Little Ice Age thermometers – History and Reliability

14 11 2009

Little Ice Age thermometers – History and Reliability

Guest post by TonyB

How reliable are The Little Ice Age thermometers ?

The Little Ice age thermometers project is an attempt to compile instrumental readings from 1660 that predate the era of modern ‘global temperatures’ as recorded by Hadley (1850) and Giss (1880). These datasets are accessed from a graphic through this link;

http://climatereason.com/LittleIceAgeThermometers/

LIA Thermometers

The project will examine the reliability of these historic datasets as a means for climate researchers to gaze into our past to see if there are any lessons for the present. In this respect many of those individual stations found to date will have been included in the Cru datasets that are not readily accessible to those outside selected members of the scientific community. In order to examine these records and place them into context with Hadley/Cru and Giss, the author has produced three separate but interlinked articles as follows;

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 68 Comments »

Categories : climate data, measurement, records, weather, weather_stations

Countdown to an “unprecedented warm decade” – 2 months to go

10 11 2009

Global Temperatures This Decade Will Be The Warmest On Record…

…And It Will Be Exploited By Those Who Fail To Understand The Reasons For The Rise

Guest post by Bob Tisdale

snowman_forecaster

INITIAL NOTES

For some visitors to this blog, this post will be a merging and rehashing of a few of my earlier posts. But this post is different in a very important way. I have attempted to simplify the discussion of El Nino-caused step changes for those with less technical backgrounds.

The post does assume the reader knows of El Nino and La Nina events. If not, here are links to two NOAA El Nino Frequently Asked Question web pages:
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/general/enso_faq/
http://faculty.washington.edu/kessler/occasionally-asked-questions.html

The following narrated video “Visualizing El Nino” from the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio provides an excellent overview of the 1997/98 E; Nino, one of the El Nino events that created the aftereffects illustrated in this post.

YouTube Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbNzw1CCKHo

I have provided links to the referenced studies and to the posts that provide more detailed explanations at the end of the following. They do not appear within the general discussion of this post.

Many of the illustrations in the following are .gif animations, with 5- to 10-second pauses between cells. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 77 Comments »

Categories : ENSO, climate data

Arctic warming goes with the floe

4 11 2009

Past Arctic Warming Also Created by Currents

Guest posted by Jeff Id of The Air Vent

Image: Met Office UK

The bear is fine, don't freak out. Image: Met Office UK

I’ve stated here on several occasions that the ‘Recent’ Arctic ice thinning is more likely a current change issue rather than a temperature issue.  Differences in flow change the transfer of vastly more energy than a couple of degrees of air temp, however changing air temperatures are a strong indicator of differences in regional water flow.  This effect is very visible in the arctic ice videos posted here.  Recently Dr. Arnd Bernaerts asked by email that I call attention to  his paper on Arctic Warming for a period we don’t hear about enough.  He has a shorter version link which he also gave here. I really enjoy the historic discussions of climate and the paper is quite readable so I’ve put the whole paper up instead.

——————

The Circumstances of the Arctic Warming in the early 20th Century

Author: Arnd Bernaerts

Dr. Arnd Bernaerts
Hamburg, Germany

Abstract

The Arctic has a crucial role in the world’s climatic system, and global warming may have an amplifying effect. The recently observed thinning of the sea ice has alerted scientists and policy makers alike. That was quite different when a similar warming occurred 90 years ago, which is still regarded as one of the most puzzling climatic event during the last century. That needs not to be, if the situation is being viewed from on oceanic perspective, together with the fact that the winter air temperatures in the higher Northern Hemisphere are greatly influenced by the ocean, particularly in the North Atlantic, which is partly free of sea ice up to the Fram Strait. Here also ends the West Spitsbergen Current, a current which supplies the Arctic Ocean with warm and saline Atlantic water. Already back in 1920s air temperature observation showed a strong warming at Spitsbergen during the winter season. By analyzing the winter temperature profile of five coastal stations it can be demonstrated that the climatic shift at the end of the 1910s had been closest to Spitsbergen, allowing the conclusion that circumstances related to the West Spitsbergen Current have caused the early Arctic warming almost a century ago. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 54 Comments »

