Reposted from Jennifer Marohasy’s website.
THERE are four official global temperature data sets and there has been much debate and discussion as to which best represents change in global temperature.
Tom Quirk has analysed variations within and between these data sets and concludes there is 1. Substantial general agreement between the data sets, 2. Substantial short-term variation in global temperature in all data sets and 3. No data set shows a significant measurable rise in global temperature over the twelve year period since 1997.
Global Temperature Revisited
Article by Tom Quirk
One of the most vexing things about climate change is the endless debate about temperatures. Did they rise, did they fall or were they pushed? At times it seems like a Monty Python sketch of either the Dead Parrot or the 5 or 10 Minute Argument.
However it is possible to see some of the issues by looking at the four temperature series that are advanced from:
GISS – Goddard Institute for Space Studies and home of James Hansen,
Hadley Centre – British Meteorological Office research centre
UAH – The University of Alabama, Huntsville, home of Roy Spencer with his colleagues including John Christy of NASA and
RSS – Remote Sensing Systems in Santa Rosa, California, a company supported by NASA for the analysis of satellite data.
The first two groups use ground based data where possible with a degree of commonality. However since 70% of the surface of the earth is ocean and it is not monitored in a detailed manner, various procedures with possibly heroic assumptions and computer modelling, are followed to fill the ocean gap.
The last two groups use satellite data to probe the atmosphere and with the exception of the Polar Regions which are less than 10% of the globe, they get comprehensive coverage.
One question is of course are the two groups measuring the same temperature? After all the satellite looks down through the atmosphere, while the ground stations are exactly that.
There is an important distinction to be made between measuring the temperature and measuring the change in the temperature. Since the interest is in changing temperatures then what is called the global temperature anomaly is the starting point. The issue of measuring absolute temperatures should be put to one side.
Data from 1997 to 2009 was drawn from the four group websites on the 28 April 2009. When data for 1997 to early 2008 was compared to data acquired in early 2008 differences were found as shown in the first table.
This is evidence of substantial reprocessing and re-evaluation of data. This is not unusual with complicated analysis systems but there is so much interest in the results that adjustments are regarded with great suspicion. This is the fault of those publishing the temperature data as they fail to make the point that monthly and even yearly measurements are about weather and not climate.
The latest series of temperature anomalies are shown in the graph where the monthly data has been averaged into quarters. All statistical analysis that follows is on the monthly data unless stated otherwise.
From inspection, there is substantial agreement over the years 1997 to 2008. This can be statistically measured through correlations. This is a measure of how closely related the series may be. A value of 0 implies independent series while a value of 1 implies complete agreement. The correlation in turn indicates the degree of commonality in the comparison.
This is remarkable agreement given the two very different techniques used.
It is important to note that the two satellite analysis groups draw measurements from the same satellites. So the differences in temperatures are a result of analysis procedures that are not simple. In fact corrections to the data have been the subject of exchanges between the two groups.
The ground based measurements also have a common data base but it is clear and acknowledged that the two groups have different analysis procedures. While the satellite analysis procedures have converged to reduce their differences over the last thirty years, this has not been the case for the ground based procedures.
It is also clear looking at the measurements that there are substantial short-term, say less than 2 years, variations over the period 1997 to 2009. In fact, while the overall monthly variations show a scatter with standard deviation of 0.20C, the month to month variations are 0.10C. This is a measure of features that are clear in the data. The short run sequences of temperature movement are a reflection of variability in the atmosphere from events such as El Ninos (1997-98) and La Ninas.
Looking for a simple trend by fitting curves through a highly variable series is both a problem and a courageous exercise. The results on an annual rather than a monthly basis are given in the third table. The problem of dealing with real short term variations was resolved by ignoring them. 
So for twelve years there has been a rise 0.10C with a 140% error, in other words, no significant measureable temperature rise. You can play with the data. If you omit 1998 then you can double the change. But 1998 was an El Nino year followed in 1999 by a La Nina. If we omit both years then the results are unchanged.
However the lesson from this is to look at the detail.
