The December 2009 and year 2009 University of Alabama at Huntsville lower tropospheric MSU temperature data is available. Thanks to Phillip Gentry and John Christy for alerting us to these figures]. I have several comments following the figures.
This data shows why the focus needs to be on the regional scale and that a global average is not of much use in describing weather that all of us experience.
The news media seem to continue to avoid this perspective. For example, in the article Snow, ice and the bigger picture
excerpts read
“Rather than seeking vindication or catastrophe in this cold snap, now is a good time to remind ourselves that weather, like death and taxes, will always be with us. Spectacular regional swings in temperature and precipitation, sometimes lasting for months, often emerge from the natural jostlings of atmosphere and ocean. By themselves, none of these prove or disprove a human role in climate change.”
“What’s different now is that climate change is shifting the odds towards record-hot summers and away from record-cold winters. The latter aren’t impossible; they’re just harder to get, like scoring a straight flush on one trip to Vegas and a royal flush the next.”
“If you’re craving a scapegoat for this winter, consider the Arctic oscillation. The AO is a measure of north-south differences in air pressure between the northern midlatitudes and polar regions. When the AO is positive, pressures are unusually high to the south and low to the north. This helps shuttle weather systems quickly across the Atlantic, often bringing warm, wet conditions to Europe. In the past month, however, the AO has dipped to astoundingly low levels – among the lowest observed in the past 60 years. This has gummed up the hemisphere’s usual west-to-east flow with huge “blocking highs” that route frigid air southward.”
“Handy as it is, the AO describes more than it explains. Forecasters still don’t know exactly what sends the AO into one mode or the other, just as the birth of an El Niño is easier to spot than to predict.”
See also the post at Dot Earth by Andy Revkin titled Cold Arctic Pressure Pattern Nearly Off Chart
The obvious response to these claims is that if we cannot predict weather features such as the Arctic oscillation or an El Niño under current climate, how can anyone credibly claim we have predictive skill decades into the future from both natural and human caused climate forcings? The short answer is that they cannot.
The article concludes with the text
“If this winter tells us anything, it’s that we’ll have to remain on guard for familiar weather risks as well as the evolving ones brought by climate change.”
This admission implicitly recognizes the focus on the reduction of vulnerability that we wrote about in our paper
Pielke Sr., R., K. Beven, G. Brasseur, J. Calvert, M. Chahine, R. Dickerson, D. Entekhabi, E. Foufoula-Georgiou, H. Gupta, V. Gupta, W. Krajewski, E. Philip Krider, W. K.M. Lau, J. McDonnell, W. Rossow, J. Schaake, J. Smith, S. Sorooshian, and E. Wood, 2009: Climate change: The need to consider human forcings besides greenhouse gases. Eos, Vol. 90, No. 45, 10 November 2009, 413. Copyright (2009) American Geophysical Union.
The media, policymakers and others should recognize this evidence of our incomplete understanding of the climate system. We will continue to have surprises such as we have seen this winter.
Vukcevic (13:30:16) :
Alternative link for the South Atlantic Anomaly:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC.htm
since original appears unstable
Until a full understanding of the different processes which comprise our climate system is achieved, along with the knowledge of how the effect each other
And predicting what humans will do is not a very exact science.
Stephen Skinner (03:25:03) :
Obviously nobody died in 62-63 and for some reason the Heatwave of 76 has disappeared from history.
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geronimo (03:47:06) :
Do you know Stephen that I was thinking the same thing about 1976 when the Met Office announced that 2009 is going to be the hottest year on record. It doesn’t seem credible.
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Gentlemen, I have been – for some time – thinking exactly the same thing.
I have very strong memories of the UK summer of 1976 (and 1975 was nearly as hot as 76) with droughts for – what was it – 6 weeks plus? The appointment of a Minister for Drought made me chuckle at the time. Have a look at film/video of many sporting events during that summer (e.g. Wimbledon) to see the grass burnt brown practically everywhere.
The only other summer I can recall that came close to these 2 was 1983, with 1998 in 4th place.
2007/2008/2009 were the most dismal summers I can recall, yet the decade was “the warmest ever, blah blah”. Whilst I would agree that we have had numerous mild winters in the last 15 years, they have generallly been accompanied by cool summers.
Frankly, the numbers, conclusions and predictions being published by the Met Office have ceased to have any credibility. Someone posted somewhere (maybe in another thread here?) that the MO’s statements around “warmest” winters are based on the average of the 15 highest daily temperatures in the period (or something similarly bizarre – does anyone have a reference to this?). Why bother with so many – just take the single highest daily temperature. It would be just as ridiculous.
