Reposted in its entirety from Climate Science
By Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. University of Colorado
There was an interesting news article in the Guardian on December 6 2008 by James Randerson titled Explainer: Coolest year since 2000
The article reads
“This year is set to be the coolest since 2000, according to a preliminary estimate of global average temperature that is due to be released next week by the Met Office. The global average for 2008 should come in close to 14.3C, which is 0.14C below the average temperature for 2001-07.
The relatively chilly temperatures compared with recent years are not evidence that global warming is slowing, say climate scientists at the Met Office. “Absolutely not,” said Dr Peter Stott, the manager of understanding and attributing climate change at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre. “If we are going to understand climate change we need to look at long-term trends.”
Prof Myles Allen at Oxford University, who runs the climateprediction.net website, said he feared climate sceptics would overinterpret the figure: “You can bet your life there will be a lot of fuss about what a cold year it is. Actually no, it’s not been that cold a year, but the human memory is not very long. We are used to warm years.”
The Met Office had predicted 2008 would be cooler than recent years due to a La Niña event, characterised by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean – the mirror image of the El Niño climate cycle.
Allen was presenting the data on this year’s global average temperature at the Appleton Space Conference at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, near Didcot, yesterday. The 14.3C figure is based on data from January to October. When the Met Office makes its formal announcement next week they will incorporate data from November. “[The figure] will differ from it, but it won’t differ massively,” said Stott.
Assuming the final figure is close to 14.3C then 2008 will be the 10th hottest year on record. Hottest was 1998, followed by 2005, 2003 and 2002.
In March a team of climate scientists at Kiel University predicted that natural variation would mask the 0.3C warming predicted by the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change over the next decade.”
Lets do a reality check.
The statement that “The relatively chilly temperatures compared with recent years are not evidence that global warming is slowing” mixes up regional and global temperatures changes. Also, there has been no global warming in the last 4 years (at least; e.g. see). Global warming has stopped for the last few years.
The statement that “In March a team of climate scientists at Kiel University predicted that natural variation would mask the 0.3C warming predicted by the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change over the next decade” is scientifically incorrect. Heating cannot be ”masked”.
As given in the examples below, the news releases provided by the UK Met Office make for interesting reading and show the complexity and difficulty of skillful season climate prediction.
Thus why should there be any confidence in the forecasts regarding climate change in the longer term?
Examples of UK Met Office News releases
1. For example, on April 11 2007, they wrote in a news release “Met Office forecast for Summer 2007″ [to their credit, they do have a readily accessible archive]
“The Met Office forecast of global mean temperature for 2007, issued on 4 January 2007 in conjunction with the University of East Anglia, stated that 2007 is likely to be the warmest ever year on record going back to 1850, beating the current record set in 1998.”
This did not occur.
2. On April 3 2008 they wrote in a news release “A typical British summer”
“The coming summer is expected to be a ‘typical British summer’, according to long-range forecasts issued today. Summer temperatures across the UK are more likely to be warmer than average and rainfall near or above average for the three months of summer.”
On August 29 2008 they published a news release titled “Wet summer could end with a bang” where they write
“The return to unsettled weather will mark the end of the meteorological summer which has been one of the wettest on record across the UK.”
I suppose that rainfall “near or above average” fits what actually occurred but this is hardly a particularly precise or useful forecast.
3. On September 25 2008 they wrote in a news release “Trend of mild winters continues”
“The Met Office forecast for the coming winter suggests it is, once again, likely to be milder than average. It is also likely that the coming winter will be drier than last year.”
They qualified this news release with the article on November 25 2008 titled “A cold start to winter” where they wrote
“The latest update to the Met Office winter forecast suggests that although the coming winter will have temperatures near or above average, it is very likely that December will be colder than normal.”
Now, in addition to a news release on December 9 2008 they published an article ”El Niño gives colder European winters”, which states
Sarah Ineson, climate research scientist at the Met Office says: “We have shown evidence of an active stratospheric role in the transition to cold conditions in northern Europe and mild conditions in southern Europe in late winter during El Niño years”.
The message in th UK Met Office press releases is that, since their is such poor skill with seasonal weather prediction, multi-decadal climate prediction must be a much less precise and accurate science than we have heard promoted by the IPCC and in the climate change press releases given out by the UK Met Office and others.
