The great thing about old magazines is that once published, they can’t be adjusted. Jo Nova has a great summary of some recent work from occasional WUWT contributor Frank Lansner who runs the blog “Hide the Decline” and what he found in an old National Geographic, which bears repeating here. – Anthony
Human emissions of carbon dioxide began a sharp rise from 1945. But, temperatures, it seems, may have plummeted over half the globe during the next few decades. Just how large or how insignificant was that decline?
Frank Lansner has found an historical graph of northern hemisphere temperatures from the mid 70ās, and it shows a serious decline in temperatures from 1940 to 1975. Itās a decline so large that it wipes out the gains made in the first half of the century, and brings temperatures right back to what they were circa 1910. The graph was not peer reviewed, but presumably it was based on the best information available at the time. In any case, if all the global records are not available to check, itās impossible to know how accurate or not this graph is.
The decline apparently recorded was a whopping 0.5Ā°C.
But, three decades later, by the time Brohan and the CRU graphed temperatures in 2006 from the same old time period, the data had been adjusted (surprise), so that what was a fall of 0.5Ā°C had become just a drop of 0.15Ā°C. Seventy percent of the cooling was gone.
Maybe they had good reasons for making these adjustments. But, as usual, the adjustments were in favor of the Big Scare Campaign, and the reasons and the original data are not easy to find.
Above: Matthews 1976, National Geographic, Temperatures 1880-1976
Now compare the 1935-1975 decline for the same area – the entire Northern hemisphere – presented by CRU/Brohan 2006:
Source: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/monitoring/CR_data/Monthly/HadCRUGNS_3plots.gif
And when the old and the new are overlaid…hey where’s the decline?
Above: The blue line is the adjusted CRU average from 2006, overlaid on the 1976 Nat Geo graph.
If temperature sets across the northern hemisphere were really showing that 1940 was as hot as 2000, that makes it hard to argue that the global warming that occurred from 1975 to 2000 was almost solely due to carbon, since it wasnāt unusual (at least not for half the globe), and didnāt correlate at allĀ with our carbon emissions, the vast majority of which occurred after 1945.
The US records show that the 1930ās were as hot as the 1990ās. And the divergence problem in tree rings is well known. Many tree rings showed a decline after 1960 that didnāt āconcurā with the surface records. Perhaps these tree rings agree with the surface records as recorded at the time, rather than as adjusted post hoc?Ā Perhaps the decline in the tree rings that Phil Jones worked to hide was not so much a divergence from reality, but instead was slightly more real than the surface-UHI-cherry-picked-and-poorly-sited records?
Esper – Tree ring widths declined from 1940-1975. Records after 1960 are sometimes ignored because they don’t fit the “temperature record”. (All timeseries were normalized over the 1881ā1940 period. RCS, regional curve standardization; TRW, tree-ring width.) Thanks to ClimateAudit. (Link below)
Steven McIntyre discusses the Esper data here.
Frank Lansner also discusses the data from Scandinavia, which originally showed that temperatures were roughly level from mid-century to the end of the century, but that the large decline from 1940 to 1975 wasā¦adjusted out of existence. (My post on that here).
Scandinavian Temperatures: 25 data series combined from The Nordklim database (left), compared to the IPCC’s temperature graph for the area.
Frank points out that while the older graph is not peer reviewed, the modern data sets are also not peer reviewed, so even if the papers they are published in are peer reviewed, itās meaningless to claim this is significant when the underlying data can be adjusted years after its collection without documentation or review.
The CRU has an FAQ on their datasets, and it includes this comment on the accuracy of the hemispheric records:
In the hemispheric files averages are now given to a precision of three decimal places to enable seasonal values to be calculated to Ā±0.01Ā°C. The extra precision implies no greater accuracy than two decimal places.
Do I read that correctly? After an adjustment that may be in the order of 0.34Ā°C, the accuracy is Ā±0.01Ā°C?
At the time when there was a Global Ice Age Scare, this graph appeared in Newsweek.
Newsweek: Global Temperatures 1880-1970 (NCAR)
Either 70% of the decline has been hidden in the years since then, or the climate scientists at the time were exaggerating the decline in order to support the Ice Age Scare (surely not!).
Full references available on Frank Lansnerās & Nicolai Skjoldbyās Blog. Stanley is derived from an NAS document. Mathews from National Geographic.
Thanks to Frank for his good work.
Brohan 2006 is linked here, with a pdf.
OT – Judith Curry interview:
“[Q] Are you saying that the scientific community, through the IPCC, is asking the world to restructure its entire mode of producing and consuming energy and yet hasnāt done a scientific uncertainty analysis?
[A] Yes. ….”
From the April 2010 issue; published online March 10, 2010
http://discovermagazine.com/2010/apr/10-it.s-gettin-hot-in-here-big-battle-over-climate-science/article_view?searchterm=michael%20mann&b_start:int=0
Jiggery Pokey. Zounds!
=============
There is a simple, obvious explanation: the data from the National Geographic article was collected using older, less accurate instruments.
What evidence do you have that this explanation is wrong?
(Note that I am not arguing this explanation is right. I am offering it as a hypothesis and asking you to disprove it.)
It’s anecdotal, but this would jibe with what Russian friends told me. Victims in the Siberian labor camps in the 1930s were buried in the thawed zone on top of the permafrost layer. When attempts were made to exhume them a half-century later the thawed zone was thinner and the bodies were frozen into the permafrost.
[post excerpts and links, not whole articles. ~ ctm]
wolfwalker (20:15:50) :
“There is a simple, obvious explanation: the data from the National Geographic article was collected using older, less accurate instruments.”
Are you serious wolfwalker? So 1976 temperatures measured in 2006 are more accurate than 1976 temperatures measured in 1976, because they now have more accurate instruments. How does that work?
Who would have been at NCAR at the time the Newsweek article had/printed their graph (presumably, with permission)?
Any records exist from that time period?
.
.
wolfwalker (20:15:50 says:
“There is a simple, obvious explanation: the data from the National Geographic article was collected using older, less accurate instruments.”
Are you suggesting that the CRU measurements taken in 1910 were done on modern, accurate instruments?
You don’t suppose we’ve been shined then do you? I am incontrovertibly stunned.
Gold star Frank, thank you.
1976, wasn’t that the peak of the ice age is coming hoax, we will all die unless we cover the polar ice caps with carbon black to stop the ice age from coming was in vogue.
I have been around too long the hoaxes are running together in my head. But they seem to cycle between the ice age is coming, we are all going to die, and the planet is going to melt, we are all going to die. What would have happened if we had melted the ice caps in 1976?
That brings up a really good question, how accurate were thermometers around 1900? Do we even know?
Sorry,
thank you too Jo, I was simply so shocked that I forgot my manners…
or maybe it was all that wool over my eyes.
Speaking of old articles. I’ve often seen mentioned an OMNI Magazine (March 1984) interview with Roger Revelle and his thoughts on AGW. I have an original copy of the magazine and was wondering if anyone at WUWT, or anyone else like a scanned copy of the article?
Just trying to help.
Which lays to rest the idea that scientists are logically rational. Just look at how imaginative and creative scientists can be in adjusting the historical record. What was once a minor cyclical variance has been adjusted to present an alarming nonstop temperature rise.
You too can become a modern Chicken Little.
The wolfwalker appears to be implying that CRU’s adjustments bring the earlier instrumental temperatures in line with more accurate modern ones. I believe however that if he were to do some research he’d find that the modern ones are in fact less accurate.
This is a good post, I would love to see the tree rings over laid on the old graft here,
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/Northern%20hemisphere%20temperatures/NHNatGeo76small.jpg
there is evidence to go after the fraud.
Tx ctm for your work on WUWT.
Tim L
The NEWSWEEK article is available here:
http://www.denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf
We now know both how they hid the decline and where they hid it…
Tarpon:
I don’t think the 1970’s “ice age” thing was a hoax. It actually makes a lot more sense than the current warming scare if you start looking at more than a few thousand years of climate history.
I think both are in part a result of science too often thinking in too short of a time span and then applying linear trends to the data. We see the same logic applied to the post-1998 trend by some skeptics too.
When one looks at the data for the last 100K years it becomes really obvious that 0.5 C up or down is not an issue. If we look at 1 million years it is even more obvious that not only are modern temperature swings (and even those throughout recorded human history) insignificant, but that we are in for a big drop – soon!
“Realign the incline.”
So when did the time-of-observation bias revisions begin? Is that part of the reason for the difference between the two charts?
The overlay of Matthews (1976) and CRU (2006) is a fascinating figure.
Both Fahrenheit and Celsius were developing reasonably accurate mercury thermometers during the mid seventeen hundreds. I go back far enough that we did dangerous experiments in high school physics lab that would never be allowed today; among them, we made our own mercury in glass thermometers that compared well in accuracy to our certified lab thermometers. If a bunch of dumbass kids could manage, I’m sure the technicians of the eighteenth century could manage.
cheers
Who’s tree rings these are, I think I know,
They’re hidden deep beneath the snow,
A great snow job that plunders much,
Claiming ground it cannot touch,
And when the time has come at last,
To prove their point and hoist the mast,
To fly the flag of “PROOF” – but wait!
Their arrogance has sealed their fate.
Their proof’s been lost, where is it now?
Computers cannot model clouds?
And what’s that scraping sound I hear?
The wheels are off? We cannot steer?
Doesn’t matter – we’ll just flap our arms,
Take to the sky, sound the alarm!
Whats that down there? What was that sound?
Ack! Those skeptics shot me down!
Don’t they know that I know best?
They don’t need to test my tests!
Oof! I’ve landed. Here they come.
There’s no escape. The truth has won…
.
.
Ā©2010 Dave Stephens
Climate heresy – No net global warming since 1940!
Could this ancient heresy be gaining favour?
Say it’s not so, Phil, say it’s not so!
