “rare” things will happen once in a while in a normal climate.
The key point of Bob Tisdale’s post is that even with their best presentation of their data, whether or not there has been biased manipulation, there is precious little difference in the rate of “global” warming between the first half of the 20th century (ie, pre-CO2 forcing) and the next 65 years (post-CO2 forcing).
The hypothesis that this data best supports is that CO2 is, at most, a weak forcer of climate change.
My wife’s relatives report that it snowed in El Paso, TX this weekend. That’s right on the Mexican border.
Snow in New Mexico and El Paso, right on the border? Take the train a few hours south to the home of the dogs, Chihuahua, in “Old” Mexico. Ten inches of snow in the city, and zero degrees in the hills.
http://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/winter-hits-chihuahua-with-25cm-of-snow/
http://news.yahoo.com/biggest-snow-storm-decades-hits-north-mexico-191315527.html
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/slideshows/nation-world/chihuahua-state-in-mexico-receives-heaviest-snowfall-in-55-years/mountain-of-snow-in-chihuahua-state-mexico/slideshow/50365371.cms
en espanol, here’s some more pictures
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/articulo/estados/2015/12/28/pega-tormenta-invernal-en-el-norte-del-pais
and a nice weather map forecast at
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/articulo/estados/2015/12/28/sigue-potencial-para-nevadas-en-chihuahua-y-coahuila
and -15C (+5F) in Durango, Mexico:
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/articulo/estados/2015/12/28/durango-registra-el-dia-mas-frio-de-la-temporada-llega-15-grados
Actually, it’s not all that odd, especially in recent years…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/01/a-cold-day-in-mexico%e2%80%99s-icebox/
It’s fun to see how global warming is cooling Mexico, too.
Snow in New Mexico and El Paso, right on the border? Take the train a few hours south to the home of the dogs, Chihuahua, in “Old” Mexico. Ten inches of snow in the city, and zero degrees in the hills.
http://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/winter-hits-chihuahua-with-25cm-of-snow/
http://news.yahoo.com/biggest-snow-storm-decades-hits-north-mexico-191315527.html
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/slideshows/nation-world/chihuahua-state-in-mexico-receives-heaviest-snowfall-in-55-years/mountain-of-snow-in-chihuahua-state-mexico/slideshow/50365371.cms
en espanol, here’s some nice photos of the snow and -17C (+2F) at La Rosilla, Mexico
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/articulo/estados/2015/12/29/continua-onda-gelida-hasta-menos-17-grados-en-chihuahua
Actually, it’s not all that odd, especially in recent years…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/01/a-cold-day-in-mexico%e2%80%99s-icebox/
Well Bob’s graphs do make his point, but they also make some other points.
1/ Climate, or at least SST doesn’t know anything about calendars or centuries.
Move that 1951 date to circa 1970 and you get a whole lot different picture.
Bob’s graphs, point out the folly of talking about trends in “scientific” data.
The data is what the data is, and there is no reason to believe there is any trend to do anything.
2/ With the large number of totally new “discoveries” about fumaroles, and other unprecedented discoveries of climate effects as announced in various press releases just this year (therefore of such importance as to bring to the public attention rather than just the science community) it is quite apparent that the statement: “The science is settled.” is a complete falsehood.
How many totally new and previously undiscovered variables that are of major importance to earth’s climate were announced in peer reviewed science papers in 2015 from eminent university groups, that were such show stoppers that they needed to be press released even though the science papers are all pay-walled from public view.
So we can declare that “The science is settled” is the total BS statement of 2015.
So how many climate variables do we now have that compete with CO2 for being the prime cause of climate change ??
g
Yes, this obsession with “trends” is one of the most misleading ways of summarising complex data from a complex system. There is always the never spoken but implied “if this trend continues” , with the unspoken assumption that this is the most likely thing that one can expect to happen. Of course it never does happen. You just get a new “trend”.
