Atmospheric Oscillations do not Explain the Temperature-Industrialization Correlation (PDF)
(Statistics, Politics, and Policy, Volume 1, Issue 1, July 2010)
Abstract
Gridded land surface temperature data products are used in climatology on the assumption that contaminating effects from urbanization, land-use change and related socioeconomic processes have been identified and filtered out, leaving behind a “pure” record of climatic change.
But several studies have shown a correlation between the spatial pattern of warming trends in climatic data products and the spatial pattern of industrialization, indicating that local non-climatic effects may still be present.
This, in turn, could bias measurements of the amount of global warming and its attribution to greenhouse gases. The 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) set aside those concerns with the claim that the temperature-industrialization correlation becomes statistically insignificant if certain atmospheric circulation patterns, also called oscillations, are taken into account. But this claim has never been tested and the IPCC provided no evidence for its assertion. I estimate two spatial models that simultaneously control for the major atmospheric oscillations and the distribution of socioeconomic activity. The correlations between warming patterns and patterns of socioeconomic development remain large and significant in the presence of controls for atmospheric oscillations, contradicting the IPCC claim. Tests for outlier influence, spatial autocorrelation, endogeneity bias, residual nonlinearity and other problems are discussed.
Conclusions
Direct testing refutes the IPCC’s assertion that “the correlation of warming with industrial and socioeconomic development ceases to be statistically significant” upon controlling for atmospheric circulation patterns.
The correlations are quite robust to the inclusion of atmospheric circulation indicators, confirming the presence of significant extraneous signals in surface climate data on a scale sufficient to account for about half the observed upward trend over land since 1980.
As discussed in the underlying papers by deLaat and Maurellis and McKitrick and Michaels, socioeconomic activity can lead to purely local atmospheric modifications (such as temporary increases in local particulates and aerosols) as well as land-surface modifications and data inhomogeneities, and these can cause apparent trends in temperature data that should not be interpreted as general climatic changes. As was noted half a century ago by J. Murray Mitchell Jr., “The problem remains one of determining what part of a given temperature trend is climatically real and what part the result of observational difficulties and of artificial modification of the local environment.” (Mitchell Jr., 1953).
The results herein show that this longstanding concern is likely still relevant, and the hypothesis used by the IPCC to dismiss it cannot be supported by the data. A substantial fraction of the post-1980 trends in gridded climate data over land are likely not “climatically real” but result from data quality problems and local environmental modifications.
Download the full paper here:
http://ross.mckitrick.googlepages.com/CircEffects.rev.pdf
h/t to populartechnology.net
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Well try putting your finger (pinkie) down the throat of a meat grinder, and then turn the handle. With any luck, you will lose at least the end of your pinkie.
If your luck is not so good; you might lose your whole arm if the grinder is big enough and you don’t stop turning the handle.
HINT ! Get a good Textbook on the Theory of Sampled Data Systems; and study it; you will learn that it is not unsafe to assume that every hole does NOT contain a meat grinder !
richard telford : “Now try the other axis.”
You are quite right. I will order new specs immediately!
Interesting that you didn’t mention that, even knocking off the 100 years, the GISS rise (c.+0.5) is still higher than UAH (c.+0.4) and RSS (c.+0.3).
It is also the case, if you look at the GISS source data (ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v2/ file : v2.mean.z), that 1880 appears to have been cherry-picked as a start date, since 1888 is the lowest point in the series, probably about 0.4 deg C below the 1840s – temperatures in the 1840s to 1870s appear to have been very similar to the 1960s and 1970s. I say “probably” and “appear to have been”, because I can’t reproduce exactly how GISS calculates annual average from the source data.
CRS, Dr.P.H. says:
August 9, 2010 at 10:18 am
REPLY: Zeke, the Univ of Ill professors are no better nor worse than the others I have seen, and most are not nearly in the same league as Hansen, Mann & the hockey team!
Of course, not to unfairly single out the U of Illinois, nor yourself for graciously giving your colleagues the benefit of the doubt.
But we all still must think of the kids. The human brain does not fully mature until after the age of 24 (probably later for males, ah ah), so all of that alcohol and drug consumption, along with the constant teaching from Marxist professors, has got to have detrimental longterm neurological effects. So pardon if we get a little crabby (+ Enneagram).
