GISS Divergence with satellite temperatures since the start of 2003

Mark (15:41:33) :
Many of the stations haven’t dropped out, it is simply that NOAA does not collect data from them any longer. A ten minute search on the web will locate up-to-date (and historical) data for a lot of those missing stations from the websites of the meteorological agencies of e. g. Canada, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Australia etc. etc.
As for why NOAA doesn’t bother to use the data, your guess is as good as mine.

I see no reason for the data from Australia to be less – we have automatic stations all over the country – we didn’t just recently shut any of them down.
REPLY: That is correct, and Australia, IMHO, has a better sited and maintained network than that of the USA. – Anthony

It’s worse than it looks Models have shown that the satellite trend should be 1.2 times greater than surface trend here’s a quote from John Christy (UAH) on CA.
J Christy:
December 19th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
Ratio factor:

Climate models display a fairly robust ratio of the troposphere anomalies/trends represented by the surface variation vs. the LT profile of MSU temperatures of 1:1.2 globally, and 1:1.3 in the tropics (Steve: it is 1.3 for the tropics and 1.2 for the globe). These have been called amplification factors. Models indicate that anomalies and trends of the surface become larger by these factors in the LT profile (See CCSP report for example or Douglass et al. 2007 for model results). Observations have not agreed with these model-calculated ratios for long-term trends, but do agree on monthly scale anomalies. (see Christy et al. 2007 on Tropical Tropospheric Temps) and Douglass et al. 2007.
It’s really an interesting quote.
The standard deviation of detrended satellite and ground data confirms his remarks. If correct, the divergence is substantially worse than we see.

Mark (15:41:33) :
What is the reason for all of those stations dropping out?

The world wonders. It is a question that has been asked and has remained unanswered for years.

Has anyone checked the Hadley trend since 2003. I get -2.53 deg/century so it appears to be more in agreement with UAH/RSS than GISS (using Excel LINEST) – but I’ve had a couple of drinks so a ‘second opinion’ might be advisable.
John Philip (16:13:47) :
Based on this, I think the ENSO amplification theory is nullified.
You think so? Here’s a bit of fun –
JP
For reasons given above I’m not looking at numbers now, but following your argument you seem to be saying that Satellite readings are warmer (relatively) than the surface during El Nino events and cooler during La Nina. Since 2002, though, we have had largely ENSO-positive conditions which, according to the “ENSO amplication theory”, means that UAH and RSS should be warmer relative to GISS – so the trends should converge rather than diverge (up to mid-2007 at least). But I do need a clear head to think it through.

In my previous post I appear to have invented a new word, i.e. “amplication” as in “ENSO amplication theory” . That should be “amplification”.

avfuktning med kontrollerad ventilation vind – vindsavfuktare says:

No, one thing that stands out is the dismal coverage of oceans, more than two thirds of earths surface. Africa is bad but the ocean coverage is worse.

Yeah…That does kind of stand out doesn’t it? It did to me too. So, I followed the link that was provided above and found out why: Anthony and Steve have chosen “none” for the ocean analysis. I.e., they are not showing the data that GISS combines with their own land surface temperatures to get the GISS global Land – Ocean temperature anomaly that they have been discussing. If you go to the site and make a plot again with the ocean analysis chosen as HadI/Reyn_v2, you will see that the ocean coverage is in fact quite complete except very near Antarctica and in the arctic.

Anthony says:

I grow rather tired of someone telling me what sort of analyses this blog should and should not do, particularly from someone who uses two different names. The idea of this blog is to explore things that interest me, the contributors, and the readers. This divergence interests us, and if it leads to a better understanding, then that is what we shall do. Often times people pointing out weaknesses or alternate ideas are the best way to learn, and I welcome pointing out mistakes or suggestions for other ways to analyse the data, sans the sort of snark you display.

Fair enough…But, if I might throw out my own views (which may or may not be what Steve Talbot was thinking in his comment that you were replying to), what seems to happen here is that a lot of the commenters (and presumably many of the lurkers) take your analysis and jump to conclusions that are completely unwarranted because a more complete analysis would likely not support them. So, if you want to inform rather than misinform, it seems to me that it would work best to first be really really clear on the limitations of your own analysis from the start and second to point out to those who are jumping to unwarranted conclusions that those conclusions are not warranted from your analysis (which I have seen you do occasionally when people really step over the line and start tossing around accusations of fraud).
Of course, far be it from me to tell you how to run your blog…But I am just trying to give some constructive criticism!

But note that the station dropouts don’t seem to have made any difference. To get a rate of change of global temperatures over time, you probably don’t need more than a few dozen stations globally.
REPLY: Gavin Schmidt once said that “only 60 stations are needed”. The surfacestations.org project will identify those best stations, (at least initially for the USA) and once we have done so, we should be able to cull a surface dataset with a higher confidence level. The way it is going thus far, the best stations represent ~ 10% of the total USHCN station set. For GHCN, I anticipate that number being even lower because of the dropout issue as well as the fact that a larger majority of GHCN stations are at airports than the USHCN station set. – Anthony

Isn’t AGW a case of analysis with the jump to a conclusion?
Don’t we have to wait for the future to see if the conclusion is really valid?
Andrew

“Isn’t AGW a case of analysis with the jump to a conclusion?”
Not really, it was a conclusion followed by analysis hoping to validate the conclusion. In this case the chicken came first.
“On what basis do you make that statement?”
Because in a previous thread you can see that when the stations dropped out, there was no sudden change between the ground-based and satellite-based measurements.

