What sudden recent warming? What Hockey Stick? I don’t see any.
By Lucy Skywalker Green World Trust
with thanks to the late John Daly and his timeless, brilliant website page “What the Stations Say” (click on Arctic map above). Click on each thumbnail graph to access Daly’s full size graph with time and temperature scales and other details. The thicker dark horizontal line across some of these thumbnails indicated 0ºC (a few of the graphs are ALL under that line). The Arctic is shown in the condition of summer sea ice (see thumbnail below) and the pale circle is the Arctic Circle. All data comes from NASA GISS or CRU originally.
Paul Vaughan notes at WUWT that he “spent a fair amount of time updating these graphs (& others of Daly’s for other regions)” using http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/ and adds a cautionary note: The time-frame and aspect-ratio of the timeplots can be manipulated to create the illusion of a steep trend in recent years.
The highly variable temperatures and amounts of sea ice in both polar regions is well-known to locals, but cherrypicked extremes have become a media weapon to scare ignorant folk with. Greenlanders today are aware of recent warming; but history, archaeology, and the Norse sagas show that Greenland was warmer than today in the Middle Ages, when crops and trees were grown there. For recent sea ice changes (since 1979) see Cryosphere Today and note that while Northern Hemisphere sea ice (at the top of the CT page) has gone down recently (but is currently going up again), Southern Hemisphere sea ice (at the bottom of the CT page) is going up, so that the overall total is pretty constant although fluctuating between summer and winter.
Finally, Jeff Id’s superb animation of recent Arctic sea ice>>
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Another dumb layman’s thought from yours truly ….
If the only way that it is possible to produce a figure for the global temperature (or the arctic or any other part of the planet) is by this process of ‘homogenization’ then the whole idea of trying to establish a globally averaged temperature makes no sense.
I live less than a mile from an amateur meteorologist who recorded the max temperature in his backyard one day in July as 93.2F and duly posted it on his website as a local record. My recorded max for that day was 78.2F though I could have moved the thermometer a couple of feet and probably got another six or seven degrees.
The whole exercise is meaningless if you are (in effect) always cherry-picking and if, as we know, a large number of the sites are producing rubbish reading anyway …
Scott:
“I also see that the folks who support the AGW theory are able to articulate their arguments much better than those that are anti-AGW.”
You are, of course, joking! I haven’t heard any argument from the supporters of AGW theory, except for the few that come on here and are infected by our natural good manners. They don’t argue; they assert. They don’t articulate; they insult. You agree with every word they say or you are a “denier” (with all that that implies) or in the pay of Big Oil (apparently forgetting that Big Oil has realised that AGW is a potential bandwagon) or whatever insult they can fling at you as occasion demands.
Sheesh!
bill (06:13:49) :
Bill, there is no heat in the “pipeline”, opposite to what James Hansen declared a few years ago. The warming of the largest heat reservoir on earth, the oceans halted about 4 years ago. Thus the increase of GHGs since 1998 has currently less effect than the natural variation (El Niño, PDO, AMO,…) which cools everything down and even has reduced the potential heat effect of the warmed oceans to near zero.
Thus there is no reason for a need for a natural huge heat reservoir to explain the RWP, the MWP and the current warm period, it is all a matter of natural cycles, whatever the main mechanism behind it, driven by the ultimate source, the sun.
One possible strong source of the variation is clouds: a 1% change in cloud cover has the same effect as the (theoretical) effect of all GHGs emitted since the start of the industrial revolution. Our understanding of clouds is minimal, to say the least and only with the latest satellites, some more detailed data are dropping in. But it is clear that there are variations, which influence climate and aren’t captured by the models. See e.g. the papers of Chen, Wielicki e.a. with a nice explanation at the NASA web site:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/DelicateBalance/
There is a lot of evidence that the RWP and MWP were as warm (worldwide!) or warmer than the current period, from the Alps (passes open in Roman times, still under ice today), Greenland (digged graves under permafrost today), China (speleoterms), South Africa,… Only cherrypicking some very suspicious series like Mann and now Kaufman used don’t show this, simply because these are no temperature proxies at all in the past centur(y)(ies).
