By Steve Goddard
Back in January, our friends were crowing about the warmest satellite temperatures on record. But now they seem to have lost interest in satellites. I wonder why?
Data: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
It probably has to do with the fact that temperature anomalies are plummeting at a rate of 0.47 °C/year and that satellite temperatures in 2010 are showing no signs of setting a record.
The attention span of our alarmist friends seems to be getting shorter and shorter. They lock in on a week of warm temperatures on the east coast, a week of warm temperatures in Europe, a week of rapid melt in the Arctic. But they have completely lost the plot of the big picture.
The graph below shows Hansen’s A/B/C scenarios in black, and GISTEMP overlaid in red.
Note that actual GISTEMP is below all three of Hansen’s forecasts. According to RealClimate :
Scenario B was roughly a linear increase in forcings, and Scenario C was similar to B, but had close to constant forcings from 2000 onwards. Scenario B and C had an ‘El Chichon’ sized volcanic eruption in 1995. Essentially, a high, middle and low estimate were chosen to bracket the set of possibilities. Hansen specifically stated that he thought the middle scenario (B) the “most plausible”.
In other words, actual temperature rise has been less than Hansen forecast – even if there was a huge volcanic eruption in the 1990s, and no new CO2 introduced over the past decade! We have fallen more than half a degree below Hansen’s “most plausible” scenario, even though CO2 emissions have risen faster than worst case.
Conclusions:
- We are not going to set a record this year (for the whole year)
- Hansen has vastly overestimated climate sensitivity
- Temperatures have risen slower than Hansen forecast for a carbon free 21st century
So what exactly is it that these folks are still worried about?
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Are you sure you got the overlay of the GISTEMP record on Hansen’s predictions correct?
The plot seems to be the GISTEMP 5-year mean, that is the mean of the 5 years centred on the year in question. So the last year plotted in 2007, which misses the bulk of the recent record warmth. Means are great for filtering out noise but to be a like-for-like you’d need also to plot the 5-year mean of the model data alongside, rather than just the annual, as was done. The average anomaly for 2010 is about 0.2C higher than the last GISTEMP figure plotted.
The data is indeed noisy, before plotting the forced projection, Hansen did a control run wthout external forcings. This showed variability of 0.4C, that is the model planet varies naturally by that much all on its own, so comparing individual years and concluding ‘600% wrong’ is indeed nonsensical, the modelled ‘weather’ cannot be expected to match exactly the planetary weather and so individual discrepencies of 0.4C or greater do not falsify the projection. Indeed, this noisy data is a target-rich environment for obsessive cherry-pickers, e.g. the model projects a rise from 2006-2016 of just 0.16C, the GISTEMP trend for the last few decades is nearer 0.2C, so the model underestimated by 25% …..just as ridiculous as the ‘600%’. Long-term trends are a better comparison.
One consequence of the noise is that Scenario B shoots up this year, then drops back and roughly flatlines for 5 years, so it is not that surprising that a comparison with observations now shows real-world temperatures less than this modelled spike.
I’ll just quietly repeat:-
IPCC projection 1990-2010 : 0.16C / decade.
Observed trend (UAH) : 0.164C / decade.
kdkd says:
July 22, 2010 at 1:46 am (Edit)
This is a bit silly. 1998 Was the strongest El Niño ever recorded. It’s quite clear that the satellite measurements overestimate temperature compared to the instrumental record during El Niño events.
No, it’s just that the satellites and the surface guages are measuring two different things. The Satellite measures the temperature in the lower toposphere, whereas the surface temp is measuring a combination of just above ground and sea surface temps.
The oceans are made of stuff (water) which has a much higher heat capacity than the atmosphere. So when the oceans release enough heat to go down in temp at the surface by, say, 0.5C, the lower troposphere temp will tumble by nearly twice that a few months later after the relased heat has escaped to space.
The opposite happens in El Nino. The SST’s rise as heat moves up from the deep, the air temp follows suit a few months later but by nearly double the rise in SST.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:2007/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2007/scale:1.7/offset:-0.3
tallbloke:
Thanks. That’s a reasonably convincing mechanism for *why* the satellite measures overestimate over certain parts of the cycle. It doesn’t mean that my explanation is wrong, just that it is simplified. The global surface measurements are still showing record temperatures exceeding 1998.
According to GISS
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
Anomaly is +0.58 and coming down sharply from the high of +0.82 in March, a pretty dramatic fall.
Yes indeed the UAH, RSS, HARDCRUT and GISS all in agreement showing rapid falls in global temps.
Only GISS shows a record half year all other sources show it to be the second warmest to 1998.
