By Steve Goddard and Anthony Watts
Some of the excellent readers of the last piece we posted on WUWT gave me an idea, which we are following up on here. The exercise here is to compare GISS and satellite data (UAH and RSS) since the start of 2003, and then propose one possible source of divergence between the GISS and satellite data. The reason that the start of 2003 was chosen, is because satellite data shows a rapid decline in temperatures starting then, and GISS data does not. The only exception to the downward trend was an El Nino at the start of 2007, which caused a short but steep spike. Remembering back a couple of years, Dr. Hansen had in fact suggested that El Nino might turn into a “Super El Nino” which would cause 2007 to be the “hottest year ever.”
The last six years (2003-2008) show a steep temperature drop in the satellite record, which is not present in the GISS data. Prior to 2003, the three trends were all close enough to be considered reasonably consistent, but over the last six years is when a large divergence has become very apparent both visually and mathematically.
Since the beginning of 2003, RSS has been dropping at 3.60C/century, UAH has been dropping at 2.84C/century, and GISS has been dropping at 0.96C/century. All calculations are done in a Google Spreadsheet here:
The divergence between GISS and RSS is shown below. Since the start of 2003, GISS has been diverging from RSS at 2.64C/century, and GISS has been diverging from UAH at 1.87C/century. RSS has been diverging from UAH at minus 0.76C/century, indicating that RSS temperatures have been falling a little faster than UAH over the last six years, as can also be seen in the graph above.
Below is a 250km map of GISS trends from 2003-2008. One thing which stands out is that GISS has large areas with sparse or no coverage. Notably in Africa, Antarctica, Greenland, Canada, Brazil, and a few other places.
Click for larger image
Many of the GISS holes seem to be in blue regions on the map. Here is a post and video of the GHCN station loss over the past several years globally, created by WUWT contributor John Goetz:
Here are two images showing the difference between GISS global coverage in 1978 and 2008:
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There is a tremendous amount of station dropout in 30 years. Dropout is worst in the high northern latitudes, most all of Canada, and about half of Africa. Of particular note is the red band at the southernmost latitude, which “seems” to indicate a continuous coverage there. Of course we know that is not true, given the paucity of stations in the Antarctic interior. Read more here.
By contrast, while it doesn’t hit both poles (neither does GISS) UAH has much broader global coverage as seen below. Could this be part of the explanation for the divergence between GISS and satellite data? What do the readers think?
![[Image]](https://i0.wp.com/discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/browse/AMSU_A_15.latest.a_04.png?resize=520%2C278&quality=75)
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![[Image]](https://i0.wp.com/discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/browse/AMSU_A_15.latest.d_04.png?quality=75)
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How different would the GISS graph appear, if it showed a -3.6C/century cooling trend over the last six years? For reference, the steep GISS warming trend from 1980 to 2002 was about 0.4 degrees.
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?
Response to George E. Smith (10:31:12) :
“HEAT is a verb, not a noun.”
Heat may to used as a synonym for energy (a noun).
“The Earth, emits electromagnetic radiation (energy) corresponding to a thermal source that is at approximately 300 K temperature.That radiation disperses to the rest of the universe, and some of it arrives at, and is absorbed, by the Sun which is at a surface temperature of around 6000 K. So is that a violation of the second law of thermodynamics; or would you say that that simply cannot happen ?”
Obviously, that can happen. The second law in this context merely states that more heat flows from the Sun to the Earth than the other way. This is not at issue.
“But as to your basic query, there is that small matter of the sun up there which is the original source of the energy, and most of that energy by far, is deposited on the surface; not in the atmosphere; despite the presence of CO2 or any other GHG.”
I do not dispute that most of the sun’s energy is absorbed at the surface of the Earth, not in the atmosphere. Rather, my earlier post centered around how EXTRA heat due to INCREASED CO2 concentrations (which absorbs infrared from surface emissions) might be in turn be returned to the surface. My point is that such a scheme necessarily requires the atmosphere to INCREASE in temperature by more than the resulting INCREASE in surface temperature. (Obviously, the surface is warmer than the atmosphere. That’s not at issue. I am talking about temperature INCREASES.)
My query remains.
peat (15:55:14) :
“Assuming both temperature records are accurate, how can CO2 be the cause of recent warming trends? Since CO2 is distributed throughout the atmosphere, if it is responsible for excess heat, then shouldn’t the atmosphere warm first, followed by the surface? The 2nd law of thermodynamics is pretty fundamental (heat flows from hot to cold, not the other way around). Am I missing something?”
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
peat (15:55:14) :
Assuming both temperature records are accurate, how can CO2 be the cause of recent warming trends? Since CO2 is distributed throughout the atmosphere, if it is responsible for excess heat, then shouldn’t the atmosphere warm first, followed by the surface? The 2nd law of thermodynamics is pretty fundamental (heat flows from hot to cold, not the other way around). Am I missing something?
No, your question is relevant , and it has given rise to several threads on why there is not tropical troposphere hot spot as is necessary for this explanation of green house gasses acting in the atmosphere. The atmosphere should be heating.
Indeed there are two theoretical physicists from Germany that have attacked the whole concept in http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1161 .
There is also a humorous image:
http://www.vermonttiger.com/content/2008/07/nasa-free-energ.html
This shows a “free energy oven” that illustrates the question of the second law by J.Peden. I do not know if it is the same Peden who posts here.