_________________________________
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/is_this_the_beginning_of_global_cooling/
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Is This The Beginning of Global Cooling
By Allan MacRae
Many scary stories have been written about the dangers of catastrophic global warming, allegedly due to increased atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) from the combustion of fossil fuels. But is the world really catastrophically warming? NO. And is the warming primarily caused by humans? NO.
Since just January 2007, the world has cooled so much that ALL the global warming over the past three decades has disappeared! This is confirmed by a plot of actual global average temperatures from the best available source, weather satellite data that shows there has been NO net global warming since the satellites were first launched in 1979.
See larger image here.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/uah7908.JPG
Since there was global cooling from ~1940 to ~1979, this means there has been no net warming since ~1940, in spite of an ~800% increase in human emissions of carbon dioxide. This indicates that the recent warming trend was natural, and CO2 is an insignificant driver of global warming.
Quote from the article: “Many tree rings showed a decline after 1960 that didnāt āconcurā with the surface records.”
CRU apologists have claimed on at least two sites I’ve monitored that “Hide the decline” (in the infamous CRU leaked e-mail) does not refer to temperature. If true, then exactly what does the “decline” refer to if not temperature? They make the denial, but never explain themselves.
Just goes to show when measuring temperature,
Raw apples should stay with raw apples and raw oranges with raw oranges.
It’s not a punch cocktail, unless someones got some rum and some pineapples.
But seriously both data sets, proxy and thermometer can be looked at side by side and a bigger picture emerges. Proxies in their nature as pointed out by Anthony many times are subject to other influences other than temperature alone.
Oddly enough I just happened to find a copy of the National Geographic issue that the article came from. Here’s an interesting line from the caption for the graph Anthony posted:
“Lower temperatures could produce a climate generally wetter and less stable, one marked by storms, floods, and freezes.”
Sound familiar anyone?
I worked on Australian temperatures in about 1980. I would take this plot of Matthews with a big grain of salt. In 1975 things were much more primitive. The vast majority of the world’s temperature data was not digitized. It existed on often hand-writted forms and logs. Before it could go anywhere it had to be accurately transcribed and often calibrated for thermometer type. This process was only just beginning.
It was even hard to move data around. Think of a few hundred stations, daily data, and a 300 baud line. Not even floppy discs, only tapes.
I strongly suspect this plot is based on US stations, maybe not very many. There is no way they could have got gridded coverage of Australia. This plot is NH, but I doubt that many countries there were in much better shape. I know people here are unlikely to credit it, but people like Hansen and Phil Jones put a huge and valuable effort into just assembling a proper dataset. Before that, the thermometer readings existed, but were just not assembled.
That may be true, Nick, but the track pre-1940 and the divergence post-1940 is striking regardless. Lots of agreement on warming, not-so-much on cooling.
“tarpon (20:57:35) :
1976, wasnāt that the peak of the ice age is coming hoax, we will all die unless we cover the polar ice caps with carbon black to stop the ice age from coming was in vogue.”
There was even a BBC program on TV about it back then.
Nick Stokes (22:14:42) :
I know people here are unlikely to credit it, but people like Hansen and Phil Jones put a huge and valuable effort into just assembling a proper dataset. Before that, the thermometer readings existed, but were just not assembled.
Messrs. Hansen and Jones, you deserve credit for that huge and valuable effort of assembling a proper dataset.
Now — why’d you go and $#@! it up?
The temperature anomaly nowadays is calculated relative to the average temperature over the period 1960-1990. The temperature anomaly in the 1976 National Geographic would be relative to some other period. In order to make the comparison, the latter period data would have to be rebased to the earlier period. That would be worthwhile doing. But until it has been done, we canāt be sure any manipulation has occurred.
“Messrs. Hansen and Jones, you deserve credit for that huge and valuable effort of assembling a proper dataset.”
But didn’t they go and bollocks-up the data set so badly that it might not be useable?
Have a look at Briffa 1998
http://eas8001.eas.gatech.edu/papers/Briffa_et_al_PTRS_98.pdf
Fig 6 shows a strong decline from 1940 to 1970. ” … As yet, the cause (of the apparent decline) is not understood”. They don’t consider the reason for what they consider the apparent falling temperatures, is actually falling temperatures !
It wasnāt only Newsweek, National Geographic and even Readersā Digest ran stories on thisā¦
I made this image mosaic up some time back to record what the āconsensusā was back then on temperature trends.
http://i34.tinypic.com/2wei1j9.jpg
It shows the Newsweek, Readersā Digest and National Geographic temp trend graphics as well as (what I believe) is the source doc ā the 1975 NAS report āUnderstanding Climatic Change: A program for actionā.
The other interpretation is that the temperatures prior to 1910-50 have been adjusted downwards.
http://i36.tinypic.com/358e135.jpg
I think that thermometer accuracy is not really an issue. In any case the data used by Budyko etc is most probably the same that HadCRU and HGCN use. So the difference due to adjutment (right or wrong) can not be ruled out. And I have wondered for some time if (at least some of) the ādivergence problemā can be attributed to the adjustment of the station tempsā¦
Sources for above:
Fig A: Figure A.6 from p148 of the 1975 NAS report āUnderstanding Climatic Change: A program for actionā
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:DSCN4904-nas-a.6_crop.jpg
Fig B: Newsweek, April 28 1975 āThe Cooling Worldā p 64
http://firstfriday.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/newsweek-global-cooling.jpg
Fig C: Readersā Digest, March 1977 Whatās Happening To Our Climate
http://newsbusters.org/node/12137
Fig D: National Geographic, November 1975 pp 614-615
http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/DSCN1557-nat-geog-1976_1200Ć900.JPG
Since I put the mosaic image together, the NAS Document has now been put online at Google Books:
http://books.google.com/books?id=wD0rAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA148&dq=budyko+1969+fig+a6&cd=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false
cheers
Michael Jankowski (22:23:00) :
Not according to the old Weather Bureau Records it isn’t.
Especially not when I find an urban station that is possibly immune to UHI.
There may be others like it, but you cannot see them when your eyes are fixed on global data sets.
Rise & Decline, rise & decline.
It is pretty clear where the change in temperatures occurred:
“The basic GISS temperature analysis scheme was defined in the late 1970s by James Hansen when a method of estimating global temperature change was needed for comparison with one-dimensional global climate models. Prior temperature analyses, most notably those of Murray Mitchell, covered only 20-90Ā°N latitudes. Our rationale was that the number of Southern Hemisphere stations was sufficient for a meaningful estimate of global temperature change, because temperature anomalies and trends are highly correlated over substantial geographical distances. Our first published results (Hansen et al. 1981) showed that, contrary to impressions from northern latitudes, global cooling after 1940 was small, and there was net global warming of about 0.4Ā°C between the 1880s and 1970s.”
It would appear that Jim fixed it for us.
toyotawhizguy (21:48:43) : ? decline
Try this: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/understanding_climategates_hid.html
There is no denying: the advancement of climate science and computer modeling techniques have resulted in greatly improved methods of securing funding. I’m left with contemplating that it had to be the National Enquirer that uncovered the John Edward scandal, for which they are in contention for the Pulitzer, and that the integrity of mainstream science is not much different than mainstream media.
“Gary Turner (21:36:40) :
[…]
I go back far enough that we did dangerous experiments in high school physics lab that would never be allowed today; among them, we made our own mercury in glass thermometers”
Yeah, playing with mercury was fun! Especially when it was spilled and all the tiny mercury droplets would race across the floor to disappear in the corners of the room.
Fascinating. This gives me much more confidence that my dT/dt method is actually working rather well. It fairly accurately reproduces the shape and character of that NatGeo Mathews 1976 graph including the roughly equal 1940’s and now, the 1970’s dip, et. al.
The only real difference I note is that mine is more volatile. ( I go up 1 C and down 1 C where they are doing about 1/2 C). That could easily be due to mine being North America only; and Canada is highly volatile. While their graph is Northern Hemisphere and will have a lot more Mediterranean, North Africa and Southeast Asia in it dampening the range.
But my “zero crossings” pretty much match as does the relative distance traveled after a zero crossing. I used “All Data” from GHCN “unadjusted” so it starts ‘way early’ with only one thermometer (making the left edge very volatile and a bit speculative) but by 1800 we’re up to a dozen or so, and it looks to match well after 1880.
http://chiefio.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/north_america_sh.png
I’ve published how to “do this yourself” (It’s pretty trivial) and will send code to anyone wanting to wrangle FORTRAN. (The “anomaly creation code” is already published in the comments on the Germany Not Warming link:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/germany-not-warming/
down near the very bottom.
The algorithm is nearly trivial. For each thermometer record, for each month, once you get a valid value, wait for the next one from future years. When you get it, subtract them, that’s the “anomaly” for that month for that year. Hold onto that last temperature until you get the next one. Stop when you run out of records to process. (Basically “year over year” anomalies calculated by month with carry forward until you get a valid datum on missing data.). Then it’s just “average the 12 months values” to get an annual anomaly for a given selection of records ( like, oh, USA). Make a running total of those annual anomalies to get the net change over time.
If you don’t do FORTRAN it would be faster to start from that description and just write it in C …
The only real ‘wrinkle’ is that when making a ‘running total’ I start in the present and move back in time. The present is always “normal” and the past is the variation. It avoids having that one old thermometer swing the present all over the place and avoids having the present swing around with different “start of time” choices. Planned is to try calculating the anomaly itself “from present to past” in the anomaly data file ( I think it would work better).
Nice, these magazine things…
About a decade ago I bought a canonical set of Nat Geo on CD (it was like, $19 on deep discount somewhere…) Maybe I’ll open it up and look up the article š Yes, it really is sitting in the library / archive unopened… but I got a closet back 8-} in return…
“Nick Stokes (22:14:42) :
I know people here are unlikely to credit it, but people like Hansen and Phil Jones put a huge and valuable effort into just assembling a proper dataset.”
