By Steve Goddard
GISS tells us that it was the hottest May on record. Just looking at that map makes me perspire. It must be wicked hot at the North Pole!
But wait a minute! The DMI record doesn’t look so hot in the Arctic.
What could be wrong? Could it be the fact that GISS has almost no coverage in the Arctic? We often hear the question”what if CO2 were pink?” Answer : it would still be almost invisible at 0.0004 concentration.
Now, let’s turn that around and see what GISS coverage holes would like if they were pink.
Shocking pink, that is. GISS is claiming a global temperature record based largely on the Arctic – in which they have less than 10% coverage. Hansen explains the growing gap between GISS and Had-Crut as being due to the fact that GISS has better Arctic coverage.
Judge for yourself.
GISS has 2010 at #1. Had-Crut has 2010 at #4. Thanks to GISS’ extensive Arctic coverage.
.
Not in Connecticut.
The pink panther stole the climate jewels of integrity and sense (as in sensors in the right places so that data isn’t invented in a process of fabrication).
By any standard, fabrication of data in science = fraud, especially when public policy is based upon such fabricated data and it’s subsequent faulty fabricated conclusions.
GISS clearly fabricates data. What are the consequences?
Surely it makes sense to cast a sensor network at a much higher grid resolution? Say every 10km? or heck even every 100km across all land and water surfaces? Surely increased sensor resolution would help improve the data sets? Or would it?
If GISS holes in the snow
Were so pink they had a glow
Then Jimmy James would blush
His data pure as smeared out slush
So the GISS tells us it was very hot in areas they took no readings. The old term for this was cheating.
Code Pink: Dr. Hansen, STAT!
================
Don’t ask, don’t tell…
I’m guessing some others will also point out that in the Antarctic, there is a transition from a -4 anomaly to a +4 anomaly. Has anyone checked to see if someone slipped a decimal in (what is almost certainly) one of the two stations used to generate the coverage?
Funny to see such a great correlation between no data and warming.
Maybe the best way to fight against global warming is by addind thermometers ? 🙂
O/T We won!:
“The head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, says he welcomes “the development of a vigorous debate” on climate science.
In an article for the BBC’s Green Room series, he says those on the side of “consensus” must remember that debate drives the evolution of knowledge. ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/science_and_environment/10316910.stm
Has anyone told Al Gore that the debate is not over after all?
And surely IF there is a debate within the scientific community, as acknowledged and welcomed by the IPCC., then there cannot possibly be consensus. To claim that there is only consensus on one side of any argument utterly invalidates the consensus of the whole. There is either consensus, OR there is debate, there cannot be both!
If there is still vigorous and open debate, then the science is NOT settled and the idea that spending trillions of dollars over the next 20 years on solutions to a debatable idea is utterly ridiculous.
The winner in this is real sceptical science.
It might be really neat looking if the “pink” were set to “transparent”. Then the rotating globe would look like a patchy meshwork.
CO2 “at 0.0004 concentration”? Units?
But temps are irrelevant now, ‘cos all that oil in the Gulf means we must have Cap’n Trade so as to force you oil guzzlers off your daily fix of fossil fuel (& make carbon exchange founders and traders VERY RICH). I’ll have some windmills on the side too, please. (Sarc/off).
Maybe continuing cold winters will take the edge off Washington’s enthusiasm. Little real sign of it affecting 10 Downing St (UK PM’s residence) unfortunately. Still, we continue to rubbish the surface Temp. sets – well, point out the difficulties & huge error margins – whenever we can!
Keep up the good work tho’. Posterity will want to know exactly when the next Ice Age began….
No one would dare to spend such a lot of color inkjet. Those guys do because it is not their money.☺
Lee Klinger
Concentration is a dimensionless number. It has no units.
David L.
Here is what the holes look like as transparent
…and that funny hockey stick shows a whopping 0.3 °K increase !!!!!. Only detectable by my greatgreat gradmother´s left knee.
These guys, as the only one who carries an alien tenant in his belly , the imcomparable Al baby(a.k.a.” El Gordo”-the fat one-), have become walking-talking jokes. Nobody can believe such extreme and foolish lies.
Thank you Charles for posting this timely reminder of the paucity of measured evidence to support this fabricated emergency that is AGW.
Imagine how pink it would get if we were able to knock out those stations that are affected by UHI? One day, perhaps. It would certainly be sobering to see how many stations world-wide are affected by UHU “noise”.
Anyhow, thanks again.