Karl et al:
This is another favourite con-job perpetrated by people who certainly DO know better. It is another form cosine acceleration or giving the impression of acceleration where none exists. Everyone knows that a continuous cosine is not going either up or down … unless you pick cherries carefully:
http://climategrog.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/warming-cosine.png
Here we see the same principal in action on N. Atlantic SST
http://climategrog.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/amo_trends.png
So Karl et al’s ficticous “acceleration” is just a trick of the light.
kwinterkorn:
Randy Moss (vikings receiver) said it best ‘Its a once in a lifetime thing that happens every once in a while”
Mike,
One way to mitigate the temptation to cherry-pick trend endpoints is to choose several time scales and plot them continuously over the entire data set:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_MCooUyKbnk/VoMKn879Q_I/AAAAAAAAAh4/C1k5XttCSIg/s1600/SST%2BTrends.png
All four plots above show positive linear slopes for all four SST data series across their entire respective intervals. A positive linear trend over a 1st derivative plot indicates acceleration.
I fully agree with Mike. In fact I raising this issue on several forums and as well with the government of India. When you select a truncayed data series of a cyclic variation data series, based on the part you select give either increasing or decreasing trend. This is exactly what a Minister informed Indian parliament saying that Indian rainfall is decreasing as this part relates the decreasing segment of 60-year cycle segment. Truncated data always give misleading inferences.
In the global average temperature and as well in the global average SST temperature 60-year cycle is existing. So, if we wants know the exact trend, first we mist eliminate the cyclic part through moving average technique.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
“All four plots above show positive linear slopes for all four SST data series across their entire respective intervals. A positive linear trend over a 1st derivative plot indicates acceleration.”
You’re using the word acceleration as it is used when referring to a positive linear trend plotted with only 1 derivative. Such a trend (with one derivative) can only indicate ONE thing, and in your charts, that one thing is that temperatures show an acceleration. A positive linear trend plotted with only one derivative (temperature change trend over time) cannot address changes in velocity because to do that, one would have to add another derivative.
Mike isn’t using the word “acceleration” the same way you are. He’s using the word “acceleration” in relation to the change in VELOCITY of warming between two trends. He’s talking about at least TWO derivatives-acceleration AND velocity.
Karl et al is talking about two DIFFERENT trends A- one between the period 1951-2012 (a 51 year trend) and B-one between 1901-2014 (a 113 year trend). They are claiming that the rate of warming in trend A is higher than the rate of warming shown in trend B, and thus indicates “stronger oceanic warming” or an acceleration in the VELOCITY of the warming that has occurred since the middle of the 20th Century.
Aphan,
I understand that a positive or negative 3rd derivative indicates a non-constant acceleration. It’s not clear to me that’s what Mike is arguing. What I got from his post is that because 51 years is less than the period of AMO, it only looks like the 2nd derivative is positive.
The purpose of my plot was to remove choice of endpoint from the analysis. My conclusion is similar to Karl (2015) even when I don’t use their data — rate of warming is increasing.
Yes, and that looks to be an argument about whether the ERSST v4 adjustments are valid, or the basis of motivated data manipulation.
Bond Gates — The issue here is not the length of the data series but the question is what period of the cyclic variation the data series is covering [truncated data] the cycle. In the longer data series it covered symmetrical pattern and in the second [shorter data] the data presented asymetrical and more data in the below the average and less data in the above average. Naturally the trend will be more [angle].
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
If I’m not mistaken (it happens) the absolute highest altitude golf course in the USA is in New Mexico, at somewhere around 9,000 feet.
So wake me, when it isn’t snowing in New Mexico.
g
See I was wrong; I was right; I was mistaken and Leadville Colorado at 9700 feet is highest in US. Highest in NM is only 9200 ft. See I got that part right.
g
I wonder if I could add 20 yards to my drives at the golf course. These lessons are getting very expensive.
Fairplay, CO….9953 ft.
Sorry…..disregard my comment please.
I believe last Saturday a college game ( football game called the Sun Bowl was played and I believe it in New Mexico I could be wrong but I think it was El Paso? some one help me here) But it was in a driving snow storm.
El Paso is in TEXAS, not New Mexico.
“If I’m not mistaken (it happens) the absolute highest altitude golf course in the USA is in New Mexico, at somewhere around 9,000 feet”
Sorry, you are mistaken.
The highest altitude golf course in the U.S. is in Lake county outside of Leadville, Co at 10,025 ft.
I have zero confidence in the data set to accurately represent global sea surface temperatures in the first place, so the extra issues with adjustments to it or papers about them is, to me, totally irrelevant.
