UPDATE: Former California State climatologist Jim Goodridge presents some data that suggests that ocean temperature may be an equal or greater driving force behind Los Angeles Temperature increases, see graph below.
Source: NASA JPL
UPDATE: Sea surface temperature anomaly versus Los Angeles air temperature:
Source: Former California State climatologist Jim Goodridge – click for larger image
Perhaps the adjuster should adjust the adjustments a bit. This press release from NASA Jet Propulsion Lab says that most of the increase in temperature has to do with ubanization:
[NASA’s JPL Bill] Patzert says global warming due to increasing greenhouse gases is responsible for some of the overall heating observed in Los Angeles and the rest of California. Most of the increase in heat days and length of heat waves, however, is due to a phenomenon called the “urban heat island effect.”
Heat island-induced heat waves are a growing concern for urban and suburban dwellers worldwide. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, studies around the world have shown that this effect makes urban areas from 2 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit (1 to 6 degrees Celsius) warmer than their surrounding rural areas.
Patzert says this effect is steadily warming Southern California, though more modestly than some larger urban areas around the world. “Dramatic urbanization has resulted in an extreme makeover for Southern California, with more homes, lawns, shopping centers, traffic, freeways and agriculture, all absorbing and retaining solar radiation, making our megalopolis warmer,” Patzert said.
Then there’s station siting issues, like this station on a rooftop of a fire station in Santa, Ana, CA. Note the air conditioner units all around.
Santa Ana Station looking North. Click for a larger image
The temperature record from that station, courtesy the Orange County Register:
And my complete write-up on it is available here
Here is the scientifc paper by Patzert, Ladochy, and Tamrazian which is cited by the NASA JPL press release.
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Wait for the retraction. The JPL guys will simply have to toe the party line or they will have their jets taken away for bad behaviour.
@Kohl Piersen
this is a global study about about UHI by McKitrick et al., that comes to the following conclusion:
“Using the regression model to filter the extraneous, nonclimatic effects reduces the estimated 1980–2002 global average temperature trend over land by about half.”
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/jgr07/M&M.JGRDec07.pdf
Off topic, Anthony, but while messing around on Wood for Trees, I took the 1st derivative of CO2 and noticed it looked like the temperature during that period.
So I added UAH and scaled it and Voilá! It’s virtually identical! EVERY up spike EVERY dip is in absolute lock-step correlation with temperature. It’s startelling:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/scale:0.3/plot/esrl-co2/mean:12/derivative:1/from:1979
I have the two graphs separated so you can properly see the incredible correlation.
@alex Llewelyn:
It appears Temp is leading CO2 derivative. I suspect you are seeing the CO2 released from the oceans as SST varies due to ENSO.
Dee Norris is right. They’re not quite in ‘lockstep.’ Look closer. The CO2 increases lag the temp.
Alex and Dee
The sinusoidal nature of the Mauna Loa CO2 measurements tells it’s own tale.
If one takes the levels from the drop-down list here:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
and checks the global temps against them…….
I trust nature to produce waves and cycles (and spheres and circles).
“Smokey (01:13:47) :
Dee Norris is right. They’re not quite in ‘lockstep.’ Look closer. The CO2 increases lag the temp.”
Except when they don’t.
Alex, Dee, Smokey: this looks exactly like what Josh Hall found a while back and posted here. I was so excited to find it! Allan MacRae has done a paper on it. I think it’s a clincher, a really important current piece of proof that temperature drives CO2. Josh also shows the reverse idea and side by side you can really see which drives which. It’s here on my skeptics’ climate science primer.
Taken together with new material I’ve just learned about the “atmospheric pipe” effect, we have an incredibly solid wall of evidence about CO2, where it really comes from and where it really goes, making the human contribution so tiny as to be a non-starter.
I’d like to suggest this deserves a thread of its own.
To further explain –
The derivative function at WFT shows the rate of change in a value. Quite naturally, the rate of the CO2 change is higher when there is a warming ocean (which is releasing CO2) and lower when there is a cooling ocean (and absorbing CO2).
Correction – My brain is not working at 5 AM… a better explanation is that the oceans are always emitting and absorbing CO2 and the changes in Temp change the ratio of absorption and emission. Therefore as Temp changes, the rate of change in CO2 level matches the Temp change.
I have removed the scaling of UAH Temp from the original plot.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/plot/esrl-co2/mean:12/derivative:1/from:1979
This better represents the relationship of the values
Jim Goodridge: Here’s a graph of SST anomalies of the waters off the Southern California Coast. SSTs would definitely have contributed to the warming. (Source: NOAA NOMADS, ERSST.v2 data) Note: The coordinates used reflect the 2 deg (lat & long) limitations of the data. I couldn’t really make the area any smaller in size.
http://i33.tinypic.com/34est51.jpg
Alex Llewelyn & Dee Norris & Others: The monthly change in CO2 at Mauna Loa does vary with North Pacific SST anomalies and therefore with ENSO.