Chris V:
Nothing will change your mind, unfortunately it is closed tight. It is not skeptics who must prove that the climate is within normal historical parameters; it is the climate alarmists who must prove that their AGW/CO2 runaway global warming climate catastrophe hypothesis is true.
They have failed.
And make no mistake: the AGW/climate catastrophe hypothesis is exactly that. Because if increasing CO2 does not cause major problems, but only causes a very minor change that is so small that it is unmeasurable, then the Kyoto Protocol and its equally ridiculous successors are a monumental waste of money and resources. Therefore, the catastrophists must continue to yell ever louder, and pound the table ever harder, in order to distract from the plain fact that AGW is not happening or, if it is, it occurring on a scale that is so tiny that it can be disregarded completely.
For those interested, Beck relates some of the locations at which measurements were taken:
Note the isolated locations: ships crossing the ocean, the sparsely populated Ayrshire coastline, and mountains. [source]
Beck’s extensive compilation brings into question Keeling’s data, not vice versa.
Hi Chris V
I do not understand your repeated assertions that post 1958 co2 readings are not included. They are present on all the graphs I want them to be on, but are irrelevant for the other studies, for example those that are concentrating on pre 1958 figures.
I have the printed book in front of me now-variability depends on location and circumstances. There are readings of over 1000ppm in mines but no one pretends they are in free atmosphere and the circumstances of the measurements are given- such as these .
“Mine; 220 fathoms deep 1 fathom broad and 1 deep- 80 from the nearest winze taken 3 minutes after firing the last of the holes. 6 men with 6 candles present, wind west north west wind, four analyses taken….
You would only expect consistent ‘modern ‘ readings in places where consistent reading were to be expected-in others of course adjustments were subsequently made when they were analysed and the log of the circumstances examined. For example in a factory note was taken of the size and location and intensity of the gas lamps and the location of the brazier. In an outdoor study the altitude, wind direction and strength, moisture, closeness to habitation and likelihood of mixing etc were accounted for.
To see a proper detailed analysis of the data rather than these snap shots taken out of context, please read the various Beck papers available on his site-it is properly tabulated and those readings that are suspect have been noted and don’t appear in his data sets. They do appear in mine because I wanted to examine the good and the bad ones so I could understand the circumstances.
Please also read other documents referenced-particularly Benedict- a very hefty document from a renowned chemist and Slocum, who elegantly dismantles Callendars selective measurements. It is also worth reading the bibliographies of other research done at the time..
Do I believe all 90,000 measurements are accurate? Of course not. Many thousands can and have been discarded for a variety of reasons.
Are there are enough left to pose awkward questions that challenge our current beliefs? Yes.
Did Callendar select unrepresentative figures? Yes
Did Keeling take them also? Yes.
You closed your post with;
‘WRT past temperatures, and the things that cause them, you need to go back and re-read the IPCC reports. They are very clear that CO2 is not the only driver of climate, but it is the most important one NOW (last 50 years or so).”
I have read the assessments-including the fuil report- several times.; Co2 is very firmly fingered as the main culprit and the link to rising global temperastures is made. The conclusions would not be as strong if they used real world temperature readings produced by individual countries.
Do I think temperatures have risen since the 1880’s the end of the little ice age? Yes.
Have they also risen in the past to levels as great or greater than this without the benefit of added human co2? Yes.
Is man the main culprit of most of the warming through his tiny emissions compared to nature, thereby upsetting some sort of ‘natural’ equilibrium? No
If I accept equilbirium for the sake of this discussion it means humans have added 100ppm since 1750-nothing at all to do with nature of course-mans tiny emissions are somehow ‘different’ That is 10 parts in 100,000. The UK has contributed 5% of that 10. So we have contributed half a part per 100,000 in 250 years.
That equates to half a part in a million of GHG ( note change of scale to keep meaningful numbers)
That is some 12/1,000,000,000 or about a one hundred millionth of total air
Do I believe that level contribution is irrelevant to life on this planet? Yes.
Can we seriously produce less than half a part in 250 years as a nation and keep functioing as a modern society? No.
Should we deliberately go around using up our resources without seeking alternatives? No.
Are those alternatives viable as replacements in the next 25 years? No.
I am by no means a religious person, but if humans can only live in an atmospheric soup of such exact amounts as described above without destroying himself and the planet, it suggest that there is some higher authority than even the IPCC that needs to be consulted doesn’t it?
Whilst considering this philosophical scenario please feel free to use my graphs to insert whatever scenario you wish to achieve. If you want graph 2 in xls form you only need to ask and I will post it here.