Ferdinand Engelbeen (09:00:01) : There is no south pacific warm pool whatsoever, even NOAA’s once flaming red inkjet maps (now pale orange and yellow) are reflecting this reality, so the ocean heat piggy bank is exhausted, not to mention the imaginary Hansen’s tropical atmosphere heat piggy bank, the sun’s gear is in parking mode, low cloud cover increased, and the only heat to find is in the feverish imagination of global warmer’s empty skulls.
KBK (11:53:16) : I keep hearing that it was warmer in the Arctic in the ’30s. While it’s clear that the summer melt is currently typical compared to the last ten years, I keep coming back [Cryosphere] which shows that the summer extent is about 60% of what it was as recently as 1970. What is the data behind this plot? Is it considered to be bogus?
I think Cryosphere data are ok as far as they go. Shame they put the Arctic prominently at the top, while shunting Antarctica and the two together to the bottom – which suggests to me a possible bias of attitude. Problem is, CT records start in 1979. Before that, we can use other evidence to assess the state of the Arctic – photos of US subs at the North Pole in 1959; these pesky temperature records; and the evidence of history (oral and written) and archaeology.
KBK (12:25:51) : …to the left of the plot on the main [CT] page there’s a link to the University of Illinois Sea Ice Dataset:
Dataset 1870 – 2008
The last link in the set, “seasonal sea ice extent timeseries”, appears to be
date / annual / season1 / season 2 / season 3 / season 4
The last couple of entries in the plot don’t match the data. Also, they haven’t plotted points since 2006, it seems.
[snip]… how can they claim to have measured “sea ice extent” since 1870??? And to FIVE DECIMAL PLACES??? And then, as you note, since the 2008 autumn, NO RECORDS. Here I was, thinking that the scientific integrity in record keeping couldn’t sink any lower… Now in 1979, satellite measurements started – which promise to give reasonable planetary records – if they’ve been calibrated well enough. Now I’ve found three different values, Uni Illinois data and the IARC-JAXA graph (“sea ice extent”) and CT (“sea ice area”). I can at least understand the plausibility of this, since different ways to measure “extent” and “area” may well yield somewhat different figures. But the patterning should be the same, so long as one sticks to one source.
Mike Odin (12:49:35)
I found it difficult to be sure from your pics that the ice was refreezing behind the ships. But I am interested if the official report of 70% ice-free is quantifiably at odds with the actual state. Your hyperlink to a hi-res satellite shot linked to an info page, not to your picture.
Ferdinand Engelbeen (09:00:01) :
Bill, there is no heat in the “pipeline”, … The warming of the largest heat reservoir on earth, the oceans halted about 4 years ago. Thus the increase of GHGs since 1998 has currently less effect than the natural variation (El Niño, PDO, AMO,…) which cools everything down and even has reduced the potential heat effect of the warmed oceans to near zero.
But you have not explained where the heat was cominging from to heat the ocean 4 y ago and where it is now going. The TSI is pretty much constant. i.e. the energy reaching the top of the atmosphere is constant. Something is modulating the temperatures over centuries. Many here claim the MWP and LIA are global so if the heat arriving at the atmosphere is constant something has increase the heat in the MWP and decreased it in the LIA then disappeared for a few hundred years to emerging as heat again in the 60s. If the input is constant where has the current heat come from. If as you say el nino etc have cooled things down then this can only happen if the heat is stored or additional heat radiated away.
Storage over centuries is not feasible in my books. so what has over the last few years changed to cause the heat to radiate to allow the cooling earth cycle to begin?
By adding many frequencieswith differing phases and amplitudes together then adding a trend it is possible to replicate the last 150 years of variations reasonably accurately:
http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/6135/synthesisedtemperature.jpg
and by continuing the time scale to the future “predict” the next few years:
http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/3739/synthtemp19882021.jpg
(yes I know you can generate any shapes with a fourier series – it was just an exercise!)
