The post below on Dr. Roy Spencer’s blog that contains responses from Spencer and Christy deserves wide distribution and attention, because it shows just how badly Ben Santer and John Abraham want to squelch this dataset. Particularly amusing is the labeling of a graph in an Andrew Freidman article at WaPo as alisting of “corrections”, when in fact it is nothing more than the advance of the trend in step with the graph below.
Addressing Criticisms of the UAH Temperature Dataset at 1/3 Century
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
The UAH satellite-based global temperature dataset has reached 1/3 of a century in length, a milestone we marked with a press release in the last week (e.g. covered here).
As a result of that press release, a Capital Weather Gang blog post by Andrew Freedman was dutifully dispatched as damage control, since we had inconveniently noted the continuing disagreement between climate models used to predict global warming and the satellite observations.
What follows is a response by John Christy, who has been producing these datasets with me for the last 20 years:
Many of you are aware that as a matter of preference I do not use the blogosphere to report information about climate or to correct the considerable amount of misinformation that appears out there related to our work. My general rule is never to get in a fight with someone who owns an obnoxious website, because you are simply a tool of the gatekeeper at that point.
However, I thought I would do so here because a number of folks have requested an explanation about a blog post connected to the Washington Post that appeared on 20 Dec. Unfortunately, some of the issues are complicated, so the comments here will probably not satisfy those who want the details and I don’t have time to address all of its errors.
Earlier this week we reported on the latest monthly global temperature update, as we do every month, which is distributed to dozens of news outlets. With 33 years of satellite data now in the hopper (essentially a third of a century) we decided to comment on the long-term character, noting that the overall temperature trend of the bulk troposphere is less than that of the IPCC AR4 climate model projections for the same period. This has been noted in several publications, and to us is not a new or unusual statement.
Suggesting that the actual climate is at odds with model projections does not sit well with those who desire that climate model output be granted high credibility. I was alerted to this blog post within which are, what I can only call, “myths” about the UAH lower tropospheric dataset and model simulations. I’m unfamiliar with the author (Andrew Freedman) but the piece was clearly designed to present a series of assertions about the UAH data and model evaluation, to which we were not asked to respond. Without such a knowledgeable response from the expert creators of the UAH dataset, the mythology of the post may be preserved.
The first issue I want to address deals the relationship between temperature trends of observations versus model output. I often see such posts refer to an old CCSP document (2006) which, as I’ve reported in congressional testimony, was not very accurate to begin with, but which has been superseded and contradicted by several more recent publications.
These publications specifically document the fact that bulk atmospheric temperatures in the climate system are warming at only 1/2 to 1/4 the rate of the IPCC AR4 model trends. Indeed actual upper air temperatures are warming the same or less than the observed surface temperatures (most obvious in the tropics) which is in clear and significant contradiction to model projections, which suggest warming should be amplified with altitude.
The blog post even indicates one of its quoted scientists, Ben Santer, agrees that the upper air is warming less than the surface – a result with which no model agrees. So, the model vs. observational issue was not presented accurately in the post. This has been addressed in the peer reviewed literature by us and others (Christy et al. 2007, 2010, 2011, McKitrick et al. 2010, Klotzbach et al. 2009, 2010.)
Then, some people find comfort in simply denigrating the uncooperative UAH data (about which there have been many validation studies.) We were the first to develop a microwave-based global temperature product. We have sought to produce the most accurate representation of the real world possible with these data – there is no premium in generating problematic data. When problems with various instruments or processes are discovered, we characterize, fix and publish the information. That adjustments are required through time is obvious as no one can predict when an instrument might run into problems, and the development of such a dataset from satellites was uncharted territory before we developed the first methods.
The Freedman blog post is completely wrong when it states that “when the problems are fixed, the trend always goes up.” Indeed, there have been a number of corrections that adjusted for spurious warming, leading to a reduction in the warming trend. That the scientists quoted in the post didn’t mention this says something about their bias.
The most significant of these problems we discovered in the late 1990’s in which the calibration of the radiometer was found to be influenced by the temperature of the instrument itself (due to variable solar shadowing effects on a drifting polar orbiting spacecraft.) Both positive and negative adjustments were listed in the CCSP report mentioned above.
We are always working to provide the best products, and we may soon have another adjustment to account for an apparent spurious warming in the last few years of the aging Aqua AMSU (see operational notes here). We know the data are not perfect (no data are), but we have documented the relatively small error bounds of the reported trends using internal and external evidence (Christy et al. 2011.)
A further misunderstanding in the blog post is promoted by the embedded figure (below, with credit given to a John Abraham, no affiliation). The figure is not, as claimed in the caption, a listing of “corrections”:
The major result of this diagram is simply how the trend of the data, which started in 1979, changed as time progressed (with minor satellite adjustments included.) The largest effect one sees here is due to the spike in warming from the super El Nino of 1998 that tilted the trend to be much more positive after that date. (Note that the diamonds are incorrectly placed on the publication dates, rather than the date of the last year in the trend reported in the corresponding paper – so the diamonds should be shifted to the left by about a year. The 33 year trend through 2011 is +0.14 °C/decade.)
The notion in the blog post that surface temperature datasets are somehow robust and pristine is remarkable. I encourage readers to check out papers such as my examination of the Central California and East African temperature records. Here I show, by using 10 times as many stations utilized in the popular surface temperature datasets, that recent surface temperature trends are highly overstated in these regions (Christy et al. 2006; 2009). We also document how surface development disrupts the formation of the nocturnal boundary layer in many ways, leading to warming nighttime temperatures.
That’s enough for now. The Washington Post blogger, in my view, is writing as a convinced advocate, not as a curious scientist or impartial journalist. But, you already knew that.
In addition to the above, I (Roy) would like to address comments made by Ben Santer in the Washington Post blog:
A second misleading claim the (UAH) press release makes is that it’s simply not possible to identify the human contribution to global warming, despite the publication of studies that have done just that. “While many scientists believe it [warming] is almost entirely due to humans, that view cannot be proved scientifically,” Spencer states.
Ben Santer, a climate researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said Spencer and Christy are mistaken. “People who claim (like Roy Spencer did) that it is “impossible” to separate human from natural influences on climate are seriously misinformed,” he wrote via email. “They are ignoring several decades of relevant research and literature. They are embracing ignorance.” “Many dozens of scientific studies have identified a human “fingerprint” in observations of surface and lower tropospheric temperature change,” Santer stated.
In my opinion, the supposed “fingerprint” evidence of human-caused warming continues to be one of the great pseudo-scientific frauds of the global warming debate. There is no way to distinguish warming caused by increasing carbon dioxide from warming caused by a more humid atmosphere responding to (say) naturally warming oceans responding to a slight decrease in maritime cloud cover (see, for example, “Oceanic Influences on Recent continental Warming“).
Many papers indeed have claimed to find a human “fingerprint”, but upon close examination the evidence is simply consistent with human caused warming — while conveniently neglecting to point out that the evidence would also be consistent with naturally caused warming. This disingenuous sleight-of-hand is just one more example of why the public is increasingly distrustful of the climate scientists they support with their tax dollars.
Santer Claws back “corrections” It must be Christmas.
Santer is in a hotspot, and suffering from too much wind shear, methinks.
@ Peter – Santer Craws.
Ah the old confusing correlation with causation…
The 33 year trend through 2011 is +0.14 °C/decade.
My 37 year trend (from 1974) is 0.0137 degrees C/annum
Not bad for an amateur, or what?
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
Well, it must be really embarrassing that temperature trends are refusing to cooperate with CO_2 as a primary driver, at least as a simple driver. Just think how embarrassing it will be if a mix of phase changes in primary decade-timescale oscillations plus strongly reduced solar activity relative to the 20th century produce a serious NH cooling trend over the next twenty four months.
Then imagine how embarrassing it will be if CO_2 levels drop, not because anthropogenic CO_2 is being produced more slowly but because the average SST drops and CO_2 absorption in the thermocline picks up. One wonders if even the last 200 years are enough for the ocean to have recovered from heat lost in the LIA.
rgb
There are several interesting points. Main ones for now: the satellite temps are continuously updated with some adjustments up, others down. The surface temps are always updated upwards. Guess which ones are likely more scientific.
As for Santer’s fingerprints it’s hard to imagine him spelling them out clearly, as then we’d have some way to falsify AGW. And I don’t think he can afford providing us that.
The reason why I prefer to look at my own tables is that the satellites don’t tell me what is causing the increase in warming!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/18/co2-sensitivity-is-multi-modal-all-bets-are-off/#comment-837743
John Abraham? Ah yes, that would be this John Abraham:
http://www.stthomas.edu/engineering/faculty/jpabraham.htm
A member of the Climate Rapid Response Team and perennial Monckton basher.
For the sake of the Mother Gaia they so profess to care for,
shouldn’t they be glad the atmosphere isn’t warming?