Categories : Arctic, sea ice

Minnesota Public Radio can’t handle comments on climate change

29 10 2009

Like Others Of Its Ilk, The Minnesota Public Radio Censors Comments On Its Climate Blog

Guest Post by Bob Tisdale

MPR_Capture

Click to visit website

This morning while checking blogs with the phrase “sea surface temperature” I happened on the Minnesota Public Radio Updraft © climate change blog. Meteorologist Paul Huttner authored a post there titled “Could 2010 be the hottest year ever?” Link:
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/updraft/archive/2009/10/could_2010_be_the_hottest_year.shtml

The post begins with, “The numbers are in, and it looks like the “global cooling” theory just melted away.” It has the requisite link to the typical news release (Seth Borenstein’s (AP) article “Statistics experts reject global cooling claims”) and a two-year-old GISS Annual Global Temperature Anomaly Graph, even though a graph of current data would have better helped his cause. But what struck me and caused me to comment there was, first, Huttner’s use of the Climate Change Attribution graph…
http://i39.tinypic.com/2s0o2uo.jpg
…which he wrongly attributes to Kerry Emanuel, and, second, his projection that 2010 could be the warmest on record while hinting that ENSO would ultimately be responsible for it.

I felt obligated to advise him of his error in attribution of the graph and of the fact that the Climate Change Attribution graph uses outdated TSI data. I also reinforced the ENSO-global climate link over the past decade by quoting from Knight et al (2009), but noting that Knight et al make an error in their assumption that the relationship between ENSO and global temperature is linear. Here’s what I wrote: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 74 Comments »

Categories : Alarmism, media

Pielke Senior on the Borenstein AP statistics article

27 10 2009

Comments On AP Story “Statistics Experts Reject Global Cooling Claims”

There is a news report titled “Statistics experts reject global cooling claims” by Seth Borenstein which appeared today.

The article reads

“WASHINGTON — The Earth is still warming, not cooling as some global warming skeptics are claiming, according to an analysis of global temperatures by independent statistics experts.

The review of years of temperature data was conducted at the request of The Associated Press. Talk of a cooling trend has been spreading on the Internet, fueled by some news reports, a new book and temperatures that have been cooler in a few recent years.

The statisticians, reviewing two sets of temperature data, found no trend of falling temperatures over time. And U.S. government figures show that the decade that ends in December will be the warmest in 130 years of record-keeping. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 193 Comments »

Categories : climate data

Why does Ocean Heat Content diverge from GISS projections?

24 10 2009

Guest Post by Bob Tisdale:

Why Are OHC Observations (0-700m) Diverging From GISS Projections?

INTRODUCTION


My post “NODC Corrections to Ocean Heat Content (0-700m) Part 2” illustrated the divergence between observed Global Ocean Heat Content (OHC) and the GISS projected rise. Figure 1 shows that GISS models projected a rise of 0.98*10^22 Joules per year, but, since 2003, global OHC has only been rising at 0.079*10^22 Joules per year. How could there be such a significant difference between the projection and the observed OHC data?

http://i36.tinypic.com/5dscxg.png
Figure 1

GISS FAILS TO MODEL ENSO Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 85 Comments »

Categories : ENSO, Sea Surface Temperature, oceans

A little known 20 year old climate change prediction by Dr. James Hansen – that failed badly

22 10 2009

The news today from the Pew Institute tells us that many Americans are backing away from the predictions of catastrophic climate change. This may be because many predictions simply haven’t come true.

Most, if not all, WUWT readers know Dr. James Hansen of GISS. He’s credited with jump starting the debate in 1988 with his now famous “sweaty” testimony before Congress in June 1988. See more about the stagecraft of that event here.

