NOAA’s new ‘climate service’ – not a sure thing yet

8 02 2010

Here’s a chance to tell your congressperson not to waste more taxpayer money on repetitive services already handled by NCDC. This looks to be nothing more than a fast track press release service. Given how badly Tom Karl has handled PR in the past, such as the disastrous NCDC Climate Change Synthesis report with photoshopped images of floods that didn’t happen.

Image above taken directly from the CCSP report. Read more here

They had to hold the report to fix errors.  I don’t expect this agency to be much better.  – Anthony

From NOAA NEWS: Commerce Department Proposes Establishment of NOAA Climate Service

New office would target nation’s fast-accelerating climate information needs
NOAA launches www.climate.gov as portal for climate science and services

February 8, 2010

Individuals and decision-makers across widely diverse sectors – from agriculture to energy to transportation – increasingly are asking NOAA for information about climate change in order to make the best choices for their families, communities and businesses. To meet the rising tide of these requests, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke today announced the intent to create a NOAA Climate Service line office dedicated to bringing together the agency’s strong climate science and service delivery capabilities. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 2 Comments »

Categories : Climate News

Munging Madagascar

7 02 2010

http://www.jmu.edu/international/images/map_madagascar.jpgSince we’ve been talking about IPCC’s “Africagate” recently, it seemed like an opportune time to point out what sort of GISS station adjustment goes on in data from it’s nearby neighbor island. Welcome Verity Jones first guest post on WUWT. FYI for those who don’t get the implied data munging  title, “Munge” is sometimes backronymmed as Modify Until Not Guessed Easily. – Anthony

Guest post by Verity Jones

This started out as a discussion point following E.M. Smith’s blog post Mysterious Madagascar Muse. The gist of the original article centered around the availability of data after 1990 in the GHCN dataset and the NASA/GISS treatment of temperature on the island. Well Madagascar has a bit of a further story to tell. I had offered to plot a ’spaghetti’ graph of the temperatures from the ten stations used on Madagascar, and this has proven interesting as an example of how data is adjusted and filled in by GISS.

To start, the annual mean temperatures plotted on a graph (Figure 1) show clearly the differences between the stations – Antananarivo is high altitude and relatively cool, with a cooling trend; of the other stations, some have cooling trends, most are warming. Also noticeable is the very sparse data after 1990. Note the darker blue data for Maintirano, of which more later. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 48 Comments »

Categories : climate data

The Times: Top British scientist says IPCC is losing credibility

6 02 2010

Scientist says IPCC claims about African rainfall reductions due to global warming have no supporting data.

Click to enlarge

African Annual Rainfall Image - UNEP FAO/Agrhymet Network and ESRI

By Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor

Excerpt:

A LEADING British government scientist has warned the United Nations’ climate panel to tackle its blunders or lose all credibility.

Robert Watson, chief scientist at Defra, the environment ministry, who chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 1997 to 2002, was speaking after more potential inaccuracies emerged in the IPCC’s 2007 benchmark report on global warming.

The most important is a claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up to 50% by 2020, a remarkably short time for such a dramatic change. The claim has been quoted in speeches by Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, and by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general.

This weekend Professor Chris Field, the new lead author of the IPCC’s climate impacts team, told The Sunday Times that he could find nothing in the report to support the claim. The revelation follows the IPCC’s retraction of a claim that the Himalayan glaciers might all melt by 2035.

The African claims could be even more embarrassing for the IPCC because they appear not only in its report on climate change impacts but, unlike the glaciers claim, are also repeated in its Synthesis Report. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 72 Comments »

Categories : IPCC

Blizzard Warning for DC, NYT: “Capital Is Crippled as Blizzard Continues “

6 02 2010

Let it snow… let it snow… let it snow…biggest snowstorm since 1922, and still not over.

From the New York Times, a crippled government. Even the post office gave up.

Snow covers a decorative iron fence at the White House in Washington, on Saturday, during a snow storm in the Washington area. Photo: AP.

