As promised, I contacted Dr. John Christy regarding the seasonal signal that the anonymous blogger “deepclimate” says he/she has identified in the UAH data, seen below. He/she says: “I am a Canadian citizen residing in Canada. For private and professional reasons, I prefer to remain anonymous to the general public, at least for now.”
I’ve never understood the need for some people to remain anonymous while at the same time attempt to do science. Imagine the furor if scientists like Christy or Spencer created an anonymous blog and then were later discovered. I’m sure it would be immediately up there on sourcewatch with “tsk tsk” attached.
Science really should be done out in the open. Here’s Dr. Christy’s in the open response.
Dr. Christy has made a response in the readme file at the UAH website here:
http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/readme.18Jul2009
Update 18 Jul 2009 ************************************
Corrected trend values (1700 CST)
It was brought to my attention by Anthony Watts that there has been some discussion about the noticeable annual cycle in the LT and MT trends when done by months. In other words, the trend for Februaries is on the order of 0.12 C/decade warmer than the trend for Mays. Other data sets don’t have such a large range in trends when calculated by months, RSS for example has a range of 0.05 C/decade. (Note, this issue doesn’t affect the overall trend.)
The feature arises when the AMSU data are adjusted and merged into the MSU data stream beginning with NOAA-15 in Aug 1998, then carries forward with NOAA-16 and AQUA (both of which are AMSUs too). The process involves at one point
the removal of a mean annual cycle in the anomaly differences from one satellite to another. It turns out that all satellites have a residual annual cycle due to each instrument’s peculiarities. In the end, all annual cycles are matched to NOAA-6 and NOAA-7.
Detecting the impact of this peculiarity is difficult. For example, it is not seen when
gridded data are directly compared against radiosondes (see Christy
and Norris 2006 and 2009.) However, an annual cycle in the difference time series is clear in RSS data when compared with balloons (see Fig. 2 of both papers.)
I’ve tested a number of alternate processing methods (basically versions of
not removing the annual cycle in the difference time series from the first
AMSU onward) and the range from the highest to lowest is reduced
to just under 0.09 C/decade. This in effect establishes a new annual
cycle for the AMSUs based on the first AMSU.
I think the magnitude of the annual cycle in the monthly trends is a
legitimate problem to address. The range in the current v5.2 LT looks too large
(about 0.12 C/decade). However, one should expect differences from month to month, especially when ENSOs and a volcano have different impacts by months so
so the range shouldn’t be zero. I’ll keep looking into this and if a
reasonable result is produced, I’ll rename the dataset v5.3.
The important point in all of this is that the overall global trend of the entire
time series ranges insignificantly from +0.123 to +0.125 C/decade even
under the different merging methods used to date. This is because the removal of the annual cycle of differences from satellite to satellite does not add any bias
to the time series, so the overall trend doesn’t change.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Since Earth is at perihelion in January and at aphelion in July, is it surprising that there is a small annual signature resembling this in the anomaly?
He/she says: “I am a Canadian citizen residing in Canada. For private and professional reasons, I prefer to remain anonymous to the general public, at least for now.”
Could this be Dr. Hansen? (LOL)
Since he is a U.S. government employee…but he “speaks as a private citizen”….maybe one of his personalities wants to speak here as a Canadian citizen…but remains anonymous so his cover won’t be blown.
As he has shown incredibly pathological behavior over the past few months but STILL managed to keep his taxpayer-funded job, I wouldn’t put it past him….
CHRIS
Norfolk, VA, USA
Slightly OT. I don’t know if the two are closely related… but here in the UK we’ve had two awful summers – 2007 & 2008, which were cool and wet. The reason given was that the Jet Stream was at a low latitude, so warmer weather wasn’t being dragged up. At the same time of course, the Arctic experienced a reduction in ice extent. The two coincided. Currently (after a hot end to June) the UK is again experiencing a pretty rotten summer, with cool temps and lots of rain. And again, the Jet Stream is low http://www.metcheck.com/V40/UK/FREE/jetstream.asp So if the two are connected, then we may see another year of Arctic melt. Of course, it could be coincidence, and we all know that correlation isn’t causation. I will try and dig out the historic weather reports for UK summers when the Arctic previously had high melt – late 1930s I think.
Record low this morning….56 at Louisville International Airport
Richmond 50
Bloomington, IN 51
Leitchfield 51
Corydon, IN 52
My house 52
Frankfort 53 (record)
Shepherdsville 53
Fort Knox 54
Carrollton 54
Bowling Green 54 (record)
Campbellsville 55
The record cool high for today is 75. The forecast high is mid 70s.
July is averaging 4.2 degrees below normal.
Yesterday’s high of 70 is the normal high for October 12.
As a matter of fact it’s the coolest first week in July in the history of weather record keeping for Louisville, Ky
I thought I would clear up some misconceptions.
