One of the best things about WUWT is the number of eyes and minds at work, multiplying the efforts. This is interesting. Now that the 1998 El Nino is disappearing off the 10 year scale, things are looking a bit different
From “crosspatch” in comments:
NCDC now has December 2008 in the database. Annual North American temperature since 1998 (11 years of data) is falling over the period at a rate of 0.78(F)/decade or 7.8(F)per century. At this rate we will be in an ice age within 5 decades. If you can get the graphic, the heavy black like is the average over the century 1901 to 2000.
Here is the graphic from their automated graphics generator linked to their database:
Source: National Climatic Data Center
While the link he provided is only a result, I’m sure he’ll share the method in comments to this post.
UPDATE: He has indeed, see below. Try your own hand at it. The trend will likely flatten a bit with the removal of 1998 from the 10 year set. Of course you could pick any number of scales/periods and get different results. The point being made here is that the last 10 years hasn’t met with some model expectations.
Also I have corrected in the text the reference to Centigrade when it was actually Fahrenheit, note the (F). NCDC being an arm of the US government operates on the English unit system whereas most other organizations use metric, and thus Centigrade. I’ve made the mistake myself, so has NASA, who famously lost a Mars probe when they botched orbit entry calculations by use of Metric and English units on different science teams.
UPDATE2: Some folks are erroneously thinking that this graph above represents a global trend, it does not. Read on.
It represents US data from NCDC. Also there has been the usual complaint that “10 years isn’t long enough to determine any useful trend”. Perhaps, but when NASA’s James Hansen went before congress in 1988 to declare a “crisis in the making”, there had only been about 10 years of positive trend data since the PDO flip in 1978. It seemed adequate then:
In the graph above, note that the GISS station data does follow the Hansen C scenario, but that we are currently well below it.
Yes we really do need longer data periods to determine climate trends, 30 years is the climatic standard, but you can also learn useful information from examining shorter trends and regional trends.
To generate the graphic I made:
Leave the “Data Type” field at “Mean Temperature”
Select “Annual” from the “Period” field pull down
Select “1998″ as “First Year To Display”
and click the blue “Submit” oval at the below the data entry form.
Tilo,
Given that the earth’s climate system is a complex, non-linear, chaotic system (even the IPCC agrees with this statement) and the fact that the future state of a chaotic system cannot be skillfully predicted unless you know very exactly the beginning state of all the variables that affect it, doesn’t that mean that any attempt to use models to predict the future state of the climate is the equivalent of a fools errand? Even if you know 99% of the variables to the degree necessary being wrong about 1% can cause wildly erroneous results, it’s the nature of chaotic systems.
With the recent cooling trend, the cry “Last year was the warmest on record” has taken a break, only to be replaced by “The last decade was the warmest on record!” I haven’t checked, but maybe that cry will have to be shelved for a while.
BTW, not only was 2008 the coolest of the decade, it’s the coolest of the 21st century and even the 3rd millennium. Not bad for a year that was so very close to average. 🙂
“Global warming threat to ski industry”
But The Telegraph says:
The BBC isn’t a news reporting organization. They are an agenda promoting organization. Today the Eiffel Tower is closed due to snow and ice. I would not look to the BBC for any objective climate information. It is fairly safe to assume what their take is going to be on things and you won’t be learning anything counter to that position from them. They seem to fee “obligated” to promote the warming hypothesis despite the debunking it has undergone over the past few years.
@L. Nettles, no i didn’t choose a starting date. my point wasn’t that i had more meaningful starting date, only that a 10 year trend is statistically meaningless. and it appears i’m not alone.
@tarpon, here are 19 years of GISS data with Hansen’s 3 scenarios modeled in 1988. (warning: BIG image). remember scenario B was a continued increase in CO2, A was an overshoot and C was a plateauing of CO2 at some point. the model predicted a large volcanic eruption in the mid 1990’s, pinatubo went off in 1991.
for my money, it is about as good as you could expect to get with the 20 year old technology and knowledge. i have seen other similar images that willfully omit scenarios B and C (Patrick Michaels anyone?).
Dell No it will be reported as the eightiest warmest LOL
M White (13:52:50) : Global warming threat to ski industry
A bit rich, considering this year has seen record levels of snow at early dates in worldwide ski resorts.
If you haven’t seen it yet, look at Richard North’s find: today’s UK Daily Express – AGW-bashing headlines!
Anyone notice RSS temp TLT does NOT include South Pole data
http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_description.html#msu_amsu_trend_map_tlt
whereas all the others do TMT ect
Mike D. (14:08:38) :
“Exploding models do not give confidence in either the models or their output.”
Indeed! In fact, exploding models are a sure sign of poorly designed numerical procedures and, possibly, software bugs. At least Hansen admits that his code blows up.