What is the most ludicrous part is how the uncertainty is still the same. For the 1951-2010 “trend” they give ERSST v3 and v4 as :
new 1.00 +/- 0.017
old 0.88 +/- 0.017
Hand on, they have just added 0.2 to something that was supposed to be accurate to +/-0.017 , so they have out and out admitted that their earlier uncertainty estimations were WAY off the mark. They are now claiming the same ludicrously improbable uncertanty range for the new improved, ultra-white, brighter-than-white-finish data.
Oddly have made massive adjustments they still have _exactly_ the same uncertainty range. But if they’ve improved the data and removed biases, shouldn’t the uncertainty range now be smaller? Unless, of course, the whole way they are estimating the uncertainty is utter horse-shit anyway.
agreed wwfan. mathturbation of fiction practiced by an increasing amount of mathturbators.
You should set up a website where people can take a Pepsi-challenge style quiz. Break each graph into a 1901-1950 piece and a 1951-2000 piece, then randomly color code them either red or blue then superimpose them.
The quiz is simply to select the line color that is natural, or is a fossil-fueled Global Warming catastophe.
Let them try to guess each of the 4 or 5 different datasets, then give them a score at the end. Fun and educational.
I did post something of the kind for the N. Atlantic SST on another blog
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AMOq1.gif
with comment:
If the ~100 year long initial section of the N. A. SST data is moved forward by about 65 years, it can be clearly seen that two sections are nearly identical (R^2 >0.7, statistically significant) with a single uplift of about 0.2C.
Anyone is welcome to any conclusion, but it is crystal clear to me that 0.2 C one off (single) uplift in temperature is absolutely nothing to do with the increase in the CO2 concentration”
vukcevic:
Thanks!
Your post, without converting temperatures to anomalies, makes it quite clear that the trend is most likely natural variance. Especially as we are warming since the little ice age.
If you do a regression of blue data alone from 1857 to 2014 and blue continued orange in first figure to get 1857 to 2014, you get clearly the difference in the trend. Please try and show this.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Cooling the past and heating up the present via changing the data: this is the true ‘global warming’ that is going on.
…and, it’s anthropogenic.
The trend for 1951-2000 in the first chart of Figure 5 is mislabeled.
Thanks, Basil. Fixed it.
I’s all very clear to me, the 40 year warming trend up until around 1940 was all natural, but the slightly less steep warming trend from circa 1960 to 2000 was all caused by the activities of man.
The other thing which is clear is that using temperatures taken from buckets of sea water, or water from ships’ engine intake pipes, as opposed to the highly accurate ARGO buoys, is an essential part of proving runaway global temperatures.
Only in ‘climate science’ would these types of arguments rapidly morph into sacred truths.
Only in ‘climate science’ would these types of arguments rapidly morph into sacred truths.
Amen brother, amen.
Or global runway temperatures, which are nothing to do with climate.
g
With all of the many tens of billions of dollars thrown at the global warming scare, think of how simple it would be to spend 10+ million dollars on constructing a high performance ship’s bucket for taking accurate temps. The initial measurement should be inside the bucket, while the bucket is submerged. Out of interest, they could then haul the bucket up and take a second reading on board. The second reading alongside with the new method would give them a good method of reanalyzing older ship’s bucket data.
Agree100% with wickedfan above its pointless because the data is NOT credible. I would use only the 4 Radisonde balloon sets and 2 satellite sets as the only reliable temp data as they ALL concur. It shows nothing, basically flat for the past 20 years. Everything else is NOT credible> BTW legal proceedings have been commenced against NOAA for cooking the books (Judicial Watch ect.
I disagree, mildly, Eliza. Demonstrating that even IF one accepts the highly questionable data the claims are mere puffery has value, I feel. Laying the evidence of such puffery out so clearly as Mr. Tisdale has done here, helps to “debunk” claims (made or insinuated) of superior expertise being the reason climate alarmism has been elevated to “settled science” by the reigning Sciants gods, it seems to me.
Factor analyses indicate …
… we sat around in the pub brainstorming excuses
Why the spike in the 1940’s?
That little yellow ball that rises in the morning and sets in the evening.
Tom Graney, the spike during World War 2 originates in marine air temperature data.
The UKMO suppresses it by using daytime readings from 1942 to 1946 in their night marine air temperature data HadNMAT2:
It carries over to the NOAA ERSST.v4 data because NOAA adjusts source sea surface temperatures to mimic the UKMO HadNMAT2 night marine air temperature data.