Over and over again we see the same error, but it is not fraud in changes to the numbers: Link http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/14/distribution-analysis-suggests-giss-final-data-is-hand-edited/ . So the disregard to some of the stations use/used?
Anthony we are getting to a point that we need your certifying of stations
1,2-3,5 and run numbers on 1,2 V 3,5
we are running out of time… here comes January 19 (part A) ,20th (part B)
And BO well be making desions on lack of, or faulty data (not fraud) , just like W got on Iraq!
God help us all
Tim

C’mon, folks. Y’all have to respect NASA, James Hansen and GISS. There are many reasons to accept GISS data over the silly satellite data:
1) The ground-based GISS information is provided by THE premiere scientific agency in the world; after all, they sent guys to the moon, for crying out loud. How can you question the almighty NASA ?
2) The data is provided by NOAA stations and foreign stations which have impecable quality control procedures in place, as documented by Anthony Watts. You can be assured that any irregularities, such as BBQs under the temperature sensors or jet engines blowing on the sensors, have been addressed by the NASA experts, with computer-aided adjustments.
3) NASA has reviewed all the literature concerning UHI effects and determined that there is a very minor influence, which has been incorporated into computer programs that adjust the temperatures accordingly.
4) Adjustments have been made to lower all the temperatures in the ’30’s, because the thermometers and recording procedures back then sucked big time. This makes the temperatures of the latest part of the 20th century look high, but that is because NASA knows that CO2 is making them high.
5) You just gotta trust a governmental agency. After all, what motivation could they possibly have to fake anything or screw up? And have you ever seen a governmental agency screw up?
6) Computer programs, although written in Fortran, almost unintelligible, and not subject to any known QA/QC programs, have been posted on the Internet for your perusal.
Oh, and these brilliant people have also produced a computer model that tells us what the temperature will be in 2100!

kim:
“I think he’s lost, and really, I pity him.”
Me, too.

crosspatch:
“To get a rate of change of global temperatures over time, you probably don’t need more than a few dozen stations globally.”
Ok – I’ll bite. Please tell me where these few dozens should be sited. The variablility in the many and varied areas of the continental US would justify your “few” all by itself, yet comprises little of the NH landmass.
Personally, I think the more the merrier, with respect to proper siting and orientation, no more “adjustments” and probably automate them. It would give us an opportunity to study climates relationship to weather…that last is a little joke.

Why isn’t the data from ARGO being used? Check out the map of coverage on their home page:
http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/
Interesting site – “Float of the month”

“How many temperature stations per square mile are there for the ocean areas???”
Well, there are several thousand (3283 to be exact) floats measuring ocean temperature from the surface down to 2000 meters.
@ Andrew (19:22:02)
I believe you misunderstood. The most accurate observations show that there has not been any warming for the past 10 years. Ocean temperatures, as David Archibald mentioned in a comment in this thread have also been cooling for at least the past five years. It doesn’t look like there is any “global warming”.
“Ok – I’ll bite. Please tell me where these few dozens should be sited. ”
Ok, sure. If you are looking for a global trend over time, it isn’t really going to matter where you site them as long as you cite them away from places that have human causes changes such as land use changes. In theory, all you would need is one station because if the entire globe is warming, that one station should be enough to show that over a long enough period of time to cycle through all natural weather cycles.
I would place them in locations far away from cities and far away from areas that are actively changing such as in the process of being deforested and the land use changed from, say, forest to farming. Areas that are static would be fine so an area that is currently farmed and probably will be the for next century or so would probably be just great. I might put stations in the middle of large national parks and wilderness areas. Also in places like desert and tundra would work, too. As would large areas of open space that is relatively static such as Northern Canada. I would place none of these stations near population centers. They would be intentionally difficult to reach and automated. They might be visited one or more times a year for calibration and maintenance but would be otherwise quite far from any human influence.
Or we can just measure the ocean temperature. That is pretty much where the vast majority of the Earth’s heat is stored. I would measure it on the sea floor, though, not on the surface.

from Yahoo story: Americans giving Obama extraordinary support: polls
“A survey conducted by The New York Times and CBS News found a US public eager to give the president-elect a wide berth as he attempts to turn around a faltering US economy, tackle global warming, help solve the intractable Middle East peace process . . .”
Al Gore would be proud that tackling global warming is listed second for challenges that the President Obama must confront.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090118/pl_afp/usinaugurationobamapoll

Very interesting work, thanks for sharing Steve and Anthony.

Joel Shore (18:09:28) said:
“Maybe because they understand the huge errorbars in trends computed over such short time periods”
What you apparently failed to see is that what I gave you was a maximum. Drawing long term (30-year) trends across either a maximum or a minimum might not be a useful exercise. Once a maximum is crossed – as it was in 2000 – then your long term trends don’t necessarily apply. The valid trend line for near-future prediction is what’s happened since the maximum. At least until the next minimum is reached. Then – maybe – your long-term trend will be useful again.
The question at the moment is – what will the “short-term” trend look like at the end of this year – and for the next 5-10 years. Only the “short-term” trend line can give you a clue about that – maybe. Or not.
The models have already proven that they’re incapable of predicting long-term. And they will continue to do so until modified to include the myriad of other climate drivers that have so far failed to be seriously considered. The name of the game isn’t CO2 – if you’re gonna talk “science” then the game is – What factors did we miss so badly that our very expensive models have failed so badly? And the answer to that question that doesn’t lie with the IPCC. And possibly not with GISS.
I do believe that 9 years is sufficient to establish a trend. After all, the boys at GISS managed to establish their trend line is 9 years or so (1979-1988). And they seem to have no problem with using 8-year trend lines to supoort their case when it’s convenient.
I knew there was a reason I refused to join the atmospheric science team back then.
“In other words, they understand the limitations in drawing conclusions from their data better than you do.”
ROTFLMAO! I spent 40+ years drawing correct conclusions from far less and far worse data than they have available. I doubt they understand the limitations as well as you think. Or that I understand them as little as you think.
YMMV

Mongo (20:05:42) :
“crosspatch:
To get a rate of change of global temperatures over time, you probably don’t need more than a few dozen stations globally.”
Ok – I’ll bite. Please tell me where these few dozens should be sited.
This problem has been solved by pollsters the world over of how to find a representative population. A similar study should be done for representative locations with the correct weights . Depending on the statistical error that is deemed acceptable for the study the number of necessary stations can be deduced.
As statistical errors go like sqrt(N)/N. It will not be small if one wants to speak of temperature errors of the order of .1C over 15C. I do not think a few dozen would do the trick.
Better stick to satellite measurements from now on.

