By Steve Goddard
We are all familiar with the GISS graph below, showing how the world has warmed since 1880.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
The GISS map below shows the geographic details of how they believe the planet has warmed. It uses 1200 km smoothing, a technique which allows them to generate data where they have none – based on the idea that temperatures don’t vary much over 1200 km. It seems “reasonable enough” to use the Monaco weather forecast to make picnic plans in Birmingham, England. Similarly we could assume that the weather and climate in Portland, Oregon can be inferred from that of Death Valley.
The map below uses 250 km smoothing, which allows us to see a little better where they actually have trend data from 1880-2009.
I took the two maps above, projected them on to a sphere representing the earth, and made them blink back and forth between 250 km and 1200 km smoothing. The Arctic is particularly impressive. GISS has determined that the Arctic is warming rapidly across vast distances where they have no 250 km data (pink.)
A way to prove there’s no data in the region for yourself is by using the GISTEMP Map locator at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/
If we choose 90N 0E (North Pole) as the center point for finding nearby stations:
We find that the closest station from the North Pole is Alert, NWT, 834 km (518 miles) away. That’s about the distance from Montreal to Washington DC. Is the temperature data in Montreal valid for applying to Washington DC.?
Even worse, there’s no data in GISTEMP for Alert NWT since 1991. Funny though, you can get current data right now, today, from Weather Underground, right here. WUWT?
Here’s the METAR report for Alert, NWT from today
METAR CYLT 261900Z 31007KT 10SM OVC020 01/M00 A2967 RMK ST8 LAST OBS/NEXT 270600 UTC SLP051
The next closest GISTEMP station is Nord, ADS at 935 km (580 miles) away.
Most Arctic stations used in GISTEMP are 1000 km (621 miles) or more away from the North Pole. That is about the distance from Chicago to Atlanta. Again would you use climate records from Atlanta to gauge what is happening in Chicago?
Note the area between Svalbard and the North Pole in the globe below. There is no data in the 250 km 1880-2009 trend map indicating that region has warmed significantly, yet GISS 1200 km 1880-2009 has it warming 2-4° C. Same story for northern Greenland, the Beaufort Sea, etc. There’s a lot of holes in the polar data that has been interpolated.
The GISS Arctic (non) data has been widely misinterpreted. Below is a good example:
Monitoring Greenland’s melting
The ten warmest years since 1880 have all taken place within the 12-year period of 1997–2008, according to the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) surface temperature analysis. The Arctic has been subject to exceptionally warm conditions and is showing an extraordinary response to increasing temperatures. The changes in polar ice have the potential to profoundly affect Earth’s climate; in 2007, sea-ice extent reached a historical minimum, as a consequence of warm and clear sky conditions.
If we look at the only two long-term stations which GISS does have in Greenland, it becomes clear that there has been nothing extraordinary or record breaking about the last 12 years (other than one probably errant data point.) The 1930s were warmer in Greenland.
Similarly, GISS has essentially no 250 km 1880-2009 data in the interior of Africa, yet has managed to generate a detailed profile across the entire continent for that same time period. In the process of doing this, they “disappeared” a cold spot in what is now Zimbabwe.
Same story for Asia.
Same story for South America. Note how they moved a cold area from Argentina to Bolivia, and created an imaginary hot spot in Brazil.
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
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Ya’ll have convinced me this problem is very messy. Starting from scratch, I would not like to be leading the team with the responsibility of designing, developing and reporting on the world’s temperature trends – regardless of the string of academic-letter qualifiers (Ph.D., and so on) for the team.
An important issue remains in that people with qualifiers before their names (such as President, Prime Minister, …) want an answer – preferably a single simple number and, maybe, a nice colorful graphic to help explain the number. The colorful graphic looks so much better on TV. At this stage, then, no one knows or cares about how the number and graphic were derived.
[ In ‘student evaluations of instructors’ students often rank, on a scale of 1 to 5, across as many as 30 items. These ranks are manipulated and presented in summary form to the administration to two significant digits and with standard deviations with respect to your department, your college, and the entire university. Read the first two lines in the first paragraph. ]
Anyway, thanks to you all for the insights and the work you are doing.
John F. Hultquist
According to Hansen’s theories, the world should already be heating up out of control.
The fact that they are having to do all these manipulations and artificially bump temperatures up a few tenths of degree, is an indication of how badly the catastrophists are failing.