There is so much variability within the 12 year period that seeking a trend that might raise the temperature by 20C over 100 years would not be detectable. On the other hand there are clearly fluctuations on a monthly and yearly scale that will have nothing to do with the predicted effects of anthropogenic CO2.
The twelve year temperature changes from the data of the four analysis centres reveal some possible differences. Since there is a high degree of commonality amongst the results, any differences may be systematic. Both the GISS and Hadley series show a larger temperature increase then the satellite measurements. This may be due to urban heat island effects.
Finally, if you are looking for temperature increases from CO2 in the atmosphere, then you should choose the satellite approach of measuring temperatures in the atmosphere!
Short term, less than thirty years, temperature series are not the place to seek evidence of human induced global warming.
**************************
Tom Quirk lives in Melbourne, Australia.
To read more from Dr Quirk click here http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/author/tom-quirk/
The photograph is from Anthony Watt’s website that details his program of photographically surveying every one of the 1221 USHCN weather stations in the USA which are used as a “high quality network” to determine near surface temperature trends in the USA, read more here http://wattsupwiththat.com/test/
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Tony B: “It sums up that on the figures you gave it would reasonably be expected that there are more cooling papers out there to be found but those doing the searching had no reason to look that hard.”
I will also recycle my previous response about the relationship between a 1970s survey of scientific opinion and the ratio of cooling to warming papers found by Connolly:
“Twenty of the papers were considered to be neutral, so I doubt that the ratio of warming vs cooling could be presented as 80/20. Also, while scientific papers in the 1970s may have favoured warming – although probably more tentatively than now – there’s no reason to assume that the great majority of climate scientists were in favour of AGW, since the evidence was less conclusive back then.”
So while you may be correct that Connolly and co had no reason to seek cooling papers, they have presented their evidence, and that’s what we have to go on.
“I am quite happy to do a joint research study with you if you can find some serious funding that will keep us going for a few years :)”
There’s an idea. I’m looking for a career change.
Joel:
“That is why I find it most useful to comment on things people say here that I believe are misunderstanding the consensus AGW scientific viewpoint.”
OK, so help us understand the consensus by telling us what you consider the two or three compelling pieces of evidence that it’s based on.
For example, something like Mann’s hockey stick and the original low resolution Vostok ice core data. Together, they were sufficient to convince me that a major problem was unfolding. Of course, neither of these data sets survived scientific scrutiny. So what, in your view, is still standing. Just a few lines will do.
davidc: My viewpoint is basically this – Carbon dioxide has increased from the pre-industrial value of ~280ppm to ~385ppm due to burning of fossil fuels. (The case for this is airtight, despite a few people still trying to dispute it.) The radiative effect of a given increase in CO2 can be calculated to reasonably good accuracy and is about 4 W/m^2 for a doubling of CO2. (Even Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen agree with this.) We know from basic radiative physics that, in the absence of any feedbacks, this would lead to ~1.1 C increase in temperature (+-0.1 C).
So, the real question comes down to what the feedbacks do to this. There are two approaches to that question, one empirical and one theoretical (i.e., through modeling). The empirical data, taken together, all seem to point to an equilibrium climate sensitivity in the neighborhood of about 0.5 to 1.0 C per (W/m^2) of radiative forcing, or 2 – 4 C for doubling CO2. This includes estimates based on the last glacial maximum, the Mt Pinatubo eruption, the instrumental temperature record (although that provides the least strong constraint due to uncertainties in the aerosol forcing), and other data. And, in general, those who study paleoclimate have concluded that the climate system seems quite sensitive to small perturbations (e.g., http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/sci;306/5697/821 ).
The climate modeling also suggests that positive feedbacks dominate. The water vapor feedback is now quite well-confirmed by the satellite data, not only for the overall trends but even for the year-to-year fluctuations (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;310/5749/841 … look especially at Fig. 2). The ice-albedo feedback is also on reasonably solid footing. It seems to me that the only thing that could “save us” is a strongly negative cloud feedback. However, this seems unlikely for a few reasons: One is that none of the models with all their different parameterizations of clouds has shown such a feedback. Furthermore, nobody has successfully shown that a model with such a negative feedback could successfully replicate the current climate very well. And, finally, if such a strong negative feedback is found, it would be necessary to rewrite our entire understanding of the paleoclimate. E.g., we will no longer understand why the ice ages occurred. (And, no, this is not just a matter of there being no role for CO2. Even if you believe that the relationship between CO2 and temperature is all one way [temperature changes causing CO2 changes] in the ice core record, the point is that we think we have pretty good estimates of the various forcings on the climate then relative to now and they are too weak to explain the difference in temperature if the net feedbacks are negative.)