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/hansen_1988_congress.jpg

Readers might be tempted to think that I’m going to point out the discrepancies between the three different model scenarios that Dr. Hansen presented to Congress in 1988, as shown below. But these model projections are very well known. I’m talking about something else entirely.

hansen20.gif

Hansen's 3 model scenarios compared to temperature records from RSS (satellite) and GISS (surface). Graphic: Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit

In Dr. Hansen’s case, he’s been living the life of a scientist in the media spotlight since, giving thousands of interviews. He’s also taken on the role of activist during that time, getting himself arrested this year for obstructing a public highway.

He likely doesn’t remember this one interview he gave to a book author approximately 20 years ago, but fortunately that author recounted the interview on Salon.com. What is most interesting about this particular Hansen interview is that he dispenses with the usual models and graphs, and makes predictions about what will happen in 20 years to New York City, right in his own neighborhood. Sea level figures prominently.

Here’s the interview. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 159 Comments »

Categories : Alarmism, Opinion, forecasting

United Nations Pulls Hockey Stick from Climate Report

5 10 2009
CCEP_report_cover

United Nations Climate Change Science Compendium - click for PDF

WUWT readers may recall that Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit blog discovery of  UNEP’s use of a Wikipedia “hockey Stick” graphic by “Hanno”, was the subject of last week’s blog postings.

The Yamal data hockey stick  controversy overshadowed it, and much of the focus has been there recently.

The discovery of a Wikipedia graphic in the UNEP Climate Change Science Compendium must have been embarrassing as  it shows the sort of sloppy science that is going into “official” publications.

In this case, the United Nations simply grabbed an image from Wikipedia that supported the view they wanted to sell. The problem with the graph in the upper right of page 5 of the UNEP report is that it itself has not been peer reviewed nor has it originated from a peer reviewed publication, having its inception at Wikipedia.

And then there’s the problem of the citation as  “Hanno 2009” who (up until this story broke) was an anonymous Wikipedia contributor.

Yet UNEP cited the graph as if it was a published and peer reviewed work as “Hanno 2009″.

UNEP_report_page5

UNEP report original page5 - click for larger image

Here’s my screencap of the page from the UNEP Climate Change Science Compendium report from last week

In this case, the United Nations simply grabbed an image from Wikipedia that supported the view they wanted to sell.

The hockey stick, based on tree ring proxies has met an inconveniently timed death it seems.

It appears now that somebody at the United Nations must have gotten the message from blogland, becuase there has been a change in the graphics on page 5.

Below is page 5 as it appears in the UNEP Climate Change Science Compendium today:

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 152 Comments »

Categories : Alarmism, politics

Satellite imagery gauges economic growth and land use change

3 09 2009

I got an email tip on this article from voxeu.org which has some relevance to the work done by the surfacestations.org project in that it shows clearly the impact of urbanization. While Hansen et al (GISS) uses “nightlights” in the USA to gauge “urbanness” of a station’s surroundings, they only use one source image from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program from 1995.  You can do the same yourself in Google Earth. Clearly from this example, GISS should be updating that source image if they are to get anything remotely representative of a true measure of urbanization around a climate station

This image is also illustrative to what Dr. Pielke Sr. and others have been saying for sometime. Impacts of Land use and land cover change can affect the surface temperature measurement environment over time and should be considered in any assesment of local/regional climate trends.

Of course the most striking evidence of economic growth measured by nightlights comes from this DMSP image of North and South Korea:

n-s-korea.jpg

h/t to WUWT reader and climate blogger Warren Meyer for the voxeu.org link. – Anthony

From VoxEU.org Reposted per their terms of use.

Measuring economic growth from outer space Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 48 Comments »

Categories : Land use land cover change, climate data

Multiple Wrongs Don’t Make A Right on ENSO Impacts

7 08 2009

2wrongs

Guest Post by Bob Tisdale

Multiple Wrongs Don’t Make A Right, Especially When It Comes To Determining The Impacts Of ENSO

The 2009 Foster et al paper (In Press) “Comment on ‘Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature’ by J. D. McLean, C. R. de Freitas, and R. M. Carter” was written by a who’s who of climate scientists. The authors include G. Foster, J. D. Annan, P. D. Jones, M. E. Mann, B. Mullan, J. Renwick, J. Salinger, G. A. Schmidt, and K. E. Trenberth. Their comment is summarized by a sentence in the abstract: “Their [McLean, Freitas, and Carter’s] analysis is incorrect in a number of ways, and greatly overstates the influence of ENSO on the climate system.”

