by Verity Jones and Tony Brown (Tonyb)
Back in October Tony asked me to help with a big idea. Searching Norwegian climate site Rimfrost (www.rimfrost.no) Tony had found many climate stations all over the world with a cooling trend in temperatures over at least the last thirty years – which is significant in climate terms. You see Tony had a grand vision of a website with blue dots on a map representing these “cooling stations”, where clicking on the dots brought up a graph of the data and the wonderful cooling trend. Would this not persuade people to look again at the notion of worldwide global warming?
I asked Tony how many stations he had in mind. “Oh two hundred or so…” He suggested breaking it down into bite-sized chunks and sending me sets of ten at a time. I was to compare the data with that on the GISS site and/or those of national met agencies where available to verify the source, and produce graphs to a standard template.
We were concerned that this could be seen as ‘cherrypicking’ nonetheless it was an attractive idea. In many cases it was not just cherrypicking the stations, but also the start dates of each cooling trend. Despite these reservations we decided to go ahead, although ultimately we have not completed the project, partly for these reasons, but also because it is a case where the journey became more important than the destination and it is worth sharing.
The first 10 (Set 1) of Tony’s target stations, which at this point I should say seemed to be a randomly chosen set, were:
- Brazil – Curitiba (1885 to 2009) Cooling 1955 to 2009
- Canada – Edmonton (1881-2009) Cooling from 1886 to 2009
- Chile – Puerto Montt (1951-2009) Cooling from 1955
- China – Jiuquan (1934-2009) Cooling all years
- Russia – Kandalaska (1913-2009) Cooling 1933-2009
- Iceland – Haell (1931-2009) Cooling all years
- India – Amritsar (1948-2009) Cooling all years
- Morocco – Casablanca (1925-2009) Cooling all years
- Adelaide – Australia (1881-2008) Cooling all years
- Abilene, Texas – USA (1886-2009) Cooling 1933-2009
The comparisons in many cases were not straightforward. While many matched GISS data, some of the graphs in Rimfrost used unadjusted data, others homogenised data. For some such as Kandalaska, there was a close but not exact match to either GISS data set. The data for Haell was clearly from the Icelandic Met Office, but I could find no match for Edmonton to any GISS series or data from Environment Canada (although having looked at Canadian data further since I am not entirely surprised). The first set took much longer than we had anticipated; however, I drew the graphs to a template and prepared to start on Set 2.
Tony also wanted a ‘spaghetti’ graph for the anomaly data of the first set, and this is where it got most interesting. In fact we were blown away by what the graph looked like. Taking these ten locations from across the globe and superimposing the anomaly data produced a sine wave-like pattern (Figure 2) with distinct cooling from the early 1940s to mid-1970s followed by warming to present; for many of the locations the older data was warmer, or at least as warm as present. Now I had seen this before with many individual stations, but it really impressed me to see the pattern matching from such far-flung locations.
But in the meantime there were other developments. Tony knew I was interested in putting the GHCN v2.mean temperature data from stations all over the world into a database. As usual, this exceeded my own knowledge and capabilities, but I had made a start and was learning as I went along. Tony, whose contacts and connections never cease to amaze me, put me in touch with a computer professional, database, web and mapping expert who was well known to commenters on The Air Vent, Climate Audit and WUWT as “KevinUK”. Kevin was also keen to put climate data into a database.
By now this was the end of November. Kevin and I rapidly established a good rapport by email and voip and, with really only a few pointers to GHCN and GISS datafiles from me (and probably lots of hindrance), he rapidly built a fully functional database. Not only that but he set about writing software to plot graphs and calculate trends from the data and put the whole lot on an interactive map – and all this in a period of about 6 weeks. It is still a work in progress, fixing glitches and preparing Version 2.0; for more information see blog post Mapping Global Warming and the website itself: www.climateapplications.com.
I did deliver 40 graphs for Tony in the end, but I was quite slow about it (and that “sine wave” pattern kept showing up again and again and stuck in my mind). Tony had moved on to researching other climate projects and Kevin’s maps meanwhile showed so much more than we ever could. With the “sine wave” climatic pattern in mind, the following maps (focussing on North America and Europe) show how climate has cooled, warmed, cooled and warmed again since 1880.
So is this “sine wave” the true climate signal? It would seem so, although we can’t expect it always to be so regular. Choosing stations that are more closely geographically located does give a more homogeneous shape to the wave.
It is most extreme in the high Arctic – Figure 4a shows the graph for six stations above 64N where the magnitude of change is +/- several degrees Celsius. Further south (e.g. Figure 4b – four stations in the US) the magnitude is smaller, and close to the equator (Figure 5, Madagascar) the magnitude is less still.