Of course, Roy Spencer claims to have found a negative feedback involving clouds. However, his claim for this is based on a lot of unusual data analysis and, while I can’t say I know exactly what is wrong with his approach (although I think that Tamino may be on to the gist of it here http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/08/01/spencers-folly-3/, as I don’t find Spencer’s dismissal of Tamino’s critique to be very convincing), I do know that Spencer has fooled himself before doing data analysis…and in some pretty elementary ways. (See here http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/a-bag-of-hammers/ but note that I’m not relying on Tamino here since he just points out something that anyone with a basic knowledge of calculus can easily verify.) So, given that, and the fact that his conclusion disagrees with such a large body of other evidence, I am extremely skeptical.
Oh…And, I might add that my last post didn’t even touch on the attribution studies for the temperature rise that we have been seeing over the past ~4 decades and the fact that the fingerprint (e.g., increasing temperatures in the troposphere and decreases in the stratosphere) agrees with the mechanism of being due to greenhouse gases and disagrees with, say, a direct solar mechanism.
And, since I am a statistical physicist who understands how a dataset such at temperature behaves when there is a combination of an underlying trend and superimposed climate fluctuations, I find the arguments that “there has been cooling since [cherrypicked date] at least if I use [cherrypicked data set]” to be quite unconvincing. There is no doubt that we have just gone through a cold fluctuation due to La Nina and my guess is a lot of interest in sites such as this one will wane once the next El Nino comes.
Joel Shore,
As always I’m getting an itchy trigger finger thinking about the opportunities to deconstruct your post above, but TonyB has made an excellent point: it’s real easy to take drive-by pot shots from the sidelines. In fact, that’s all that the handful of CO2=AGW believers here ever do. That’s all any warmists do any more anywhere, ever since their data-hiding heroes got publicly spanked in moderated debates by skeptics like Monckton, Crichton and Lindzen.
So here’s a challenge to someone who regularly brags about the peer reviewed papers he’s got under his belt: write the best article you can, attempting to show that an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide will cause runaway global warming. Don’t forget to identify the tipping point, that’s important.
And be aware that skeptics here aren’t like the referee and journal friends you schmooze to get published; those folks tend to be sympathetic to your alarmist point of view, and therefore they are much more likely to give you a pass on anything questionable.
Not so here. We’re not mutual back scratchers. We’re skeptics of the CO2=AGW hypothesis, and so far the climate is in general agreement with skeptics. And models won’t get you far unless they can clearly predict. Which eliminates all of them. No, you will have to make a solid, real world case that falsifies the existing theory that the observed global temperature changes are a consequence of natural variability, in which the planet is slowly warming along a trend line going back to the last Ice Age and LIA, with alternating warm and cool periods. The planet is currently well within those trend line parameters — which is why you’ll have to identify that putative tipping point, to show that the CO2=AGW hypothesis explains reality better than the existing theory; it must have better predictive value to overturn the existing order.
Peer-review here will be rigorous — as it should be. [And it’s not so rigorous in the mainstream climate peer-review process, where peer-review is a little too cozy; see the “peer-reviewed” Schön & Hwang Woo-suk frauds.] Skepticism is absolutely essential to the scientific method. It is the duty of skeptics to tear down a new hypothesis, if they possibly can.
But skeptics have had a hard time even being considered, much less published, in the clique-controlled climate peer-review process. So they are deliberately forced to publish in other hard science journals. This challenge is the other side of that coin: we want to give you an opportunity to make your CO2=runaway global warming case. If only the AAAS, of which I was a member for over twenty years, would give skeptics an equal chance to refute your side… but they don’t. Why? Because they don’t want their new, money-making hypothesis to be falsified. They covet the gravy train, which they jealously control. The down side is that the climate peer-review process has been corrupted by the big money involved.
