By Steve Goddard
People see what they want or expect to see. A great example is in today’s NASA Earth Observatory image of the day article.
A heat wave scorched the eastern United States in early July 2010, straining power grids, slowing transit, forcing nursing homes to evacuate, and prompting East Coast residents to shelter in “cooling centers,” according to news reports. Temperatures topped 105 degrees Fahrenheit (41 degrees Celsius) in Baltimore for two consecutive days. The heat wave was a global phenomenon. Beijing also experienced near-record heat, and temperatures soared to 122 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius) in Kuwait. This global map shows temperature anomalies for July 4–11, 2010, compared to temperatures for the same dates from 2000 to 2008. The anomalies are based on land surface temperatures observed by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. Areas with above-average temperatures appear in red and orange, and areas with below-average temperatures appear in shades of blue. Oceans, lakes, and areas with insufficient data (usually because of persistent clouds) appear in gray.
The author missed mentioning the fact that almost all of Mexico and Australia were far below normal. The author missed the fact that much of north and equatorial Africa was below normal, as was much of Asia and eastern Europe.
To quantify this, I did a pixel count on their high resolution image.
It turns out that 5% more pixels were below normal than were above normal. The animation below makes this easier to visualize. Red is above average temperatures, blue is below average temperatures, and white represents average temperatures.
Below are close up animations
This is not a perfect equal area projection – so the pixel count method is not 100% accurate. However, it is clear that NASA claims of a global heat wave are incorrect. Some places were hot, other places (like where I live) were cold.
The author noted that it is hot in Kuwait in July? What are the chances of that?
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jaymam says:
July 16, 2010 at 4:59 pm
I’m a skeptic Kiwi and also ask that Nasa rotates its map to clearly show the record breaking cold weather we’ve been having. But perhaps not because the earlier post at WUWT that saw our country speckled with little red dots seemed to suggest we actually had warmer than usual weather.
Steve Schapel says:
July 16, 2010 at 6:51 pm
I believe part of the reason is because at less than $5 / week ETS ain’t really stripping our wallets yet. And, when it comes into full effect it will demonstrate that modern day Indulgences do work – at least for a while. But hey any tax is a good tax when you are the Guv’mint.
Is that ice I see forming at the pool on the north pole? In our sea lake I would say it was plankton, but would not think so in such a small pool .
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/npole/2010/images/noaa2-2010-0716-191646.jpg
I just checked AMSU-A global temperature trend for now compared to last year, it’s 0.21 F cooler this year. So last year must’ve been a scorcher, funny how nobody noticed.
“The heat wave was a global phenomenon.”
No it wasn’t. Most of the earth was below normal. 95% of the article was above normal.
“However, climate warming is expected to increase the likelihood of heat waves”
The last time any continent set a high temperature record was 1974. Most were set prior to 1920
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalextremes.html
Mike says:
July 16, 2010 at 8:18 pm
The baseline is the 2000-2008 average. Thus, “cool” means cooler than the average for the warmest decade on record.
Ominous signs!! Sarc off.
We’re talking about 1/10ths of a degree:
This is all very disappointing. I was promised a world that would be 8 degrees warmer. An entire world. Not here or there, but an entire world. Now it is revealed that some places are warmer and some places are colder.
Can government agencies like NASA and NOAA be trusted in recent years? Obviously no. Remember the days when NASA had a glorious reputation?
Joseph D’Aleo: Eisenhower warned us
Richard Lindzen on climate science in the service of politics:
Basil
I am using proprietary software from a graphics startup I founded a few years ago near London.
I think this story also speaks to what NASA and perhaps many others in society consider to be the world. The east coast of N.A., Western Europe, Middle East , okay that’s all that counts, isn’t it?
Tom in Florida says:
July 16, 2010 at 7:23 pm
“A heat wave scorched the eastern United States in early July 2010, straining power grids,”
“I wonder how a grid using mostly wind power would have been strained.”
Pretty easy to do. The wind can die down. But, I don’t think it’s mostly wind generated power either.