There is always a risk of a credibility gap when picking a timescale for looking at temperature trends.
A big word of thanks for woodfortrees.org for providing such a simple tool for looking at the data. Temperature up, down, or no change, its all there depending on your chosen timescale and start point.
Similarly its the argument about what is the timescale for “weather” and what for “climate”. How about we all agree that (say) 10 years is the (human) timescale for “climate”, and we don’t pick start or end points based on apparent changes or divergences?
If we do that then since 1999 all three indexes have risen. GISS by about 2 degC/century and the satellites by 1 degC/century.

Roy (17:27:07) : wrote:
Just wanted to raise an issue for general awareness: if someone has been adjusting published government data with the intent to influence government action, that person could be prosecuted for violation of 18 USC section 1519 and be sent to jail for up to 20 years.
—————————————————
Forget it Roy. That part of the U.S. legal system is terminally broken.
Having said that though, some of these people could not imagine the ferocity with which a class action plaintiff’s litigator would go after this if there’s a big damages pay-off to be had. The asymmetric warfare of costs of litigation versus potential damages awards is staggeringly in favor of such a plaintiff.
I’m not an attorney, but I’ve had the, shall we say, “educational experience” of being associated with a big time science litigation for ten years. Not producing ALL data and notes during discovery does not go over well with a Federal Judge – believe me. Testifying that the debate was over would not be a particularly good defense for ignoring 2008 and prior data either. Think Vioxx (not the one I was involved in). Think civil not criminal. Think big damages. It’s all about their finding a target that can pay up though, so don’t get too excited.

Re Anthony’s reply to Lars Kamél (13:34:27) :
“REPLY: I had thought about Amundsen-Scott base, but the the red band seemed so large in area, compared to other stations, that it seemed unrealistic to treat it as a single station. Perhaps one station is being distorted in the map resentation. Mercator projection does that. – Anthony”
Looking at the GISS maps you referred to they didn’t strike me as Mercator projections. They are I believe “Unprojected Lat Long World Maps” which distort both area and shape at virtually all latitudes, obviously moreso at the higher latitudes. (Mercator at least does preserve shape). However, that is not the issue for this post which was prompted by the “full width” high anomaly band located over Antarctica. Clearly this is reflective of only a few stations in the Antarctic.
However, if GISS calculates the area of anomaly based on the number of pixels on these maps (for example) then clearly anomalies at high latitudes such as what is shown on the map above reflect a disproportionate amount of the earth surface as having an anomaly compared to that same area on the GISS map being located at an equatorial latitude.
If you take a mean Radius of the earth as 6371km then a 100 km wide band of anomaly located wholly around the equator would occupy 4,003,017 sq km. The same anomaly located at the extreme top of bottom of the GISS map (which only extends to 80 deg N & S) would occupy 695,116 sq km. This is only 17% of the equatorial area yet on the GISS map shows or implies the anomaly to be the same area.
I stand to learn and be corrected about how GISS determines the areas of the anomalies in order to assess overall global temperature, but simply looking at the map and assigning a pixel to represent the anomaly, effectively a square of given size at the polar extemity of the GISS map has nearly 6 times the weighting in area of the same size square at the equator.

I am no AGW believer, but a true skeptic must consider all the possibilities:
The “GISS divergence” problem since 2003 may not be a problem at all – it is after all only 5 years of data, and MIGHT be a temporary anomaly. Look at how GISS & HADCRUT have varied since 1880:
http://i37.tinypic.com/6r20zb.jpg
Although the differences here never 0.1C, they are both land-based measurements, so you would expect them to be the closer. What is important it that they can ‘diverge’ for DECADES at a time, before coming back together (or even going in the other direction).
Secondly, it is possible that the satellite data is the source of the divergence, not GISS, although I don’t know what.

crosspatch (20:28:35) :
“Or we can just measure the ocean temperature. That is pretty much where the vast majority of the Earth’s heat is stored. I would measure it on the sea floor, though, not on the surface.”
Ha, ha! Oceans have a rather large range in bottom depth. Let’s say from 150 meters at the continental shelf break to 11,000m in the Mariana Trench. So what is your datum of reference?

To Alan and others: similar “pauses” in the warming have been observed before: take the 79-85, the 86-95, the 90-96 periods and all you’ll get is an apparent cooling. Nevertheless, no-one in his (her) right mind would dare to say that temperatures decreased since 79, 96 or 90.
This is short-term variability opposed to long-term trends. By the way, take a look at the UAH tropospheric temperature data for January http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/amsutemps.html You can check that the temperatures we have rightnow are in no way “cooler” than what we had the previous years. Despite la nina. And the solar minimum.

Joel (18:09:28)
Sure, sure, trend length can be argued in circles forever. Look at it this way. Temperature seems to have some of the behaviour of a cycle and 2003 looks like a peak. As the temperature curve’s negative slope steepens you’ll see why attention to inflection points can give understanding about a trend in a manner that arguing about its length won’t.
Another point I’ve made before with reference to the common use of 30 years as standard length of time to determine a trend. Well if the PDO has a phase length of 30 years, then looking at the last 30 years will always give you the wrong prediction for the next 30, if the PDO is as determinative of climate as I believe it is. Nice, huh?
========================================

The GISS minus RSS linear trend does not show any seasonal pattern, so I see no reason to believe it is related to “melting of ice” or any other summer phenomenon. UIUC shows global sea ice right at the 30 year mean. Regardless, why is the divergence occurring? A discrepancy of one month might be overlooked, but 72 consecutive months?
The reason for land only maps was to highlight the missing areas on land. That is the default setup on their site, but you can generate GISS ocean maps as well from the link in the article.

To Alan and others: similar “pauses” in the warming have been observed before: take the 79-85, the 86-95, the 90-96 periods and all you’ll get is an apparent cooling. Nevertheless, no-one in his (her) right mind would dare to say that temperatures decreased since 79, 96 or 90.
There was a plausible explanation for the pauses you mention, i.e. El Chichon in 1982, Pinatubo in 1991 and ENSO. Between 2003-2007 there were no volcanos and the PDO/ONI indices generally favoured warming. Remember ‘lack of volcanos’ is one of the reasons (perhaps now the only reason) given for the early 20th century warming.
I don’t get it. Climate scientists are supposed to have enough knowledge about the climate system that they can confidently attribute late 20th century to anthropogenic influences. But when the climate doesn’t respond as expeted – it’s just natural variability. Now fair enough I can understand that they can’t predict volcanos and probably not ENSO events either but when both these factors are weighted in favour of warming – what other ‘natural variability’ has caused a 5+ year lull.