So why not give it a shot, Joel? Pick up the gauntlet that Tony and I are throwing down. Show us that mysterious tipping point. We want to understand how a minor trace gas — one of the most beneficial and harmless compounds on Earth, and essential to all life — by rising from four parts per 10,000 to 5 or 6 parts per 10,000, will cause a climate catastrophe when it’s never happened before. Not even at levels twenty times as high as they are now. Because if CO2 won’t cause a climate catastrophe, then there is no reason to spend any more tax money or government grant money on it. There are much more deserving problems to spend that money on — real problems.
I sincerely hope you take the challenge. The parameters are clearly stated here. As an added benefit, you will see what it’s like to be on the other side of the fence, defending what you wrote from skeptics who will tear it down, piece by piece, until nothing but the truth remains — or nothing remains.
Do it. I double-dog dare you.
Brendan H
For our joint research project-motto ‘seeking the truth’ shall we go for £250,000 each per year, plus the same again to cover one researcher each?
I think we need physical access to the IPCC who are in Geneva so a place there in the winter (an extra of course) would be good. Its absolutely coincidental I am a skier.
5 years should be enough to enable us to get our study finished, then we will see-looking from the perspective of both sides-whether Connelly et al were correct, or -almost unbelievable I know- whether they had an axe to grind. When can you start?
Best wishes
tonyb
Smokey and Joel
I agree 100% with Smokey in his post.
Joel, with respect, I think you make the fundamental mistake in believing we dont ‘understand’. We have a similarity here with the EU who are suprised when their pearls of wisdom are ignored. An example (of many) is with the Lisbon treaty that the Irish voted against-us Brits haven’t been allowed a say because they know the answer we would give.
The EU said the Irish obviously didn’t ‘understand’ the message and have set up another vote in order to get the ‘right’ decision. The trouble is we DO understand which is PRECISELY why we want to reject it.
I view the IPCC Document as a Dan Brown novel (and yes of course most of us have read it-AR1-4 that is, not Dan Brown).
The plot is basically interesting, throws in some undeniable facts, some things that look like facts but aren’t, has an increasingly theadbare plot with numerous holes and becomes increasingly silly and frantic as it get to the denouement.
To justify their version of events requires that several plot lines are considered factual.
* firstly that co2 has been constant for 650,000 years
* secondly that temperatures have been relatively constant in the past -hence the iconic status given to the hockey stick which rejected history
* thirdly that there is such a rational notion as a single global temperature accurate to fractions of a degree, that can be computed back to 1850 or 1880 based on reliable and consistent data sets.
*next, that our contribution to overall co2 has disturbed the equilibrium and nudged the co2 thermostat higher
*that this nudging can be linked to rising co2/temperature in a cause and effect
* That doubling co2 causes a rise of up to 6.2C
* That all sorts of feedbacks will cause catastrophic temperature rises (the equivalent of the Dan Brown mad chase through Paris as the clock ticks)
* That sea levels are rising at the rate claimed and will accelerate
* That the science is settled and models are utterly reliable- when even the author admits numerous times they aren’t.
The truth is that we have been this way before climatically. It needs someone to admit this and tell us why its different THIS time round.
We are not idiots-if someone can demonstrate-without smoke and mirrors- that our actions will cause a catastrophe please give us all enough credit here that we would accept we need to change our ways.
Hope you will take up the challenge.
Tonyb
Joel,
Thanks for the reply, more detail than I expected. I’ll take some time to follow up on your links and references before commenting.
I’ve asked these questions before on various blogs and yours is the first reply I’ve had. So, again, thanks.
Joel Shore
Thanks for posting your analysis. There are many issues, but I’ll address just one :
On the matter of feedbacks you say “It seems to me that the only thing that could “save us” is a strongly negative cloud feedback. However, this seems unlikely for a few reasons: One is that none of the models with all their different parameterizations of clouds has shown such a feedback. Furthermore, nobody has successfully shown that a model with such a negative feedback could successfully replicate the current climate very well. And, finally, if such a strong negative feedback is found, it would be necessary to rewrite our entire understanding of the paleoclimate. E.g., we will no longer understand why the ice ages occurred. […]
Of course, Roy Spencer claims to have found a negative feedback involving clouds. However, his claim for this is based on a lot of unusual data analysis and, while I can’t say I know exactly what is wrong with his approach […..]”