I thought Climategate was a turning point where the scientists would be more open with public and would explain the uncertainties. Anyone noticed?
Anyway the obviously cold anomolies are themselves evidence of CAGW, I’m told this is all predicted, but I’ve searched everywhere in the scientific literature and come up with nothing.Yet.
Steve Schapel says: July 16, 2010 at 6:51 pm
Jaymam: “NZ has the highest proportion of sceptics per population of any country”
Hmmm, I would be interested to see the source for that information. If it’s true, how did we get the most rigorous CO2 tax in the world? If it’s true, why did we only get 120 people to a recent march to parliament to protest against said CO2 tax?
Nzers are also the most ‘laid back’ people in the world – Steve if you know anything about us you would realize that we won’t wake up to this until we actually start paying the tax – by then it’s too late. The skepticism extends to believing anything that goes on in parliament is of any moment.
Doug
I know I’m not the best scientist in the world but…
looking at the pictures with the correct resolution settings,
without a fine tooth comb, I would have to say that I see more white and blue than red
[snip]
PS congratulations to Mr. Goddard….. not just 1, not just 2, but 3 count em THREE rebuttals of MR. Goddard on Skeptic Science…. You have made it past the 15 minutes of fame into the big leagues MR. Goddard sir. 🙂
Part 1: http://www.skepticalscience.com/Part-One-Why-do-glaciers-lose-ice.html
Part 2: http://www.skepticalscience.com/Part-2-How-do-we-measure-Antarctic-ice-changes.html
Part 3: http://www.skepticalscience.com/Part-Three-Response-to-Goddard.html
All replete with pretty pictures and references.
This is from todays Daily Telegraph (UK).
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/7895681/Worlds-hottest-year-on-record-expected.html
You can’t make this stuff up. Can you?
Steve Schapel
Google News had an article last month saying “NZ has the highest proportion of sceptics per population of any country”. However a search fails to find it. It’s not important. Most countries had only single figures for sceptics, which of course is wrong.
NZ has the most rigorous CO2 tax in the world because scientists have lied about the effect of CO2,and NZ’s government have been delighted to introduce an extra tax, saying that the rest of the world insist that we do that or they won’t buy NZ’s unsubsidised and efficiently produced products.
Yuba Yollabolly says:
July 16, 2010 at 6:21 pm
Steve states: “The author missed mentioning the fact that almost all of Mexico and Australia were far below normal. The author missed the fact that much of north and equatorial Africa was below normal, as was much of Asia and eastern Europe.”
Yet the article clearly states: “…temperatures are below-normal for a large part of North America and parts of Eurasia.”
Er, Does “North America and parts of Eurasia” equate to Mexico? Australia? North Africa? Equatorial Africa?
Get a grip.
Great job – it went a long way in answering the my question I posted on this.
Are they using the extrapolation method to compute the polar temps?
I find it weird that they keep showing a hot Arctic, when in fact (above 80°N) the DMI keeps showing normal, or even slightly below normal temps.
Simon Stanley says:
July 16, 2010 at 11:29 pm
This is from todays Daily Telegraph (UK).
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/7895681/Worlds-hottest-year-on-record-expected.html
…Let’s read the whole thing, which contains some interesting information:
“For the first six months of the year, 2010 has been warmer than the first half of 1998, the previous record holder, by 0.03 degree Fahrenheit, said Jay Lawrimore, chief of climate analysis at the federal National Climatic Data Center.
“A period of a El Nino weather pattern is being blamed for the hot temperatures globally…”
“…However, as cooler temperatures may set in later this year, it remains to be seen whether 2010 will overtake 2005 as the hottest year overall.
“This year the fact that the El Nino episode has ended and is likely to transition into La Nina, which has a cooling influence on the global average temperature, it’s possible that we will not end up with the warmest year as a whole,” Mr Lawrimore said.”
So it’s not that interesting a story at all, a few facts amounting to another load of speculation about what might or might not happen this year.
The southern hemispere, the artctic, and south asia was colder than considered normal.