If required please let us know within 24 hours as I will then be away for five days hoping to participate in the best start to a European ski season for thirty years.
TonyB
Charles Pierce points us at his web site, which says the following in a section on “Is Global Warming Happening”:
This ignores the effect of H2O which has similar properties, absorbs over a larger range of frequencies and makes up more than an order of magnitude more of the atmosphere and CO2 does.
Sigh.
The BBC claimed at the start of the evening weather forecast today that this has been the coldest start to the winter in the UK for 30 years. It certainly feels like it too – but I wonder how the Met Office will spin it.
Anna, and E.M.Smith.
Ahhhhh…. Got it. Thanks.
Much Appreciated. – Now I feel that I can really begin to talk in this forum!
Moooorararararahahahahahahahah……
(Oh my gawd… What has just been released!!!).
G
TonyB (12:30:39) :
I looked at all the graphs (I think) in your file at cadenzapress- can’t find any that show Mauna Loa.
But here is a graph that does, along with the ice core, and pre-1950 “chemical” CO2 measurements:
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2/bayreuth/bayreuth1e.htm
Can somebody please, please explain to me
1) why the pre-1950 CO2 measurements (labelled “chemical”) are so much higher and more variable than the ice core CO2 measurements?
2) why the Mauna Loa levels show none of the variability that the pre-1950 CO2 measurements show?
These two questions are the essence of the issue. If you cannot answer these questions, and provide some kind of reasonable, testable, and measureable PHYSICAL MECHANISM (asteroid impacts? worldwide forest fires?) that can add or remove TENS OF BILLIONS of tons of CO2 to the atmosphere over the course of a year or two, then the only reasonable conclusion is that the pre-1950 measurements are wrong, and the Mauna Loa and ice core data are right.
The rest of your post is really missing the point.
I will try once more, I will give possible answers to your questions, not researched ones, but pointing to gaps in the information flow.
Can somebody please, please explain to me
1) why the pre-1950 CO2 measurements (labelled “chemical”) are so much higher and more variable than the ice core CO2 measurements?
2) why the Mauna Loa levels show none of the variability that the pre-1950 CO2 measurements show?
for 1) There are doubts about how well the ice core measurements are carried out preserving the status quo: ( look for Jarowlski’s talks/research), and also how well the difusion of CO2 in ice is known.
I have also introduced the following question: The ice core measurements are very close to oceans. The colder the oceans the better a sink for CO2 they are, so even if the measurements are accurate, they are good only for the arctic regions. If you look at the arctic regions in the AIRS maps they show at the bottom of the scale of CO2.
for 2) Mauna Loa is at the top of a 3000 meter mountain volcano. The airs maps of the mid troposphere, which is about the height of Mauna Loa shows that the world CO2 is not uniformly distributed even at that height. I would like to see more AIRS maps of lower heights to compare with the chemical measurements. The chemical measurements are measurements mainly at people accessible height , and the AIRS data have shown us that uniformity of CO2 is not so great.
My lat was for Chris V (16:15:15) :
I would add that maybe, if one had chemical measurements from the same spot for a number of years, they would show the Mauna Loa curve just with a different callibration, which is what happens with data from other channels.
The reasons I am more skeptical of the Keeling et all papers is just that, that one person is responsible for the calibration choices, and it is only human nature that he/she will try to make it fit his/her choices. Particularly so after seeing the cherry picking of the low curve from the chemical data. This (human nature) is why experiments have to be repeated by independent experimentalists . Particularly when the world is asked to do economic hara kiri depending on those measurements.
Chris V
The rest of my post- as are the graphs- are trying to put things into an atmospheric and a historic perspective so are very much to the point. Our impact is very small.
As for the chemical measurements, you really need to go to Becks site and see the whole thing in their proper context written up in a logical manner for publication, rather than try to dissect these tiny snapshots.
Temperatures took a dip-according to Callendar- during the 1950’s to the early 60’s after having experienced a rise during the 1930′ and 40’s. The chemical figures exactly pick up the temperatures/co2 relationship during that pre mauna loa period. Post that date temperatures have largely been on a rise, so co2 levels will reflect that. If temperatures fall substantially it would be expected that co2 levels will fall. If they don’t it perhaps demonstrates they are rather immaterial
Now the problem is that I dont know at what temperature co2 will start dropping, how long drops have to be sustained for it to have an effect, and the biggest problem of all are the actual time scale involved.