Shouldn’t they hope they’re wrong and sensitivity is low?
For some odd reason, every time I read “human fingerprint” I think of Ikey Solomon (Dickens’ model for the character Fagin in Oliver Twist).
any comments on this page showing many undisclosed corrections?
http://tinyurl.com/bwannra
First, it is not enough to find potential problems with satellites. You have to explain why the satellites have measured what they have measured and you have to prove that it is not incompatible with your hypothesis.
Second, here is the graph above detrended by 1/3 degree Celsius for 1/3 of a century:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/detrend:0.333/plot/uah/detrend:0.333/mean:13
So, removing a trend of 1 degree Celsius per century seems to remove all of the perceived trend. Is it possible that a trend of 1/2 a Celsius per century comes from the cool Pinatubo in the first half and the 1998 super El-Nino in the second half? If you take the sine function from 0 to 2pi radians. Since it starts with the positive phase then the negative phase, you would find a negative trend even if this function does not have a trend in the long run. It would be interesting if someone knew a way to remove the artificial trend that comes from particular events.
This is nothing but an attempt to smear the character of Spencer and Christy. It isn’t about UAH temp trends vs land. For those unfamiliar, there is a different satellite data set and it shows (to 2/10,000) of a degree, exactly the same thing as UAH data set. (Over the same period of time.) In fact, RSS has been running much cooler than UAH over the last 15 yrs. But, those lunatics don’t say anything about RSS. Why? Because it isn’t about the temps. It’s about the spankage and butthurt Dessler, Santer, and Abraham have all received from skeptics. They don’t like appearing as stupid as they are and that’s why the children are lashing out.
I have a graph that shows the trends of all 4 data sets (GISS, HadCrut, RSS an UAH), I offset the trend lines up and down. Can anyone pick the UAH 33yr trend from the graph?
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/delusional-scientists-and-bloggers-fail-at-character-assassination-attempt/
When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
Observation does not match what models predict,
therefore the observations must be wrong.
There’s actually a “consensus” of scientists who believe this?
Amazing.
Given this little bit of history
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/wp-images/Michaels_Knappenberger_Nature96.pdf
followed up here
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2010/02/26/quick-response-to-ben-santers-comments-at-realclimate/
one would think that Ben Santer would be a little more reticent to keep on bringing up the issue of detecting a “human fingerprint” in climate data.
The UAH temp set has 2 very unfortunate features: Firstly, the 13 months-average….too much up and down to show a decadal trend… why not a decadal or a 5-year trend instead of 13 months?
This 13 months is probably an Alabama lucky number but should be thrown out …. secondly, this wavelike average line: Why should it go down in its first 5 years…it is also strange…..
Both lines do not show the real progress of temps: Which is 1. Plateau since 2001, staying flat
and 1980-2000 occurred a stepwise increase….. somehow muddeling the 1980-2000-2001flat temps plateau into some sort of temp swing ….
A third revised graph of compensating Ninas and Ninos with each other would also be useful since we know that these short time ups/downs are OHC ocean heat related and annullify each other ….
The good Ben Santer news always remains that after 17 years of no increase (by the year 2018) there will be no more human made foot, finger and bottom prints left and the CO2-Yeti must have died after 17 years without his visible traces….which AGW must concede by then…..
I think the most damning thing about the models vs. the data isn’t the failure to predict the trend over time…because, seriously, who knows quantitatively what the natural variability of the climate is.
The most damning thing about the models is that they don’t predict temperature vs. altitude at a single instant in time. This means that the climate modelers don’t even have a handle on the basic atmospheric heat transfer mechanisms, much less the disturbing influences of the sun, cosmic rays, particulates, ocean temp…take your pick.
Sinusoidal fit on graph shows about 3/4 of a complete cycle with a period of 45 – 50 years. Interesting that the data is that flat.
“Ben Santer, a climate researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said Spencer and Christy are mistaken. “People who claim (like Roy Spencer did) that it is “impossible” to separate human from natural influences on climate are seriously misinformed,” he wrote via email. “They are ignoring several decades of relevant research and literature. They are embracing ignorance.” “Many dozens of scientific studies have identified a human “fingerprint” in observations of surface and lower tropospheric temperature change,” Santer stated.”
Because Dr. Santer is a mainstream climate scientist it will be very easy for him to substantiate his claims. All he has to do is present the reasonably well confirmed hypotheses which can be used to explain and predict the contribution to warming that is specific to CO2. Of course, because he is an excellent scholar he will also present the history of experiments undertaken to confirm these hypotheses. Because he wants to communicate with us, he will present these matters in his own words. After all, they are at the tip of the tongue of such an eminent scientist.
Otherwise, he can admit that mainstream climate science is a baby in the birth canal and that neither the head nor feet are yet visible. Let us hope it is not breach. Without the physical hypotheses in question, all we can do is conclude that Dr. Santer is using the same Divine Hunches that are used by Trenberth, Mann, and all of mainstream climate science. Hunches are not science. Models are not science.
As everyone knows, including the Warmists, there is no set of reasonably well confirmed physical hypotheses that explain the causes or effects of atmospheric phenomena such as cloud formation on global warming. If there were such physical hypotheses, everyone would be referring to them instead of using hand waving terms such as “forcing” and “feedback.”
Bob Tisdale shows that the models have absolutely no skill over the 20th century except for one roughly 30 year period where the CO2 rise happens to coincide with the temperature trend. For the rest of the 20 century (and that since the end of warming at around 2000), the models have absolutely no skill.
What the models are telling us is that “correlation is not causation” when it comes to the late 20th century warming period.
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2011/12/12/part-2-do-observations-and-climate-models-confirm-or-contradict-the-hypothesis-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/
It is actually a 60-ish year cycle (+- 5years or so) that shows up in the climate record nearly everywhere.
The human “fingerprint” studies that I’ve looked at were indistinguishable from “we don’t know why our models are different from measurement” studies. Any difference between reality and a model which omits what they imagine CO2 is doing, must be due to humans rather than being due to unknown causes. (Of course, this is dependent upon the values for “reality” which the modelers are using.)
If you really want to see something scary:
http://www.global-warming-and-the-climate.com/images/sunspot-lenght-temp-trend.gif
One would like to beat the crap out of Ben.
What about RSS? Present global anomaly is the same as in 1980.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss
All these “claims that have long been debunked by mainstream climate scientists” (© A. Freedman) … Strange how Freedman doesn’t notice that these “mainstream climate scientists” have also “long been debunked” by cooler heads like those of Drs. Spencer and Christy, to whom thanks for a dispassionate look at those good old-fashioned measurements. Being “debunked by mainstream climate scientists” is the new “peer review”, it seems.
@Sal Minella – Is the data also a not-too-bad fit to the traditional 60 year (ish) cycle? Or maybe the data has “phase noise” like the “11 (or 22) year” sunspot cycle.
crosspatch says:
December 21, 2011 at 12:56 pm
“If you really want to see something scary:
http://www.global-warming-and-the-climate.com/images/sunspot-lenght-temp-trend.gif”
On the one hand, it is something that just might motivate belief in God. On the other hand, it is something that I pray will cause all scientists who use proxy evidence to commit themselves to serious empirical evaluation of their proxies.
Interstellar Bill says (December 21, 2011 at 11:33 am)
“For the sake of the Mother Gaia they so profess to care for,
shouldn’t they be glad the atmosphere isn’t warming?”
Nah!, They want self-righteous self-justification. More than that, they want to stay alive…
1682.txt: “What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multidecadal natural fluctuation? They’ll kill us probably…”
I remember Freedman from his days as a Heidi Cullen minion at the Weather Channel blogs.
He was an one-sided propaganda hack then and it seems he hasn’t changed
“consistent with “…… ” This disingenuous sleight-of-hand is just one more example of why the public is increasingly distrustful of the climate scientists they support with their tax dollars.”
Absolutely! I’ve been conditioned to go into hyper-skeptic mode whenever I see “consistent with”!
A banana peel left on my kitchen counter is consistent with an escaped gorilla being loose in my house, yet for some reason I still think one of the kids/grandkids just didn’t throw it away.
I was home today and caught a program on the History Channel that had to do with climate change. Some of the usual suspects (Lonnie Thompson, Overpeck, et al) were in it ranting about run-away, human induced global warming and claiming that the “finger print” of human causation was indisputable. I wanted to gag. I enjoy the History Channel’s “Universe” program because it goes to great pains to bring different viewpoints about applying laws of physics to the universe in its offerings. It is interesting (and disturbing but not surprising) that the producers chose not to do so on their program on climate change…DJ
An interesting presentation, Dr. Spencer.
All corrections so far have increased the UAH record? None have decreased it? And with each correction the UAH record comes closer to the RSS, GISS, and other temperature records?
Yet you state the “supposed “fingerprint” evidence of human-caused warming continues to be one of the great pseudo-scientific frauds of the global warming debate.”
