Watts Up With That?

Bill Illis and Bob Tisdale will likely make use of this. h/t to WUWT reader Chris D.

NOAA Releases Expanded World Ocean Database

NOAA today released the World Ocean Database 2009, the largest, most comprehensive collection of scientific information about the oceans with records dating as far back as 1800. This product is part of the climate services provided by NOAA.

The 2009 database, updated from the 2005 edition, is significantly larger providing approximately 9.1 million temperature profiles and 3.5 million salinity reports.  The 2009 database also captures 29 categories of scientific information from the oceans, including oxygen levels and chemical tracers, plus information on gases and isotopes that can be used to trace the movement of ocean currents. Read the rest of this entry »

This is likely to cause a bit of a stir. Michael  from the Climate Skeptics Party in Australia writes in Tips and Notes:

The TCS ad campaign hit the airwaves last night in Australia. I thought you might be interested and post them on your website.

Here are the other TV advertisements: Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the latest global temperature plot from UAH:

From Dr. Roy Spencer - click to enlarge

From Eurekalert: Human emissions rise 2 percent despite global financial crisis

		IMAGE: Human emissions rise 2 percent despite the global financial crisis. Click here for more information.

Despite the economic effects of the global financial crisis (GFC), carbon dioxide emissions from human activities rose 2 per cent in 2008 to an all-time high of 1.3 tonnes of carbon per capita per year, according to a paper published today in Nature Geoscience.

The paper – by scientists from the internationally respected climate research group, the Global Carbon Project (GCP) – says rising emissions from fossil fuels last year were caused mainly by increased use of coal but there were minor decreases in emissions from oil and deforestation.

“The current growth in carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions is closely linked to growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP),” said one of the paper’s lead authors, CSIRO’s Dr Mike Raupach.

“CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel combustion are estimated to have increased 41 per cent above 1990 levels with emissions continuing to track close to the worst-case scenario of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“There will be a small downturn in emissions because of the GFC, but anthropogenic emissions growth will resume when the economy recovers unless the global effort to reduce emissions from human activity is accelerated.” Read the rest of this entry »

Guest post by Larry Fields

The last Ice Age razed all of the coniferous forests in Finland. After the ice sheet retreated, trees from elsewhere–like the Scots Pine–gradually colonized the vacant niches. On a smaller scale, the same thing happened in many high mountains of the Earth’s temperate regions, including the Sierra Nevada Range of California. We can learn a thing or two about climate history from Alpine dendrology.

Round Top Lake, at 9340 feet elevation in the Northern Sierra near Carson Pass, is my favorite place for informal climate history research. Whitebark Pine trees grow in tight clumps around the North half of the lake.

Other high altitude conifers–like Lodgepole Pine, Mountain Hemlock, and Red Fir–also grow in the Carson Pass area. But Whitebark Pines can grow at slightly high elevations than these other trees.

At Round Top Lake, the Whitebark Pines in any given group are nearly identical genetically, since they reproduce asexually. New tree trunks grow outward from an existing root system. This is called suckering. The seeds that do sprout can’t endure the harsh Winters at that altitude. Walking 100  yards downhill from the lake on the main trail, one can see Whitebark Pines that have grown in a more normal way.

Naturalist Jeffrey P. Schaffer mentioned Round Top Lake in the 1989 edition of his book, The Tahoe Sierra: A Natural History Guide to the 106 Hikes in the Northern Sierra. Here’s a link to a review of a more recent book by Schaffer.
http://www.amazon.com/Tahoe-Sierra-Natural-History-Northern/dp/0899972209
Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve made so much progress in the USA. 75 years ago, we may have witnessed some scenes like this in today’s China. Unfortunately, the de-industrialization of the west just moved the western problems of the past to a country that doesn’t seem to care much about pollution control.

At the junction of Ningxia province and Inner Mongolia province, I saw a tall chimney puffing out golden smoke covering the blue sky, large tracts of the grassland have become industrial waste dumps; unbearable foul smell made people want to cough; Surging industrial sewage flowed into the Yellow River…”

- Lu Guang

Or how about his one? Read the rest of this entry »

Global warming skeptic tells group that cure is worse than problem.

By Lee Roop, special to The Huntsville Times

Dr. John Christy

HUNTSVILLE, AL – Science doesn’t support current global warming alarms and, even if it did, current proposals to fix things won’t work and might make life worse.

That’s the well-known view of Dr. John Christy, a University of Alabama in Huntsville climate scientist, and Christy spelled out the “whys” and “why nots” of his perspective Tuesday to the Huntsville Rotary Club.

“Consensus is not science,” Christy began, quoting the late author Michael Crichton.
Christy, the state climatologist, is well-known in the global warming debate. He has testified before Congress many times and was an unpaid expert witness for the automobile industry in a federal lawsuit against fleet mileage requirements.

Here’s Christy’s basic argument: Read the rest of this entry »

You can’t make this stuff up.  A priest, a rabbi, and a minister…no wait. A Prius, a Tesla, and an SUV…

3 car pileup - Prius, Tesla, SUV: caption your own joke

No, this isn’t a Photoshop trick. Proving truth is indeed stranger than fiction, it actually happened in Denmark on October 9th. It is likely the only accident of its kind in the world.

WUWT reader Lars Seiersen gives us the details and translation of this newspaper article that appeared in Ekstra Bladet: Read the rest of this entry »

By William M. Briggs, professional statistician

“J’accuse! A statistician may prove anything with his nefarious methods. He may even say a negative number is positive! You cannot trust anything he says.”

Sigh. Unfortunately, this oft-hurled charge is all too true. I and my fellow statisticians must bear its sad burden, knowing it is caused by our more zealous brethren (and sisthren). But, you know, it really isn’t their fault, for they are victims of loving not wisely but too well their own creations.

First, a fact. It is true that, based on the observed satellite data, average global temperatures since about 1998 have not continued the rough year-by-year increase that had been noticed in the decade or so before that date. The temperatures since about 1998 have increased in some years, but more often have they decreased. For example, last year was cooler than the year before last. These statements, barring unknown errors in the measurement of that data, are taken as true by everybody, even statisticians.

Th AP gave this data—concealing its source—to “several independent statisticians” who said they “found no true temperature declines over time” (link) Read the rest of this entry »

But they do say that “first ice-free summer expected to occur between 2060 and 2080″. By then there will be nobody that remembers this forecast.

Yet on the same day, bumbling Arctic explorer Pen Hadow says in a UK Telegraph interview:

“To all intents and purposes the Arctic will be ice free in a decade. I do find the implications of this happening in my lifetime quite shocking.“.

Gosh, who to believe? Somebody that fakes biotelemetry data or somebody that won’t hand over climate data for replication studies?

From a Met Office press release on October 15th

The extent of Arctic sea ice has been decreasing since the late 1970s. In 2007 it decreased dramatically in a single year, reaching an all-time low. At the time it was widely reported that this was caused by man-made climate change and that the rate of decline of summer sea ice was increasing.

Modelling of Arctic sea ice by the Met Office Hadley Centre climate model shows that ice invariably recovers from extreme events, and that the long-term trend of reduction is robust — with the first ice-free summer expected to occur between 2060 and 2080. It is unlikely that the Arctic will experience ice-free summers by 2020. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m off this weekend – talk quietly and politely amongst yourselves. Don’t make me come back here.

If you have something worth posting on the front page, flag a moderator.  In the meantime I have a couple of stories that will post using the WordPress scheduler. – Anthony

From World Climate Report: Antarctic Ice Melt at Lowest Levels in Satellite Era

Where are the headlines? Where are the press releases? Where is all the attention?

The ice melt across during the Antarctic summer (October-January) of 2008-2009 was the lowest ever recorded in the satellite history.

Such was the finding reported last week by Marco Tedesco and Andrew Monaghan in the journal Geophysical Research Letters:

A 30-year minimum Antarctic snowmelt record occurred during austral summer 2008–2009 according to spaceborne microwave observations for 1980–2009. Strong positive phases of both the El-Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Southern Hemisphere Annular Mode (SAM) were recorded during the months leading up to and including the 2008–2009 melt season.

Figure 1. Standardized values of the Antarctic snow melt index (October-January) from 1980-2009 (adapted from Tedesco and Monaghan, 2009).

The silence surrounding this publication was deafening.

It would seem that with oft-stoked fears of a disastrous sea level rise coming this century any news that perhaps some signs may not be pointing to its imminent arrival would be greeted by a huge sigh of relief from all inhabitants of earth (not only the low-lying ones, but also the high-living ones, respectively under threat from rising seas or rising energy costs).

But not a peep.

But such is not always the case—or rather, such is not ever the case when ice melt is pushing the other end of the record scale. Read the rest of this entry »

August 2009 Global Temperature Update: +0.23 deg. C

Dr. Roy Spencer September 4th, 2009

Spurious SST Warming Revisited

Dr. Roy Spencer August 31st, 2009

From NASA’s hurricane/tropical cyclone page

NASA's MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite captured Typhoon Vamco on August 24 at 0255 UTC (August 23 at 10:55 p.m. EDT). Credit: NASA/MODIS Rapid Response Team

Typhoon Vamco is being as stubborn in its quest to live in the Pacific Ocean as Bill is in the Atlantic Ocean this past week, and NASA satellite data confirmed that the large storm has a huge eye, about 45 miles in diameter!

NASA’s Aqua satellite flew over Typhoon Vamco early today, Monday, August 24, and infrared imagery from Aqua’s Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument clearly showed Vamco’s 45-mile in diameter eye. Around the huge eye, AIRS showed Vamco’s cold high thunderstorm cloud temperatures were colder than minus 63 Fahrenheit. That’s an indication that the storm is still strong, and it is still a category one typhoon.

Also on NASA’s Aqua satellite, the Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument captured a stunning look at Typhoon Vamco’s clouds at 0255 UTC (August 23 at 10:55 p.m. EDT).

Read the rest of this entry »

Hot off the press from Dr. Roy Spencer. After being essentially zero last month, we have a jump to .410°C in July. This was not unexpected, as a El Nino has been developing.

July 2009 Global Temperature Update: +0.41 deg. C

August 5th, 2009

Guest post by John Goetz

The GISStemp Step 1 code combines “scribal records” (multiple temperature records collected at presumably the same station) into a single, continuous record. There are multiple detailed posts on Climate Audit (including this one) that describe the Step 1 process, known affectionately as The Bias Method.

On the surface seems like a reasonable concept, and in reading HL87 the description of the algorithm makes complete sense. In simple terms, HL87 says that:

1. The longest available record is compared with the next longest record, and the period of overlap between the two records is identified.
2. The average temperature during the period of overlap is calculated for each station.
3. The difference between the average temperature for the longer station and shorter station is calculated, and that difference (a bias) is added to all temperatures of the shorter station to bias it – bringing it in line with the longer station.
4. The two records can now be combined as one, and the process repeats for additional records.

In looking at numerous stations with multiple records, more often than not the temperatures during the period of overlap are identical, so one would expect the bias to be zero. However, we often see a slight bias existing in the GISS results for such stations, and over the course of combining multiple records, that bias can be several tenths of a degree.

This was one of Steve McIntyre’s many puzzles, and we eventually figured out why we were getting bias when two records with identical overlap periods were combined: GISStemp estimates the averages during the overlap period. Read the rest of this entry »

Guest post by John Goetz

#17 - Selinsgrove, PA (in 2003)

The GISS temperature record, with its various adjustments, estimations, and re-estimations, has drawn my attention since I first became interested in the methods used to measure a global temperature. In particular, I have wondered how the current global average can even be compared with that of 1987, which was produced using between six and seven times more stations than today. Commenter George E. Smith noted accurately that it is a “simple failure to observe the standard laws of sampled data systems.” GISS presents so many puzzles in this area, it is difficult to know where to begin.

My recent post on the June, 2009 temperature found that the vast majority of temperatures were taken from airports and urban stations. This would cause some concern if the urban heat island (UHI) effect were not accounted for in those stations. GISS does attempt to filter out UHI from urban stations by using “nearby” rural stations – “nearby” meaning anything within 1000 KM. No attempt is made to filter UHI from airports not strictly listed as urban.

If stations from far, far away can be used to filter UHI, then it stands to reason some stations may be used multiple times as filters for multiple urban stations. I thought it would be amusing to list which stations were used the most to adjust for UHI. Fortunately, NASA prints that data in the PApars.statn.use.GHCN.CL.1000.20 log file.

The results were as I expected – amusing. Here are the top ten, ranked in order of the number of urban stations they help adjust: Read the rest of this entry »

I was surprised to learn today, that one of the most prominent newspapers in the USA, the Orange County Register in the Los Angeles area, carried an editorial of which my work was the subject. It is quite a turnaround from the brush off I got last year by their Science Dude blogger who wrote a story on the warming of Santa Ana, CA.

By the way here is what the official NOAA weather station for Santa Ana looks like, note the a/c heat exchanger exhausts:

Santa Ana Station looking North.  Click for a larger image

The editorial about my work was published in the OC Register on Monday, June 1st. I’ve reposted it below.

Editorial: Cooling down with global-warming data

U.S. and world temperature records are compromised by monitoring station errors.