UAH and RSS are in broad agreement as usual UAH a bit lower. Even the mid-troposphere “corrected” measurements (i.e. taking into account the absorption from increased CO2) show them to be the second highest on record and not the highest.
If 2010 is the hottest year, which now looks increasingly unlikely, then it won’t be unanimous as it was in 1998.
Rob Vermeulen says:
July 21, 2010 at 9:20 pm
“- before the el nino, the anomaly was 0.6 as you can verify. that is still much higher than scenario B. I really wonder how this hand-written curve has been “created”.
Which Scenario B are you looking at? Or are you stuck in the year 2000?
HR, please see my comment at July 21, 2010 at 5:44 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/21/the-satellites-are-missing/#comment-436277
As a layman I find this much more useful than all the talk about temperatures.
If I read this right, the real issue is energy content and where that energy is located and where it is moving from and where it is going.
I wonder, New Agers are usually quite drawn to the notion of “energy movements”.
Those who talk about energy flows could come across to the general public as sounding like they are more in touch with reality than those who bang on about abstract notions of temperature and computer models.
The question, “How much energy is in the ocean?” could sound to many like it is eminently sensible and valuable.
Stefan says:
July 22, 2010 at 5:05 am (Edit)
tallbloke says:
The oceans are made of stuff (water) which has a much higher heat capacity than the atmosphere. So when the oceans release enough heat to go down in temp at the surface by, say, 0.5C, the lower troposphere temp will tumble by nearly twice that a few months later after the relased heat has escaped to space.
As a layman I find this much more useful than all the talk about temperatures.
The question, “How much energy is in the ocean?” could sound to many like it is eminently sensible and valuable.
A big and important question, to which no-one has a certain answer as far as I know. All we get from the oceanologists is an ‘anomaly’ relative to an earlier dateline.
If you find my explanation useful, you may want to look at my outline for a holistic climatology here:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2010/06/29/holistic-climate-theory-part-1/
kdkd says:
July 22, 2010 at 4:01 am (Edit)
tallbloke:
Thanks. That’s a reasonably convincing mechanism for *why* the satellite measures overestimate over certain parts of the cycle. It doesn’t mean that my explanation is wrong, just that it is simplified.
I’m sorry to have to disagree, but the satellites are not ‘overestimating’ anything. They are correctly measuring the change in temperature occurring in the troposphere, which for the reasons I explained, is larger than the changes in the surface record.
This is well worth a read if you are interested in ocean heat content and where the energy comes from/goes to.
http://www.sciencebits.com/calorimeter
I get curious. Is it normal for the global mean temperature anomalies to vary over the year as shown in the above graph? Why?
One would naively assume that global mean temperatures would not show any trace of seasonality, since they are global.
When we’ve accumulated ~20 years of temperature observations subsequent to Hansen’s modified models, we can test them like the 1988 model.
The 1988 model predicted that:
ΔCO2(a) + ΔCH4 (a) + ΔTG(a) = Δ(a)
(TG = Trace gases like CFC’s)
The experimental results were:
ΔCO2(a) + ΔCH4 (c) + ΔTG(b to c) < Δ(c)
Hansen would have had to lower the climate’s CO2 sensitivity to a negative number in order to modify his model to correctly retrocast the period from 1988-2009. Or he would have had to elevate solar and other natural forcings to the point that they totally dominate the anthropogenic components (which they do).
I forgot yhr T’s on the right side of the equations…
ΔCO2(a) + ΔCH4 (a) + ΔTG(a) = ΔT(a)
(TG = Trace gases like CFC’s)
The experimental results were:
ΔCO2(a) + ΔCH4 (c) + ΔTG(b to c) < ΔT(c)
I also misspelled or fat-fingered “the”.
Magnus says:
July 22, 2010 at 5:46 am
When a year starts in El nino conditions, and ends in La Nina conditions, the temperature can swing a lot.
El Nino can happen on average 3 years out of seven IIRC, so it’s not unusual, but not regularly seasonal either.
Phil Clarke
Your claim that “Scenario B shoots up this year, then drops back and roughly flatlines for 5 years” is incorrect. It shoots up and stays there for five years.
2010 is the year that blows away Hansen 1988. Denial is not an option.
We do know more about climate now than 1988. We know that sensitivity to CO2 is much less than Hansen imagined.
BenjaminG says:
July 21, 2010 at 5:02 pm
Where in the world did the idea come from in this thread that we’ve only seen .1°C warming when the prediction was for .6°C?
There is no dataset in existence that only shows .1°C warming since 1988.