It’s easy to verify.
This is going to come back and bite them in the tail.
Wake up Kiwis, you can all be super rich ! All that scrub land can be turned into cash, just leave it as it is and claim the ‘carbon credits’, if Greenpeace can do it and claim U.S.$60,000,000,000 (yep that trillions) for a little of the Amazon, join the club.
Can NASA please stand up and explain the current 2-month contuinuous record sea ice anomaly at the South Pole? Is this sea ice record due to global warming? http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/ice_ext_s.png
And where were they this past winter, in hibernation?
This NASA website is full of interesting hyperbole and omissions – these are some from the first half of 2009:
1: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/36000/36900/australialsta_tmo_2009025_tn.jpg
Here we have “Exceptional Australian Heatwave” for the last week of January 2009, yet the map shows greater areas of below normal temperatures than of above normal temperatures.
2: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/37000/37466/superior_amo_2009062_tn.jpg
Here we have a picture of ice on Lake Superior – “a relatively rare blanket of ice” – so obviously no discussion about global warming here.
3 http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/38000/38284/arctic_min_max_map_tn.jpg
A comment here: “Antarctic sea ice trends during the satellite era are smaller and more complex than Arctic trends. Through 2008, the total annual Antarctic sea ice extent increased about 1 percent per decade, but the trends were not consistent for all areas or all seasons. The variability in Antarctic sea ice patterns makes it harder for scientists to explain Antarctic sea ice trends and to predict how Southern Hemisphere sea ice may change as greenhouse gases continue to warm the Earth.”
So here is another inconvenient truth, which does not fit the ‘models’.
4 http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=38655
“Heavy Rains Flood Brazil” – I thought the IPCC said that wasn’t supposed to happen.
5 http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=38419
2008-2009 winter land suraface temperature anomalies – no comment on global warming for obvious reasons.
6 http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=38835
Something to be concerned about, but the final comment is complete unfounded alarmism:
“These same models predict that the Antarctic ozone layer will recover around 2040. On the other hand, because of the impact of greenhouse gas warming, the ozone layer over the tropics and mid-southern latitudes may not recover for more than a century, and perhaps not ever.”
Ozone depletion over the ‘tropics and mid-southern latitudes’ has never been an issue, as ozone is being created in every moment of daylight hours by cosmic rays from the Sun. The impact of CFCs here is essentially negligible. Ozone ‘holes’ over the Antarctic are at their maximum at the end of the Southern Hemisphere winter, after many months without cosmic ray bombardment.
This response is already too long, there are plenty more examples like these – there is a subtle thread of disinformation, exaggeration and omission in much of the NASA stuff on climate.
Steve has pointed out a classic example of this in his article.
Steve Schapel says:
July 16, 2010 at 6:51 pm
Jaymam: “NZ has the highest proportion of sceptics per population of any country”
Hmmm, I would be interested to see the source for that information.
It came from the JNAS blacklist http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/climate/skeptic_authors_table.html
If it’s true, how did we get the most rigorous CO2 tax in the world? If it’s true, why did we only get 120 people to a recent march to parliament to protest against said CO2 tax?
Possibly because it wasn’t well advertised. Compare it to the Bikers against ACC rally at parliament where there were over 7000 motorcycles. It was well advertised on a number of forums throughout New Zealand. Most skeptics didn’t hear about the march until it was over.
The whole story is a political one . The US government under Barack Obama wishes to install cap and trade and increase taxing of their society in order to keep the deficit-ball roling . Apparently they are seeing no other way out of the big financial trouble continueing to hit them . Apparently every governmental institution must contribute to make the public cap and trade ready . The policy-makers are very well aware that time is running against them, you only need to read the formulations used in the climate-gate correspondence to verify this . So every govermental institution is expected to show their support of the leadership . A different tune or opinion will have the consequence that the civil ervants in charge , all paid extremely well for their painting of reality , will loose their jobs and reputations . Whose bread i eat , whose word i speak . Is not it all very simple , Mr. Obama ?