Continued Bias Reporting On The Climate System By Tom Karl and Peter Thorne
By Dr. Roger Pielke Sr.
Today, there were news articles concerning the state of the climate system; e.g. see the Associated Press news release in the Washington Post
Climate change study: More than 300 months since the planets temperature was below average
The news article refers to the 2010 climate summary that will be published in a Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society article. The article will undoubtedly include informative information on the climate.
However, the news article itself erroneously reports on the actual state of the climate, as can easily be shown simply by extracting current analyses from the web. Two of the prominent individuals quoted in the news report are Tom Karl and Peter Thorne. They make the following claims
“The indicators show unequivocally that the world continues to warm,” Thomas R. Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center, said in releasing the annual State of the Climate report for 2010.”
“There is a clear and unmistakable signal from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans,” added Peter Thorne of the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites, North Carolina State University.”
“Carbon dioxide increased by 2.60 parts per million in the atmosphere in 2010, which is more than the average annual increase seen from 1980-2010, Karl added. Carbon dioxide is the major greenhouse gas accumulating in the air that atmospheric scientists blame for warming the climate.”
Karl is correct on the increase in carbon dioxide, but, otherwise, he and Peter Thorne are not honestly presenting the actual state of the climate system. They focus on the surface temperature data, which as, we have reported on in peer-reviewed papers, has major unresolved uncertainties and includes a systematic warm bias; e.g. see
Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, S. Foster, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S08, doi:10.1029/2006JD008229.
Klotzbach, P.J., R.A. Pielke Sr., R.A. Pielke Jr., J.R. Christy, and R.T. McNider, 2009: An alternative explanation for differential temperature trends at the surface and in the lower troposphere. J. Geophys. Res., 114, D21102, doi:10.1029/2009JD011841.
The climate system has not warmed since about 2003 either in the upper ocean or in the lower troposphere as shown in the three figures below.
Tom Karl is wrong in his first quote – The indicators DO NOT show unequivocally that the world continues to warm. This warming has stalled, at least for now, since about 2003. Peter Thorne is misrepresenting the actual data when he erroneously reports that (assuming he means ‘unequivocal warming’) “There is a clear and unmistakable signal from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans”.
Second, the lower troposphere (from both the RSS and UAH MSU data) also do NOT SHOW unequivocally that the world continues to warm! Indeed, warming has also stalled since about 2002.
Figure caption: Global average (70 south to 82.5 north) lower tropospheric temperatures (from RSS)
Figure caption: Global average (70 south to 82.5 north) lower tropospheric temperatures (from UAH)
It should not be surprising that Tom Karl and Peter Thorne are not honestly reporting the actual state of the climate system, which involves a much more complex signal in response to human and natural climate forcings and feedbacks, than they report on; e.g. see
Christy, J.R., B. Herman, R. Pielke, Sr., P. Klotzbach, R.T. McNider, J.J. Hnilo, R.W. Spencer, T. Chase and D. Douglass, 2010: What do observational datasets say about modeled tropospheric temperature trends since 1979? Remote Sensing, 2(9), 2148-2169.
Previous documentation of the biases and efforts to manage the information provided to policymakers by Tom Karl and Peter Thorne includes the following examples
Pielke Sr., Roger A., 2005: Public Comment on CCSP Report “Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences“. 88 pp including appendices
It is disappointing that the media do not properly question the claims made by Tom Karl and Peter Thorne. They are presenting a biased report on the actual state of the climate system.
I’ll stifle my sarcastic nature, and politely point out that the graph is of changes relative to an arbitrarily chosen zero point. Like the Celsius scale vs. the Kelvin; same units, different base (for convenience).
Looking solely at the three graphs shown above, they all appear to show a warming trend over the entire width of the graphs.
How can I explain to a warmist that this is not the case?
Well, where I live, not only was this spring bellow average, it was the coldest spring on record. No spring in the last 650 months has been colder than this spring.
Nigel Harris: wonderful example and point made! Thanks.
If these scientists reported the truth they would be out of a job. So the lie persists.
Interestingly, on Jeopardy tonight (June 29, 2011), one of the topics was called `Green` and one of the “what is“ questions had an answer of `Green House Gasses“, and during the question, a visual and commentary showed O3 and H2O, mentioned ozone and water vapour, with no mention at all of CO2. Goes to show that those Jeopardy question writers are very smart.
jaymam says:
June 30, 2011 at 2:20 am
Looking solely at the three graphs shown above, they all appear to show a warming trend over the entire width of the graphs.