Looking at this one can see the last few years at static temperature followed by a dip over the last couple of years. On can also see similar dips and peaks into the future. So cyclical events can predict the humpy bits of temperature. BUT the slow rise is more difficult (impossible) to generate cyclically without getting massive over/under swings. In these plots a simple trend has been used to get the current temperature rise.
Thus there is no reason for a need for a natural huge heat reservoir to explain the RWP, the MWP and the current warm period, it is all a matter of natural cycles, whatever the main mechanism behind it, driven by the ultimate source, the sun.
The MWP was 700 years ago (approx!) what changed for this heat to dissipate and where has the current heat come from when the sun’s output has not changed significantly. the heat has not been stored in the oceans as you admit but over the last 60 years the globe has warmed. How!
One possible strong source of the variation is clouds
why over the last 60 years have these caused less heat to be radiated/reflected?
Why has it taken 700 years for this event to suddenly reappear?
Scott Mandia (03:33:24: “I see AGW in the evidence and I do not see any strong arguments for a natural cause. I also see that the folks who support the AGW theory are able to articulate their arguments much better than those that are anti-AGW. There is a preponderance of support for AGW in the peer-reviewed literature from a preponderance of folks who are experts in the field. One cannot deny that but one can certainly trot out the conspiracy theory arguments or name a small fraction of experts who disagree. Science progresses through the peer-review process not via blogs and mass media interviews. To change that process would be scientific anarchy and, using a metaphor, the wheels would fall off.”
So, by “articulate” do you mean obviously manufactured hockey sticks? Or, do you mean massaging data and not disclosing methods? Or, do you perhaps mean claiming the debate is over while a debate rages on?
This is just a small sample of the obvious holes in AGW that even non-scientists can see. If it was really science then none of these things would occur.
And, as for peer-review being the way science is one. Don’t you mean it’s that way science as been done RECENTLY? There was no such thing as peer review for centuries. Sure, peers reviewed scientific claims but there was no process. And, science moved along just fine. Arguably, peer-review is a poor method since over 80% of all peer-reviewed articles are shown to be wrong within 20 years. That you would hide behind peer-review demonstrates you aren’t willing (or don’t want) to see evidence that contradicts your view … contrary to your claims.
AGW will fall apart because it hasn’t followed good scientific methods. Very little effort is spent on TESTING the hypothesis. Any person with any scientific knowledge understands this is a recipe for disaster. Stick around and you may learn something.
bill
The sun is sufficiently variable on century time scales.
Even the IPCC considers that the warming of the first part of the 20th Century was most likely solar induced.
There is no need for the oceans to store anything in the usual sense of the word. All they need to do is accelerate or decelerate the transmission of solar energy through the Earth system thus altering the balance between solar shortwave arriving and radiative longwave departing. The air circulations respond rapidly to maintain stability.
The globe has warmed slightly over the past 60 years because of several solar cycles of increased solar shortwave entering the oceans and, despite a run of powerful EL Nino events during a positive oceanic phase, the solar input was still high enough to prevent a reduction in ocean heat content.
Now the balance of input and output has changed due to a less active sun and a negative oceanic phase so we first saw a plateau and now a fall.
You must also bear in mind that the air warms as the oceans cool due to the transfer of energy from one to the other. Thus the air cools as the ocean warms.
In both situations the trump card is whether the solar input remains high enough to replace whatever the oceans release. That ultimately determines whether the background trend is warming or cooling. During a strong La Nina a weak solar input can still prevent an increase in ocean heat content and during a strong El Nino a strong solar input can still prevent a decrease in ocean heat content.
It is a constant dance round a point of equilibrium but that equilibrium is set primarily by sun and oceans with the air providing a minor component only and the human contribution truly miniscule.
“”” Home SciTech ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Aug. 20, 2009
Warming Brings Walruses to Shore Early
U.S. Geological Survey Says 3,500 Walruses Have Come to Alaska’s Northwest Coast as Sea Ice Retreats. “””
Why do they keep lying to us ? IARC-JAXA says the ice has stopped retreating; looks like at least a week earlier than 2008 and at 14% more ice than last year.