Curious. Personally, I think you protest to much… that your data is biased low, that you accept corrections only when overwhelming, and that (as the data show) your temperature record continues to be an extreme outlier on the cool side.
Wherever the likes of Santer are found youll also find a large UHI effect…….
crosspatch says:
December 21, 2011 at 12:56 pm
“If you really want to see something scary:
http://www.global-warming-and-the-climate.com/images/sunspot-lenght-temp-trend.gif
”
Very interesting. BUT: Assuming that the temperature anomaly is proportional to the sunspot cycle length is conjecture. We are entering unchartered territory. If there’s a non-spurious correlation, it might as well be nonlinear. We haven’t reached that part of the scale for the last 110 years so our records are not good enough to tell.
What do the balloon data say? The last I heard the balloon data match closely to the satellite data. Funny how Santer makes no mention about this.
KR says:
December 21, 2011 at 2:18 pm
“An interesting presentation, Dr. Spencer.
All corrections so far have increased the UAH record? None have decreased it? And with each correction the UAH record comes closer to the RSS, GISS, and other temperature records?
Yet you state the “supposed “fingerprint” evidence of human-caused warming continues to be one of the great pseudo-scientific frauds of the global warming debate.”
Curious. Personally, I think you protest to much… that your data is biased low, that you accept corrections only when overwhelming, and that (as the data show) your temperature record continues to be an extreme outlier on the cool side.”
KR. You’re quoting Anthony, not Dr. Spencer.
The 33 year UAH trend of +0.1.4C/decade looks, to my untrained eye, very similar to the simple linear trend of HADCRUT over the 50 year period of predominately human impact as claimed by the IPCC:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/plot/uah/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1950/trend
KR says:
All corrections so far have increased the UAH record? None have decreased it? And with each correction the UAH record comes closer to the RSS, GISS, and other temperature records?
What part of the following were you not able to read?
@KR
You could do a tiny bit of research before posting.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/plot/uah/plot/rss/trend/plot/uah/trend/plot/rss/from:2001/trend/plot/uah/from:2001/trend
Keep up the good work. All you have to do is stick to the scientific method. Everything else is froth.
KR says:
December 21, 2011 at 2:18 pm
An interesting presentation, Dr. Spencer.
All corrections so far have increased the UAH record? None have decreased it? And with each correction the UAH record comes closer to the RSS, GISS, and other temperature records?
==============================================================
KR, you’re confused. Dr. Spencer didn’t say that, Dr. Dessler did, being quoted in the WaPo blog. It is, btw, demonstrably false. As is his claim that surface temps don’t get adjusted for errors. GISS, in fact, employs an algorithm that is always changing the temps and trends. So much so, that 1998 and 1934 for the U.S. had switched the lead for the hottest year evuh, several times….. in the 2000s decade.
The facts do not support the claims made in that hit piece by Freedman. Some people would mark that up to incompetence. Certainly, Dessler, Santer, Abraham, and Freedman all have had their moments when their a$$ was handed to them by skeptics, but, I think untruths stated were intentional. Those guys can’t be that oblivious to the facts and still be remotely connected to the climate discussion.
KR writes “All corrections so far have increased the UAH record? None have decreased it? ”
But quoting Christy, Spencer wrote…
“The Freedman blog post is completely wrong when it states that “when the problems are fixed, the trend always goes up.” Indeed, there have been a number of corrections that adjusted for spurious warming, leading to a reduction in the warming trend. That the scientists quoted in the post didn’t mention this says something about their bias.”
So it is evident where KR’s bias lies.
Charles.U.Farley said @ December 21, 2011 at 2:33 pm
“Wherever the likes of Santer are found youll also find a large UHI effect…….”
Unbelievably Hubristic Ignorance?
Robt319 says:
December 21, 2011 at 2:53 pm
@KR
You could do a tiny bit of research before posting.
Sadly, that’s asking a bit much for a team player.
“…..the data needn’t be passed on.” Phil Jones
Thank you, Dr. Roy Spencer. I have been trying since 1996 to get someone to acknowledge what you state above. I could not get a proposal on this topic funded, and I have even quizzed several people on this site, hoping to generate some discussion about the observed warming being consistent with, and therefore potentially explained by, advancing humidity. Indeed, increasing humidity may be a feedback from increasing CO2, but it is surely possible that long-term changes in humidity may result from variation in source location of atmospheric moisture and varying characteristics of the source region. El Nino being just one such example.
JJThoms:
Yes, I DO have comments…
That blogger (“thefordprefect”?) should have read the disclaimer at the Discover website before critically comparing the daily, automated, “quick-and-dirty” AMSU data averages posted there with the intercalibrated and quality controlled data in our monthly updates of the UAH dataset.
Our corrections are NOT (as the blogger claims) “undisclosed”. If the blogger took the time to read our publications, he/she would not make such uninformed claims.
John Christy…
“The most significant of these problems we discovered in the late 1990’s in which the calibration of the radiometer was found to be influenced by the temperature of the instrument itself (due to variable solar shadowing effects on a drifting polar orbiting spacecraft.)”
Yes of course! I wonder if this feedback influence is present to some degree on all space based platforms since the inception of satellite remote sensing of temperature. And also it should be confirmed that all space based remotely sensed temperature data already incorporated in data sets and models prior to the discovery of this feedback phenomena, has been readjusted to reflect a more accurate reading.
It’s fairly obvious that the academic “climate science” establishment has little interest in being informed by real-world measurements, preferring the virtual reality of unvalidated computer models. In fact, an arrogant hostility toward objective data is evident in their pronouncements. In their hands, patchy historical station data–which indeed is often subject to strong UHI effects–either becomes a convenient crutch for their lame hypotheses about global warming or is summarily “adjusted” to fit such hypotheses. Truly global UHI-free satellite measurements are attacked, because they contradict their specious claims. The palpable aim is the production of pseudo-scientific opiate for the masses. Dispassionate attention to what the data may be revealing about phyical reality seems the last of their concerns.
KR and Christopher Hanley, regarding the “match” between surface and satellite measurements:
Did you not read that?
>> KR says:
December 21, 2011 at 2:18 pm
Curious. Personally, I think you protest to much… that your data is biased low, that you accept corrections only when overwhelming, and that (as the data show) your temperature record continues to be an extreme outlier on the cool side. <<
Personally, I think you spout dogma too much … that your statements are biased by spending too much time on the believer blogs, and that (as James Sexton showed on December 21, 2011 at 11:41 am) your post continues to quote an extreme (xxx)liar from the warm side.
KR says:
December 21, 2011 at 2:18 pm
Ignore KR, he is either stupid or cannot comprehend english.
Christopher Hanley says:
December 21, 2011 at 2:45 pm
The 33 year UAH trend of +0.1.4C/decade looks, to my untrained eye, very similar to the simple linear trend of HADCRUT over the 50 year period of predominately human impact as claimed by the IPCC:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/plot/uah/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1950/trend
=============================================================
Christopher, attribution for the warming has yet to be shown. But, even to a trained eye, the 33 year trends for all of the data sets….. UAH, RSS, HadCrut, and GISS look remarkably similar.
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/delusional-scientists-and-bloggers-fail-at-character-assassination-attempt/
“Robt319 says:
December 21, 2011 at 2:53 pm
@KR You could do a tiny bit of research before posting.”
Well Rob, it’s obvious he can’t.
We should remember there are two significant volcanoes at the beginning of this record. This has the affect of increasing the trend versus what it would have been in the absence of the volcanoes (this is similar to Bob Tisdale’s recent post on sea surface temperatures).
Adjusting out the impact of the volcanoes, the average of UAH and RSS then falls to 0.094C per decade in terms of a trend. The impact of the ENSO also becomes much more clear.
http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/4235/volcadjuahrssensonov11.png
The climate models predict that the UAH/RSS atmospheric level should rise by 1.2 to 1.4 times that of the surface (the tropical hotspot in particular). So the climate models would have this level increasing at over 0.28C per decade while it is just 0.094C (after taking into just one external variable).
If one adjusts out the volcanoes, and also the ENSO and AMO influences, the trend then falls to 0.042C per decade (now that is less than 15% of the climate models predicted trend for the lower troposphere).
http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/7739/warmingvolcensoamouahrs.png
“R. de Haan says: December 21, 2011 at 11:44 am
When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.”
Or in the case of Ben (Sluggo) Santer, when you find yourself in the ring with Ali, stop swinging.
33 years is half the climate cycle, and it’s been mostly the warming half. So now we enter the cooling half. After a few years of coolth, I think the world will come to the conclusion that warmer is better.
Oh no you di-ent!
KR has a valid point, contrary to the OP. The graph does show a mix of the actual in trend mixed with the corrections to the S&C methodology that cause the UAH to rise in trend. In short, S&C have previously underestimated the trend. However the heading under the figure in the WashPost piece is not correct. It is not “errors that were corrected’ but a “combination of rise in trend and corrections” (those corrections being to correct prior trend underestimations).
