When I served on the committee that resulted in the CCSP (2006) report on reconciling the surface and tropospheric temperature trends, one of the issues I attempted to raise was a warm bias in the construction of long term surface temperature trends when near surface land minimum temperatures (and maximum temperatures when the atmospheric boundary layer remained stably stratified all day, such as in the high latitude winter) were used. This error will occur even for pristine observing sites. Tom Karl and his close associates suppressed this perspective as I document in
Pielke Sr., Roger A., 2005: Public Comment on CCSP Report “Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences“. 88 pp including appendices.
As a result of the poor treatment by Karl as Editor of the CCSP (2006) report, I decided to invesitgate this issue, and others, in a set of peer reviewed papers with colleagues which include
Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, S. Foster, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S08, doi:10.1029/2006JD008229.
Pielke Sr., R.A., and T. Matsui, 2005: Should light wind and windy nights have the same temperature trends at individual levels even if the boundary layer averaged heat content change is the same?Geophys. Res. Letts., 32, No. 21, L21813, 10.1029/2005GL024407.
Lin, X., R.A. Pielke Sr., K.G. Hubbard, K.C. Crawford, M. A. Shafer, and T. Matsui, 2007:An examination of 1997-2007 surface layer temperature trends at two heights in Oklahoma. Geophys. Res. Letts., 34, L24705, doi:10.1029/2007GL031652.
Fall, S., D. Niyogi, A. Gluhovsky, R. A. Pielke Sr., E. Kalnay, and G. Rochon, 2009: Impacts of land use land cover on temperature trends over the continental United States: Assessment using the North American Regional Reanalysis.Int. J. Climatol., accepted
We now have a new paper accepted which documents further a warm bias in the use of multi-decadal global surface temperature trends to assess global warming.
It is
Klotzbach, P.J., R.A. Pielke Sr., R.A. Pielke Jr., J.R. Christy, and R.T. McNider, 2009: An alternative explanation for differential temperature trends at the surface and in the lower troposphere. J. Geophys. Res., in press.
Our paper is also effectively discussed in my son’s weblog
Evidence that Global Temperature Trends Have Been Overstated
The abstract of the Klotzbach et al (2009) paper reads
“This paper investigates surface and satellite temperature trends over the period from 1979-2008. Surface temperature datasets from the National Climate Data Center and the Hadley Center show larger trends over the 30-year period than the lower-tropospheric data from the University of Alabama-Huntsville and Remote Sensing Systems datasets. The differences between trends observed in the surface and lower tropospheric satellite datasets are statistically significant in most comparisons, with much greater differences over land areas than over ocean areas. These findings strongly suggest that there remain important inconsistencies between surface and satellite records.”
We tested the following two hypotheses:
1. If there is no warm bias in the surface temperature trends, then there should not be an increasing divergence with time between the tropospheric and surface temperature anomalies [Karl et al., 2006]. The difference between lower troposphere and surface anomalies should not be greater over land areas.
2. If there is no warm bias in the surface temperature trends then the divergence should not be larger for both maximum and minimum temperatures at high latitude land locations in the winter.
Both were falsified.
The paper has the following text
“We find that there have, in general, been larger linear trends in surface temperature datasets such as the NCDC and HadCRUTv3 surface datasets when compared with the UAH and RSS lower tropospheric datasets, especially over land areas. This variation in trends is also confirmed by the larger temperature anomalies that have been reported for near surface air temperatures (e.g., Zorita et al., 2008; Chase et al., 2006; 2008, Connolley, 2008). The differences between surface and satellite datasets tend to be largest over land areas, indicating that there may still be some contamination due to various aspects of land surface change, atmospheric aerosols and the tendency of shallow boundary layers to warm at a greater rate [Lin et al., 2007; Esau, 2008; Christy et al., 2009]. Trends in minimum temperatures in northern polar areas are statistically significantly greater than the trends in maximum temperatures over northern polar areas during the boreal winter months.
