This is part 8, essentially a wrapup see all other parts 1-7 here: http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/
Guest post by Ken Stewart, July 2010
“…getting seriously fed up with the state of the Australian data.”
(Harry the mystery programmer, in the HARRY_READ_ME file released with the Climategate files.)
He’s not the only one. In a commendable effort to improve the state of the data, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has created the Australian High-Quality Climate Site Network. However, the effect of doing so has been to introduce into the temperature record a warming bias of 41.67 %. And their climate analyses on which this is based appear to increase this even further to around 66.67%.
This post is the summation of what I believe is the first ever independent check on the official climate record of Australia. It is also the first ever independent check on the official record of an entire continent.
I will try to keep it simple.
Here is the official version of “the climate trends and variations in the Australian instrumental record” published for the Australian public, the government, and all the world at http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/aus_cvac.shtml
Trend Map, 1910-2009:
Time Series Graph using their handy trend tool:
0.1 degree C per decade, or 1 degree per100 years.
In the BOM website appears this explanation:
The temperature timeseries are calculated from homogeneous or “high-quality” temperature datasets developed for monitoring long-term temperature trends and variability …….. Where possible, each station record in these datasets has been corrected for data “jumps” or artificial discontinuities caused by changes in observation site location, exposure, instrumentation or observation procedure. This involves identifying and correcting data problems using statistical techniques, visual checks and station history information or “metadata”.
and
“High-quality” Australian climate datasets have been developed in which homogeneity problems have been reduced or even eliminated.
I have given a very brief summary of this process in http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2010/05/12/the-australian-temperature-record-part-1-queensland/
(I should point out that this method was changed somewhat by Della-Marta et al (2004) who also used a distance weighting method as well and included some urban stations and stations with much shorter records.)
Torok and Nicholls (1996), authors of the first (published) homogenization, rightly state that
“ A high-quality, long-term surface air temperature dataset is essential for the reliable investigation of climate change and variability.”
Here is the map showing the 100 currently used High Quality stations that supposedly meet this requirement:
Before my first post, I asked BOM to explain some of the odd things I had noticed in the Queensland data. Amongst others, this statement by Dr David Jones, Head of Climate Monitoring and Prediction, National Climate Centre, Bureau of Meteorology, in an email dated 25 April 2010, caught my eye:
“On the issue of adjustments you find that these have a near zero impact on the all Australian temperature because these tend to be equally positive and negative across the network (as would be expected given they are adjustments for random station changes).”
This statement has been the yardstick for this study.
Not having access to the list of stations, the metadata, the software used, or the expertise of BOM, the average citizen would normally accept the published results as they stand. However I wanted to have a closer look. Surely the results of any adjustments should be easy to compare with the previous record.
I downloaded annual mean maxima and minima for each of the sites from BOM Climate Data Online, calculated annual means and plotted these. Frequently, two or three stations (some closed) were needed for the entire record from 1910-2009, and even then there sometimes were gaps in the record- e.g. from 1957 to 1964 many stations’ data has not been digitised. (But 8 years of missing data is nothing- many stations have many years of estimated data “filled in” to create the High Quality series). I also downloaded the annual means from the High Quality page, and plotted them. I then added a linear trend for each.
I have exhaustively rechecked data and calculations in all 100 sites before compiling this summation. I have decided to amend only one, Bowen, by creating a splice by reducing early data and omitting some data, so that the trend matches that of HQ. This is on the basis of no overlap at all, but makes the plot lines roughly meet. Unsatisfactory, and Bowen should be excluded. The net effect on the Queensland and Australian trends is negligible (0.01 C).
Let’s look at Dr Jones’ assertion for the whole of Australia.
“…a near zero impact on the all Australian temperature …”
WRONG.
We can look at the record in a number of ways- here is the graph of the average raw and adjusted temperatures for all 100 stations. The discrepancy is obvious. 
That’s 0.6 degrees C / 100 years for the raw data. The adjusted trend is 0.85.
Before anyone complains that anomalies give you a more accurate picture of trends across a large region, I also calculated anomalies from the 1961-1990 mean for the all Australian means (0.6 raw to 0.85 HQ increase)
and for all 100 stations (slightly different result): (0.6 raw to 0.9- 50%)
But the figure BOM publishes is 1.0C- that’s a two-thirds increase!
We can also look at the average adjustment for each station: + 0.23 degrees Celsius. (The table of all 100 stations is too large to include).
Or we can find the median adjustment (+ 0.275 C), and the range of adjustments:
So much for “these tend to be equally positive and negative across the network”.
We can also look at the “quality” of the High Quality stations.
Urban vs Non-urban:
“Please note: Stations classified as urban are excluded from the Australian annual temperature timeseries and trend map analyses. Urban stations have some urban influence during part or all of their record.” (http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/hqsites/site_networks.cgi?variable=meanT&period=annual&state=aus)
In Part 1 I showed how 3 Queensland sites listed as urban by Torok and Nicholls (1996) are now non-urban. Della-Marta et al resurrected a number of others in other states.
The full list is: Cairns AMO, Rockhampton AMO, Gladstone MO, Port Hedland AMO, Roebourne, Geraldton AMO, Albany AMO, Alice Springs AMO, Strathalbyn, Mount Gambier AMO, Richmond AMO, Mildura AMO, East Sale AMO, Cashmore Airport, Launceston Airport.
15% of the network is comprised of sites that BOM is at pains to assure us are not used to create the climate record.
Long records:
“… the number of stations is much smaller if only stations currently operating and with at least 80 years of data are considered. To increase the number of long- term stations available, previously unused data were digitised and a number of stations were combined to create composite records… all stations in the dataset (were) open by 1915.” (Torok and Nicholls)
Torok wanted 80 years of data: Della-Marta et al and BOM have settled for much less. There are six stations with no data before 1930 (80 years ago), but BOM has included these. Some are truly dreadful: Woomera- 1950; Giles- 1957; Newman- 1966.
As well, many of the sites have large slabs of data missing, with the HQ record showing “estimates” to fill in the missing years.
Here is a graph of the number of stations with data available for each year.
Note that only 70% of raw data is available for 1910; 90% by 1930; another drop from 1945 to 1960; and the huge drop off in HQ data this decade!
Data comparison:
“Generally, comparison observations for longer than five years were found to provide excellent comparison statistics between the old and new sites…… Comparisons longer than two years, and sometimes between one and two years, were also found to be useful if complete and of good quality… Poor quality comparisons lasting less than two years were generally found to be of limited use.” (Della-Marta et al, 2004)
Wouldn’t “excellent comparison statistics” be essential for such an important purpose? Apparently not. There are many sites with less than five years of overlapping data from nearby stations (up to 20 km apart). A number of sites have no overlap at all.
This results in enormous gaps in the temperature record. Here is the map of the High Quality network, with sites deleted if they are (a) listed as urban in 1996 (b) sites with less than 80 years of observations (c) sites with less than 5 years of comparative data overlap- or sometimes all of the above!
The sites left are concentrated in Eastern and South-Western Australia, with an enormous gap in the centre. Check the (admittedly very aprroximate) scale.
And finally…
Claims made in the State of the Climate report produced by BOM and CSIRO in March 2010.
Since 1960 the mean temperature in Australia has increased by about 0.7 °C . The long term trend in temperature is clear…
TRUE. But the raw data shows the mean temperature since 1910 has increased only 0.6 C.
Australian average temperatures are projected to rise by 0.6 to 1.5 ºC by 2030.
REALLY? That would require between 5 and 12 times the rate of warming seen in the raw temperature record, or between 3 and 7.5 times that shown by BOM’s published figures.
Much of Australia will be drier in coming decades
MAYBE NOT. See http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2010/03/20/political-science-101/
Our observations clearly demonstrate that climate change is real.
TRUE- that’s what climate does.
CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology will continue to provide observations and research so that Australia’s responses are underpinned by science of the highest quality.
“Highest quality”? REALLY?
Conclusion
This study shows a number of problems with the Australian High Quality Temperature Sites network, on which the official temperature analyses are based. Problems with the High Quality data include:
- It has been subjectively and manually adjusted.
- The methodology used is not uniformly followed, or else is not as described.
- Urban sites, sites with poor comparative data, and sites with short records have been included.
- Large quantities of data are not available, and have been filled in with estimates.
- The adjustments are not equally positive and negative, and have produced a major impact on the Australian temperature record.
- The adjustments produce a trend in mean temperatures that is roughly a quarter of a degree Celsius greater than the raw data does.
- The warming bias in the temperature trend is 41.67%, and in the anomaly trend is 50%.
- The trend published by BOM is 66.67% greater than that of the raw data.
The High Quality data does NOT give an accurate record of Australian temperatures over the last 100 years.
BOM has produced a climate record that can only be described as a guess.
The best we can say about Australian temperature trends over the last 100 years is “Temperatures have gone down and up where we have good enough records, but we don’t know enough.”
If Anthropogenic Global Warming is so certain, why the need to exaggerate?
It is most urgent and important that we have a full scientific investigation, completely independent of BOM, CSIRO, or the Department of Climate Change, into the official climate record of Australia.
I will ask Dr Jones for his response.
(Thanks to Lance for assistance with downloading data, and janama for his NSW work. Also Jo Nova for her encouragement.)
in other words, the whole thing is manufactured. the end product is a product of algorithms, not of measurements
and it was “the smoking gun at darwin zero” that first opened my eyes to these shenanigans!
If AGW is true, why the obvious obscuration.
This looks an interesting analysis thanks, but you start poorly by stating results with four significant figures, as if your calculations could be so accurate. Stating a value of “about 42%” makes more sense than “41.67%”. I will read a bit further anyway.
Bravo! If station data, which were never acquired for scientific purposes, are going to be used to estimate reputed changes of ~.1K/decade, then maintenance of a consistent datum-level throughout the period of record is mandatory. By constantly “adjusting” that level in the anomaly series, an unscientifcally arbitrary result is produced. You’ve done a great service by exposing this.
Ken, I’m curious;
How does the BOM produce those sexy “contour maps” of temperature trend with so few data points for the centre and lots of WA, such as for the period 1910 to 2009? (your fig 1). Your final figure suggests that well over 5 million square Km have no reliable data, including Alice Springs, at dead centre!!!!!!
Regards; Perplexed of Melbourne
Didn’t the Aussie electorate just reject a lot of politicians, who were out to impose a crushing tax & trade over the exaggerations of climate warming?
Adjusted data are results, not data. Extrapolated data points aren’t data either. This should be pointed out to the BOM, among others.
Congratulations on this detailed report. I wonder how D.Jones will wriggle out of this. But I am certain he will wriggle as he usually does when confronted with facts.
Thankyou thankyou for this analysis. For those of us scientists ‘Down Under’ who see the BOM and CSIRO’s prophecies on AGW offered as fact, it’s great to get an independent view. I’ve no doubt you’ll get a waffly explanation from the BOM. They’re terribly righteous.
The adjustments are important because temperatures are already well-below that which was predicted. The CO2/GHG increase to date indicates that temperature should have risen by about 1.4C (give or take a real increase in human-made aerosols reflecting sunlight and give or take the ocean absorbing more of the heating than should be expected).
So a 0.5C increase versus a 1.0C or 0.8C makes a big difference at this point. A 0.5C “real” increase means the warmers actually have to go back to the drawing board and global warming will probably not be a problem at all. A 1.0C or 0.8C means the warming will take longer than expected “and” the climate scientists just need to find a few more negatives like aerosols to explain the lack-of-warming to date.
These few tenths of adjustments are important.
An excellent post, confirms what us Australian skeptics always believed.
My next move is to email the “conclusions” to our politicians, TODAY ! with links to WUWT.
Very timely, we do have a Federal election in a couple of weeks time and the “Green Plans” are still on the books !
Very interesting. Did you plot a series with just the remaining stations that met the criteria? Regards Alex
“High quality data,” indeed– a swagman camping by a billabong, under the shade of a coolibah tree, could spit his jolly jumbuck with more oomph. Why is it, that every time some veddy official body deigns to publish HQD, disinterested observers rapidly expose everything as a charade? Here again, credentialed Cargo Cultists acting in bad faith under false pretenses have vented noxious AGW fumes. Faugh!