If those damn toothed furbags don’t come ashore now, they are going to get crushed by the growing sea ice; idiots! where did you take your last courses in elementary problem solving ? maybe the chow line down at the welfare department !
Can you set them striaght on this Lucy; and by the way; nice piece of science journalism there; very quick way to get a snap shot of reality.
George
Just for completeness, I pasted the above “NEWS” headline from five minutes ago off the CBSNEWS website; the Neanderthal Times of live, as it happened eons ago “news”. Maybe the Catlin survey just gave them their up to the minute download.
Scott Mandia
Thanks for the reply. I know when you make pro AGW comments here you do not fear the inevitable criticisms to come and respect that.
I think Lucy’s point that the blade of the recent hockey stick is inside the temp record yet isn’t shown by actual instruments is very telling, it should at least cause a great pause when reviewing a reconstruction of data which is not even known to be related to temp.
Regarding the quality of articulation, I have personally found ZERO blogs in the AGW world where science can be discussed in a rational fashion without being snipped out of existence. The science presented is far weaker and less open form than the skeptic type blogs and the reasoning is often flawed to the point of extreme advocacy. RC is a great example.
You can say peer reviewed journals is where science happens and state the lack of skeptic papers is due to lack of quality, Then you make the implication that we must believe in conspiracy arguments to make a case. All of this is flawed. First, conspiracies do happen although they are often simple. Political parties are conspiracies by definition. People funded by government are going to get more money from the government if they support the governments intended goals. This would happen whether someone has a conscious meeting or not. The fame and money have a sorting effect on scientists over decades of time. McIntyre’s rebuttal papers are a perfect example of correct science being bashed out of existence by the ‘mainstream’ reviewers in the driver seat.
Therefore your quantity of scientists argument is the weakest possible one against reasonable science. Frankly, I’m sick of hearing it from believers and if this were not Anthony’s house, there might be a few cuss words to explain. The ‘conspiracy’ is that the AGW science comes from government money where the government DOES have a stake in the outcome. It’s a natural biasing process which even smart liberals seem to be incapable of understanding.
Since you seem to be a reasonable scientist, and have enough background, I hope you’ll consider my links before as they show the truth of CPS hockeysticks.
Finally, the fact that the blade is inside the range of temp curves is highly telling. This is a natural process in correlation and slope sorting proxy calibration algorithms. The ends of the calibration range are rounded based on the autocorrelation of the noise. This indicates that the shape of the curve is likely a result of mathematical operations comparing an upslope to noisy proxy data for sorting and scaling.
Bill:
“But you have not explained where the heat was cominging from to heat the ocean 4 y ago and where it is now going. The TSI is pretty much constant. i.e. the energy reaching the top of the atmosphere is constant. Something is modulating the temperatures over centuries. Many here claim the MWP and LIA are global so if the heat arriving at the atmosphere is constant something has increase the heat in the MWP and decreased it in the LIA then disappeared for a few hundred years to emerging as heat again in the 60s.”
This is an excellent point, and you have inadvertenly put your finger exactly on the problem than undermines the whole AGW position. It is precisely because the AGW theorists have implicitly or explicitly accepted the premise that since the TSI must have remained constant, then the climate could not have cycled through these warmer and cooler periods.
According to the warmist’s hypothesis, the TSI and insolation remains constant and there was no forcing and the earths radiative balance remained zero, until humans disturbed it. You ask “If the input is constant where has the current heat come from?” And you are quite correct when you imply that the heat could not have come from anywhere if there is no forcing.
IF THERE IS NO FORCING! Notice the premise of your conclusions. There are many scientists such as Roy Spencer who have argued convincingly that the AGW assertion that there has been no forcings before humans is fallacacious. In this alternative postulate, the earths climate is a non linear chaotic system. Like any chaotic system it is NEVER stable, but continually moves towards its great attractors. Once it moves towards one attractor there is necessarily a forcing that moves it to the next. Therefore we don’t have to invent a variable TSI to account for natural cycles, because this behaviour is perfectly explained by chaos theory.