A final point – with the exception of the Madagascar graph, which was prepared for a blog post (link), all these graphs were part of different sets (the first 40 stations for which data was examined). Although the original data was chosen for its cooling trend this, in many cases, results from warmer temperatures in the period 1930-1940 than present.
The wave pattern is still present in many data sets worldwide, no matter what the overall trend. In some the date of the onset of warming or cooling is later or earlier, depending on location – as would be expected with the oceans moving warmth around the globe. In others however the wave pattern is not present or is obliterated by something – in these sets should it be present or not? Is it wiped out by anthropogenic effects on the temperature record such as growth of cities and even small rural communities though the otherwise cooling 40s, 50s and 60s?
For us the take-home message of this study was simply how widespread and consistent the wave pattern is, and this, ultimately is very convincing of the veracity of the arguments against CO2 as a primary cause of current warming. From the physics I don’t doubt it has a role in warming, but its role needs to be disentangled from the large magnitude natural climate swings that are clearly present all over the world – a pattern that is not widely disseminated.
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J. Bob says: September 4, 2010 at 8:50 pm
One thing that was striking is the almost periodic cycles around the 50 year point.
I am also inclined to think there is a 51-2 year, rather than usually referred 60 year cycle.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETs.htm
The same cycle permeates solar activity :
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/FFT-Power-Spectrum-SSN.png
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC4.htm
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC2.htm
JBob
I have a particular interest in CET and was interested in your graphs. There are many cycles it would be interesting to examine further-it is likely the jet stream plays a large part in all this and solar and the PDO also (amongst many other influences).
Can I suggest that if you are interested in solar influences that you look at Vuk’s charts that he referenced above and I later referred to.
Tonyb
“Temperature records to be made public”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7981883/Temperature-records-to-be-made-public.html
“Climate scientists are to publish the largest ever collection of temperature records, dating back more than a hundred years, in an attempt to provide a more accurate picture of climate change”
I wonder how many sets of records will appear in both collections?
I’d write the whole thing off as outrageously biased.
If you chose a large number of stations at random and marked them with blue and red dots, then I’d think the work was balanced enough to pay attention. Otherwise, the motion is simply propagandistic. “Wonderful cooling trend”???
Fortunately, there are now numerous places on the web where people have, in the last year, taken the raw data from large numbers of stations and plotted their own time series with their own methods and come up with credible alternatives to the official surface records. Some of these have been done by avowed skeptics (such as the Air Vent, which you mentioned), and much credit goes to them for ponying up and doing the hard yards without selecting data to favour a preferred agenda.
John Finn says:
September 4, 2010 at 12:31 pm
I can’t believe this level of logical thought can exist from anyone with a high school education.
Bill is saying that Temperature rises cause CO2 rises.
You then claim that because CO2 has risen while temperature has not, he is obviously wrong.
The obvious conclusion you seen to be missing is that CO2 has NOT caused temperature rises in the past, but the other way around. The fact that CO2 has risen (because we are burning fossil fuels) does not then mean that temperatures will rise now, as indeed, they seem not to be.
Wait a minute – is the notion you’re rebutting here meant to be “every single place on Earth has been warming”? I hope not, as your endeavour will have been in vain. No one has advanced that notion except climate change skeptics. You’d be wasting your time on a straw man.
If you want to call something into question that’s actually said by mainstream climate science, you’ll have to go for bigger fish. The smallest resolution you could tackle is continental. According to the IPCC, every continent except the Antarctic has warmed significantly over the past century. At a smaller scale, some regions have cooled over the century, according to IPCC.
eg
Chapter 3 – Observations
At even smaller scales, of course, there is more variability, such as with cities and towns.
barry,
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/04/in-search-of-cooling-trends/#comment-475542
“If you chose a large number of stations at random and marked them with blue and red dots, then I’d think the work was balanced enough to pay attention. Otherwise, the motion is simply propagandistic. “Wonderful cooling trend”???”
I went a little further than choosing random stations and decided to use the whole GHCN v2 and GISS temperature datasets (in Figure 3 above). The net result of the analysis can be seen in Figure 3 above so I’m sorry barry but you are way off the mark as there has been Zero cherry picking in my analysis, far from it in fact. Instead I’ve left the ‘propaganda’ that you seem so concerned about to others. Here is a classic example.
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadghcnd/HadGHCND_paper.pdf
Have a look at Figure 6 and then have a look at Figure 3 above again. Now tell me barry who is the propagandist, me or our friends from the Hadley Centre and NCAR? Who has deliberately chosen to start their maps in 1946? Who is hiding evidence of cooling while warming is occurring at the same time within nearby stations at the same time and there that there is significant warming in parts of the world while there is clear significant cooling in other parts of the world at the same time?
I despise colour contour plots almost as much as I despise the whole anomalisation and gridding processes that go into derivation of the MGST temperature indices much beloved by people like Mosh, Zeke H, Nick Stokes and Ron B over at Lucia’s Blackboard.