In my 20+ years experience with computational fluid dynamics, I know that it is very easy to get codes to explode due to the non-linearity of the underlying mathematical equations. One generally doesn’t trust algorithms and software that behave in this manner, but this IS climate science…
“a 10 year trend is statistically meaningless.”
True … unless you have forecast rising temperatures that are not only increasing but increasing at an exponential rate (looking like a hockey stick) where temperatures should never drop in *any* year, let alone have a 10 year down trend.
A 10 year down trend (or any down trend, really) absolutely and completely debunks Mann (et al) and it does so in a manner that wipes away any need to go through his maths or data. Quite simply, if Mann’s, Hansen’s, and IPCC forecasts were correct, what we are seeing could not possibly happen. It is happening which means they are utterly and completely incorrect. No additional quibbling needed. They have simply been shown to be wrong by the observed reality. Now if one wished to ignore reality, that is an option, but not one generally placed within the boundaries of what we might consider sanity.
“Is there any Londoner reading this who can go out and check if any hippopotamus have turned up in the Thames yet? They were there during the Eemian.”
I was in London today. The hippos had more sense than to be hanging around the river in the freezing cold. Clearly I didn’t!!
And furthermore, ak, since the RSS numbers now show a global anomaly for December 2008 that is 1/2 the anomaly of December 1987, we can say that all the heat accumulated since that time is now gone. It isn’t like all that heat has hidden itself to suddenly re-appear. It is flat gone. It will take more energy to heat the planet back up to what it was in 1998 than it took to heat it up from 1987 to 1998. That heat isn’t going to just suddenly pop out of a cave or something and *bingo* we are back to 1998 temperature levels. It is gone forever … radiated into space.
The oceans have not warmed. The atmosphere has not warmed, we are cooler now than we were in December 1987. Under the IPCC forecast, that should be an absolute impossibility. But here we are. So one can continue to believe the IPCC forecast but that would have to be an act of faith, not an act of scientific observation. It is a religious decision one would have to make on their own because it isn’t a scientific observation that can be proved based on data. It would be an act of faith based on a model someone built that one would hold to be more accurate than thousands of scientific instruments (even with the “adjustments” made to the data in increasingly desperate attempts to validate the models).
I believe now is the time to place the popcorn order.
Bill Marsh (14:12:36) :
“Even if you know 99% of the variables to the degree necessary being wrong about 1% can cause wildly erroneous results, it’s the nature of chaotic systems.”
Ahhhh, the famous butterfly effect. I wonder how that is captured in the models? Isn’t it possible that all of the temperature swings we see are simply side-effects of chaos? Not to rain on all the counter-theories, but …
(This is off-topic, but this looks like the best place to post this.)
We have some very sharp people here in Lane County, Oregon, that have figured out how to bill the rest of the USA for not working. Oregonians used to work at logging to sell lumber to the rest of you. That’s hard dangerous work. We finally got smart, and quit logging, because a forest that isn’t logged is worth millions in carbon sequestration. You have not been paying for this service, and it’s not free. Pay up.
ak:
“only that a 10 year trend is statistically meaningless. and it appears i’m not alone.”
Then why do Hansen and Schmidt publish papers about a 10 year ocean warming trend as though it is very meaningful? Why do they look at 10 year polar ice melt trends as though they are meaningful?
You cannot take the Tamino noise explanations seriously in this. We have independent data sets from independent sources that all show the same thing. And that does not correspond to Tamino’s noise example.
You can claim that a ten year trend is not meaningful because we have cycles of natural variability that are longer than ten years. But the warmers claim that thirty years is meaningful, and we have elements of natural variability that are longer than 30 years.
If you think that a ten year trend isn’t meaningful, then explain why please.
@ur momisugly Janama:
I just love it when alarmists use that hansen prediction, as can be seen on real climate!!!! Why??? Who wants to answer that?? Anyone kids??
… Oooh me! Pick me pick me!!
….. Okay.. Go ahead Alex…
That prediction (barely) matches reality only up to 1990… After that the real world diverges sharply from the prediction (conveniently ommited from the graph), in yet another graph the real world data totally zips across in the opposite direction after 1998, let alone the more exaggerated predictions which just make those models look absolutely useless, (like a bikini in Spokane in the Gorean winter of 2008)
What is also funny is that in some parts, although the general trend does follow prediction (up to 1990s) at various short intervals a spike upward in prediction was a spike downward in reality! Hence in these short term periods the models were useless!!
I agree with the comment about predicting ENSO,,, without being able to predict ENSO accurately past may 2009, all models are useless in predicting climate into the future simply because although there are short term predictable cycles, in reality climate is so chaotic it could be an ice age next week or an immense heatwave for all we know.