Some people surely value it:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8571347.stm
Last paragraph: “Brass From Pockets” (Is Richard Black capable of irony suddenly?)
“”The developing world needs to see clear signals to have something in their hands at Cancun,” he said. “
Excellent article. I always wondered, why the CET record shows 70ties and 80ties as cold as 1900.
http://climate4you.com/CentralEnglandTemperatureSince1659.htm
Even Phil tinkered with CET UHI, it is quite good representation of the NH, UHI-free Armagh Observatory record as well.
Nick Stokes (22:14:42) : I worked on Australian temperatures in about 1980. I would take this plot of Matthews with a big grain of salt. In 1975 things were much more primitive….
Now wait a minute. Seems to me they built nuclear bombs 30 years before that, had a nice set of 56 and 64 bit computers (running languages like Pascal and Algol in addition to others like FORTRAN and APL) and I have very fond memories of a nice Dodge Charger that would blow the doors off most anything from Detroit today… and there was this SR-71 Blackbird flying over my head frequently at the time (still holds a bunch of official worlds records IIRC) not exactly “primitive” IMHO.
It was even hard to move data around. Think of a few hundred stations, daily data, and a 300 baud line. Not even floppy discs, only tapes.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of round tapes.
The entire GHCN would fit on one round tape of the era. No problem. $9.
I still have some around here somewhere with my ‘archives’ from the time. Don’t know where to read them, though š
I know people here are unlikely to credit it, but people like Hansen and Phil Jones put a huge and valuable effort into just assembling a proper dataset. Before that, the thermometer readings existed, but were just not assembled.
I was under the impression that NCDC “assembled the data” and Hansen’s GIStemp just sucked it in and changed it… So I’d rather credit NOAA / NCDC with “assembly” (and Hansen / GIStemp with decorating it… )
Re Arnost (23:42:23) :
Both wikipedia and wmconolley.org.uk links now shows “page not found” š®
@Patrick Davis (22:26:14)
——————————————————
There was even a BBC program on TV about it back then.
——————————————————
Professor Stephen Schneider, The coming ice age of the 1970s:
Sinclair Davidson (22:51:17) : The temperature anomaly nowadays is calculated relative to the average temperature over the period 1960-1990. The temperature anomaly in the 1976 National Geographic would be relative to some other period. In order to make the comparison, the latter period data would have to be rebased to the earlier period.
I don’t think so… You are assuming anomalies are calculated against a multi year average period. That need not be so. Look again at that graph. “Now” in their time period was at zero. I think they are doing the same thing I did. Fix NOW as the “baseline” and measure anomalies backward in time from that.
If so, then I’ve managed to re-invent the Mathews method š of anomalies.
But I do think that “right hand zero” crossing is diagnostic.
For the present data, matching on the approach to the peak effectively re-bases it to match.
So let’s examine the possibilities. I see two:
1. The data was deliberately massaged to remove the cooling.
Conclusion – do I need to spell it out?
2. The data was corrected for issues found on proper examination.
Conclusion – The 0.7 degree c warming over the last 100 years is far from certain.
“The great thing about old magazines is that once published, they canāt be adjusted. ”
Of course, with the impending demise of the print media, to be replaced by the digital media, rewriting hsitory will be a simple matter for Winston, et all.
CIA confirms Global cooling
But surely this downturn is very well documented and something that has been the subject of many discussions here on WUWT?
This documemt from the CIA in the 1970’s looked at the effects of global cooling on world politics.
http://www.climatemonitor.it/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/1974.pdf
Amongst the host of references is Hubert Lamb -first Director of CRU- Lamb writes in his many books of the climatic downturns which started sometime aroud 1960.
If anyone knows the CIA document to be fraudulent you need to produce your evidence-It certainly looks authentic
Tonyb
geronimo (00:03:43) :
It would appear that Jim fixed it for us.
That I recovered substantially the same result from the GHCN “unadjusted” data via a straightforward anomaly process implies the information is still there, and that you are right: The jiggery – pokery happens after GHCN gets run through the Jones and Hansen sausage factories… (Modulo the 1990 uplift / “splice” that NCDC looks to have put in GHCN)
Anthony Scalzi (22:12:17) :
Oddly enough I just happened to find a copy of the National Geographic issue that the article came from. Hereās an interesting line from the caption for the graph Anthony posted:
āLower temperatures could produce a climate generally wetter and less stable, one marked by storms, floods, and freezes.ā
Sound familiar anyone?
It sure does!
I have done a lot of travel in the midwest in the last 14 years and I’ve noticed the really damaging ice storms. These bad ice storms were pretty much confined to the Oklahoma City up to Kansas City area when I began in the late ’90s.
Then they began showing up farther southeast along I-44 Tulsa, Joplin and Springfield, Missouri.
Now they’re beginning to show up all the way from almost McAlester, Oklahoma through southern MO and the northern half of Arkansas to the Ohio/West Virginia line. With a lot of torn up timber (old growth forest) and powerlines along the way.
January 2009 Central Plains and Midwest ice storm – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2009_Central_Plains_and_Midwest_ice_storm
Geckko said
” (or) The data was corrected for issues found on proper examination.
Conclusion ā The 0.7 degree c warming over the last 100 years is far from certain.”
It depends on the start point. Giss chose to start their records from 1880 when 1910 would have been more logical from the point of view of wdespread coverage-their intention according to Hansens 1987 paper. 1880 was at the start of a temperature decline. If measured from 1860-the start of a 20 year upturn, the subsequent trends would look rather different.
Similarly CRU started in 1850-at the foot of another decline. A start date from 1830 or 1840 would again show a different trend.
In other words both major temperature datasets started from a trough in the LIA not a peak.
Who would have guessed that temperatures would rise from the depths of the LIA?
Tonyb
FROM AUSTRALIA
Iām sure youāve heard about the latest CSIRO and BOM relesse āIt is very likely that human activities have caused most of the global warming observed since 1950
There is greater than 90% certainty that increases in greenhouse gas emissions have caused most of the global
warming since the mid-20th century. International research shows that it is extremely unlikely that the observed
warming could be explained by natural causes alone. Evidence of human influence has been detected in ocean
warming, sea-level rise, continental-average temperatures, temperature extremes and wind patterns. CSIRO
research has shown that higher greenhouse gas levels are likely to have caused about half of the winter rainfall
reduction in south-west Western Australia.ā
http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/ho/20100315.shtml
http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/ho/20100315a.pdf
Iād like to make a FOI request to both the CSIRO and BOM
there are a number of you who are more expert than I am (my background is legal); what should I ask for so that their data can be checked by enthusiastic amateurs
and if I get anything can I post it so that you guys can help with comments
I thought Wolfwalker’s comment was tongue in cheek. [snip]
Sinclair Davidson (22:51:17) :
“The temperature anomaly nowadays is calculated relative to the average temperature over the period 1960-1990. The temperature anomaly in the 1976 National Geographic would be relative to some other period. In order to make the comparison, the latter period data would have to be rebased to the earlier period. That would be worthwhile doing. But until it has been done, we canāt be sure any manipulation has occurred.”
I am not a scientist nor a mathematician, but as I understand it, an anomaly is the observed temperature minus some artificially chosen fixed datum (eg a temperature average). As this is an average figure I assume it has no trend built in, thus is a flat line. This will only affect the absolute magnitude of the resultant curve, not the overall shape.
It doesn’t change the conclusions at all.
Please enlighten me if my understanding is wrong.
Despite the obvious hype, newspaper reports in the 70s consistently refer to a 0.5Ā°C drop from the 1940s to the 1970s in the NH and must reflect the real concerns of scientists at the time.
That temperature drop has vanished from the record.
Sorry Nick, but you’ve got it quite wrong in certain respects.
In 1975 I was recording the observation on a WBAN Form-10, using a PTP (Paper Tape Punch) to record the observations on a paper tape, and using a PTR (Paper Tape Reader) to automatically transmit the record at 110 Baud by the Automated Weather Network (AWN) to the computers at Carswell AFB. They in turn forwarded the electronic data record through the Global Weather Communications Systemās (GWCS) to the NMC. who forwarded the data to the WMO, who transmitted the data to other NMC around the world. I was able to receive the latest weather data and forecasts from weather stations located in virtually every nation and sea of the world on my teletype printers within hours or even minutes of their transmissions. Automated summaries were also available.
By 1976, we transitioned from the old COMETS communications using the antiquated data input/output systems to the latest COMEDS Western Union CRT terminals. We still used the old teletype printers in conjunction with newer printing systems and the CRT terminals. COMEDS is still in use today.
Weather data has been transmitted by telegraph ever since the telegraph was invented in the early 19th Century. As automated telegraphy and ticker tapes came into use in the late 19th Century, weather reports were included alongside the financial and business data in the ticker tapes. By the early 20th Century telegraphy and radio telegraphy came into use with the KSR (Keyboard Send/Receive) teletype machines. Newspapers, radio stations, railroad companies, shipping companies, the U.S. Weather Bureau, Army, Navy, and assorted other domestic and foreign customers used the teletype communications networks to send and receive a variety of governement and commercial weather data products.
During the Second World War, these international teletype communications networks were controlled by the military, and weather data was classified as secret information. One the war had ended, the teletype communications networks were restored, and weather data communications underwent a huge expansion in the United States, Europpe, the Soviet Union, Asia, and the Pacific.
By the 1960s period, mainframe digital computer systems were beginning to be introduced into the weather communications systems. This process was perhaps accelerated by the needs of the aerospace activities of NASA, the military, and commercial organizations. By 1976, we were using CRT terminals to send and receive weather data between stations just about anywhere in the world anyone chose to establish communications to a station. Moscow, USSR and Alice Springs, Australia were among the stations we we received.
