Is Spencer Hiding the Increase? We Report, You Decide
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
One of the great things about the internet is people can post anything they want, no matter how stupid, and lots of people who are incapable of critical thought will simply accept it.
I’m getting emails from people who have read blog postings accusing me of “hiding the increase” in global temperatures when I posted our most recent (Dec. 2009) global temperature update. In addition to the usual monthly temperature anomalies on the graph, for many months I have also been plotting a smoothed version, with a running 13 month average. The purpose of such smoothing is to better reveal longer-term variations, which is how “global warming” is manifested.
But on the latest update, I switched from 13 months to a running 25 month average instead. It is this last change which has led to accusations that I am hiding the increase in global temperatures. Well, here’s a plot with both running averages in addition to the monthly data. I’ll let you decide whether I have been hiding anything:
Note how the new 25-month smoother minimizes the warm 1998 temperature spike, which is the main reason why I switched to the longer averaging time. If anything, this ‘hides the decline’ since 1998…something I feared I would be accused of for sure after I posted the December update.
But just the opposite has happened, with accusations I have hidden the increase. Go figure.
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Well, your critics don’t understand math, numbers, statistic, nor apparently, logical thought.
Why is T Departure from 79 to 98 Avg and not 79 to 09?
Looks good, original data with two different data smoothings.
It’s all there to see.
OT but you may find this interesting:
http://carbonfixated.com/newtongate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-renaissance-and-enlightenment-thinking/
Re-posting this here because it’s relevant. I’ve found where the UAH and RSS raw data is stored. It’s at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in the “Data Pool” section of this page:
http://nsidc.org/data/amsre/order_data.html
I’ve not yet come across any UAH or RSS source code that processes this raw data. However, there is some general purpose source code for working with this data here:
http://nsidc.org/data/amsre/tools.html
You’ll want the AE_L2A.2 brightness temperatures data.
http://n4eil01u.ecs.nasa.gov:22000/WebAccess/drill?attrib=esdt&esdt=AE_L2A.2&group=AMSA
The raw data has the following noteworthy properties:
*) It’s huge. I’d estimate a single day of temperatures will be about 2.5 gigabytes of data.
*) It mixes binary and text data in a single file. The text data is in hierarchical format, but it’s not XML, JSON, or any other standard format. It uses custom tags to define the hierarchy.
*) It includes all levels of the atmosphere. Usually, you’ll just want the troposphere, so you’ll have to extract that information out manually.
For more information on this data and how it’s collected, see the WUWT post by Dr. Spencer, here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/12/how-the-uah-global-temperatures-are-produced/#more-15191
What with all the real problems we can discuss, THIS becomes an issue?
Well the 25 year average does seem to hide the incline in the last year or so, as compared to yhe 13 month line. Perhaps Dr Spencer should publish future graphs showing both lines, to avoid such shrill denoncements.
One thing I notice in graphing the data is the longer time shows the insignificance of short term trends. while the temp may have spiked it was short lived and within normal variation.
Excellent work!
This further disproves CO2 forcing as a driver of climate.
The “Kiss Principle” applies to many fields, especially science and the military. Einstein was a master, imagine what he could have done to E=mc2. I, myself, prefer the top graph to the bottom one:-)
LOL to the picture
“Sordnay (12:16:20) :
OT but you may find this interesting:
http://carbonfixated.com/newtongate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-renaissance-and-enlightenment-thinking/ ”
We are trying it with humour now?
Go figure indeed – it’s something that has been bothering me for a while – how come no matter what data one presents that contradicts the AGW belief, the reaction is always the same – you’re hiding the warming, or whatever. The AGW mindset doesn’t seem to get it that scientific theories can never be proved, but are easily disproved, or falsified.
Take Trenbeth’s, now infamous statement, that the data is showing the warming, and that maybe they are not measuring the right data, right? Here is a classic case of a belief system in cognitive dissonance with the data, and try as hard as you might, you can’t convince a believer of anything, for their belief isn’t based on evidence, but on a deep seated need to believe (c.f. Carl Sagan).
During the 1970’s when I was still an undergraduate I noticed a change in attitudes at University – rigorous testing of knowledge by examination was on the way out and replaced by in course assessment requiring a lot less intellectual rigour. This change came from the social sciences and the rot spread to the physical sciences. One muse I entertained was what would happen to science when that generation graduated and started to work as professional scientists – where the mores of the social sciences seemed to dominate the intellectuality of the physical sciences.
It didn’t affect the physics or chemistry departments since in those sciences in-situ testing of hypotheses are easily done and crank theories quickly eliminated. But when you have science in which you cannot easily do in-situ experiments, like climate science, geology, astrophysics, etc, then the methodology becomes one of inductive reasoning to “prove” an hypothesis, or theory. Falsifying it falls by the wayside, and such sciences seem to attract the people who are at ease with the social science mindset.
Cooking data for support of an agenda isn’t a crime as some of us believe it to be for this crowd – because the science has been inverted – a hypothesis was framed, and then data sought to confirm it.