Found Dr. Elsasser’s 1942, “Infrared Radiation Heat Transfer in the Atm” on ScribeD.
Page 23 is particularly interesting!
Note to CTM: Please move to tips and notes, which is not working right currently (Tuesday evening.)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/34962513/Elsasser1942
Looking at the graph, a rough visual trace drawn between about 1915 and about 1955 shows a forty-year trend of “flat or slightly down.” A similarly rough visual trace drawn between 1955 and 2005 shows a fifty-year trend of “most definitely up.”
If you did statistical analysis against both the raw temperature data set and the adjusted temperature data set for each of those two periods, 1915-1955 and 1955-2005, what would the significance numbers look like for each set for each period?
I notice that BoM gives ENSO as now higher than it has been since early 2008. I wonder if that’s an omen of more decline in need of hiding.
The earth is supposed to be warming out of control this century. If it were, these people would not be having to squeeze a few fake tenths of a degree out of the data sets.
The whole global warming story has become a massive farce. Why would any self-respecting person want to be associated with it?
What Steve said.
“0.1 degree C per decade, or 1 degree per 100 years.”
So if you only have to fudge 0.01 degree C per year, no problem.
Great work Ken. I look forward to Dr Jones’ response. Any chance you could get your work into a peer-reviewed journal?
Looks to me like the adjustments were about equal … just not temporally. Cooling adjustments during the early years and warming adjustments later on.
Any chance of publishing this?
Peer review would make it stronger and may require a refutation from BOM.
Perhaps with an academic co-author.
Why does New Zealand pop into my head reading about all this?
I think the comment that “the adjustments have been equally positive and negative” means that they have biased the older years by making them colder and more recent years by making them warmer.
if this is Dr. David Arfon Jones face book page his bias should be seen in its political context
Well, yeh, but this is only a very small portion of the globe. I’m really extra sure the rest of it is very reliable! Well, OK, forget about New Zealand, too. And it’s already been shown how we don’t really need thermometers to know what the anomalies are in certain parts of the world. And the oceans, that’s where most of the world is, shows that its getting really hot down there and we know those are more truthful than land thermometers anyway, so this issue probably doesn’t matter…………..starting now!
For years now I have conceded that the world has indeed been warming, although the source of that warming was, IMO, not because of human influence. I am really wondering if I need to rethink my position. Perhaps the world is not warming at all and the warming we thought we were seeing has been completely manufactured through data adjustments/manipulation.
But…. but…. the debate was over, the science was settled, no one told us our work would be checked by independent nitpickers looking for faults……. this is just sooo unfair.
Visual inspection shows that the hottest zones have the fewest sensor locations. I think the next hottest have just slightly more sensors, and so on. I tried to do an overlay, but the maps are not congruent. It’s worse than we thought.
Peter Jones says:
July 27, 2010 at 7:47 pm
“I think the comment that “the adjustments have been equally positive and negative” means that they have biased the older years by making them colder and more recent years by making them warmer.”
I believe your statement is true.
As they say here in France: “Why do simple when you can do complicated?”
I am willing to bet that they followed the GISS script on how to manufacture more warming than actually exists.
The pattern match is remarkable.
Is it possible to have a meeting with Dr. Jones’ staff who did the work, and figure out why the differences are as they are? In technically based companies with stockholders and bonuses to consider, it is common for a technical person’s “I think maybe” to become “absolutely, without question” three levels up the management chain. Only bankruptcy or insolvency brings reality to the game. Perhaps that is the problem with politicians: there is no equivalent of creditors (voters) taking the shirt from your back, so neither you nor your successor has to ‘fess up to what has gone on.
Max Hugoson says: “Found Dr. Elsasser’s 1942, “Infrared Radiation Heat Transfer in the Atm” on ScribeD. Page 23 is particularly interesting!”
The link is largely illegible in browsers other than Internet Explorer. I got an error message in IE citing a malicious add-on at that site.
NOTA BENE: The continuing risible defense of the indefensible by the Climate Crisis Crew makes me wonder whether they are stonewalling not because they think anyone will believe them, but because they’re hoping skeptics’ focus on the known lies will keep anyone from delving deeper to an even more fundamental layer of fabrication and pseudoscience.
“Pay no attention to that Mann behind the curtain, and whatever you do, don’t look behind him for yet another curtain.”
DoctorJJ says:
July 27, 2010 at 8:28 pm
“Perhaps the world is not warming at all and the warming we thought we were seeing has been completely manufactured through data adjustments/manipulation.”
————————————–
At Last ! You’ve got that bit right.
Bit of a slow learner, but don’t dispare, there are another 100 million out there who are at the bottom of the learning curve !!
They just need a bit more time !!
These records were written down in log books, what is the rounding error? Plus or minus 0.5 degrees perhaps. Thermometers must be calibrated so they show the same measurement for the same temperature, I assume this was not done. What is this error? If it is 0.2 degrees or greater, then the total error for just these two items matches what is being measured. Is there a consistent time of day when measurements were taken either at a site or nation wide? Measuring even an hour later than normal would change the measurement significantly. Are there early morning measurement on Saturday? Perhaps Friday night at the pub would interfere with a timely rising! These measurements cannot be used with the accuracy desired to show AGW!
DoctorJJ says: “For years now I have conceded that the world has indeed been warming, although the source of that warming was, IMO, not because of human influence. I am really wondering if I need to rethink my position. Perhaps the world is not warming at all and the warming we thought we were seeing has been completely manufactured through data adjustments/manipulation.”
Except the satellite records since 1979 are a relatively uncontaminated and robust data set.
rbateman says:
July 27, 2010 at 5:51 pm
Not exactly. The Labor government were pushing for a cap and trade to be introduced BEFORE Copenhagen so that the then Prime Minister could bask in self adulation live on stage. The Opposition were weakly going for the “me too” approach and agreeing to it, when us neanderthal troglodyte reactionaries started emailing, writing etc demanding they man up. The Opposition dumped its leader, the new guy Tony Abbott managed (just) to have the cap and trade defeated, the media predicted he’d get walloped by the electorate in response, but at two bye elections for the House of Representatives soon after there were swings towards the Opposition. Some time later, partly (though not only) because of that debacle, Labor panicked, axed the Prime Minister and replaced him with our current PM Julia Gillard. She’s desperately trying to walk both sides of the AGW street, making the usual fashionable “climate change” comments but desperately trying to avoid any firm commitment to a cap and trade. There is an election coming up, and it’s likely that Labor will get back in on the basis of Gillard managing to look a lot more conservative on most issues, and who knows what they’ll do once they are back in, so we’re not out of the woods yet.
They thought they could get away with it. And why not — there were no “peers” who were going to “review” their work, that’s for sure.
DoctorJJ says:
July 27, 2010 at 8:28 pm
“For years now I have conceded that the world has indeed been warming, although the source of that warming was, IMO, not because of human influence. I am really wondering if I need to rethink my position. Perhaps the world is not warming at all and the warming we thought we were seeing has been completely manufactured through data adjustments/manipulation.”
Like you, I had conceded, in times past, that the world has been warming. Given the work done here and other sites, I’ve maintained for sometime now, no one can prove the globe is warming. Malevolent data adjustments have been shown beyond doubt. Many earlier posts here have shown vast areas where we don’t even track the data. Just by eyeballing it, I’d say half of the land mass of the globe isn’t tracked with a thermometer by the prevalent climate tracking organizations. Of course, there is always the well-known good area coverage of the SST’s. There isn’t a sane person in the world that can tell you they absolutely know the earth is warming.
The lack of coverage is excepted but the warmists say the can extrapolate the temps for areas they don’t cover. The willful manipulation of the data has been shown. On this post and many others. The poor sightings of temp stations have been exposed to the point of concession, except it is maintained that the statistical difference is null in the sightings that are incorrect.
Yeh, given the interpolation of temps we don’t track and the manipulation of the data we do track, the warming inferred by the poorly sighted temp tracking stations could probably equal the other deceptive mechanisms in the warmista’s arsenal. In other words, the fudge factor of one is congruent to the fudge factor of two, which is congruent to the fudge factor of three. See proof positive we’re warming! No one can state affirmatively we are warming over any significant period of time.
What galls me the most, is that people that truly believe this tripe don’t hold the people making the assertions to a standard of truth. The impending Himalaya melt for example. The assertion was something simply pulled out of one’s posterior, yet, it is believed. Later it is shown to be a fabrication. Alarmists aren’t angry at the person that misled them and exposed them as people that will believe anything. They get angry at the people that showed the Himalaya meltists to be frauds and charlatans. Just like the Pat Sajek posting earlier, they don’t get offended that the mouth pieces of CAGW don’t live like they espouse, they get offended at the people that point to the hypocrisy of the way they live. Just coming from me, I’d expect more from my preacher.
Email from Phil Jones to Tom Karl and Wei-Chyung Wang, 12 July 2007
“Had an email from David Jones of BMRC, Melbourne. He said they are ignoring anybody who has dealings with CA…”
Ken, did Dr David Jones actually correspond by email with you on 25 April 2010 or with someone else? Perhaps there are two David Jones’ at the BOM, one who answers requests irrespective of who sent them and the other, unbeknown to we Australian taxpayers who employ him, only corresponds with his personally vetted climate cogniscenti.
As I understand it, old records are manual reads, so a 0.5 degree error is certainly a possibility. The modern readings are down to a 0.1 degree, so the error is probably 0.05 (though I don’t know what the instrument accuracy is).
On the second point, the BOM reports minimum and maximum for the 24 hours prior to 9am. In the old days, this was done using thermometers that showed a max/min value, which was reset with each read at 9am. In modern times, they just keep monitoring them and determine what was the max/min. However, I don’t believe there is any adjustment made for daylight saving, the 24 hour range is different in the states with daylight saving in summer as compared to those states without daylight saving, or historical temperatures before daylight saving was introduced.
As the max/min is almost always well away from 9am, this means there is almost no TOBS bias.
Ken has not yet got around to the all the uncertainties. Waht aboiut taking the mean of a maximum and minimum measured once a day. The error can be a degree or two. Then averaging for the week, month, year. Each stage uncertainties, usually skewed. Then subtract from the average for the reference period. The true uncertainties must greatly exceed the supposed “trend”
jorgekafkazar says:
July 27, 2010 at 9:15 pm
NOTA BENE: Yes, they are stonewalling, for behind the next curtain they are certainly up to something.
How long & loud did NOAA scream about oil leak worse than we previously imagined, then Thad Allen pops up today and asks:
“Where’s the oil?”. 800 skimmers reportedly gathered 54 gallons today. Say what?
He went > thataway <.
The difference between raw data and the ‘high quality’ temp graphs at the Aust BOM is well-known. For example, Darwin’s temps in the early part of the 1900s have been dumbed down in the HQ data sets. Just check the raw data at:-
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=36&p_display_type=dataFile&p_startYear=&p_stn_num=014016
against the HQ data at:-
http://reg.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/hqsites/site_data.cgi?variable=maxT&area=nt&station=014015&dtype=raw&period=annual&ave_yr=5
For instance, 1910 has max av temp at 32.4C – the HQ graph shows 31.8C.
This happens right across the board. No wonder we’re warming when the earlier temps have been ‘dumbed down’.
And there was a Stevenson Shield operating at Darwin PO from the 1890s.
andy at 5:37 pm % ?
Why make a big deal about significant figures when it is immaterial to the context of the topic?
If I have $3 and you only have $2, then you have two-thirds the amount I have. How many significant figures would you use to represent such a notion in percentage terms?
John F. Hultquist says: “andy at 5:37 pm % ? Why make a big deal about significant figures when it is immaterial to the context of the topic?”
Desperation?
DoctorJJ says:
July 27, 2010 at 8:28 pm
I’ve been having the exact same concern this last year, and it’s growing…
I just checked the records for my local BOM Weather station. July mean was 15.3 degrees. The mean for the last 70 years was 15.4
Great work. Not one bit surprised at he bias from the BoM. Australia is the “me too” country next to New Zeland. NZ has an ETS, so too will Australia if either Labor or the Liberals “win” the election in August.
Shame they haven’t yet had a whif of the fact that every other country, in particular, is or had dropped any such policy.
Good on Australia, the lucky country where, soon, we’ll all be lucky to have jobs!