However, you must notice that these were not necessarily the stations and/or the observations being used in the USHCN and GHCN dtasets. A large proportion of the reporting stations in those datasets are COOP stations in the U.S. and something about the equivalent in the non-U.S. locations. Furthermore, these datasets do not include the SPECI, hourly, 3-hourly, or 6-hourly data of the non-COOP stations. The COOP stations often mailed their weather records to the NMC, and the delay before they were available for transmission on the weather data communications networks could be 45 days or longer in the U.S. or perhaps never for some COOP type stations reporting to the foreign NMC.
The level of sophistication at any given point in time depends very much on the time, place, and exactly which weather dataset is being discussed. In 1923, it was quite possible to receive weather data in Toulouse, France from a weather station in Buffalo, New York within hours or not minutes. Yet it may still take as long as 45 days for someone in Buffalo, New York to receive weather data from a COOP station also located in the State of New York in the year 2010. Likewise for Australia, a weathe report from an aerodrome in Perth, Western Australia in 1932 could be received in Liverpool, England within hours or minutes of transmission. Yet, it might be many years before someone communicated a local weather station report and dataset beyond the file cabinets of the NMC and put it onto paper tapes, Hollerith cards, digital tape, or other digital media.
Dr A Burns (23:34:23) :
Have a look at Briffa 1998
http://eas8001.eas.gatech.edu/papers/Briffa_et_al_PTRS_98.pdf
Fig 6 shows a strong decline from 1940 to 1970. ā ā¦ As yet, the cause (of the apparent decline) is not understoodā. They donāt consider the reason for what they consider the apparent falling temperatures, is actually falling temperatures !
Val Majkus (02:12:13) :
FROM AUSTRALIA
Iām sure youāve heard about the latest CSIRO and BOM relesse āIt is very likely that human activities have caused most of the global warming observed since 1950
Reading these two posts next to each other you have to conclude that the Climate Scientists have some twisted logic working through their theories. How can you say on the one hand recent cooling 1940-1970 is unexplainable by them and just leave it unexplained but this somehow morphs into a similar warming MUST be caused by Humans as they cannot find any other cause.
Surely if the current warming is human made then any unexplainable cooling was also human made.
Does the 1976 chart take account of UHI or should it slope down more agressively from 1940 or before?
So… this “analysis” involves a visual comparison between a 2006 graph from CRU, and a graphic in a 1976 copy of National Geographic?
On the basis of analysing no actual data, taking into account no new information in the intervening period such as the retroactive gathering of station data, and just by visually aligning two completely different graphs (one of which is a hugely simplified and non-peer-reviewed graphic with no smoothing or error bars, and the other of which is a smoothed curve with error bars, with different base periods) and making no mention of the absolute temperatures represented, and no indication that the resizing, scaling or realignment of the two graphs has been performed correctly, the author leaps to the conclusions that there has been deliberate manipulation, that there may be no major warming at present, that CO2 is questionable as an influencer of climate, and that theft of private material is justified.
And you accept all of this, while claiming to be “skeptics”…
wolfwalker (20:15:50) :
“There is a simple, obvious explanation: the data from the National Geographic article was collected using older, less accurate instruments. ”
———-
What, like tree rings? Hiding the decline. UHI. Come on now wolfwalker you should know what WUWT is about by now.
Re: E.M.Smith (Mar 17 01:12),
Seems to me they built nuclear bombs 30 years before that, had a nice set of 56 and 64 bit computers
Nuclear bombs were high priority then – temperatures in 1975 not so much. AGW wasn’t in the popular discourse. It was pretty clear to me that in 1979 I was the only person in Australia outside BoM actually looking at those temperatures, and I was working on a PDP-11 (with limited access to a Cyber-76).
It’s all very well to talk of Crays and tapes, but this is a highly distributed set of data, which can only with great difficulty be brought to a central site.
I was under the impression that NCDC āassembled the dataā and Hansenās GIStemp just sucked it in and changed it
Nope – no GHCN in the 80’s. Hansen got data from NCAR, but Jones had to find a whole lot of other sources.
The real victims of AGW are those who believed it in the first place.
Dave,
You are exactly the kind of person I am referring to.
I was reading today the absurd comments by the Met Office on 95% confidence there is a wolf. But reading between the lines, they are clearly laying the foundation for a case for global warming which is not based on temperature data but the other “signs of impending doom” as foretold in the IPCC dodgy dossier.
Using a military analogy, they are clearly aware that the defence line of the instrumentational record is entirely inadequate and about to be overrun, and so a few die-hard fanatics are desparately trying to build up a second line of defence around the “and there’s other things that show it is warming even if the instrumentational record can’t be relied on”.
All in all it reminds me of the game we play on the beech with the kids trying to stop the tide from over-running the defences of the sand castle, and it always amazes me just how quickly the defences of sand crumble after the first wave breaches the week spot in the sand-wall.
And on global warming, I think that week spot is that figure of 90 now 95% confidence, because as far as I can see it has no real basis in science or statistics.
Doug in Seattle: “I think both are in part a result of science too often thinking in too short of a time span and then applying linear trends to the data. We see the same logic applied to the post-1998 trend by some sceptics too.”
There lies the difference between the two sides on global warming. You tell a global warmer that the world has cooled since 2001 and it attacks their core belief about the world and they refuse to believe it (most can’t do basic stats so have to rely on what they are told – and of course their “high priests” like gore and the climategate gang never told their followers the truth about the 21st century cooling). But you tell a sceptic, and most know the basics of science, and so know it doesn’t mean much
…. except it sure does annoy the hell out of the typical scientifically illiterate idiots who believe in global warming who aren’t aware how insignificant it is!
That just doesn’t make any sense with respect to the airways datasets. I was briefing RAAF aircrew using Australian and New Zealand weather data 1974-1978. Why didn’t you use the weather data from the GTS?
The NG graph is not an anomaly graph. It is based on studies by M. I. Budyko of the U.S.S.R. and James K. Angell of the U.S., both prominent researchers back then.
Juraj V:
Try http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/ (not down, but not what I expected, either).
his wiki is alive as well.
Who made the original graph and are they still alive? Can they be contacted?
toyotawhizguy (21:48:43) :
‘hide the decline’ refers to the decline in tree ring density and width, not to temperatures. The CRU scientists are not pulling your leg when they deny it is a decline in temperatures they were speaking about.
The decline in tree rings – when converted to a temperature proxy – diverged from the instrument measured rise in temperatures. Thus, they either spliced in the actual thermometer readings onto the dataset (the ‘trick’) or they just stopped the series in 1960 when the decline started.
The problem most people have with this is that the ‘decline’ tends to say that tree rings make a poor temperature proxy if they are known to diverge from the most accurate instrument measurements available, and there is no explanation available. It could be anything – extra rain, more c02 for the trees to ‘eat’, airborne fertilisers, more sun and less cloudy days -nobody knows. Meaning they probably shouldn’t be used at all. The problems were covered in the much-cited paper ‘hidden in plain sight’ but these concerns had disappeared by the time the hockey stick(s) made it into the IPCC report and ‘An inconvenient truth’.
The climateaudit article on ‘ipcc and the trick’ is most informative on this subject.
Dave (03:02:55),
It looks like that kool-aid is having a bitter taste these days.
BTW, thanks for the insight into your thinking. You obviously have no idea what it takes to be a skeptic. I’ll try to help.
Skeptics tend to look not at any single piece of data, but at the overall collection of data. They look for things that don’t add up. They look at how people react to questions. They look at history. They look for the contradictions. The last thing a skeptic does is accept anything by itself as proof of concept. Essentially, 180 degrees from those like you who accept CAGW and never thought to question the IPCC or the climate scientists involved.
Dave (03:02:55) :
No.
Something that puzzles me.
As I understand paleoclimatology, cores are calibrated against sections of the instrumental temperature record, then validated against other sections.
If the instrumental record is subsequently adjusted, then shouldn’t paleo work be re-done to re-calibrate and re-validate against the new version of the historical instrumental record? If proxy reconstructions pre-date the adjustments, then surely they can’t be considered reliable until they’re redone against the new temperatures.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Walter-Rodgers/2010/0302/War-over-the-Arctic-Global-warming-skeptics-distract-us-from-security-risks
Harsh language against skeptics… does not even consider both sides. Actually was a little surprising coming form CSM.
oyotawhizguy (21:48:43) :
Quote from the article: āMany tree rings showed a decline after 1960 that didnāt āconcurā with the surface records.ā
CRU apologists have claimed on at least two sites Iāve monitored that āHide the declineā (in the infamous CRU leaked e-mail) does not refer to temperature. If true, then exactly what does the ādeclineā refer to if not temperature? They make the denial, but never explain themselves.
It relates to hiding tree ring data in a graph, there is a ton of stuff about it all over the net.
Hi all, and thanks for the comments!!
I am presently working as fast as I can on a followup, digging further into the background of this matter. Theres more nice findings, as I see it. (The years 1958-78 appears very essential when we talk about temperature corrections.)
K.R. Frank and thanks for this surpricing publishing of our http://www.hidethedecline.eu writing!!
I worked on Australian temperatures in about 1980. I would take this plot of Matthews with a big grain of salt. In 1975 things were much more primitive. The vast majority of the worldās temperature data was not digitized. It existed on often hand-writted forms and logs. Before it could go anywhere it had to be accurately transcribed and often calibrated for thermometer type. This process was only just beginning.
It was even hard to move data around. Think of a few hundred stations, daily data, and a 300 baud line. Not even floppy discs, only tapes.
I strongly suspect this plot is based on US stations, maybe not very many. There is no way they could have got gridded coverage of Australia. This plot is NH, but I doubt that many countries there were in much better shape. I know people here are unlikely to credit it, but people like Hansen and Phil Jones put a huge and valuable effort into just assembling a proper dataset. Before that, the thermometer readings existed, but were just not assembled.”
You can’t have it both ways Nick. By your premise, then all the temp data that Hansen and Jones have used is just as suspect for the time period given. To not openly and freely share public data exactly how all this was put together and how the data was “managed” casts doubt on what they’ve done.