BTW heat is a noun in thermodynamic books. In my thermodynamics book, (Sears,Addison Wesley ’59) it is clearly a noun, Q defined as a “flow of heat”, going onto “dU=d’Q-d’W”, for the first law of thermodynamics.
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, as I posted in the previous thread on this topic, the step divergence between UAH and RSS is easily seen here:
http://www.iforce.co.nz/i/4ae531bcb6bb7cef4b8214ec0d8952c5.gif
I also pointed out the more recent Douglass and Christy paper here (http://arxiv.org/pdf/0809.0581v1) which has a detailed discussion in the Appendix with references as to why they believe their UAH series is preferable to RSS.
Removing the 1992/93 step from RSS would obviously move its linear trend towards UAH. Passage of time will do that as well. Furthermore, the satellite data is said by Christy to be more sensitive to anomalies by a factor of 1.23 and this is also visible in the chart I linked to where peaks and troughs are greater for both UAH and RSS compared with GISS.
Scaling the satellite anomalies down by that factor will have a similar impact on the satellite trend, further distancing even RSS from the GISS data.
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.
A minor point about the chart link I just posted is that the trend slopes are deg C per month as the data is the monthly global average temperature.
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.
Ahh, the famous Gerlisch and Tscheuschner paper. The most praised full-of-bull****-and-fundamental-thermodynamics-errors-never-published-nor-even-reviewed paper! Where (for the sake of simplicity) earth is modeled as a plane always presenting the same face to the sun… I think it’s even worthless to make any more comment on it…
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…
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.
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Also Flanagan, I think we’re going to find that the oceans warm or cool with the atmosphere following their lead. And yes, the sun is the major driver of temperature change in the oceans. Just how, well, the wheels turn. The climate is the continuation of the ocean by other means.
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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
An incandescent lamp burns out.
What caused it? Well, the filament became weak in one spot and it broke.
How? Well all those electrons coursing through it caused metal migration and at a weak spot, enough metal was moved that it broke.
Can we say it was the power that caused the problem? Surely it was the power that did it!
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.
The upper level hot spot is hotlinked [the second ‘this post’ in the first sentence], and discussed within this interesting page: click
For anyone getting up to speed on the climate issue, the link(s) above deconstruct many of the bogus AGW claims in a single post.
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…
I wonder what the criteria for station inclusion are. Watts mentioned that there where huge gaps of coverage in Brazil, as confirmed by the maps, However, Brazil does have a well developed metereological system with countrywide coverage and a large number of automated stations reporting by satellite even in the Amazon region. I am not quite sure if this data is available online,though, but I think this website http://www.inpe.br would be a good place to start. Click on ¨Talk to us¨ on the right upper hand side for further information; their main weather section is in Portuguese only.
its pretty clear to me that no one knows what the “world’s” temperature is. And they dont know how to measure it.
If a scientist is honest, he says this data stinks, I better design a better experiment
PS: the following page http://satelite.cptec.inpe.br/PCD/ can show the distribution of the weather collection stations linked by satellite in Brazilian territory; data for each station can be obtained from this page http://satelite.cptec.inpe.br/PCD/historico/consulta_pcdm.jsp Portuguese only
One must choose which sensors to use; for max/min temperatures choose tempmax and Tempmin, I do not know what tempint means _maybe intermediate, that is ¨mean¨_, tempair means probably air temperature.
http://bancodedados.cptec.inpe.br/climatologia/ is the databank of cptec, one must register to use it- option ¨cadastro¨; you can search for stations, including those not linked by satellite by town -cidade-, geographical location -localizaçao- or station -estaçao. A single town can have more than one weather station, because different agencies have installed them for different purposes at different times on different locations. Each station comes identified by agency (not helpful unless one knows what the alphabet soup refers to) and if one clics on ¨visualizaçao¨ a helpful summary of the station, including measurement type, length of operation and number of failures appears. As an example, the city of Piripiri in the state of Piaui has three stations with historical data; two are rainfall only ¨precipitaçao¨ with data available from 1913 to 1995; one includes temp max/min, with data from 1976 to 2007 and, alas, an extremely high failure rate.
Sir Anthony:
Brazil 8,511,000 km^2
The lack of coverage is incredible;
http://www.climateaudit.org/data/ghcn/brazil.population.xls
clik: All brazilian GHCN stations
most are urban
many did not report data
automatic stations
http://www.inmet.gov.br/sonabra/maps/automaticas.php
Been on vacation and just found this.
What do I think? It is time to scrap GISS!
They need to design a system to measure surface temperatures from scratch. Do it right with 21st century technology. No more Wizard of Oz behind the curtain methods.
Talk about divergence, NOAA had predicted the high today to be a bit below 40 and the low to be about 22 degrees F tonight. How have they done so far? The high today was 23 and it is currently 14 degrees F in Lostine.
I only would add following figures. When I look at the 40 most extreme monthly UAH–GISS divergencies since 1979, I see the following results become visible:
In March: 9 cases; in February: 6 cases; in April and from June to August: each 4 cases. Together, these months cover 78% of the 40 most extreme values of the cited period.
In order to find a plausible explanation for the divergence between the two agencies, maybe we have to look to the specific climatic conditions in the atmosphere around March and around July.
Could it be that at least some of the divergence could be due to the slowly cooling oceans releasing less heat to the atmosphere from below (2nd law of thermodynamics), while the atmosphere is cooling more rapidly due to it’s lower thermal mass and less insolation from above?
Just asking. 🙂