Snow covers a decorative iron fence at the White House in Washington, on Saturday, during a snow storm in the Washington area. Photo: AP via The Hindu

Capital Is Crippled as Blizzard Continues

By LIZ ROBBINS
Published: February 6, 2010

A winter storm continued its blizzard rage in some parts of the Mid-Atlantic region on Saturday morning, dumping nearly two feet of wet, heavy snow that cut power to about 200,000 residents, caused the roof of a private jet hangar to collapse at Washington Dulles International Airport and forced the nation’s capital into quiet hibernation.

All postal operations in the Washington area, including the suburbs in Northern Virginia and Maryland were canceled on Saturday.

Full story at NYT here

CBS news calls the storm “epic”. See video report below. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 139 Comments »

Categories : snowfall, weather

NOAA: All time record snowfall for DC and Baltimore?

5 02 2010

From the “weather is not climate department”, it seems that the biggest snowstorm of all time is targeting the nation’s capitol. Here’s the current radar image:

via NOAA/NWS

SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BALTIMORE MD/WASHINGTON DC
1234 PM EST FRI FEB 5 2010

DCZ001-MDZ004>007-009>011-013-014-016>018-VAZ042-050>057-501-502-
060145-
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA-FREDERICK MD-CARROLL-NORTHERN BALTIMORE-
1234 PM EST FRI FEB 5 2010

...RECORD SNOWFALL FORECAST IN THE BALTIMORE-WASHINGTON DC REGION...

...EXTREMELY DANGEROUS WINTER WEATHER CONDITIONS DEVELOPING TONIGHT... Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 169 Comments »

Categories : records, snowfall, weather

Flashback to 2007 – SST to plunge again?

5 02 2010

Steve Goddard points out that warm SST events often have a downside. My view: something like capacitor discharge in an RC circuit. – Anthony

http://www.amusementtoday.com/2009_new_site/image/May2009/Plunge03.jpg

Pilgrims Plunge - photo from Amusement Today - click for details

Dr. Roy Spencer reported that January, 2010 was the warmest on record at +0.72C anomaly after a relatively cool +0.28 in December.  Dr. Spencer is one of the most trustworthy players in climate science and clearly does not have a warming agenda. So is earth’s climate warming out of control after all?

To answer this question, it is worth looking back at the “second warmest January” which came in 2007. Like 2010, January, 2007 also took a big jump up from the previous month and was at the peak of an El Nino.  The warm weather led the Met Office and to forecast a record warm year.  Hansen also speculated about the possibility of a “Super El Nino.” Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 165 Comments »

Categories : Sea Surface Temperature

Israeli study shows variable sea level in past 2500 years

4 02 2010

From the University of Haifa via Eurekalert

The sea level has been rising and falling over the last 2,500 years

IMAGE: Rising and falling sea levels over relatively short periods do not indicate long-term trends. An assessment of hundreds and thousands of years shows that what seems an irregular phenomenon today…

Click here for more information.

“Rising and falling sea levels over relatively short periods do not indicate long-term trends. An assessment of hundreds and thousands of years shows that what seems an irregular phenomenon today is in fact nothing new,” explains Dr. Dorit Sivan, who supervised the research.*

The sea level in Israel has been rising and falling over the past 2,500 years, with a one-meter difference between the highest and lowest levels, most of the time below the present-day level. This has been shown in a new study supervised by Dr. Dorit Sivan, Head of the Department of Maritime Civilizations at the University of Haifa. “Rises and falls in sea level over relatively short periods do not testify to a long-term trend. It is early yet to conclude from the short-term increases in sea level that this is a set course that will not take a change in direction,” explains Dr. Sivan. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 84 Comments »

Categories : sea level

WSJ op ed – IPCC “Omitted: The bright side of Global Warming”

4 02 2010

http://spiritualtravelman.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/earth.jpg?w=172&h=171While the consensus warns of gloom and doom, the WSJ points out that warming has its positive aspects as well. For example, Trees seem to be responding well to increased CO2.  See: Forests in the Eastern United States are growing faster than they have in the past 225 years

The 1970’s worry of the “population bomb” may very well have been subdued by CO2 helping crop yields. WUWT readers may be familiar with Indur Goklany, a regular WUWT contributor. He figures significantly in this WSJ article.