The X axis of the seond graph above tells us everything: No one can perceive or feel such minuscule temperature changes. Any change is just “noise”. Only with a really crazy extrapolation, a kind of IPCC statistics could change what is shown here: A straight line if we take X axis in one degree increments.
Errata: The Y axis
D. Patterson (02:52:02)
Agree 100% I was a SAWRS observer from 1974 to 1977, (Supplemental
Aviation Weather Reporting Station.) Granted, I used equipment right out
of “Smilin’ Jack,-the Ceilometer was a DC3 landing light rigged for a base
ine measurement, and the usual other equipment… But, I had my hourly
reports out to the Flight Service Stations and into the hands of aviators
within minutes…
Also this was in my commuter airline days, where I HAD to be accurate.
lives depended on it, sometimes…
@richard M
> Iāll try to help.
Thanks, that was great insight. Apparently to be a “skeptic”, one needs to be incredibly condescending, avoid responding to substantive points about a specific claim while waving ones hands and pointing at some vague holistic approach to evidence, and then throw in a few cracks about anyone that disagrees with you being closed-minded or unable to think for themselves.
It seems querying methodology and looking for simple explanations is frowned upon by “skeptics” – clearly a true “skeptic” accepts simplistic analyses such as this one without a second thought.
Who’d have thought.
“The temperature anomaly nowadays is calculated relative to the average temperature over the period 1960-1990. The temperature anomaly in the 1976 National Geographic would be relative to some other period. In order to make the comparison, the latter period data would have to be rebased to the earlier period. That would be worthwhile doing. But until it has been done, we canāt be sure any manipulation has occurred.”
At that time the WMO standard period was 1931-1960. Which was indeed quite a bit warmer that 1961-1990.
The quote above regarding the change in method of calculating global temps…
āThe basic GISS temperature analysis scheme was defined in the late 1970s by James Hansen when a method of estimating global temperature change was needed for comparison with one-dimensional global climate models. Prior temperature analyses, most notably those of Murray Mitchell, covered only 20-90Ā°N latitudes. Our rationale was that the number of Southern Hemisphere stations was sufficient for a meaningful estimate of global temperature change, because temperature anomalies and trends are highly correlated over substantial geographical distances. Our first published results (Hansen et al. 1981) showed that, contrary to impressions from northern latitudes, global cooling after 1940 was small, and there was net global warming of about 0.4Ā°C between the 1880s and 1970s.ā
…makes me consider that the spurious warming injected may have been quite unintentional (initially) – an artifact of the new method- which they gained confidence in as they fiddled with the program (and it appears these early stages might have been undocumented and so not reproduceable).
It is the refusal to admit that they got it wrong that is the travesty: I think it may have begun innocently enough and simply got out of hand. After it was hijacked by others, it was too far along to retrack. And now they know they cannot defended their actions because even they don’t know exactly what they did – so they continue to deny.
For that Hansen perhaps bears the responsiblity – for not backpeddling when he should have way back then.
To those who wonder how accurate thermometers could be, made as they were by primitives of a century or more ago, I offer this:
“In 1708, Fahrenheit developed and suggested the wide use of a scale linked to the melting point of ice and the temperature of the human body. After experimenting with different temperature scales, he settled on 32 degrees for freezing water, 96 degrees for human temperature, and 212 degrees for boiling water.
Fahrenheit made further corrections of his scales using the same freezing and boiling points but he adjusted the scale in between so that the normal human temperature was established at 98.6 degrees as it is today.”
So 300 years ago we had established pretty well what we know today of the freezing point of water, boiling point of water and normal human body temperature – imagine Fahrenheit himself ultimately corrected his body temperature figure from 96 degrees to 98.6 degrees. I expect that even the fiddlers three haven’t thought to adjust body temperature upward to jibe with temperature records – although they should.
http://www.getwords.com/words/index/getwords/view_unit/48/?letter=T&spage=1
Anthony, what is the rationale for the reduction in recording stations and adjustment of the raw data?
Surely, someone has written something about why these stations were removed from the data set. there has to be an administrative record someone for this drastic change in policy.
There has to be some written justification for the stepwise manipulation of raw data that has created the artificial uptick in temperature records. We can see that it happened. Where is the record on why it happened.
We need a Climate Daniel Elsburg.
@ Frank
If you want to look in the early 20’s there was a global warming scare. Lots of ink spilled on eskimos losing their happy home. The Nat Geo jumps on any half baked, eco preserving theory so there might be something to dig out of that era. Also turn o the century 1900 we had Roosevelt (just don’t call him Teddy) the Progressive as President, and he started the national parks service or something. Doubtlessly the Nat Geo gushed over every movement to establish a park, with grave warning of how the “modern man’s” influence was destroying momma Gaia.
I’d look in the index at home. then take a trip to the local library’s microfish for the hard copy of any promising story.
Dave (03:02:55) :
“Soā¦ this ‘analysis’ involves a visual comparison between a 2006 graph from CRU, and a graphic in a 1976 copy of National Geographic? …the author leaps to the conclusions that …CO2 is questionable as an influencer of climate, and that theft of private material is justified. And you accept all of this, while claiming to be ‘skeptics'”
By putting quotation marks around the term skeptics you show disdain for the scientific method. That is not surprising, since the scientific method is almost entirely absent from current mainstream climate science.
You fail to understand that all honest scientists are skeptics, first and foremost. Even scientists putting forth their own pet hypotheses have a duty, an obligation, to try to falsify their hypothesis. When has that been done by the current crop of climate scientists? Cite names and examples, please.
Every scientist involved must try to falsify the CAGW hypothesis, whether they agree with it or not. Whatever part of that hypothesis withstands falsification becomes accepted science, and after sufficient time the parts that remain standing, after all attempts at falsification fail, are elevated to the status of a theory.
But CAGW has been falsified so often [especially by the ultimate authority, the planet itself], that, rather than being promoted to a theory, CAGW has been demoted to being nothing more than a conjecture: an empirically baseless opinion, and its adherents have been forced to resort to pointing to normal weather events, three headed frogs, etc., as their “proof” of CAGW. That is so far removed from true science that it is regarded as cognitive dissonance by those who understand how the scientific method works.
Look at this graph.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A3.lrg.gif
See how the mid-century cooling was stronger in the Northern Hemisphere than the Southern?
Then read p 1327 of this.
http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0477/89/9/pdf/i1520-0477-89-9-1325.pdf
It explains how the earliest attempts to get a global record showed that stronger cooling, because they were largely picking up the NH. Add in the SH, and you get the result we’re familiar with.
Nothing to do with adjustments. Just a lack of global data cover.
Didn’t they readjust errors founs in the SST’s readings a few years ago? Didn’t that cause the 60’s and 70’s temp anomalies to jump up a bit? That would explain this quite nicely.
Sonicfrog:
There is that, with SSTs being measured by buckets vs engine intake, and so on. Some big changes in the pre-WWII era. A relevant paper is here
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadsst2/rayner_etal_2005.pdf
But much of those adjustments were made more recently.
___
I now see the above discussion is mostly on the NH, so my last comment is a bit off. But data coverage is still probably the issue; one would have to track down old papers that used the NCAR dataset from those days, to see how things evolved.
Great article Frank! It occurred to me when ‘hiding the decline’ came out in the emails, if the tree rings are true, that coupled with UHI, there could be no actual warming.
As Luke Skywarmer requested above, here is the NG graph overlaid with the tree ring density graph, to the best of my scaling abilities. The separation in the NG image makes up for the binding loss of the X-axis. Also note, the 1980-2000 space on the X-axis is shorter than all other 20 year blocks, making the tree rings appear to be longer than reality, although care was taken to align correctly through 1980.
http://i44.tinypic.com/vzbzag.jpg
@Nick Stokes
Just to set the record straight, I retired from the USAF (and the AWN) in 1971. At that time we were using two Univac 1108’s connected to 77 circuits at various speeds. Further, we had been doing the same sort of thing for at least five years. All observations in the world that we could get our hands on were processed except for what I would call “junk observations,” such as the climate network stuff, that were of little use to the USAF. One of our circuits was to the U.S. Weather Bureau in Suitland, MD. Others were to AFGWC and the Fleet Weather Center. And in fact we drove remote transmitters for the US Fleet at Rota Spain, San Diego, and Guam as I remember.
This data covering the entire world was indirectly sent to NCDC daily on magnetic tape. We averaged less than one minute down time per day.
We were not the primitive operation that you describe.
Mike Haseler (04:40:50) :
ā¦. except it sure does annoy the hell out of the typical scientifically illiterate idiots who believe in global warming who arenāt aware how insignificant it is!
Too true!
” carrot eater (09:13:29) :
Look at this graph.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A3.lrg.gif
See how the mid-century cooling was stronger in the Northern Hemisphere than the Southern?”
The divergence that Frank shows in the 3rd graph starts about 1978.
In 5 minutes I found the source of the National Geographic plot.
The effect of solar radiation variations on the climate of the earth
princeton.edu
MI Budyko – Tellus, 1969 – aos.princeton.edu
Google “author:budyko temperature” to get the link to the PDF.
The original data is from 1969, though it looks like it has been updated in the NG plot. The data is from “a group of stations in Europe and America with the longest-period series of observations”, whereas HadCRUT is obviously more widespread data.
In the original, temperatures peak at 0.6 and the minimum dip is -0.15C. In the National Geographic, the peak is +0.75 and the dip is -0.25C. So it’s been expanded 33% for “artistic license” perhaps.
