Contiguous U.S. GISTEMP Linear Trends: Before and After
Guest post by Bob Tisdale
Many of us have seen gif animations and blink comparators of the older version of Contiguous U.S. GISTEMP data versus the newer version, and here’s yet another one. The presentation is clearer than most.
http://i44.tinypic.com/29dwsj7.gif
It is based on the John Daly archived data:
http://www.john-daly.com/usatemps.006
and the current Contiguous U.S. surface temperature anomaly data from GISS:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.txt
In their presentations, most people have been concerned with which decade had the highest U.S. surface temperature anomaly: the 1940s or the 1990s. But I couldn’t recall having ever seen a trend comparison, so I snipped off the last 9 years from current data and let EXCEL plot the trends:
http://i44.tinypic.com/295sp37.gif
Before the post-1999 GISS adjustments to the Contiguous U.S. GISTEMP data, the linear trend for the period of 1880 to 1999 was 0.035 deg C/decade. After the adjustments, the linear trend rose to 0.044 deg C/decade.
Thanks to Anthony Watts who provided the link to the older GISTEMP data archived at John Daly’s website in his post here:
NOTE: Bob, The credit really should go to Michael Hammer, who wrote that post, but I’m happy to have a role as facilitator. – Anthony
“Convenient Untruth”?
Best,
Frank
I love that there’s a “Help Solve Global Warming” on this blog. Hilarious
Mark Twain’s maxim of three lies, “lies, damn lies, and statistics” seems to apply here.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/bookshelf/brochures/greenhouse/Chapter1.htm
Following the GISS timeline, the median average CO2 load humans have dumped into the atmosphere is 2 billion metric tons per year. In that time, the CO2 percentage of atmospheric gas has increased from 280 to 380 parts per million, which sounds less dramatic when transposed to the actual percentages, .028% to .038%.
The one-half degree of global warming over a century can be attributed to many things. Land use, solar cycles, man’s productivity producing water vapor and other heat exchanges, . . . but our government has tied it to an increase of CO2 of .001%.
The problem is only .001% of our government are NOT lawyers. Neither Joe Biden or Barack Obama had any experience or education outside of two years of law before going into politics. This makes them excellent liars, but horrible scientists.
Bob Tisdale (15:56:03) :
“Kurt: You wrote, “I’m having a little trouble understanding how the comparison between the adjusted data in 2000 and the adjusted data in 2008 shows that a trend line from 1880 to about 1915 changed from neutral to cooling.”
Sorry, this was only a comment based on my own comparison of the animation above. If you look at the first 35 years as it flashes from one version to the next you can eyeball a trend for the first 30-35 years of the bottom scale and see that it switches from approximately flat (2000 correction) to a cooling trend (2008 correction). My post was basically wondering what kind of correction algorithm would make such a significant shift in data so old between a 2000 correction and later corrections between 2001 and 2008. It was not a comment on anything specific that you wrote.
Craig Moore – May we use “humbug?”
Sure, as long as you prefix it with “Bah” and make your clerk work on Christmas day.
paralegalnm (17:11:38) :
“In that time, the CO2 percentage of atmospheric gas has increased from 280 to 380 parts per million, which sounds less dramatic when transposed to the actual percentages, .028% to .038% . . . but our government has tied it to an increase of CO2 of .001%.”
The difference between the two values is 0.01%. Moreover, this means that the concentration of CO2 has increased to about 36% of it’s original concentration in the atmosphere, which is not insignificant. There are a number of excellent arguments as to why man’s CO2 emissions aren’t dangerous, but the one that CO2 emissions must not have a significant effect because CO2 in total comprises such a small percentage of the atmosphere, in my opinion, is not one of them. In fact, it is the very first contributions of CO2 to the atmoshphere that should have the largest effect because the atmospheric IR-absorbtion v. CO2 concentration chart is logarithmic.
I think many, probably most scientists are naively acting in good faith. They also often have appalling manners when their pet theories are disputed. They also often are unable to apply scientific method afresh, direct, when it is suggested that peer-review is suspect and that amateur scientists are bypassing this process and looking at evidence afresh, direct. They are often only able to stay in their privileged positions because of the work of eco-brownshirts of whom they are not aware, who, as Chris Horner shows in detail, attack and silence the climate realists, who would otherwise displace the climate naive. IMHO. But I could be wrong.