From the Wall Street Journal:

It seems the U.N. IPCC only tabulates the benefits of climate change when they are outweighed by the costs.

By ANNE JOLIS

Could global warming actually be good for humanity? Certainly not, at least if we’re to believe the endless warnings of floods, droughts, and pestilences to which we are told climate change will inevitably give rise. But a closer look at the science tells a more complex story than unmitigated disaster. It also tell us something about the extent to which science has been manipulated to fit the preconceptions of warming alarmists. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 98 Comments »

Categories : IPCC, earth

Telegraph: India forms new climate change body

4 02 2010

See UPDATE below the read more line.

Looks like Pachy is having a crisis of confidence in his home country. Is anyone surprised?

Current IPCC chairmanin R.K Pachauri and his smutty romance novel

Excerpts from the Telegraph: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 101 Comments »

Categories : IPCC

LBNL on Himalayas: “greenhouse gases alone are not nearly enough to be responsible for the snow melt”

3 02 2010

From Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, and announcement that comes at a very inconvenient time for IPCC and Pachauri while their “Glaciergate” issue rages. Aerosols and black carbon are tagged as the major drivers. And no mention of disappearance by 2035.

Black Carbon a Significant Factor in Melting of Himalayan Glaciers

The fact that glaciers in the Himalayan mountains are thinning is not disputed. However, few researchers have attempted to rigorously examine and quantify the causes. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientist Surabi Menon set out to isolate the impacts of the most commonly blamed culprit—greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide—from other particles in the air that may be causing the melting. Menon and her collaborators found that airborne black carbon aerosols, or soot, from India is a major contributor to the decline in snow and ice cover on the glaciers.

“Our simulations showed greenhouse gases alone are not nearly enough to be responsible for the snow melt,” says Menon, a physicist and staff scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division. “Most of the change in snow and ice cover—about 90 percent—is from aerosols. Black carbon alone contributes at least 30 percent of this sum.”

Menon and her collaborators used two sets of aerosol inventories by Indian researchers to run their simulations; their results were published online in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 159 Comments »

Categories : IPCC, aerosols, carbon soot, glaciers

UK Greenpeace director calls for new IPCC chairman – meanwhile Pachy comments on the use of makeup

3 02 2010

In an interview with the Times, John Sauven, director of Greenpeace UK suggests that the IPCC needs a new chairman other than The Love Guru. But, in a recent press release, it looks like the IPCC is digging in their collective Nobel Laureate heels. Meanwhile, news of newspaper clippings in IPCC AR4 peer reviewed research.

Current IPCC chairmanin R.K Pachauri and his smutty romance novel

With quotes like these coming from Pachy, he’s quickly running out of supporters who have been looking past his blown credibility. Here’s a quote from the Love Guru himself in a Financial Times interview today:

They are people who say that asbestos is as good as talcum powder – and I hope they put it on their faces every day…

(h/t to Andrew Bolt for that one) Send in the clowns! Maybe he’s referring to the makeover suggested by the National Post?

John Sauven, director of Greenpeace UK , said that Dr Pachauri should have acted as soon as he had been informed of the error, even though issuing a correction would have embarrassed the IPCC on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 108 Comments »

Categories : IPCC

In 1790, Philly “had a fever”, today, not so much

3 02 2010

Steve Goddard reminded me that we’ve had “220 Years of Global Warming in Philadelphia”

public buildings

View of various public buildings in Philadelphia about 1790. Left to right, Congress Hall, State House (whose steeple had actually been removed in 1781), American Philosophical Society Hall, Hall of the Library Company of Philadelphia, and Carpenters' Hall. (Engraving (undated) by an unknown artist, in Columbian Magazine (1790). Library of Congress.)

Starting in 1790, a prominent Philadelphia resident named Charles Pierce started keeping detailed records of the weather and climate, which has been archived on Google Books.

His report from January, 1790 is below: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 99 Comments »

Categories : Climate News

Penn State report on Mann: new investigation to convene.