And I find it so depressing and alarming that – Andrew Neil excepted – no current heavyweight journalist in the UK is prepared to question the mantra. The BBC should be shut down for their outrageous behaviour in all of this.
It is going to take rioting in the streets before the MSM (and maybe the politicians) start to wake up to reality. AGW? Nobody with a brain believes it any more.
” Tom P (10:39:52) :
Phil’s Dad (09:33:02) :
“That’s the point Tom. Smokey tells us how it was.
They predicted. They got it wrong.
Afterwards they changed their prediction. No prizes.”
None of the predictions were made in the last 18 months. Current temperatures are close to IPCC predictions made 3, 9 and 15 years ago.”
Tom, Coming out of the cold period in the late seventies it was a pretty safe bet that we were going to have warming and it would continue for at least 30 years thanks to the PDO cycle and the 70 -90 Gleissberg cycle ( published 1944) All you needed to do was plot the temperatures for the last couple hundred years to see the cycles. Heck William Herschel figured that out back in 1801. That is why the big push to finish the con and get the carbon taxes into law NOW before the con collapses. Then on to the next con which will be famine and high food prices.
The whole blasted thing is about making money out of conning people into boom and bust cycles, this is just one more con job and the peons get poorer and lose a little more of their freedom.
Tenuc (10:55:47) “[…] because of deterministic chaos, our climate system cannot be forecast with any degree of certainty beyond a few days.”
The assumption upon which this statement is based does not extend across all spatiotemporal scales. Via conditional analyses, we can identify the boundaries of hard constraints and substantially improve medium- & long-term forecasting probabilities. The lame, old “it’s ALL chaos” paradigm is holding back progress. It’s not all chaos – it is richly patterned if one looks with phase-aware methods. Eventually we may get down to residual chaos & measurement-noise, but we are nowhere near exhausting opportunities to learn from phase-conditioned analyses — quite the contrary – misguided paradigms have SHUT DOWN such pursuits, so little progress has been made despite tremendous effort (on largely unproductive fronts).
Following up on Tony B’s comment – isn’t this the second cold winter in a row in Europe (it certainly is in Ireland)? And isn’t this the third severe winter in a row in North America? Maybe in order to work for the Met UK you have to have your temporal lobes resected. Then you can keep up the “weather isn’t climate” routine with a straight face no matter how many successive years of cold there are.
rw
2010/01/09 at 3:45pm
“Following up on Tony B’s comment – isn’t this the second cold winter in a row in Europe (it certainly is in Ireland)? And isn’t this the third severe winter in a row in North America? Maybe in order to work for the Met UK you have to have your temporal lobes resected. Then you can keep up the “weather isn’t climate” routine with a straight face no matter how many successive years of cold there are.”
Having lived through the northeast ice storm last christmas, I can say that “natural disaster isn’t climate, it just seems like your whole world has changed.”
matt v. (13:25:57) “To assume that the next 30 years will be like the past 30 years is at the heart of what is wrong with the AGW science”
Good way of putting it in nutshell matt.
“… a global average is not of much use …”
What happened to
“…the global average is down since 2002…”
“…the global average is down since 1998…”
“…warmer global averages will be good for crops…”
“…global averages are increasing because of the sun…”
“…carbon dioxide isn’t increasing the global averages…”
“…global averages aren’t increasing…”
???
Have you all thrown in the towel on climatology, and decided to play weatherman instead?
Vukcevic (13:30:16) “[…] evolution of the SA anomaly during the last 400 years. http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SA%20mag%20anomaly.gif “
Interesting evolution at the constriction between South America & Antarctica – fits nicely with concepts laid out by Barkin.
Ronaldo (11:58:45) :
Tom in Texas (12:50:11) :
Regarding the Bucket Thought Experiment.
The intent was not to replicate the climate system which is vastly more complex.
The intention (as with most such though experiments) was to isolate a few variables to discuss a particular point or phenomenon.
In this case I was simply trying to illustrate a system where a long term effect could be reliably forecast while the short term could not. Whether that is precisely applicable to climate forecasting is another matter – we just shouldn’t infer outright that a system that is hard to pin down with short term predictions makes it hard to pin down long term.
Same goes for casinos. If I walk into a Las Vegas casino and start playing slot machines, an outcome prediction for the very next “pull” will be less likely to be correct than the long term prediction that, if I play long enough, I will lose money.
Re: matt v. (14:05:04)
Careful with your analysis – there has been pronounced spatial anti-phase across the great divide since ENSO & QBO switched phase ~mid-2009. (Continental averages can seriously mask regional differences, depending on spatial phase-relations.)