There are plenty of good books on chaos theory and it is quite amazing to see some of the shifting patterns that emerge. I promise, you’ll never look at climate change the same way again.
@Jeff Id (11:20:51) :
I promise you I will look at your links when I have a good stretch of time to give it a fair look.
I will, however, comment on this piece of your reply:
Political parties are conspiracies by definition. People funded by government are going to get more money from the government if they support the governments intended goals.
During most of the eight years of the Bush/Cheney administration they openly discredited AGW and were huge supporters of the fossil fuel industry. How was it then possible for American scientists to get the funding to do their research that cemented AGW during that time? How many studies from US scientists matched the Bush/Cheney administration agenda?
I refuse to believe that there are conspiracies everywhere and that our scientists are perpetrating a hoax. Frankly, this thinking discredits ALL scientists in ALL disciplines even those that many of you quote here.
Now I feel like throwing some cuss words around. (Just kidding.)
bill (10:21:51) :
Bill, Stephen Wilde did reply already with several arguments, here some additions:
There is a small variation over the sun cycle of about 1 W/m2 at the top of the atmosphere. Despite that this gives a very small change of direct incoming heat at the surface, the real infuence is beyond that, as the tropical sea surface (upper few hundred meters) temperatures increase with 0.3-0.5 C within a few years. That is mainly by an inverse correlation between solar intensity and (low) cloud cover. Higher solar activity = lower low cloud count, which is a positive feedback for solar (anyway initially). The mechanism (GCR or other) is not proven, but the empirical evidence is clear. See:
http://folk.uio.no/jegill/papers/2002GL015646.pdf Fig. 1
BTW, there is no correlation found between increasing GHGs and clouds (despite what the models say).
The main discussion is not about the 11/22 year solar cycles, but about the long term changes in solar input. The cold period which was the LIA, was the first period where we have observed data about solar activity: a complete lack of sunspots coincidences with the coldest part of the LIA. Similar for the previous century: the warming coincidences with the highest solar activity of the past 8,000 years (measured as proxy by 10Be and 14C levels). That may be less obvious for short periods (less than 30 years), but the long-term picture is there. See e.g.:
http://noorderlicht.vpro.nl/attachment.db/18258097/Solanki.pdf
The main problem for the AGW theory in all this: if we don’t know the exact causes and magnitude of the natural variation how can we determine what the role and magnitude of greenhouse gases is?
Adam Grey (00:18:07) : John Vaughan – thanks for the clarification. I had read that you updated the data, and so wondered why there was nothing more recent than 2003 and many series finished earlier. Even though this is so far a collative work, I still hold that a better reflection of the graphs would be all Y axes that show variabiliy (and trend) more clearly, up-to-date and all stations (as caveated in my previous post) – just for eyeballing purposes. A statistical analysis with as much servicable data as possible would be much better. Has such been done anywhere that you know of (not just summer temps)? Apart from the science institutes that collate the data, I mean.
As the sites posting this information in this way have a clear agenda – nothing wrong with that per se – I hope you can understand that I am deeply skeptical of selective presentations. (Yes, I apply my skepticism equally)
Tamino’s reply to this post is worth checking out.
Thanks Adam for your comments. I agree that standardising Y-axes would have been the best… however it posed a few problems: (1) I wanted to have a reply to Kaufman out while the cake was warm (2) I already had to distort Daly’s graphs in order to get them into iconic form (3) there is another Y-axis problem… the absolute range. High Arctic are incredibly low and if I showed the necessary absolute range, it would have been difficult to see either spikes or trends (4) the point I needed to convey “at a glance” is the non-trend evidence WHEN COMPARED WITH THE SPIKES AND CYCLES, for which I needed no Y-axis scale at all. For the natural variations MUST be subtracted before we can have any reasonable idea of manmade cumulative effects. But when the existing evidence of natural variations is not just ignored but is actively suppressed (read Bishop Hill, Loehle on peer-reviewed studies of the Medieval Warm Period, me on Santer and IPCC 1995, Martin Mason (11:35:03) saying BBC world ran a TV article today on the crisis in the scientific peer review process because of corruption and fraud; and TonyB on historical evidence) we have a problem of corruption in the science. Of first importance to me was to give something that could allow folk to stop long enough to look, think, ask questions, and do some research themselves.