3 02 2010

The report is out, and further investigation is forthcoming.

http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/a/q/aqs11/imgs/logo.jpghttp://live.psu.edu/slnoflash2/userpics/10003/normal_Mann_Michael.jpg

Excerpts from the report are below, where they considered 4 allegations. They say only one had merit. That will be the subject of the upcoming investigation.

Excerpts:

“It is clear to those who have followed the media and blogs over the last two months that there are two distinct and deeply polarized points of view that have emerged on this matter. One side views the emails as evidence of a clear cut violation of the public trust and seeks severe penalties for Dr. Mann and his colleagues. The other side sees these as nothing more than the private discussions of scientists engaged in a hotly debated topic of enormous social impact.

We are aware that some may seek to use the debate over Dr. Mann’s research conduct and that of his colleagues as a proxy for the larger and more substantive debate over the science of anthropogenic global warming and its societal (political and economic) ramifications. We have kept the two debates separate by only considering Dr. Mann’s conduct.” Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 156 Comments »

Categories : Climategate

NASA Still Spreading Antarctic Worries

3 02 2010

Steven Goddard looks at trends in Antarctica and compares to NASA’s recent article.

File:Kaiserpinguine mit Jungen.jpg

Antarctica - Emperor Penguins - Image: Wikimedia Commons

A January 12, 2010 Earth Observatory article warns that Antarctica

“has been losing more than a hundred cubic kilometers (24 cubic miles) of ice each year since 2002” and that “if all of this ice melted, it would raise global sea level by about 60 meter (197 feet).“

If sea level rose 60 meters, that would wipe out most of the world’s population – which would no doubt make some environmentalists happy.  Sadly for them though, Antarctica contains 30 × 10^6 km3 of ice which means that it will take 300,000 years for all the ice to melt at NASA’s claimed current rate of 100 km3 per year.  (Chances are that we will run out of fossil fuels long before then.)  The surface area of Antarctica is 14.2 million km2 which would indicate an average melt of less than 7 millimeters per year across the continent.  (Is NASA claiming that they can measure changes in Antarctic ice thickness within 7 millimeters?)  But even more problematic is that UAH satellite data shows no increase in temperatures in Antarctica, rather a small decline. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 228 Comments »

Categories : Antarctic

Jo Nova’s ClimateGate Timeline: 30 years in the making (Edition 1.1)

2 02 2010

Mohib Ebrahim, who has created timelines for professional exhibitions, has now produced one of the ClimateGate scandal, providing graphs, e-mails, history, and analysis of events. This is the second edition, thoroughly edited and revised.

Image: ClimateGate Timeline small versionClick to see a larger version (but download the full version below to read it all).

Click here to download the poster as PDF (892k)

Click here if you prefer a GIF version of the poster (1.8Mb)

To print a poster, check-out the sizes below, each with reference pages. As needed, the timeline will be updated and expanded. This is its home, so check back here for new editions and comments. And please link to this page here so people will always get the updates and all the versions. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 30 Comments »

Categories : Climategate

Micro satellite to study atmospheric gamma ray flashes

1 02 2010

From NASA Science News: Firefly Mission to Study Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes

High-energy bursts of gamma rays typically occur far out in space, perhaps near black holes or other high-energy cosmic phenomena. So imagine scientists’ surprise in the mid-1990s when they found these powerful gamma ray flashes happening right here on Earth, in the skies overhead.

They’re called Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes, or TGFs, and very little is known about them. They seem to have a connection with lightning, but TGFs themselves are something entirely different.

Right: An artist’s concept of TGFs. Credit: NASA/Robert Kilgore [more]

“In fact,” says Doug Rowland of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, “before the 1990s nobody knew they even existed. And yet they’re the most potent natural particle accelerators on Earth.”

Individual particles in a TGF acquire a huge amount of energy, sometimes in excess of 20 mega-electron volts (MeV). In contrast, the colorful auroras that light up the skies at high latitudes are powered by particles with less than one thousandth as much energy. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 71 Comments »

Categories : Science, space

UHI is alive and well

31 01 2010

One of the most ridiculous claims recently related to Menne et al 2010 and my surfacestations project was a claim made by DeSmogBlog (and Huffington Post who carried the story also) is that the “Urban Heat Island Myth is Dead“.