It also stands out in the NOAA ERSST.v4 data because NOAA did not account for the “discontinuity” (unjustifiable drop-off) in 1945.
See the previous post about the ERSST.v4 data for more info:
https://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2015/12/21/busting-or-not-the-mid-20th-century-global-warming-hiatus/
Cheers
Bob, what is the justification for UKMO using the daytime temps to adjust the nighttime temps?
Duncan,
“Factor analyses“
What is the hypothetical mechanism for the spike in nighttime marine air temperatures during WW2? I haven’t seen a mechanism discussion yet…
Peter,
Sorry I can’t find the exact comment right now but that very matter was explained here recently.
From memory, the spike has something to do with the significant proportional increase in warships over that period reporting their temp measurements.
(Larger ships = bigger engines = higher intake temperatures) x the increased proportion of warships = ‘the spike’ over WW2.
Makes sense.
Also that it drops off just as quickly after the war.
If you have interest and the patience, I’d recommend a search through the recent posts on this topic as I’m sure there were other contributions to the spike as well.
The most common explanation is that the relative percentages of ships sampling water using buckets as opposed to cooling intakes changed during the war. The spike is not seen in the land record.
Not forgetting, of course, the huge buildup of ships in the Western Pacific and Mediterranean.
A larger preponderance of higher temperatures data sources.
I think it was called WW-II
There’s tons of graphs and figures… what’s not to believe?
I was wondering about the recent divergence between HADSST and CRUTEM (version 3, as there is no HADSST 4 yet) which was not seen before cca 1980 (except for volcano induced coolings, which obviously affected land temps more than sea surface temps). Any ideas?
Referring to Table S1, I think there is another story that could be (already) told. Look at the adjustments as the time interval gets to the modern era, some ‘new’ values are ~triple the ‘old’ values, whereas earlier intervals less or nonexistent. Adjustments increase exponentially, like a hokey shtick.
It’s “hokey pokey”.
Can you give us an explicit equation for that ” exponential ” increase, you are talking about ??
Hello. Could someone explain why the HADSST and CRUTEM (land only) temperatures started diverging around 1980 (with land temps rising faster than sea surface temps)? it has not been so until around that time. http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst3gl/from:1960/plot/crutem4vgl/from:1960
Perhaps this— “It [CRUTEM] has been developed and maintained by the Climatic Research Unit since the early 1980s”
https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/crutem/ge/
What point could possibly require 29 separate graphs to be proven?
Why is there no summary?
Does anyone read the entire thing, puzzle it all out?
Mr. Tisdale, at some point you need to tell us why you have labored mightily to create this fine post. What is your POINT???
Alas, Many have made this criticism before, to no avail. Bob has very good analysis and points to make but he’s far too long winded.
There should be an executive summary at the top and a conclusion at the bottom.
Millennials didn’t invent TL;DR, they just renamed the problem…
Pete
Don’t listen to these nay Sayers Bob, It is a fine post and clear to those following along.
Michael Moon- Read the following slowly-
(from first paragraph)
“We’ve discussed NOAA’s new ERSST.v4 “pauses-buster” sea surface temperature reconstruction in a number of posts this year….We can add yet another curiosity to the list…this time relating to the global ERSST.v4 data during the first half of the 20th Century. Additionally, there is an error in a new paper about the NOAA ERSST.v4 that I want to discuss as well.”
Translation-this post is about the new ERSSTv4 paper. I found another curious thing about that paper, as well as an error in a new paper regarding the ERSSTv4 paper, and I’d like to discuss them both.
Insert evidence showing error in new paper. Then add evidence demonstrating the “new curiosity” found in the ERSSTv4 paper. THEN summarize your thoughts at the end under the title “CLOSING”-
(from paragraph that follows the word CLOSING)
“Did NOAA adjustment (modify, tweak, manipulate, etc.) their ERSST.v4 “pauses-buster” sea surface temperature data during the first half of the 20th Century so that the ocean surfaces showed a slight acceleration in global sea surface warming for 1951-2012? The other ocean surface temperature datasets don’t show the same disparity over those two time periods. If fact, the UKMO’s HADSST3 dataset (which like ERSST.v4 is also adjusted for bucket, ship inlet and buoy biases) shows a noticeably higher warming rate for 1901-1950 than for 1951-2012.”
Bob’s Point (in case you don’t see it even now after I made it easy for you to see)-He wants to talk about something that he finds curious and something he finds erroneous. Based on the evidence he provided, does anyone else find this curious and erroneous as well?