D. Patterson,
What a great history – much enjoyed the details of the technology used in data recording and sharing pre-1970. Fisheries scientists in the U.K. were using computers to help with stock assessments by the late 1960s, and of course Hollerith machines back into the 1950s. Perhaps not so facile as current technologies, but by no means unsophisticated – and these technologies were sufficient to enable scientists to do pretty much what they continue to do today, except perhaps for some levels of meta-analysis. And remember, the USA got to the moon using slide rules – technology is no substitute for intelligence or careful science, and does not make up for dishonesty or agenda-driven science.
papertiger (08:55:46) :
Theodore Roosevelt was a fan of the Gospel of Efficiency form of conservation, which means he was in favour of Gordon Pinchot’s vision of setting aside huge swathes of land for nature reserves, that could also be used for harvesting timber, hunting, and even mining – with parks employees replanting the trees and managing the natural resources along scientific lines. Progressive he may have been, but hardly a Gaia worshipper or follower of John Muir (Sierra Club founder), who favoured nature reserves which were not to be used by people for any purposes at all, including recreational activities. I would imagine that the National Geographic from that era followed the most popular version of conservation, the Gospel of Efficiency kind, which shaped scientific thinking in natural resources sciences (forestry science, fisheries science, some schools of ecology) of that era.
Steve Milesworthy (10:58:56) :
“In 5 minutes I found the source of the National Geographic plot.
The effect of solar radiation variations on the climate of the earth
princeton.edu
MI Budyko ā Tellus, 1969 ā aos.princeton.edu”
Exactly, i have almost finished an illustrated review of the data behind Nat geo 76 – inclussive Bodyko 69.
I will post on hidethedecline.eu within 5 hours i guess š
K,R. Frank Lansner
” DirkH (10:17:35) :
[…]
The divergence that Frank shows in the 3rd graph starts about 1978.”
Sorry i misread the blurry numbers. What i thought was 1980 is in fact the 1960. Forget my comment.
Dumb question. The article mentions getting temperature accuracy down to hundredths of a degree–but does that accuracy actually tell us anything useful? No one would even notice a temperature difference of +/1 .01 degrees or even 0.1 degrees either way, nor would they care.
Even if you reworded this into “attempting to assemble a proper dataset” it would be too kind. Are you just trying to find something nice to say about someone who needs to be put out to pasture?
Jones’ and Hansen’s works do not hold up well to scrutiny. What good are datasets of adjusted data, without the original data and extensive notes to justify all their modifications? Should professionals be complimented for slip-shod work that doesn’t come close to meeting professional standards?
wolfwalker (20:15:50) :
There is a simple, obvious explanation: the data from the National Geographic article was collected using older, less accurate instruments.
What evidence do you have that this explanation is wrong?
(Note that I am not arguing this explanation is right. I am offering it as a hypothesis and asking you to disprove it.)
Since when is it anyone’s job to disprove a hypothesis? Here is a hypothesis that I want you to disprove. God exists in a dimension that allows him to see all and know all and live forever. So please disprove this. Now for a more science based theory, quarks are actually made up of tiny energy particles called niseies. Please disprove this.
Theory is just that, a guess now I can provide evidence to ‘PROVE’ my theory. But all it is is proof that a theory is correct. Anytime someone says disprove a theory they are talking, in my opinion, about science incorrectly. You may show that evidence does not support a theory thus rendering the logic that says a theory is correct in disarray but even then it is not disproving the ‘theory’
Just my thoughts on that.
Gee that first chart looks a little familiar. Take a peek a http://justdata.wordpress.com/ and scroll down to the 7th chart. Try overlying that on the first chart of this posting.
And the data for Eugene Zeien’s analysis is from NCDC (GHCN), done with a relatively simple statistical method. WUWT??
Turns out I still have an old Encyclopaedia Brittanica printed in 1974. Their temperature graphs end in 1960, and are broken up by latitude. They show a CLEAR decline in temperature from 1950 to 1960 that echoes National Geographic 1976. I scanned it and put it here:
http://knowledgedrift.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/national-geographic-1976-brittanica-1974/
Re: D. Patterson (Mar 17 04:45),
Yes, you could get current data from the major sites without difficulty. But data from decades ago was only available on written records, widely dispersed.
And Rod Smith, again you’re describing the handling of current air force data. I’m talking about historic, distributed data.
Re: rickM (Mar 17 07:45),
There’s no issue that the data Hansen and Jones use existed then. I’m just talking about the fact that in 1975 only a small subset could have been assembled for a graph like this. And Steve Milesworthy has now verified this. It was āa group of stations in Europe and America with the longest-period series of observationsā.
Nick Stokes (13:48:16) :
For which periods and locations?
“Where’s the decline?” this post asks? Well, you can see it in the GISS US record. because, as Steve Milesworthy (Mar 17 10:58) found, this plot is based on US and European stations. And the US temps did decline in the ’60s. The CRU global temps shown in the head plot are something quite different.
Re: D. Patterson (Mar 17 13:56),
For which periods and locations?
I’m not sure what you’re referring to. But if it’s the major Australian sites, certainly the state observatories had three-hour observations going back some time, available digitised. And probably the major airports, including Defence (it’s a while back now, and I don’t remember all details). But my job was to try to assemble gridded data for the whole of Australia.
Fortunately the BoM had undertaken a very recent effort to collect and digitise (and QA) the handwritten rural data. But that was 1979, and very recent – in fact, it was only partly complete.
Re: Nick Stokes (Mar 17 13:59),
Broken link – here is the GISS US record.
@Smokey
> By putting quotation marks around the term skeptics you show disdain for the scientific method.
No, I show disdain for those that abuse the term beyond recognition. Those that credulously accept obviously flawed material because it fits their biases and – rather than respond to substantive critical points – instead handwave and pontificate.
> When has that been done by the current crop of climate scientists? Cite names and examples, please.
Would a skeptic choose to change the subject and ask a diversionary question, or would a skeptic be more likely to doggedly pursue the subject at hand until their curiosity for the truth of the matter was satisfied?
As I (and others) have said, you’re comparing two entirely different things. A smoothed plot of the ’70s using the data available now, and an unsmoothed plot based on a subset of that data that was available at the time, covering a smaller proportion of the Earth’s surface. And you’re comparing that *visually*.
Would a skeptic not enquire about these things? You haven’t – you’ve just got on your soapbox and lambasted scientists in baseless and unfounded terms.
Odd that the 1975 temperatures lie outside of the confidence interval of the CRU graph. LOL.
Dave (14:13:40)
You have perfectly described the CRU.
“Would a skeptic not enquire about these things?”
That is up to the particular scientific skeptic. Skeptics inquire about a lot of things. But they’re blown off. Then they use the FOI process — and the CRU kisses up to the local FOI officer, and the data, methods and code requested remain stonewalled, until time runs out.
When the alarmist crowd decides to honestly follow the scientific method, instead of treating skeptics like the enemy… wake me. Because that will be the day their preposterous runaway AGW conjecture gets completely falsified to the point that even the NY Times will have to admit it’s been debunked.
They’re certainly not keeping the hidden data and methods secret because it would prove them right; they’re hiding them because opening the books would decisively falsify CAGW. The climategate emails already showed that to be the case, when Jones stated that he would destroy the data before turning it over to skeptics. And Jones isn’t out of a job for being excessively honest.
Dave (07:58:39) :
Thanks, that was great insight. Apparently to be a āskepticā, one needs to be incredibly condescending, avoid responding to substantive points about a specific claim while waving ones hands and pointing at some vague holistic approach to evidence, and then throw in a few cracks about anyone that disagrees with you being closed-minded or unable to think for themselves.
It seems querying methodology and looking for simple explanations is frowned upon by āskepticsā ā clearly a true āskepticā accepts simplistic analyses such as this one without a second thought.
Whoād have thought.
It appears to me your first paragraph somewhat covers your original post. A little projection perhaps. Your second paragraph is a contradiction that makes no sense.
A question for climate science: Why would data for northern hemisphere be inferior to whole-globe data for evaluating CO2 forcing of climate change?
1. Is there not partial isolation of the northern from the southern hemisphere atmosphere? Most weather systems stay on one side of the equator or the other, and ocean currents can only bring heat energy equilibium across the equator over years and decades.
2. In the last hundred years, and still true today, there has been far greater human CO2 emission in the northern hemisphere.
3. So if there is a signal amidst the climate noise that indicates that human generated CO2 is changing the climate, it ought to be more apparent in the northern hemisphere.
Yet some in the thread above seem to argue that the 1940-1970’s cooling trend was mostly in the northern hemisphere, and should be discounted as evidence against AGW.
It would make more sense to argue that in the 1940 to 1970’s the massive industrialization of the northern hemisphere was pumping aerosols into the atmosphere, differentially affecting the climates (north vs south) and then the clean air movement of the 1970’s reversed the trend. Aerosols declined and the North then disproportionately warmed. At least this would roughly fit the real data and make sense.
I didn’t get the memo about me having to let you know whether or not I accept this.
BTW William Connolley has a better (well, bigger anyway!) reproduction here http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/DSCN1557-nat-geog-1976_1200x900.JPG
Squinting, it seems the graph credit is ‘Graphs by William, H Bond National Geographic Art ‘. Now there was a staff illustrator/Artist at NG named William H Bond
http://www.postalmuseum.si.edu/artofthestamp/SubPage%20table%20images/artwork/Artist%20Bios/williambond.htm
so a reasonable deduction is that these graphs were hand drawn.
REPLY: Gosh, hand drawn. Why, that’s terrible. How could anything hand drawn and not coming out of a computer be of any value? /sarc Of course it is hand drawn. Computer plotting wasn’t around much in 1976 and when it was, it was typically x-y pen plotter output. The fact that it is hand drawn doesn’t detract. Welcome to the light by the way Mr. Clarke. -A
“The decline apparently recorded was a whopping 0.5Ā°C.”
Let’s be careful not to tell whoppers like the warmists. The 0.5 on either side does not deserve the ‘whopping’ label; it’s all within the bounds of natural variation.
Try Bureau of meteorology Australia for unadulterated version still on current website with cooling weel shown! Worth a new topic!