The long term anomaly trends trends indicate significant static periods.
1880-1920 flat
1920-1945 increasing
1945 -1979 flat
1980 – 2000 rising
2000 – ongoing flat
Over this 120 year period atmosperic carbon dioxide concentrations have continued to increase year by year but temperatures have not reflected this. For over half this period there has been no upward temperature trend.
One conclusion from these results is that, over significant periods, there are cooling drivers that predominate over any anthropogenic greenhouse effects . Are there also similarly other periods when natural global heating drivers predominate?
Are we seeing the heat engine effect described so well in the earlier posts.
I know it is just another cherry from the lot, but it looks like as rotten cherries are taken from the lot, there aren’t many of them left…
Portugal is one spot that seems to have some heating influence in Morocco and Spain, but the data for the Lisbon weather station shows cooling in the last series starting in the 80’s, I don’t know why there are so many series for this station but it seems like worth taking a look at it:
Series: <a href="http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/findstation.py?datatype=gistemp&data_set=0&name=lisboa" title="GISS series"
Station Location:
Station Photos:
stevengoddard,
1200 km and 250 km smoothing only diverge if you select trends over a time period (e.g. from 1880) where many remote regions do not have a good temperature record. Try comparing the two 1960-present, for example, the the differences will be much smaller.
Regardless, I’m not sure how the way that the GISS trend graphing engine handles incomplete data is germane to, well, anything. If you want a more useful exercise, try running GISTemp code with 250 km and 1200 km smoothing for different latitude bands (or specific countries/regions) and compare the resulting anomalies. The smoothing won’t make a huge difference in most places, with a few notable exceptions (the Arctic, parts of inner Africa, etc.). When divergences do exist, you can check the interpolated values against actual GSOD station data in those locations. Nick Stokes has been doing some interesting work to that end lately on his blog (e.g. http://moyhu.blogspot.com/2010/07/revisiting-bolivia.html )
EUREKA!
I want to emphasise again that there can not have been any man-made CO2 induced warming before 1950. This is quite simply because the Mauna Loa record shows that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was about 310ppm in 1950 compared to a long term trend assumed to be 285ppm. Hence in 1950 the level of CO2 was only 9% higher than the long-term trend and not sufficient to cause significant warming, whereas today it is 390ppm (37% higher than the long-term trend). It follows from this that any AGW from 1950 -2010 must be bigger than any warming from 1880 – 1950 for the AGW theory to hold, because the added C02 in the latter half of the last hundred years or so is 4x bigger than for the first half.
Now take a look at the graphs that Steve Goddard has included above. They don’t show any warming 1950 to 2010. However they do show warming 1880 to 1940. A hell of a lot of warming. In fact it appears to be warming at maybe as much as 6Celsius per century! That’s a high rate of change – and not one part of it attributable to AGW!
So I took a look at all the GISTEMP raw data for the stations north of 65degrees. Almost all of them show the same trend. Only Alaska shows warming in recent times. Russia, Scandinavia and Greenland sites either show no warming or warming during the years 1880 to 1940, followed by cooling/flat-lining in the years 1950 – 2010. Those sites showing this high degree of warming in the years 1880 to 1940 cannot be showing AGW induced climate change – they are showing the power of the planet to alter its OWN climate all without our help.
All those red dots you see in the northern latitudes in the 250km smoothed map are due to sites that don’t show AGW at all. They show a massive amount of NATURAL warming in the years 1880 – 1940. These have then been used to suggest that the entire Arctic circle is warming up in the 1200km smoothed map, due entirely to AGW. This would be a gross misrepresentation of the truth.
Why did team-AGW want to show the years 1880-1940 in their anomaly maps? Could it be that by roping in the limited, unreliable data for years where AGW was not relevant, that they were able to show spurious warming in parts of the world that have actually cooled since 1950? You decide…..
Nick Stokes wrote:
“Is the temperature data in Montreal valid for applying to Washington DC.? “
Yes. it is.. Here’s the plot. Lots of correlation.
—
Perhaps I misunderstand correlation, but correlation doesn’t connect the magnitude of change, only the direction, correct? So, even if DC and Montreal have a high degree of correlation in temperature anomolies, you still can’t determine the difference in magnitude from that correlation, correct? For example, if it is warmer in DC, I can reasonable conclude that it is likely warmer in Montreal (due to the correlation), but I cannot say that since it is 3C warmer in DC that is is therefore 3C warmer in Montreal. It could be .5C warmer, or 5C warmer, and the correlation can still hold.