My original comment (second from top) looks rather facile (lacking depth; “too facile a solution for so complex a problem”) after following the comments here.
I concede, now, that the AGW army probably has undertaken the hard work of scholarship, but has knowingly or unknowingly debased that scholarship by focusing on a desired outcome, blinded to (or willfully dismissing) even the most expert of opinion that their desired results may be flawed.
It is the “unwinding of wisdom”, but by intent; not accident.
CRS, Dr.P.H. says:
August 9, 2010 at 10:18 am
@Zeke says:
The likely YES to all of these questions would show that Academics “zealous to save the planet” are more precisely “zealous to rid the planet” – of a prosperous and free US, of private property and private enterprise.
——
REPLY: Zeke, the Univ of Ill professors are no better nor worse than the others I have seen, and most are not nearly in the same league as Hansen, Mann & the hockey team!
University professors tend to be very to ultra-liberal anyway, so this is not surprising. I stick out like a sore thumb & keep many of my opinions to myself.
These profs have all bought into the Chicken Little “sky is falling” BS of the mainstream climatology cabal, and have neglected their scientific obligation to review data, question results and demand accuracy. Quite sad.
The college faculties will be among the very last to admit that the global warming scare is without substance, but they always seem to be out-of-touch with mainstream USA anyway.
—…—…—…
Sadly, all too sadly, these (almost exclusively) liberal extremist CAGW members of this zealous cult do justify their combined attitude (as expressed in numerous “The Skeptics” biographies) as “Well, the overall goal (of reducing carbon emissions) is a good thing.”
So who is to “blame” – or do we hold this mass group-think essentially “blameless” and somehow innocent?
Their goal of reducing carbon emissions (all human energy use in fact) down serves ONLY to condemn billions to an early death from illness, bad water, low food, cold, heat, no food preservation, no lights, no clothes, no transportation, no adequate medical care nor housing. The ONLY way we have of improving the lives of today’s and all future human population is through increased AND smarter, more intelligent use of ALL of our energy resources. The pervasive pure “hatred” of (Western/capitalist) energy production and use in the environment movement and its supporters in the politicians, press, university systems and bureacracies worldwide both begins inside such biases and feeds back those biases to yield these journals/editors/reviewers/writers/funding sources/readers and their IPCC minions.
We face (fight ?) a cultural revolution as significant as that begun by Copernicus. But now, the culture is itself the dogmatic secularized “religion” of organized institutional “Big Poli-Science” more rigid and fixed than that supposedly maintained by the medieval “Big Religion”.
RACookPE1978 says:) August 10, 2010 at 8:00 am) … Their goal of reducing carbon emissions (all human energy use in fact) down serves ONLY to condemn billions to an early death from illness, bad water, low food, cold, heat, no food preservation, no lights, no clothes, no transportation, no adequate medical care nor housing.
A harsh, clear statement which needs wide circulation and acceptance.
Watching a show on history last night that yet again pointed to the bitter struggles of mankind only a few centuries ago to simply provide enough food and shelter for life to continue — realities of daily life we have conquered in so much of the world to the immense benefit of humanity.
The same can be done for the rest of humanity; but only if the sad apologists for our comfort stand aside.
Richard, Mike,
This was also always an open question for me. Why so much discussion about the ground temperatures when they are so well confirmed by independant measurements. Assuming WordForTree plotter is not lying, it is striking how RSS, UAH, GISS and HADCRUT all tell the same story:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:12/from:1980/offset:-0.11/plot/gistemp/mean:12/offset:-0.2/from:1980/plot/uah/mean:12/offset:-.05/from:1980/plot/rss/mean:12/offset:-0.05/from:1980
(don’t hesitate to change dates and offsets to compare on other periods)
Now that seems to indicate that problems like surface-stations bad placements are not significant. Can somebody explain me where I am wrong?
This does not tell anything about studies like Ross conducted, as these local effect may also continue at higher altitudes. It would be interesting however to see if the correlations of socio-economic and heating also holds for higher temperature measurements – they should be proportionally less significative with altitude.
Thanks for any hints!