Unfortunately, the problem with countering AGW is that one HAS to do a bit of science for oneself, and that can be hard work; moreover it can leave one open to being called a fool, apparently with justification, by “experts”.
Thanks for flagging up Tamino, Adam. Sorry T didn’t see fit to ask me if I’d like to reply, as might have been done without any real extra effort… it would have raised my opinion of him immeasurably.
Stephen Wilde (10:56:55) :
The sun is sufficiently variable on century time scales.
Show your figures and their source please
because of several solar cycles of increased solar shortwave entering the oceans and, despite a run of powerful EL Nino events during a positive oceanic phase, the solar input was still high enough to prevent a reduction in ocean heat content.
Now the balance of input and output has changed due to a less active sun and a negative oceanic phase so we first saw a plateau and now a fall.
Just how much does the solar input change in your books? In mine the average has gone from min 1365.7 in 1905 to 1366.2 in 1950 to 1365.78? in 2007? and 1365.5 in 1700 Leifs figures – are you suggesting that this is sufficient to cause the change in temperature?
You must also bear in mind that the air warms as the oceans cool due to the transfer of energy from one to the other. Thus the air cools as the ocean warms.
Just how do you propose heating warm air from cold ocean?
Vincent (11:40:46) :
The total energy on earth = total energy arriving (TSI) – total energy leaving
If TSI is constant then the only way of changing earth energy is by changing energy leaving.
If the temperature on earth changes lower then either you are going to have to store energy or increase transmission away from earth. Since temperature fluctuations are on centennial cycles you would have to store energy for centuries – not easy. Much simpler to take GHGs and varying the radiation from the earth as the cause. (simplistic of course!)
bill (06:37:37) : Lucy: I’ve only checked one station using raw and homogenised GISS temperatures from Fairbanks – the homogenised version actually lowers modern and raises historic temps – but the results do not look much like those in your graphic. Do you know the source of the data used in your graphs? Is it wise to use annually averaged data?
The plot I created averages monthly data a month at a time over the usual 1961 to 1990 period then creates a monthly anomaly for plotting. Doing a yearly plot looses too much data in my view.
Before using the graphic it would be worthwhile updataing the temperature plots to current data and state where the data has been derived from.
Bill, what I actually did was to take John Daly’s graphs, crunch them into thumbnail icons sans axes, and repeat what Daly said about his source. I now believe, looking at Paul Vaughan’s NASA URL and clicking on the world map in the Arctic, that this record (or its earlier versions, more likely) was what Daly could have used. IMO we need some spikes but not too many, for visual clarity without sacrificing the record, and Daly’s yearly plots do this for me. Certainly this source could be used for more uptodate graphs. However, this would still raise problems for me: (1) as folk here, especially E M Smith, are aware, the NASA GISS records are (now) highly suspect; they have been heavily doctored; whereas I’m more inclined to trust old maritime Arctic records where lives often depended on accuracy of the records; (2) this doctoring may have happened, or worsened, since Daly used NASA as source material; (3) all NASA records now start at 1880… which cuts off some of the most important early material.
P Wilson (07:22:02) : bill (06:13:49)
Oceans retain heat. Air doesn’r retain much heat. The sun works 24 hours a day
I don’t know if anyone else has seen this, but Ferdinand E’s charts from Greenland show that recent summer temperatures have been lower, yet annual averages have stayed much the same, as in the 1930’s – 1950’s. I thought WHY?? Ha, a flash. What differentiates Arctic winter and summer? The Sun. So now we have a cooler Sun than in the 1930’s (yes – somehow, even if it’s not TSI as currently measured) but a warmer ocean, due to the past warm Sun. Presto! warmer winters (though still cold) and cooler summers. I think we actually have here a significant piece of evidence that it is the Sun – as was always supposed, before modern Science got too clever for itself.
bill (12:59:47) :
bill, I think you’re not taking into account the same thing that the entire alarmist crowd ignores: clouds. A change in cloud cover changes the energy arriving. And it doesn’t take much of a change in cloud cover to have a really big effect.
bill (12:41:17)
The IPCC accepts that early 20th century warming was most likely solar induced.
