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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Paul
I think you mean what most folk say as “Correlation does NOT prove causation”, yes?… Since I regard the whole universe as a mystery, I see the possibility of “lurking variables” everywhere. Particularly, I suspect Quantum Physics Zero Point Field, and /or understanding of resonance effects, may be needed to help “explain” why small solar changes “produce” rather larger climate changes. Fascinating what’s coming in right now that seems to support the “electric universe” ideas. And folk who report on the “smell” of space, it sounds to me like the effect of something like electricity.
PS Could you give me a ref for Barkin, for me to start?
Paul Vaughan (15:51:15) :
“The only comment I’m going to offer is that there are some very weird politics involved.”
Of course there are several stations north of the Arctic in Canada used for the GISS dataset. No politics involved in the real world.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/
These 2 are worth comparing:
Southern Ocean SST south of Indian Ocean
http://i39.tinypic.com/vdpcvs.jpg
[credit: Bob Tisdale]
Iceland surface temperatures:
http://www.john-daly.com/stations/akureyri.gif
[credit: John Daly]
(Flip one or the other upside-down.)
Oceanographers, is this reflecting valve-like activity off of the Southern Ocean’s Antarctic Circumpolar Current?
It is consistent with what Sidorenkov & Barkin are saying.
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Lucy Skywalker (00:47:01) “Paul I think you mean what most folk say as “Correlation does NOT prove causation”, yes?”
One can read that from an understanding of confounded & lurking variables, but those who blast this oversimplicity at folks lacking a conceptual understanding of lurking & confounded variables will get nowhere with their scolding memorization-oriented educational efforts.
The important thing to recognize is that confounded variables convey info about each other (it’s like looking at a shadow – sometimes a very clear one cast from a good angle) and that we are dealing with nonrandom phenomena.
…so when people bark that correlation does not imply causation in these threads we can ignore them most of the time if we have a solid conceptual understanding of lurking variables, confounding, & randomness. (The assailants are targeting people with no conceptual understanding upon which to base their own thinking.)
–
Barkin gives an alternative to “mysterious forces”. It is important to understand that even his work is based on assumptions, even though he removes the “most stupid” assumptions used by the mainstream. Other bright folks should be able to advance Barkin’s work incrementally. Removing “stupid assumptions” is brutally difficult mathematically (which should be a huge clue as to why we are stuck with the junk in the first place). I’ve spent many years around academic statisticians and I can tell you bluntly: totally garbage assumptions underpin a staggering amount of what passes as “science”, “economics”, etc. The mainstream acceptance of what I call convenient dramatic oversimplification (cdo) is a serious threat to nature & civilization. It could take more than a century to overcome this major obstacle in our society even if we initiate strategic reforms to the mainstream education system promptly.
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Lucy Skywalker (00:47:01) “Could you give me a ref for Barkin, for me to start?”
During a busy week I decided to make no effort to take notes in a tradeoff for speed in locating & plowing through the sheer volume of Barkin material. A considerable proportion of his work is difficult to locate, behind pay-walls, in Russian, &/or heavily mathematical. Perhaps I can find some time to try to retrace my steps, generate a reference list, do some bookmarking, copy some key sentences, etc. in the days ahead.
RR Kampen (08:03:49) “Of course there are several stations north of the Arctic in Canada used for the GISS dataset. […] http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/ “
That’s the link I originally advertised (in the earlier thread that preceded this one).
It appears you have not read Espen’s posts carefully. His concern is about station closures and lags in record-updates. (Note the dates listed in his post upthread.)
Environment Canada has shut down stations over the years and they are much slower in updating records (for remaining stations) than many of the other agencies one sees in links in these threads. For example, we see threads here addressing monthly updates that are posted within a few days of the end-of-the-month. Meanwhile, I have to wait upwards of 2 years to get the records I need from Environment Canada websites. The standard explanation is that time is needed for quality control, but in my experience (to put it politely) this is a partial truth.
– –
RR Kampen (08:03:49) “No politics involved in the real world.”
amusing claim
If you want to see something laughable, take a look at the CO2 “data” for Alert, Nunavut, Canada provided by CDIAC. [They’re not actually data – they are modeled stats with rigid structure artificially imposed.]