How can I explain to a warmist that this is not the case?
The warmist case is not that the planet is warming. It has been slowly for centuries. We’ve known that for many decades.
The warmist case is that the warming is accelerating and that is dangerous and it is caused by carbon dioxide and it is caused by man. If any of those four are wrong then their case is wrong.
Keep up the good work. I live in Australia where millions of honest hard working people are just about to be made to pay an extra tax for no good reason by a minority government that did not take the policy to the poll. What is particularly annoying is that our government appears to be one of the very last to be still following the discredited catastrophic anthropogenic warming theory (emphasis on the word catastrophic). I’m quite upset. It’s money from my pocket that I might have put aside for my little childrens’ savings or some nice clothes that is now going into the pockets of what I consider to be the lowest form of public purse parasites that I have seen to date.
I’m staring and squinting at these 3 graphs and I honestly can’t see what RPS is talking about.
If he is referring to the random variation in the graph over the last few years making it impossible to make a statement of certainty for the trend over the last few years then fine. But then his claim of certainty for no change over the last few years is junk for exactly the same reason.
To me it’s clear though that the latest measurements are consistent with the long term trend allowing for the random variation and there is no reason to believe that the cause of that trend has disappeared.
Maybe I need to read the referenced articles to understand, but this article by itself makes little sense.
I question the 2.60 ppm increase in 2010. At the South Pole where three different organizations measure CO2, the yearly average changes were; 2007-2008 1.97 ppm, 2008-2009 1.70 ppm, and 2009-2010 1.56 ppm. Factoring out seasonal variations, these values probably have a standard error of about 0.4 ppm. These values indicate a significant decline in rate of increase.
Actually, it has been about 63,984,000 months (over 5 million years) since the earth has been OVER the average temperature.
Reference http://scotese.com/climate.htm and his quote, “During the last 2 billion years the Earth’s climate has alternated between a frigid “Ice House”, like today’s world, and a steaming “Hot House”, like the world of the dinosaurs.”
And http://scotese.com/miocene1.htm, “The climate during the Miocene was similar to today’s climate, but warmer.”
Warmer is better; just ask the dinosaurs.
Of course, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1419455/Paleocene-Eocene-Thermal-Maximum-PETM, much, much warmer then. Probably a bummer, even for the dinos. Recall the sun had appreciably lower output 55Mya. On the bright side, we primates took advantage of the warmth. Admittedly a bit dated, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Age-of-Man-wiki.jpg gives a visual representation of how important that time of extreme warmth was for us.
Nigel Harris says:
June 30, 2011 at 1:41 am
Try it for yourself in Excel. In A1 enter 0. Then in A2 enter the formula “=A1+0.001″. Copy that formula down column A for 400 cells or so. This gives you a linear upward trend. In B1 enter 0.5. In B2 enter the formula “=0.9*B1+0.1*RAND()”. Copy that formula down column B. This gives you some autocorrelated AR(1) noise. Now add the two columns together in column C and chart the result as a line chart. Hit the F9 key to calculate different sets of random, autocorrelated noise.
Just tried that and am ROFLMAO! If I only knew how easy this was, I would have made a fortune in Global climate research. Too bad I’m a tad too honest and want to like myself when I shave. Maybe I could this technique to genertate some landscapes for my POVRay renderings. Just think I could display global temperture rise in a 3D model…WHERE’S MY FUNDING?
This reads like a Chamber of Commerce PR release for the city of Lake Wobegon:
“Welcome to Lake Wobegon, where all days are warmer than average.”
Torgeir Hansson says: June 29, 2011 at 9:46 pm
Besides, it is the job of all honest people to de-politicize the issue. As such, dialogue continues to top the agenda.
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Torgeir, I appreciate your good will as in “Can’t we all just get along”.
Unfortunately, to have an honest discourse, both parties must be talking from the same foundation. You believe that we are all talking about the science.
This controversy, i.e. AGW, is ALL POLITICAL. It is a struggle for money and power and has been from the beginning. The so called “science” is only a tool in a political struggle.
It has never been about the science.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)
Mooloo says:
June 30, 2011 at 4:02 am
The warmist case is that the warming is accelerating and that is dangerous and it is caused by carbon dioxide and it is caused by man. If any of those four are wrong then their case is wrong.
And every chance we get, on whatever venue or forum, we should keep pointing this out.