Doh. UHU should read UHI.
Dumb question:
If there are no/few stations in the Arctic/South America/etc, how are they measuring the surface temp over the oceans? Strictly by satellite?
Still 2-4 Celsius cooler than average and raining last night in the mid Island region of Vancouver Island despite promises of a dry week. Warmer my [snip].
Although given the non temperature monitored areas on the globe, I’m not surprised the forecasters get it wrong. But enough about mere weather.
Klinger, at 0729 asks, “Units?” This is a molecular fraction: for every gas molecule in the atmosphere, there are nearly .ooo4 molecules of CO2. Or 4 per 10,000 or 400 per million (400ppm). 400ppm=.ooo4. And according to the ideal gas law, molecular fractions are very similar to volumetric fractions, if the gases were to be separated out. –AGF
These GISS anomaly maps drive me nuts. This is certainly a case where the absolute value of the measurement IS MORE SIGNIFICANT than the anomaly.
First, GISS uses corrupted/cherry-picked data around the Arctic, then they extrapolate hundreds of km beyond data points (or beyond ignored/excluded data points), and then they display the results in florid colors intended to imply blazing heat.
Even if an anomaly value of (e.g.) +4C were correct (doubtful), it has little physical significance if it is the difference (e.g.) between 260K and 264K. Both values are below freezing and dang cold.
Color is the smoothest tool of propaganda because we are conditioned to respond emotionally to color
Double-ditto for images of brown-eyed critters.
Put ’em together and you’ve got a WWF fundraiser poster. Or a contribution to IPCC AR4.
Does the GISS use a gridding technique (such as Kreiging) to extrapolate across regions without data? If so, how well do they deal with boundaries in their model Earth?
My experience (based on GIS and other data processing applications) of such processes is that the standard processes tend to lead to extreme values (both high and low) around the margins because of a tendency to extrapolate as similar rates of change. Based on this, I wonder if the extremely hot area in eastern Russia and the Arctic is an artefact of the cold spots in Russia/China and NW Canada and a normal or slightly warm reading to the north of these.
Burning embers!
As inspired by the New York Times:
http://www.artistascitizen.org/#/burning_embers_competition/
And others:
“In the IPCC third assessment report, Smith et al. (8) first presented the now famous “burning embers diagram,” a graphic, easily digested representation of the level of threat or risk associated with future projected anthropogenic climate change”
“stevengoddard says:
June 15, 2010 at 7:39 am
“David L. Here is what the holes look like as transparent”
Thanks for posting so quickly! Even though transparent is “cool looking” the pink is more striking!
NASA GISS had a huge 11 degree mistake in their data for March 2010 in Sodankylä, Finland. They claimed, that the mean temperature was +2C, which was ridicilous. They “corrected” the problem by deleting the data and extrapolating. The huge red spot on Finland disappeared and changed to blue. Funny thing was, that one wrong measurement like this turned almost the whole Scandinavia red.
Then two months went and the same idiotic mistake reappeared. Weirdly enough, this happened at the same time when NASA claimed, that the last 12 months have been the warmest ever. No wonder, if your data is 10C off.
Well, the problem is corrected again, but I bet the same mistake will reappear again later this year. They don’t treat the real problem and only treat the symptoms. So keep your eyes open on NASA GISS measurements for Finland in 2010.
Steve Goddard says: “Concentration is a dimensionless number. It has no units.”
What?? Since when? Concentration always has units: 0.0004 g CO2/g air, or if done by volume 0.0004 L CO2/L air. The grams and L do not cancel as they refer to different species.
This is why we use PPM or PPB as concentration units for a ratios of masses.
Continuing still about that 10C huge mistake in Sodankylä. Any red spots on that map should be double checked. Actually, nothing on that map should be believed without scrutiny as NASA obviously does no quality control on their data.
GISS did lose most of Africa and the World Cup, but being part of NASA they did discover something remarkable about the football stadium in Johannesburg.
Nice propaganda job Steve, as always. Opening with the subtle ‘trick’ of comparing the GISS monthly anomaly with the DMI daily temperature, classic ‘apples to oranges’. By the way Steve how many stations are used to compile the DMI temperature, how big are their holes? Since you persist in showing your comparison with UAH why not do it correctly and show that they have no coverage north of 82.5ºN?