RR Kampen:
You write: “Of course there are several stations north of the Arctic in Canada used for the GISS dataset. No politics involved in the real world.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/”
You wrote this as a comment to Paul Vaughan’s comment to me. Try to read my post about the GISS stations in arctic Canada again – and you will see that out of 35 stations actually used for the GISS analysis, ONLY Eureka has been reporting in 2009. Of the remaining stations, only 6 have reported in 1998-2008, and only 3 more have been reporting since 1989.
(note: With “arctic” I here mean north of the arctic circle – not north of 60N as is also commonly used)
(My previous comment was made almost obsolete by Paul Vaughan’s answer, but it hadn’t appeared yet as I wrote my answer)
But I have one more question for RR Kampen: Earlier you wrote “For Holland, where I live, the GISS-data are always accurate.”
Really? Which stations?
I tried to find stations with long records in Holland, and found De Bilt (near Utrecht) which shows the same result of homogenization as the arctic cities: The temperatures from 1881 to 2009 first shows a flat trend (-0.05C/century), but after homogenization there’s suddenly a +1C/century trend! For Milano, Italy, it’s even stranger – a -0.7C/century trend is turned into a +0.7/century trend. I.e. the homogenization performs the reverse of an UHI correction, despite the fact that Linate is an airport very close to a huge city!
Aber (04:13:24) “[…] http://www.arctic-heats-up.com/
, where it is shown that the most pronounced Arctic warming since the end of the Little Ice Age from 1919 to 1939 was ocean related, respectively caused by the West Spitsbergen current.”
Thanks for that link, which leads to useful info, along with some ‘interesting’ ideas here:
Bernaerts, A. (2007). Can the “Big Warming” at Spitsbergen from 1918 to 1940 be explained? PACON 2007 Proceedings 325-337.
http://www.arctic-heats-up.com/pdf/Submitted_conference_paper.pdf
Surprisingly: No mention of LOD (length of day), polar motion, and factors influencing them [but WWI is suggested as a cause].
Instructions for creating a Natural Arctic Hockey Stick Blade beginning around 1970:
1) Download the DJFM (DecemberJanuaryFebruaryMarch) Winter NAO Index:
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/jhurrell/Data/naodjfmindex.asc
2) Calculate a cumulative sum.
3) Graph.
Positive DJFM NAO brings warm, wet storms & wind from the west to the European North Atlantic & the nearby polar night of the Arctic, thus keeping winters in that area more moderately-maritime & less harshly-continental by limiting ice expansion.
For further insight, compare with:
a) Negative of Southern Ocean temperature anomalies.
b) time-integrated rate-of-change of aa index.
c) estimated specific mass of Antarctic ice.
d) EOP (Earth Orientation Parameters).
Espen (16:43:16) :
“But I have one more question for RR Kampen: Earlier you wrote “For Holland, where I live, the GISS-data are always accurate.”
Really? Which stations?”
Shall we say: all?
Warming is reality in Holland and no-one needs numbers to know it. There must plainly be error in your analysis. Warming since 1900 is over 1.5° C everywhere in Holland and there are consequences to flora, fauna and the saying ‘Every Dutchman was born on skates’. Today they are born on skeelers.
Espen (15:15:30) :
RR Kampen:
“You write: “Of course there are several stations north of the Arctic in Canada used for the GISS dataset. No politics involved in the real world.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/”
You wrote this as a comment to Paul Vaughan’s comment to me. Try to read my post about the GISS stations in arctic Canada again – and you will see that out of 35 stations actually used for the GISS analysis, ONLY Eureka has been reporting in 2009. Of the remaining stations, only 6 have reported in 1998-2008, and only 3 more have been reporting since 1989.
(note: With “arctic” I here mean north of the arctic circle – not north of 60N as is also commonly used)”
I use Arctic for polar circle too (having been up there a year of my life).
As for the Canadian (non-)stations, I’m taking note of your and other’s info on this. I doubt that info but will have to find the evidence to the contrary.
There can be no political reason for excluding Canadian stations this year though. Too cool a winter, spring and summer.