Comments : 127 Comments »

Categories : ENSO

Why regression analysis fails to capture the aftereffects of El Nino events

27 07 2009

In a study in the Journal of Geophysical Research a paper, Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature,  researchers Chris de Freitas, John McLean, and Bob Carter find that the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a key indicator of global atmospheric temperatures seven months later.  By their analysis they have shown that natural forces related to ocean heat cycles are the dominant influence on climate. See the WUWT post on it here and the original paper here.

This guest post by Bob Tisdale is a response of interest to both critics and supporters of the paper and  illustrates how the multiyear processes of an El Nino event such as occurred in 1998 are missed. – Anthony

Regression Analyses Do Not Capture The Multiyear Aftereffects Of Significant El Nino Events

Guest post by Bob Tisdale

INTRODUCTION

This post illustrates why regression analyses do not capture the multiyear aftereffects of significant El Nino events. To emphasize this, I’ve provided a detailed explanation of the processes that take place before, during, and after those significant El Nino events, using graphics and videos from earlier posts.

EXAMPLE OF RESULTS FROM A REGRESSION ANALYSIS

Regression analyses are used by climatologists to determine and illustrate the impact on global temperature of one or more variables, such as ENSO, Solar Irradiance, and Volcanic Aerosols. Figure 1 shows the results of one such study. It is a multi-cell illustration of “Surface Temperature Variability Components” from Lean and Rind (2008) “How Natural and Anthropogenic Influences Alter Global and Regional Surface Temperatures: 1889 to 2006” [GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 35, L18701, doi:10.1029/2008GL034864, 2008].
Link to Paper:
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2008/2008_Lean_Rind.pdf
http://i32.tinypic.com/2lmw477.png
Figure 1 Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 162 Comments »

Categories : ENSO, oceans

Greenpeace defaces Mount Rushmore

8 07 2009

More civil disobedience and vandalism along the thinking of Dr. James Hansen of NASA GISS, who advocates such things.

From Ecorazzi and Treehugger

greenpeace

Greenpeace took a unique approach today and sent several climbers up Mt. Rushmore in the middle of the night to deploy a giant 75lb sixty-five feet high by thirty-five feet wide banner calling for Climate Action. Featuring an unfinished portrait of the President, it read “America honors leaders not politicians: Stop Global Warming.” The demonstration came as President Obama meets other G8 leaders in l’Aquila, Italy today to discuss the global warming crisis in the lead-up to UN climate treaty negotiations in Copenhagen this December.

The banner managed to stay up on Mt. Rushmore for about an hour before being cut at around 1:17 PM est. Greenpeace was quick to point out that they respect American monuments and the banner was not installed in any way detrimental to the carvings on Mt. Rushmore. For more information, jump to the official Greenpeace posting on the event here. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 106 Comments »

Categories : climate_change, ridiculae

Quote Of The Week #13

6 07 2009

qotw_cropped

From Gary Strand, software engineer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) commenting on Climate Audit:

As a software engineer, I know that climate model software doesn’t meet the best standards available. We’ve made quite a lot of progress, but we’ve still quite a ways to go.

I’ll say. NASA GISS model E written on some of the worst FORTRAN coding ever seen  is a challenge to even get running. NASA GISTEMP is even worse. Yet our government has legislation under consideration significantly based on model output that Jim Hansen started. His 1988 speech to Congress was entirely based on model scenarios.

Do we really want congress to make trillion dollar tax decisions today based on “software [that] doesn’t meet the best standards available.”?

There’s more. Steve McIntyre comments:

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 164 Comments »

Categories : Quote of the Week, modeling

Pielke Sr. on RC – continued misinformation

6 07 2009

misinfo

Real Climate Permits The Continued Presentation Of Misinformation

Filed under: Climate Change Metrics, Climate Science Misconceptions — Roger Pielke Sr. @ 1:23 pm

Over at Real Climate, quite a few of the comments that they post continue to incorrectly interpret the observed behavior of the global average upper ocean heat content changes and sea level rise over the last 5 years (see the misinformation in the comments on the Real Climate weblog More bubkes).