In most scientific and engineering endeavours, the people in charge of the data respond to discrepancies like this with concern and thoughtful analysis.
There must be an explanation for the GISS/satellite divergence over the last 72 months, and it would be very helpful to policymakers (who rely heavily on the GISS graphs) to be informed about the explanation.

I hope this gets through. 😉
The Treasure Island / I Don’t Know What The Temperature Is Story
Captain Andrew is a sea captain in Seatown. Drinking one night at a bar, he hears there is treasure on Treasure Island. He vows he must have this treasure and goes to the mapmaker, Mr. Burnes, to buy a map with Treasure Island on it.
Mr. Burnes (with a pleasant smile): “Our maps are $50”
Captain Andrew: “Arrrrr!” He buys the map (with a scowl) and sets sail.
After months on the open sea, braving many storms and starvation and bouts of scurvy he gets to where the map says Treasure Island is, coordinates (x,y).
No island. He sails around the area looking for it, but can’t find it. He realizes he is running out of water and has to sail home, giving up the search.
When he gets back to Seatown he angrily goes back to Mr. Burnes, demanding an explantion of why he didn’t find Treasure Island.
Mr Burnes: “Yeah, about that… while you were gone we found out our map was inaccurate. We have since produced a better one. It’s $100 (inflation)”
Captain Andrew: “Arrrr!” He buys the map (with a more intense scowl) and sets sail.
After months on the open sea, braving many storms and starvation and bouts of scurvy he gets to where the map says Treasure Island is, coordinates now (x,y+50).
No island. He sails around the area looking for it, but can’t find it. He realizes he is running out of water and has to sail home giving up the search.
When he gets back to Seatown he angrily goes back to Mr. Burnes, demanding an explantion of why he didn’t find Treasure Island this time.
Mr Burnes (with pleasant smile): “Yeah, about that… while you were gone we found out our map was inaccurate. We have since produced a better one. It’s $150 (inflation again)”
Captain Andrew: “Arrrrr!” He buys the map (with an even bigger scowl) and sets sail.
After months on the open sea, braving many storms and starvation and bouts of scurvy he gets to where the map says Treasure Island is, coordinates now (x+10,y+75).
No island. He sails around the area looking for it, but can’t find it. He realizes he is running out of water and has to sail home giving up the search.
Captain Andrew is mad as h*ll.
On his way, he sees a shell of a man in the ocean, who is clinging to a plank.
Captain Andrew rescues the man, gives him some water, but still angry from his failures he screams at the rescued man:
“By my beard, you scurvy spider! …Where in blazes is Treasure Island?!”
Shell of a Man: “It’s around here somewhere. Let’s look at your map.”
They look at the map together. When he sees the map is made by Mr. Burnes he says:
“Oh… don’t buy maps from Mr. Burnes. His maps keep changing. You can’t trust him”
Captain Andrew: “Arrrr!”
THE END

“The planet is not anthropologically unstable. The people are.”
– Rich Gele’
Welcome to the new millenium folks.

Pearland Aggie (04:47:24) :
off topic, but is this an equatorial sunspot?http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_igr/1024/latest.html
if so, would it be safe to assume that this is a SC23 spot? it shows up on the magnetogram, but i’m not well versed in how to interpret the polarity depicted in the magnetogram.
That certainly looks like a cycle 23, there sems to be a C24 trying to form top left. Maybe Leif can explain this?

Paul said;
“Silly suggestion, but why could this extra heat not have gone into outer space? It seems logical to suggest that if heat [from the sun] can come in, the it should be able to escape also.”
I appreciate that the theory of AGW is in effect based on heat being unable to escape the thick ‘girdle’ of co2 back into space, but in reality how much of the heat that comes in plus the heat we create, disappears into space and over what period?
TonyB

Richard M (20:26:04) said: “steven G (20:03:56) makes a very good point about the 60 station nonsense. For a number like this to be valid it ASSUMEs a homogenized world. I don’t think many folks here believe our world is one giant climate. The truth is the world consists of multiple, interacting climates. Anyone who attempts to model the world otherwise is bound to fool themselves. ”
As a just a regular average Joe, it seems to me that this statement sums it all up. It has always been a mystery to me as to why we even try to get an average temperature of such a diverse and complex world. What does it really mean? At my locatoin we had lows in the upper 30’s this last few days but before that the lows were in the 50’s and 60’s which is where they are now. With such constant swings in temperature just at my location how can anyone even speak about 1.0 degree C average changes over the entire world? It makes no sense to me at all to even worry about it. And lastly, I never see any reference to the changes in the Earth’s obiquity or the precession of the equinox when discussing long term climate changes. As I have learned from Lief it is not TSI that counts it is solar isolation at the surface that counts and those two factors are the major players in determining that. As I understand it we are in a period of decreasing obiquity with the winter soltice heading for aphelion which should (in the long term) reglaciate the planet and there is nothing we can do about it. Luckily for us, our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren will not be around to suffer through that epoch.
But this is a most interesting blog and deserving of it’s award.

Has anyone ever been able to replicate GISS temp data?
When in doubt, go with the disclosed, most transparent data.
Hansen has stated in a public letter to Scientific American that he ahs managed his data to achieve desired results in the past.
I will be unsurprised if, as has achieved higher and higher status, that his ‘management’ of data is entirely jsutified.

The simplest answer is that GISS is affected by increasing UHI, erroneous adjustments, lack of coverage, etc, and satellites aren’t. The differences between the sets goes all the way back to the start of the sat temps (1979), with the differences increasing gradually since then. Not just GISS, but all the various surface temp records show this compared to the sat temps.