Well, spelling is shoot, not a surprise after working 31.5 hrs in 48!!
Great work. Not one bit surprised at he bias from the BoM. Australia is the “me too” country next to New Zealand. NZ has an ETS, so too will Australia if either Labor or the Liberals “win” the election in August.
Shame they haven’t yet had a whif of the fact that every other country, in particular the US, is about to or has dropped any such policy.
Good on Australia, the lucky country where, soon, we’ll all be lucky to have jobs!
andy:
Yes I agree with you it’s silly to say 41.67%- should have said “over 40%” – I’ll change that now. Touche ‘
GrantB:
Yes Dr Jones did email me.
Everyone: thanks for your comments!
Ken
Ken’s being very cool about it, as perhaps he should, but when you actually look into it there is evidence of straight forward fraud IMO.
There is site called Bourke Airport in New South Wales – it’s listed as a Rural Site as it is out of town and is therefore included in the national temperature analysis.
Yet Bourke Airport was established in 1999 and has only 9 years of data! So where did the data from 1910 – 1999 come from? Well it matches perfectly with Brewarrina Hospital 80kms away in the heart of Brewarrina that has a record back to 1910 – well it’s not an exact match because the earlier years have been systematically adjusted downwards along with the typical rural town UHI influence yet it’s included as Rural!
The same technique has been used for Glenn Innes airport which was established in 1997 yet by using the Glenn Innes Post Office data with it’s typical UHI ( increasing min temp) they have a record going back to 1910 yet it’s also classified as Rural.
I only studied NSW but I’m pretty sure it is similar throughout the country.
The temperature data-set http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/hqsites/ includes the following allegedly ‘high quality’ stations with impeccable records dating back to 1910:
HALLS CREEK AIRPORT, BROOME AIRPORT, PORT HEDLAND AIRPORT, LEARMONTH AIRPORT, CARNARVON AIRPORT, MEEKATHARRA AIRPORT, GERALDTON AIRPORT, ALBANY AIRPORT, KALGOORLIE-BOULDER AIRPORT, DARWIN AIRPORT (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/the-smoking-gun-at-darwin-zero/), TENNANT CREEK AIRPORT, ALICE SPRINGS AIRPORT, WOOMERA AERODROME (Woomera Village established in 1947), MOUNT GAMBIER AERO, WEIPA AERO (Weipa township was constructed by Comalco in 1962), CAIRNS AERO, TOWNSVILLE AERO, CHARTERS TOWERS AIRPORT, LONGREACH AERO, BOULIA AIRPORT, ROCKHAMPTON AERO, BUNDABERG AERO, CHARLEVILLE AERO, WALGETT AIRPORT AWS, CANBERRA AIRPORT (Foundation stone laid in 1913 http://vrroom.naa.gov.au/Images/Laying%20Foundation%20Stone%20-%20Federal%20City%20-%20Canberra1_4994301_tcm11-18009.jpg )…..
…..many more, but that’s probably enough to follow my drift — Orville Wright made the first powered flight in December 1903.
Don’t worry, Ken, it will all be sorted out by Julia Gillard’s granny’s knitting circle of 150 randomly chosen Australian citizens. Maybe she will ask the statisticians at the BOM to help her with the citizen selection process? Or maybe each citizen will be allowed to represent all citizens living within 1,200km of where they live?
Good boy. You deserve a medal.
The temperature data-set http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/hqsites/ includes the following allegedly ‘high quality’ stations with impeccable records dating back to 1910:
HALLS CREEK AIRPORT, BROOME AIRPORT, PORT HEDLAND AIRPORT, LEARMONTH AIRPORT, CARNARVON AIRPORT, MEEKATHARRA AIRPORT, GERALDTON AIRPORT, ALBANY AIRPORT, KALGOORLIE-BOULDER AIRPORT, DARWIN AIRPORT (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/the-smoking-gun-at-darwin-zero/), TENNANT CREEK AIRPORT, ALICE SPRINGS AIRPORT, WOOMERA AERODROME (Woomera Village established in 1947), MOUNT GAMBIER AERO, WEIPA AERO (Weipa township was constructed by Comalco in 1962), CAIRNS AERO, TOWNSVILLE AERO, CHARTERS TOWERS AIRPORT, LONGREACH AERO, BOULIA AIRPORT, ROCKHAMPTON AERO, BUNDABERG AERO, CHARLEVILLE AERO, WALGETT AIRPORT AWS, CANBERRA AIRPORT (Foundation stone laid in 1913 )…..
…..many more, but that’s probably enough to make my drift — Orville Wright made the first powered flight in December 1903.
A little bit OT:
In swedish, there is a word spelled “bom”. It has several meanings, one of them is: a total miss, such as in shooting, when you miss the target by meters.
It´s kind of funny, for a Swede, learning about something really called “BOM”.
But maybe the swedish meaning could be accurate, in their case?
janama
‘Yet Bourke Airport was established in 1999 and has only 9 years of data! So where did the data from 1910 – 1999 come from?’
The data probably came from:-
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=36&p_display_type=dataFile&p_startYear=&p_stn_num=048013
Blurryell !
Sorry for the double dip, I thought my original post got lost somewhere out there.
Isn’t this climate scandal a bit like a children’s pass the parcel. It started as a huge thing which impressed everyone – everyone wanted it, but bit by bit by bit the wrapping has been taken off and now even though the music keeps going it’s obvious that there’s not much inside. Just how many more wrappings do we have to remove from this “THING”, until we discover what lies inside?
What is it? A tube of smarties?
And, with all the wrappings strewn about the floor, and the kids gone off to play leaving just the adults passing this parcel, when someone finally reveals the truth inside the parcel there’s a fair chance they’ll loose it in the mess on the floor!
John F. Hultquist says:
July 27, 2010 at 10:27 pm
andy at 5:37 pm % ?
Why make a big deal about significant figures when it is immaterial to the context of the topic?
To avoid criticism from the pendantic AGW crowd ? perhaps?
For those people who are dedicated to the AGW religion, I suggest you look at the BBC’s Britannia TV series on the changes in the UK landscape over the years since 1584. Climate change has been constant over millions of years, and it will continue. See for yourself. A eyefull of history is much better than an earful of political science.
It wasn’t CO2 that caused the changes that the presenter discussed, as London only had 220,000 people when the original book was written.
“The whole global warming story has become a massive farce. Why would any self-respecting person want to be associated with it?”
Because over the last 10 years, thousands of people have invested billions and billions of dollars in it being real.
Just another instance of when the data does not agree with the model or theory, then the data has to be manipulated/mangled/tortured to make it agree with that model or theory.
This is the cornerstone of warmist climate science. I repeat: this is the cornerstone of warmist climate science.
Is it any wonder the typical climate ‘scientist’ desperately tries to avoid any communication or debate with sceptics?
Bengt Abelsson says:
July 27, 2010 at 11:56 pm
A little bit OT:
In swedish, there is a word spelled “bom”. It has several meanings, one of them is: a total miss, such as in shooting, when you miss the target by meters.
The difference is that the BOM couldn’t miss, they estimated their own bulls-eye’s.
Jeff (of Colorado) says:
July 27, 2010 at 9:26 pm
These records were written down in log books, what is the rounding error? Plus or minus 0.5 degrees perhaps. Thermometers must be calibrated so they show the same measurement for the same temperature, I assume this was not done. What is this error? If it is 0.2 degrees or greater, then the total error for just these two items matches what is being measured. Is there a consistent time of day when measurements were taken either at a site or nation wide? Measuring even an hour later than normal would change the measurement significantly. Are there early morning measurement on Saturday? Perhaps Friday night at the pub would interfere with a timely rising! These measurements cannot be used with the accuracy desired to show AGW!
________________________________________________________
That has always been my biggest beef.
“The global temperature rise is 0.6C +/- 5C” [/sarc] Only they forget to add in the error to the statement.
AJStrata did an excellent analysis of the error at : http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/11420 [Alarmists Hide Truth About (Lack Of) Global Warming]
He has three other good articles:
Stunning: NASA GISS Admits No Evidence of AGW In The US, Won’t Be For Decades!
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/12532
NASA GISS Admits Current Temps Not Historically Warmer
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/12516
Proof Why Global Warming Alarmists Are Mathematically Wrong
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/12246
(if I recall correctly AJStrata mentioned he works (worked?) for NASA)
This is the government. This means the bosses do what the government tells them to do. The conclusion must be that the government has instructed them to do this.
Right?
I will ask Dr Jones for his response: Don’t hold your breathe.
Dr David Jones has emailed me before asking that I direct questions to the BOM through him. He has answered most, after branding me as a person who puts the emails of others into public view.
In summary, we agree to disagree. I show him what I consider to be valid quantitative data, he makes generalised excuses and nothing seems to change. An oft-repeated line is for me to go to the BoM library and extract data manually from the PhD thesis of Simon Torok. Well, I’m not paid to do that, so I won’t. The people who are paid to do that should do the work with high quality and report it freely to interested taxpayers and decision makers.
The last email I sent to David essentially asked which of the statements appeared to be correct on the WUWT site last week. Too early for an answer, yet.
Settled science: Can everyplace really be warming much faster than everyplace else?
[Africa: Allegedly warming faster than the global average]
Prof Gordon Conway, the outgoing chief scientist at the British government’s Department for International Development, and former head of the philanthropic Rockefeller Foundation, said in a scientific paper that the continent is already warming faster than the global average
North Pole Heating Faster than anywhere else
Many scientists seem mystified as to why the North Polar region is warming up several times faster than the rest of the planet.
Australia warming faster than rest of globe, climate report says
Kuwait: Alarm as Gulf waters warm three times faster than average
The seawater temperature in Kuwait Bay has been increasing at three times the global average rate since 1985
Antarctic air is warming faster than rest of world – Times Online
AIR temperatures above the entire frozen continent of Antarctica have risen three times faster than the rest of the world during the past 30 years.
Tibet warming up faster than anywhere in the world | Reuters
(Reuters) – Tibet is warming up faster than anywhere else in the world, Xinhua news agency said on Sunday.
European temperatures rising faster than world average, report says – The New York Times.
Sundarbans water warming faster than global average
In the Sundarbans, surface water temperature has been rising at the rate of 0.5 degree Celsius per decade over the past three decades, eight times the rate of global warming, says a new study.
Climate change heating up China faster than rest of the world – report
In a new report, the China Meteorological Administration now says climate change is heating up the People’s Republic faster than the rest of the world
Spain warming faster than rest of northern hemisphere: study
The country has experienced average temperature increases of 0.5 degrees Celsius per decade since 1975, a rate that is “50 percent superior to the average of nations in the northern hemisphere”, the study by the Spanish branch of the Clivar research network found.
U.S. West warming faster than rest of world: study
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The U.S. West is heating up at nearly twice the rate of the rest of the world and is likely to face more drought conditions in many of its fast-growing cities, an environmental group said on Thursday.
A New Leaderboard at the U.S. Open « Climate Audit
Four of the top 10 are now from the 1930s: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939, while only 3 of the top 10 are from the last 10 years (1998, 2006, 1999). Several years (2000, 2002, 2003, 2004) fell well down the leaderboard, behind even 1900.
Global warming is occurring twice as fast in the Arctic as in the rest of the world
Lake Superior is Warming [much stronger than the global average]
The really striking thing here is that the long-term trend in Superior is so much stronger than the global average. Well, we know that the upper midwest is warming more rapidly than the global average, but not this much more rapidly.
Himalayas warming faster than global average
New Delhi, June 4 (IANS) Northwestern Himalayas has become 1.4 degrees Celsius warmer in the last 100 years, a far higher level of warming than the 0.5-1.1 degrees for the rest of the globe, Indian scientists have found.
[Korean Peninsula]: Allegedly warming twice the global average]
According to the Korea Meteorological Administration, the climate has been warming on the Korean Peninsula twice more rapidly than in the rest of the world over the past century.
DoctorJJ says: July 27, 2010 at 8:28 pm
For years now I have conceded that the world has indeed been warming, although the source of that warming was, IMO, not because of human influence. I am really wondering if I need to rethink my position. Perhaps the world is not warming at all and the warming we thought we were seeing has been completely manufactured through data adjustments/manipulation.