++++
Dunno what I’m doing wrong, but I look at that graph at the top and I see ~.25C difference in 1988 vs current for GISS, with Scenario A having predicted a further ~.6C on top of that.
And I still say Hansen predicted Scenario A should be where we are today, as Scenario B in his testimony included CO2 growth limitations that have not occurred.
Ok guys I’m very happy to read that there’s so much people interested in climate , and this means in our life in this planet, well sometime we should think , where we are going to…?! and we are all together my friends on this same “car” , but who is to drive…..?
geo says:
And I still say Hansen predicted Scenario A should be where we are today, as Scenario B in his testimony included CO2 growth limitations that have not occurred.
Then you should read his report because you’re flat out wrong, just like McIntyre was on the same subject a couple of years ago.
Mods is that why my post on this was censored yesterday, because I took McIntyre’s name in vain?
[reply] Read the blog policy. RT-mod
David Middleton says: July 22, 2010 at 5:53 am
Seems like a very straight forward analysis of the falsification. Are you certain that you are correct?
Also about the statemet:
“The experimental results were:”
Should that read:
“The actual results were:”
And, can I cut/paste you on that?
@tallbloke thanks!
David Middleton says: July 22, 2010 at 5:53 am
Would it be fair to substitute ‘NASA’ for ‘Hansen’ in your statements or did NASA have an independant model?
Does the ‘Hansen’ model speak for ‘NASA’?
@Roy:
Regarding the warming of Lake Tanganyika, see these two WUWT threads:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/18/unprecedented-warming-in-lake-tanganyika/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/20/tanganyika-revisited/
Geoff Sharp says:
July 21, 2010 at 6:45 pm
R. Gates says:
July 21, 2010 at 5:17 pm
What is most remarkable in my estimation is that global temps didn’t even fall more during the long and deep solar minimum that we just came through. I’ve still not heard AGW explain this in any scientific way. By the way they were carrying on at one point about the solar minimum, you’d of thought a new ice age was upon us, but temperatures held up– not rising, but not falling either.
Maybe you should get out more, you obviously have no knowledge of the interactions between the Sun, ocean heat storage and climate. The deep solar minimum will be a downstream effect that is just starting to show it teeth now. This coupled with the natural ocean cycles and associated changes in the upper atmosphere related to the reduced EUV, should see a continued reduction of world temperatures over the coming years. There will still be hotspots for you to cherrypick, but these are normal during times of low EUV.
If real world temperatures rise on a steady path over the next decade then there might be cause for concern, as nearly all the cooling players are engaged. But I would suggest it’s way too early to be writing off what is already in the pipeline.
____________
The long a deep solar minimum we just passed through should have produced much more of an effect on cooling (according to AGW skeptics) yet the first half of 2010 saw record temps. Skeptics seem determined to put this all on the El Nino, even though this El Nino wasn’t as strong as 1998. To deny the effects of increased CO2 is to deny part of the equation. El Nino and Solar cycles are smaller players and seem to take a back seat to the general forcing from the 40% increase in CO2 since the 1700’s. Undoubtedly the solar minimum put a damper of global temps in the past 3 years, and even if an onset of a La Nina keeps 2010 from being the hottest year on record, it will be right up there, and there is a very good chance that with another El Nino during the current solar cycle rise to solar max in 2013 we will see another global temperature record before 2015. The most likely and most logical major cause of these higher temps is CO2.
In percentage terms, a new record high global temperature record between now and 2015 can be attributed to:
50% CO2 forcings
30% ENSO
20% Solar Maximum (with related increase in TSI and decrease in GCR’s)
Take a look at the excellent charts at this site:
http://www.climate4you.com/
Click on Sun on the left hand side, and study the charts. You easily see the ENSO and Solar cycles riding on top of the general increase in temps over the past few decades.
tty much immediate to within 6 months of the cycle and seemed to based on total solar irradiance, and perhaps on the effect of reduced solar wind and increased GCR’s. Every reliable chart we have shows this quite easily, such as this one:
NASA is working on green energy and muslim peace initiatives now…….Russia is working on an advanced space program now. CO2 will drop in the US, Obama’s plans are killing the economy
Phil Clarke: “IPCC projection 1990-2010 : 0.16C / decade.
Observed trend (UAH) : 0.164C / decade.”
“according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?
1860-1880 21 0.163
1910-1940 31 0.15
1975-1998 24 0.166
1975-2009 35 0.161
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=5134
So, Phil, what you are arguining is that the IPCC blames CO2 for warming rates that have occurred 3 other times int he last 150 years.
In effect you are blaming CO2 for naturally occuring warming.
How stupid.