We conclude that the fact that trends in thermometer-estimated surface warming over land areas have been larger than trends in the lower troposphere estimated from satellites and radiosondes is most parsimoniously explained by the first possible explanation offered by Santer et al. [2000]. Specifically, the characteristics of the divergence across the datasets are strongly suggestive that it is an artifact resulting from the data quality of the surface, satellite and/or radiosonde observations. These findings indicate that the reconciliation of differences between surface and satellite datasets [Karl et al., 2006] has not yet occurred, and we have offered a suggested reason for the continuing lack of reconciliation.”
What our study shows is that maps prepared by NCDC, as given below, are biased presentations of the surface temperature anomalies.
BIASED NCDC MAP OF SURFACE TEMPERATURE ANOMALIES
where I wrote
Back of the Envelope Estimate of Bias in Minimum Temperature Measurements
To present a preliminary estimate, lets start with the value reported for the recent trend in the global average surface temperature. The 2007 IPCC Report presents a global average surface temperature increase of about 0.2C per decade since 1990 (see their Figure SPM.3). Their trend is derived from the average of the maximum and minimum surface temperatures; i.e.,
T(average) = [T(max) + T(min)]/2.
“From our papers (Pielke and Matsui 2005 and Lin et al. 2007), a conservative estimate of the warm bias resulting from measuring the temperature near the ground is around 0.21 C per decade (with the nightime T(min) contributing a large part of this bias) . Since land covers about 29% of the Earth’s surface (see), the warm bias due to this influence explains about 30% of the IPCC estimate of global warming. In other words, consideration of the bias in temperature would reduce the IPCC trend to about 0.14 degrees C per decade, still a warming, but not as large as indicated by the IPCC.
This is likely an underestimate, of course, as the value is not weighted for the larger bias that must occur at higher latitudes in the winter when the boundary layer is stably stratified most of the time even in the “daytime” . Moreover, the warm bias over land in the high latitudes in the winter will be even larger than at lower latitudes, as the nightime surface layer of the atmosphere is typically more stably stratified than at lower latitudes, and this magnifies the bias in the assessment of temperature trends using surface and near surface measurements. [not coincidently, this is also where the largest warming is claimed; e.g., see the map on Andy Revkin’s Dot Earth’s weblog].
Land is also a higher fraction of the Earth’s surface at middle and higher latitudes in the northern hemisphere and at the highest latitudes in the southern hemisphere (see).”
Our new paper Klotzbach et al (2009) provides evidence of the significant error in the global surface temperature trend analyses of NCDC, and well of other centers such as GISS and CRU, due to the sampling of temperatures at just one level near the surface. It is also important to recognize that this is just one error of a number that are in the NCDC, GISS and CRU data sets, as we have summarized in our paper
Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, S. Foster, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007:Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S08, doi:10.1029/2006JD008229.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“E.M.Smith (15:53:12) :
TonyB (11:21:08) : E M Smith said: I can fairly easily produce the lists of station IDs by quartile, if anyone wants it. It would be fascinating to see if the warming pattern matches urban vs rural or airport vs non or a dozen other UHI related things.”
Yes please!
OK, right after “send money to son” ;-0
Hey EM Smith can you change that to “after send money to son AND Tonyb”
Tonyb (in hope and expectation)
E.M.Smith (15:53:12) :
TonyB (11:21:08) : E M Smith said: I can fairly easily produce the lists of station IDs by quartile, if anyone wants it. It would be fascinating to see if the warming pattern matches urban vs rural or airport vs non or a dozen other UHI related things.”
Yes please!
Done.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/15/best-3000-thermometer-records/
Is a decent entry point. All 4 quartiles are up. One observation was that the shorter a life time for a thermometer, the more likely it had a high “mod” count. Don’t know exactly what that means, but it looks like a high proportion of the short records are of “diverse” modification histories…
I also found it interesting that at the bottom of the lists there were often a few “SHIP L” , “SHIP A” etc. Who knew? And in the “bottom quartile” post, there is one record with a 20 year data series named “EXPERIMENTAL”…
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/15/bottom-quartile-of-thermometers/
Hey EM Smith can you change that to “after send money to son AND Tonyb”
Sorry, didn’t see this in time, son and cat food have cleaned me out already… 8-}
Don S. (20:42:43) : All science is numbers and qualitative meanderings lead nowhere.