Tamino just posted a rebuttal to Lucy’s graphs and assertion “What sudden recent warming?”
See: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/09/13/reply-to-lucy-skywalker/
The data presented there makes it quite clear that there IS a recent warming trend in the Arctic and why Lucy’s graphs are very misleading.
As I said before, Tamino is brilliant at analyzing data but he has little patience for ignorance so look at the DATA he presents instead of focusing on the TONE of his message.
Hmm reading Tamino I see a spoilt kid throwing his toys out of the pram. Lucy’s graphs don’t show what he wants so he says look at the ‘proper’ graphs.
Unfortunately Lucy’s point is that the ‘proper’ graphs are wrong, deliberately biassed by grant chasing ‘scientitists’.
Tamino proves that faked data leads to false conclusions.
Espen (16:43:16) :
You wrote: “I tried to find stations with long records in Holland, and found De Bilt (near Utrecht) which shows the same result of homogenization as the arctic cities: The temperatures from 1881 to 2009 first shows a flat trend (-0.05C/century), but after homogenization there’s suddenly a +1C/century trend!”
I’m flabbergasted here. Where on earth did you get your data from?
I have a graph, showing the temperature correction for De Bilt, at http://nlweer.com/img/18mrt2007a.PNG.
It was produced by using data directly from KNMI, at http://www.knmi.nl/klimatologie.
No way you can get a trend reversal like that.
At http://www.knmi.nl/klimatologie/onderzoeksgegevens/CNT/, again from the offical Dutch Meteorological Institute website, you can download corrected temperature data for Central Netherlands. I made a graph showing the annual average, at http://www.weerwoord.be/uploads/1592009133430.png. Temperatures are definitely rising in the Netherlands, UHI effect or not.
Regards,
Alwin
Scott Mandia
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.)
I missed this comment before and now the thread is older. Your reasoning is pretty weak here. Bush didn’t have the power to stop the environmental movement just as obama doesn’t have the power to force it down our throats. They both need congress.
Why do you think there have to be conspiracies “everywhere” just to have a system which rewards an expanded government viewpoint? It sounds like deliberate exaggeration for the purpose of discrediting rather than a real discussion. It’s completely obvious that the governments have been specifically constructed with individuals interested in their expansion of funding and control. To my knowledge, the world has never known any different form of government than one intending to expand. The IPCC is a perfect example.
Paul Vaughan (14:28:01) :
If you want to see something laughable, take a look at the CO2 “data” for Alert, Nunavut, Canada provided by CDIAC. [They’re not actually data – they are modeled stats with rigid structure artificially imposed.]
Really do you mean these: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/aes-algr.html
Why do you suggest they are not data?
Phil. (08:00:50) “Really do you mean these: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/aes-algr.html Why do you suggest they are not data?”
I mean these:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/co2/altsio.co2
They are stats (i.e. calculations made from data), not data. Artificial annual structure has been imposed.
I suggest running some diagnostics if you have time. The “data” suggest a very interesting phenomenon that happens every January like clockwork. When I discovered this I considered the possibility that this could be an important clue about circulation near the North Pole (after reading an article about the polar vortex & sudden stratospheric warming events), but before leaping to conclusions I ran diagnostics and discovered that the interesting phenomenon was a purely artificial result of (CDIAC) processing. As is often the case, we discover something other than what we are trying to discover.
I recommend use of the following (from NOAA) for analyses:
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/flask/month/alt_01D0_mm.co2
A comparison/contrast of diagnostics on the 2 series would make an excellent classroom example in an intermediate level applied stats course. If I have time in the days & weeks ahead, I’ll polish the related graphics and share them.
@ur momisugly Jeff Id (07:56:49) :
Republicans had a majority of the House between 1995 and 2007.
Republicans had a majority of the Senate between 1995 and 2007 (except a tie 50/50 between 2001-2003.
My point is that given your comment “People funded by government are going to get more money from the government if they support the governments intended goals.” “expanding the government viewpoint” would have led to anti-AGW funding which should have led to anti-AGW published articles.
Instead, with a science-illiterate President and Congress having a majority of Republicans whose viewpoints were quite anti-AGW, AGW was cemented. Your statements have been shown to be false by the record. The real science triumphed despite the government viewpoint.