E.M.Smith (01:12:47) :
jae (19:19:33)
6) Computer programs, although written in Fortran, almost unintelligible, and not subject to any known QA/QC programs, have been posted on the Internet for your perusal.
Where? (I was pretty good with FORTRAN once. it was my first computer language.)
I’d love to get a look at the guts for a little QA exercise. (Though if nausea is induced I’m bailing… 8-0
Might be able to get it over at CA but as far as I’m aware, no-one has been able to compile the source ‘as is’. Those that have been able to modify it to compile have been unable to reproduce the GISS figures.
Dave.

Steve Goddard, you wrote in your post, “Since the start of 2003, GISS has been diverging from RSS at 2.64C/century…”
Much of that can be explained as the difference between mediums sampled for the oceans, as noted in my 18:19:21 comment above. A quick extrapolation of the trend line in the first graph linked in my comment leads to a trend of approximately 2.02 deg C/century.
And as noted by looking at the long-term data, much of that is the difference between the responses of ocean TLT and SST to ENSO events.
Regards

Yep, it’s a ghost of Solar Cycle 23 Past. It’s discussed over on the 95% sunspots thread.
============================================

“To Alan and others: similar “pauses” in the warming have been observed before: take the 79-85, the 86-95, the 90-96 periods and all you’ll get is an apparent cooling. ”
Ric,
El Chicon and MT St Helen’s erruptions in ealry 1903s, and Mt Pinutumbo in the early 1990s explain much of the apparent cooling during those time periods; however, there doesn’t appear to be any short term cooling from 86-90. Not sure what your point is. Anthony picked 2003 to get away from the Super El Nino/ENSO cycle of 1997-2000. The point of this thread isn’t to cherry pick apparent cooling trends, but to point out a serious conflict in 2 datasets. Divergence points to a serious problem. As a matter of fact, the divergence problem MBH9X (the famed Hockey Stick) had sealed the reputation of Mann’s temp reconstruction. The last 30 years of Mann’s proxies diverged significantly with recorded local temps.
Hansen is attempting to do what Mann et als could not – call it building a Hockey Stick by other means.

“C’mon again, CP. Siberia is alledgely the farthest you can get from human influences, but look at the data we get from there. And what portion of this globe is entirely removed from human influences such as aerosols, soot, etc. ”
There is potentially a serious UHI problem in Siberia, as Anthony posted awhile back. Above ground steam emmiting plumbing used to warm the cities during the most frigid periods of winter may be giving false warming -it all depends upon the siting of the temperature equipment.
The other problem is, of course, lack of reporting stations. GISS interpolates the temps for the empty gridcells there.

Steven Talbot,
1993 to 1999 is not an analogy, because the trends were parallel (no divergence) through 1997, and then the satellites had a step function upwards in 1998 due to a very strong El Nino event which made a large spike in the data.
The 2003-2008 trend is different in that the divergence is linear and there were no major El Nino, volcanic or statistical events during the period.

Indeed Climate Heretic,
You are on to the point of the Captain Andrew story. Unless temperature right now is recorded and, you, me, the moderators, the scientists who can’t agree on it, the politicians who won’t agree on it, everyone who ever cared or will care in the future and everyone agrees that’s what it is, and it is considered THE temperature today and no one ever changes it, because it is the history, does any of this have any meaning now or in the future.
Andrew ♫

“global temps are globalogna. ”
I would tend to agree with that. And there is also a larger problem. We have been attempting to spot trends over too short of time spans. In the Northern Hemisphere, we seen to have a PDO cycle of about 60 years or so. It is looking to me like we get something like 30 years of cooling and 30 years of warming. What I think needs doing is looking at temperatures over several cycles. For example, the cycle that peaked in the 1990’s apparently didn’t get as warm as the cycle that peaked in the 1930’s. It also looks like we still haven’t hit as warm a cycle as we saw in the MWP. The MWP apparently wasn’t as warm as the Roman Warm Period. It looks to me that while we have periods of warming and cooling, each warming hasn’t seemed to reach as warm as the one previous so we have possibly been in a period of general cooling for the past thousand or two years.
I have a problem with people looking at rates of cooling over a decade or two and extrapolating that rate out over a century in the future when we are probably in only a 30 year cycle. Same with cooling. Superimposed on these cycles appear to be “super cycles” of things such as the Little Ice Age. We haven’t been keeping temperature records long enough (since the thermometer as we know it was invented only in the 1700’s.) to make intelligent projections 100 years into the future because we don’t know what normal behaviors are over periods of several centuries.
Looking at the warming from about 1976 on to about the early 2000’s, it was probably a mistake to project that warming to continue on for a century into the future and now we see the other half of the cycle coming into play as we appear to be in a period of cooling as we also experienced after the period of warming in the 1930’s during the 1950;s, 1960s, and early 1970’s. It would be equally wrong to project the current cooling for 100 years into the future as that probably isn’t going to happen either.
We need to look at where these cycles peak. Did this cycle peak at a higher temperature than the last one? If so, by how much? We need to watch this cooling period and see if it bottoms out lower than the one of the 1970’s. This is the only way we are going to see real trends in temperatures because temperature change isn’t linear.

Anthony, could you put an e-mail on this site in order to send you information directly, without leaving them in comments?
For the lack of e-mail… please take a look at this: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/01/global_warming_is_for_dummies.html
After “Global Warming for Idiots”, now they will publish the “Global Warming for Dummies” and of course it is all over the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation up here.
Also, Have you heard of this German ship that left South Africa last week in order to dump tons of Iron Sulfide in the ocean to seed the ocean to boost the algea growth… against international laws???!!!
http://www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/Article.aspx?id=915801
Reply: Take a look here. ~ charles the moderator

Steven Goddard,
1993 to 1999 is not an analogy, because the trends were parallel (no divergence) through 1997, and then the satellites had a step function upwards in 1998 due to a very strong El Nino event which made a large spike in the data.
I wasn’t suggesting the period was simply ‘equal but opposite’. Every period is subject to a different combination of influences. My point was simply that one can readily cherry-pick the same length period which shows GISS warming less against the sat records, just as one can pick a period showing it greater. I’d actually suggest that 93 to 95.7ish is converging and 95.8 to 97.3ish is diverging before the convergence of 98. These are interesting indications that the land-based temperatures do not respond in lock-step with the satellite observations, which is hardly enormously surprising, given that they’re recording different things. As for the period you choose to look at, you say ” there were no major El Nino, volcanic or statistical events during the period”. However, we have recently experienced La Nina conditions and solar output has diminished. Should we expect surface and lower troposphere temperatures to respond equally and immediately to such influences? It seems at least sensible to ask that question before some leap to the conclusion that the best explanation is fraud.
What is your view of the UAH divergence (in favour of less warming) from all other records over the period of satellite records? To quote you again, ” In most scientific and engineering endeavours, the people in charge of the data respond to discrepancies like this with concern and thoughtful analysis.” Does your concern apply to the much longer-term divergence in UAH or only to the six-year GISS divergence you have raised here?