Um, no.
Biology, medicine, botany, geology come to mind as fields with a heck of a lot of science done without a whole lot of math in most of it. Plate tectonics wasn’t exactly a math laden theory… And I’d not want to see you trying to tell an M.D. that his development of a new surgical technique after a great deal of thought and experimentation was not scientific because it did not use math… And I’m pretty sure the invention of the lightbulb was more “thesis, trial and error testing, confirmation” than math, yet a form of scientific enquiry.
There is also the notion that Math is not a science because it is either an act of definition or the discovery of a natural language ( I can’t describe this theory well because I don’t buy into it, but a lot of folks do.)
We have two side of the brain, and multiple intelligences. Many of them can “do science” and it is not limited to the math lobes…
BTW, I love math, and got a math award at one time in my life. I do think a lot of science is improved by better application of math. It’s just that you can form a hypothesis and test it in words, just fine, thank you very much. Math is just a language, and the languages are translatable / transformable into each other. Some are more efficient than others for some problems, but that does not mean they are unable.
BTW #2: You don’t actually need words either. At least not in the way most folks think of them. Deaf folks do just fine thinking in sign. I know because I’ve learned sign. At times, though rarely since I’m not a native “speaker” of sign, I have flashes of thought in sign. It’s often faster and more concise than either english or math for some things.
AND my best insights and understandings come in a visual form. Not English. Not math. Not even sign. Just a “flash” with visual cues blended in. Use your whole brain, not just one tiny part of it, and things work a whole lot better… including science. Most of the time when I’m figuring out how something works it comes in the “flash”, only later do linear forms like language and math get involved (and often just in the “tell someone else” phase). I know this particular function is more an “Aspe” thing, and many folks can’t do it, but it is still a valid style of thought.
Basically, there are many valid ways to think, so please don’t try to limit everyone else to the one you can do. Some of us can do other forms…
Lucy Skywalker (16:16:22) :
E M Smith (or anyone)
Noting your observation that longstanding records have little apparent bias problems – see all of John Daly’s longest continuous temperature records:
Bookmarked. I’ll look at it in more depth later. Now it’s time for some sleep… Thanks for the pointer!
Lucy Skywalker
This was one of the first pieces of information I ever looked at and as thousands of other papers have crowded this out I have forgotten just how good this piece of work is.
It seems to me it is worth going through each one by region and brining it up to date-where that hasn’t been done.
Has anyone (such as EM Smith) got the relevant data already in a digital format so the job can be easily done? Perhaps it has been done already and is available somewhere else?
http://www.john-daly.com/stations/stations.htm#Greenland,%20Iceland,%20northern%20Norway,%20and%20the%20Arctic%20Ocean
Tonyb
This is what happens to scholars who pin their careers on the back of failed “D” science students comments. AWG a nothing in the past and proven to be worse today. It’s beginning to be a democratic thing lately, can’t trust any of them.
E.M. Smith,
You may already know this, but Ship Station A was at Lat. 62 degrees N. and Long. 33 degrees W. When a ship reached a “station” (within a square whose sides are 105 nautical miles N,E,S, and W of the center of the station) they filled out forms which recorded meteorological information which was then forwarded on to the US Weather Bureau or the Met. Office London. Both commerical and Navy ships suppled info. The means were computed from the sums of 8 individual temp. obs. per 24 hr. period recorded to the nearest whole degree.
Science Daily has an article admitting that the tree lines have not been lowering as expected due to the 0.7°C global warming.
They give their reasons for the unexpected behavior. But they left out the most obvious explanation: that the global rise in temperature over the past century is has been somewhat exaggerated.
Smokey (09:17:40) :
Science Daily has an article admitting that the tree lines have not been lowering as expected due to the 0.7°C global warming.
They give their reasons for the unexpected behavior. But they left out the most obvious explanation: that the global rise in temperature over the past century is has been somewhat exaggerated.