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/global/timeseries.cgi?graph=global_t®ion=global&season=0112&ave_yr=4
Cheers Ian
Nick Stokes (13:48:16) : “And Rod Smith, again youāre describing the handling of current air force data. Iām talking about historic, distributed data.”
NO, no, no. I was talking about the world’s weather data in any shape or form as coded anywhere near WMO standards. And I was talking about conditions in 1971, some 39 years ago this fall. I’m not sure what “historic distributed data” even means. I suspect you mean “distribution of” data rather than “distributed” data.
I was in error in my quoted 77 circuit count. That was mis-keyed – sorry – and I think we had 37 circuits, each dual terminated in paired, CTMC’s.
As to Australian data, I was charged with collection of that when I was running USAF weather editing/collection site in the Philippines in the mid 60’s. I believe we might have collected some of it via radio intercept and some directly from an RAAF relay in Changi, Singapore, but that was a long time ago so I may be mistaken. I do not have any recollection that AU data was not reasonably timely. I do remember that Australia provided my only link to Swan Island, Victoria, about 38S and 145E (kind of in the boondocks). I remember always looking for the Swan Island reports to gauge the days report efficiency from Australia. If I got it then the rest of AU data was very likely reasonably complete.
I can’t speak to your problems of collecting data, but Australia was the least of my problem areas.
Ok, here’s something you don’t see a lot of:
Red Bluff, CA raw –
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/TempGr/RedBluff.GIF
Contrasted to GISS –
http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=1208&g2_serialNumber=2
And the uglier than previously imagined airport site –
http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=1161&g2_serialNumber=4
So, why is there no warming in Red Bluff’s raw data?
a.) Oops – we forgot to apply monster mash formula to raw data
b.) UHI is dead in Dead Bluff, Ca
c.) It’s already naturally suffocated being at the end of the Sacramento Valley
Option (c) seems the more likely case. There may be a dome of CO2 in Red Bluff, but then there’s already no natual circulation…the place is pegged from the start.
Which brings up a question: Is there an upper limit to UHI?
Because if there is, the cities are already as warm as they can be. They will cool as the climate cools when the climate decides to cool.
You can’t have runaway AGW if there’s an upper limit to UHI.
Phil Clarke (15:22:49) :
“Hand Drawn”
Steve Hempell (13:16:50) :
I case nobody noticed, the aforementioned graph by Eugene is a very close match to the National Geographic chart for the period ~1900 to 1976
Eugene’s chart is computer generated, using the very latest graphic/statistical software generated by an undoubtedly up to date statistical software program using the very latest NCDC (GHCN) raw data. sarc/off
Sorry, but the stuff put out by GISS/CRU/Hadley ad nauseum is looking less and less credible by the day.
@Smokey
> You have perfectly described the CRU.
Or: “I’m rubber, and you’re glue”. The rest of your message is more uninteresting evidence-free pontificating. Wake me when you’re prepared to question or defend the substance of this post.
@richard M
> It appears to me your first paragraph somewhat covers your original post.
Interesting – that also seems to translate as “I’m rubber and you’re glue”. I sense a theme emerging.
> Your second paragraph is a contradiction that makes no sense.
Explain how. There is a qualitative difference between “simple” and “simplistic”.
And again, wake me when you’re prepared to discuss the criticism of this post.
A very similar position was advanced in an article by Hubert H. Lamb (then Director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia) which was published in the August/September 1973 issue of Unesco Courier magazine. The article entitled “Is the Earth’s Climate Changing ?” brings in many strands of evidence to support the overall conclusion that “For the past 30 years the temperature of our planet has been steadily dropping.” These strands of evidence include measurements of sea ice are and thickness and length of growing season, in addition to the “Computations in the United States from surface temperature observations all over the world”.
Since scientific skeptics have nothing to either prove or defend, the burden is entirely on the alarmist crowd to defend CRUs rewriting of history.
The CRU credulously accepted obviously flawed data – when they could even find it – because such data fit their biases. Rather than respond to skeptical criticism, they corrupted the FOIA officer so information requests could safely be ignored. Now they have gone further, into historical revisionism.
The evidence for those facts is in this article, and also here: click
And the evidence for the pathological science practiced by the climate alarmist crowd is here: click. [The alarmist contingent is currently between #5 – #6, having predictably gone through each prior step in order.] Catastrophic AGW/runaway global warming has taken four or five torpedoes; it’s going down.
It is unfortunate that due to ignorance of the scientific method, it must be repeatedly pointed out that scientific skeptics have nothing to prove. Promoters of the CAGW hypothesis have the burden of showing that CAGW explains reality better than the current theory which, as Dr Roy Spencer explains, is the long accepted theory of natural climate variability.
The present global climate is, in fact, well within its long term historical parameters — which do not suddenly begin in 1979. There are verifiable historical records of the warmer MWP and the much colder LIA. Nothing unusual is occurring. Any small effect of CO2 is swamped by other climate effects. Otherwise, the one-third increase in CO2 since the mid-1800s would be causing a steady, measurable rise in global warming, rather than a reversion to the mean temperature rise since the LIA: click
We are fortunate to be living in a historically warm period, with sufficient carbon dioxide to provide for the accelerated growth of crops necessary to feed the population.
The fact that alarmists feel the need to re-write the decline shows that they do not have the evidence required to support their falsified CAGW hypothesis.
Lacking real world evidence, the CAGW hypothesis then becomes simply a conjecture, unable to make reliable and accurate predictions, and unable to show that the current climate is outside the parameters of natural variability.
Re: rbateman (Mar 17 16:52),
I notice the annotation to your airport picture says it has been photoshopped. What is the point of such a picture?
Prior to the International Geophysical Year (1957-58) there were no contnuously operating weather stations in Antarctica and this has to be considered in assessing any estimates of southern hemisphere temperature – and hence global temperature – up till that time. Interesting meteorological work was done – the “wind chill” factor was developed during Byrd’s “Antarctic Service Expedition” of 1939-41 (which was truncated for obvious reasons). Note that the IGY was also the start of the “Keeling Curve” of CO2 concentration on Mauna Loa.
Notice also that this artist-drawn, provenance-free but still accurate to 0.1C graph seems to contradict the idea that the media were unanimously raising the alarm about imminent cooling… the extrapolated portion of graph has the global temperature going in either direction – not exactly a concensus. In fact the artist has drawn a slightly more pronounced possible warming trend. Clearly a visionary.
Nick Stokes (18:03:52) :
Not my picture, it’s what’s on surfacestations.org
Try this one:
http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_itemId=1187
or this one:
http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_itemId=1196
or even this one:
http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_itemId=1201
But I get your point. It did not matter one bit to the temperatures out in Red Bluff, CA. They haven’t moved except in natural cycles in the last 125 years.
Didn’t even matter where they put the Stevenson Screen or the ASOS, the whole place is baked to a golden crisp all by itself.
Have you had the pleasure of being in Red Bluff?
Now how’s about that raw data??
Look ma, Red Bluff, CA pop. 14,000+ , no UHI.
Phil Clarke (18:35:47) :
Notice also that this artist-drawn, provenance-free but still accurate to 0.1C graph seems to contradict the idea that the media were unanimously raising the alarm about imminent coolingā¦
>>
My 1974 Encyclopaedia Brittanica not only has temp graphs from 1880 to 1960 that show a marked cooling trend in that time period (see my comment above for a link, I scanned it in) but it also has multiple articles and references to the “current cooling trend”. I am also old enough to remember the panic in my high school when a rumour caught hold that an ice age was coming and we were all going to have to move south. I’m not talking there was a discussion, I’m talking kids breaking down and crying.
Alarmism isnt new, its just reversed its polarity.
Decades ago, it was fashionable in certain Afro-American circles to straighten hair by a heating procedure they called “conking.” (Nat “King” Cole and Rep. Henry Rangell come to mind as examples.) That tradition lives on in the data adjustments made by Hansen & Co.
Your prior comment…
Regardless of which weather data were used by the authors of the National Geographic graphical chart, we sometimes had a considerable amount of historical worldwide weather data available in written form and by the weather communications systems when necessary at the detachment weather station in the 1940s-1980s. World Weather Records” (WWR) 1st Ed. was published in 1927. The weather detachment maintained this publicaton in the appropriate subsequent editions and an assortment of other historical sources of this type in its station library for use as needed by the mission. The WWR was subsequently incorporated into the NCDC GHCN dataset, but I am not acquainted with how much of the WWR may have been omitted or adjusted in the process.
How comprehensive in coverage the WWR and other publications were with respect to any given nation is unknown to me, but I do understand how and why you had problems with gridding the Australian data. The geography and population settlement patterns work against the adaptation of a weather dataset never meant to be used for such purposes.
Australian meteorology was undergoing revolutionary and massive reorganizations in the decade of the 1970s. Computerization of the datasets and numerical forecasting did not get underway until the debut of the Automated Regional Operations System (AROS) as late as 1989.
That is a misconception. Although the overwhelming focus was on current weather data for use by aviation, it was not just Air Force data and not just current weather data. We did in fact communicate, disseminate, and use a wide variety of current and historical weather data for use by a wide variety of military, government, commercial, and public customers. The U.S. Air Force Air Weather Service (now the Air Weather Agency) was also responsible for serving the needs, including non-aviation services, of the U.S. Army, allied forces, and joint commands. We also provided some limited services to the local and state communities. These services were sometimes as simple as looking up some historical weather data upon request. Doing so was accomplished a number of ways including use of the WWR and querying the NCDC and its datasets such as those related to the World Weather Watch. Some of the data available to us in written form and by remote communications went well back into the 19th Century.
In the case of Australia, we had extraordinary access to some of the historical data due to USAAF participation in the Allied Air Meteorological Service. Unfortunately, Australia BoM did not submit much of its weather data to the WMO until after the reorganizations of the 1970s, so the number of Australian stations and years represented in the WMO-GRN subsequently supplied to the NCDC was/is limited, as you discovered in your gridding work.