This occurred to me several months ago. I am amazed at the consistency of the data, whether it be USA, NZ or Australia. They must all be operating from the same SNAFU statistics manual.
rbateman says: July 27, 2010 at 9:05 pm
I am willing to bet that they followed the GISS script on how to manufacture more warming than actually exists.
The pattern match is remarkable.
I agree. Although there are a couple of subtle differences. The USA data is hinged in the 1960s, and is rotated 6°CCW. This data appears hinged post 1985 and they have close to 8° of CCW rotation. Must be trying to catch up
Michael Cejnar:
At July 27, 2010 at 7:32 pm you say:
“Any chance of publishing this?
Peer review would make it stronger and may require a refutation from BOM.
Perhaps with an academic co-author.”
Why should Ken Stewart republish with any co-author?
He did the work so why give credit for some of the work to some “academic” who did not do the work?
He has published his work here. And he may choose to publish it elsewhere, too. But he has published it here. The peer review of this thread may assist him to improve his work prior to republishing it in some other place (e.g a journal). However, his findings are presented here. Science is about available knowledge and not about where that knowledge is available.
Importantly, there has been no significant development in understanding of climate behaviour from any part of adademia in the past two decades. But several academics have co-authored and published many ‘peer reviewed’ papers in journals. This co-authorship encourages a ‘pass’ in peer review because those in the co-author club peer review the work of each other.
So, giving an undeserved share of the credit for Ken Stewart’s work to some “academic” would only serve to encourage the malaise in climatology that exists in academia.
Richard
jorgekafkazar says:
July 27, 2010 at 9:15 pm
Max Hugoson says: “Found Dr. Elsasser’s 1942, “Infrared Radiation Heat Transfer in the Atm” on ScribeD. Page 23 is particularly interesting!”
The link is largely illegible in browsers other than Internet Explorer. I got an error message in IE citing a malicious add-on at that site.
I did not have trouble with IE and (so far) have not had a mal ware problem.
The paper is extremely long but well written. I became very nostalgic for the time when phyicists built their conclusions on theory and experimental results and then used logic and mathematics to create a model that others could challenge.
I particularly liked the comment on page 77 “the ice ages might be due to changes in radiative properties of the atmosphere caused by changes in the carbon dioxide content, an idea which has long since been abandoned as an untenable generalisation”
But that was before science funding changed their mind as to the answer they needed to come up with!
The paper reminded me of a recent thread discussing the effect of greenhouse gases on the average temperature of the earth. From Elsassar’s paper I came to the conclusion that the calculation for water was very difficult since it involves both clouds and vapour as well as convection and rain. Although we can hypothesise about the temperature of what the earth would be if it were a black body with no atmosphere, we know that this is not the reality, so the impact of adding water is more than just a greenhouse effect. However the CO2 case is simpler. It is sufficiently opaque in the 13 to 18 micron range that for 18% of outgoing IR, radiation into space does not take place until the upper troposphere which is at about 230K compared with 290K at the surface. By my calculation (using the 4th power law) this reduces the energy radiated by about 60%. Since this applies to 18% of the total spectrum, as a first approximation, one might assume that radiation accross the rest of the spectrum would have to increase by about 60x 18/82 to compensate. That is about 12%.Using the same power law the temperature at the surface would therefore have to change by about 3% – about 9 degrees. In one sense this is an overestimate since water vapour also absorbs over these wavelengths (so I am double counting) but in another sense it is an underestimate since not all the 82% is radiated at 290K. However I am only trying to get an order of magnitude in order to pose a question which has bugged me for some time. As far as I can see, the height at which CO2 radiates into space is already close to the tropopause, which is the minimum temperature found in the atmosphere. Can someone therefore explain to me how adding more CO2 above what we have now can reduce the energy radiated into space any further.
This observation may be more worrying than it might seem. All the energy absorbed by the earth has to be radiated back into space somehow. At the moment most of the heat is radiated by the earth itself (particularly at wavelengths around 10 micron). The next largest amount is radiated by water vapour from various levels of the atmosphere and the remainder is radiated by CO2 from the upper troposphere.
Within the uppper troposphere/tropopause CO2 and water vapour are equal emmiters but above the tropopause CO2 is the main coolant. So if the warming effect is already at maximum but the cooling effect is not, it seems to me that as more CO2 is added to the atmosphere there should be a nett cooling effect. Can someone with more knowledge explain why this is not the case.
Can some one help me here? In Steve Goddards post “GISS Swiss Cheeze” GISS shows the South Eastern portion of Australia as not having warmed at all, Central Australia warming .2 to .5 degrees and South Western Australia warming .5 to 1 degree. From Ken’s excellent post SE Australia has the greatest concentration of recording sites, the Centre has the least. The BoM map however shows the Centre warming by 2 degrees, four times the GISS figure. My question is ; for an immense area with little coverage we have two results, differing by a factor of 4. GISS it would seem thinks Australia is warming much more slowly than does BoM.
BoM obviously wants to show the big boys that we can warm with the best of them. Problem is; which one is more correct?
Ken,
Interesting analysis. Could I raise an additional matter. The record for Australia runs only from 1910, as the BOM considers the earlier readings to be unreliable, as I understand it. Yet we have an estimate of mean GLOBAL temperature that runs back half a century beyond that point! How does the Australian data contribute to the global data? The dropping of the pre-1910 data is convenient, because it would include a very warm period known as the ‘Federation Drought’. (The Australian Commonwealth was created by the federation of six colonies in 1901, for those not from here). The whole question of the reliability of records before 1910 is thus of crucial importance – especially if we are to reject ALL pre-1910 data, but accept some post-1910 data that are of questionable quality. I wonder if you have looked (or might in future look) at the basis for the rejection of the pre-1901 data, and how the global record is constructed if it is not reliable enough for an Australian record pre-1910?
It could be even worse than we thought. There are divergences from the “raw” data that Ken has downloaded and the CRU2010 data that the Met office released after climategate that are “Based on the original temperature observations sourced from records held by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology” which are apparently taken of the CLIMAT reports.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/monitoring/subsets.html
Here are a couple of comparisons of the HQ stations with the files the Met office released.
These are some of the results I got when comparing the CRU stations with the BOM.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=510
Hall s Creek
http://members.westnet.com.au/rippersc/hccru2010.jpg
http://members.westnet.com.au/rippersc/hccru2010line.jpg
Note that 2007, 2008,2009 are cooler in the met office version and the slope actually cools from 1950 once you drop off the 1899 figure (the only year that Phil Jones used from the old town that is 12kms and 63 metres downhill from the new town)
Meekatharra
http://members.westnet.com.au/rippersc/meekacru2010.jpg
http://members.westnet.com.au/rippersc/meekacru2010line.jpg
Note the same thing 2007-2009 and the lesser slope from the bom data .
Which lot is the “raw” data? I would find it strange if the CRU/ Met Office actually adjusted cooling into the BOM data.
Then there is this that was done by CSIRO for the timber industry
http://www.timber.org.au/resources/ManualNo1-ClimateData.pdf
Graeme W says:
July 27, 2010 at 9:55 pm
“As I understand it, old records are manual reads, so a 0.5 degree error is certainly a possibility. The modern readings are down to a 0.1 degree, so the error is probably 0.05 (though I don’t know what the instrument accuracy is).”
Any reasonably skilled met observer can read an old-fashioned standard thermometer to 0.1 degree F (error +/-0.05 degree F). Or in Centrigrade, with half degree points marked, to 0.05 degree. The accuracy and stability of those manual thermometers was considerably better than most of the digital recorders used today, which have to be “calibrated”, leaving room for endless fudging. You can believe the old pen and ink raw data, back several hundred years. By contrast, numbers on a computer can too easily be manipulated or downright falsified.
(Occasionally, a thermometer’s mercury or alcohol thread may snap without being immediately noticed, when readings with a bias of a few tenths of a degree are possible – in front of me right now I’ve got an old one of mine I used to use as the wet bulb and swing manually to get the depression, which has a disconnected 0.2F bit of thread at the top. It’s easy to correct for once you spot the problem though).
I don’t think there’s any doubt that there has been some warming during the satellite era. The positive PDO just happens to run during this period. Also, I think there’s little doubt the 1930s were warmer than present in many parts of the world. The number of record highs is proof. Therefore, we have a situation where much of the changes are to make older temps lower. That produces a more consistent degree of warming and a large amount than what is likely to be the actual case.
In any event, it will all work its way out in the next few years. If Joe Bastardi is right and we see a big La Niña next winter, the warmers will face lots and lots of questions.
As an absolute layman , I was wondering why on earth temperature measurements are so often taken at airports , doesnt the masses of fiercly hot air blown out of the aircrafts engines mix with the normal air and warm it .
Over a day thousands of gallons of fuel would be burnt launching the aircraft into the sky . , so why do people think that thermometers at airports wouldnt record a warmer than natural temperature ?
Why measure temperatures at airports ? Surely the blowtorch effects of jet engines hitting the runway will make the ground absorb significant amounts of heat – enough to skew temperature readings to the warm side . Tens of thousands of liters of jet fuel being burned every day must make the temperature reading false – or am i missing something ?
The last 60 years of data (1950 – 2010) gives a warming trend of 0.18C per decade – 80% more warming than the 0.1C per decade derived from the first graph. That seems significant. I wonder why it wasn’t highlighted in this article? Surely 60 years of data qualifies as ‘climate’, does it not? Indeed, it’s clear that *all* of the warming over the last 100 years occurred since 1950.
Great analysis. I hope this proves to be another nail in coffin of ‘panic’!
I’ve spent a little time trying to find a single remote (ie not urbanised in recent years) weather station that shows the same warming trends in raw temperature data as in the global anomaly data – without success. If the global ‘anomaly’ trend always exceeds the trend from raw station data – surely any pretence that the global anomaly is a true reflection has to be abandoned because the pitfalls in going from to point measurements to area averages are myriad.
I was fascinated by your thermal image a few days ago which illustrated the difference in heat signature between asphalt and concrete. No one mentioned the fact that the trees in the pic were much cooler than anything else (which makes sense: they spend the day converting incident solar radiation to sugar if I recall my school biology – or maybe it’s the lack of CO2 around the leaves that makes them cooler :). If there is any rise in recent temperatures, you’ve got to account for land-use changes – I’d want to discount any stations with any potential for advection from urban areas if you really want to spot trends of 0.1C per decade.
I would think many cattle stations in Australia have long term term temperature data – and would probably be free of UHI influences – anyone got any contacts?
The poor science being practised globally by (so-called) climate scientists is spectacular.
I think quite a few of these folks need to go back to college and repeat the tutorials in basic experimental methods.
First: propose a theory (Man-made CO2 is heating up the planet).
Second: design the experiment (measure CO2 levels both man-made & natural & temperature at say 1000 randomised points on the globe (also consider multi-altitude global measurements) in a repeatable calibrated manner over a period of say 1000 years.)
Third: collate the data and report, peer review & publish (peer meaning someone of equal standing not your best mate, review meaning critical examination not exec summary only)
(Note: just because it is hard to do these things well doesn’t mean you shouldn’t even try to do them!)
No.
First & last: publish finalising your theory – using whatever existing data you can manipulate to fit your theory. If no data exists – invent it in a “model”.
The networks of weather stations were never designed to be used to gather data for high fidelity temperature measurements as needed for the above. Its about time someone stands up and shakes these fools by the shoulders.
The word fraud was used on here the other day – but I don’t actually believe these folks believe they are doing anything wrong. They are just bad scientists.
The Tsunami of Truth – coming to a climate research unit near you!
Ken what does the full range of daily max and min temperatures looks like? In Canada the increase in the average of the yearly mean since 1900 is being caused by cooler maximum summer temps, and not as cold minimum winter temps. It would be interesting to see a graph of the entire range of a year’s temperature to see if there is any changes in the min and max for each year.
anthony holmes says:
July 28, 2010 at 4:45 am
“As an absolute layman , I was wondering why on earth temperature measurements are so often taken at airports ,…”
There are almost always met stations at airports because pilots need to know the temperature, pressure, wind direction, wind strength, cloud height and cloud cover over the runway. They are appropriately sited (or cited!) for aviation purposes; but very badly sited (or cited!) for climate purposes.
“anthony holmes says:
July 28, 2010 at 4:45 am
As an absolute layman , I was wondering why on earth temperature measurements are so often taken at airports , doesnt the masses of fiercly hot air blown out of the aircrafts engines mix with the normal air and warm it .
Over a day thousands of gallons of fuel would be burnt launching the aircraft into the sky . , so why do people think that thermometers at airports wouldnt record a warmer than natural temperature ?”
It is an important factor in safe air travel. Unfortunately, that “data”, along with all the other bullcrap and “adjusted” data etc etc, has been fed into the AGW propaganda machine, leads to “AGW”.
Does the Department of Defense know about this development? Anyone who can torture data like these guys can and make it talk oughta be involved in anti-terrorist activities, “Talk hamper-head or we’ll ‘adjust’ you! And if you don’t give us what we want, we’ll ‘homogenize’ you! And don’t even get us started on what we’ll do if you are missing! Now spill!”
“Okay okay I’ll talk!…sniffle snuffle…in -sob- 5th grade I…I…”
So . . . you’ve got a Stephen’s screen, sitting on a grassy knoll outside some unknown little town, a long long time ago. You diligently record the temperature, and low an behold, over the last 50 years, it’s gotten warmer! (and never mind the fact that the little town this used to sit outside of has now enveloped the screen . . .)
So . . . you make an adjustment, say about half of the total increase over the last 50 years, and move the screen back outside of town. (Funny, don’t recall where I saw or heard this, but did you know that the temperature in a major metropolitan area can be six degrees warmer during the day than just outside of town, and that the effect actually increases in the overnight hours! In light of recent ‘peer reviewed climate science’ I had to laugh. ) Oh, and since you’ve moved the screen now you have to make another adjustment, otherwise your temp record will show a sudden decline! The solution; adjust all of the old temps down (not kidding here)! Now the discontinuity is gone, record looks fine until; 50 years later . . . town has expanded yet again to encircle the (now) MMTS shelter, which is 15 feet from a building, due to a short cable, but no adjustment has been made for this. Time to move it again, make another adjustment to all of the old data, and so forth.
Repeat ad nauseum and you’ve truly got Mann made Global Warming! (Though this one effect cannot be said to be his fault.)
The intelligence of mankind is coming under severe scrutiny just now.
jorgekafkazar says:
July 27, 2010 at 8:35 pm
Visual inspection shows that the hottest zones have the fewest sensor locations. I think the next hottest have just slightly more sensors, and so on. I tried to do an overlay, but the maps are not congruent. It’s worse than we thought.
This also is a feature of the Global temp rises, the largest rises always seem to be in unpopulated areas, eg North Pole, Sibera etc. Then when you look at areas with long wel documented temp records and large populations you see no or slight warming eg Central England, Northern Ireland.
Just doesn’t smell right.
From the looks of the map. there are many areas in the central part of the continent that lack black asphalt airport runways to locate thermometers.
anthony holmes says:
July 28, 2010 at 4:50 am
Why measure temperatures at airports ? Surely the blowtorch effects of jet engines hitting the runway will make the ground absorb significant amounts of heat – enough to skew temperature readings to the warm side . Tens of thousands of liters of jet fuel being burned every day must make the temperature reading false – or am i missing something ?
The large expanses of tarmac are huge heat sinks that distort the temp records upward on sunny days, this will have a greater effect than heat from engines as air loses temp much more rapidly than tarmac.
“The more a person relies on statistical analyses the farther their feet are from the ground.”
Is there any wonder than that politicians, bankers, and scientists have been seen flying through the sky in greater numbers? The fault is not entirely their own however. Their constituents, share holders, and students have consistantly demanded less for more and a bigger bang for the buckeroo too. The first law of human physics – “Ya get what ya vote for Mate!” (aka – “Garbage In, Garbage Out”)
Dixon said (July 28, 2010 at 5:10 am):
The problem with that argument is that satellite-based global temperature series are almost exactly the same as the terrestrial series.
Geoff Sherrington asks
July 28, 2010 at 3:08 am
…Can everyplace really be warming much faster than everyplace else?
Why not? Soviet tractor production continues to soar.
In comparing the unadjusted maximum temperatures for Melbourne from March 7-13 of 1940, with maximum temperatures for the same period, as reported in The Argus on Friday March 15 of 1940, I found no discrepancies.
It was still the hottest unadjusted March on record.
JohnH: July 28, 2010 at 6:57 am
The large expanses of tarmac are huge heat sinks that distort the temp records upward on sunny days, this will have a greater effect than heat from engines as air loses temp much more rapidly than tarmac.
Concrete has the same effect. Airport temperature data is only valid for the air temperature *on* the airport. Temperature here on our ramp today at 1300 (from an aircraft’s OAT gauge) was 48°C, and the official reading from the tower (500 meters east) was also 48°C.
The temperature in the desert scrub 500 meters *west* at 1300 (measured with the same aircraft OAT gauge) was 43°C.
I think 5 yr trend lines are great! These types of trends are far more valuable for agricultural purposes than a beginning to end trend line (data poor, information poor). Icarus, why did the author of your linked graphs not do 5-yr trend lines starting in 1978? Even better, if we actually had an unadjusted, unsmoothed, unhomogenized data set back to 1900 or earlier, 5-yr trend lines would be extremely educational and have far greater potential of being both data and information rich.
One more point about the graphs Icarus linked to. Too bad the author didn’t do 5/yr trend lines for all the various temperature data sets and then compared these shorter trend line to each other.
Bill Illis,
I think this is one of your charts. It shows there is nothing to worry about WRT global warming.
JohnH said (July 28, 2010 at 6:53 am):
The CET shows warming of ~0.27C per decade over the last 50 years. Not ‘slight’.
Pamela: I made those graphs. It’s a lot of work to make lots of 5-year trendlines! 🙂 I just did enough to illustrate the point I was making. I’m not sure that 5-year trendlines are particularly useful for agricultural purposes, unless you can predict years *in advance* what the ENSO and other such climate phenomena are going to do (which of course we cannot). Looking at 5-year trendlines from the past is interesting but rather academic for these purposes, wouldn’t you say?
Smokey said (July 28, 2010 at 8:49 am):
This chart strikes me as being rather bogus. It plots atmospheric CO2 against *current* global mean temperature anomaly, without accounting for the lag in the climate system, which is mainly due to the thermal inertia of the oceans. For example, today at ~390ppm CO2 we have seen ~0.8°C of warming above pre-industrial level, but there is still a net energy imbalance of ~0.5W/m², which means that even if CO2 never rose any further than 390ppm, we would still expect another ~0.4°C of warming (50% more than the current value) based on short-term climate sensitivity of 0.75°C/W/m². No-one disputes that this lag is present in the system. So, it seems to me that the predicted 1.62°C per doubling of CO2 based on observations is invalid.
Thanks Ken for your work, maybe it will make some of the scientists who are cooking this country’s historical temperature record think about how they and the dodgy science they represent will be viewed by the Australian people when the whole charade they have built up collapses as it certainly will.
They think they are well protected by both sides of the political spectrum who are playing things safe (just in case) and by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) who have refused to allow dissenting scientific information to be debated on Prime time television and by their tight knit academia associations and total stranglehold on the government funding of climate science.
I think they will regret the damage they have done to the Australian people, the economic damage, the disruption of lifestyle, and the high cost that, they have personally imposed on ordinary Australians, by assisting the control agenda of socialist left academia, comfortable entrenched in feather bedded jobs and protected from feeling the effect of higher taxes, higher prices, loss of jobs, loss of opportunity and the ruination of the future job prospects of those children that they have helped indoctrinate with false expectations, the Eco Warriors of today, that will be the disenchanted of tomorrow once the full extent of the fraudulent manipulation is fully exposed.
I just hope that among our new politicians there will be some who insist on cleaning up Climate science by creating a Royal Commission or Judicial Inquiry with sufficient powers to compell them to disclose the full extent of what they have been wilfully promoting and wrongfully manipulating.
They should be careful of what they try and create and nervous about the backlash of public opinion once the rotten core of this scientific fraud is exposed. Unfortunately it may take a year or two, but it will surely happen.
I wish it was sooner, rather than later.
Looks like my last post hit the spam filter – maybe I was just too disgusted and let my feeling show!! I hate to see Australia go down the drain because of this stuff.
Icarus,
That chart shows two things: the model predictions, and reality.
You’re arguing for the model over reality. If you accepted reality, you would see that you have nothing to worry about. In fact, a 1°C rise in global temperature would be a major benefit to people, plants and animals. Warmer is better; cold kills.
And regarding your “time lag”, you might as well accept the fact that the rise in temperature is the result of the planet’s emergence from the Little Ice Age. CO2 outgases from the oceans as they naturally warm.
Smokey:
The reality is that it takes a long time to warm up 332 million cubic miles of ocean. I think you’d have to agree with that – it’s basic physics. It’s not a climate model telling us that. Your cited chart isn’t a valid representation of how much warming corresponds to a particular atmospheric concentration of CO2, because it doesn’t take into account the inertia of the climate system. It’s not measuring warming at equilibrium. Agreed?
As for the ice age argument, warming needs a forcing – a net energy imbalance – and there isn’t one from this supposed ‘recovery from the little ice age’. The only reason the Earth continues to warm in response to atmospheric CO2 today is that it hasn’t reached equilibrium yet – there is still that imbalance of ~0.5W/m², accumulating heat in the climate system.
Nice good-natured comment from you though, discussing the facts rather than ranting, as some people have here. It’s appreciated.
Icarus (7:36 am):
“…The problem with that argument is that satellite-based global temperature series are almost exactly the same as the terrestrial series….”
Not quite right,
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1979/trend/plot/uah/trend/offset:0.2
Icarus (9:02 am):
“…The CET shows warming of ~0.27C per decade over the last 50 years. Not ‘slight…”
Eyeballing the entire CET record, most of the warming appears to be in the last 20 years,
http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/HadCET_an.html
Icarus says:
July 28, 2010 at 1:39 pm
“[…] reached equilibrium yet – there is still that imbalance of ~0.5W/m², […]”
So the AGW crowd is now crowing about a purported energy imbalance of 0.2 % of the mean solar insolation? And this shall do what? Cause a problem? Make global climate reach a tipping point from which she is not able to recover? Meanwhile insolation regularly varies by 90 W/m^2 from perihelion to aphelion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_constant#Solar_constant
And has done so through all ages.
Icarus, this is not a believable scare scenario.
Ken,
Well done.
1. How does the rate of warming for rural stations compare with urban stations ?
2. How does the rate of temperature change appear for only long term rural stations that are really “high quality” ie well sited ?
Christopher Hanley: The difference between the satellite and terrestrial series is minimal. The warming is unequivocal. Also I would disagree about the CET – it looks like consistent warming in the last 50 years.
Aynsley kellow- yep that would be great, I just tried to keep it simple and stick to BOM’s own criteria.
Anthony Holmes- most rural airports in Australia are very quiet, lonely, bare, windswept places- not bad at all. They all need to be checked physically though. Busy airports have the problems you mention.
Icarus- make the trend short enough and you can prove anything. Don’t like 100 years? Too bad.
Bob-FJ- They would have some distance weighted algorithm for a grid 16 degrees x 16 degrees centred on each point. Or they might guess. As others have noted, the south east of Australia has most stations and has warmed the least- AND HAS BEEN ADJUSTED THE MOST! Strange but true. Much of SE Australian inland’s raw data shows flat or cooling means.
Folks- I won’t be able to comment again until this arvo as I’m off to school and Education Queensland has blocked WUWT from schools. My site is still OK so comment there and I’ll reply when I can.
Ken
DirkH:
A change in globally averaged insolation of less than 1W/m² was enough to take the Earth into and out of the last ice age – a difference in global mean temperature of ~5°C. Also it’s not just a matter of what the energy imbalance is at any particular time, but also of how long it’s sustained. If we keep pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere, that energy imbalance can’t decline to zero, so warming will continue, dependent upon how much longer we keep raising atmospheric CO2.