In discussions with Leif he has tended to accept the idea of a varying solar influence on century timescales with amplification on shorter time scales by an unidentified factor internal to the Earth system. It is cycle to cycle variaton that Leif is most averse to and I agree with him on that.
Cold ocean does not heat warm air. As energy is transferred from a warmer ocean to a cooler air the water cools and the air warms as they move towards equilibrium.
If the water is cooler than the air then less energy is transferred to the air which cools to match the water temperature because the energy flow to space becomes faster than the energy flow from water to air. Evaporation ensures a one way flow of energy because it continues to occur when the water is cooler than the air due to the pressure and density differentials.
However one cuts it there can be no significant energy flow from warm air to cooler water.
In view of your apparent comprehension problems please forgive me when I decline to address your comments. I do not want my points to be obscured by purposeless confusion.
I’d have a look at the GISS data for the largest city north of the arctic city: Murmansk, which has records back to 1918 (two years after it was founded).
I first ran a linear regression on the “unhomogenized” data, and got just below zero trend (-0.06 °C / century). I then tried the “homogenized” data, and got a positive trend (+0,44°C / century). I’ve seen the same for several Scandinavian cities: The temperature data of cities get “homogenized” to a steeper warming trend than they already have (or in Murmansk case, that it didn’t even have). Something is very, very wrong with the GISS algorithms, and my guess is that it’s UHIs at all the airports that is wrongly categorized as “rural” that does this.
bill (10:21:51) :… Storage over centuries is not feasible in my books.
The 800-year lag of CO2 behind temperature in the ice core records is well explained by regarding the oceans as storing some heat, especially since some folk put the time of total ocean circulation around 800 years. However, I am partly in agreement with you… and am looking towards the Sun and towards solar cycles as the primary cause of fluctuating Earth temperatures. Before you jump on me, I’m perfectly aware that TSI appears unable to explain enough of the changes. I say, appears, since there is still correlation. I’m also aware of factions actively trying to discredit solar folk like Svensmark, sometimes stooping to false accusations and preventing replies from being published alongside the critical papers (as is generally, rightly, normal scientific practice). So we have muddied waters in which to look for evidence – which means double-checking all the time. I believe there is a lot of evidence showing at least a correlation between solar activity and global temperatures; what is still missing is a mechanism. And though Svensmark et al may be moving towards proving some of the mechanisms, I still think we have a mystery, I still think there are mechanisms as yet unknown, even by Svensmark, that we need to quantify in order to prove the solar influence. This is still a hotly contentious issue even among skeptics: witness the steam rising every time Leif Svalgaard and Geoff Sharp get into, er, discussion.
bill, you said this:
“Much simpler to take GHGs and varying the radiation from the earth as the cause.”
Surely it is just as simple to take the oceans as varying the rate of energy transfer from ocean to air ?
My suggestion fits observations whereas yours does not.
The reason yours does not fit observations is because the effect of GHGs as observed by Tyndall and others is so small compared to the variations that the oceans induce so that the GHG effect is wholly swamped and unmeasurable.
Lucy Skywalker (13:24:15): I still think we have a mystery, I still think there are mechanisms as yet unknown, even by Svensmark, that we need to quantify in order to prove the solar influence.
I didn’t know, when I wrote this, that WUWT had just published a piece on just such a hitherto-unknown possible mechanism. That’s a beautiful piece of serendipity.
This needs to be shot down:
“Were the 1930s the Warmest Decade?”
http://bartonpaullevenson.com/1930s.html
The assumptions upon which the statistical inference are based are absolutely untenable, as any bright Stat 101 student would easily know.
Also, the author is applying the usual tactic of trying to paint all WUWT readers with the same brush – pure distortion – we are a varied bunch.