The authors of Real Climate, unfortunately, are permitting this erroneous information (and personal insults) to be posted without their comments and correction. Apparently, the balance provided by Gavin Schmidt that I reported on in my weblog Gavin Schmidt’s Interview On Media Hype On Climate Science Issues was just a fluke.

In this weblog, I will correct two of the major errors made in a number of the comments on the Real Climate website. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 71 Comments »

Categories : Science, ridiculae

Bubkes II – RC’s “rush hour”

2 07 2009

Like Waxman-Markey, where 300+ pages get added at 3:09AM that nobody has time to read or fully evaluate, Real Climate gets on the “hurry up bandwagon” in regards to climate change perception. Dr. Pielke takes them to task again. I ask “What’s the rush?” – Anthony

With sincere apologies to "Big Daddy" Roth

With sincere apologies to "Big Daddy" Roth

Response By Roger A. Pielke Sr. To The Real Climate Weblog “More Bubkes”

Filed under: Climate Science Misconceptions, Climate Science Reporting — Roger Pielke Sr. @ 9:11 am

Real Climate has posted a response titled “More bubkes” to my weblog of July 30 2009 titled  Real Climate’s Misinformation. First, it is clear they are (deliberately?) misinterpreting what I wrote on the weblog. Embedded in the personal attack comments that Real Climate permits be posted, there are several that recognize that the error in the original Real Climate post was their statement

”Some aspects of climate change are progressing faster than was expected a few years ago”.

As I documented in my weblog of June 30 2009, their statement is clearly and documentably false (and is not a “wild allegation”).

They present a set of observational evidence regarding the longer term trends, and I have no disagreement with them on this. Indeed, in the past I posted a weblog that supported the retrospective skill of the GISS model in simulating upper ocean heat content increases at least until the last few years;

Comparison of Model and Observations Of Upper Ocean Heat Content.

I wrote in that weblog Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 134 Comments »

Categories : climate_change, fun_stuff, politics

Tropical Tropospheric Amplification – an invitation to review this new paper

30 06 2009

The Amplification Invitation

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

The ITCZ from space. Source: NASA Earth Observatory. Click for larger image

Tropical: the ITCZ from space. Source: NASA Earth Observatory. Click for larger image

A while ago I started studying the question of the amplification of the tropical tropospheric temperature with respect to the surface. After months of research bore fruit, I started writing a paper. My intention was to have it published in a peer-reviewed journal. I finished the writing about a week ago.

During that time, I also wrote and published The Temperature Hypothesis here on WUWT. This got me to thinking about science, and about how we establish scientific facts. In climate science, the peer review process is badly broken. Among other problems, it is often an “old boy” system where very poor work is waved through. In common with other sciences, turnaround of ideas in journals takes weeks. Under pressure to publish, journals often do only the most cursory examination of the papers.

Upon reflection, I have decided to try a different way to examine the truth content of my paper. This is to invite all of the authors whose work I discuss, and other interested scientists of all stripes, to comment on the paper and on whether they can find any flaws in it. To facilitate the process I have provided all of the code and data that I used to do the analysis.

To make this process work will require cooperation. First, I ask for science and science only. No discussions of motives. No ad homs. No generalizations to larger spheres. No asides. No disrespect, we can be gentlemen and gentlewomen. No comments on politics, CO2, or AGW, no snowball earth. This thread has one purpose only, to establish whether my ideas stand: to either attack and destroy the ideas I put forth in the paper below, or to provide evidence and data to support the ideas I put forth below. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 114 Comments »

Categories : Science, climate data, climate_change

Dr. James Hansen of NASA GISS arrested

23 06 2009

Daryl Hannah, scientist arrested at W.Va. mine protest

James Hansen and unidentified woman under arrest by WV state trooper. Photo credit: Antrim Caskey, Rainforest Action Network Field Photography

SUNDIAL, W.Va. (AP) — More than two dozen people — including actress Daryl Hannah and NASA climate scientist James Hansen — were arrested Tuesday in the latest protest in a growing civil disobedience campaign against mountaintop removal in Southern West Virginia.