Short-term climate sensitivity is ~3°C (that is, the Charney climate sensitivity with fast feedbacks only). Put another way, that’s ~0.75°C/W/m², so the ~1.6W/m² of CO2 forcing since the pre-industrial should yield about 1.2°C of global warming, of which we’ve seen about 0.8°C so far, with 0.4°C of warming still to come, subject mainly to the lag from the oceans, and determined by that remaining ~0.5W/m² of net energy imbalance. However… fast feedbacks contribute only about half of the warming over longer timescales, the rest being mainly due to changes in ice sheet area, vegetation cover and climate-induced greenhouse gases, so even if atmospheric CO2 stopped where it is now, we’d be looking at a long-term warming of over 2°C… and no-one seriously thinks we’re going to stop raising atmospheric CO2 in the very near future. There is still too much cheap coal to burn.
Considering that we’re only at about 0.8°C of warming and we’re already seeing the terminal decline of Arctic sea ice, disappearing glaciers, thawing permafrost, shifting climate zones, rising sea levels, invasive species and many other effects, I don’t think I want to see what >2°C does to us. How will people know what to grow if the climate keeps changing all the time?
Icarus says:
“…this supposed ‘recovery from the little ice age’.”
If you believe the LIA did not occur, you are either uneducated or deluded. There are copious eyewitness accounts of the extreme cold during the LIA from around the world [the painting shows Washington crossing the ice-filled Delaware in 1776]. The LIA was a global event — unlike the current natural Arctic ice variability, which is only regional.
And your “~3°C short term climate sensitivity” number is a fantasy. If not, explain for us the percentage of “forcing” caused by CO2, vs the percentage of natural warming since the LIA. You will be the first to show where the line is drawn.
There is still much debate over the climate’s sensitivity to CO2, from the rational [<1.0°C] to the fantastic [the UN/IPCC’s ridiculous 3 – 6°C]. Planet Earth herself makes it clear that the effect of CO2 on temperature is minimal.
You really need to get out of that RealClimate echo chamber more often. It is run by mendacious censoring prevaricators and populated by closed-minded people who like comfortable echo chambers. Stick around here and you’ll learn that the large increase in CO2 is almost entirely due to natural emissions as a result of the planet’s warming.
Rises in CO2 follow temperature rises on all time scales. Effect can not precede cause, therefore the fabulous story that a very minor trace gas can cause runaway global warming is only believed by the credulous.
I like to maintain a temperature comparison on my site at http://www.waclimate.net based on 32 locations in the western half of Australia with fairly consistent records dating to 1900 and earlier. I update it each month with the latest BOM data and when doing my update late last year I noticed the mean minimum and maximum temps had all been adjusted up by about half a degree from what had previously been on the BOM website for August 2009. e.g. with their initial data at the top as posted by BOM from September 1 to November 17, and their new adjusted data below:
Albany
9 16.2
9.4 16.6
Geraldton
9.5 20
10 20.5
Marble Bar
13.8 31.1
14.3 31.5
Perth
8.8 18.5
9.3 18.9
etc. I questioned the BoM on what happened and received this reply … “Thanks for pointing this problem out to us. Yes, there was a bug in the Daily Weather Observations (DWO) on the web, when the updated version replaced the old one around mid November. The program rounded temperatures to the nearest degree, resulting in mean maximum/minimum temperature being higher. The bug has been fixed since and the means for August 2009 on the web are corrected.”
The temps for all Western Australia locations in the BOM web database remain at the higher adjusted temperatures and I’m still not sure why they thanked me for pointing out the problem.
My independent, non peer reviewed, check it yourself comparison of temps at the 32 locations suggests the average min across Western Australia has increased by .8 C and the average max has increased by 1.31 C since the 19th century compared to the year to June 2010.
In the year to July 2009, a comparison with exactly the same 1800/1900 baseline showed the average min up by .31 C and the average max up by .64 C.
So for Western Australia, either the average min has leapt by about .5 degrees and the average max by almost .7 degrees in less than a year with extremely hot weather distorting the climate comparison … or inexplicable “bugs” raise questions about the validity of the BOM’s recent dataset as presented on the web.
Smokey:
Yeah, one might “learn” that, but it won’t be a correct learning.
The stoichiometry with oxygen reduction, the isotope signatures, the simple accounting of the amount of combusted fossil carbon with respect to CO2 flow rates into sinks, and the fact that the warming is post-contemporaneous with CO2 increase (rather than preceding CO2 increase by 800 years as many are fond of indicating), all demonstrate that you have the cart before the horse.
They do when the rise in CO2 is a reponse to the effects of warming resulting from other forcings.
However, the simple fact is that as a greenhouse gas, CO2 itself can also force temperature. You are telling only half of the story, and doing so does not make you correct, nor does it change the fact of the physics of greenhouse gas warming, and it certainly does not refute the contribution of CO2 as a cause for the modern warming.
On the matter of the Australian temperature record, perhaps some of the commenters here might like to explain why the fruit trees in my district have shown reductions in fruitset over the last 30 to 40 years, to the point that many orchards are being comlete;ly ripped out and replaced with varieties that require far fewer chilling hours. Perhaps they might like to explain why many spring-flowering species are flowering one to two weeks earlier – or even more – than they did in the 70s.
Perhaps they m ight like to explain why the number and the severity of frost-nights in my area has decreased from dozens each winter several decades ago, to less than a sinlge dozen each year over the last ten years. Perhaps they might like to explain why the snowing-in of people living in valley on the other side of the ridge to me, an event that used to occur annually on at least two or three days, no longer occurs – and in fact they might like to explain why it is now rare to experience any snow in the valley or on my side, let alone the 18 inches or more which used to be a regular occurence.
Perhaps the commenters here can explain why the salmon industry in our waters, which in previous decades had no issue at all with water temperatures rising, is now facing annual summer increases that threaten the very survival of the stocks. Perhaps they might explain why the industry is seeking heat-tolerant species to replace the salmon, should the water warm any further and render the current industry non-viable. Perhaps they might like to explain the presence of tropical and warm-temperate fish species in our waters each summer, that were never observed three or four decades ago.
I’d be most interested to hear their explanations for each of these phenomena.
Hey there Bernard J, another RealClimate refugee I see.
You avoided responding to my request to explain for us the percentage of “forcing” caused by CO2, vs the percentage of natural warming since the LIA.
What exactly are these vague other “forcings”? The effect of CO2 is negligible, as I cited in my post up thread. So what are these other so-called ‘forcings’ that are [very moderately] raising the temperature? And how can you separate them [if they all even exist] from the planet’s natural warming from the LIA?
Where is your runaway global warming? Right around the corner — as always?
JohnH said (July 28, 2010 at 6:53 am):
when you look at areas with long well documented temp records and large populations you see no or slight warming eg Central England, Northern Ireland.
The CET shows warming of ~0.27C per decade over the last 50 years. Not ‘slight’.
This just confirms what I have said, if you look at the full temp record for CET this rate of warming over the last 50 years is nothing unusual and has been repeated before and current temps are not high.
Dr A Burns said:
1. How does the rate of warming for rural stations compare with urban stations ?
2. How does the rate of temperature change appear for only long term rural stations that are really “high quality” ie well sited ?
1: No idea. Do you mean the urban stations BOM identifies and doesn’t use, or the 15 they still use? Haven’t looked at either but will sometime in the future.
2: Why bother? The result could be increased, decreased, or about the same, but essentially meaningless. Have a look at the second map showing the stations that are long term, rural, and with decent overlaps. There are 50. I don’t know how many of them have siting issues. BOM says 100 should be enough to give a reasonable climate picture for Australia. We are talking about 50 sites to cover the whole continent. There are huge areas (millions of square kilometres) without any good sites. You could look at smaller regions e.g. eastern Australia but not for Australia as a whole. I could do it but it would contribute nothing.
Ken
Hey, CAGW fools. There’s this cyclical nuclear furnace, about which we’re orbiting, that just went through what is called a “solar maximum”. None of your comments seem to ackowledge this “inconvenient” fact, and you seem to be all worked up over an increase in plant food that appears beneficial to the continued survival of life as we know it. But…but…but we mere riff-raff can’t presume to challenge your superior intellect. How could we?! Well, we can and we will and the truth will out through the free exchange of ideas (intellectual property). Or is this concept anathema to you?
Icarus says:
July 28, 2010 at 3:16 pm
“Christopher Hanley: The difference between the satellite and terrestrial series is minimal. ”
Only because the satellite data has recently been deliberately cooked to make it match up. It was cooked because the real satellite data was showing unmistakeable signs of divergence from the previously cooked terrestrial series.
Christopher Hanley says:
“Not quite right,
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1979/trend/plot/uah/trend/offset:0.2”
What’s the difference between that and this one?
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1979/trend/plot/rss/trend/offset:0.2
“Bernard J. says:
July 28, 2010 at 9:13 pm ”
Dunno, where do you live? All I can tell you is that this winter in the inner west of Sydney has been the coldest I can recall, regularly 2c or more below usualy for this time of year. Even ex-pats returning to Australia from the UK, and last winter in the UK was the colderst in 30 years or more, are finding this Australian, southern hemisphere, winter cold.
With the salmon thing, there are MANY factors that affect their spawning, one of which is temperature.
********
Icarus says:
July 28, 2010 at 7:36 am
The problem with that argument is that satellite-based global temperature series are almost exactly the same as the terrestrial series.
********
The problem is that going by basic greenhouse theory, the mid-tropospheric sat temp trend should be about 1.2x greater than the surface trend (up or down). By this, if the sat trend is +.8 C/century, the surface trend should be only +.67 C/century.
Patrick Davis says:
(July 29, 2010 at 6:59 am)
I’m not referring to salmon spawning. Salmon in Australia are always artificially bred, and raised to fingerling-size in cool, fresh water well within their optimal temperature envelopes.
I am referring to the day-to-day physiological response of adult salmon in marine farms, when ambient summer water temperatures rise close to the tolerable limit. Twenty or thirty years ago salmon were able to be raised to salable size with naver a single individual lost to excessive warmth: these days many many fish are routinely lost to warm water, or the growth and health of whole nets (= tens of thousands of fish) is so compromised as to make the viability of farms uncertain.
Where is this warmth, and the warmth that is altering our seasons, coming from?
Bernard J,
Are you not aware that the increase in global temperature is only about 0.7°C over the past century and a half [not the past 20 – 30 years]?
Any anomalous local warming is due to natural climate changes — the same source that makes other regions colder than they have been. It’s silly to believe that a 0.7° change in temperature is going to kill off the world’s farmed salmon population.
You need to show us evidence, from a credible source, showing that farm raised salmon are dying throughout the world from too much heat. Can you provide a reliable citation to back up your story? It looks like what you’re claiming is the usual cherry-picked alarmism. In your case, it may be an entirely invented scare.
Finally, to answer your question about where the [very mild] warmth came from, it is due to the planet’s emergence from the Little Ice Age.
Smokey:
According to you, what is the forcing which is currently causing this ‘recovery from the Little Ice Age’?
Icarus
“According to you, what is the forcing which is currently causing this ‘recovery from the Little Ice Age’?”
As the fable Greek myth goes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icarus), be careful you don’t fly too high and get too close to it, otherwise your wings might melt and you’ll come tumbling down to the ground.
Now perhaps Icarus you could now tell us what ‘forcing’ caused temperatures throughout many parts of the world, particularly in the Northern hemispshere to be greater during the Holocene Climatic Optimum, the Minoan Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period?
Sorry didn’t finish that last sentence off . It should say
“Now perhaps Icarus you could now tell us what ‘forcing’ caused temperatures throughout many parts of the world, particularly in the Northern hemispshere to be greater during the Holocene Climatic Optimum, the Minoan Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period than they were towards the end of the 20th century?”
Bernard J
How old are you?
Were you around in the 20s, 30s and 40s? What evidence (citations please) do you have that the ‘phenomena’ you describe are unique to the late 20th century warming period?
During the last century and a half we experienced a series of warming and cooling periods. Of these cyclic warming (1910 to 1940) followed by cooling (1940 to 1970), followed by warming (1970 to 2000) periods only the last of these was associated with a significant rise in GHG/CO2 emissions due the post-WW2 industrial expansion. Also the late 20th century warming trend is neither greater than nor statistical any more signifcant than the 1910 to 1940 warming trend.
How do we know this? Well Phil Jones told us.