The fact is these processes (anomlisation and gridding) are clearly designed to hide/obfuscate very clear evidence of very significant natural climatic variability on a multi-decadal scale (multi-centennial in the more long lived records like the CET and Uppsala etc).
barry says: (September 5, 2010 at 2:34 am)
Did you actually read what was written? Figure 1 – the dots are yellow, red only implies a subset. Figure 3 mpas have no bias – they are ‘all stations’ with whatever trend. As for “Wonderful cooling trend”??? Don’t you recognise ‘tongue in cheek’
The point and only point of this post is: Verity Jones (September 4, 2010 at 7:08 am)
Meanwhile, back on the ground in Norway, snow falls on the Jotunheimen mountains between Trondheim & Bergen
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=0&sl=no&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.abcnyheter.no%2Fnorge%2F100829%2Fsnofaste-bilister-reddet-ned-fra-fjellet-0
“People were afraid for a while. It was simply dangerous to drive. A lot of standing firm, and motorcycles had overthrown and driven out of the way. Everyone has the summer now, “says Turid Berge.
Valdresflya Hostel is located at almost 1,400 meters high on top of Valdresflyveien. . After a new light snowfall in the ten o’clock Sunday morning it became milder.
– “But it is far too early for snowfall now. Not since the early 1990’s have we experienced something similar”.
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=no&tl=en&u=http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/08/29/nyheter/innenriks/ver/sno_and_norge/13163246/&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&usg=ALkJrhihlKF9hrR67H7Z6s8hvJqxj7XSJw
Links dated 29th August 2010
NIC Asia&Europe Snowfall Map 2nd Sept 2010 shows fresh snow in the Jotunheimen.
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims/ims_gif/ARCHIVE/EuAsia/2010/ims2010245_asiaeurope.gif
vukcevic says:
September 4, 2010 at 9:43 am
I took liberty to superimpose the Arctic’s resultant Geomagnetic field (de-trended GMFz) on your Fig. 2 temperatures chart.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/TB-A-GMF.htm
It appears to be a good match.
Vuk, thanks. That certainly is an interesting graph; I find your work generally very intriguing.
Vukcevic & tonyb
Another item of interest, was that as more stations, (western & central Europe), with later starting dates were added, that pesky ~50 yr. cycle persisted. It would indicate that this was going on in other parts of Europe. Also of interest was the cycle showing up in the Hadcet data series.
What would be interesting would be to take the sunspot records, that appear to go back farther then the temp data, and see what correlation results. As Vuk’s charts show, this would enhance my gut feel that there is solar influence, that we still do not know of. It could very well be that there are even lower freq. cycles one is not seeing, simply because the data isn’t there. This lower freq. could show up as “trends” on shorter time plots.
tonyb, if you compare my CET graph with Tamino’s, you will notice a different result at the end. Guess in the next few years we will see who is more correct.
Concrete, asphalt, steel, glass, and deforestation (land use change), as well as, population density, winter heating, summer cooling, traffic, etc., would seem to have more to do with climate systems and global climate than CO2(+) could ever be remotely responsible for. But, it would seem that even all these UHI ingredients, plus thousands of mis-sited thermometers, do not make much of a dent in the natural ‘Global Longterm Temperature Cycle’. “What hath God wrought?” seems just as appropriate today as it did on May 24, 1844.
JBob said
“As Vuk’s charts show, this would enhance my gut feel that there is solar influence, that we still do not know of.”
I totally agree. I think the sun is the overwhelming influence on our climate and that we still as yet have an imperfect understanding of all the forms that influence actually takes.
tonyb
Verity Jones and Tony Brown
And what about the Argo Project, is there any data that shows warming or cooling?
http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/
Peter Ellis writes:
If you want to chuck that out of the window, you have to:
“1) Explain why CO2 doesn’t produce warming, given its known radiative characteristics
2) Explain why sulplates don’t produce cooling, given their known reflective characteristics
3) Suggest a convincing physical process generating a sinusoidal change in surface temperature
4) Explain why the same sinusoidal trend is *not* observed in longer-term data series such as ice core data, tree ring series, etc.”
You assume that CO2 does explain the phenomenon and place the burden of proof on the sceptic. Brilliant rhetoric, lousy logic. The burden of proof is on manmade CO2 as the cause. Why don’t you just send them a bill for their new, high carbon taxes?
Arno Arrak says:
September 4, 2010 at 1:29 pm
You have picked your year breaks badly. The most suspect range of station data is 1977 to 1997 where their curve shows rising temperatures that do not exist. That is the range that should be separately analyzed from the range of 1999 to 2010. 1998 is an outlier – a super El Nino that should not be averaged with any other year because it is not part of the ENSO system. You should find two horizontal trends, one before and one after that super El Nino. Get back to the drawing board and do it right this time.