Hansen’s Arctic hole is represented by the color assigned a greater than +5° anomaly (from the bar key below). I know many alarmists (including politicians) who would simply look at the image an conclude that Arctic warming is out of control without even the slightest understanding that the +5° end of the scale actually represents a lack of data and not out-of-control warming. How does Hansen do this with a straight face, let alone scientific integrity?
AG Foster – Thanks for the explanation. CO2 is in parts per unit volume.
It’s always amazed me that people do not see the disconnect between claiming that different areas of the world can be hotter or colder, all at the same time, because of weather, and then claiming that anyone can get a global temperature by adjusting, guesstimating, averaging, fudging the very few temperature stations they have. They even claim that they know exactly how much heat has been added to their stations over the years by people developing the land around them, and can accurately adjust for that too.
and then taking it to the next level by claiming they can get a trend from that………
and that accurate temperatures do not matter, it’s the trend.
Looks like they can just about claim any temperature or trend at any time and get away with it……
Benjamin Said –
“Funny to see such a great correlation between no data and warming.
Maybe the best way to fight against global warming is by adding thermometers ? :)”
It fits the predetermined narrative though doesn’t it? It is the only thing that it could be. Wherever there is no data, it must be warmer. After all, it is worse than we thought.
Concentration could also be expressed as .04% of the atmosphere, I believe? Not much. Does this not differ by altitude? Do the different gasses which make up our atmosphere not concentrate at different elevations? What effect does that have on their greenhouse effect?
The notion that a trace component like CO2 can have only a negligible effect due to its ultra-low concentration is an incorrect one, and I find it odd that it is perpetuated here. The absorption by CO2 of outgoing longwave thermal radiation is based on the absorptivity coefficient of the gas and on the optical path length. The actual absorption of radiation by atmospheric CO2 in its frequency range is therefore quite large.
Steve Goddard: What month are you presenting in the second animation?
These temp records are just wrong. It is nearly a record winter in Australia/NZ yet the anomaly map shows positive. The positive anomaly is manufactured and in fact we are having serious cooling. Worst spring in 15 years in the Pacific NW. Seriously.
Henry chance says: “So the GISS tells us it was very hot in areas they took no readings. The old term for this was cheating.”
But it’s not that they “took no readings.” GISS deletes Sea Surface Temperature data, which varies less than Land Surface Temperatures, and extends Land Surface Temperature data out over the oceans. Refer to:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/05/giss-deletes-arctic-and-southern-ocean.html
Question for Steve (or others).
When visiting the DMI site (http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php), their explanation of daily mean temperature is not clear, to me at least. Is the daily “mean” red curve actual measured temps or some type of estimate (extrapolations?)? Does the green curve represent the daily average of actual average temps between 1958 and 2002, or is it some type of average of estimates?
If these indeed are temperature estimates, how is their estimation process different from GISS?
Per YouTube pic above, it ought’a be pale green. Then Good Ol’Mother Earth would look like a Do-Nut, a KrispyKreme Do-Nut!
Wasn’t it Hansen that claimed only a small number of thermometers are necessary to measure “global” warming? Why then does GISS need the Arctic?
Global warming is neither.
Owen, based upon the amount of energy entering the atmosphere and the amount of energy leaving the atmosphere, the absorbtion of CO2 is actually pretty darn insignificant at the current concentration.
The GISS folks should pay attention to what is actually happening on the ground, verses trying to confirm their bias toward global warming by force fitting heat into the Arctic. Too many organizations are trying to force the data to prove some kind of climate change model rather than sticking to actual observational data or perhaps they might say: “Huh, I don’t know if the data supports global climate trends.”
It has been cool and wet in Western Canada this year. The Canadian Wheat Board says that over 5 million hectares (12.3 million acres) are too wet to seed or are underwater in the Western Canadian Prairies – the wettest May and June in 40 years. The weather has, in a word, sucked. Maybe we are in a cool wet cycle, but we are not where the large population is in North America. It has been warm and humid in central Canada where the air from Gulf of Mexico air travels to. Coincidentally, that’s where the voters are so, voila! “Global Warming!” The climate seems more like “global schizophrenia” to the casual observer.
Did you see on the news of all those “football” fans in Argentina watching games in fans parks in the rain? Looks like typical fall weather there.
“”Owen says:
June 15, 2010 at 8:56 am
The notion that a trace component like CO2 can have only a negligible effect due to its ultra-low concentration is an incorrect one””
Owen, if you could answer a few questions for me, that might make it clearer and easier for me to understand.