Why, then, is correlation a defense for smoothing magnitude?
I admit my statistics are rusty, so I could be way off base here.
stevengoddard,
If GISTemp (and others) are doing “all these manipulations and artificially bump temperatures up a few tenths of degree”, please suggest a way to calculate global temperature using the various raw station datasets available that you think would be ideal. I’d be happy go generate a record of, say, raw GHCN + GSOD stations that have no lights visible to satellites, are away from the coast, are not at airports, and have low population density. Do you think the results will differ that much from, say, NCDC land temps?
Zeke,
If there isn’t an adequate dataset to calculate an accurate “global temperature” – then I would recommend that you don’t calculate a “global temperature.”
Spellbound says:
July 27, 2010 at 7:36 am
Correlation is not the ideal statistic to use here. There are other statistics, for example Reduction in Error (RE) that would be sensitive to correlated trends with different magnitudes.
See http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11676&page=93#p200108c09960093001 for the formula.
Steve.
There is enough data to estimate a global temperature. The key word is estimate.
I can estimate the temperature with many fewer stations than those available. I can also test how sensitive that estimate is by systematically Removing stations and seeing that the average does not change. I can ( and have) estimated that number by using, all the stations, only one station per grid cell, only the stations with complete records for the past 110 years, only the rural stations, etc etc. The estimate does not change in any appreciable way. The estimate does not change for a simple reason.
When the earth warms over long periods that warming, that trend, is not, for the most part, locally entrained. If it warms by 1C over a century at location lat X, Lon Y, then the available data shows the following: It will also warm by 1C at position lat X2, Lon Y2. Go figure, heat moves. Now if heat didnt move, you might see one position warm at 1C over a century and another position Cool at 1C, but we don’t see that in data that covers 50% of the total land mass. We dont see that in the 50% we sample, so I’m baffled by people would think that the 50% we dont sample is different. Did we magically pick the 50% of the earth where is has warmed and magically missed all those places where it cools.
Question: is it warmer or cooler now than it was from 1900-1910? can you estimate?
To Tisdale et. all above, regarding the 1880 data etc.
If we provide a plot of data from Point A to Point B, using a broad spectrum of data accuracies between, any trend observed from point A to point B is a direct result of data. The graph shown at the beginning obviously makes a clear case for a net increase in temperature from beginning to end. If 1880-? data is shown inaccurate, the conclusions drawn from (or implied by) the data are as well.
The true contention that can be made against this graph is thus quite simple: The error bar, vs. time, does not change significantly vs. the amount of data interpolated. Interpolated data for non-continuous systems is not real, and should be considered 100% statistical error for the purpose of this graph. However, given the magnitude of interpolation shown in Steve’s representation… I question that proper mathematical logic is applied, and thus the graph, by presenting data and error bars (to inspire confidence in the implication,) is not representative of the data.
Make the documentation of error correct in a strict sense, and I suspect this graph will look quite heavy to the left, and present a much smaller and more confusing trend (or possibly lack thereof, which probably the most valid conclusion as well, given the variability in the underlying data set across the period of this graph.)
steveG.
Smoothing from at 250km or 1200km does not make any appreciable difference in the TRENDS ( the globally averaged trend) You will see differences in certain places, but when you put it all together there is no difference. I dont smooth AT ALL. to grids where I have no data and I get the same answer. “same” means within 10%.
James:
“Over this 120 year period atmosperic carbon dioxide concentrations have continued to increase year by year but temperatures have not reflected this. For over half this period there has been no upward temperature trend.”
The AGW theory does not predict a monotonic increase. There are natural cycles of warming and cooling. ups and downs. The warming produced by GHGs happens slowly over time and the impact is lagged. over time this warming shows up in a long term trend.
Steven Mosher
Sorry, I missed the period from 1910-1920
The hottest temperature ever recorded in the western hemisphere occurred in 1913.
What is the temperature anomaly record like using the 250 km smoothing instead of the 1200 km? Even though there are large gaps, as the effect of CO2 is, by “consensus”, global, should the lesser data coverage not show the same as the same, plus, it IS the same data.