Mann O Mann (09:50:40)
Thinking about your thought experiment, you say the bucket is in equilibrium until the hole gets partially blocked, then the level in the bucket rises. How can the water level then fall, without the hole getting bigger (we assume as the IPCC does that the flow from the fawcett does not vary)? Once the partial blockage is removed, the water stops rising but stays at the new high level.
The bucket needs “added” particles, whereas the earths climate already has (almost) limitless particles on the bottom waiting to be stirred up, called the oceans. Hence my problem with AGW and the operation of the Greenhouse effect.
The planet DIDN’T HAVE TO wait millions of years for man to “add” particles to the atmosphere, those particles were available all the time in the form of oceans, water vapour.
So my question is: What makes anyone think the planet was “short” of GHG’s? It’s always had as much as it has needed in the form of the oceans. Surely it didn’t have to wait millions of years for H Sapiens to arrive and provide it with an extra 0.001% in GHG’s?
Paul Vaughan
Can you expand or clarify in simpler terms?
What is the point of “projections” “predictions” “scenarios” if they can’t predict “extremes” of weather?
Afterall, it’s not climate per se that will do damage, it’s the resultant weather (droughts, floods, cyclones etc). So even if we can predict future climate, that prediction is near useless unless we can also predict the resultant extremes of weather.
The IPCC gets around this by saying “more” of all extremes. Well so far after 20 years of projections, they have been wrong, there has been NO documented increases in extremes nor any weather this planet hasn’t already experienced many many times over.
I don’t have the figures for 2009, but European annual summer anomalies started to decline after 2006 and annual winter anomalies started to drop after 2007. Looking at 10 year moving averages, both started to rise after about the late 1980’s .
While the winter anomalies levelled of in the late 1990’s , the summer anomlaies continued to rise until 2006 . The10 year moving historical pattern[1900- 2008] for European winters is quite different [fluctuates more] from the summer pattern since about 1950.
Bill Nye, the science guy?
Correct – they’re wedded to straight-line thinking, billiard-ball modeling.
lgl (06:11:29) “Solar eclipses at low latitudes usually produce El-Nino […] http://virakkraft.com/enso-solar-eclipse.png “
Thanks for pointing this out lgl.
I would suggest (based on piles upon piles of analyses I’ve run on a variety of interannual terrestrial oscillations) that the particularly-good El Nino matches of (at least) ’73, ’83, ’87, & ’98 are nonrandom. This is coming together coherently with some of what we’ve been hearing from Piers Corbyn & Ian Wilson – it’s a matter of pulling clues together to discover what multivariate conditions are associated with partial-residual phase-deviations. Soon the alarmists, caught red-handed making untenable assumptions of randomness, may have to resort to spouting ‘chaos’ propaganda in an attempt to obfuscate insights arising from conditional analyses.
Interesting. A question about the basic science. Of what is the the lower tropospheric temperature supposed to be indicative? Just from what I’ve seen here (in the post and in the comments) the lower tropospheric temperature anomaly (from satellite) does seem to correlate well with the global mean surface temperature (again from satellite) since 2001, and perhaps since 1998.
I thought Stephen Wilde’s explanation was interesting, and it comports with Roger Pielke’s conclusion that GMT is not a good indicator of what regional weather will be like:
Stephen Wilde (12:51:50) :
What we seem to be seeing is a large redistribution of tropospheric heat energy with mid latitude regions cooling but equatorial regions remaining warm.
In the process of that redistribution the air circulation patterns have shifted substantially equatorward but that in itself is merely an extension of the changes that should have been apparent to all observers of weather and climate since 2000.
Applying my general climate description I would say that the following is the likely explanation:
i) Generally a latitudinal shift in the air circulation patterns is ocean driven and since about 2000 the PDO has been trending to the negative phase so that gives a basic background cooling effect.
ii) In contrast the Arctic Oscillation that controls the size and position of the polar high pressure systems is driven by a combination of the speed of the hydrological cycle as dictated by the rate of ocean energy release and the speed at which the stratosphere can radiate energy to space which is driven by variations in the turbulence of the flow of energy from the sun. The SABER satellite results appear to show that the rate of loss of energy to space is greater when the sun is active and less when the sun is less active.
iii) At present the quiet sun is reducing the rate of energy loss to space and the stratosphere is warming. At the same time the 2009 El Nino has been pumping energy faster to the stratosphere. The combined effects have both been supplementing one another to increase the flows of energy up into and downward out of the stratosphere to enhance the size of the polar high pressure cells and push them equatorward against the counter pressure from the El Nino.
iv) The result is cooling mid latitudes but warming equatorial and more polar latitudes.
If this setup continues then the cooler mid latitudes will progressively cut off the flow of warmer air to the poles and cooling will become more general.
As for a “tipping point” that doesn’t seem to be in the cards either at the moment.