It’s pretty weird though that so many people defend a misleading heading calling it corrections. I get the sense that the “rapid response team” writes figure headings a little too rapidly and defends their work a little too rapidly also. I guess they figure 99.99% of the public won’t figure it out.
I just checked out the WAPO blog that Spencer and Christy are replying to. The blog has a total of 43 comments and maybe 3 good ones. I guess the WAPO brand does not count for much in climate science or climate politics.
Jeff Alberts says:
December 21, 2011 at 6:46 pm
It’s about the spankage and butthurt Dessler, Santer, and Abraham have all received from skeptics.
Oh no you di-ent!
===============================================================
lol,….. called it like it was. 😉
There was a time I could provoke discussion on issues such as these with great ease…… they just don’t come out to play anymore. I believe they’ve decided that it really wasn’t the manner in which they packaged their message.
Perhaps one reason for UAH data being cooler is that satellite sensors aren’t cheek and jowl with heat absorbing/emitting tarmac airport landing strips like land-based weather stations are? Proximite to ever-more-powerful jet engines, and increasing number of plane flights?
Perhaps some who knows would share with this poor benighted soul the percentage of weather stations, globally, located at airports?
neill says:
December 21, 2011 at 8:15 pm
Perhaps one reason for UAH data being cooler is that satellite sensors aren’t cheek and jowl with heat absorbing/emitting tarmac airport landing strips like land-based weather stations are? Proximite to ever-more-powerful jet engines, and increasing number of plane flights?
Perhaps some who knows would share with this poor benighted soul the percentage of weather stations, globally, located at airports?
===================================================
Neil, the thing is UAH isn’t cooler. At the risk of being redundant, go here http://suyts.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/delusional-scientists-and-bloggers-fail-at-character-assassination-attempt/
Ok, technically it is cooler. It is slightly over 2/10,000ths of a degree warmer in the annual trend than RSS (the other satellite temp database)
Here are the numbers for the trends from 1979 to present ………
UAH, slope = 0.0137276 per year……..
RSS, slope = 0.0139595 per year ………
HadCr slope=0.0149354 per year……
GISS slope = 0.0162445 per year …..
(hope the formatting holds) So, the largest divergence is 25/10,000ths of a degree/yr. This is outrageous. 825/10,000ths of a degree divergence from the outlier over a 33 year period of time! With HadCrut, it is much closer. And with the other satellite data gathering group they are spot on! Can anyone legitimately state they hoped for closer agreement? No. What they hoped for was validation of their wild a$$ illegitimate theories about our atmosphere and the role GHGs play. Turns out, GHGs aren’t nearly as important as those imbeciles thought. And when facts invalidate these lunatic theories, they turn to character assassination.
They are wrong intellectually, they are wrong morally. And they willfully choose to remain in such state. There isn’t much else to be stated.
There is one other thought that should be vocalized. If, the contention is that our satellites are wrong…… which it must be the satellites and not the interpreters because of such close agreement with the two separate groups gathering satellite data,(gosh I love typing that! 🙂 )…….. then, our satellites are wrong about much more than just temps. The assumptions and spacing with the temp gathering are the same for all satellites with other functions. There would be only a very small part of the process that was unique to the process of gathering temps as opposed to say……. sea levels, or ozone measurements or gas spectrometry, or ……
I am very, very curious about the views of Dr. Spencer on why the troposphere isn’t warming as fast as the surface, and why he thinks the models are unanimous in predicting the troposphere should warm faster.
I have my own theory about both these points, I’ve posted a paper about it on my blog. But given how busy Dr. Spencer is, I don’t expect him to read and comment on random papers in the blogosphere. I’d really just like a paragraph or two summarizing his view, or a link to same.
How about it, Dr. Spencer? What are the physics in this case?
And while we’re at it, has anyone else got a theory?
All that linear trend comparisons are useless, since tropospheric data are much more sensitive to positive ENSO events than the surface record – see the 2010 El Nino on HadCRUT and UAH.
This is CRUTEM3 vs MSU above land vs Reynolds SST since 1979:
http://blog.sme.sk/blog/560/252537/uhi_glob.jpg
As long as the “mainstream” climate scientists continue to claim publicly that Mann’s Hockey stick (or any of it’s clones) is an accurate representation of temperatures for the past 1000 years they will continue to have zero credibility.
I suppose the human fingerprint is supposedly the changes in observed 13C to 12C. One argument is no biological source of carbon would be depeleted in 14C. A better argument is biological sources of CO2 are enriched in 12C, and fossil fuels supposedly come from plants originally. Consequently, burning fossil fuels enriches 12C. Is that necessarily true? And even if it is true, it doesn’t mean that CO2 has anything to do with observed warming trends.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/newsletters/newsletter_2011.pdf
The ratio of 14C to 12C is decreasing in the atmosphere. 14C is cosmogenic (ignoring atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons) and has a half-life of about 5700 years. After 5 half-lives, only 3% is left. Methane seeping from the ground either on land or in the sea easily could be old enough. However, what we are looking for is something that may be a consequence of more recent events, not a constant contributor. It must explain a change in the observed isotope ratios,
Perhaps methane clathrates, accumulated during the last glacial maximum, are still being released. More recent isotope ratio changes might be explained if the methane release rate from the ocean was slowed during the LIA. Another source might be recenty thawed permafrost that had frozen 15,000 or more years ago. Thawed ground could now be producing methane with little 14C. Permafrost melting may be caused by factors other than atmospheric CO2 increases. It is well known that atmospheric CO2 concentration increases and decreases follow changes in average temperature, and that clear observation is ignored by alarmists.
It is less obvious how to explain the observed 13C decline. In photosynthesis, plants capture 12CO2 slightly faster. Actual fractionation depends on gas phase concentrations, but also the concentrations of CO2 or HCO3 dissolved in tissues. Furthermore, there are strong differences in fractionation between terrestrial and aquatic species, and there are strong temperature dependencies. Marine phytoplankton strongly enrich 13C in surface water, and 12C in sediments. This effect is more pronounced in cold water conditions. Thus, the observed decline in atmospheric 13C could be explained by the release of methane in the last century that was produced from sediments that accumulated long ago, perhaps while the oceans were colder.
http://www.geo.cornell.edu/geology/classes/Geo656/656notes03/656%2003Lecture28.pdf
Read much?
Apparently not.
James Sexton says:
I have a graph that shows the trends of all 4 data sets (GISS, HadCrut, RSS an UAH)
James, I always respect your opinion. Maybe you can help me.
My problem is : the datasets that are always quoted, even on WUWT, don’t show me where the extra heat came from. If you look at my dataset:
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
you can easliy see what is happening, because it shows the development of maxima and minima as well….
For example: looking at the SH (on my tables).
Looking at the Means I am finding that there is virtually no warming in the SH since 1974. I heard here that it is apparently the same in the antarctic:
http://www.nerc-bas.ac.uk/icd/gjma/amundsen-scott.ann.trend.pdf
http://www.nerc-bas.ac.uk/public/icd/gjma/vostok.ann.trend.pdf
(does anyone here perhaps know where the original data of these 2 graphs are?)
However, seeing that Maxima rose by an incredible 0.045 degrees C per annum in the SH, and minima are falling by -0.017 degrees C, there must be a nett loss of energy over the whole of the SH.
Now, on the NH, on the other hand, maxima and means and minima are almost on par with each other, all increasing at about 0.027 degrees C per annum since 1974.
the only explanation I can think of is that our current weather systems pick up the warmth from the SH and drop it in the NH. That is all that would explain that maxima and minima and means are rising at almost the same rate here.
Note that I only cut up my results in NH and SH because I was curious. But we cannot cut up earth in 2 pieces to make a point. I have to bring everything back to one global result: 0.0137. Obviously, the final conclusion of all the results in my tables is still that warming is driven by increasing maxima,
i.e. less clouds and/or more intense sunshine, especially so in the SH.
So, what we see is happening from my dataset is that more heat went into the SH oceans and is taken away by current weather systems to the NH.
Now, curiously enough, it seems that my estimate of global warming for the past 37 years is remarkably spot on: mine is 0.0137 degrees C per annum versus the 0.14 degrees C per decade for the past 33 years reported here….
Interesting, not?
The point I am trying to make is that I prefer my datasets – even though I am not yet quoted -because it tells me more of what is happening. Don’t you think so too? So why can’t we get the same information about maxima and minima from your 4 datasets?
All I find on climate bloggs is graphs telling me that average temps. are rising. I know that. I think everyone knows that by now. We need to have more info, telling us why the temps. are increasing.
Unfortunately Dr. Spencer your time period of 33 years, yes I know it is the total satellite period of observation, is about half the climate cycle found in some other research. Within that 60 year cycle there is no warming and even a slight cooling.
I fully expect your research to continue to produce good data.