WRT 1200km
Hansen’s study has been revisited and before people bluster on about it the should do some reading ( hehe I used to bluster about it) The effectiveness of “smoothing: out to 1200km has long been a bone of contention. The spatial correlation of the climate feild is modulated by several factors. Hansen noted a NH and SH difference. Later studies have been more detailed, using more stations to do the same thing.
1200km is not a magic figure. At some places 1200km works fine ( high lat) during some seasons. In the END it does matter ( to the global average of everything) if you use 1200km or 750km or 250km. at 0km it will make a difference. hehe
The most accessible paper I know on this is here: If your not prepared to discuss the literature, then I got other things to do
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadghcnd/HadGHCND_paper.pdf
@Stephen Fisher Mosher “The AGW theory does not predict a monotonic increase. There are natural cycles of warming and cooling. ups and downs. ”
Then what exactly DOES it predict? What is the theory ACTUALLY stating? You see, when I was at university, a scientific theory had to make firm PREDICTIONs which could then be TESTED by OBSERVATION.
What we now have is a theory which makes certain predictions which are so elastic as to permit fitting to any observation that may be made.
Therefore we can see in the graphs above a trend from 1880 to 1940 that suggests a staggering 3Celsius rise. We are told that this is due to AGW. Hence the maps show red dots in the areas where this AGW is said to have occured. We can then predict that the rise from 1940 to 2010 should have been a further 12 degrees, to account for the continuing rise in CO2 from 1940 point on. Except that the graphs above show that this didn’t happen. It refused to rise any more.
Ah yes, but we have NATURAL changes in climate you see. Natural changes so big they totally compensate for the AGW from 1940 to 2010 in this case, one presumes? Or was the natural change big enough to cause the warming from 1880 to 1940? Do we know? Do you care? One wonders why we worry about AGW at all when we have such large NATURAL changes occurring at unexpected moments in Earths climate cycle.
Whatever. There are RED dots all over Canada and Greenland where the climate change occuring could be natural or AGW. No way of telling really. What matters is the red dot. Not the observation, which could be said to contradict the red dot. And having put a spurious red dot where no data supports its existence, why not splurge it out over the upper 30degrees of the globe.
Its the new science. Its not based on using observations to challenge theories. It based on belief.
Nick:
“When you compute a global average, no explicit interpolation is necessary. You can interpolate points and then add them if you want but the summed result is still just a combination of the data points – just with different weighting. Where points are sparse, you’re just regarding them as representing a larger area. That increases the error range.”
You know I did really GET this point until I actually DID the math. I mean actually DID the calculation. I think some simple examples with a small grid might be useful to explain this to people. THERE IS NO EXPLICIT INTERPOLATION.
Maybe a joint post?
Hansen claims that reason he sees warming during the past decade (while HadCrut doesn’t) is because of his better Arctic coverage.
GISS doesn’t have better Arctic coverage and talk of how everything comes out in the wash does not impress me.
Hansen forecast rapidly warming temperatures for the 21st century – which are not happening.
Ryan says: July 27, 2010 at 7:35 am : “They show a massive amount of NATURAL warming in the years 1880 – 1940.”
Ryan says: July 27, 2010 at 9:00 am : “Ah yes, but we have NATURAL changes in climate you see”
What is NATURAL if atmospheric phenomena are physical and chemical processes and energetics?
Alexander K
“The concept of using statistical methods to replace actual measurement is not real-world thinking, which suggests that those who do this are inhabiting some kind of mental wonderlland.”
Hmm.
1. I land you in the middle of a mystery desert. Its 110F in your current location
I ask you to estimate the temperature in any given direction. What do you estimate?
2. I tell you that 1200km north of you is a spot where the temperature is 100F. East of you at 1200KM is spot that is 110F. South of you is a spot that is 80F. West of you at 1200km it is 115F. Which direction do you walk and why?
We estimate what we dont observe all the time.
@Stephen Fisher Mosher: “2. I tell you that 1200km north of you is a spot where the temperature is 100F. East of you at 1200KM is spot that is 110F. South of you is a spot that is 80F. West of you at 1200km it is 115F. Which direction do you walk and why?”
West. The point at 115F is probably an airport.
Ok Steve Mosher, let’s discuss:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/18/out-of-africa-a-new-paper-by-christy-on-surface-temperature-issues/
Steven Mosher
I remember a hot summer day in San Jose during the summer of 1998. It was 102 degrees, so we drove up to San Francisco to cool down. It was bitter cold in San Francisco.
Which direction do you drive, and why?