MY POINT- We all know Bob’s posts are LONG. Why is that? Because they contain A LOT OF EVIDENCE. But I learned to read what he says to introduce his posts and decide if that topic is interesting to me or not. If it is, I’ll read on. If it’s NOT, I don’t read it. BUT….if in the future, I NEED both the argument AND the data that Bob worked so hard to present here, all I have to do is come back and read Bob’s post, and if I agree with it, link to it instead of having to do all that research AND present it myself.
Aphan,
I don’t read anything slowly thank you very much. Many other commenters echo my request. I have offered to help Bob with these posts, as technical writing is included in my skill set.
Keep it classy…
Michael Moon-
“Many other commenters echo my request”.
“Many-a large number, a majority, numerous, a great/good deal of, a lot of, plenty of, countless, innumerable, scores of, crowds of, droves of, an army of, a horde of, a multitude of, a multiplicity of, multitudinous, multiple, untold”
I count three in this thread. Not many compared to the number of commenters overall.
“I have offered to help Bob with these posts, as technical writing is included in my skill set.”
Well that’s nice, if Bob wants your help. But if he doesn’t want, or hasn’t accepted your offer, then I see nothing “classy” in continuing to berate him. I think the “classy” thing would be to let the man do what he likes and just not read them yourself. But maybe we understand the word “classy” as differently as we do the word “many”.
MM:
Classy? While you call out derision towards Bob Tisdale’s, his research and his articles?
Bob may be verbose, but he tries not to overlook anything. Compare that to all other ‘climate science’ research articles, especially those multiple speak opaque CAGW articles.
Are you offering your services to all climate scientists? Why don’t you take a test rewrite of Bob’s work here to demonstrate your skills?
Remember, it’s bad manners and bad business to insult and demean another’s efforts and writings; even if you have something to offer. The old put up or shut up position.
Odd that you and sable peter bring up the ever so classy, ‘others have the same complaint’, defensive argument as if that justifies your disdain and bad manners.
Classy… Riight, you sure keep it classy.
A the K,
There was no derision in my comment. I would do a rewrite of one of Bob’s posts if I could find his lead! If he was trying to point out errors made by Karl, he sure took the long way to do this. It is as if he is trying to repeat himself by endlessly subdividing the Pacific Ocean with all these charts. Any engineer would be frustrated with this.
Mr. Tisdale could help put the AGW meme away permanently, if he could put a stake through Karl’s heart. He may be able to do this. What he appears to be trying to do, instead, is bury Karl with a mound of charts, simply ineffective communication.
Michael Moon,
“Does anyone read the entire thing, puzzle it all out?
I did . . but I had to read kinda slowly ; )
I appreciate the work behind Mr. Tisdale’s posts and commend him for it. But a couple of introductory paragraphs that tip the reader off to what he should be looking for in the post’s body would go a long way to reducing the number of regular Watts up with That readers who, like me, ordinarily skip over Mr. Tisdale’s posts.
The reason I personally skip them in most cases is that doping out what Mr. Tisdale’s point is too often takes more time than I prefer to dedicate to the effort. In this case the best I could come up with was something like the following.
If one were to accept Karl’s “pause-buster” data set, the argument could be made that the temperature trend has increased in recent decades. Even if one does accept those data, though, the increasing-temperature-trend conclusion is not one that can validly be drawn from the Huang et al. paper’s observation that the trend in the NOAA “pause-buster” data for the period since 1901 is exceeded by that of the sub-period since 1951. To draw such a conclusion from that observation would be to ignore the perhaps-counter-intuitive fact that trends for both halves of a time series can exceed the trend for the time series as a whole–a fact that the pause-buster data set in fact exemplifies: just as the later sub-period’s trend does, the early sub-period’s trend exceeds the trend of the overall period. So a later-sub-period trend’s being higher than the whole-period trend does not necessarily mean that the trend is increasing.
It’s true that in the case of the pause-buster data the later sub-record’s trend exceeds not only that of the record as a whole but also that of the early sub-period. One might therefore argue that the “pause-buster” set does indeed tend to support temperature acceleration. But for most data other sets the reverse it true: for the sub-period that Huang et al. chose, it is the portion of the record preceding that sub-period whose trend is greater: if any conclusion is to be drawn from those other data sets based on that record division, it is that the trend is falling.
