The Temperature claims of 2010

Scientific hypotheses are falsified if predictions turn out to be untrue. The AGW hypotheses thru the 1990s were for continued warming, shadowing the Keeling CO2 concentration curve. Global temperatures have in fact (source, P Jones) been flat since 1995, with unsurprisingly quite a lot of noise. Arguing about whether this or that peak is 0.01 degree hotter than 1998 is completely irrelevant. As Nigel Lawson (no fool) said a year ago, imagine the furore had world population stopped rising in 1995.
The fact is, the AGW hypotheses have been shown to be false. Simple as that.

The warm Spring is typical of El Nino.

Now, now, let’s not get hemispherist – Spring in the NH or SH?

This analysis shows that 1998 was more of an outlier relative to earlier years than 2010 was.
Given that most records show 2010 as at least matching 1998 then the analysis damages the “No warming” position rather than reinforces it. For every month hotter ones can only be found in the 2000s or late 90s. Why not the early 90s, 80s or 70s?

I suppose it’s understandable, but I can’t help thinking that all this talk about records, whether warm or cold, can be very misleading. Surely the bast way is to get the data, draw a graph and stare at it, and decide what the trends are.
Let’s assume that Phil Jones is right and that, as he is said to have stated in a BBC interview, there has been no statistically warming since 1995. If it’s effectively been flat for the last fifteen years then, by definition, we’re still more or less at the top. We know that climate and weather never changes in nice tidy straight lines, and there is a huge amount of short-term variability. Because we’re still near the top, random variations can still easily set new records.
But if you look at the graphs you can see it’s meaningless. Even if the recent short term change due to el Nino did set new records (and, overall, it probably didn’t) the graphs still show that the trend is still flat or even slightly negative. And of course now global temperatures are starting to plunge, as shown by the recent satellite data.
My advice, for what it’s worth: forget about records and look at the graphs.
Chris

@ur momisugly climatebeagle
Well spotted! “The world is warming.” It is as hot as it was 10 years ago. “We are at a peak.” So, it is as hot as it was 10 years ago, maybe 15. By what definition is that ‘warming’? Can I define ‘cooling’ in a similar manner?
“Warming” to me, means a steady increase in temperature. I certainly know the CO2 is going up, maybe from the LIA increase over the past few centuries or from human activities, maybe not. As the ‘warming’ (evident in the many temperature series) seems to have been from about 1975-1995, a very short time, and it has not apparently warmed during 1995-2011, then either the definition of ‘warming’ has morphed into ‘continuing to be warmer that is used to be recently’ or someone is fibbing.
Someone above asked why it was not as warm in the 80’s. Well, we don’t really know, do we, because the urban temperatures have been so misused and massaged we can’t actually tell. An interesting alternative question is, “Why hasn’t continuing urbanisation and UHI been able to deliver a continuing warming signal given the positive bias available to climate scientists?” Surely with an advantage like that, we should be seeing bigger numbers from them each year? Taking away the bias and manipulation of temperatures past and present, would we see any warming at all? Is it continuing?
It seems the main support for a warming world is from the lip-and-tongue modulated CO2 expelled from the lungs of a some members of the climate science and enviro-alarm communities.

The anomolies between the 5 sets of temperature “anomolies” looks to be somthing of a an anomoly!
I support Dr Whitehouse’s view that temperatures cannot be measured to 3 decimal places of accuracy (i.e. 5 figures on the degF/C scale), outside of laboratory control conditions.

Dr. Whitehouse,
Please tell me why no temperature record which covers the Arctic has 1998 as the warmest year on record? For a REAL comparison of temperature datasets see the following:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Monckton-Myth-2-Temperature-records-trends-El-Nino.html
This includes all major indices (minus the JMA) and includes the reanalysis datasets. Perhaps you should stop cherry picking which datasets you use. Showing Hadleys analysis 3 times despite it being known that they undersample warming regions (see ECWMF) and that their station combination method reduces the actual warmth (see Roman M post).
Please answer these questions, in fact I would love to hear why Hadley is the darling of the skeptics considering it uses the LEAST amount of data due to the CAM method. I thought you people wanted to see ALL the available data?

Just out of curiosity , reference fractions of a degree warming etc , how sensitive are our bodies to tenths of a degree warming or cooling – wouldnt it be rotten if the global warming we are supposed to be having cant actually be felt so we get no benefit from it as regards not having to wear such a thick coat in Winter or need to remove a jumper in Summer !

On the other hand we have this from John Cook:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Monckton-Myth-2-Temperature-records-trends-El-Nino.html
“To answer this question I looked at more than just the traditional Hadley, NASA and NOAA datasets, but also the measurements of the lower troposphere processed by Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and the University of Alabama-Huntsville (UAH) as well as the 5 major reanalysis datasets which incorporate station data, aircraft data, satellite data, radiosonde data and meteorological weather modeling. In hopes of being able to demonstrate robustness I have compiled data from the 10 different sources, with these, and 2010’s year-end temperature ranking summarized in Table 1.”
John also gives an excellent graph of the combined 10 data sets with a superimposed correlation function which shows that temperatures are not only increasing, but the rate of increase is increasing.

BarryW, says:
February 3, 2011 at 6:49 pm
Hence the real question is what was the total heat content of the atmosphere/aquasphere at the beginning of the year and what was it at the end.
According to the NOAA NODC OCL OHC page global heat content anomaly for the upper 700 m of oceans changed little during last year. In fourth quarter of 2009 it was 4.571±0.231×10^22 J, while a year later, in fourth quarter of 2010 it was 4.564±0.225×10^22 J. The 7×10^19 J decrease is negligible and is well within the error bounds. Therefore heat content of the climate system was absolutely stationary in this unprecedented year, there was no extra heat “accumulating in the pipeline” whatsoever.
An annual increase of 10^22 Joule is equivalent to a 0.62 W/m^2 net radiative imbalance at TOA (Top of Atmosphere), which would be 0.26% of average outgoing thermal (or absorbed shortwave) radiation flux. Data measured by the ARGO fleet last year show the radiative balance was practically perfect (within 0.06% of average fluxes).
And that in a year when water vapor content of the atmosphere (the strongest of greenhouse gases) was said to be well above average. If it’s true either low level cloud cover increased to make up for the difference or fractal dimension of water vapor distribution decreased somewhat making atmospheric IR opacity more or less constant in spite of increasing average humidity. Or both.

Smokey says:
February 4, 2011 at 10:47 am
Could you be any more hypocritical?? Thirteen years after MBH98, Michael Mann still refuses to disclose his data, methodologies and metadata!
With all due respect Smokey you couldn’t be more incorrect. Mann’s 1998 and 1999 data are on NOAA’s paleoclimate data website (easily found) as well as the majority of the other reconstructions. His methodologies are well known and have been emulated in the literature multiple times. His code for matlab is also readily available. This idea that this stuff is not available right now is an outright distortion of the truth. That graph is over 10 years old. A whole decade has passed and better reconstructions have come about (Moburg et al 2005, Mann et al. 2008 …etc…) please stop rehashing old arguments.
JR says:
February 4, 2011 at 8:28 pm,
Regarding your airport claim see the following:
http://clearclimatecode.org/airport-warming/
Regarding Urban warming I draw your attention to :
http://www.skepticalscience.com/urban-heat-island-effect-intermediate.htm
Do you know what better explains the warming?
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/
GHG warming + Sulfate Aerosol Cooling + Volcanic Cooling + Feedbacks + Solar Activity