Andrew,
Exactly correct. It is IMPOSSIBLE to sail from Halifax to Nassau without taking ‘fixes’ along the way.
Dr. Hansen is using dead reckoning with the help of super computers. He has picked his port of call and has plotted his course. But he will NEVER get there by predetermining what course to steer.
Regardless of all the technology in the world, you cannot sail from here to there without taking ‘course corrections’ along the way. There are simply too many variables on earth and in the universe.
Cheers.

“Heck, we should record the temp is as many locations as possible”
The satellites pretty much do that already, over the entire surface of the planet, not just on land.

crosspatch – maybe they should just use this map to locate the ship!!! http://www.awi.de/de/infrastruktur/schiffe/polarstern/wo_ist_polarstern/
and it was updated today!!!

Crosspatch,
“The satellites pretty much do that already”
‘Pretty much’ is not very scientific. I need a number to see if that is ‘good enough’. 😉
Andrew ♫

OT but very interesting from Spaceweather:

A new sunspot is emerging inside the circle region–and it is a strange one. The low latitude of the spot suggests it is a member of old Solar Cycle 23, yet the magnetic polarity of the spot is ambiguous, identifying it with neither old Solar Cycle 23 nor new Solar Cycle 24.

Is there a plot somewhere that projects GISS back before 1990 with all the dropped stations removed from the earlier numbers?

Thank you RICH, for the recognition. 😉
Andrew ♫

“‘Pretty much’ is not very scientific. I need a number to see if that is ‘good enough’. ;)”
Okay, the entire planet with the exception of a “dead zone” directly over both poles that is not observable due to orbital issues. RSS is from -70 to 82.5 latitude.

Andrew (18:45:15) :
Isn’t AGW a case of analysis with the jump to a conclusion?
Don’t we have to wait for the future to see if the conclusion is really valid?

There won’t be any way to really tell if the conclusion is valid. How will you isolate a CO2 warming caused by humans from any other warming? All you’ll even have is correlation.

Referring to Joel Shore’s comment in support of GISS/Hadley publications and pronouncements, “In other words, they understand the limitations in drawing conclusions from their data better than you do.”
If they understood “the limitations in drawing conclusions from THEIR data”, they would welcome discussion from all responsible “scientists” and STOP making the fearful pronouncements OF THEIR CONCLUSIONS. Be definition, “limitations of data”, affect certainty! There are all kinds of “scientists”, and from my own lowly, lay-person, common sense evaluation of limited studies (which include the participants, history and methods of the IPCC, peer-reviewed research on ice, oceans, atmosphere, the sun, historical geology, and links found on numerous blogs), I think that those driving the hysteria over what they now call “climate change” are irresponsible as “scientists”, and that they are driven by those with less than responsible motives.
When the CO2 “issue” came to my awareness, my first question was, “How do ‘they’ measure the earth’s temperature”? ‘They’ quickly mentioned CO2 less often, perhaps because that part of the equation was rather mysterious to the masses except for catchy phrases like “the carbon foot-print”, “green”, “poisonous greenhouse gases”, and ‘they’ moved toward use of the terms “global warming”, and more recently “climate change” in order to keep a movement going that has global political, social, and economic motives AND consequences. It is obvious that my first question has definitely NOT been answered, and the answer to that one question is really the critical one required to reach any valid conclusions to the hypotheses for AGW.
I really appreciate the scientific information and polite discourse I have found on WUWT. Science is NEVER settled. Scientific debate is NEVER over. Those who think it is on this issue should review what the scientific method is. It is the best tool we have for finding truth. I am so pleased to see that many responsible scientists all over the world have been coming forward on this issue to counter un-truths and to attempt to educate those in power as well as all the good citizens of the world, most of whom are doing their best to be good stewards of our planet while trying to survive. Reason must prevail, so that humanities’ resources can used to make wise decisions about environmental challenges from weather and natural, sometimes catastrophic, earth events, WHILE cleaning up poisons going into our air, land, and water, addressing poverty, health, starvation, wars, conserving all resources, and doing our best to live in harmony with all life on the planet. We need human and spiritual wisdom, and we desperately need respect for one another!

I don’t know whether this has any bearing on the debate in this track but the following CRU INFORMATION SHEET #1 caught my eye. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/
According to this exhibit, it shows the GLOBAL TEMPERATURE RECORD [ANOAMLY [from 1850 to 2007]. Combined global land and marine surface temperatures.
It shows a net change of 0.362+ 0.423 =0.785 degrees C over 157 years. This reflects an average temperature change of 0.785/15.7 = 0.05 degrees C per decade, ¼ the IPCC forecast for the first two decades or 0.2 per decade. IPCC further projects various scenarios that project temperature increases of 1-6 degrees C over 100 years. This means accelerated warming approaching 2 to 4 times [for say 3.5 degrees C increase in 100 years] their early year’s projections of 0.2 per decade. This translates on the low side to warming decades of 0 .2 x 2= 0.4 per decade or nearly 8 times the historical trend for the last 157 years of 0.05. It isn’t going to happen folks, in my opinion.
I think their fundamental flaw is that they seem to be using short term, straight line, and highest decadal figures of 1978-2007 trend line or flawed models to project 100 years ahead. As the graph shows above, in 100 years there are 3-4 cycles of warming and cooling for various reasons [ocean temperature changes, volcanic eruptions, etc.] which significantly slow the climate rise and keep this planet’s climate on a more even keel.
Also the temperature increase between 1913 and 1944 or 0.390 degrees C is almost the same as ‘so called manmade global warming’ increase [ the cause of all the recent panic] of 1976-2007 or 0.491. degrees C. There is only a net difference of 0.1 degrees. So the claim that the recent accelerated warming is primarily due to recent man greenhouse gases seems false since similar warming have occurred before and quite recently .
If we are turning the global energy strategies upside down because of a false non existent warming threat requiring a massive swing to nuclear energy, we are making a very big mistake. We are jumping from a frying pan into a broiler.

George E. Smith (10:31:12) :
Could be; for a start HEAT is a verb, not a noun.

Says here it can be both, but the first definitions are for the noun. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/heat

Jeff Alberts,
I agree but to free the prisoner, and help him escape his chains, sometimes you have to start by finding a way over the barbed wire fence.
Ya know what I mean? 😉
Andrew ♫

“We already know from the data we have, however poor it may be, that GW isn’t global by any stretch of the imagination.”
I’ll that a step further and say we don’t know exactly what we know, because the data has been adjusted.
Andrew ♫

“If you only have one station, how would you possibly know if anything global is happening? Sheesh!”
Because if it is “global” then it is “global” and if it is happening at one place it is happening at them all. In other words, if I have data over, say, 200 or 300 years, that is probably enough to show if there is a trend either positive or negative. Taking data for less than 100 years is likely useless. You need at least one cycle of data just to establish some frame of reference. That takes somewhere along the lines of 50 to 70 years. You then need to measure over a second cycle to see if it has changed from the first. So now we are at somewhere between 100 and 140 years. And then you need a third cycle to see of there is really any trend … to see if the cycles are topping out at higher or bottoming out at lower values over time … and so here were are at about 1.5 to 2 centuries before any kind of real “signal” can be resolved and a real trend line would take, say, 4 or 5 such cycles to resolve.
In other words, attempting to show “man made global warming” during a period when we were in a period of a natural cycle that has rising temperatures anyway is actually quite silly.

Steve Goddard:
As a follow up, I remembered a post I had done in May about the GISTEMP 1200km versus 250km smoothing.
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/05/giss-temp-smoothing-radius-comparison.html
I had already endured the trouble of retrieving the GISTEMP data with 250 smoothing and wanted to see if it would add anything to the discussion. I went back and cleaned up the delta T (1200km smoothing minus 250km smoothing) graph and took out the poly trend line so not to have to endure the wrath of others who comment here:
http://i39.tinypic.com/120qkpg.jpg
Then I shortened the time span to January 2003 to May 2008. Aha, there’s a positive trend in the 5+ years of data.
http://i42.tinypic.com/5pldon.jpg
So I went back and tried to update the graph by tacking on the data since May, without looking for any updates there may have been to the earlier data. Here’s the delta-T graph with the update:
http://i42.tinypic.com/mcexe9.jpg
And the short-term version:
http://i41.tinypic.com/2qixs75.jpg
That cluster in recent months concerns me, as does the shift in the trend line, so I’m not sure if that really helped.

For Jim Norvell:
Last year I analyzed the temp histories (from GISS) of only those stations in existence before 1940. This date was the mid-century peak in temp, as well as the start of CO2 increase. I identified over 400 stations (excl US) whose net increase from 1940 to 2008 was but 0.2 deg C on avg (identical to US graph). This amount was considerably less than the GISS Global Mean (+0.6 deg C). The GISS analysis was corrupted (in my opinion) by the addition of thousands of stations after 1950.
Sam

“Five years is ample time to confirm these measurements. ”
It absolutely is not. We had 30 years of cooling going in to the 1970’s. We had thirty years after that. Five years of data would have shown absolutely nothing about what was going on with “global temperature”.
As the most recent peak in temperatures did not reach the level of the 1930’s peak, it appears that we are in an overall period of cooling shorter term variations of warming and cooling but overall, temperatures appear to be cooling. And the problem with even the “modern” record is that the early part of the record simply shows recovery from the Little Ice Age.
The fastest rate of rise in the temperature record is during the 1700’s. There was no significant CO2 impact from humans at that time. What Hansen has documented is natural cyclic warming from a positive PDO cycle and extrapolated that over time as if it would continue forever.
You can absolutely not gain any significant information over a 5 year period in the Northern Hemisphere except to learn what the current natural cycles are doing. Anyone who claims otherwise is practicing voodoo, not science.
Can you look at the rate of this morning’s temperature change and use that information to predict what tomorrow’s temperature will be? No. Can you look at the rate of change in daily high temperatures in April and predict based on just that information what October’s high temperatures will be? No. But if you have a history of the entire annual cycle of temperature over an entire year, you can get an idea of what the range of summer is likely to be. And it is the same with cycles that are longer than a year.
We are talking about cycles of natural variation that are several decades long. You can not take readings over a portion of it and extrapolate from that what the temperature will be a century hence.

I would like to sincerely thank everyone involved for a fascinating blog that is doing exactly what scientists should be doing with this and other issues – examining it from all sides until no doubt remains.
My interest in this far exceeds my knowledge – as I count myself more a philosopher than physical philosopher.
As to those who rudely interupt this discussion with comments designed to stifle debate – I do wish they would go back and re-read Descartes. As the father of modern scientific method [my assertion – debate at your peril 🙂 ] his methods have been followed in outline from the time he proposed them. We abandon them now at our peril.
After all – you can’t do any science without using his co-ordinate system.
Congratulations people – Descartes would be proud.
And sorry for being slightly off thread.

John Philip:
Looks like the two of us did the exact same analysis independently. You can see my spreadsheets here if you want to play around with them: http://drop.io/hausfath/asset/temp-data-12-2008-xls
I’m just curious what the mechanism could be for the 6 month lag, as I’m somewhat loathe to arbitrarily shift the data simply because I eyeball a better fit.

Crosspatch, you entirely miss my point. Five years is quite enough to determine the measurements – ie the temperature is not increasing over that period. So the question immediately is why?
Yes, this is natural variation. But it must be explained. Exactly where is the heat going? If it correlates with PDO, so what? Where is the heat going or being stored?

Bill Illis: you got ‘er nailed. And it’s all about heat STORAGE on this planet, not magical radiation cartoons. The radiation is a “symptom” or “measurement” of what is happening.

“Nobody sensible should expect that the 4 major global mean temperature series, 2 satellite, 2 surface based, will ever show 100% correlation.”
I agree with that. But by the same token, they should show the same basic general direction. They might vary in absolute value but one wouldn’t expect to see a situation where the satellite and two ground-based networks (HADCrut and GISS) show cooling and a third (NOAA) shows warming over the same period. It reminds me of an old Sesame Street song that went something like “one of these things doesn’t belong”.
Once the CRN gets up and going, it will put a lot of these issues to bed because there will no longer be any need for “adjustments”. This is a network designed from the start to be a climate monitoring network rather than a weather network pressed into service for climate monitoring. It is going to take a considerable amount of time, though, to collect enough data from these stations to get any idea of long term trends. Besides that, the network covers only the US, we still have considerable problems with stations in the rest of the world (ROW) as those tend to have the least assurance in quality of equipment and observations.

Crosspatch, the problem is that the ocean temperature doesn’t show that heat is being stored there over the last five years. Both temperature and sea level rises stalled. The onus is on the AGW proponents to show where the heat is being stored.
The evidence so far as far as I can see is that it is not being stored anywhere on earth. Therefore their forcing assumptions are false.

RE Crosspatch
You stated that “the only place that “stores” heat is going to be the ocean and the only place it is going to be “lost” is to the atmosphere and into space”.
Is that a scientific certainty or only an assumption based on our current limited knowledge about how the sun and this planet interact?

I like the last several comments and thoughts therein, especially crosspatch’s idea of a global climate monitoring network. I can change my answer from a ‘no’ to ‘yes’ as soon as it is up! (The millions Al Gore spent on his Global Warming propaganda campaign could have been spent on that.) I think you guys are starting to ‘ask the right questions’, as my boss would say. 😉
Andrew

John, Zeke, allmost the entire trend divergence between RSS and UAH can be accounted for with a step change in 1992 coinciding with satellite transition. This step change has been noted by both RSS and UAH and is examined by Dr. Christy in a 2007 Journal of Geophysical Research article. Jeff Id has been corresponding with Dr. Christy and has a post which corrects for this step by removing the discontinuity and substituting trend corrected GISS data. This post is one of several exploring surface vs. tropospheric temp anomaly linear slopes.
One could argue that the use of GISS to correct tropospheric data may be an issue however Jeff showed in a previous post comparing GISS with UAH that the only real difference with the metrics is with the 30 year linear slopes. When the metrics are detrended, then 2 year slope differences are plotted, the 2 sigma slope difference was a measly .002 C per 30 years! This gave Jeff the confidence to use GISS data in the RSS / UAH discontinuity.
Another interesting observation when comparing filtered, detrended UAH vs. GISS was that the ratio of standard deviations was consistent with the hypothesized tropospheric amplification factor.
In summary: 1) Trend corrected GISS / UAH comparisons demonstrate a very tight relationship – it is the 30 year linear slopes which diverge. 2) 2 year slope differences demonstrate tropospheric amplification consistent with hypothesis. 3) When corrected the UAH / RSS slopes become very close.
All of these things suggest a trend bias in either the GISS surface, or the satellite metrics. The alignment of RSS and UAH slopes does not eliminate a possible common bias but it sure narrows the range of possible explanations as data adjustment methods for the most part are independant. The fact that tropospheric amplification seems to show up in short term trends but not long term would suggest that the true slope difference between surface and satellite should be surface x tropospheric amplification = troposphere. The alignment of UAH and RSS by correcting for the 1992 step would appear to tip the scales toward the GISS surface data containing the bias.

Layman Lurker (22:52:03) :
The alignment of UAH and RSS by correcting for the 1992 step would appear to tip the scales toward the GISS surface data containing the bias.
Add to that that the GISS surface data are the output of innumerable convolutions of corrections, even changing the old data when new data comes in, plus the results of the surface station checks Anthony has initiated that point to the elephant in the room clearly.

Here is what the trends look like using Christy’s scaling factor for the satellite data:
http://www.iforce.co.nz/i/73ace4a6e5bef6c44bdeb1cb478778de.gif
It’s noteworthy and obvious as Mike McMillan pointed out in the earlier thread that the 1998 peak is severely and uniquely flattened by GISS relative to the satellite data. This requires explanation.

Flanagan (03:05:07)
The criticisms of G&T of the IPCC’s conception of the greenhouse effect are still cogent even if their own conception of the physics isn’t sure. But check out Miscolzi’s, and now Spencer’s, contributions to the destruction of the overly simplistic IPCC conception.
============================

Flanagan states:
“Surface warms first because the this is where the IR back-radiation comes from. For example, if the sun were to be the major driver of the observed warming, upper atmsophere layers should warm faster than the rest. Which is, well, exactly the opposite of what we see…”
You may want to take this up with Gavin Schmidt:
“On multidecadal time scales, tropospheric amplification of surface warming is a robust feature of model simulations, but it occurs in only one observational data set. Other observations show weak, or even negative, amplification. These results suggest either that different physical mechanisms control amplification processes on monthly and decadal time scales, and models fail to capture such behavior; or (more plausibly) that residual errors in several observational data sets used here affect their representation of long-term trends.”
Link:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/309/5740/1551

I’ve noticed that March of 2008 has one of the largest divergences of late between Satellite and Surface, likely playing a significant part in the diffenence in trend slopes from 2003. Based on the March maps of RSS vs GISTEMP, the areas of divergance look to be Alaska, Northern Europe, Nino Regions 1+2, Northern US, northern S. America.
My $0.02.

crosspatch (18:27:36) :
But the only place that “stores” heat is going to be the ocean and the only place it is going to be “lost” is to the atmosphere and into space.
At present, I’ve seen nothing to suggest that perhaps more heat is being lost into space than previously retained. So to answer the question, “where has the heat gone”, into space is one possible answer…