Current thinking is that temperatures rise first then co2 follows up to 800 years later, so are the Beck figures actually relating to the MWP or are they responding to the temperatures that occurred a few months or a few years earlier?
Clearly temperatures have fluctuated in the past up to and beyond present day levels without any input from man, so it is highly circumstantial that our minute contribution to overall GHG has the drastic effect stated by the IPCC.
The IPCC blame co2 as the main culprit but you seem to be sensibly conceding it is but one of a number, so following this train of thought it is surely logical to suggest that it is circumstantial evidence that co2 has now become the primary climate driver and has superceded the ones driving the climate in the past?
I would be very interested to hear from you as to what you;
a) believe the percentages currently contributed by each of the drivers
b) The time scales involved. Does co2 rise six months after temperatures rise or 600 years? Does it go back down as quickly or slowly, or does it take it longer for their to be an effect?
These climate drivers pre 1900 must be very powerful if they are able to increase temperatures so dramatically from a constant 280ppm to beyond current temperature levels. Surely that alone demonstrates how fundamental they are and that their impact likely swamps the effects of man made co2?
So my last question is;
c) Can you work out the energy factors each climate driver would have needed to increase by in the past in order to overcome the lack of a high co2 base? 100ppm has apparently caused a substantial temperature rise over a 100 years so we need something very dramatic from other sources in order to replace that impact. There must be some mathematical formula out there. Did the sun need to be 80% more powerful? Did the ENSO need to be 47% more active? Your calculations are welcome.
Indeed I invite anyone on this forum to answer those three questions.
Please excuse the lack of response beyond tomorrow morning as I go off to examine the effects of global warming at first hand. Hope I don’t get frost bite on the slopes. It has been an interesting debate helped by lack of acrimony from either side.
TonyB
anna v (23:15:48) :
There are plenty of INDEPENDENT long-term atmospheric measurements that confirm the Keeling curve:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/
Researchers from France, Italy, Hungary, Argentina…all agree, and no sign of annual 100 ppm variability.
There is some geographic and temporal variability in CO2 levels (as the AIRs data shows), but it’s a few percent, NOT remotely close to the variability shown in Beck’s pre-1950 chemical data.
WRT to ice cores, they are not all “close” to the oceans- Vostok is 1000 miles from the ocean, ice cores from central Greenland are 100+ miles from the ocean. If that is “close”, and reason enough to distrust the measurements, then you also should distrust most of the pre-1950 chemical CO2 analyses from Europe, ships at sea, etc.
Yet the ice cores all agree, and agree with the modern measurements (many not involving Keeling!) where they overlap.
As for Jaworski, he is a lone voice- why do you accept his views, which are disputed by all the hundreds of other glacier scientists? And if Jaworski is correct, why do all the ice cores (from different places in the world, with different dust levels, etc.) agree?
And why do you mention diffusion of CO2 out of ice cores?? It is physically impossible for CO2 to have diffused out of the ice cores into the atmosphere IF the chemical CO2 measurements are right, and CO2 levels were actually much higher than the ice core records show. Unless you’ve found a way around those pesky laws of thermodynamics….
Please guys, give it up! There are plenty of more interesting topics to discuss. Becks stuff is crap. Multiple researchers looking at ice cores and the modern CO2 levels all come to the same conclusion. Beck is the only one who thinks the carbon cycle is capable of adding or subtracting 10’s of billions of tons of CO2 to the atmosphere over the course of a few years, months, or days.
And everyone is STILL avoiding these questions- what causes the huge variability that Beck shows, and why don’t we see it in the modern measurements???
TonyB (01:10:09) :
I have looked at Becks stuff- my criticisms stand.
As to the rest of your points, I am not going to get into a dialogue about every aspect of climate science (another time, perhaps?). I’ve tried to confine my discussion to whether Becks’ pre-1950 chemical measurements are accurate. The other stuff about whether CO2 leads or follows temperatures (actually, it does both), by how long, mistakes Keeling or Callander might have made 50 years ago… are irrelevant to that discussion.
Unless you can propose some physical mechanism (backed up with real evidence) for the HUGE variability in Beck’s data, and can also explain why that mechanism suddenly stopped operating 50 years ago?
anna v (23:15:48) : […]
2) why the Mauna Loa levels show none of the variability that the pre-1950 CO2 measurements show?