It is easy to see why this data set needs to be maligned by thye AGW crowd. Put simply over the 33 year period there is no warming trend. Before the super El Nino, temperatures were flat. After the super El Nino temperatures remain flat. The data set shows that all that has happened is that there was a step change around the supoer El Nino.
The data set is completely inconsistent with all land based data sets (save that they appear to largely agree that there has been little warming since the super El Nino).
@Maurizio: “Guess which ones are likely more scientific”
I am going to use this sentence of yours as a stalking horse. Please dont take what I write as aimed at you personally.
But this phrase strikes me as being a symptom of a modern (post-modern?) problem; we have taken science – which is simply a rigorous methodology – and applied it as a value judgement.
In this context, “scientific” = “good”.
Now we have the bizarre and troubling spectacle of everyone on all sides of an argument trying to claim to be the **most** scientific, in much the same way people might once have contended to be seen as the most pious. When we join this spectacle, we degrade science, from its proper status as a useful discovery mechanism, to a pietistic social ritual.
But really, a scientific process is merely one in which no obvious mistakes have been made. The results may be good, bad, or indifferent, depending largely on one’s point of view.
(I am, for example, firmly in the “warming is good” camp, believing that less people die when it is warm than when it is cold, and not at all convinced that the alleged damage done by warming is anywhere near as bad as it is painted by some, assuming it exists at all. Others see warming as inherently bad, yet others are indifferent to it.)
The rigour of the process used to arrive at the result tells us nothing about the desirability of the result.
Please can we try to avoid the linguistic and epistemological errors of our opponents, especially while we’re criticising them for their linguistic and epistemological errors?
My view is that sloppy language is a symptom of sloppy thinking.
I’m agin it – generally.
Thanks.
Trend matching as a means to causation is such a low level degree of scientific acumen that I wonder which PhD committee allows such nonsense. That population has risen, development has risen, and CO2 has risen does not automatically render them the first encountered pathology responsible for the fact that global temperatures have risen (though not in regard to development blanketed nocturnal temperatures impinging on ground sensors). I’ve gotten older in concert with the rise in CO2. Is my aging birthdays thus responsible for the rise in CO2 and therefore the rise in global temperatures? Only when I suffer from a hot flash.
Now with the right kind of PhD committee, I just might get away with that spurious connection.
HenryP says:
December 22, 2011 at 2:08 am
James Sexton says:
I have a graph that shows the trends of all 4 data sets (GISS, HadCrut, RSS an UAH)
James, I always respect your opinion. Maybe you can help me.
………….
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
you can easliy see what is happening, because it shows the development of maxima and minima as well….
For example: looking at the SH (on my tables).
…………
Interesting, not?
The point I am trying to make is that I prefer my datasets – even though I am not yet quoted -because it tells me more of what is happening. Don’t you think so too? So why can’t we get the same information about maxima and minima from your 4 datasets?
All I find on climate bloggs is graphs telling me that average temps. are rising. I know that. I think everyone knows that by now. We need to have more info, telling us why the temps. are increasing.
================================================
Henry, thanks for the kind words. And, yes your approach is interesting. Perhaps someone more capable than myself could have a look at the way you’re presenting the data. But, I like how you’ve broke it down in the min/max/mean. And, thanks for reminding me, I’ve been remiss in popping over to see what you’ve been up to. I always enjoy looking at things from a different perspective.
In this particular case, I wasn’t aiming to do any analysis, rather, to simply show the disingenuous characterization of UAH’s data set and by extension what these people were implying about Drs Spencer and Christy. As is often the case when, either writing on my blog or participating in a conversation elsewhere, time is my largest constraint. Because of the fluid nature of discussions and topics, I often opt for expedience. In this particular instance, Paul Clark’s http://www.woodfortrees.org is the place to go. Just to be clear, I’m not doing anything with any data. These aren’t my data sets. Paul Clark links directly to the source and any independent graphic I create uses data directly from the various sources. I prefer to keep the numbers as straight forward as possible. Statistical acrobatics isn’t my forte.
For my particular views on numbers, statistics, and what some have done to my first love, ……..
Read these two in this order…… http://suyts.wordpress.com/2011/11/08/i-wanted-to-be-a-statistician/ and then this one for a specific view of dendro…. http://suyts.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/dividing-by-zero/
Henry, as to why we’re seeing warming, I haven’t a clue. Nor, do I seek to answer that question. While anyone who knows me, knows I posses a rather inflated view of self, it isn’t large enough to believe I can understand all that Nature is doing. I can’t. I’m not sure it is a worthwhile venture.
UAH and RSS on the whole agree very well with one another (although in recent years UAH is running a little warm in comparison to RSS).
If this science was new. ie., just set up/come about as a new discipline in the last few years, what is the betting that scientist would (i) prefer the UAH and RSS data over all land based data sets (the latter being collected by stations/instruments not designed for the purpose to which it is presently put, stations poorly cited and unquantified problems with UHI); and (ii) look at the UAH and RSS data and Argo data, and not be alarmed that there was any problem with global warming.
The reality is that there is no global warming scare based upon either the UAH data set or on the RSS data set, PERIOD. Thus the cAGW crowd have to discredit these 2 data sets and have to use the land based data sets notwithstranding the obvious shortcomings with the land based data sets. Crazy really.
James Sexton says:
December 22, 2011 at 8:36 am
HenryP says:
December 22, 2011 at 2:08 am
///////////////////////////////////////////////////
Henry’s approach is intuitive.
I do not know whether his data is correct nor whether his analysis of the data is sound, but if it properly suggest that day time maxima are increasing significantly faster than nighttime minima then this would suggest that temperatures are being driven by solar influence (in which I include a change in cloudiness and/or reduction in the opaqueness of the atmosphere inaddition to TSI etc) rather than by CO2.
James Sexton says
While anyone who knows me, knows I posses a rather inflated view of self, it isn’t large enough to believe I can understand all that Nature is doing. I can’t. I’m not sure it is a worthwhile venture.
Henry@James
I have checked the woodfortrees website. It is interesting to me. I will go back there again when I get more time.
Thanks for explaining your position. Acknowledging that Nature (God) is higher than yourself is indeed the beginning of all knowledge. … Myself, I also believe more warming is better (for nature, e.g. for more trees to grow) ,
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
it is just that I have now developed this curiosty to know why it is happening.
I think I am on this path because I suspect that it will not continue to warm forever, so when it stops, should we not be ready?
Richard Verney says
Henry’s approach is intuitive.
I do not know whether his data is correct nor whether his analysis of the data is sound, but if it (properly suggest) is that day time maxima are increasing significantly faster than nighttime minima then this would suggest that temperatures are being driven by solar influence (in which I include a change in cloudiness and/or reduction in the opaqueness of the atmosphere inaddition to TSI etc) rather than by CO2.
Henry@richard
IMHO, your conclusion is correct.
To check my tables you can sample all the data from a single weather station, like the data from here
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/no-global-warming-in-brisbane-australia
Pamela Gray says:
December 22, 2011 at 7:15 am
Actually, with the right connections, you could get a PAL review and get published in a major scientific journal. We see Warmists do it all the time.
ScuzzaMan says:
December 22, 2011 at 5:04 am
“But really, a scientific process is merely one in which no obvious mistakes have been made. The results may be good, bad, or indifferent, depending largely on one’s point of view.”
So, when the waiter spits in your food and you cannot detect it, you call that scientific?
James Sexton says:
December 21, 2011 at 9:07 pm
“There is one other thought that should be vocalized. If, the contention is that our satellites are wrong…… which it must be the satellites and not the interpreters because of such close agreement with the two separate groups gathering satellite data,(gosh I love typing that! 🙂 )…….. then, our satellites are wrong about much more than just temps.”
Very well said and absolutely crucial in our understanding of Warmism. Our science of satellite instrumentation is the twin of our climate science and both are in the birth canal.
Roy Spencer says: December 21, 2011 at 4:10 pm
That blogger (“thefordprefect”?) should have read the disclaimer at the Discover website before critically comparing the daily, automated, “quick-and-dirty” AMSU data averages posted there with the intercalibrated and quality controlled data in our monthly updates of the UAH dataset.
Our corrections are NOT (as the blogger claims) “undisclosed”. If the blogger took the time to read our publications, he/she would not make such uninformed claims
==============
thanks for answering but I cannot find your change log for the data. Could you provide a link please?
Also you seem to be saying that this page is vitually useless. Why provide it if the data is wrong?
Why not correct it to the same state as your quality controlled data?
There seems to have been no attempt to intercallibrate data from the various sattelites with up to 2K temp differences between supposedly same altitudes but different satellites. Why not?
Could you also point to similar “altitude” data sets that are corrected please.
‘We have sought to produce the most accurate representation of the real world ‘ There is the problem , this is in conflict with the first rule of climate science which states ‘when the value of anything differs between reality and the model , its reality which is in error ‘.
