By Steve Goddard
GISS appears to be working hard to make 2010 the hottest year ever. As you can see in the graph above, they show 2010 with much more area above the 1998 line than below. I did a numerical integration of the graph above, and found that they have 2.8 times as much area with 2010 warmer than they do with 2010 cooler.
How does this compare with other data sources? HadCrut has been adjusting their data upwards, but even using their upwards adjusted numbers, their ratio of above to below area is only 0.04. Seventy times lower than GISS.
UAH has 0.12 times as much area above as they have below. Twenty-five times lower than GISS.
RSS has 0.07 times as much area above as below. Forty times lower than GISS.
The chart below shows how much of an outlier GISS is.
GISS is the only one of the four which shows 2010 as #1. The others aren’t even close. It must be their almost non-existent better Arctic coverage.
Conclusion: Dr. Hansen thinks that warming has continued unabated since 1998, while HadCrut, RSS and UAH think it has stopped or slowed to a crawl.
GISS
Had Crut
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It is just a simple numerical integration of degrees on the y-axis vs. years on the x-axis done by counting pixels. This yields degree-years for the result.
The ratio of area with 2010 hotter to area with 1998 hotter remains fixed, no matter how you stretch or shrink the axes. It doesn’t matter if you use Fahrenheit or centigrade or kelvin or months or lunar years or star dates, you will still get the same ratio.
Hi all. Some suggestions. Suppose you believe GISS is inaccurate due to its extension of data in the Arctic. In the current environment warmer temperatures in Arctic stations are being extended over a wide area to imply a higher global mean. However, if AGW is a hoax, presumably at some point the same stations will experience colder temperatures and be extended to produce equally inaccurate lower global means. As has been pointed out, GISS is open source and is applying its approach consistently.
Alternately, abandon GISS and run with HadCrut. In this case there is no need to worry about anomaly correlation, smoothing routines and so forth. One thing to note however; temperature can be trending higher without making record highs in the short term and temperature can be trending lower without making record lows in the short term. Try taking a 12 year average of HadCrut global temperatures starting in 1970 (say) and repeat moving forward one year at a time until 2009 is encompassed. The direction is clearly up (and barring volcanic eruption will continue to be so in 2010).
It is only a matter of time until the HadCrut 1998 extreme is overtaken.
You can paint all the lipstick on the roasting pig that you please:
Everyone knows the type of beast that is being cooked.
November will bring it’s own reality, irregardless of what GISS marinates data in.
Ammonite
Global warming is not a hoax. It has just been wildly exaggerated.
jeez says:
August 20, 2010 at 6:45 am
Oh I’m sorry, you didn’t ascribe motives?
Four days ago it was intent. Now it’s motive. They aren’t the same.
I know you are concerned that WUWT keeps an unbiased appearance in matters concerning James Hansen. And that is good. It has real merit. But honestly, you seem angry and rash. Maybe if you took some time to lay out your case more carefully it would help to get your point across.
Personally, I don’t think Steven Goddard is doing anything wrong. But you seem to feel you know his intent, which is, to define what James Hansen’s intent is. And you feel that is wrong. In doing that you are doing what you say Steven Goddard is doing—defining intent.
Speaking for myself, I can see from the graphs that GISTemp is radically different than other data sets. It isn’t just as little different. And we all know that James Hansen has made it crystal clear what he is all about. Some of the things he has said and done make me wonder if there is something wrong with him, in his brain, or some psychological or emotional disturbance. Since he is so radical, in my opinion, why is it wrong to think that his radically strong views could be factoring into his temperature product methods thus creating the radical differences in the graphs, i.e., radical man = radical differences in the graphs.
What does it matter that others can use his methods and come up with the same results he does? Why keep going over that point? I don’t see Steven Goddard saying he has used Hansen’s methods and came up with different results. To make a point of that gives the appearance you mean there is nothing wrong with GISTemp, even though you have not said that outright. It can easily be misinterpreted that you do mean that. People are probably getting a wrong image of you.
I think it would help if you took some time to lay out the case for what you mean in a more detailed way—without sarcasm. Maybe then some progress could be made in what you’d like to see happen.
As it is now it seems you are rashly attacking Steven Goddard.
It is much said that weather is not climate, though it contains the building blocks of it.
How it came to be that Goddard Institute for Space Studies usurped weather, to become building block of climate, escapes me.
jeez says:
August 20, 2010 at 6:45 am
Sigh, given that Gistemp code has been open and online since 2007 with documentation and the methods have not materially changed in recent years as far as I know, this is another of Steven’s Posts which are equivalent to ascribing motives to water running downhill.