Tamino makes a few valid points, but as usual they are strawmen. He seems to misunderstand (or is it distortion?) why John Daly was looking at the longer Arctic station records. Also, he seems unaware (or is it distortion?) that WUWT readers are well-aware of upward temperature steps post-1976-climate-shift and following recent major El Ninos, such as 1998, as Bob Tisdale has very thoroughly demonstrated upon a number of occasions here. Finally, does Tamino understand that John Daly is no longer with us? Attacking a dead man for not updating his graphs? – more than a little distasteful, for sure.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/arctic-stations/
A poorly-researched post, with partisan intent.
Alarmists seem so determined to control the framing of the strawman issue of “whether or not” there has been warming. There has been warming; there has also been cooling. There will be more warming – and there will also be more cooling.
No amount of distortion-artist issue-frame-control weaseling can make “whether or not” there has been warming the issue
Let’s be clear about where humanity has failed:
The task is understanding natural climate variations and humanity has not – stress not – made sufficient progress.
Course: Understanding Natural Climate Variations
Student: Humanity
Grade: F
Some might argue that the grade should be D. Alarmists might be willing to settle for a D (and base their understanding of climate change on that foundation), but at WUWT there are people who are willing to take the course as many times as necessary to achieve an A+.
On alarmist sites one cannot trust that legitimate comments about natural climate variation will even make it past moderation (first-hand experience). Perhaps some perceive efforts towards improving the grade as a threat.
When we reach the stage when ENSO forecasts work like tide-tables, we’ll be somewhere (and maybe our grade will be increased to C).
Lucy,
I suspect John Daly’s data would have been downloaded from GIStemp (or equivalent). The current data link is here:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/
you can either click on the map or enter a station name (if known). They offer three versions of the data for each station – “Raw GHCN data+USCHN corrections”, “after combining sources at the same location” and “after homogeneity adjustment”. The data is available for download at the bottom of each plot.
One of my favourite games at the moment is opening all three versions of the plots for one station in different tabs and “blinking” between them (I’m not techie enough to set up a blink comparison) so I can see what effect GIStemp homogeneity adjustment has on the data. There are some horrors (e.g. Aberystwyth, UK)
As mentioned above by bill (06:37:37) the homogenised version actually lowers modern and raises historic temps – at least this is USUALLY the case. The GIStemp code ‘looks’ for possible Urban Heat Island effects and corrects for them. As an example here is a list of stations in northern Norway.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/findstation.py?datatype=gistemp&data_set=0&name=bodo&world_map.x=391&world_map.y=58
Basically, if the station is labelled rural area there will be no adjustment – even if this is an airport. If there is a population size and there is warming in the last 30-50 years, the programme compares the data with rural stations (possibly up to 1000 km away) and corrects the UHI by warming the older data.
As the final ‘product’ of GIStemp is anomaly data, +/- compared to baseline of 1950-1991, this should not be a problem. However, I’ve found many instances of stations where the warming trend of the homogenised data has been increased by homogenisation. For example – here are the plots of the three types of data for Bodo in Norway:
Bodo (Raw GHCN data+USCHN corrections):
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=634011520000&data_set=0&num_neighbors=1
Bodo (after combining sources at the same location):
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=634011520003&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
Bodo (after homogeneity adjustment):
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=634011520003&data_set=2&num_neighbors=1
The older data is made cooler and the trend increases. Note also the subtle shift of scale in the Y axis, which disguises the adjustment. I am not suggesting there is foul play here (in disguising the adjustment), I think it is just an intrinsic flaw in GIStemp. I think this UHI malajustment happens when the rural station cools instead of warms. Another flaw in GIStemp as discussed on E.M. Smith’s blog in several posts is which stations are used in adjustment. There are some very inappropriate choices made by the programme, such as high alpine stations and those North of the Alps contributing to the adjustment of Pisa, well South of the Alps on the Mediterranian coast.
Should we worry about this? Well, in my brief survey of UK data (96 Stations), 22 were noticably changed in some way and of these 13 seemed to have an increased warming trend after homogenisation.