Looking in the real world for the feedbacks is now needed, not just looking in the models. ie, they need to be properly verified.
I don’t think the cloud feedback is happening at all – and I too am not convinced that Roy Spencer has got it right saying there’s negative cloud feedback – because it looks like clouds simply act independently. Take a look at
http://solar.njit.edu/preprints/palle1376.pdf
There is a simple graph of albedo (1st graph on p.22) showing albedo (cloud cover) declining from the 1980’s to 2000 then increasing again. See Pielke Sr’s comments here, linking it to ocean cooling
http://climatesci.org/2009/01/02/new-jgr-paper-inter-annual-variations-in-earths-reflectance-by-palle-et-al-2009/
My conclusion from this and from much other material including the IPCC Report, is that there is quite simply no justification for the IPCC claiming a positive cloud feedback, in fact the IPCC themselves say repeatedly that they do not understand clouds. It does look like the disappearing clouds delivered a significant part of the late 20thC warming, but the reappearing clouds are helping to cool us again now. [Important note re timing : the cooling won’t start the moment cloud cover starts increasing. Cooling starts only when cloud cover increases above a certain level.]
TonyB: “For our joint research project-motto ’seeking the truth’ shall we go for £250,000 each per year, plus the same again to cover one researcher each?”
Sounds about right. I should point out that my skill set is primarily in supervisory/management, so the addition of researchers to do the leg-work is probably wise.
We are also fortunate in having before us an excellent source in the Connolly paper, so I’m not sure that much more substantive work is required – checking out the existing sources should be sufficient.
In which case, the researchers need not have great expertise in this area. Youth and enthusiasm are the primary requirements:
http://www.thereeftank.com/blog/qaampa-with-marine-biologist-sheril-kirshenbaum/
Brendan H
We will need a peer reviewer so I am nominating Smokey who is well known for his complete objectivity as were Connelly and his two fellow researchers .
So all we need now is for someone to cough up the money. Perhps I can get my MP to put it on his expenses?
Best wishes
TonyB
Tony and Brendan,
I am, of course, completely objective. I follow the example of those luminaries at Science, Nature and the Lancet who bend over backwards to be objective.
OK, that was sarcasm.
The difference between skeptics and those selling AGW, though, goes to the heart of the entire matter: As a skeptic, I am simply saying: prove it. Or at least provide real, verifiable evidence that AGW exists. Solid, not flimsy evidence. But rather than provide the tools a skeptic requires, the AGW community puts up roadblocks to the truth. Skeptics feel like Diogenes wandering the streets with a lantern, looking for an honest AGW man.
To be a true skeptic, one must be a rabid skeptic. Otherwise, fraud creeps in. We see AGW fraud everywhere, from the refusal of taxpayer-paid public servants to archive their data and methodologies, to the thoroughly corrupt UN and its IPCC political appointees, to the gaming of the climate peer-review process by a small clique of self-serving grant seekers. Corruption is endemic in the AGW community. They have learned to game the system. Scientific veracity no longer matters.
Therefore, if a skeptic is neutral and doesn’t hold the fraudsters’ feet to the fire, the role of scientific skeptics is fatally diminished. It is like a legal advocate trying to see the other side’s point of view. That never works. Skeptics are not doing their duty according to the scientific method if they do not demand that the purveyors of the CO2=AGW hypothesis must show convincingly and transparently that their new hypothesis explains reality better than the theory of natural climate variability. So far, they have completely failed.
Why? Because they hide their methodology and raw data. They expect everyone to take their conclusions on faith. That naturally leads to corruption, because there is big, big money involved. Scientists are no more immune to rent-seeking than anyone else. AGW has turned into a giant con game. The evidence is everywhere.
So I do what is necessary: I demand answers. You can see the AGW side constantly squirming in response, and trying to wiggle out of having to show exactly how they arrived at their conclusions; it’s a secret, see? We’re expected to trust them.