You should read Mooney’s The Republican War on Science. BTW, I am a registered Independent and I always vote. I have voted for only two major party candidates since I have been 18: Reagan and Obama. I never voted for Gore, BTW.
Scott Mandia (06:39:13) “Tamino just posted a rebuttal to Lucy’s graphs […] http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/09/13/reply-to-lucy-skywalker/ […] makes it quite clear that there IS a recent warming trend in the Arctic […]”
–
Tamino: “Now it’s not just obvious. It’s startling.”
Nature is powerful, but I’m not “startled”.
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/CumuSumDJFMwinterNAO.png
Positive DJFM NAO brings warm, wet storms & wind from the west to the European North Atlantic & the nearby polar night of the Arctic, thus keeping winters in that area more moderately-maritime & less harshly-continental by limiting ice expansion.
Compare with:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/LODaa(yoy)diffsqHadSST.PNG
…and with Tamino’s “Lat. 64N to 90N” graph here:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/09/13/reply-to-lucy-skywalker/
Also compare with:
1) Figures 9, 10, & 11 here:
Carvalho, L.M.V.; Tsonis, A.A.; Jones, C.; Rocha, H.R.; & Polito, P.S. (2007). Anti-persistence in the global temperature anomaly field. Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics 14, 723-733.
http://www.uwm.edu/~aatsonis/npg-14-723-2007.pdf
http://www.icess.ucsb.edu/gem/papers/npg-14-723-2007.pdf
2) Figure 7 here:
Sidorenkov, N.S. (2005). Physics of the Earth’s rotation instabilities. Astronomical and Astrophysical Transactions 24(5), 425-439.
http://images.astronet.ru/pubd/2008/09/28/0001230882/425-439.pdf
3) Southern Ocean SST anomalies:
http://i41.tinypic.com/29zxus7.jpg
[credit: Bob Tisdale]
(Flip it upside-down for comparison.)
4) Figure 1 here:
Sidorenkov, N.S. (2003). Changes in the Antarctic ice sheet mass and the instability of the Earth’s rotation over the last 110 years. International Association of Geodesy Symposia 127, 339-346.
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Regarding blog-article titles:
Lucy’s comment might help upset-people understand:
Lucy Skywalker (12:07:08) [Sept. 10, 2009] “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.”
It seems we each have a different role. Inflammatory titles, themes, & controversy stimulate learning, but maybe there are alternatives for those who have already secured power and are positioned to raise the game – maybe not.
Certainly there is no shortage of non-alarmists who know there has been warming. I’ll repeat selected excerpts from my comments above:
=—–
[…] 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.
[…] a few valid points, but […] strawmen. […] 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.
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).
—–=
–
As for Tamino’s comments about individual stations:
His analyses suggest he is aware of the importance of investigating the stability of parameter estimates across of a range of spatiotemporal scales, but he does make a few misleading comments that might mislead the statistically-uneducated into falsely thinking it is somehow a bit wrong to look at individual station records – a slight inconsistency in his presentation.
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Suggested:
1) Look beyond anthropogenic computer fantasies.
2) Read the works of Russian scientist Yu.V. Barkin.
3) Learn about nature.
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/M4PxPyf123.png
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/ChandlerPeriod.PNG
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/1931UniquePhaseHarmonics.png
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/ChandlerPeriodAgassizBC,CanadaPrecipitationTimePlot.PNG
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/f(Pr.,-2r..,-3LNC)LOD.png
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/(J,N),r..png
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/PhaseConcordancePxySI.png
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/CCPxXTR.png
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/ClimateRegimeChangePoints.PNG
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/CCaa1mo&11aT1mo.PNG
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/ccLR1CRF.PNG
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/ccM4Py.png
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/OMMO_2.png
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/Phase(r..,LNC).png
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/SunspotCyclePeriod.PNG
4) Don’t expect it to be easy to sort out complexity.
(We won’t find our way with a simple univariate extrapolation.)
I’m not going to look at Tamino again tonight. I did a whole page to answer him but since then I’ve done some more really interesting stuff. Inspired by Bill Illis, I’ve now been circling Yamal. The “local” thermometer records make Yamal treerings look like another spoilt teenager. Even those with serious UHI. Coming soon at a blog near you.