Indeed the ‘good Dr Phil’ said this to Roger Harrabin during a Q&A email exchange earlier this year following Climategate (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8511670.stm)
The very same ‘good Dr Phil’ back in March 2009 also advised the lead authors and reviewers of IPCC AR4 (including Susan Solomon, Kevin Trenberth who were seeking to make out that Greenland ice sheet melting was having a signiifcant effect on late 20th century sea-level rise) that it would be a very bad idea to try include (within the IPCC AR4) a reference to a paper published by Chylek and Lohmann which attempts to find a GHG warming signal (with due allowance for the effect of the NAO taken into account) in Greenland.
The ‘good Dr Phil’ proceeded to rubbish this claim and in fact sent the ‘team’ a series of charts that show that it was somewhat warmer in SW Greenland during the 30s/40s (particular during the winter months) than it is today. So according to the ‘good Dr Phil’ we shouldn’t be worrying about sea level rises due to melting Greenland icesheets (someone needs to tell Al Gore that as well) as they didn’t seem to cause us much of a problem back in the 20s/30s so why should they now? In one of his emails he even attached aerial photos of a Greenland glacier that was retreating during the 20s/30s but has since stopped retreating and indeed is now growing again.
So much for ‘unprecedented’ (not according to Phil Jones) Arctic warming during the late 20th century – even the ‘good Dr Phil’ seems to know that the 2007 sea ice extent low was not unusual when one actually takes the trouble to go and actually look for evidence of Arctic warming prior to the post 1979 satellite era!
Now back to the pesky 20th century warming and cooling periods. Perhaps you could have a quick look at the following link.
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/mapping-global-warming/
and in particular at Figs 7,8, 9 and 10. Note the legend for these maps given in Fig 1. All 4 maps show the warming/cooling trends in degC/century for individual WMO stations (with duplicate data for the same station appropriately combined into a single series for each WMO station ID and ‘imod’ combination). In particular please contrast Fig. 8 (1910 to 1940 warming period) with Fig 10 (1970 to 2010 warming period) and be sure to make due allowance for the relative lack of global coverage for the 1910 to 1940 period relative to the 1970 to 2010 period.
Can you see any significant differences particularly in the Northern Hemisphere during these two (IMO remarkably similar)warming periods? Note these are ‘raw’ data warming/cooling trend maps for the GISS land surface temperature dataset (basically GHCN with USHCN v2 and SCAR) and there has been no ‘anomlisation’ or ‘gridding’ of this data (sorry Zeke H, Nick S, Ron B, Mosh and co.) just straight forward linear trend fitting to the individual station ‘raw’ temperature data.
For the 1910 to 1940 map notice the ‘dark red’ dots for SW Greenland, Iceland, Northern Scandinavia and Russia (see the ‘good Dr Phil’ wasn’t telling porky pies to his IPCC compatriots). Now scroll further down that article on ‘Digging in the Clay’ (http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/) and look at Figs 10 and 11 (which should be labelled Figs 11 and 12).
To quote from that thread/article
“Now Figure 10 is clearly dramatic! Just look at all those dark red dots (> 5 deg.C/century warming trend) in the Northern US and all of the Canadian stations, and similarly most of the former USSR i.e. Russia, Kazakstan etc, Mongolia and North Eastern China stations! Despite this clearly alarming warming trend, there is at the same time an observed cooling trend in much of central China and, puzzlingly, in much of the Balkans, Greece and Turkey? Looking at the Southern Hemisphere for this DJF seasonal period i.e. summer period in the SH, Western Australia appears to refuse to be warmed!
It is then even more puzzling to contrast Figure 10 with Figure 11 which shows the JJA seasonal period trends. Much of the alarming warming trend evident in the DJF trends for the Northern US and Canadian stations has vanished and in fact has been replaced for some of the Central US stations with a cooling trend. Similarly many of stations in central China as in Western Australia refuse to show any warming trend! It also looks as though if you want to get a good tan, then ‘the Med’ whether it be the South of France, Italy, Greece or Turkey is a good place to head for as temperatures are clearly rocketing up there in the summer. Don’t forget to pack your sun protection cream though!
Seriously though, these seasonal trend maps would appear to indicate that that much of the claimed global warming is hardly global at all. In fact it looks to be more accurately Northern Hemispshere warming, and for that matter primarily Northern Hemispshere WINTER warming! Clearly CO2 is choosey! It’s happy to only take full effect during the winter time in the Northern Hemispshere and even when it does it is also happy at the same time to allow some exceptions. It looks very much like Western Australians need to apply to Kevin Rudd for a carbon tax rebate.”
Perhaps some Australians (maybe some with the firsname Julia) visited DITC (and not just western Australians) and read that thread, saw those maps and decided to ‘spread the word’ back home? Maybe or maybe not or perhaps much more likely its just a coincidence that short afterwards the Australian ETS scheme was ‘postponed’ and my poor namessake was told to take an early bath by Julia. Sorry Kev!
So Bernard J, based on this evidence, can you please explain why we should consider the late 20th century warming trend (from 1970 to 2000) to be in anyway exceptional and that the ‘phenomena’ you describe unique to the late 20th century. Clearly you are going to have to cite references that justify your claim else otherwise it possible that the same ‘phenomena’ you describe could just as easily have occurred occurred during the 30s/40s?
Folks, how do these temperature reports tie into the temperatures reported by the likes of the CRU, NOAA, GISS, NCDC, etc? Or do they? In other words, are these Australian reports only of significance to Australia (bad enough) or of significance in the larger picture of the claimed worldwide average temperatures? Thanks in advance for helping me understand this!!
KevinUK: The Earth’s climate has *always* changed, throughout its history – long before we even existed. As we’re changing the very same things *now* that changed naturally in the past, in order to cause those climate changes, we are (of course) now seeing climate change in response to human activities. How could it be otherwise?
It was white, it was skinny, it’s trend was inordinate. It sat in an airport in the middle of Australia.
“Bernard J. says:
July 29, 2010 at 9:13 am
Where is this warmth, and the warmth that is altering our seasons, coming from?”
Certainly not through emissions of CO2. Are you aware the a 67 year cold record was broken this winter in Sydney, a few days before it was a 30 year cold record, and yet CO2 emissions continue to rise.
However, without you identifying the sites you are talking about 20 or 30 years ago and today, then it’s difficult to identify the “problem”. As I said, there are many factors in volved in salmon spawning/farming, temperature being one, chemicals in feed are another.
re: Patrick Davis says: July 29, 2010 at 11:36 pm
Peru is doing some pretty amazing record breaking too I gather – they have declared a national emergency because the cold is so extreme and so many people are dying from it, particularly at the highest altitudes. I’m not sure if all of S. Am. is having unusual cold or not, but parts of it sure are. Meanwhile this past winter approximately half of all the livestock in Mongolia was lost to extreme cold, and deep snows. IIRC, they also had a drought which made forage during the winter a bit scarce too, which contributed – but the cold was record setting also.
Icarus says:
July 29, 2010 at 2:35 pm
“KevinUK: The Earth’s climate has *always* changed, throughout its history – long before we even existed. As we’re changing the very same things *now* that changed naturally in the past, in order to cause those climate changes, we are (of course) now seeing climate change in response to human activities. How could it be otherwise?”
Reply: It could be that most of us here think that the effect of human activities re: the climate are insignificant (and possibly nill). This in comparison to the the effects of the sun and the response of the oceans and subsequently the atmosphere, thus climate and weather. It is you who say human activity is warming the planet. Prove it. With verifiable science! You will be the first.
If you doubt the effects of the sun, try this: Get in your sun-bathing gear. Go lie in the sun. No sunblock please. Report back what burns you first. The Sun? Or the CO2? But both radiate heat, although some think it may be doubtful for the CO2.
Happy Trolling,
Ralph Dwyer
Icarus says at 12:22 pm:
“Smokey:
According to you, what is the forcing which is currently causing this ‘recovery from the Little Ice Age’?”
I have to explain the following regularly to refugees from RealClimate, where they steer clear of the subject:
The CO2=CAGW hypothesis stated that rises in CO2 would lead to runaway global warming & climate catastrophe. That has been falsified, not least by planet Earth.
What you apparently misunderstand is that the proposer of a hypothesis is obligated by the scientific method to pick apart his own hypothesis, and to make his data, metadata, code, documented methodologies, etc., available to everyone who requests it… for the specific purpose of falsifying the hypothesis.
Whatever is left standing after all attempts at falsification is assumed to be accurate science, until increased knowledge requires a new hypothesis. A hypothesis will be elevated to a theory if it makes numerous repeated, accurate, testable and transparent predictions about the future.
That is how the scientific method works: everything must be made transparent. In the internet age, it only requires some mouse clicks to publicly archive all of the information so it is available to the public that paid for it. This is the weather we’re talking about, not nuclear defense secrets.
What you don’t want to accept is the fact that skeptics have nothing to prove. It is the proposer of the hypothesis who has the burden of showing that the current climate is outside of past parameters. But even Phil Jones knows that today’s global temperatures are simply a repeat of the past. And a very exact repeat at that.
The null hypothesis is natural climate variability. Unlike CO2=CAGW, one has ever falsified the null hypothesis.
That is an abbreviated explanation of the scientific method. But the alarmist crowd will not follow the scientific method. Michael Mann has refused to disclose his hockey stick methodologies for over 12 years despited scores of requests. What does that tell you?
So again: skeptics have nothing to prove. For more on the scientific method, see Sir Karl Popper: “…the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.”
How can skeptical scientists meet those criteria when the alarmist scientists refuse to disclose their methods?
anthony holmes says:
July 28, 2010 at 4:50 am
Why measure temperatures at airports ? Surely the blowtorch effects of jet engines hitting the runway will make the ground absorb significant amounts of heat – enough to skew temperature readings to the warm side . Tens of thousands of liters of jet fuel being burned every day must make the temperature reading false – or am i missing something ?
**
You do, the ability to draw logical conclusions. Historically, the weather, including temperature, were measured at airports because the pilots needed the info. Today there are many other ways to measure temperature, including satelites. The ground based thermometers need not even be accurate, if consistently reading high or low. The trend will reveal itself regardless. On the coast, temperatures may be high with the wind blowing from the land, and drop when it comes in from the sea. Yet even then, without compensation the trend will reveal over time. However, feel free to stick a few thermometers onto the tarmac of your nearest airport. I then challenge you to do an accurate calculation of how much the plane engines contributed to the result. Perhaps wait for a volcanic explosion to close the airport, but then again what would be the influence of the aerosols?
KevinUK says:
July 29, 2010 at 1:23 pm
“Seriously though, these seasonal trend maps would appear to indicate that that much of the claimed global warming is hardly global at all. In fact it looks to be more accurately Northern Hemispshere warming, and for that matter primarily Northern Hemispshere WINTER warming! Clearly CO2 is choosey! It’s happy to only take full effect during the winter time in the Northern Hemispshere and even when it does it is also happy at the same time to allow some exceptions.”
**
It’s not that CO2 is choosey, it’s you. Look at the northern hemishere and what do you see? Right, a lot of land. Look at the southern hemisphere and what do you see? Right, a lot of water. Both absorb heat, but the ocean disperses it quickly to the water below. The ocean’s are not likely to present a thin layer of boiling water. Try it with a black surface on land. It is the weather that makes the exceptions, not CO2. Sorry, to spoil the happyness of CO2. Are you aware that global temperature is always preceeded by the word average? It’s like average income, some actually earn avarage income, but most either less or more. This was just my average comment.
Ralph Dwyer says:
July 30, 2010 at 10:20 am
Icarus says:
July 29, 2010 at 2:35 pm
“If you doubt the effects of the sun, try this: Get in your sun-bathing gear. Go lie in the sun. No sunblock please. Report back what burns you first. The Sun? Or the CO2? But both radiate heat, although some think it may be doubtful for the CO2.
Happy Trolling,”
Ralph Dwyer
**
Are you for real? Ever heard about the difference between UV and IR? Silly question, of course not. What’s the trolling bit? Is it a label for anyone putting up a counter argument? Or anyone who does not sing praise? I find that quite unkind. I don’t believe in the mantra “If you’re not with us, you’re against us. If that makes me a ‘troll’, well so be it.