So we must hold their feet to the fire, or they will succeed in stealing from us. Because the AGW scam is not about science any more. It is about money. Our tax money. And how they can get their hands much deeper into our pockets.
Brendan H and every other interested party on both sides should demand, for a start, that every individual and organization that takes public money must immediately publicly archive all the raw data and every computer algorithm they use. Our taxes paid for that work product, and it is nothing less than dishonesty to withhold the work product from those who paid for it. Corruption is endemic within the AGW community, and I make no apologies for demanding answers.
That said, I propose to raise your stipend to £500,000 per annum. Each, of course. It’s no more money wasted than what goes into the black hole of the corrupt and unaccountable UN.
OT…. What is going on over at NSIDC??? It appears that the satellites are really messed up… but that hasn’t stopped the continued drop of the line graph… WUWT?
Mike
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/daily.html
Doesn’t look like much is going on at NSIDC.
In “Sea Ice in the News” on their website (the link you posted), the latest item is “Arctic Sea Ice Shatters All Previous Record Lows” dated … 1 October 2007.
Maybe it’s only news if there is less ice, so we may have to wait 50-60 years (a PDO cycle) for the next news item?
[It certainly does look like they are having satellite trouble, with a huge chunk of the ice map missing. Nansen http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic have an unfiltered vertical drop in extent and area of c.30%.]
matt v. (05:50:38) :
Hi Matt,
Please re-read my posts on this thread. I don’t think we are in disagreement.
To be clear, I think there is reasonable evidence that Earth was ~0.3C warmer in ~1940 than today, and humanmade CO2 emissions have increased ~800% since that time.
In summary, I think there is adequate evidence to state:
There is no humanmade global warming crisis.
There is no significant sensitivity of Earth temperature to increased atmospheric CO2.
CO2 lags, does not lead temperature at all time scales.
The future does not cause the past.
I predicted cooling in an article published in 2002 or 2003. I hope this proves incorrect. Humankind does much better under warming than cooling conditions.
Our undereducated politicians continue to obsess about global warming, and as a result we are unlikely to be prepared should serious cooling occur.
***************************
Strongly agree Smokey.
It is clear to me, given the great difficulties that Steve McIntyre has experienced when attempting to obtain research materials from several publicly sponsored climate researchers, that these individuals are deliberately concealing data and methodologies that they fear will not stand up to logical scrutiny.
I have similar concerns about peer review in climate science, which is often just corrupt, incestuous, academic cronyism.
When a researcher fails to produce data in a timely and competent manner, that should be enough evidence, given recent experience, to dismiss their work.
McIntyre spent years obtaining and examining Mann’s hockey stick data, only to find out conclusively that it was without merit. This was later substantiated by the Wegman inquiry.
Why waste all this time and effort? NO data, NO credibility – it should be that simple.
Smokey said;
“Brendan H and every other interested party on both sides should demand, for a start, that every individual and organization that takes public money must immediately publicly archive all the raw data and every computer algorithm they use. Our taxes paid for that work product, and it is nothing less than dishonesty to withhold the work product from those who paid for it. Corruption is endemic within the AGW community, and I make no apologies for demanding answers.
That said, I propose to raise your stipend to £500,000 per annum. Each, of course. It’s no more money wasted than what goes into the black hole of the corrupt and unaccountable UN.”
Absolutely agree with the first part. Why should organisations like the Met office hide behind the FOI act?
As for the second part, should we give you our bank details now or later?
Brendan H
After following your link I think your motives are less than pure…
Tonyb
“…should we give you our bank details now or later?”
Now would be fine, Tony. Please include your account name, number and password.
Thanks in advance. Please feel free to visit me in Tahiti.
Smokey
I will just go and find my bank details, whilst I am away would you glance at my 00 48 41?
I wrote out a list of helpful points and suggestions for Joel should he take up our challenge. Are there any more ‘plot lines’ you think we could usefully add into the equation?