In percentages:
1. How much atmosphere is CO2?
2. How much of that CO2 is man made?
3. How much of that man made CO2 can we possibly reduce?
4. If temperatures rising is a natural event and not something man-made, how much higher will CO2 naturally rise?
UAH NoPol anomaly for May is +2.51
RSS anomlay map (click on anomaly) here
http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_data_monthly.html?channel=tlt
shows arctic regions up to 4 deg warmer than 1979-1998 mean.
GISS arctic temperatures are perfectly consistent with satellite measurements.
The Mercator projection doesn’t hurt them either. Vast swaths of land and sea that don’t actually exist, are even now, roasting at an imaginary temperature.
Bob,
The GISS and HadCrut maps in the second animation were taken from Hansen’s paper
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/paper/gistemp2010_draft0319.pdf
Figure 12. I believe it represents the entire year 2005.
Steve, that hot pink is a stroke of genius! It’s the perfect candidate for a new international symbol meaning ‘no information’, ‘made up information’ and ‘general bull[snip]’. It certainly sums up the GISS situation perfectly without needing a word of further explanation.
/dr.bill
Ian B says:
June 15, 2010 at 8:19 am
Does the GISS use a gridding technique (such as Kreiging) to extrapolate across regions without data? If so, how well do they deal with boundaries in their model Earth?
There are no boundaries, it’s a sphere!
Vieras says:
June 15, 2010 at 8:33 am
NASA GISS had a huge 11 degree mistake in their data for March 2010 in Sodankylä, Finland. They claimed, that the mean temperature was +2C, which was ridicilous. They “corrected” the problem by deleting the data and extrapolating. The huge red spot on Finland disappeared and changed to blue. Funny thing was, that one wrong measurement like this turned almost the whole Scandinavia red.
Then two months went and the same idiotic mistake reappeared. Weirdly enough, this happened at the same time when NASA claimed, that the last 12 months have been the warmest ever. No wonder, if your data is 10C off.
If you’re going to tell a story at least get it right.
NOAA, who maintain the database that NASA uses, apparently made the mistake you describe which led to the error on the map. NOAA withdrew that data pending investigation so NASA reloaded and the hotspot went away. It resulted in about 0.002ºC difference to the global mean as I recall. Apparently NOAA repeated the error and again it’s been corrected.
What an …hole!
Phil,
This is Hansen’s data, not mine. Maps are straight off his web site, and visualized in an easier to understand fashion. I have not altered any of the underlying data.
I agree, and we need a lot more of it!
/dr.bill
@Phil — So… averaging the DMI for May gives me a 1.33K avg daily anomoly. GISS show 4-5K. Do you see something different?
When comparing to the SMHI here is Sweden it looks like the GISS anomaly is approximately 0,5C higher than SMHI (SMHI uses 200 stations GISS I belive uses 8, only one is rural)
When comparing the Jan-May 2010 anomaly for SMHI and GISS, there is a significant difference, GISS (8 stations) is between 0,3 and 0,5 C higher than SMHI (200 stations), but since SMHI has many more stations their figure should be more accurate.
Steve Goddard is confusing mixing ratio with concentration. Concentration always has units, mixing ratios are dimensionless, but since their magnitude varies depending on what the ratios are for (mass, volume, number of molecules, etc.) one has to state what the ratios are of, e.g. ppmV or ppm mass, etc.
Phil wrote: “If you’re going to tell a story at least get it right.
NOAA, who maintain the database that NASA uses, apparently made the mistake you describe which led to the error on the map. NOAA withdrew that data pending investigation so NASA reloaded and the hotspot went away. It resulted in about 0.002ºC difference to the global mean as I recall. Apparently NOAA repeated the error and again it’s been corrected.”
So apparently there were two organizations, who should have noticed the error but who didn’t. That speaks volumes about the quality control these two organizations have – or lack thereof.
Errors of those magnitudes should never slip through both NOAA and NASA, not even once.
Looking at the GISS map code red has been applied in many places with some brown points or better a complete brown area above Russia ! Over 6 degrees above normal temperatures ! Is cold war returning with the creation of distorted data ? Who is imagining that the Russians are going to believe this ? Who is willing to defend this fairy tale with scientific arguments and undisputed measurements of temperatures ?
Or has this been a russian trap in the first place in order to test how rotten us bureaucracy is becoming , even more rotten than the ice itself ? Or is this all Jack Nicholsons fault ?
Latitude says:
Owen, if you could answer a few questions for me, that might make it clearer and easier for me to understand.