Bernard J. says:
July 28, 2010 at 9:13 pm
Agree, have just started reading this blog over the last couple of days. I have great respect for the people at the BOM. What struck me though is how often a discussion on sceptical climate on blogs in general, use of local weather, state weather or even national weather, to reinforce or prove a global effect.
Smokey: Your claim was that we are currently experiencing a ‘recovery from the Little Ice Age’. According to the scientific method, what argument and evidence do you have to support that claim? What forcing is involved?
Icarus,
How many times does it have to be pointed out to you that according to the scientific method skeptics have nothing to prove? The burden is entirely on those pushing the CO2=CAGW
hypothesisconjecture. Natural climate variability fully explains all of the climate observations. That does not imply that we know all there is about the processes involved – but that is a completely different discussion.Those believing in the [repeatedly falsified] conjecture that an increase in a very minor trace gas will cause runaway global warming have the entire burden of showing that their conjecture explains reality better than natural variability. Without exception they have consistently failed.
We do not know all the factors involved in global temperature variability, just as we do not have physical evidence of the force that mediates gravity [presumed to be the Higgs boson]. That does not mean that that gravity does not exist.
If you had read Karl Popper’s explanation of the scientific method that I provided [or Richard Feynman’s cargo cult explanation], you would understand that unless a hypothesis is testable and falsifiable, it is not even science; it is merely a conjecture — an opinion.
You still do not comprehend the scientific method. Until you do, you will continue to be led down the wrong path, believing the increasingly preposterous conjecture that a beneficial and harmless trace gas, essential to all life on Earth, is going to cause runaway global warming and climate catastrophe.
If it were not for the immense amount of public funds being funneled into the corrupt climate ‘science’ trough, the CO2=CAGW conjecture would long ago have been laughed off stage.
Smokey:
I’m skeptical of your claim that the current warming is a ‘recovery from the Little Ice Age’. I’m simply asking you to support that claim with valid argument or evidence. Can you do that, or not?
re:
Icarus, all you have to do is look at historical temperature records. After an ice age, things heat up. After temporary temperature drops that aren’t as significant as a full blown ice age, things still heat back up. The rate and degree of our current warming is nothing unusual or unprecedented throughout history. For that matter, the rate of increase hasn’t changed when compared to the years before man was releasing any significant amount of CO2.
Therefor, its far more likely that we are seeing natural variation yet again. Its far less likely to be some cause other than natural variation when there is nothing unusual about it. Occam’s razor – the simplest reason/cause is more likely to be correct. There’s just no reason to assume it is anything else. One of these days the Earth will move back into another ice age almost certainly – and we almost certainly won’t have caused that either.
When someone proposes a cause that is NOT in line with the historical record, then as others here have been trying to explain, its up to that person to prove their hypothesis. To take the stance that the warming isn’t natural variation and coming out of the little ice age, but is caused by man releasing CO2, one would have to show why there was significant warming before man began releasing much CO2 – and why the rate of warming hasn’t increased significantly since we started releasing a lot of CO2. No one has done that yet.
Currently we’re not even as warm as we have been several times in the recent past – e.g, the last 15,000 years or so since temperatures started warming up after the last ice age (Medieval Warm Period, etc.). These facts make it illogical to suddenly decide that our temperature variations are anything but natural, and the most recent coming from warm up post little ice age – just returning to temps closer to what they were prior to the little ice age.
Icarus says at 1:58 pm:
“I’m simply asking you to support that claim with valid argument or evidence. Can you do that, or not?”
Of course I can. Glad you asked. And I prefer the evidence based approach over your “valid argument” offer, which you will just argue over no matter how valid it is. So, let’s get started with some real world evidence:
click1
click2 [scary!]
click3
click4
click5
That is physical evidence that the planet has been through major changes regularly in the past. We are currently in the sweet spot, in one of the less frequent warm periods. We’re fortunate, but to attribute any changes to CO2, a minor trace gas to the warming since the LIA, is the Argumentum ad Ignorontiam fallacy that because we don’t know exactly what drives the climate, then it has to be CO2. Argument from ignorance isn’t part of the scientific method.
Fuzzylogic19 says:
July 30, 2010 at 11:28 pm
Ralph Dwyer says:
July 30, 2010 at 10:20 am
Icarus says:
July 29, 2010 at 2:35 pm
“If you doubt the effects of the sun, try this: Get in your sun-bathing gear. Go lie in the sun. No sunblock please. Report back what burns you first. The Sun? Or the CO2? But both radiate heat, although some think it may be doubtful for the CO2.
Happy Trolling,”
Ralph Dwyer
**
Are you for real? Ever heard about the difference between UV and IR? Silly question, of course not. What’s the trolling bit? Is it a label for anyone putting up a counter argument? Or anyone who does not sing praise? I find that quite unkind. I don’t believe in the mantra “If you’re not with us, you’re against us. If that makes me a ‘troll’, well so be it.
Reply: Hi Fuzzy! Cute name. Got anything constructive to contribute to the thread? Always stick your nose into other people’s business? And you presume I have no knowledge of the electromagnetic spectrum? I see, I’m in the presence of a superior intellect. How do I know this? I keep stumbling over these incapacitated people sitting on the floor with their feet in their mouths.
How about addressing the first part of my response to Icarus, which you apparently ignored? Can you? You’d also be the first! It’s a great challenge!
Oh, about me being “real”? That’d be me. I’m not hiding behind some cute moniker. I’ve got a handle for the CB, and I’ve got great character names for MMORPG. But I’m not role-playing here. This IS reality! So, what’s your real name, and what is your contribution to this discussion?
And the thing about the trolls, I keep meaning to say “Happy Trails” but it keeps coming out “Happy Trolling”. I apologise. /sarc off.
Happy Trails,
Ralph Dwyer
‘Rational Debate’:
To the best of my knowledge, glaciations are due to long, slow changes in the intensity and distribution of solar irradiance on the planet. Smaller climatic changes, likewise (Maunder Minimum etc). That being the case, if someone claims the same process is going on now, they should be able to demonstrate the changes in solar forcing which are causing the change in climate. I don’t think anyone argues that the climate experiences substantial long-term net changes without a sustained forcing from changing TSI or long-lived greenhouse gases or some other factor. Of course there are stochastic interannual variations (ENSO etc.) but these don’t tend to produce any net change over longer periods. Agreed?
Smokey:
To quote you directly, your claim was that “… the [current] rise in temperature is the result of the planet’s emergence from the Little Ice Age”. As evidence in support of this claim, you cite the fact that “the planet has been through major changes regularly in the past”.
How does this argument work, exactly? What do the past climate changes prove about the current warming? What forcing or forcings from those past climate changes are you claiming are in effect today, to cause the current warming?
Icarus, you are entirely missing the point. No one can demonstrate why ice ages and interglacial happen, because we haven’t lived through those transitions while we had the scientific method and ability to study and record data associated with such changes. We can piece together various records that make it pretty certain that those changes occurred, and we have an idea of how extreme they were, roughly when they occurred, etc. There are hypothesis about why those sudden changes occurred – Milankiovitch cycles, position in the Milky Way arm, etc. If you look at those records, you’ll see that in the geologic time scale those were rapid, sudden events, not a long slow change. Relative to our lifespans its a different story.
Smaller scale changes like the Medieval Warm Period are much more difficult to pin down in terms of cause. We almost certainly don’t know all of the ‘forcings’ associated with the huge swings of ice ages v. interglacials, let alone the far more frequent but far smaller swings that occur while you are in the relative plateau of interglacial or glacial periods.
We are, quite literally, in the infancy of our studies of these phenomenon. We are discovering that there are other natural cycles involved. Some of those on yearly scales, some decadal, others over hundreds or even thousands of years. There’s no question that there are some that occur that we don’t even have a clue exist.
Those on the SHORTEST timescales are the EASIEST to study and begin figuring out. The longer the timeframe, the less we know about even their existence, let alone causes. So, take a couple of the shortest ones and apply your question to them. What ‘forcings’ cause El Nino’s? What ‘forcings’ cause La Nina’s? I don’t believe anyone can tell you yet, because we just don’t know. But we sure know they occur. If you/we cannot even yet explain exactly how those occur and what causes the shifts between them, let alone how they interact with the longer scale cycles, how can you possibly expect anyone to give you scientific details on exactly how and why the longer scale cycles occur?
We know there is an impact between solar output and our climate – just how much effect, and exactly how it occurs is debatable and being studied. It had been thought that if we measured solar output on one frequency/band, that changes would be the same across the spectrum – turns out that may not be the case. We had thought that the cosmic ray spectrum was also pretty even, turns out that’s not the case. We’ve just learned there are ‘spacequakes’ that tie into our aurora borealis phenomenon. We had thought that cloud formation was an atmospheric thing, with the only Earth surface input being evaporation – but we’ve discovered that both plants and phytoplankton activity can actually spawn clouds. The latest is that perhaps up to between 50% to 60% of all recent ‘global warming’ may be due to black soot and not CO2 at all. The list goes on and on and on.
The historical temperature reconstructions, which we continue to revise, refine, add new relevant data to, etc., at a very rapid rate, tell us very clearly that there have been several periods during this interglacial that have been as warm or warmer than our present day temps. That data tells us that the degree and the rate at which our temps have changed in the last few hundred years is completely within normal, natural variations that have always occurred. We don’t have to know exactly why these temperature shifts occur to know that they do and have occurred repeatedly.
We also know that these historical increases in temperatures comparable to present day changes occurred all by their lonesome, without man’s industrial revolution adding significant amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere.
So, to suddenly decide that THIS temperature change, even tho it matches numerous historical changes before we were adding CO2 to the atmosphere, is for some reason unique (contrary to the records) and caused by us rather than those same natural cycles makes no sense. If you don’t understand now why your demand makes no sense – that somehow ‘forcings’ must be provided in order to ‘prove’ present day changes (which totally fall within historical norms) aren’t caused by CO2 , then I have no idea how to get these basic logical concepts across to you.
‘Rational Debate’: Smokey’s claim was that “… the [current] rise in temperature is the result of the planet’s emergence from the Little Ice Age”. I’m asking for the argument and evidence to support that very explicit claim. Pretty simple really. Just saying “the climate changed in the past” does not qualify as support for such a claim. Agreed? Perhaps Smokey might like to retract it and just say “Well maybe the current rise in temperature is caused by whatever caused the Little Ice Age but I don’t actually know”. That would at least be honest.
Icarus, don’t be dense. If the world weren’t recovering from the little ice age, we would still be IN the little ice age – or we’d be as warm as the Medieval Warm Period. Ipso Facto, we’re still emerging from the little ice age.
Happy Trollings!
‘Rational Debate’:
I think you and Smokey need to decide between yourselves what exactly it is that you’re saying. If it’s just that the Earth has warmed since the Little Ice Age, that’s an observation I wouldn’t disagree with. If you’re claiming that this warming is natural and not anthropogenic, then you need to support that claim with argument and evidence.
Which is it to be?
Icarus,
A child could easily deconstruct your comments. You keep complaining that there is no physical evidence, when I provided multiple examples @6:51. Your mind is made up and closed tight. Sad, but typical of the cognitive dissonance-afflicted alarmist belief system.
You ask, “What forcing or forcings from those past climate changes are you claiming are in effect today, to cause the current warming?”
Once again you turn the scientific method on its head: the entire burden is properly placed on those promoting a new hypothesis, such as CO2=CAGW, to provide the mechanism for such “forcings.” So far you have all failed.
Skeptics simply ask the alarmist contingent to provide the mechanism for their unfounded conjecture. Alarmists have universally failed — so now they mendaciously try to turn the tables and demand that skeptics must in effect prove an unknown: exactly why the climate oscillates as it does.
That is the job of the alarmist crowd, not skeptics, but the alarmists have all failed at it, every one of them. Their one explanation — that CO2 drives the climate — has been repeatedly debunked. Their ridiculous conjecture that a rise in a trace gas comprising a truly minuscule 0.00039 of the atmosphere will cause climate catastrophe is being laughed off the world stage by people with common sense.
Since CO2=CAGW is your conjecture, then it is your duty to provide the mechanism. Since the CO2 conjecture has repeatedly failed the test, why don’t you at least try to follow the scientific method, and give us the reasons you believe the Earth has gone through the same exact cycles repeatedly — but why those exact same cycles are entirely different now? …If you can.