Those trained in empirical science would realise that it’s the presence of unusual novel data requiring a theory to explain it that characterises the scientific method. In this sense AGW has never been observed from the data in the first place and when the data don’t support the belief, sincerely I must add, that human oxidation of carbon is bad, then efforts are made to find supportive data, even to the extent of neglecting contrary data by omission, as Jonathan Cole has showed.
It’s the price we seem to have to pay for allowing the social sciences into the physical sciences for the laudable goal of a multidisciplinary educational policy. The chickens have come home to roost, but I am not sure I appreciate the eggs they are laying.
I’ll take any points; connecting the dots, the last two show a decline.
In the past year of WUWT, certain topics have come up. I have put together a webpage where a picture is worth a 1,000 words.
http://robertb.darkhorizons.org/WhatGlobalWarming.htm
Here, we examine the question of
-current state of the N. Hemisphere (cold enough for you?)
-Sea Level rise (hey- where did all that briny go?)
-Ice Free Arctic al la Gore (break out the suntan lotion, boys, 1959 at the N. Pole was a real cooker).
Enjoy.
Well, I would be more likely to guess that UAH overestimates the increase, especially the very recent one.
The January warmest record for the brightness surface temperature – on Jan 15th, 2010 – is now minus 16.29 deg Celsius, almost 0.2 deg Celsius warmer than the previous record I can see (but it’s conceivable that they were warmer days in January 1998 that I can’t access).
There are some questions that Dr Spencer could answer. I have certain doubts whether the albedo is correctly accounted for. Isn’t the reflected solar infrared part of the radiation by the snow kind of incorrectly included to the thermal radiation?
Sorry if this is a really dumb question – but I do guess that the UAH temperature increase between Dec 2009 and Jan 2010 will be much higher than the same quantity at GISS etc.
Fair enough, the globe’s been warming. Some people who post here seem to think it isn’t, and claim a vast left-wing conspiracy has made it all up.
Roy Spencer obviously doesn’t think so.
One of the great things about the internet is people can post anything they want, no matter how stupid, and lots of people who are incapable of critical thought will simply accept it.
—————————————————————
When commenters were saying Roy Spencer was trying to hide an incline I thought they had a short memory and not taking time to look at things critically.
They didn’t remember the difference that Roy Spencer had with Richard Lindzen in the ERBE data. It would seem that if Roy Spencer wished to hide inclines he would not have made an effort to publicize his critic of Lindzen’s work.
Roy Spencer’s math found slight warming—a difference with Richard Lindzen’s.
The ‘incline in the blue [and even the green] curve is marked, but very subdued in the red. Often what matters in this debate is perception rather than facts, and the perception one gets from the red curve is that the trend the last few years have been down. I have run the graph [the old one] by several lay persons and asked them what they thought and although not a valid scientific poll, their perception of the red curve was a marked downward trend. So, no accusation of hiding anything, just unwareness of how many people might perceive this.
You could use both running averages on your graphs. I assume you use a computer so it isn’t a whole lot of extra work for you. Push comes to shove, they are both arbitrary time intervals and the choice is yours as long as the running average is labeled explicitly.
Hi Roy, keep up the good work. I think the human brain is better at processing data than xl. As I see it you have a step change around 1997, flat trends before and after. 10 to 20 year time lag between solar events and their impact on temperature – the worst has yet to come IMO. The roads here (Aberdeen Scotland) are falling apart due to frost damage.
I’m reading a book called “So foul and Fair a Day” right now which is an historical account of Scotland’s climate. Apparently, at the end of the 17th century, North Atlantic Sea ice was so extensive that Inuit were sited off the coast of Aberdeen – one the kayaks is in a museum here attached to the college where I used to study. Anyone interested in stories of cold and starvation will enjoy this book.
John Hooper (12:35:59) :
The earth has been clearly cooling since 1998.
You are not taking starting points in to account.
If 1998 isn’t a good starting point for you then let’s start with the Medieval Warm Period. That is the time period the Mann Hockey Stick graph tried to eliminate. Why would they do that? To make it appear the earth was never as warm as it is now.
But it was warmer in the past than now. The earth is in a cooling trend.
Manmade global warming is not happening.
If one were to change the start and end dates of the average to 1984 – 2003 it would hide the incline even better. 🙂
John Hooper
[snip]
Don’t feed the troll
It’s just the usual noise Dr Roy. Trolls like Hooper like to make as big a smokescreen as possible.
A running N month average would be better, where N is a random number based on the cumulative sum of failing UK Met Office seasonal forecasts modulo 42…
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/world/seasonal/
🙂
We could start with N=25.
that is fun: “almost 0.2 deg Celsius warmer than the previous record I can see”
almost 0.2 deg, around 1 decade later, with a moderate instead of a strong El nino? Fun coincidence. Just a coincidence. 😉 lol
Yes, it is really only fun. But the UAH data show, there is no global cooling at all.