It is an amazing visual aid. The two thirds of the graph to the left of 1960 clearly move downward with the adjustment while the one third to the right clearly moves upward with the adjustment.
Very dramatic.
Can this be adequately explained by the adjusters? I won’t hold my breath.
It is not fraud. I believe it is largely an artifact of the last two year’s temperature record in the US being comprised of only ~130 US stations, almost all of which are airports. Furthermore, all but 15 of those stations are considered urban. Although the urban stations are homogenized with rural data, the rural stations involved in that homogenization have not had their data used by GISS since at least this time 2007.
That’s pretty tricky. You’re taking the “new data”, but still only plotting through the year 2000 to reach an adjusted figure. How about you plot the latest cooling trend, too?
kurt,
Regarding the decreasing logarithmic effect of each succeeding increase in atmospheric CO2, I find that this chart shows how very insignificant any future CO2 increases would be:
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0115707ce438970b-pi
[chart source]
The CO2 question is essential to the entire AGW debate. If increasing CO2 will cause runaway global warming, then something must be done.
But the science tells us that runaway global warming is only a scare tactic. In fact, there is no such thing as runaway global warming — which would require positive feedback and a large climate sensitivity number. The first one doesn’t exist, and the second one has been falsified [h/t to Bill Illis, among others].
The chart makes clear that rising CO2 will have very little effect on the planet’s temperature. And that is the reason the CO2 = AGW crowd is getting so shrill.
Hmm, that does sounds scary, doesn’t it?
Well, according to
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/D7.html
average hurricane produces 5.2 x 10e19J per day. That means that about 50 days of hurricanes will use up as much energy as your whole scary glacier melting. Counting both Atlantic and Pacific hurricanes that would take about what, 1 year or so?
Here is a great report on Senator Inofe who is another doubter: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/29/gop-senator-calls-inquiry-supressed-climate-change-report/
For Robert A Cook PE (20:40:51; 6/28):
As a fellow ‘Gawgin” (that’s Georgian for those who don’t speak Southern) I had the same question. My solution was to email our Senators telling them if they don’t defeat this legislation or filabuster it to death, I would be voting Libertarian when their reelections come up. Having an ineffective Congressman is tantamount to not having one at all. I would hope that Cambliss got a big enough scare last time, but the lack of public outrage from our Congressmen is very disturbing.
If someone out there has access to them, let them know that being a good guy with the Dems and working out something more palatable is going to get them booted out of office. The only acceptable climate bill is no bill at all.
“I would be voting Libertarian when their reelections come up. Having an ineffective Congressman is tantamount to not having one at all.”
I am simply going to vote against whoever is running against the incumbent in all races regardless of party.
Has anyone stopped to consider the short-term consequeces of an extended minimum dropping the sea levels?
Major ports, estuaries and the Panama & Suez Canals come to mind.
Impinged accessability right when the literary record shows that trade is most needed to address potential crop failures.
Now, that’s not something you scare people with, it’s something that makes your climate data very important. Any monkeying with the data to hide the cooling will impose delay on goverments making plans to deepen the channel entrances.
The result is that the world’s economy & trade will take it in the chops, which is exactly what this Energy Bill before Congress will do. Bust our chops.
It is possible but far from certain that the ancients did build a canal from the Mediterrean to the Red Sea.
Certainly when the new Suez canal was built many people thought that there might be a difference in sea levels between the two ends, as it were.
There wasn’t then and there isn’t now.
And unlike the Panama the Suez has no locks: but it does have level/tidal gauges, for all practical purposes there is no tide in the Med, about three inches I think, nor in the Red Sea, less than a foot.
Since the Suez Canal was built and opened in 1869 these gauges show no change in sea levels at either end to an accuracy of approximately one inch.
Does that answer your question?
Kindest Regards
When does a correction stop being a legitimate correction and become scientific fraud?
Is that the case here?
Smokey (18:43:18) :
But the science tells us that runaway global warming is only a scare tactic. In fact, there is no such thing as runaway global warming — which would require positive feedback and a large climate sensitivity number.