If the post had started with an introduction something along those lines (with promises to back up its assertions, as the head post did), the reader might have had an easier time knowing why he was reading what the post contained. That’s why in freshman comp they say of expository writing, You tell the reader what you’re going to say, you say it, and then you tell the reader what you said.
Of course, one can cherry-pick sub-periods to arrive at whatever conclusion he wants: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/plot/gistemp/from:1901/to:1957/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1958/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1901/to:2014/trend. But I take the point to be that, whatever one may think about whether sea-surface-temperature increase is accelerating, the comparison Huang et al. made is not a valid criterion on which to base that determination.
Or I may have missed the point entirely.
If you really want to argue relevance, then skip all SST measurements for one singular reason: we do not live on the ocean, we live on land.
Actually a large percentage of the population lives close enough to the ocean that SST dominates.
Also SST is 70% of the planet’s surface. the oceans in general has an order of magnitude more heat capacity than the atmosphere. This means to me there’s no statistically significant delta in the heat storage of the planet earth due to C02 increases. Just look at the graphs above (the last on e in particular). It’s not even visible to the eyeball, let alone any fancy statistical munging. (compare 1900-1950 and 1950-2000+, the latter when most of the C02 has been emitted.
Peter
I’d argue that the ocean measurements are important for showing human CO2 impact on global temperatures. If CO2 is well mixed (area for debate?), any effect it has on the global climate can be measured at the surface of the oceans. There, you also have a lower noise floor (no urban height, minimal changes in vegetation/land use, etc). The identification of other forcing effects should be easier as well (again, less noise).
Very true Peter. [At my latitude of 27.4 deg (S) ]: Towns on the coast easily fit within the influence of the ocean’s temperature. Roughly speaking, every 2 km you go inland, the temperature drops 1C (or the influence lessens by 1C). So at 10km inland, the ocean has little influence on night time temperatures. 10km is the approximate limit of influence (from my own experience only and estimated roughly). Obviously hills and prevailing winds throw this simple metric out the window.
Gas can’t heat a liquid, so the whole SST effort is a chimera. There is NOTHING man can do overtly or inadvertently to warm the ocean. Too big, too vast and too great a heat capacity.
All the climatology around SST only proves it’s the sun.
Well if you did and do skip Bob’s posts; as you say you did/do, then it is for certain that you missed his point, which he only makes in his posts.
The point is that the data doesn’t match the populist narrative.
Usually, the data tells what is happening. The narrative is just (uninformed) conjecture; aka bull s***.
I’m at + 37 deg, 22.046 minutes latitude. Well at least the western edge of the end of my driveway is. Well more correctly, that’s where the middle of the dashboard of my car sitting on the street at the west edge of my driveway is. And my altitude is + 21 meters.
Actually the center of my dash could be anywhere within 0.3 meters of that spot. That’s the result of averaging 10,000 GPS measurements.
Somewhere around 122 deg West.
Any quad-copter drones will be shot down.
Bob is who he is. And he did just fine in this post introducing his topic(s) and closing his remarks (see my above response to Michael Moon). You seem to have missed those.
I personally skip over a lot of articles posted on WUWT simply because they don’t interest me, no matter who wrote them. Since it’s obvious that many readers at WUWT do read them, DO understand them enough to engage Mr. Tisdale in a discussion, or outright enjoy them, might I suggest that WUWT readers that “skip over Bob Tisdale’s posts” are missing out. But that’s THEIR choice, not Bob’s problem.
Agreed, far too long winded and are far too many graphs. I got bored somewhere near the 4th or 5th panel in fig 2.
Bob really needs to cut some of the superfluous detail and get to the point. An abstract paragraph that tells us what the key point is in no more than 5 lines would let the reader know whether it is worth the effort of ploughing through the rest.
Why not just give a single Temperature number for the whole earth for the whole year and cut out all of that detail crap ??
Perhaps you can ask Josh to summarize all of Bob’s posts in one nifty little cartoon panel for readers that desire to be both entertained and enlightened with as little effort as possible on their part?
A typo in final sentence of Closing paragraph:
” If fact, the UKMO’s HADSST3 dataset (which like ERSST.v4 is also adjusted for bucket, ”
Is it “If in fact…”? or “In fact…”?