But, that does not mean the worldwide communications and computer systems were not available to archive and disseminate the data. It only means that Australia did not make full use of those systems. The same is true of many other nations then and today, but there have been many other nations then and today who had significant historical weather data and coverage available through the WMO exchanges with the various NMC of the WMO.
It is unfortunate, however, the extent to which the NCDC and CRU have failed to serve as trustworthy custodians of this treasure of worldwide weather data entrusted to their care. It is reported that original manuscript weather records are still being destroyed in the NCDC archive by negligence as a consquence of being eaten by infestations of insect larvae. Under the circumstances, it appears that James Hansen, Phil Jones, et al are doing more to destroy the historical record than they are to preserve it. Otherwise there would be an absolutely clear and unequivocal record of all adjustments and quality control changes at the same level of detail practiced by accountants following GAAP. Furthermore, some of the vast funds being spent on the supercomputer models which fail to model the real world would be put to good use preserving the artifacts of the real world represented by the original weather records undergoing destruction by negligence and by records retention disposals.
The biggest contrast between the Coming Ice Age and the AGW scare is one of provenance:
In the Coming Ice Age we were shown paintings of the Little Ice Age, and that really happened.
With AGW, all we have are artists conceptions of impending doom, though they have yet to happen. More like the early artists conception of what the planets would look like, until we started to get back the Mariner, Viking and Pioneer spaceprobe pictures.
All I got was a lousy UHI Tee Shirt.
Dave (16:59:50) :
And again, wake me when youāre prepared to discuss the criticism of this post.
What criticism? You haven’t provided a single piece of evidence to support your conclusion (or should I say assertion).
I see you figured out your contradiction. At least something was accomplished today.
D. Patterson (19:52:38) :
That is awful about the NCDC’s treatment of original documents.
It’s not like you can go back in time and re-take weather data.
rbateman (20:25:12) :
NCDC didn’t say which records or how many were being destroyed by the larvae, or which records were being destroyed for purposes of records retention. Some of the documents being destroyed under the records retention policies have supposedly been microfilmed, scanned, or otherwise reproduced for archiving. NARA did the same thing with the census schedules, however, and some of the reproductions were badly botched by bad film exposures and misalignment of the pages. So, there is always going to be a concern about how the weather records are handled and reproduced before the original documents are destroyed.
The fact that NCDC, GISS, CRU, and others have failed to maintain the original values of the reported data after applying adjustments to the computer data files makes the whole situation just that much worse for human posterity.
I have seen the records online that were microfilmed. I hope somebody at NCDC is making an effort to rescue what is left. The records are full of holes, only a few stations can be filled with summaries done in the past.
You don’t know how bad it is until you start trying to compile the raw data.
It’s a mess.
rbateman (19:52:41) :
“The biggest contrast between the Coming Ice Age and the AGW scare is one of provenance:
In the Coming Ice Age we were shown paintings of the Little Ice Age, and that really happened.
With AGW, all we have are artists conceptions of impending doom, though they have yet to happen. More like the early artists conception of what the planets would look like, until we started to get back the Mariner, Viking and Pioneer spaceprobe pictures.
All I got was a lousy UHI Tee Shirt.”
Profoundly put, Rob. If you get a chance….mosey on over to the Mister Mean Green thread….I put in a few good words. I have always highly respected your “natural” scientific approach to it all…and if the world had more observers like this…we would solve some problems more quickly.
Cheers.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
@John F. Hultquist (00:13:14) :
toyotawhizguy (21:48:43) : ? decline
Try this: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/understanding_climategates_hid.html
– – – – – – –
John, thanks for the link. I’ve read the article and digested as best a possible. So “hide the decline” doesn’t mean temperature, it means reconstructed temperature. I knew all along it had to do with the Briffa tree ring study. And the tree ring sets were cherry picked! No wonder the CRU apollogists don’t want to explain themselves.
What I would like to know is when is some person(s) going to be held accountable for all the fudging of temperature data that has been going on by various scientists and agencies/institutions? It is tantamount to fraud.
Does anyone know of any old CO2 graphs from around the same period?
I would like to see if they have been fudged as well?
Keith Winterkorn (15:17:09) :
You assert:
āIt would make more sense to argue that in the 1940 to 1970ās the massive industrialization of the northern hemisphere was pumping aerosols into the atmosphere, differentially affecting the climates (north vs south) and then the clean air movement of the 1970ās reversed the trend. Aerosols declined and the North then disproportionately warmed. At least this would roughly fit the real data and make sense.ā
Sorry, but that has been investigated and the investigations show it to be wrong or that the understandings of climate built into climate models are wrong.
For example, I cite a paper I published long ago concerning the Hadley Centreās climate model and a 2007 paper by Kiehl that says the same as mine but for several models.
My paper is:
Courtney RS, āAn Assessment of Validation Experiments Conducted on Computer Models of Global climate (GCM) Using the General Circulation Model of the UK Hadley Centreā, Energy & Environment, v.10, no.5 (1999).
It concludes;
āThe IPCC is basing predictions of man-made global warming on the outputs of GCMs. Validations of these models have now been conducted, and they demonstrate beyond doubt that these models have no validity for predicting large climate changes. The IPCC and the Hadley Centre have responded to this problem by proclaiming that the inputs which they fed to a model are evidence for existence of the man-made global warming. This proclamation is not true and contravenes the principle of science that hypotheses are tested against observed data.ā
Although that paper is dated, I know of no published information that alters its conclusions, and a paper by Kiehl published in 2007 confirms its findings.
My paper reports that the Hadley Centre GCM showed an unrealistic high warming trend over the twentieth century, and a cooling effect was added to overcome this drift. The cooling was assumed to be a result of anthropogenic aerosol.
So, cooling was input to the GCM to match the geographical distribution of the aerosol. And the total magnitude of the cooling was input to correct for the model drift: this was reasonable because the actual magnitude of the aerosol cooling effect is not known.
This was a reasonable model test. If the drift were a result of aerosol cooling then the geographical pattern of warming over the twentieth century indicated by the model would match observations.
However, the output of this model test provided a pattern of geographic variation in the warming that was very different from observations; e.g. the model predicted most cooling where most warming was observed.
This proved that the aerosol cooling was not the cause ā or at least not the major cause ā of the model drift.
The Hadley Centre overcame this unfortunate result by reporting the agreement of the global average temperature rise with observations. But THIS AGREEMENT WAS FIXED AS AN INPUT TO THE TEST! It was fixed by adjusting the degree of input cooling to make it fit!
Kiehl has conducted similar investigation of several climate models
(ref. Kiehl JT, āTwentieth century climate response and climate sensitivityā, Jeophysical Research Letters (2007).
His finding was the same as that in my paper except that each of the several models he studied had been given a DIFFERENT āaerosol fixā to get it to agree with reality.
So, either the climate models are complete rubbish, or the āaerosol excuseā is wrong, or both. Take your pick.
Richard
A C Osborn (06:10:36),
These may help:
click1
click2
click3
If you look at the GHCN data set and compare the mean temps before and after “adjustment” there is a systematic correction to the temperature data. This can be seen at RomanM’s website (3rd graph down)http://statpad.wordpress.com/2009/12/12/ghcn-and-adjustment-trends/
I have independently run the analysis of the adjustments and get the same result as RomanM shows. Ie there is a systematic adjustment made from raw to adjusted GHCN data. GHCN is one of the input data sets used by CRU
Taking the long linear section of the adjustment from 1911 to 1988 gives a slope of 0.03 deg C per decade adjustment (ie 0.3 deg C per century, or around half of the apparent warming). The adjustment makes earlier temperatures colder relative to modern temperatures. For the 40 year period 1935 – 1975 the slope of the adjustments alone accounts for a temperature change of 0.12 deg C. Looking at the spot values of the adjustments for the years 1935 and 1975 gives a difference of 0.16 deg C from the adjustments alone.
The adjustments in GHCN could only partially explain the change from 0.5 deg C to 0.15 deg C described in this post. CRU may include other data or may include other adjustments. We don’t know because they won’t release the data or methods. The problem I have with the adjustments is why are they systematic with time? For a large set of measuring stations (there were 2,756 stations in 1935 and 5,168 in 1975) I would expect the effect of station changes etc to be largely random. I only expect that a UHI correction would be systematic with time and I would expect that to have an opposite sign to the actual adjustments made.
Smokey (06:22:56) : Thanks for that, it wasn’t quite what I had in mind.
I was looking for something that would directly relate to the current Article based around the 1970s to see how it compares with those that you showed me and the Ice Core data.
A C Osborn
I wrote an article on Historic CO2 variations carried over at Air Vent which to date has attracted nearly 200 comments. It is here ( To put it in context you need to read the article, links and comments.)
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/03/06/historic-variations-in-co2-measurements/
There is a mass of CO2 information here including numerous graphs.
tonyb
I think it’s delicious, with some barbecue sauce and a side of ‘tater salad, that other unadulterated data records, previously published before the CRU, NASA/GISS, or NOAA could get their hands on them, show just as much variability of temps, totally independent of CO2 (which is also what the paleo record shows that we have suffered neither catastrophic warming or cooling, at least not as drastic as the Little Ice Age, though we could certainly suffer from that, again.
Then, again, the AGW theory was never based on actual science, which would explain why the proponents of that theory never felt the need to produce repeatable experiments and explain via basic physics and chemistry. Hence it is a belief, linked with politics, of a fantasy world. Someone should make a movie about it. Oops, they did, and called it “Avatar.”
And some of the soi-disant “science” channels have their own unicorn stories. “Life after humans” is a case, in point. Magically, 6 billion humans are gone, no bodies laying around, no explanation for the loss of mass to the planet, just “poof” no more humans. Then they detail how Nature “reclaims” everything, etc. It’s part of the anti-human rhetoric that has taken over many “environmental” movements, which have, themselves, become tools of power for socialist and communist parties.