Monthly Change in CO2 vs NINO3.4 SST anomaly:
http://i33.tinypic.com/2uotpjb.jpg
Monthly Change in CO2 vs North Pacific SST anomaly:
http://i37.tinypic.com/30mo4ev.jpg
Discussed here:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/09/atmospheric-co2-concentration-versus.html
Regards
I agree that this would justify a thread of it’s own as I would be interested in any theoretical justification for this such as an environmental reaction to the rate of change of CO2 levels and whether this is positive or negative feedback
Dee: If you or someone else is capable of calculating the “absorption-emmision” of CO2 in sea water, I can get you SST data (not anomaly) for the North Pacific or NINO3.4 or the waters around Hawaii or wherever you want.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html
Lucy. Love your stuff. You have come a long way in a year. More power to your elbow.
It is disturbing that trillion dollar punitive actions are attempted in the absence of engineering quality, repeatable CO2 science and that the only proclaimed protestations are reserved for those who would prefer the first above the second.
Bob. I am envious of talent such as yours. Thanks for the graphs.
Dee: You’re right; it is early. I couldn’t think of the word solubility a few moments ago. I need more coffee.
@Bob:
What sounds like an easy task – the solubility of CO2 in Sea Water – may turn out to be much more complex, IMHO. Atmospheric CO2 concentration will play a factor as well as SST. A mixing model would have to be set up and the ocean temperature gradient would have to be included. Add in Salinity, other gases, etc…
I suspect that this work has been done while attempting to model ocean acidification, so perhaps one of the budding oceanographers here can dig it up.
i noticed in the pdf reporting the study they used the global warming figure to state about 26% of the warming is due to “normal global warming” and the urban heat effect to the rest. As Anthony is in the process of showing, the number used for global warming must include many urban heat island effects. Is it known or is there a reasonable guess how much the global average is perturbed?
Just curious, thanks!
Dee, I’m curious about something. In your 2:28:40 comment, in which you corrected your earlier comment, you revised Alex Llewelyn’s graph to eliminate the scaling and said it better represented the relationship of the values. Why? Alex wasn’t using the graph to calculate a coefficient of global temperature to the change in CO2 level; he was simply illustrating that there was, in fact, a correlation. The scaled graph does a better job of that. And since it does list the scaling factor, there’s no misrepresentation of what’s being shown.
Regards
@Bob Tisdale:
I was just looking at it without the scaling, that’s all. No slight on Alex’s original graph implied or intended.
Alex didn’t indicate any causality for the correlation and in my attempt to explain the causality, I wanted readers to look at the plot with a different eye to help set aside any preconceived notions.
They are both equally important plots of the same data, one building on the other.
garron (21:51:58) :
AnyMouse (18:43:50) : ” Shouldn’t they be the first to demand that blacktop must now be whitetop?”
“Funny. But seriously, on what basis do anything? Blacktop’s potential impact on global climate is, meteorically speaking, a fractional part per million kind of thing.”
True, but if they want it cooler in LA, maybe whitetop would be a good thing?
Alex Llewelyn (00:26:24) :
Star telling? I could make a crack about astrology, but I don’t do that. I often fix typos, but this is too cute.
I don’t see much of a time shift, but let me point out that a decline in the CO2 derivitive means one (or both) of two things:
1) Less CO2 is going into the atmosphere.
2) More CO2 is leaving the atmosphere.
If 1), then either we’re adding less CO2 to the carbon cycle (i.e. we’re using less fossil fuel) or other CO2 sources are holding back.
If 2), then either the ocean is sucking up CO2 or plants are thrilled with the climate change.
Of those, my guess is that the ocean effect is biggest (note Argo measured cooling).
At any rate, good messing around. Nice graph.
Who knows what that temp profile would look like if SoCal didn’t spray all that Colorado River water all over the place just to keep things green.
I wonder how much black rooftops and asphalt actually enhance precipitation as well as increase temperatures. In Mediterranean environments, it would lead to more heating than precipitation enhancement, because the strong sun coincides with a time of year when it is almost impossible for rainfall to occur anyway. However, I bet at an open continental on the plains/prairies, that the effect could be very significant. The radiation absorption could act as a trigger mechanism by causing turbulent eddies. An interesting experiment would be to blacken deserts and see if it increases precipitation (of course, that neither would nor should pass the environmental ethics boards). It would be possible, I imagine, to compare rainfall in urban areas to rural areas, but it would be hard to separate the orographic effects of the buildings from the albedo suppression effect.
From the Abstract:
That’s strange. The daily range has increased and the maximum has increased more than the minimum. Both trends are backward from those promised by Certified Climatologists, if I recall correctly.
That graph is interesting enough to pursue as an empirical model. Empirical just means you aren’t trying to prove the theory – just trying to quantify the correlation. So you can essentially make your own formula trying to get perfect overlap.
“It looks like temperature leads the derivative of carbon dioxide” is one thing. But you might be able to make more concrete statements with just a tiny bit of math.
You’ve got:
T = Temperature in Kelvin
d = derivative of carbon dioxide levels in ppm/??
t = time
You’re scaling vertically, so that’s an ‘A=Amplitude’ fudge factor. And you think there’s a lag – which I normally represent with theta. How about “L” for lag here.
Model:
d(t) = A*T(t) + L
What sort of correlation does that give? And what does the residual look like?
Mike Bryant (06:49:09) : “True, but if they want it cooler in LA, maybe whitetop would be a good thing?”
Could be.
I think that qualifying/quantifying “urban heating” factors is beyond current technology. and therefore, causes, effects, and cost of problems/solutions are indeterinate.
LA can do whatever they want. They can white-top everything and the rest of the world can evaluate the impact — so to speak.