In percentages:
1. How much atmosphere is CO2?
Answer: Approximately 0.039%
2. How much of that CO2 is man made?
Answer: What is important is how much of the change in CO2 is man made, since it is the change in CO2 that is postulated to drive warming. CO2 in the atmosphere has risen from ca. 0.028% in 1800 to 0.039% today, and this 39% increase rise parallels the increase in the consumption of fossil fuels by our industrial society. Measurements of the falling C13/C12 ratios in atmospheric CO2 are consistent with increasing burning of fossil fuels which have lower C13 levels. The evidence is quite strong that virtually all of the CO2 increase is man made.
3. How much of that man made CO2 can we possibly reduce?
Answer: Good question – I am fairly pessimistic on that one. I believe it will continue to rise with little abatement.
4. If temperatures rising is a natural event and not something man-made, how much higher will CO2 naturally rise?
Answer, I am unaware of any natural event that is considered a source of the increased CO2. It would have to be a steady ongoing event. Do you know of such an event?
Phil.
UAH and NASA satellite maps show coverage well north of 82.5. I’m not responsible for the discrepancy with their rhetoric.
stevengoddard says:
June 15, 2010 at 9:54 am
Phil,
This is Hansen’s data, not mine. Maps are straight off his web site, and visualized in an easier to understand fashion. I have not altered any of the underlying data.
Instead of answering a question I didn’t ask, (how is the DMI, UAH and HadCRUT data Hansen’s data anyway) how about answering the ones I did ask?
In case you’ve forgotten here they are again:
” Steve how many stations are used to compile the DMI temperature, how big are their holes? Since you persist in showing your comparison with UAH why not do it correctly and show that they have no coverage north of 82.5ºN?”
PeterB in Indianapolis says: “Owen, based upon the amount of energy entering the atmosphere and the amount of energy leaving the atmosphere, the absorbtion of CO2 is actually pretty darn insignificant at the current concentration.”
Actually, the absorption by CO2 is quite large, and was large even before the CO2 levels started rising. The longwave emission spectrum of the earth, recorded continuously by top-of-atmosphere satellites shows a large CO2 absorption band from 6-8 wave numbers (see http://www.barrettbellamyclimate.com/page15.htm).
“”Answer, I am unaware of any natural event that is considered a source of the increased CO2″”
I read that increased temperatures release more methane and methane converts to CO2.
“”It would have to be a steady ongoing event””
It’s claimed that temperature rise has been a steady ongoing event.
“‘CO2 in the atmosphere has risen from ca. 0.028% in 1800 to 0.039% today, and this 39% increase rise parallels the increase in the consumption of fossil fuels by our industrial society.””
So CO2 levels have risen 0.011%. One hundreth of one percent. 0.0001
Which also parallels a rise in temperature.
Who would have thought that our planet and atmosphere were that delicate.
0.0001
So, it appears there are 24 reporting stations in the Artic (half being in Greenland), less than a half dozen in Russia, and we are suppose to extrapolate the entire Artic from this data? Satellite sounding data only measures tropespheric temps and not surface temps. And thier anomalies are just that.
And the reasons for the large positive anomalies has everything to do with the rather strong, negative AO, which began as a result of high latitude volcanic activity last year. I also might add that the prevailing Westerlies over the North Atlantic pushed most of the volcanic ash cloud into the southern Artic earlier this year. The warming we’re seeing over the Artic is due mainly to the cooling of the Artic stratosphere. And a negative AO means warmer Artic surface temps, but much colder mid-latitude temps (esp duirng Winter).
I thought that CO2 IS pink.! Oh wait, that’s the color of the political spectrum from which most alarmists come.
Seriously, I do wish that pink or any related color not be used in presentations. It makes it nearly impossible to read for those who are red-green color-blind.
Phil,
I am assuming that you understand the difference between a map and a graph?
Owen says:
June 15, 2010 at 8:35 am
What?? Since when? Concentration always has units: 0.0004 g CO2/g air, or if done by volume 0.0004 L CO2/L air. The grams and L do not cancel as they refer to different species.
This is why we use PPM or PPB as concentration units for a ratios of masses.
There are 385 atoms of CO2 in every 1,000,000 atoms of “air”. Atoms divided by atoms cancel (not that they were really a unit in the first place). The rest becomes a decimal fraction. So one atom in two would be 0.5 – no units.
PPM and PPB are not units either. If you have three fifths of something – “fifths” is not a unit.
“Globally” warm? “Globally” cold? I neither know nor care. I only care about where I live at present and that’s in the south of England, on the coast.
Plants and other natural indicators are showing that our peak growing season is about a month late (if it ever arrives). A major lettuce producer near the village where I live lost his entire first crop (and a pile of money) when an extremely late frost nipped his entire crop despite his having deployed acres of agricultural fleece to cover the crop. The bigger, outer lettuce leaves all turned to a black/dark green mush rendering the crop unsaleable.
My Autumn planting of broad beans died off in our deep-freeze Winter so I planted again not in late March but in mid-May, when the hawthorn in the hedgerows finally deigned to blossom. The broad beans are now in full flower and have yet to have any blackfly descend upon them, turning the green stalks into black.
The courgettes have only just begun to germinate in pots in the greenhouse instead of already being in flower in the garden.
The fruit on the Bramley apple tree is still acorn sized instead of being about 3 – 4 inches in diameter. The woolly aphid which usually infest the tree are absent at present.
Blackbirds are only now nest-building instead of tending their fledglings as they learn to fly.
It is almost the Summer solstice and I’ve yet to see any swallows or swifts wheeling overhead.
According to Nature here it is still [snip]ping cold, too cold for the time of year. I reckon that without a prolonged Indian Summer that a lot of crops are not going to reach fruition before it gets too cold for them to live.
Please could someone smear some of that AGW over here? We need it!
John Finn says:
June 15, 2010 at 9:36 am
UAH NoPol anomaly for May is +2.51
RSS anomlay map (click on anomaly) here
http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_data_monthly.html?channel=tlt
shows arctic regions up to 4 deg warmer than 1979-1998 mean.
GISS arctic temperatures are perfectly consistent with satellite measurements.
All of which were still well below freezing in any case.
This is high coverage? 😀
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/work/gistemp/NMAPS/tmp_GHCN_GISS_250km_Anom05_2010_2010_1951_1980/GHCN_GISS_250km_Anom05_2010_2010_1951_1980.gif
May 2010 Budapest, Hungary
Mean Temp.: 15,9 °C
Temp. anomaly: -0,3°C (Average: 1971-2000)
Linear trend 1780-2010: -0,7°C
http://www.varaljamet.eoldal.hu/oldal/climate_budapest_majus
This May was the wettest month in hungary since 1901!
Photos, videos (Váralja, Mecsek, Völgység)
http://www.varaljamet.eoldal.hu/cikkek/erdekessegek/arviz_2010_majus
Benjamin says:
June 15, 2010 at 7:00 am
Funny to see such a great correlation between no data and warming.
Maybe the best way to fight against global warming is by adding thermometers ? 🙂
___________________________________________________
Actually there is a great correlation between global warming and SUBTRACTING thermometers. I do not have the link handy but the global temperature is now calculated from less temperature reading stations than it was a couple of decades ago. E.M. Smith calls the selective subtraction The Bolivia Effect.
For instance my state of North Carolina is about 1/4 to 1/3 foot hills and mountains with at least one big city dating from the 1800’s, Asheville NC, yet there are NO GISS weather stations listed for that area. All are sea-side and piedmont areas.
The current temperatures are:
Wilmington 95.3F
Rocky Mount 91.6F
Fayetteville 95F
Lumberton 95.4F (high for today 99F or 32C)
Sanford 93F
Chapel Hill 92.8F
Raleigh 87.8F (Cloudy with a thunderstorm rapidly approaching)
Compare that to Asheville at 81.8F
Cherokee 84.6F
or Black Mountain at 80.9F
There is a good five degree F (3 C) difference between the GISS chosen stations and the third of the state GISS “extrapolates” those temperatures to.
Figures lie and Liars figure and Hansen is really really good at it. click 1 and click 2
(Temperatures chosen at random from names I know off the top off my head The first set includes GISS stations plus Sanford which is smack in the middle of the state.)
Well,
Its cold Here in NZ, but, thanks to the AGW crew, we’re having the hotest year, month, day hour, minute, second on record.
We’ve had extreme weather here too, mostly rain, a bit of flooding, obviously the 0.2 rise in global temperatures caused it, didn’t cause it, might cause it, will cause it or should cause it.
Must be a bit of synchronicity at work too, I explained the DATA hole issue over the Artic Surface Temps to a colleague yesterday, and whammo – here we are today discussing the same.
Excellent examples Steve, picture says a thousand words.
stevengoddard says:
June 15, 2010 at 7:35 am
Lee Klinger
>> CO2 “at 0.0004 concentration”? Units?
> Concentration is a dimensionless number. It has no units.
Several years ago, someone was flying in a hot air balloon and was blown a bit off course. He saw someone walking along a path and called out to him, “Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?”
“You’re in a balloon!”
“I know that, I need to tell a may chase vehicle where I am – Hey, wait, you just answered the question after all – thanks!”
The pilot realized that the answer was factually correct but was an answer to a wrong question that obviously the person knew. Therefore he was talking with a Microsoft Customer Service Rep and must be in Redmond WA.
——
What Steve should have said was something like “it’s the ratio of CO2 to the total atmosphere.”
He should have used the conventional amount, 380 ppm. There was no reason, given the topic of this post, for Steve to emphasize that CO2 is a trace gas and then refuse to use normal units.
Owen says:
June 15, 2010 at 8:56 am
The notion that a trace component like CO2 can have only a negligible effect due to its ultra-low concentration is an incorrect one, and I find it odd that it is perpetuated here. The absorption by CO2 of outgoing longwave thermal radiation is based on the absorptivity coefficient of the gas and on the optical path length. The actual absorption of radiation by atmospheric CO2 in its frequency range is therefore quite large.
_______________________________________________________________________
That argument does not work here because
A) the energy is reradiated in all directions not just towards the CURVED surface of the earth
and
B) If we were going to have “runaway” Global W arming” WATER in all its various forms wins the race hands down. Sort of a race between a supersonic jet and a snail.
Take a good look at this graph before you try out that argument again.
I see the etiquette police have arrived.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
Owen says: “…CO2 in the atmosphere has risen from ca. 0.028% in 1800 to 0.039% today, and this 39% increase rise parallels the increase in the consumption of fossil fuels by our industrial society.”
Parallels? Sorry, nice try, but correlation doesn’t prove causation.
> We often hear the question “what if CO2 were pink?”
You may, I never have. Google has six references, five are related to Andy Revkin’s blog, one is this post.
If we could shift the wavelengths our eyes respond to into the IR spectrum where the Earth radiates, then CO2 would absorb a fair amount of “red” light and you wouldn’t be able to see the ground from Earth orbit. Water vapor would absorb more, including pretty much all the “red” and the shorter “blue” wavelengths. So CO2 would be a pastel “cyan” or “blue green”, and water vapor would be a purer “green”.
However, both would be glowing in the wavelengths they absorb! It’s a good thing that our eyes are sensitive to sunlight instead.
I cringe whenever people point to CO2 as colorless when they try to dismiss it as a trace gas. Sure it’s a trace gas, but in the first 100 ppm it absorbs about all that it can, so additional CO2 doesn’t do much but fill in the “edges” of the window and capture photons in a shorter distance.
Sure, it is a trace gas, but it and water vapor (not so much of a trace gas) both play important roles. Their effects as greenhouse gases are overstated, to be sure, but to refer to CO2 as transparent or pink is not informative and only serves to encourage the “it’s only a trace gas” folks.
hedrat says:
June 15, 2010 at 9:37 am
> The Mercator projection doesn’t hurt them either.
We’ve been through that before – these maps are not Mercator projections, if they were, they wouldn’t reach the poles. They do distort things, and there are better choices for public display that aren’t as misleading.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/23/why-joe-bastardi-see-red-a-look-at-sea-ice-and-gistemp-and-starting-choices/#comment-351865
GISS holes in Africa and the Arctic are 90% concentration. You could say that GISS data in those regions is “trace data”, though not quite as rare as CO2.
Anu
If CO2 equals climate – then there is no need for models, funding or research.
Sounds like you think you can boil the entire field of climatology down to a single linear equation.
I live in +1 to +2 deg anomaly area. I can only say that I can hardly remember a colder month of May, and I’m soon to be 60.
Maybe they extrapolated the temperatures. Still had to wear sweaters though.
John Finn says:
June 15, 2010 at 9:36 am
Huh? The RSS anomaly is not 4 degrees, or anything like that. It is available here. The anomaly is given as 2.113°C …
According to buoy 25593 and 48684, it is currently 247.5 units Kelvin at the north pole- June 16 0600.
http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shiplocations.phtml
or
http://coolwx.com/cgi-bin/findbuoy.cgi?id=48684
2.113 degrees C!
Is it just more of my arithmetical idiocy to wonder how they got four-digit precision for that RSS anomaly? Can one make a direct measure of temperature to one part in 300,000? Or are there tens of thousands of accurate readings to be averaged, and then the difference taken between two sets? Exploring pseudo-precision in this science could be a rewarding exercise.
Took a lok at those figures from RSS, one has to admit it seems to be pretty “hot” in the Arctic, third highest montly anomaly ever recorded by RSS in the Arctic, highest was in January 1981 2,582 degree C, so still 0,5 deegree C from the record.
I just checked som of the Buoys around the North Pool, air temp -20 to -25 degree C there this morning, water temperatur around freezing point.
I too am wondering which stations are laoded into the DMI average: If more than one, it would be more accurate than GISS.
Then again, if Hansen does not keep his Arctic temperatures “hot” he has no life, no meaning for subjugating the earth’s residence to poverty and short, unproductive lives, and his cause (his religion ?) will not be the purpose of his president’s worldwide TV conference tonight on combating the Gulf oil leak by a 1.3 trillion cap and tax energy restriction nationwide.
But that’s no reason to suspect Hansen is biased in any way.
By the way, I vote for lack = no data.
Western Cape, South Africa, was the first snow in almost 20 years. Brazil x 1.6 C. Temperature Korea . Cold very cold …
Western Cape, South Africa, was the first snow in almost 20 years. Brazil x Korea, World Cup, temperature 1.6 C. Cold very cold …
….the cold would have killed at least 500 African penguins newborns in a national park.
Ric Werme says:
June 15, 2010 at 5:54 pm
hedrat says:
June 15, 2010 at 9:37 am
> The Mercator projection doesn’t hurt them either.
We’ve been through that before – these maps are not Mercator projections, if they were, they wouldn’t reach the poles. They do distort things, and there are better choices for public display that aren’t as misleading.
Agreed, fortunately GISS provides a nice Java app that will transform it into other more appropriate forms.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/gprojector/
paulo arruda
Between the noise and the winter, South Africa seems like a poor choice of venue. Other than Germany, everyone seems to be having a lot of trouble putting the ball in the back if the net.
Vieras says:
June 15, 2010 at 11:31 am
So apparently there were two organizations, who should have noticed the error but who didn’t. That speaks volumes about the quality control these two organizations have – or lack thereof.
Errors of those magnitudes should never slip through both NOAA and NASA, not even once.
You’re talking about automated programs that accept data from a source and display it, they’re subject to input errors which propagate down the line. Most of such sites point out that the data is provisional and subject to later corrections.
Spencer’s UAH website suffered from a similar problem today, in apparently switching to the AQUA channel 5 from NOAA-15, they made a mistake which results in the statement ‘the temperature is 457 deg F warmer than this day last year’. Embarrassing, sure but no big deal I’m sure they’ll sort it out promptly.
stevengoddard says:
June 15, 2010 at 1:37 pm
Phil,
I am assuming that you understand the difference between a map and a graph?
Yes I do, however I don’t understand why you think this constitutes an answer to either of my questions. Try again.
Willis Eschenbach says:
June 15, 2010 at 11:54 pm
Huh? The RSS anomaly is not 4 degrees, or anything like that. It is available here. The anomaly is given as 2.113°C …
Not quite what I wrote. The key phrases being “arctic regions” and “up to”.
John Finn says:
June 16, 2010 at 10:56 am
The RSS anomaly I gave is for the “arctic regions”. Yes, the map shows “up to 4 deg” warmer than the mean, but that does not mean that “GISS arctic temperatures are perfectly consistent with satellite measurements”.
“Vieras says:
June 15, 2010 at 11:31 am
Errors of those magnitudes should never slip through both NOAA and NASA, not even once.
Phil. says:
June 16, 2010 at 9:24 am
You’re talking about automated programs that accept data from a source and display it, they’re subject to input errors which propagate down the line.
”
How about giving those “automated programs” an automated consistency check or automated plausibility check? And if that’s too hard, how about not automating it?
Z said: There are 385 atoms of CO2 in every 1,000,000 atoms of “air”. Atoms divided by atoms cancel (not that they were really a unit in the first place). The rest becomes a decimal fraction. So one atom in two would be 0.5 – no units.
¿What makes you think you can cancel atoms of carbon with atoms of air (and what is that, by the way? That’s like saying 4 apples between two kids is 2 – no units. It’s different, dude, concentration certainly has units. You don’t have three fifths of something, you have three of something into five of something.