To clarify for these folks: Elvis is dead, UHI is not.

For disbelievers, let’s look at a few cases showing UHI to be alive and well.

CASE 1: I’ve measured it myself, in the city of Reno for example:


The UHI signature of Reno, NV  – Click for larger image

Read the story of how I created this graph here The procedure and raw data is there if you want to check my work.

I chose Reno for two reasons. It was close to me, and it is the centerpiece of a NOAA training manual on how to site weather stations to avoid UHI effects.

CASE 2: NOAA shows their own measurements that mesh well with mine: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 172 Comments »

Categories : UHI

Lake Powell Water Levels as a Proxy for Western Snowfall

31 01 2010

In Debunking National Wildlife Federation Claims – Part 2 some commenters claimed that the snow data cited from WRI “was not good enough”. OK then, on to a bigger catchment. Steve Goddard replies in this brief essay.

File:Lake Powell Above Wahweap Marina.jpg

From Wikimedia: Lake Powell from above Wahweap Marina. July 2004, by Dave Jenkins

Lake Powell (Arizona and Utah) provides a good proxy for western slope snowfall, because much of the snow in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Northwestern New Mexico drains into the lake via the Colorado, Green and San Juan Rivers.  The lake currently contains more than 4.5 trillion gallons of water and is 490 feet deep at the dam. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 123 Comments »

Categories : climate data, snow

NODC revises ocean heat content data – it’s now dropping slightly

31 01 2010

NODC Ocean Heat Content (0-700 Meters) – 2007, 2008 & 2009 Corrections

Guest post by Bob Tisdale

The National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) recently updated its 4th quarter and annual 2009 Ocean Heat Content (OHC) data. The data that was presented in conjunction with the Levitus et al (2009) Paper now covers the period of 1955 to 2009. There have been changes that some might find significant.

This post presents:
1. A brief look at the revisions (corrections) to the data in 2007 and 2008 OHC data
2. A comparison of the NODC OHC data for the period of 2003 to 2009 versus the GISS projection

REVISIONS (Corrections) TO THE 2007 AND 2008 NODC OHC DATA

Figure 1 is a gif animation of two Ocean Heat Content graphs posted on the NODC GLOBAL OCEAN HEAT CONTENT webpage. It shows the differences between the current (January 2010) version and one that appears to include data through June or September 2009. So this is an “Official” correction (not more incompletely updated data posted on the NODC website discussed in NODC’s CORRECTION TO OHC (0-700m) DATA, which required me to make corrections to a handful of posts). I have found nothing in the NODC OHC web pages that discuss these new corrections. Due to the years involved, is it safe to assume these are more corrections for ARGO biases? As of this writing, I have not gone through the individual ocean basins to determine if the corrections were to one ocean basin, a group of basins, or if they’re global; I’ll put aside the multipart post I’ve been working on for the past few weeks and try to take a look over the next few days.

http://i48.tinypic.com/14e6wjn.gif
Figure 1

NODC OHC OBSERVATIONS VERSUS GISS PROJECTION (2003-2009) Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 174 Comments »

Categories : oceans

Ice in Chinese ports “exceeding anything experienced in 30 years”

29 01 2010

From the “weather is not climate department” another report of ice further south than has been recently experienced. Here’s a picture from this China Daily news story:

In Bohai, all at sea on the ice

A donkey pulls a cart across the frozen sea near Liaodong Bay of Bohai in Jinzhou, Liaoning province, January 22, 2010. The worst sea ice was seen on Saturday in Bohai Sea in northeastern China this winter with 51 percent of the water covered by ice.[Agencies


From Maritime Global.net

CHINA PORTS FREAK WEATHER ALERT

By David Hughes
Published: Tue, 26 January 2010

Freak weather conditions and/or abnormal weather patterns have been reported in several parts of the world during recent months warns the American P&I Club. One of the latest examples is a significant build-up of sea ice in some major northern Chinese ports, the volume exceeding, it says, anything experienced in more than 30 years. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 120 Comments »

Categories : Climate News, sea ice

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