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.
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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.