Even if Arctic Ice disappearing somewhere or Glaciers are retreating somewhere or there is Coral reef bleaching somewhere or Polar bears doing something somewhere or there is a drought somewhere or a flood somewhere else, it does not mean or prove that anthropogenic CO2 is the cause.
Which just goes to show that if you repeat an unsubstantiated opinion often enough in the MSM, it eventually becomes fact.
Realize the vast majority are too ignorant and lazy to ascertain any truth finding research. Therefore, the scare mongering continues unabated. As CO2 increases, the cooler oceans will absorb more CO2 so AGW’s can then produce more lies that it is humanity that causes all and any undesirable global condition, therefore, implement a process of ALGORIAN human depopulation, strip the “deniers” of any voice, tax the remainder, redistribute the funds to “frenzy friends of like greed” and finally appoint some pawn to be the anointed global leader. The Nazi model with a new face of “saving us from ourselves” approach. Good luck! The masses will be of their own demise, succumbing to the how to catch a pig syndrome. Uffda, I suddenly sound like them…. ouch. 🙂
For me the issue with all of these Global Warming Alarmists is that the premise of the whole thing is that the temperature is directly tied to the CO2 levels, and that the effect of any change in CO2 is multiplied by (some positive factor) because of the “forcing effects) of other greenhouse gasses like water vapor and methane. Since they are claiming that the increase in CO2 levels in the last few years are greater than anything ever recorded, wouldn’t the increase in temperature have to be greater than ever recorded?
In the temperature record that they published in 2007, 1998 was the hottest year EVER. By this year, they changed the hottest year ever to 2005. Why the didn’t realize that 2005 was hotter than 1998 in the year 2007 I can’t quite figure out. I mean, one would think that two years would be sufficient to calculate the temperatures and see the averages, but apparently they needed 6 years to add the temperatures up and decide that they were wrong in 2007.
Now, apparently, they know that 2010 was equal to 2005 as the hottest year EVER, with 1998 coming in at a very close 3rd place, followed by 1934 in a fairly close forth place. Now, if the temperature is closely related to CO2, and CO2 is growing much faster now than in 1998, and much, much faster than 1934, why isn’t the temperature climbing much, much faster now than it did from 1910 to 1945? Also, why is the temperature anywhere close to what it was in 1998?
According to the projections (because the IPCC does not make scientific predictions) with the amount of CO2 we’ve added we should be well above 1.2 degrees above normal my now. How is this not the message? We are NOT adding temperature at even near the rate that we’re adding CO2, so that means that the feedbacks are not anywhere near as positive as they are claiming, right?
What I’m enjoying about all of this, is the more the evidence mounts that AGW is totally bogus, the calmer the discourse is on this website, while in the pro-AGW space, people are getting more and more frantic and aggressive.
Thanks Anthony for offering the World this island of calm. Like the coral in the sea, I have no doubt that this island too, will remain above the water level of the sea of nonsense that surrounds it. Keep up the great work!
I actually did a graph recently of the UAH and RSS data and the GISS and HADCRU indexes for since the start of the satellite records. What is interesting is that the HADCRU records are only 0.01 per decade higher and the GISS is only 0.02 per decade higher than the RSS results.
http://www.anupchurchchrestomathy.com/2011/06/comparing-giss-hadcru-rss-and-uah.html
click on the graph to see the details.
It looks like strong warming only occurs in computer models and isn’t in the actual data.
Excellent reporting Dr. Pielke, Anthony.
Thanks!
Joel Upchurch says:
June 30, 2011 at 8:59 am
I actually did a graph recently of the UAH and RSS data and the GISS and HADCRU indexes for since the start of the satellite records.
Notice that all but GISS shows, since 1998, a slight decline in temp.
The source for the first graphic on “Global Ocean Heat Content” is
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
We should all be allowed to use average in our daily lives. I’d never get any speeding tickets again. My taxes would be so, so much lower. Temperatures here in northern Alberta on average are NEVER freezing ever again – see, I could live with that. Ride my Harley year round on average. No guy would ever be smarter or more handsome or richer than me. On average I’d then get a shot at every lady I ever laid my eyes on – yep, I’m really beginning to have myself a real love affair with average. What’s not to like?
“Carbon dioxide increased by 2.60 parts per million in the atmosphere in 2010,…”
Yes but in 2011 the season corrected CO2 level has not risen from January.
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt