Blink comparator of GISS USA temperature anomaly – h/t to Zapruder
The last time I checked, the earth does not retroactively change it’s near surface temperature.
True, all data sets go through some corrections, such as the recent change RSS made to improve the quality of the satellite record which consists of a number of satellite spliced together. However, in the case of the near surface temperature record, we have many long period stations than span the majority of the time period shown above, and they have already been adjusted for TOBS, SHAP, FILNET etc by NOAA prior to being distributed for use by organizations like GISS. These adjustments add mostly a positive bias.
In the recent data replication fiasco, GISS blames NOAA for providing flawed data rather than their failure to catch the repeated data from September to October. In that case they are correct that the issue arose with NOAA, but in business when you are the supplier of a product, most savvy businessmen take a “the buck stops here” approach when it comes to correcting a product flaw, rather than blaming the supplier. GISS provides a product for public consumption worldwide, so it seems to me that they should pony up to taking responsibility for errors that appear in their own product.
In the case above, what could be the explanation for the product changing?
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A question about “the anomaly” the quantity on the Y-axis.
I guess the anomaly is calculated by subtracting te long-year average temperature from the measured average of any given year.
Between 1999 and 2008, the long year average apparantly hasn’t changed !!
When you calculate a “new” long year average, including the warmer years after 1975, you will see more of the graph below the X-axis. When the average becomes higher, the anomalies become smaller and more negative.
We all know why GISS doesn’t calculate a new long-year-average and new smaller anomalies.
The graphs would turn out much less dramatic and alarming.
It’s all politics.
GISS’ extra UHI/adjustment/etc. temperature was compared to UAH between 1979 and 2007 only 0.068 degrees C, which is at most 0.25 degrees in 100 years.
Isn’t that about as much economic affection on the GISS temperature record in the 20th century as Patrick Michaels and Ross McKitrick found in this research?
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12492
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/jgr07/M&M.JGRDec07.pdf
This, and bad weather stations and UHI, were a fraction of them is very bad, is of course not acceptable and shall be targeted, but an important question may be if the small (maybe) 0.25 degrees C offset error per century will increase (like a dragon who raise his neck…?) so that it can be used to “prove” say 1.0 degrees C temperature change the coming decades where there is no such temperature increase?
I don’t think that. Certainly not if the NASA folks doesn’t get extremely creative and have extremely good intuition about how to set the scientific society under some deep hypnosis. They must probably be more vital than Beatles. I don’t think James Hansen has even a small fraction of Beatles creativity…
But, anyway, maybe they can get a political decision from UN about +2.0 degrees C?
No, I don’t like to speculate in conspiracy theories. We got to curb down the 0.2 or 0.3 degrees C per century, because it may be a problem in one or two hundred years, where alarmist environmentalists refer to this low quality biased science.
That’s what I think. I doubt NASA can prove AGW in decades with a +0.05 degrees C bias…
Steve McIntyre wrote:
The principal reason for the change are USHCN adjustments developed by Dr Karl – primarily the TOBS adjustments – the introduction of which to the GISS record is reported in Hansen et al 2001 and have been discussed from time to time at CA.
Is this the same “Dr. Karl” of the NCDC who never an academic Ph.D.?
Chris V.:
Despite your correction above [and thanks for that], I should point out that using 1999 as a baseline year will produce a radically different conclusion than using a 1998 baseline.
We all tend to cherry-pick to some degree to support our conclusions, but one factor that seems to be routinely ignored is the fact that the planet has been steadily emerging from an Ice Age for the past 11,000+/- years.
This results in a continued natural warming trend. No one has provided any proof — only computer model prognostications — that this natural, mild warming trend has anything significant [or even measurable] to do with increases in carbon dioxide.
Unless some reasonable, empirical evidence emerges proving that CO2 is the villain that alarmists claim it is [instead of what we already know: that more atmospheric CO2 is beneficial to plant and animal life], then the correct position to hold is one of rational skepticism regarding the AGW/CO2 hypothesis.
What kind of empirical evidence do you need? I mean ,there are a lot of measurements of the CO2-induced greenhouse efect…
“Humans may have prevented super ice age”
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16026
And for everyones ammusement “Ten predictions about climate change that have come true”
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article1984755.ece
Chris V. wrote:
I dunno, Hansen’s projections look pretty good to me, all things considered.
I think what you fail to consider in the graphs is that the Hansen projection that should be compared with GISS and RSS is Hansen A, which matches real-world CO2 levels. The Hansen B and Hansen C are based on the assumption of massive CO2 limits.
Hansen A comparison
Consider the red line.
Sometimes it seems that the argument regarding continuous temperature adjustments on historical data sets are like arguing about how many angels fit on the head of a pin.
On Oct 27, 1969, there was one temperature. Obviously, that temperature cannot change. So any model that produces continously changing “adjusted” data can’t be accurate. This isn’t to say that an adjustment to the data can’t be made, such as adjusting for UHI or other factors. But that’s not the same as saying “It’s 62degs today, so Oct 27th, 1969 must have been warmer than it was yesterday.”