Tonyb
Tony,
I’ve read all your posts, even if I haven’t responded to each of them. And yes, I think Joel should answer your questions too, and also answer the 4 points listed on page 3 here: click
But I notice Joel has disappeared from this thread. So has RW. If I were them, I’d hide out too.
Maybe Brendan H can step into the breach and take a shot at it.
Smokey: “We see AGW fraud everywhere…”
As I’ve said previously, if you think you have a case, document it and place it before the proper authorities.
“Therefore, if a skeptic is neutral and doesn’t hold the fraudsters’ feet to the fire, the role of scientific skeptics is fatally diminished.”
I would say such an attitude indicates advocacy rather than scepticism. Such a sceptic would have made up their mind that climate fraud was occurring, in which case, the science would become secondary. If so, any debate would be about something other than the science.
“Maybe Brendan H can step into the breach and take a shot at it.”
Sorry, I’m just a layman, so I could not give you an article at the level of detail you would require.
Smokey
RE; Transfer of money to my account for the joint research project.
In the time honoured tradition of averaging meaningless and ever changing figures in order to arrive at a precise and highly accurate data set (like Global mean average temperature) I have taken all my bank accounts details past and present, averaged them, corrected them to 2 decimal places and interpolated quite a lot of information I seem to have mislaid or never existed in the first place but is bound to be highly accurate.
So the Bank acct number you want is
12.34 5.45 8.76 9.23 5.45
The disheartening thing about this exchange is that Brendan H can link to the rather attractive scientist he obviously has impure thoughts about, whilst we are stuck with Monckton. Still you can’t win them all.
Your 4 extra points are noted.
Tonyb
Smokey says:
Here is the link that Smokey clicked to: http://joannenova.com.au/globalwarming/the_skeptics_handbook_2-22_lq.pdf A brief answer to these 4 points:
(1) By the “hotspot”, she is presumably talking about the idea that the temperature trends (and fluctuations) should be magnified as you go up in the tropical atmosphere. However, she is absolutely incorrect in saying that this is a signature of greenhouse gases and that its (supposed) absence means that something else is causing the warming. In fact, this magnification is predicted as a result of basic physics, what is called “moist adiabatic lapse rate theory” independent of the warming mechanism. And, the magnification is seen if you look at temperature fluctuations that occur, say, on a roughly yearly timescale. Unfortunately, for the long term multidecadal trends, both the satellites and weather balloon data have significant uncertainties and artifacts that make it very difficult to assess whether the expected magnification is or is not there. If it really isn’t there (which I think is unlikely), it would mean that there is something quite basic about the tropical atmosphere that is not being correctly understood and simulated by the models but it would not say anything one way or the other about what has caused the temperature increases that we have seen. As I noted, what is a signature that, if not unique to greenhouse gases at least differentiates it from direct solar forcing, is a rise in the temperatures of the troposphere and a decline in the temperatures of the stratosphere…and this is in fact what is seen.
(2) This is a red herring. Scientists have understood since at least Hays, Imbrie, and Shackleton’s seminal paper in the mid 1970s ( http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;194/4270/1121 ) that the “pacemaker” for the ice ages were the Milankovitch oscillations in the earth’s orbit and also that these changes must then trigger the changes in CO2 levels. However, that does not mean that the causation only goes one way. Since we can very accurate estimate the radiative forcing due to CO2 and can also estimate the radiative forcing due to the changes in albedo (due to ice sheets) and changes in aerosol levels, it allows scientists to estimate that about 1/3 of the temperature change between the last glacial maximum and now is due to CO2 and also allows the estimation of the climate sensitivity of 0.5 to 1.0 C per (W/M^2) that I mentioned above. The greenhouse gases are also believed to play an important role in linking the temperature changes in the two hemispheres. (And, in fact, I believe the current best understanding of the data is that it is the temperature changes in only one of the hemispheres that tends to lead the CO2 changes.)
(3) We’ve discussed this to death. The point is that trends over short periods of time are dominated by the fluctuations in the climate such as El Nina – La Nina and, in fact, when one puts error bars on the trends over such times one finds that they are simply very ill-determined. It is completely analogous to the fact that even for places like Rochester that have a very strong seasonal cycle, one often has weeks in spring with a negative temperature trend (and weeks in fall with a positive temperature trend).