Uh, getting behind with other bits of all this now. And I missed the beekeepers meeting.
I can see another long haul ahead – grasping the full Arctic record, systematically comparing Daly (I feel he used an earlier version of NASA GISS not bedevilled by homogenization) with GISS uptodate, sniffing out station problems from a distance – uh, how? But I now know that at least two stations are at airports, Longyearbyen and Gardermoen (Oslo), probably several more.
Still working on the stuff emerging from this thread here and for Tamino, here; these pages will take time to come up to scratch.
Jeff Id (07:56:49) :
…
Why do you think there have to be conspiracies “everywhere” just to have a system which rewards an expanded government viewpoint? It sounds like deliberate exaggeration for the purpose of discrediting rather than a real discussion. It’s completely obvious that the governments have been specifically constructed with individuals interested in their expansion of funding and control. To my knowledge, the world has never known any different form of government than one intending to expand. The IPCC is a perfect example.
It’s almost a “law of nature” that governments will seek to expand their role and funding. That’s what makes the US Constitution interesting is that it is largely framed around limiting government.
RR Kampen: “Shall we say: all?
Warming is reality in Holland and no-one needs numbers to know it. There must plainly be error in your analysis. Warming since 1900 is over 1.5° C everywhere in Holland and there are consequences to flora, fauna and the saying ‘Every Dutchman was born on skates’. Today they are born on skeelers.”
Please present some hard facts – “noone needs numbers to know it” is not good enough (except if you’re more than 80 years old, then I’d listen to your first-hand experiences from the 30s and 40s).
Alwin: “I’m flabbergasted here. Where on earth did you get your data from?”
I got it it from GISS (I thought that was obvious, since I answered RR Kampen’s claim about the GISS data for Holland). Have a look for yourself:
Combined GISS data: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=633062600003&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
Homogeneity adjustment adds a trend to the older data:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=633062600003&data_set=2&num_neighbors=1
I don’t find any other dutch stations than De Bilt in the actually used GISS records, but you can have a look at Uccle (which is in Brussels), which shows a similar parttern to De Bilt and the arctic stations: The 30s and 40s were similar to recent years.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=606064470003&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
Tamino’s main “evidence” in his post is Barrow. Well, the name of the station in the Giss system is “BARROW/W. POS”, i.e. it’s probably the weather station at the Wiley Post-Will Rogers Memorial Airport…
REPLY: Indeed it is. I’ve verified it. It is also an ASOS intrumentation. Much of the weather data above the Arctic Circle is gathered at airports. – Anthony
Espen (22:25:02) :
“Please present some hard facts – “noone needs numbers to know it” is not good enough (except if you’re more than 80 years old, then I’d listen to your first-hand experiences from the 30s and 40s).”
The hard facts have been presented by Alwin.
There are four versions of the De Bilt record in the GHCN db of Nasa.
“The 30s and 40s were similar to recent years.”
They most definitely are not.
The warmest 18 years in our record are 1988 or later, 2009 wil become the 19th. That will push 1934 into 20th.
http://nlweer.com/png/DeBiltJaarJDT.png
The three warmest winters since at least 1706 appear in recent years, 2007 is #1. On the other hand, 1940, 1942 belong to the top four harshest winters in the record since 1900 and 1947 was one of the coldest in the entire record.
http://nlweer.com/png/DeBiltWinterT.png , see 1935 on 8th place – meantime 2007 (at +6.5° C) and 2008 (at +5.1° C) have pushed that one down.
I’m 42 and I know the difference between recent years and the seventies/eighties. It is vast.
Espen (22:51:29) :
Tamino’s main “evidence” in his post is Barrow. Well, the name of the station in the Giss system is “BARROW/W. POS”, i.e. it’s probably the weather station at the Wiley Post-Will Rogers Memorial Airport…
REPLY: Indeed it is. I’ve verified it. It is also an ASOS intrumentation. Much of the weather data above the Arctic Circle is gathered at airports. – Anthony
Thanks Anthony and Espen. I knew Tamino’s evidence would have use somehow.