Perhaps because the air has spent several thousand miles getting well mixed as it wanders over the ocean from Asia…
I’m sure that the old measures have good accuracy, by and large, and I’m also sure that it’s from local effects. What this means for AGW I don’t know.
Could it be that CO2 levels over land are different than they are in mid Pacific? I’m sure they are. Its the meaning that’s unclear.
Graeme Rodaughan (14:36:13) :
Much Appreciated. – Now I feel that I can really begin to talk in this forum!
Moooorararararahahahahahahahah……
(Oh my gawd… What has just been released!!!).
Oh No, I’ve created a Moorarahahah… (You’re welcome…)
Chris V (15:59:41) :
anna v (23:15:48) :
There are plenty of INDEPENDENT long-term atmospheric measurements that confirm the Keeling curve:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/
Thank you for the link. I had only found the Keeling references before.
You are correct that the curve is the same. The calibrations different for different locations. I am going through the links and I see that many measurements stop at the middle ’90s. I do not know why. Probablky ran out of grants once the science was supposed to be settled.
I have seen curves with 40ppm differences between minimum and maximum.
One possible explanation then for the Beck collected numbers is that people were taking measurements during the height of CO2 plant production, which already puts them up, or during winter, which puts them down. The sine curve mixed up. So it has not stopped, within 40ppm as in
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/uba-wagr.html for example.
As for CO2 diffusion, I think it meant the diffusion in the process of getting the samples out.
The basic point argued is not that today’s measurements are wrong. It is that measurements of last century are being ignored for convenience of the AGW argument.
p.s to my previous
I just remembered somebody mentioning that a specific time of day is also used to take the daily measurements in current CO2 records. I do not know of any plot that shows the daily variations of CO2. Maybe that would add another 20ppm and would bring consistency between last century and now.
It would mean that the old data would have to be sorted for time and date to see what conclusions can be made.
p.p.s
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_measurements.html
has a lot of the variations. look at windspeed for example. Would explain a lot.
“The same is true for diurnal variance: at daytime and with high enough wind speed (> 1 m/s), CO2 levels are lower and near background, while at night under the inversion layer, CO2 levels are up to 100 ppmv higher.”
OK, now I can see how to get a consistent picture of old and new measurements.
Maybe a global CO2 measure is as elusive as a global temperatue measure after all.
anna v (01:02:25) :
Maybe a global CO2 measure is as elusive as a global temperatue measure after all.
Trying to fit one measure to a chaotic collection is a basic problem for both CO2 and temperature. It hides more than it reveals. One example? Everyone was sure the U.S. was the Evil One for making all the CO2 we had to be making since we used so much fossil fuel. So they measured CO2 on the west coast were pristine ocean air arrived, then on the east coast after we polluted it with CO2.
One small problem… there was less CO2 on the east coast than on the west. Why? I’d speculate it was all those millions of tons of crops we export to the rest of the world each year and our forests regrowing since we don’t cut them down for energy much anymore. But it’s an open question…
anna v (01:02:25) :
There are clearly temporal and geographic variabilities in modern CO2 concentrations. Some are natural (like seasonal, reflecting more or less photosynthesis), and some are man-made (being downwind from a coal-fired power plant). But you will notice that in all the modern, long-term measurements, the variations are centered on a very consistent long term trend, and those long-term values and trends agree at many different measurement sites.
I have no doubt that many the measurements Beck uses are accurately measuring the CO2 in the air at a certain place and time, but are those measurements representative of the WHOLE atmosphere (as Beck maintains), or do they just represent local variability? Clearly, MOST of them are recording local variability.
I would love to see a plot of all of Beck’s data (he claims 90,000 plus measurements). If that data is representative of the atmosphere as a whole, then we should see a relatively small, but clear, seasonal fluctuation, superimposed onto his red curve (just as we see a clear seasonal fluctuation around the long-term trend in all the modern data).
That wouldn’t prove his case by any means (there is still that pesky mechanism, and the disagreement with the ice cores), but it would make his ideas slightly less ridiculous.
Well, as E.M Smith points out above, maybe nothing is really representative of world CO2 . Keeling et al are careful to go to places they consider stable, but tability is meaningless in a chaotic system.
For temperatures we solve this problem by taking measurements all over the world and taking averages. Maybe we should use the same for CO2. At least we would have a consistent to temperatures measure.
I too would like to see the old CO2 data sorted by time and place.