I’m reminded of a presentation that Bob Carter did a few years ago, where he said that the 1998 El Nino represented a kind of “dividing line” in lower tropospheric temperature, that it produced a “step shift” in the GMT, but that otherwise there was no trend either before or after that point in terms of greenhouse warming.
Here is part 2 of his presentation where he talks about this:
matt v. (17:10:28) “Can you expand or clarify in simpler terms?”
On average cool air has been ‘ponded’ (simplifying here) east of the mountains, while warm air has been ‘ponded’ on the Pacific coast since ~mid-2009 (hot summer, balmy-warm winter here on the Pacific coast – in BC, Canada). Averaging across the continent will ‘confuse’ the strong regional difference, under such circumstances. Sometimes we have ‘north-south’ flow & a loopy jet stream; other times we have strong east-west flow with a straighter jet-stream. Averaging across the jet-stream (or other spatial discontinuities) can ‘confuse’ important signals. As per your request, I’m not trying to be precise here – just giving a gist of the hazards of averaging across different places that may sometimes have similar weather and sometimes have very dissimilar weather, depending on flow patterns …so averaging across the continent makes sense sometimes. Nothing wrong with your analysis – just adding a note of caution regarding interpretation of the past 6 or 7 months […for which a spatial contrast “east vs. west” or “east minus west” reveals something a spatial blend “(east+west)/2” does not].
Same goes for casinos. If I walk into a Las Vegas casino and start playing slot machines, an outcome prediction for the very next “pull” will be less likely to be correct than the long term prediction that, if I play long enough, I will lose money.
Terrible analogy. Known system with known odds. Try again.
I am having trouble understanding how someone can make sense out of temperature data and its implications for global warming or cooling. If sites where data were collected and/or are being collected are subject to urban heating, if some sites were not used, if the thermometers and auxilary equipment are not properly calibrated to the same standards, if the raw data have been erased or lost for many of the sites, if the collection processes are subject to variations, what does the error band in the global timewise temperature graphs mean? Then of course there is cherry-picking too. Certainly, 0.17 degrees centigrade per decade could all be due to systematic errors in the recorded numbers. I understand that one can perform various statistical analyses of whatever numbers you throw into the computer program. However,are the variations in the data due to random errors or are they systematic errors? Those heroic individuals trying to sense of the temperature data situation deserve or praise, prayers, and consolatory support. I apologize in advance if my comments are offensive to those who devote time to the global temperature issue. I am writing in a state of pure ignorance of what the data really look like before they were correlated. I just remember performing an analysis of temperature measurements in my freshman physics laboratory where we were required to make estimates of ramdom and systematic errors in the measurements. Clearly, if the errors are all systematic, then one cannot ascribe an external cause for the changes. Maybe this evaluation of the global temperature data has been performed.
Baa Humbug (17:03:32) :
Unobstructed, the hole will let water out at a rate faster than it is added. The equilibrium is dependent on the occurrence of obstructions (both partial and full) happening at a rate that is consistent over time. At any moment it could be fully obstructed with water levels rising or clear with water levels falling or partially blocked, with different degrees of rising or falling tied to the degree to which the hole is blocked.
Mann O Mann 16:07:13
I fully accept your comment, I am a great believer in thought experiments-apart from anything else. they are cheap and eminently modifiable. I agree that your “expt” does give insight and I was trying to push it a bit further. The value of WUWT is that it enables such visualiations to be shared and commented upon in a positive manner so adding, hopefully, a little to the common understanding.
So I did my own thought experiment and figured the bucket analogy was interesting, but it seemed to me that it should work more like a capacitor. On a local scale we have all sorts of stuff happening, wind rain, convection, etc etc. But on the system level is is simpler. Total energy goes up, the system rises to a new equilibrium. If you know the time constant, you can figure out how long it will take, all the twists and turns along the way don’t matter in the end.
In reading the last IPCC they suggest CO2 doubling would constitue a rise in radiance of 3.7 watts per square meter. So I started wondering, what is the time constant of the system? The answer to that probably can’t be calculated at all, but I figured I could cheat. I would just match the data to my theory.
I used Crowley’s millenia model of the solar constant which shows total variation from high to low of 3.5 watts. If 3.7 is a hockey stick, 3.5 ought to show up. I slid the graphs around until I got a match.
It looks to me that it takes 150 years for an increase in radiance to show up in global temp. I even tried to predict the low and the high for the last 500 years and hit the end of the little ice age for a low, and 2000 with no significant temp change afterward for a high.
Am I on the right track or did I just make the data fit my theory?
http://knowledgedrift.wordpress.com/category/uncategorized/
The global sea surface temperature map looks mighty chilly.
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html