Theo,
I dont know what’s crawled up your leg, and I’m not interested.
Here’s a hint for future reference: Context.
With all the supposed warming around the globe, how come my thermometer outside my house could not climb above 4F this morning. Seems I may be missing the “global” part of global warming. Just asking.
That last from Andrew Dessler seems a particularly ugly lie. There are a whole raft of adjustments made to surface temperature data from thermometers. Without one of them called Time of Observation Bias, which began to be applied around 1990, there is virtually no warming at all in the surface temperature record! The scope of surface temperature adjustments are nothing short of phenomenal. The pencil done to fill in the gigantic gaps in surface coverage are particularly breathtaking. Gridding, comparisons and averaging with neighboring stations, it’s such a fantastic web of calculations it can’t be done without a computer and it’s all to coerce an instrument array that was never designed for nor capable of either global measurement of temperature nor measurements accurate to tenths of degrees into producing a global record accurate to tenths of degrees. And according to the link below which describes all the current adjustments and when they were discovered to be necessary there is yet another adjustment in the wings waiting to make its debut on stage.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.html
Now while there might not have been new adjustments “every few years” to the thermometer record there was a whole raft of adjustments that, without which there would be NO GLOBAL WARMING, all applied right around 1988. That year will go down in history as the year that man-made global warming was invented. The man-made part means it was manufactured from the instrument record by a series of adjustments to the actual thermometer readings.
One might also take into consideration that the thermometer was invented hundreds of years ago and is a rather simple affair that for hundreds of years didn’t need any “corrections”. The adjustments were only needed to gin up the anthropogenic global warming hoax circa 1988. Conversely satellite sensors of atmospheric temperature were invented in the 1970’s and they are complex electronic affairs that only high tech geeks can actually understand the theory of operation and even so they’re still learning. What’s truly remarkable,which Dessler ought to understand, is that number of corrections needed for that technology over the years is amazingly few. He should also acknowledge that just as many corrections are applied to the thermometer record and he should also acknowledge that without the thermometer adjustments there is no global warming at all.
So there. I fart in Dessler’s general direction. What a scoundrel. I’m ashamed that he lives in the same state as me. He’s an embarrassment to all Texans and a really big embarrassment for Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University who employs his sorry ass.
@Roy Spencer
“In my opinion, the supposed “fingerprint” evidence of human-caused warming continues to be one of the great pseudo-scientific frauds of the global warming debate. There is no way to distinguish warming caused by increasing carbon dioxide from warming caused by a more humid atmosphere responding to (say) naturally warming oceans responding to a slight decrease in maritime cloud cover (see, for example, “Oceanic Influences on Recent continental Warming“).”
I beg to differ here, Roy. The difference will show up as either greater warming at the surface or greater warming at altitude by cloud or CO2 respectively.
This has to with the radiative response characteristics of water to visible and infrared radiation. A decrease in cloud cover increases visible light which falls upon the ocean. An increase in CO2 increases the amount of far infrared which falls upon the ocean. In the case of visible light the ocean is transparent to it and it is gradually absorbed by impurities in the water until at a depth of hundred meters or so it is completely extinguished. Thus visible light warms the ocean down to some substantial remove from the surface.
Far infrared on the other hand is absorbeb by the ocean in the top few micrometers and this energy is immediately rejected as latent heat of vaporization. There are no forces which serve to mix this instantaneious heating of the skin layer downwards. Several studies in the peer reviewed literature attest to this as well as numerous ocean heat budget studies which show that the great majority of ocean heat loss occurs through evaporation.
So then the difference between greenhouse gas increase and cloud cover decrease is that cloud cover decrease warms the ocean which then warms the air and the greatest heating will be in the surface air layer. CO2 warming on the other hand will cause the additional energy at the ocean surface excess heat to be entrained in latent heat of vaporization which does not heat the surface air but rather rises insensibly until adiabatic cooling drops to the dewpoint and the energy is then released at altitude.
So this is how you tell apart increased CO2 warming from lesser cloud cover warming. The $64,000 question thus becomes is the surface air warming faster or is the air at altitude warming faster?
I think you and I know the answer to that question. It’s now just a matter of how long it takes the climate science community to acknowledge it.
All the observations start making complete sense when the physics of water in regard to its different response to visible and far infrared light are correctly understood and applied. CO2 over the ocean warms the atmosphere at altitude. CO2 over land warms the atmosphere at the surface. Simple, elegant, and in complete agreement with the observations.
QED
Dave says:
CO2 over the ocean warms the atmosphere at altitude. CO2 over land warms the atmosphere at the surface. Simple, elegant, and in complete agreement with the observations.
Henry@Dave
Well, professor, it does not make sense to me. I think we argued about this before. I tested your theory on 2 islands and it did not work out. I compared the records of Easter Island with that of Minamitorishima. Easter island (-27 in the pacific) follows SH trend, Mininatorishima (+ 24 also in the pacific) follows the NH trend. According to your theory I should get similar results.
My suface temp. estimate is now 0.0137 degree C per annum for the past 37 years which actually corresponds with Roy’s 0.14C/decade.
But from my records I am able to see what is happening.
I am convinced it has nothing to do with CO2. See my comments made earlier.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/21/ben-santers-damage-control-on-uah-global-temperature-data/#comment-839937
&
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/21/ben-santers-damage-control-on-uah-global-temperature-data/#comment-840419
P.S. added below
@Roy Spencer
“In my opinion, the supposed “fingerprint” evidence of human-caused warming continues to be one of the great pseudo-scientific frauds of the global warming debate. There is no way to distinguish warming caused by increasing carbon dioxide from warming caused by a more humid atmosphere responding to (say) naturally warming oceans responding to a slight decrease in maritime cloud cover (see, for example, “Oceanic Influences on Recent continental Warming“).”
I beg to differ here, Roy. The difference will show up as either greater warming at the surface or greater warming at altitude by cloud or CO2 respectively.
This has to with the radiative response characteristics of water to visible and infrared radiation. A decrease in cloud cover increases visible light which falls upon the ocean. An increase in CO2 increases the amount of far infrared which falls upon the ocean. In the case of visible light the ocean is transparent to it and it is gradually absorbed by impurities in the water until at a depth of hundred meters or so it is completely extinguished. Thus visible light warms the ocean down to some substantial remove from the surface.
Far infrared on the other hand is absorbeb by the ocean in the top few micrometers and this energy is immediately rejected as latent heat of vaporization. There are no forces which serve to mix this instantaneious heating of the skin layer downwards. Several studies in the peer reviewed literature attest to this as well as numerous ocean heat budget studies which show that the great majority of ocean heat loss occurs through evaporation.
So then the difference between greenhouse gas increase and cloud cover decrease is that cloud cover decrease warms the ocean which then warms the air and the greatest heating will be in the surface air layer. CO2 warming on the other hand will cause the additional energy at the ocean surface excess heat to be entrained in latent heat of vaporization which does not heat the surface air but rather rises insensibly until adiabatic cooling drops to the dewpoint and the energy is then released at altitude.
So this is how you tell apart increased CO2 warming from lesser cloud cover warming. The $64,000 question thus becomes is the surface air warming faster or is the air at altitude warming faster?
I think you and I know the answer to that question. It’s now just a matter of how long it takes the climate science community to acknowledge it.
All the observations start making complete sense when the physics of water in regard to its different response to visible and far infrared light are correctly understood and applied. CO2 over the ocean warms the atmosphere at altitude. CO2 over land warms the atmosphere at the surface. Simple, elegant, and in complete agreement with the observations.
QED
P.S. This is also in complete agreement with the models which predict that CO2 warming will be greater at altitude. Given that 70% of the earth’s surface is oceanic and most land is at least occasionally wet and CO2 is well mixed in the atmosphere then the lion’s share of CO2 warming fingerprint on a global average basis will be greater warming at altitude than at the surface. The models evidently take this into account if that’s what they predict.
The problems and confusion arise because the thermometer record is primarily land based and surface based so it does not have any appreciable ability to accurately produce a temperature record for the atmosphere at any level over the ocean and only a modest ability through radiosonde data to get temperature readings at altitude. I used to routinely launch radiosondes in my military days back in the early 1970’s and I was the technician responsible for calibration, maintenance, and repair of the eletronics involved with it. I’m here to tell you’d be damn lucky to get sub-degree repeatibility of temperature measurements from those things for a number of reasons. The biggest reason is adiabatic cooling and once the balloon is downrange a few miles it is next to impossible to get the tracking antenna elevation reading so precise that you could say with confidence the balloon’s altitude down to 10’s of meters. Given that adiabatic cooling is 1C per 100 meters elevation an elevation error on the antenna of just hundreths of a degree when the balloon is downrage thousands of meters translates into altitude errors of tens of meters and thus comparison errors at same altitude between different launches of half a degree C or more.
That magnitude of error was perfectly acceptable for the intended purpose of the radiosondes which was to give pilots and artillery controllers accurate winds and temperatures and relative humidity aloft as well as helping weather forecasters make predictions which effect military planning, operation, and execution. The sounding datums, which are important for a number of reasons, are pretty much oblivious to small comparative inaccuracies between different soundings. And of course soundings done from dry land are far more numerous than soundings done aboard a ship at sea. The gear I used would have been quite incapable of an accurate sounding on a ship at sea as it had no provision for removing the motion of the ship from the motion of the balloon. There may have been sounding gear with that capability however provided the motion of the ship wasn’t too abrupt. My tracking antenna massed a few hundred kilos and there was only so fast the servo motors could move it to keep it locked onto the radio under the sounding balloon. In fact we often had to manually track the balloon for a bit right after launch especially in high winds because the balloon would be moving so fast so close to the antenna that it couldn’t keep up with the motion.
@HenryP
Surface temperature records from two islands hardly constitutes a global record. There are decadal fluctuations in ocean surface temps which will control the temperatures on those two islands. You must have global coverage of both surface and altitude to draw conclusions.
Try again.
“Dave,
you said (some time ago) that you won’t see much of an CO2 effect over oceans (seas) because (earth’s) water does not really give off much radiation of the 14-15 um type.
and you quoted a paper
So I tested this. In several ways. Islands in the ocean were chosen randomly. Even at similar distrances at opposite sides of the equator.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
(but I have not yet added the Minamitorishima result in the table)
The long and short of it is that your theory does not hold up. Islands in the oceans behave exactly the same as land. They behave according to their place on earth, whether in the NH or SH.
And NH and SH have widely different warming rates.
As explained here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/21/ben-santers-damage-control-on-uah-global-temperature-data/#comment-839937
Eric (skeptic) says:
…And, actually, it is not very hard to figure out how much is due to each since you can just apply the current algorithm to the data cut off at various times. I did that as of a few years ago (Dec 2008) and found that it was pretty close to 50-50%. In particular, the original trend that they had reported was -0.076 C / decade for the Jan 1979 – Apr 1997 data and if you look at the trend over the same period in the “current” (Dec 2008) version, you get +0.029 C / decade and a trend over the entire data set of +0.127 C / decade. Hence, 0.105 C / decade of the change from the old trend to the Dec 2008 trend was due to the corrections and 0.098 C / decade was due to the longer data record.
I have not updated this analysis since Dec 2008 but I imagine it won’t change much as the only updates they have made to the analysis are ones that they say have almost no effect on the overall trend.
In Burrito says:
How do you know that they don’t predict the temperature vs altitude at a single instant of time? If you are thinking about plots showing the lack of a “hot spot” then you are misinterpreting those plots…They are not plots of the temperature vs altitude at a single instant in time. They are plots of the multidecadal trend in the temperature at various altitudes.
And, in fact, the models do even do a pretty good job with trends in temperature vs altitude over shorter timescales. If you look at fluctuations in temperature over the timescale of months to a few years (e.g., due to ENSO) then the “hot spot” (magnification of fluctuations as you go up in the tropical troposphere) is there, and this severely limits possible explanations for whatever discrepancy exists between the models and the data for trends over the multidecadal timescales.
It is only when one looks at the trend over multidecadal timescales that it may be absent. However, the data are less reliable for these trends, as is apparent from the discrepancies between various analyses and re-analyses of satellite and radiosonde data. And, it is understood how various artifacts due to instrumentation could contaminate the trends.
So, the summary conclusion is that the models and data are in pretty good agreement over timescales where the data is trustworthy and the largest disagreement is over timescales for which the data is problematic. This suggests that it may be as much or more a problem with the data than with the models.
The essence of any competent practitioner’s credentials is the ability to predict a result.
However, NOT ONE of the scary predictions of the global warming alarmists has materialized.
The global warmists have NO PREDICTIVE SKILL!
In fact, their predictive skill is negative – to date, their dire predictions have all been FALSE!
Anyone who still listens to them is clearly unaware of this critical fact, or is so brainwashed that facts no longer matter.
Given the negative track record of the warming alarmists, just ask yourself one question:
Would you hire someone with this dismal track record to paint your house, tow your car, or fix your toilet?
P.S. Merry Christmas to all.
(even you global warming alarmists)
Regarding the human fingerprint, isn’t the true test to see whether or not GAT rises above the historical average? I’ve always wondered this, how can we pick an arbitrary starting point such as 1800-present and attribute any warming to man? After all, isn’t the temperature simply replicating something it has done before?
Additionally, since the earth is below average atmospheric co2, doesn’t this make human attribution even harder to detect?
Dr. Christy follows climatological tradition by comparing climate model projections of the global temperature to a global temperature time series. However, such a comparison logically results in neither the falsification nor corroboration of model claims. For the purpose of falsifying the claims of bad models and corroborating the claims of good ones, the procedure is to compare model predictions of the outcomes of statistical events to the observed outcomes. We are prevented from doing so by the fact that climatologists have not yet gotten to the tasks of: a) modifying the climate models such that they make predictions b) describing the complete set of statistically independent statistical events whose outcomes are predicted by the models and c) computing the outcomes of those events which have been observed.
“All the observations start making complete sense when the physics of water in regard to its different response to visible and far infrared light are correctly understood and applied. CO2 over the ocean warms the atmosphere at altitude. CO2 over land warms the atmosphere at the surface. Simple, elegant, and in complete agreement with the observations.”
Agreed.
All that more GHGs achieve is a faster water cycle and a surface air pressure redistribution. The relative positions sizes and intensities of the permanent climate zones shift a fraction but by far the largest such shifts are system responses to solar and oceanic variability.Solar and oceanic variability have an effect on global cloud cover so as to alter the amount of solar energy entering the oceans to fuel the system. The effect of GHGs is puny in comparison even taking GHGs including water vapour as a whole.
Whereas the shifts were up to 1000 miles latitudinally from MWP to LIA and LIA to date the effect from more human emissions could well be less than a mile unless someone can prove otherwise.
It was never GHGs that made the system warmer than it otherwise would be. It was always the oceans and always will be until they freeze solid or evaporate to space.
Arrhenius et al never included solar shortwave into the oceans as part of their equations. They only ever considered the air and got it wrong as a result.
Water in liquid form in the oceans is the real determinant of the global atmospheric temperature.
Thus a Hot Water Bottle Effect rather than a Greenhouse Effect.
“i.e. less clouds and/or more intense sunshine, especially so in the SH.
So, what we see is happening from my dataset is that more heat went into the SH oceans and is taken away by current weather systems to the NH.”
Agreed.
During the late 20th century warming period there was less cloudiness in the tropics as the equatorial air masses expanded and pushed the clouds poleward. More solar energy entered the oceans to skew ENSO in favour of warming El Ninos.
The position has changed since the late 90s when global cloudiness began to increase again and the warming trend stopped.
Whatever happens next will be a crucial diagnostic indicator but it looks very much as though solar and oceanic effects are way ahead of anything that GHGs can achieve. The sun and the oceans achieve their effects on solar input to the oceans by altering global albedo through cloudiness changes that are linked to the latitudinal positions of the permanent climate zones.
Simple, elegant, true.
Hi Stephen
Dave Springer has not answered so he probably realizes that his theory does not work.
And yes, I agree with you, although I do not consider it scientifically proven that the net effect of more CO2 is warming rather than cooling, especially because CO2 also cools air by taking part in photo sythesis. Nobody has any (measured) figures when I asked them to prove to me that the net effect is one of warming rather than cooling.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-Aug-2011
The collection of the daily data from 1974 (mostly) from the 20 odd weather stations from the internet was of course most of the work in my tables.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
Now that everything has been collected it would be possible to revisit those excel files and cut up the graphs (in excel) by selecting the data from certain time periods and establish the change in degrees C per annum during those specific time frames.(excel calculates the regression automatically when you ask it do it)
1973 is the earliest time where I could find reliable recorded daily data, in most cases.
My question to you is: if I were to cut up my tables in different time frames (from 1974), each time frame giving me a new set of tables, which time periods would you chose and why?
I believe it was about a decade ago (or more) that I came to the realization [not original with me] that those who studied the data did not believe in AGW/ACC and those who studied the models did. As someone who has done a fair amount of data work and a fair amount of computer work in my life, I found that to be a predictable phenomenon.
A computer model is only a reflection of the biases of the programmer. I have always said if you give me a data set and a targeted result, and I will build you a computer model that will use that data to predict that result. I realize that I may be a bit cynical of these AGW “scientists” [I tend to think of them more as mysticists], but I am always concerned when science and politics join hands.
As for computer model builders, I am reminded of the old Groucho Marx line: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”
Thanks to Dr. Spencer and Prof. Christy for this information. It is unlikely to be discussed in the politically correct media–at least not objectively or honestly.
@Stephen Wilde
“Water in liquid form in the oceans is the real determinant of the global atmospheric temperature.”