…

State Police said about 30 people were charged Tuesday afternoon after they blocked State Route 3 near a Massey Energy subsidiary’s coal processing plant in Raleigh County.

Full AP story here

In a statement distributed by the Rainforest Action Network, whose executive director was also arrested, Dr. Hansen said: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 234 Comments »

Categories : politics, ridiculae

Hansen’s at it again

20 06 2009
cca-dc-protest-cap17

Dr. Jim Hansen gets ready to deliver his message at the Washington DC power plant protest on March 2nd 2009. On February 22nd, WUWT covered Hansen’s announcement that he was endorsing civil disobedience.

No longer content to be a scientist, and apparently now a full time protesting advocate, Dr. James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies joins forces with deep thinker Darryl Hannah.

From commondreams.org

Following this protest, on June 23rd leading climate scientist, Dr. James Hansen, actress Daryl Hannah, Michael Brune, the Executive Director of Rainforest Action Network, and former Representative Hechler will join Coal River Valley residents in a second round of protests in West Virginia.

Your tax dollars at work. I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it: FIRE THIS GUY.

Oh there will be those who say “but he’s doing it as a private citizen”.

I preemptively call BS on that. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 84 Comments »

Categories : politics, ridiculae

Quote of the Week #10 – the future of underwater flaming

14 06 2009

qotw_cropped

Image from WUWT reader “Boudu”

One thing you can say about AGW alarmists, they are passionate. But passion doesn’t usually equate to factual discourse, as demonstrated so well on Joe Romm’s Climate Progress blog this week by guest blogger Kyle Gracey:

In 2050, I’ll be 77, and given the pace of the climate talks in Bonn these two weeks, I’ll likely spend most of my retirement either under water or on fire.

Sillier words may never have been written.

Of course, if you can’t dazzle ‘em with prose, doing a rap music gig for climate delegates is always sure to beat out factual discourse any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

We rapped and rhymed about the threatened survival of nations and developed countries’ weak financing proposals.

I just wonder how well the “negotiators” take to being adopted?

http://adoptanegotiator.org/2009/06/12/rap-how-old-will-you-be-in-2050/

Of course this isn’t the first time rap music has been used to make a point about climate. It happened earlier this year when Dr. James Hansen of NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) opened for a rap trio at the capital climate action protest that (ahem) according to their own claims “closed down” the coal fired power plant in Washington D.C. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 105 Comments »

Categories : Quote of the Week, ridiculae

Revisiting Detroit Lakes

9 06 2009

Some long time WUWT readers may remember this famous picture of the USHCN climate station of record in Detroit Lakes, MN.

This is what I wrote on July 26th, 2007 about it in:

How Not to Measure Temperature, Part 25

This picture, taken by www.surfacestations.org volunteer Don Kostuch is the Detroit Lakes, MN USHCN climate station of record. The Stevenson Screen is sinking into the swamp and the MMTS sensor is kept at a comfortable temperature thanks to the nearby A/C units.

Detroit_lakes_USHCN.jpg

The complete set of pictures is here

From NASA’s GISS, the plot makes it pretty easy to see there was no discernible multi-decadal temperature trend until the A/C units were installed. And it’s not hard to figure out when that was.

Detroit_lakes_GISSplot.jpg

And as you know, that curious jump in the GISS record, even though it coincided with the placement of the a/c heat exchangers (I checked with the chief engineer of the radio station and he pulled the invoices to check), it turns out that wasn’t the most important issue.

Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit saw something else, mainly because other nearby stations had the nearly the same odd jump in the data. That jump turned out to be discovery of a data splicing glitch in the NASA GISS processes joining the data pre and post year 2000. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 79 Comments »

Categories : climate data, weather_stations

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