=========================
No. He is just pointing out error. Nothing wrong with that.
It is a challenge…always with the directive to prove him wrong.
What’s wrong with that??
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
stevengoddard says:
August 20, 2010 at 5:22 pm
John Finn
The base period doesn’t make any difference.
You can use any baseline you want (use the Traissic if you want) and GISS will still show 2010 higher than 1998.
(2010 – baseline) – (1998 – baseline) = 2010 – 1998
The baseline term disappears.
I know. But I think you’re missing the point. I used the 1979-98 base period to provide a direct comparison between GISS and UAH anomalies.
The GISS 1998 anomaly is relatively lower than the others (HadCrut, UAH & RSS). It is this factor which explains why 2005 and probably 2010 are warmer than 1998 – according to GISS. The GISS 2010 anomaly (1979-98 baseline) is, to date, ~0.1 deg below the UAH 2010 anomaly yet you seem to be implying that GISS has inflated the 2010 anomaly.
If GISS has anything wrong it’s more likely that the 1998 anomaly is at fault because it’s too low .
savethesharks
Really what error? He has pointed out a divergence in trend over an extremely short interval chosen to highlight the divergence. He has implied the divergence is intentional. He has implied that it is due to some insidious manipulation for political gain. But, he has not identified the manipulation or talked to anyone who could help him find it. He has identified no error. He has highlighted a difference in behavior in the execution of a program that generates an index which by definition does not generate exactly the same trend as a different program. And incidentally, Gistemp is is not millions of lines of code, it is thousands.
Over other periods the divergence lessens or goes away. He has showed some of these other periods, but omitted (hid the decline in divergence), some indexes when they show inconvenient results (don’t tell as tidy story). I have shown this in previous posts in this series despite the accusations of my use of a straw man. When Bob Tisdale tries to point out flaws in his reasoning Steven evades and side steps.
There is no scientific meat here. This is numerology. Saying the red thingy is higher than the blue thingy when it shouldn’t be is not science. Under different meteorological conditions the trends could easily reverse and Gistemp could plunge while others spike. Unfortunately this is the kind of post that justifies the criticisms of the Joe Romms and Taminos
Again, I am not a fan of GISS or Hansen. The differential handling of the US vs. ROW and issues such as using nightlights to estimate urban development are known weaknesses. Estimations of historic sea surface temperatures are a huge source of uncertainty. The people who point these things out are doing real work.
Amino Acids in Meteorites,
I have been clear in my criticisms while no doubt too harsh for those who haven’t been following these issues for years. For those who have, my criticisms are clear. I am in fact a bit disappointed in all the cheer leading and back slapping that Steven is getting. In my opinion a serious lack of ”skepticism” is being displayed. I do not have the energy to lay it out any more clearly to explain it to those who do not understand that when there is real data, code, or methods to analyze, the proper way to examine something is to examine the serious information available, seek and find the root errors, not cherry pick trends from some graphic output software and do gotcha science.
Dr. John M. Ware says:
August 20, 2010 at 7:36 pm
I had understood that 1934 was the warmest year. I know that the all-time high temp recorded in Indiana (where I grew up) was 116 in 1936. The question was asked why the 1930s didn’t show up as the warmest decade.
1934 was the warmest year in the US. The US covers about 2% or the earth’s surface so can, in no way, be considered representative of the rest of the world. The 1930s do show up as a warm decade in the US temperature record .
Steven Goddard replied, “The graph you object to says GISS 1998 vs 2010. It plots 1998 vs. 2010. How can it be in error?”
The text pertinent to that graph states, “GISS appears to be working hard to make 2010 the hottest year ever. As you can see in the graph above, they show 2010 with much more area above the 1998 line than below.”
This implies that 1998 is the hottest GISTEMP year prior to 2010. It is not. 2005 is the hottest GISTEMP year prior to 2010. That’s the whole point of my original question.
What I would like to know is how come every time they say this, we have been freezing our asses off?
We’ve had one of the coldest years, winter and summer I can remember (maybe 84 was worse).
I’ve had to buy a new wardrobe, I just don’t have the summer clothes for “cold”
This is global warming? Have they thought how we’re going to heat our homes through global “warming”?
How cold does it have to get before it’s called “cooling”?
Reference to the 1934 Dust Bowl.