1) Regarding my identity: No, I’m not a scientist, and certainly not a member of the “hockey team”. (Believe it or not, this is not the first time that idea has been raised). I do have a background in computer programming, as well as undergrad level statistics. The latter was a long time ago, and I’m only recently getting back up to speed.
2) Regarding anonymity: I have my reasons, which are largely personal and which I suppose will be revealed at some point. Meanwhile the following points may be of interest:
** I have identified myself at all times in my private correspondence with other individuals, who include various principals involved in the topics to be presented here. In fact I intend to communicate with Dr. Christy on this matter. Anthony, I am also willing to extend you the same courtesy, if you get in touch via email and are willing to agree to keep our communication private.
** To the extent that my posts rest on publicly available information (which they do entirely as far as I know), my identity is not particularly relevant. In the current case, I think the focus should be on resolving the “annual cycle” issue that I and others have raised. I commend Dr. Christy for agreeing to do so and look forward to the results of his inquiry.
As a final comment, the chart shown is average UAH anomaly by month over the last few years, not a chart of the resulting trends. That latter chart with (trends for all data sets), was given in the same post, and can be found here:
http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/global-month-trends1.gif
Thanks for reading if you’ve made it this far.
DC is a branch of desmut .. same words same attitude and same disrespectful argument….
comment policy
“Links to websites to blogs or websites known to engage in deliberate distortion of scientific or other facts may be removed.”…better shut down deepclimate asap.
and
“Unfounded accusations of scientific fraud, whether implicit or explicit, are actively discouraged and may be snipped or moved.”
translation: anyone posting of scientific facts will be snipped or removed.
I do remember someone from Desmut who bragged about being able to censor people at will on his facebook page…. KG.
Clarification:
“I have identified myself at all times in my private correspondence with other individuals, who include various principals involved in the topics to be presented here.”
Perhaps it’s obvious, but that should have read:
“”I have identified myself at all times in my private correspondence with other individuals, who include various principals involved in the topics presented at deepclimate.org“
I got past the LT & MT (lower & middle troposphere) but am still stumped by the chart. The solid red line is the average monthly anomaly (2003-2008). The value for May is just under 0.1, lets say 0.098. The value for February seems to be about 0.36. The difference is 0.262, but that doesn’t appear to be what is being discussed here. The discussion focuses on “trends” – where or how on the chart do I get to “the trend for Februaries is on the order of 0.12 C/decade”?
I’ll feel foolish when someone explains.
Well, because, some of us have ‘day jobs’ or do business/have our names out there (actual product/services et al) where it might not be appreciated by customers/employers to be doing business
withas skeptics ….
.
And maybe some comments are being removed or something but wilbert Robichaud (11:21:31) and Deep Climate (11:24:35) items seem to be unrelated to the question. Why not find someplace else to spar? Thank you.
Yep…the UK Met office got it wrong ….again!
Can we have some global warming….please.
Anonymity is not a factor. I can come up with greatest theory, algorithm, discovery, or invention, and as long a it is verifiable, it doesn’t matter if I am anonymous. The key is that these are all objective measures and you can disprove these if you wish. Science is like this, whereas most of politics, sociology, etc is not and so you need names and credibility to keep a scorecard.
Now the fact that you may waste a lot of time verifying some anonymous source’s ideas, then that may play more of a role. But that is the way of the internet and if you choose to ignore someone who has figured it all it, well, that is your fault.
REPLY: try getting an anonymously authored paper published in a peer reviewed journal. – A
John H,
My second comment was a clarification to my original comment, and nothing to do Wilbert R’s comment.
Sometimes comments cross each other.
For example … you wrote:
“The discussion focuses on “trends” – where or how on the chart do I get to “the trend for Februaries is on the order of 0.12 C/decade”?”
My first comment anticipated your question above (before I saw it obviously). In my opinion, the second chart (showing UAH trend divergence) should be part of the main post. Your confusion was most understandable – that’s why I brought it up. I hope the chart clears it up.
Hete it is again, just to be sure:
http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/global-month-trends1.gif
I’ve contacted Dr. Christy on this more than 6 months ago to similar result. Deep, doesn’t need to worry about coming clean about his identity b/c his math skills are weak as evidenced by his discussions of filtering. I do commend him for working on it though. He’s got more guts than most to try IMHO.
Under the guise of “saving the children”, the misinformation broadcast by sites like deep climate and others like them are doing far more harm to children and families than any good what so ever. Lies and obfuscation are the weapons that are used to push an agenda that will only result in devastation to those who they claim to want to help. How about reasonably priced energy to all people of the world? That is what is needed to help the children and grandchildren. Technology is what will save the generations of the future. Reveal who you are deepclimate, you chicken(snip)!! Liars have to hide. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Anthony and moderators, snip at will.
_Jim (11:47:30), this is how the AGW lie is perpetuated. Stand up and be counted as a skeptic. Fly the skull and crossbones at full mast. Make them accountable for their beliefs. Otherwise, the lie will never be revealed for what it is.
I’d love to hear Mr Christy’s take on the recent upshot on the UAH daily AMSU-A temperature graph (ch05). If it is of any interest or importance, that is.
I found Deep Climate’s pieces on the issue an interesting read, although I cannot judge the content. Why do you always make such a point of anonymity, Anthony?
If there is a CO2 based response in the atmosphere, we would see a difference in annual atmospheric signal over time. The earth sees a 4% change in solar radiation on an annual basis. I spent a couple of days last year looking a phase analysis of the recent data and found that the signal corresponded in time reasonably to an increased response to the solar input. However, when I looked at older data (earlier in the time series) it seemed to be a nonsensical mess.
I think David Archibald counted on this in his May -0.4C anomaly prediction, seeing the regular cooling pattern around May. Concerning recent UAH spike, for the time being it is visually as high as the spike in July 2007, which gave an average 0,255 deg C anomaly. January 2007 had much higher anomaly of 0.59 deg C and quickly reverted back.
OT, with SOI index so positive again, what will happen with expected El Nino, which NOAA (who understands and manages everything) expect to beat the 1998 one?
OT, sort of.
Deepclimate, I just went to your site.
So what if Friends of Science gets some funding from oil and gas. It’s a drop in the bucket compared to the billions lavished on Warmist ventures through grants etc from governments, left-dominated academia and the UN/IPCC/etc.
If you’re saying that Friends of Science et al are promoting a ‘partisan’ point of view and the above-mentioned are not, you’re exposing yourself as completely intellectually bankrupt.
Jeff Id (12:16:49) :
If there is a CO2 based response in the atmosphere, we would see a difference in annual atmospheric signal over time. The earth sees a 4% change in solar radiation on an annual basis. I spent a couple of days last year looking a phase analysis of the recent data and found that the signal corresponded in time reasonably to an increased response to the solar input. However, when I looked at older data (earlier in the time series) it seemed to be a nonsensical mess.
I’d suggest this period of solar quiet is a good time to be assessing various kinds of signals in the data. For example the lag between SST and LT temps.
So, the Hoo Flung Dung over UAH is all about a 0.08C wibble in the annual trend?
And John Christy points out this makes a 0.002C to the overall trend.
What is the big deal?
Barry Foster (09:43:53) :
Slightly OT. I don’t know if the two are closely related… but here in the UK we’ve had two awful summers – 2007 & 2008, which were cool and wet. The reason given was that the Jet Stream was at a low latitude, so warmer weather wasn’t being dragged up
Are there any longterm records of Jet Stream latitude available anywhere?
By the way, DC, how are those wheat yield projections coming along up in Canada?
(oil and gas must have a hand in that as well)
Let deepclimate be deepclimate. This is not peer-reviewed science but a blog and as long as he/she is presenting and utilizing data and methodology which can be verified the name of the person is in terms of strict rational thinking immaterial.
I agree with the comments about the (sad) need some feel for not disclosing who they are due to peer pressure or more ‘serious’ concerns. I myself am Danish and in the light of the witch hunt Bjorn Lomborg have faced at home have no interest in revealing my true identity, nor here or the Danish blog-debates i participate in. Call me chicken but allow me – and others – the courtesy of doubt and the possibility that we have actually rationally pondered the issue rationally. I am involved in academics within economics and wish to pursue a career in this field but at present need the network and contacts of several ‘green’ groups in Denmark for data and inside insights. They know I am skeptic towards many things but not the degree and detail. In fact by having their ear I have chance of debating some of their viewpoints. Quite a few I have spoken to over the past years have come to understand why cap and trade and taxes on everything is a bad idea. How innovation and free markets are to prefer and that it is more an issue of resolving energy-questions than being green for the sake of it. Even windmills are no longer pursued as vigorously as in the past as people understand they are not an easy quick fix to any energy problem (or imagined CO2-problem).
Lend me your ears and let me tell you a story. Sadly, many people close their ears if they believe you to be a political/ideological ‘opponent’. By then it matters little how logically robust my story is.
Don’t call me chicken(snip) – or others – simply because we for what could be well considered reasons choose not to have our full name in public.
Best regards
I enjoy reading your blog – but mostly I don’t understand a blind word on it. I will add that after promising us Brits a BBQ summer and indeed getting 10 days of hot humid weather, we are now reverting to the cool wet and windy summer we usually get.
I am of course a lubberly non scientist but also a dunce t acronyms. I know you give a glossary but the meaning behind the allusions that are made is vague to the likes of me.
Without a doubt, rather than talking to yourselves, I do feel the odd précis in plain text rather than code would help ‘the cause’.
The cause of course is ‘The Truth’