That’s absolutely normal natural ecological succession and has nothing to do with anthropogenic global warming. The latter (AGW) is a fallacy. We are starting a warmhouse period given that a very long icehouse period is finishing.
Chris Schoneveld (01:02:24) : When you view the entire world as beautifully mathematical, to say otherwise is sacrilege. I suspect that you don’t, but okay, whatever!
E.M.Smith (04:30:47) : I happen to think that the only real science is physics, the rest, uh, not so much…condescending? Oh absolutely. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate other ways of thinking, I just happen to think that they are all ultimately reducible to mathematics. I consider mathematics to the language of the gods themselves. But I understand not everyone feels that way.
@Anthony Watts…
I don’t see it’s fair that you silenced me on the issue of the real meaning of heat while you yield Leif and others to insist on teaching a major lie derived from deep ignorance on thermodynamics and heat transfer science.
My arguments are supported on real physics writen by real physicists. However, they continue mentioning the lie making a mockyery the reference to the discussion on the difference about heat and kinetic energy, as if they were right and I was wrong, even when I demonstrated their lack of knowledge on the issue.
REPLY: I didn’t silence you, as evidenced by your comment now and many other subsequent comments on other threads. I asked, using “please” not to dominate the thread. At one point you were making rapid fire comments and some of them were a bit over the top. My job as moderator is to regulate such occurances. If you are unhappy with that policy, take the argument elsewhere but don’t waste my time by whining about it. – Anthony
If you are unhappy with that policy, take the argument elsewhere but don’t waste my time by whining about it. – Anthony
No, not unhappy, just I find it uncomfortable. It’s not my argument, but the physical concept of heat developed by scientists, so I have not need of taking real science elsewhere. It is in any book of physics, thermodynamics or heat transfer.
Anyway, I have understood what you are saying and stop “whining”.
Anthony, while I don’t disagree with dropping the argument, you are remiss if you don’t notice that all it would take would be for everyone to stop responding, i.e., it takes two to argue. It’s not Nasif that is dominating the thread, it is Nasif plus everyone that chooses to take up the argument. They are equally culpable.
Mark
REPLY: Well then, the alternative is to close the thread. I just don’t want to spend time moderating personal spats over semantics and terms. It is a waste of my effort and the effort of other moderators. – Anthony
Anthony
Please don’t spoil our fun. Watching Nasif and Leif, and Phil and Shawn, do their battles over various internet blogs is like watching a fourth instalment of Lords of the Rings.
Tonyb
TonyB (05:08:24) :
re:http://www.john-daly.com/stations/stations.htm#Greenland,%20Iceland,%20northern%20Norway,%20and%20the%20Arctic%20Ocean
I agree that this is an excellent site for people who feel a bit intimitated by the statistics and science. The alarmists say that the looming catastrophy is global and observations by individuals based on their own personal experience is irrelevant. Only by consulting their “global temperature” (not an actual temperature but a statistical construction, made up using opaque rules by people with vested interests) can a rational decision be made (they say). But there is a simple alternative. If dangerous global warming is occuring this should be evident in the individual temperature records at various places around the world. OK, if there is no warming in just a few places, while everywhere else is warming, this is likely to be a result of local factors. But what is evident in these long term data sets is exactly the reverse. Simple inspection nearly everywhere shows that nothing is happening of any significance. A few go up a bit, a few go down, most go nowhere. No statistics or computer models needed.
astronmr20 (16:11:29) :
Somewhat O/T,
But my AGW friends are going on about this article, which does seem to show that a particular glacier is “thinning fast:”
Yes, it is somewhat O/T, BUT, I will posit a guess using numbers from another previous post;
alexandriu doru (03:26:31) :
1.The temperature trends 1980-2009 are (in celsius/decade) :
HADCRUT3 0.1597
NASA GISS 0.1589
RSS-TLT 0.1559
UAH-TLT 0.1276
Source:Woodfortrees.
The four numbers tell the same story .