Reference Sir Richard Gregory’s work shown in a century old book titled “Through Space and Time” by Sir James Jeans, a collection of his Christmas Lectures at the Royal Society, he showed that the lake levels of Lake Victory “perfectly match” sunspot activity.
From 1878 to 1933 was a milder sunspot cycle series than what we had from 1934 to 1963 and from 1975 to 2007. The cycle from 1965 to 1974 had as many sunspots as the last cycle, but lacked a significant peak as the more robust cycles. It was flat and drawn out. This probably caused the ice age scare back in the 1970s.
That said, the period mentioned above from 1878 to 1933 had an average of one less inch of precipitation than the last 45 years. The Dust Bowl period matched Sir Gregory’s research if one compares sunspot activity to the time of the Dust Bowl.
We are now having the first major droughts around the world during this minimum sunspot cycle.
When an area is flooded from time to time, study the causes and the history of the area. It may be the norm for that area.
Sincerely,
Paul Pierett
No surprises here more proof that Nasa GISS is run by a climate-change
nutactivist.Steve
Regarding GISS v UAH for 1998, 2005 and 2010. The following table shows the comparsion (UAH – GISS) for the first 7 months (Jan-Jul) of each year. The 1979-98 base period is used
UAH-GISS
1998 +0.14 (El Nino year)
2005 -0.01 (Neutral)
2010 +0.12 (El Nino year)
Notes:
1. The anomalies are consistent. In 2005, the ENSO neutral year, there was only a slight difference. In the El Nino-affected years, UAH anomalies were amplified by 0.12 to 0.14 deg.
2. The ‘El Ninos’ were already established in Jan 1998 and Jan 2010 so there was very little lag effect. The comparison is, therefore, reasonable.
3. Towards the end of 1998 GISS anomalies cooled more than the UAH anomalies (the lag effect). Hence the UAH record for 1998 was relatively much higher than the GISS record. The GISS 1998 record was, therefore, much easier to beat than the UAH record.
4. There is a hint that GISS is cooling faster than UAH at present (as of July 2010) so Steve may have jumped the gun a bit here anyway.
5. Annual records can be an artifact of the constraints of the calendar year. 1998 is a good case in point. The 1997-98 El Nino effect on satellite temperatures began in Jan 1998 and ended sometime around October 1998.
Shona,
When is there global warming and cooling?
This is a summary of 7 years of personal study.
This is part of the insanity of this thread.
There are two types of warming going on.
One is, we are in a small period of time between ice ages when the Earth is overall warm and we can farm very far north and south of the Equator with various crops. 10,000 years ago, farming was between roughly 35 degrees and North and South of the Equator degrees.
That is about as far north as St. Louis and that is why civilization started in the Middle East, Asia Minor, and India, again,generally speaking and what we know so far.
During the last 10,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age, there has been what people call, mini ice ages. See “Glacial Geology” by Matthew Bennett and Neil Glasser. There have been three of these.
About 1700, the Sun began to roar back into action with more consistent sunspot activity. Most climatologists mark the end of the mini-ice age at different times and as late as the mid 1800s.
I mark the end of the mini-ice age in 1700 when sunspot activity resume.
We are now in one of the final thousand years or so before we begin a 10,000 year slide into the preliminary years of the next ice age.
If you want some fun,
You can play around on this site for hours.
Ifhttp://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/cag3.html
I choose winter months for Annual averages are not as defined as our winter months.
This will aggravate the readers, but this is my personal thumb nail for judging global warming and cooling during this 10,000 year break between Ice ages.
I mark winter break line at 33F degrees.
There is a climate lag time of 5 to 14 years as the Earth slowly warms and cools in this Global warming period.
If the winter averages are above 33 degrees, generally speaking, allowing for minor changes in the climate, we have less glacier and Polar Ice activity and more hurricane activity.
The opposite occurs if the average US winter temperatures fall below 33F degrees.
It sounds crazy, but it is a good thumb nail for me.
That is why Ms Gray mentioned above slight biological changes she has noticed. We went below 33F degrees this past winter. We matched 1984 winter temperatures last year. We match 1996 winter temperatures a year and a half ago.
If the average US winter temperatures hang around 33F things are rather stable.
We are going to cool down for the next 30 years per scientists. We are in a sunspot minimum and they come in pairs.
This will be th biggest challenge for us for it will affect our farming and heating resources. You can read between the lines on that.
Sincerely,
Paul Pierett
John Finn: Your table above…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/20/giss-shaping-up-to-claim-2010-as-1/#comment-462691
…indicated that 2005 was ENSO neutral. The 2004/05 El Nino extended into 2005, and with the lag, the global response to the 2004/05 El Nino would have peaked in the second year (2005), just as it had for the 1997/98 El Nino (peaking in 1998), and as it will for the 2009/10 El Nino (peaking in 2010).
It’s best to identify the El Nino by both years, to eliminate the confusion about El Nino years.
John Finn: You wrote, “2. The ‘El Ninos’ were already established in Jan 1998 and Jan 2010 so there was very little lag effect. The comparison is, therefore, reasonable.”
The lags are very apparent:
http://i34.tinypic.com/5xr1cp.jpg
And the lag in 2005 to the 2004/05 El Nino was excessive.
The baseline makes no difference in determining realtive differences between years.
Bob,
I think I understand your concern. In order for 2010 to be #1, it would also have to be hotter than 2005 (and every other year since 1998.) So far, it is well ahead of 2005 according to GISS.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m2h775UOZI]
stevengoddard says: “I think I understand your concern.”
Bingo! Thanks.
What has this ratio of areas got to do with the price of eggs?
Consider two sets of hypothetical anomolies for the first six months of 1998 and 2010:
2010: 0.1, 0.1, 0.1, 0.1, 0.1, -0.01
1998: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0
Ratio of 2010 area above 1998 to 2010 area below 1998: 50
Average 1998 anomoly: 0
Average 2010 anomoly: 0.081666667
versus
2010: 0.3, 0.3, 0.3, 0.3, 0.3, -.0.3
1998: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0
Ratio of 2010 area above 1998 to 2010 area below 1998: 5
Average 1998 anomoly: 0
Average 2010 anomoly: 0.2
JK
Yes, any time you put a very small number in a denominator, you are going to get a large ratio.
Bob Tisdale says:
August 21, 2010 at 3:55 am
John Finn: You wrote, “2. The ‘El Ninos’ were already established in Jan 1998 and Jan 2010 so there was very little lag effect. The comparison is, therefore, reasonable.”
The lags are very apparent:
http://i34.tinypic.com/5xr1cp.jpg
Bob
I’m not sure if we’re agreeing or disagreeing. I agree with you that there is a lag effect. I would though suggest that the lag is more evident in the satellite records than it is in the surface records. The surface record (in this case GISS) tends to respond quicker to ENSO fluctuations than the UAH LT record – probably because GISS reflects ‘current’ SST.
My point was that, in both Jan 1998 and Jan 2010, the rising part of the UAH lag had passed. Temperatures had peaked for both GISS and UAH. As of July 2010 there has been no significant drop in either record so the UAH-GISS Jan-Jul comparison is, therefore, “reasonable”.
And the lag in 2005 to the 2004/05 El Nino was excessive.
The 2004/05 El Nino was less intense than either 1997/98 or 2009/10 and did not amplify LT temperatures anything like the 97/98 and 2009/01 El Ninos – as can be seen in your plot. Hence the relative UAH-GISS anomaly differences for 2005 were very small – as can be seen from my table.
The table shows more agreement between UAH and GISS than is being suggested by Steve.
Temperatures are supposed to be increasing by about 0.2C per decade.
Although 1997-98 was a bigger El Nino than 2009-10, the net impact on global temperatures should only be about +0.07C bigger so it is not that much different.
Let’s compare conditions in July 1998 versus July 2010.
A large La Nina developing in both cases but the lag means it is has not impacted temperatures in July yet. Solar cycle has started ramping up with TSI about the same in both periods. Aerosols were likely higher in 1998 so it should have warmed since 1998 from the effect alone.
May 1998 Nino 3.4 : +0.71C
May 2010 Nino 3.4 : -0.09C
July 1998 AMO : +0.529C
July 2010 AMO : +0.500C
July 1998 GISTemp : +0.68C
July 2010 GISTemp : +0.55C
Change 1998 – 2010 : -0.13C
The difference in Nino 3.4 should make 1998 about +0.05C warmer and the AMO should make 1998 about +0.015C warmer or 0.065C warmer in total. It is 0.13C warmer so right in the ballpark if there was no global warming since 1998 but it is 0.065C lower including the ENSO and AMO adjusted figures.
Temps should have increased by +0.24C over the period, instead they are down -0.065C.
REPLY: You have the makings of a guest post right here in this comment – Anthony