/sarc on
Suggested edit:
” Looks like the
peerpal reviewers missed an obvious mistake.”/sarc off
The whole Tom Karl, Huang NOAA/NCEI “Pause Buster” exercise is a classic example of Sir Walter Scott’s:
Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive.
Thanks Bob for continuing to pull on the threads of Mr. Karl’s tangled web.
Joel,
Talk about the tangle web woven by NOAA. See Bob’s comments in the thread at Climate etc. on Craig Loehle’s recent post: http://judithcurry.com/2015/12/28/global-temperature-trends-after-detrending-with-the-amo/#comment-754714
Thanks for finding the typo, Joel. It should have read and now reads, “In Fact…”
Bob Tisdale:
Based on your analysis do you find that NOAA did or did not “adjust” or otherwise muck around with the data?
If yes, you need to write a synopsis ASAP summarizing the evidence in terms a politician can understand and send it to the Senate Committee that has a subpoena out on the NOAA internal docs, etc. regarding the Karl et. al. paper.
The adjustments are not a secret. There is even a paper about them. What is needed is another emailgate. What water cooler discussions took place that would indicate bias in the effort to reconstruct the temperature series? The only source of culpable evidence would be email discussions and internal memos. Bob would not have knowledge of those.
Ditto what Pamela said. These adjustments are no secret. NOAA usually announces the changes it has made, or will be making on their own website. Problem is, they also provide excuses for why they did so that are very convincing to some people, including politicians.
An organization that claims +/- 0.1 degree C. accuracy, for average temperature data going back to the 1800s, and issues press releases declaring 2014 to be the ‘warmest year on record’ … by two hundredths of a degree C. … CAN NOT BE TRUSTED.
It is very curious how the “adjustments” usually create a steeper warming trend, and a “better” correlation of CO2 levels and average temperature.
Only a very gullible person would trust the official surface temperature data after all the “adjustments” by gooberment bureaucrats whose jobs depend on having a “crisis” to study.
Only a fool would believe predictions of the climate (or anything else) 100 years into the future.
Climate “science” appears to be the only branch of science where the FUTURE climate seems to be known with great certainty (runaway warming) … while the PAST climate is always changing from “adjustments”, “re-adjustments”, and “re-re-re- adjustments” !
If the PAST climate requires so many “adjustments” to get it “right”, how can the same people be trusted to make good predictions of the FUTURE climate?
Leftists may be too dumb to see what’s going on, but sensible people can see only ONE political party with an agenda drives the global warming scaremongering … their goals are greater control over the economy, new taxes on corporate energy use, and re-distribution of income from poor to rich nations.
Wild guesses of the future climate from scientists on government payrolls, and global climate models, are merely tools used to achieve political goals.
I know that Karl et, al has been X-rayed by several observers and was not suggesting that Bob would have knowledge of anything other than his in-depth analysis.
The point is that any pertinent additional information/insights that can be cross referenced with whatever docs NOAA is ever so reluctantly providing to Congress might help flush out more relevant “water cooler” info that’s being held back.
In order to pull the hen’s teeth you first have to locate them and the more reference points the better..
The NOAA ERSST v3b ( first green graph ) has a typo..It says ” trend = 1951 – 2012 ” twice..One of them should be ” trend = 1900 – 2012 ” ..i think ???
Not the same one that Basil mentioned..
Thanks for finding the typo, Marcus. 1901-2012 corresponded with 0.071 deg C/decade.
Cheers.
So except for the suspicious WWII spike, we have over 100 years of steadily increasing SST; where’s the AGW footprint?
Quite, but then again, perhaps this is not surprising since it would appear that DWLWIR cannot warm the oceans.
Bottom line are we actually in a position to take these measurements in a scientifically meaningful way, which includes precision and range, or are we once making great claims based on a ‘guess’ ?
Bob,
All of the blue graphs (HADSST3) have a text/numerical error. 1901-1950 should read 0.104 deg C/decade not 1.04 deg C/decade.
Thank you, Jan, for finding the typo.
[So, is a crowded review more efficient, more effective than a peered review? 8<) .mod]
Hmmmm. The data sets show a mix of pulses of short term warming during periods that allow subsurface heat to rapidly rise to the surface instead of staying mixed, with overall warming one would expect with a long term warming heat-release regime that followed a long term cooling heat-retention regime. If those spikes measured during a short term El Nino spike condition were removed (if that were possible), one could easily see that there is simply long term warming at the surface with no difference between one shorter period and the next. Note: I think the short term and long term SST heat trend is forced by the same overall mechanisms that gurgle along with occasional stronger pulses during warm regimes.
All that is to say that eventually, the ocean will stop releasing heat to the surface because there is no more to give to maintain that condition. It will either pause, or begin to decline. What little heat anthropogenic CO2 imparts into the vast ocean would not in any way be able to continue that upward trend. Back of the envelope calculation of the W/m2 available in JUST the anthropogenic portion of CO2 excludes it, and the fairly steady state of solar radiance measured at the top of the atmosphere also excludes it as the source of this trend. What is left as a potential source of this trend? Whatever lies between the ocean surface and the top of the atmosphere. That would include wind and clouds. Why would I look there? These entities are known to vary a great deal and have the chops to vary deflection of solar radiance and vary heat release from ocean surfaces in measurable and mechanistically reasonable amounts.
You should re-write this comment to make it easier to understand.
That should result in getting comments in reply, if that interests you.
To me it appears to be rambling speculation on the causes of climate change — If so, your words “Back of the envelope” do not inspire reader confidence.
You say “The data sets show a mix of pulses of short-term warming …”
I would like to remind you that you may be observing nothing more than measurement errors, or random variations, and mistaking them for meaningful “pulses”.
Richard,
You said, “I would like to remind you that you may be observing nothing more than measurement errors, or random variations, and mistaking them for meaningful ‘pulses’.” I think that it is unlikely that the entire global network in both hemispheres is simultaneously making positive measurement errors. If they are truly “random variations,” then I would expect approximately an equal number of negative pulses. As to whether or not they are meaningful, that is really the crux of the problem. Until such time as we can explain abrupt excursions away from the average or trend, we need to make note of them and try to understand how they come about. They may be meaningful, but at the moment we can’t be sure.
Very interesting post, Bob, thank you.
Bob
In your earlier post Busting (or not) the mid-20th century global-warming hiatus I pointed out the significance of the Karl et al plot, and the fact that it showed that the rate of warming between 1900 to 1950, was greater than the rate during the more recent warming. At the time, you did not wish to engage on that subject, so I am pleased to see that you are now picking up on this, and have posted an article on it.
It is extremely material to note that at a time when even the IPCC accepts that manmade CO2 was not driving temperatures (ie., prior to 1950) that the rate of warming in the first half of the century is greater than the rate of warming in the second half of the century. It appears that manmade CO2 emissions post 1950 have done nothing to increase the rate of warming.
Since the rate of warming has not increased, this begs the question, what does CO2 do?
Until one can satisfactorily explain what drove the warming in the first half of the 20th century, ie., identify each and every forcing that drove that warming and to assess the upper and lower bounds of every constituent forcing involved, one cannot begin to speculate whether CO2 played any role at all in the warming that was observed in the second half of the 20th century.
There is nothing to suggest that whatever caused the warming in the first half of the century, did not also fully account for the warming seen in the second part of the 20th century.
GWPF Report 13, “A Sensitive Matter”, says “The high-quality observationally-based estimates for
climate sensitivity discussed in this report assume that virtually all the measured warming (not just since 1950, but over the last 100–150 years) is due to
humans.” (Judith Curry wrote the foreword.) That’s a report arguing that the best estimates for ECS are substantially lower than the IPCC said in AR4&5 and that the IPCC knew this.
I was a bit staggered by this statement.
Letting *CO2* off the hook doesn’t let *humans* off the hook. I computed the correlation between Central England Temperatures and log(global population) for a sample of years from 1850 to the present as 0.81. So obviously it is human sin that is causing Hell to approach thus warming the Earth. Of course that doesn’t explain the Pause, but the answer to that is also evident. The annual COP rituals and the New Flagellants (a.k.a. climate marchers) are expiating our eco-sins just as the old ones took care of the Black Death. /sarc (as if the use of correlation coefficients weren’t enough of a joke warning sign)
Even if one believed the hokey data, the uncertainties of fitted parameters should be shown. Without doing the actual calculations, I would bet that the line slopes plus confidence limits would be something like. 0.07 +/- 0.05 C per decade. Then it becomes a different question whether 0.09 +/- 0.06 is really a different result. Noisy data just generates wide confidence limits and these should be shown.