2. Kate
The Pine Island glacier:
-mean temperature -30 C
SO – a quick google search yields results that include a link to; sub-glacial volcanoes?
Yes, based on a aerial survey and radar mapping expedition last year in the Pine Island area, and ice-core samples from other locations, a nearby volcanic system erupted ~2200 years ago. It may have become active again circa 1985. Which is more likely, that a possible surface temperature increase of 0.48 degrees (ah, what the heck, I feel generous, double it and then round up to 1 degree) at a “balmy” mean of –30, is melting the ice, or a possible temperature increase under the glacier that could range from ~400 degrees to ~1700 degrees, or higher, might be increasing the speed at which it is melting?
I wonder…
davidc
I prefer using national temperature data sets which often show a different picture to the global temperature construct which;
a) is meaningless
b) relies on ever changing stations
tonyb
Larry
The plot thickens. I have attached a link to the BBC report and to the actual scientific paper the BBC is reporting on. The TV piece clearly makes a link to AGW by juxtaposing the Antarctic piece to the Greenland item where someone actually talks of climate warming.
However this is a very clever sleight of hand as I can’t see anywhere in the actual scientific paper any reference at all to the Antarctic situation being the result of climate warming.
This is quite deliberate splicing of two unrelated (but similar) items in order to create a perception that the two events have a common cause.
What do you think. Another Obamagate?
http://www.the-cryosphere-discuss.net/3/223/2009/tcd-3-223-2009.pdf
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8200680.stm
tonyb
I have posted previously that my estimate of the average global warming bias of Hadcrut3 surface temperature measurements is 0.07C per decade, when compared with Lower Troposphere temperatures as depicted by UAH.
If I read this post correctly the writer is estimating the warming bias as equal to (~0.2 – 0.14) = approx. 0.06C per decade.
Close enough.
timetochooseagain (11:05:28) :
“Chris Schoneveld (01:02:24) : When you view the entire world as beautifully mathematical, to say otherwise is sacrilege. I suspect that you don’t, but okay, whatever!”
I agree with you, I just didn’t think that the reference to God was appropriate. Now I understand that it was used metaphorically, but one never knows with a country with a bible belt.
“REPLY: Well then, the alternative is to close the thread. I just don’t want to spend time moderating personal spats over semantics and terms. It is a waste of my effort and the effort of other moderators. – Anthony”
But correct terms are of vital importance, Anthony. To his credit, all that Nasif has done is patiently explain that the oceans system does not contain “heat” (as the title of one of your threads incorrectly implies) it contain “energy”. Flipping the distinctions between “heat” and “energy” poisons the very root of science. The incorrect term “Heat Content” is deployed rather than the proper term “Energy Content” because of its emotive propaganda utility. It induces people to think straight away in terms of abnormal temperatures.
Tony,
I don’t know if it’s intentional, but it is not as if the information is not in the public domain;
“Pine Island glacier has experienced sudden accelerations toward the sea twice in the past few decades. Topography of the bedrock around the volcano indicates that meltwater would flow off the mountain’s flanks and beneath the glacier, lubricating its base and speeding up the movement of the ice.”
http://www.volcanolive.com/hudson2.html
One question:
Let’s assume that the global warming bias in average surface temperature (ST) measurement from ~1980 to present is 0.06C to 0.07C per decade, or a total of ~0.2C in three decades.
Is it reasonable to extrapolate this 0.06C to 0.07C per decade ST warming bias backward in time to “adjust ” average global surface temperature measurements?
I have no opinion on this question, which is why I’m asking here.
If we do make this extrapolation, we get 0.6C to 0.7C of warming bias in the global average ST data, which pretty much eliminates all the alleged global warming in the 20th Century.
I am not questioning whether temperature has fluctuated over this period; rather I’m questioning whether Earth was actually significantly warmer in circa 2009 than circa 1900.
For those who answer yes, please provide your evidence.
I must say Tom has a point and especially Anthony – with a name that stands for the rate of energy transfer by heat (W=J/s) – should be receptive to his argument.
Correction:
For those who answer yes OR NO, please provide your evidence.