Technically, a runaway condition can only happen in an active system. Any and all passive systems are bounded input, bounded output (BIBO) stable by definition since none of the poles of the system are in the right half plane.
There would need to be an amplifier with a plug in the wall somewhere amplifying the energy input to the earth, which would imply an input of energy from somewhere other than the sun (since the sun’s energy is what would need to be amplified). Even if you accept the Venus climate as that of a greenhouse gone wild, it was not the result of a runaway: the end result is most definitely bounded. Physical, active systems that go into runaway conditions burn themselves out because their output is not bounded and there is not an infinite amount of energy in the universe capable of supplying the runaway.
Mark
Well I think it’s not off-topic on the sense that most of the energy from excess greenhouse effect goes to melting ice and heating water, and only a fraction heats the atmosphere – so taking a look only at the average surface air temperature over only the US is not really related to global warming.
The comparison with hurricanes is an interesting one, though completely irrelevant here. Hurricanes, like melting, are a consequence of heat being “captured” (by liquid water in that case) and thus also act as an energy “sink” (or more precisely a means to transfer energy) rather than an energy source. And I truly wonder how a hurricane could melt glaciers, so the connection between the two is at best dubious.
“Smokey (18:43:18) :
kurt,
Regarding the decreasing logarithmic effect of each succeeding increase in atmospheric CO2, I find that this chart shows how very insignificant any future CO2 increases would be.”
You are preaching to the choir, here. I was responding to a post dismissing CO2 because it’s concentration in the atmosphere is minute. I pointed out, correctly, that that was faulty reasoning (after all, that minute amount of CO2 is responsible for maintaining all plant life on earth – a very significant effect.) Your point is actually that the concentration is already so high that any additional increases have little effect, in essence taking the opposite tack from the original poster. Your point is valid, although it dismisses the alleged positive feedback scenarios (which I do not buy into by the way) and also dismisses an argument that an exponential increase in CO2 emissions over time will counteract the logarathmic response of additional CO2. Personally, I think the climate system has negative feedback, meaning that the response to even exponential growth in CO2 emissions will be muted.
Somewhere above (or in a different post) there was a comment that accuracy is needed if you want to convince those who buy into AGW that the nightmare scenarios are wrong. All I was doing was discouraging an argument that is too easily rebutted.
That’s 2 billion terajoules. Hiroshima bomb was 63 TJ. The amount of energy that was necessary to melt all this ice was thus more or less the equivalent of 31 million Hiroshima bombs.
Of course, the Earth receives 3,850,000 exajoules of energy from the sun each year. So 2 billion terajoules is 15 seconds of sunshine. Spread over half a century to melt your glaciers.
And of course, a tiny fraction of the known and undisputed variation in solar output. Proving that glacier melt is insignificant on the scale of the Earth’s climate.
Flanagan, I’m sure those numbers impress your friends, but they are unlikely to impress the rather more numerate crowd here. 😉
@ur momisugly Frank K. (13:36:34) :
If you had given the GISTEMP code you link to even a cursory look, you would have noted that the adjustments by Karl and TOBS are not calculated within the GISTEMP code, instead it uses the already corrected USHCN data in step 0. What was this act of misdirection trying to achieve? Set me off on a wild goose chase? Or did you try to impress other readers? FAIL on both counts. Urban adjustments are covered in step 2, again the interesting stuff (which site is rural) is done elsewhere.
Has it even occurred to you, that there is no simple equation to cover the effects? Take a look at TOBS, for example: A Model to Estimate the Time of Observation Bias Associated with Monthly Mean Maximum, Minimum and Mean Temperatures for the United States, TR Karl et al., J. Appl. Met. 25(2), pp. 145–160, Feb. 1986
(PDF). If you are interested, you can buy their code.
To learn what, exactly? TOBS and other interesting stuff are done elsewhere.
@ur momisugly John Galt (14:28:42) :
What part of
don’t you understand? If you do this kind of adjustment, old values will vary.
Reading up is part of science, get used to it. There is no executive summary.
I think it’s the same data as in “Questions on the evolution…”, depicted November 14, 2008 on this site.