What am I missing? How can a model like that even exist? I know I’m not a scientist…but it just seems to be common sense, which I know isn’t always that common.
Jim
Did anyone catch the latest IPCC spin on soot? They’re conceding it’s worse than thought, but they’re still claiming brown clouds mask heating from CO2.
This, even though over the Indian Ocean basin Ramanathan’s team found that sooty brown clouds enhance heating by half of CO2’s claimed effect, not masking it by half as had previously been thought. Ramanathan will let fly an amazing revelation & then has stood by to let the IPCC steer.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iiDlfwqOC5I71KgFjzSBuany-hrAD94EBGJ80
Alan Wilkinson,
I think that is the best summary I’ve read of the problems with climate models.
Thanks,
Mike
Flanagan (06:01:32) And one quite indirect measurement of the CO2 effect on climate is the temperature record of the last seven years, and that measurement is strongly suggesting that the IPCC’s conception of climate sensitivity to CO2 is exaggerated.
====================================
Flanagan. Mention one then…
@M White (11:51:40) :
“Climate change ‘to halt ice age’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7722300.stm
”
Slightly OT, perhaps, but the bit which stands out for me is: “In the last 100,000 years, global CO2 levels increased by around 1.5 parts per million”
Where do they get such unmitigated nonsense from?
@leebert
Looking at this paper Atmospheric Brown Cloads by Ramanathan et al published in 2008 http://www.unep.org/pdf/ABCSummaryFinal.pdf it states on page 11
5. The combined GHG and ABC forcing is 1.8 W m-2 with a 90 per cent confidence, confidence interval of 0.6 – 2.4 W m-2. By comparing this with only the GHG forcing of 3 W m-2 (90 per cent interval of 2.6-3.6 W m-2), it is seen that aerosols in ABCs have masked 20 – 80 per cent of GHG forcing in the past century.
This compares with the summary from nature http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7153/abs/nature06019.html which states in part
We found that atmospheric brown clouds enhanced lower atmospheric solar heating by about 50 per cent. Our general circulation model simulations, which take into account the recently observed widespread occurrence of vertically extended atmospheric brown clouds over the Indian Ocean and Asia, suggest that atmospheric brown clouds contribute as much as the recent increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gases to regional lower atmospheric warming trends. We propose that the combined warming trend of 0.25 K per decade may be sufficient to account for the observed retreat of the Himalayan glaciers
Why do I get the impression of confusion
Anthony,
Will you comment regarding the “right turn” in the graph? I seems to be quite “unnatural”…….
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
Maybe unnatural isn’t the correct term…….Abrupt? Queer? Abnormal?
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
Katherine (06:13:00) :
I think that if you look into it, you will see that that Hansen’s “B” scenario is closest to the actual CO2 increase.
Smokey (05:52:28) :
I’m sorry Smokey, but I will have to disagree with you about the baseline. Changing the baseline only changes the absolute value of the anomalies- it shifts the ENTIRE graph up or down, but the trend (in degrees/decade) of the increase or decrease in the anomaly remains the same. And the trend is what matters.
In regards to your statements about CO2, the fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and that increasing CO2 will produce warming, is accepted by virtually every scientist, including most of the AGW skeptics (Christy, Spencer, Lindzen…).
Where the skeptics and “warmers” disagree is the “how much warming” part.
JimB,
Bingo. Very well stated.
Thanks,
evanjones (00:55:15) :
WRT the “GISS divergence”:
http://cce.890m.com/giss-vs-all.jpg
Looking at the inset (showing the 5-year averages), it looks to me like UAH is doing the “diverging”, from HadCru, RSS, and GISSTEMP.
Chris V. (08:56:33) :
Interesting slight-of-hand. I note that almost the entire UAH graph is below the others because of the dependence on a single point baseline (Jan 1979).
What if you chose Jan 2000 as your starting point? Who are the outliers?
And wrt Scenario B, that’s not looking too healthy right now either.
Katherine (06:13:00) :
On this, Chris V has a point. Scenario A had a lot of forcings from CFCs. That didn’t happen, although the HCFC replacements have picked up some of the slack. Scenario C was the cold-turkey slashing of CO2 emissions in ~2000. Interestingly, as I alluded to Chris V, 2008 will be well below B and may well fall below Scenario C too.
Chris V´
Looking at your graph I see a difference of less than 0.1°C. Hardly within the limits of statistical uncertainty.
Brute,
There is nothing “unnatural” about the ice graph. The interior portions of the Arctic are now completely frozen over, and further freeze can occur only in different geographical basins at lower latitudes.
Come on Flanagan. What are these “there are a lot of measurements of the CO2-induced greenhouse efect”?
John M (09:24:49) and Pierre Gosselin (09:36:52) :
So you guys don’t see any significant divergence? I would tend to agree; whatever divergence there is, it ain’t much (at least over that time scale).
But Smokey is the one who brought up the divergence issue, claiming that GISSTemp was doing the diverging. You should be addressing your comments to him, not me.