—…—…—…
No! No data should be thrown or discarded for ANY reason at present.
There have been no large volcanoes the past 15 years, and NO published records of any mythical all-encompassing world-affecting particles or sulfates or soot. The myth of variable particles is added to the Mann-made CAGW programs to back-calculate their results to a linear CO2 increase. But actual soot and particle values are (very cleverly) only approximated or calculated, not cited against measured values of anything worldwide or country wide.
Well, the “dots” of sample points – without GISS/Hansen’s tampering and “corrupting” influences!!! – cover the US thoroughly, the north American continent effectively, south America and Africa somewhat less, most of Europe through to the Pacific with good regional coverages.
The original data set should add in DMI’s 80 degree north latitude Arctic daily temperatures since 1958: That will show additional coverage north towards the Arctic circle.
There is NO particular reason for ANY “skeptic” researcher or plotter-of-data to be forced to provide ANY specific theory for a 60 year cycle, the 800 year cycle, nor the 10,000 Ice Age cycle at present. Just revealing the untampered, uncorrected, un-edited and un-biased data is sufficient right now.
Previously on a WUWT discussion of DMI’s 80 degree north daily record, the summer temperatures in the Arctic (those for June, July, and August when average temps are above freezing) were clearly plotted as FALLING for the overall period of 1958 through 2010. (GISS-Hansen somehow claims an unsupported +4 degree rise in the Arctic during the same period for some reason from unnamed sites from unnamed data.) I’d strongly recommend not using the “annual” averaged temperatures but monthly plots of the monthly running 10 year averages for your plots, or plotting summer and winter “averages” separately. I say “running ten year average” specifically to avoid smoothing out the (potential) 60-year sinusoid trend while reducing the year-to-year variation.
I suspect you might see significantly different trends: Are summers actually getting cooler, while winters are getting warmer from 1850 through 2010?
A major nitpic, but a nitpick nonetheless:
re CO2, and: “From the physics I don’t doubt it has a role in warming…,”
Sure. It has a “role.” So do clouds, humans, animals, dirt, ice, water, water vapor, the thin stuff at the boundary between atmosphere and vacuum, ozone, Sun, Earth’s core, Earths albedo, Earth’s orbital distance, Earth’s gravity, worms, trees, deserts, seas, and probably anything that you’d care to name encased within Earth’s magnetosphere.
Of course I threw in the nitpick (with and without ‘k’) before pointing out I appreciate the work you folks did here. I’d love to see the followup to it when anyone gets the time.
Speaking of time, thanks also, for the time you put into it.
Thanks for a really interesting post Verity and TonyB.
I saw a nice animation of the changes in surface magnetism across the globe from 1600AD and was struck by the apparent correlation between areas of lower magnetism and higher regional temperatures. The motions of these areas can be on decadal to centennial timescales. I haven’t had time to investigate that eyeball estimate numerically, but I think Vuk’s ideas on magnetism should be taken seriously as a promising line of investigation.
tallbloke
I regularly look at Vuks work and comment on it. There is certainly some compelling correlation. How and why that should be so needs investigating further.
tonyb
Ulric Lyons,
Here are the links you need:
1) Wavelets:
http://www.ecs.syr.edu/faculty/lewalle/tutor/tutor.html
2) Sunspot Numbers:
ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/STP/SOLAR_DATA/SUNSPOT_NUMBERS/INTERNATIONAL/monthly/
With a mastery of link#1, your questions will dissolve.
Best Regards.
—
AusieDan & Orkneygal,
As indicated: If/when I secure sufficient reliable funding, elaboration & catering (for audience segments) may become more feasible.
Until then: It will be whatever balances with indispensable competing obligations. The choice is between sharing nothing and sharing strategically at a reduced pace. I choose the latter.
—
Stephen Wilde, I addressed your original comments here. I will offer a bit more: Of course clouds, pressure, wind, temperature, etc. are interrelated. I would advise (1) against underestimating the role of the atmosphere and (2) considering the alignment, acceleration, & integration of recurring phenomena with respect to annual terrestrial cycles (keeping in mind that there are many). [Relationships involving the hydrologic cycle, for example, reverse seasonally for large portions of the globe, so phase-acceleration (which switches relations as seasonal thresholds are passed) is not irrelevant to integrals.] Variables to look at: earth orientation parameters, geomagnetic aa index, solar wind. [The SCL’ pattern is buried in all of the preceding. Also, I have recently posted this request (which may interest participants like vukcevic & tallbloke in particular). Elaboration will have to wait.]
I wish you efficiency in your synthesizing efforts Stephen. Thank you for your comments.
Someone just now brought this to my attention. I have no clue whether this is true or not.
http://europebusines.blogspot.com/2010/08/special-post-life-on-this-earth-just.html