This is yet another tactic used by alarmists in their attempt to glorify these models,,, sigh… garbage in, garbage out!! 😀
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1037/3175164436_814eedc3e4.jpg?v=0
Well DJ, I guess you must know all about records but playing around with graphs and one cherry is not going to prove a season let alone global warming. Also, can’t find yours on the BOM site. Where did the data come from?
From this graph which is from the official BOM website I detect a downward trend in mean temp since 1998 and if you select max and min and SST you will get the same trends, moreso with min and even moreso with SST.
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/timeseries.cgi?variable=tmean®ion=aus&season=0112
Shouldn’t they be going up like yours?
I was under the impression the Oceans had warmed since 1987. Am I wrong?
Dr. James Hansen concluded:
“If the planet gets too warm, the water vapor feedback can cause a runaway greenhouse effect. The ocean boils into the atmosphere and life is extinguished. …
Then why hasn’t water vapor alone, with its theoretically upwardly spiraling feedback, already done it?
@Bill,
the Finnish study referenced at CA is based on tree lines rather than regular dendro tree rings.
Reminder: you can vote once every 24 hours [not once a day — 24 hours has to elapse between votes].
It takes maybe 5 seconds [once the site loads. They’re very busy.] This will make it really easy: just click here, and be part of the winning team!
Hi,
I tried the NCDC plot following the instructions. The -0.78 change is FAHRENHEIT, not CENTIGRADE.
Regards
Joel Shore
“No, you don’t disprove a theory by making up a strawman version of the theory which has no relation to the actual theory and then finding data in contradiction to this. Perhaps you should go and study what the AGW predictions really are before you talk about them.”
————————————————————
Enlighten me. What is the straw-man version of the theory? A straw-man is created by a false restatement of the original theory or by an exaggeration of the consequences of the original theory, the latter the stock-in-trade of the AGW mongers.
The original theory, as stated by the Maurice Strong/Algore/UN/IPCC consortium, is that man-made carbon dioxide is causing global warming. This is a false premise. Man, at the most, is only responsible for 17% of the current atmospheric concentration of 385 ppm CO2. There is no link between man-made CO2 and global warming and, in addition, there is no link between GHG – minus water vapor – and global warming.
With the change in the chairmanship of the IPCC to a vegetarian, Dr. Pachauri, the theory has been expanded to include bovine global warming (BGW), swine global warming (SGW) and farm animal global warming (FAGW) – all emitting the evil methane (CH4).
The global warming alarmists have degraded into a real-life version of Don Quixote.
Dr. Roy Spencer has two blogs you should read at: http://www.drroyspencer.com/
Global warming/climate change are independent of any false AGW, BGW, SGW or FAGW claims by the Don Quixote alarmists.
ak @ur momisugly 09:31:36)
You seem to be complaining of cherry picking. Well, the global warming hysterics cherry pick their trend from the coldest start period in the past few hundred years.
Why not choose a start period of, oh, I don’t know, say 1000 AD? Hey, look, warming’s disappeared!!
I’ve recently pulled apart the components of GISS ModelE and, based on this deconstruction, have extended it out another 10 years (from the end period of 2003). So this is what goes into an actual climate model.
The model would already be out be by 0.15C or more in just five years.
Here is ModelE’s hindcast versus GISS’ temp since 1880 – (not very good compared to my ocean cycle reconstruction).
http://img355.imageshack.us/img355/9043/modelehindcastoz1.png
Here is the Aerosols forcing component – Black Carbon and Sulfates from smokestacks and car emissions – (which is a little “forced” in my mind).
http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/6919/modeleaerosolshb4.png
Here is the Volcano forcing (which misses most of the volcanoes other than Pinatubo).
http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/7802/modelevolcanoesmr4.png
Here is the Land-Use forcing – including the Urban Heat Island, Deforestation and Agriculture – (which, surprise, has a negative temperature influence).
http://img127.imageshack.us/img127/7097/modelelandusexr5.png
Here is the Solar forcing (which has a positive impact of about +0.1C but will have declined to 0.0C now).
http://img355.imageshack.us/img355/3111/modelesolarej8.png
Net Other forcings – not including GHGs is pretty random.
http://img127.imageshack.us/img127/5221/modeleothertw0.png
Here is ALL Other Forcings versus GHGs/CO2 – (the large GHG impact needs to be offset by Large negative numbers in other forcings to keep the hindcast close to the actual temperature record).
This is the important chart.
http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/6131/modeleghgvsotherbc9.png
Based on these components and their recent trends, we can extend GISS ModelE out to 2013 (from 2003) and see how close a premiere climate model comes to the actual temperature trend (surprise – it is already off by quite a bit in just 5 years.)
http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/8594/modeleextend2013gi9.png
Lou Dobbs joins the rebel alliance…
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-balan/2009/01/06/cnn-s-lou-dobbs-belief-global-warming-almost-religion
Heh. Told you so.