(4) It is true that the dependence of temperatures on CO2 levels is expected to be approximately logarithmic. However, scientists already understand that, which is why they speak of the amount of warming due to a certain FRACTIONAL change in CO2 levels (such as a doubling) rather than a certain ABSOLUTE change in CO2 levels (such as 100ppm). It is a property of a logarithmic function y = log(x) that a given fractional change in x produces the same increment in y no matter what the value of x is. As for the claim that “In fact, carbon levels were ten times as high in the past but the world still slipped into an ice age,” this shows how willing skeptics such as Joanne Nova are to believe any piece of data, no matter how flimsy, if it seems to support their cause. In fact, for the time periods of hundreds of millions of years ago that she is talking about, the levels of CO2 are not known with any good precision or time resolution. I believe that all that can be said with any certainty is that during a period of time when CO2 levels were generally believed to generally be quite high, there seems to have been a cold period interrupting the warmth; what the CO2 levels were during that cold period itself cannot be determined. Furthermore, one is talking about periods so long ago that other factors are quite different, including the locations if continents and mountain ranges, ocean currents, possibly solar luminosity, etc., etc.
Despite claims to the contrary by you and Anthony, I do have a life outside of WUWT. I was away this Memorial Day weekend on a camping / rock climbing trip.
No…The ice core data shows that variations of CO2 have been fairly dramatic over that time, ranging from ~180ppm during the depths of the ice ages to ~280-300ppm during the interglacial periods. What is true is that the levels have not been above ~300ppm during that time and that they are now at ~385ppm.
No, the hockey stick did not reject history. What it demonstrated is that, because the warm periods that occurred in during the Medieval Warm Period were not very synchronous at different locations, when one produces a temperature record of the entire northern hemisphere it does not show that pronounced and broad-based a warming as is occurring today. And, while some other reconstructions do show somewhat more temperature variation (mainly by having a more dramatic cooling during the “Little Ice Age”), they all seem to pretty much agree with the conclusion of the current warmth likely being unparalleled in at least the last 1200 years.
Actually, what is computed is not a global temperature but a temperature anomaly…which is a somewhat different beast. And, the basics of this temperature record have been confirmed by a number of different studies, as well as parallel evidence regarding the melting of glaciers, the earlier onset of spring, and many other indicators.
I’m not really sure why you are stuck on this 6.2 C number. I believe that was the upper bound mentioned in one study. The IPCC likely range for the equilibrium climate sensitivity for a doubling of CO2 is 2 C to 4.5 C, with a value below 1.5 C considered very unlikely.
No…What is being said is that there that, while there are substantial uncertainties, there are some things that we know with a fairly high degree of confidence. And, it also should be pointed out that the uncertainties are not a very good reason to do nothing since some of them revolve around things like tipping points which could turn out to mean that things will be worse than the projections suggest.
That was a good laugh! Hey, I think I’d also rather hang out with Kirshenbaum than with Monckton, but everybody’s got to make their choices!
Welcome back to the conversation, Joel. I look forward to your WUWT article. In the mean time, let me point out that your response above was riddled with the equivalent of “what ifs”. No solid evidence of any kind.
For example:
That’s projection, Joel. Skeptics need prove nothing; it’s the warmists who have to do the convincing.
By attempting to claim that rising CO2 caused global warming except for that inconvenient time [of millions of years] when there was “a cold period interrupting the warmth,” you accept the existence of those CO2 levels — even while trying to claim that nobody really knows what those levels were. I’m sure plenty of geologists would set you straight on that score.
Anyway, you always fall into the trap of the argumentum ad ignorantiam: the fallacy of assuming that something [CO2=AGW] is true, simply because it hasn’t been proven false. To make matters worse, CO2=AGW has been proven false. Yet you still assume it’s true — despite the fact that the planet itself is contradicting you.
Anyway, I look forward to your article submission to WUWT. These little tracts are too easy to deconstruct, and at this point not many folks are reading this thread. I’m saving my time and energy for something more juicy; something that thousands of people will read and comment on.
Don’t forget to identify that mysterious tipping point!