Water in all its forms. Water vapor puts an upper limit on atmospheric temperature which is very important. We’d be cooking in our own juices without clouds acting like in iris in response to ocean temperature. The effective albedo of the ocean is close to zero. Clouds give the planet an effective albedo around 35%. Solar insolation has actually increased around 10% over geologic time yet here we are in an ice age which is a rare condition for the planet. Albedo is the big kahuna. Frozen water on the other hand has a positive feedback on falling temperature again because of its albedo which is close to 90% versus liquid water being close to 0%. Once the ice gets the upper hand then non-condensing greenhouse gasses play their most important role. Volcanism doesn’t cease during a snowball earth episode and the accumulation over millions of years CO2 emission with sinks all frozen and volcanic soot on the ice gradually lowering its albedo eventually triggers a melt. The net result is that a liquid ocean is the rule with temperatures in a regime friendly for life depite the fact that insolation is constantly rising over geologic spans of time.
HenryP says:
December 23, 2011 at 8:43 am
“The long and short of it is that your theory does not hold up. Islands in the oceans behave exactly the same as land.”
You don’t understand the theory then. It doesn’t predict islands should behave like water. How on earth do you get that? That said islands certainly DO NOT have climates similar to continental interiors at the same latitude. I have no idea what point you are even trying to make. What you write is coming across as nonsense.
Henry@DaveSpringer
Well, I don’t remember now exactly but you or someone said: GHG’s (CO2/H2O/O2/O3) have little effect over the oceans as the oceans only give up 20% of the solar heating through radiation. Supposedly the balance comes from land surfaces. Remember that the above substances all absorb in the 14-16 um range where we see earth’s missing radiation.
Now, at the time I was still looking for a reason as to why I am finding a big difference in SH and NH, i.e. virtually no warming in the SH. 70% of earth is ocean and most of the land is in the NH and most of the sea area is in the SH. So, there was a reason for me to think from that statement: There was my missing link.
I decided to look at 4 islands in the oceans, namely Marion island,Eeaster island (SH) Marcus island and Curacoa (NH).
If you or someone or if the AGW theory would somehow be correct, I should be finding the same type of warming or cooling at all 4 islands the same: they are small, in a big ocean, so they have or should adopt the temps as if I were measuring just above the ocean itsself.
I am saying that that did not work out. The NH islands behave similar to the results I am getting for the NH in general and the SH islands have the same results as what I am finding in the SH in general.
Subsequently I posed my new theory as explanation for the difference between NH and SH, here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/21/ben-santers-damage-control-on-uah-global-temperature-data/#comment-839937
So, what we see is happening from my dataset is that more (solar) heat went into the SH oceans and is taken away by current weather systems to the NH. That is why the NH is warming and that is why the SH does not warm.
Eearlier on, Stephen Wilde agreed with my theory as posed above as it is apparently consistent with his own observations about weather patterns.
PS @Dave
I am only looking at warming or cooling rates, not climate.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
Henry@Stephen Wilde
My question to you is: if I were to cut up my tables in different time frames (from 1974), each time frame giving me a new set of tables, which time periods would you chose and why?
PS@all of you still oogling and googling here at WUWT
MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS
The issue as to whether or not there is a “human footprint” – or at least one due to assumed back radiation – should be settled once and for all by Professor Claes Johnson’s note on “Computational Blackbody Radiation” http://www.csc.kth.se/~cgjoh/blackbodyslayer.pdf which is also supported by Prof. Nasif Nahle’s paper “Observations on Backradiation During Nighttime and Daytime” http://principia-scientific.org/publications/New_Concise_Experiment_on_Backradiation.pdf . Having studied both these, I consider the physics sound and defy anyone to fault either of them.
Radiation carries temperature information in the cut off frequency as shown by Wien’s Displacement Law. That with frequencies below the cut off for the surface will not be absorbed. In effect, it is turned around in its tracks and re-emitted with the same frequency, just as if reflected. Absolutely none of it is converted to thermal energy, because 100% of the energy remains in the radiation which then exits backs into the atmosphere. On the other hand, high energy short wavelength direct solar radiation will be converted to thermal energy by ionisation processes (which involve dislodging electrons) and will penetrate to some extent with more radiation energy being converted to thermal energy the greater the penetration – a bit like X-rays.
Hence all warming is caused by solar insolation and nothing at all by back radiation of “second-hand” energy previously radiated from the surface but now reduced to lower energy levels by the time it gets back. Indeed, the whole concept of similar IR radiation competing with itself in opposite directions (rather than just a net upward flow) is questionable. Measurements of so-called downwelling back radiation could well be totally incorrect if the instrument measures frequency from which temperature and then radiation levels are supposed to be derived.
So, there is no physical basis for any atmospheric greenhouse effect. What makes your car hot in the Sun is trapped air (warmed by molecular collision processes) which cannot escape by convection.
Doug Cotton
Doug Cotton says:
In effect, it is turned around in its tracks and re-emitted with the same frequency, just as if reflected
Hi Doug
Amazing, that statement is the correct observation and conclusion I have also made:
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-Aug-2011
Would you do me a favor: could you read my report also? Do you agree with everything I say in that report quoted above? Or do you still say that there is no warming or cooling effect from that reflection itself? Surely, there must be, however small it may be?
(I think basically, in the case of CO2, the radiative cooling and warming may cancel each other out, leaving a net zero effect or very close to zero)
Henry@ Dave Springer
In hind sight:
So, what we see is happening from my dataset is that more (solar) heat went into the SH oceans and is taken away by current weather systems to the NH. That is why the NH is warming and that is why the SH does not warm.
that should be:
So, what we see is happening from my dataset is that more (solar) heat went into the SH oceans and is taken away by WATER currents AND/OR weather systems to the NH. That is why the NH is warming and that is why the SH does not warm.
Doug Cotton says:
And, why do you think you are at all qualified to judge this? Frankly, the rest of your post shows you don’t know the first thing about physics. You (and Johnson and Nahle) have ideas of how radiation works for which there is zero empirical evidence and tons and tons of evidence to the contrary. You can’t just make up physics to suit what you want to believe.
Joel Shore says;
You (and Johnson and Nahle) have ideas of how radiation works for which there is zero empirical evidence and tons and tons of evidence to the contrary.
Henry@joel
Joel, that is name calling. That is a cop out.
Here we want to see arguments.
Bring it on.
HenryP: It really isn’t worth my wasting any more time on this. If you can’t see that it is based on nonsense and not physics, then I encourage you to spread it far and wide telling scientists that it is represents the best thinking of “AGW skeptics”. If you just make up laws of physics to suit your fancy, you can show anything you want. Have fun!
Joeln if you have read all my comments on this thread and knew how much work went into my tables I am sure you would re-think your comments here.
HenryP: I appreciate that you (and Doug Cotton, whose statements I was actually commented on) may have expended a lot of effort on your work. However, unfortunately, effort is not enough to make it correct. Doug has simply invented out of whole cloth an entirely new physics, in stark contradiction to the currently understood laws of physics, with no empirical justification whatsoever.
There is no evidence whatsoever that radiation carries information about the temperature of the object from which it was emitted except in a statistical sense. There is no evidence whatsoever to support Doug’s notions about when energy will and will not be absorbed. I really don’t know what else one can say. If one is allowed to invent new laws of physics, with no empirical evidence, willy-nilly, then one can make all sorts of outlandish claims. I prefer instead to stick with the laws of physics that have actually been shown to give very accurate understanding of what we observe empirically.
Joel, Doug ignored my request to comment on my report abt thr GH effect. So I would love to hear your comment on it? ( See my comment to Doug earlier)
Joel, it seems Doug did not read my report
on the GHG effect. Could I ask you to read and
tell me what you think of it?
Henry: The best thing I can say about your paper is that I find it to be pretty confused. For example, what does this sentence even mean: “Also, I think the actual heat caused by the sun’s IR at 4-5 could be underestimated, e.g. the radiation of the sun between 4 and 5 is maybe only 1% but how many watts per m2 does it cause?” When scientists talk about the amount of radiation in a certain wavelength band, they are generally talking about the fraction of power in that band.
As for the absorption of incoming sunlight by CO2 and other greenhouse gases: Yes, that occurs but it is (at least for CO2) a pretty small effect…and, it is accounted for in calculations of the radiative effect of a change in CO2. In other words, the quantitative calculations that you desire to be done have already been done. By the way, here is a good graph showing the spectrum of incoming radiation from the sun and outgoing radiation from the Earth’s surface and the absorption of the various elements in the atmosphere: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Atmospheric_Transmission.png I don’t see any evidence for any significant CO2 absorption bands at fractions of a nm. My guess is that the magnitude of the effect in the paper that you link to is too small to be relevant.
Also, to comment on the re-radiation part of your piece: While this may be a confusion for non-scientists, all scientists working in the field well understand that the greenhouse gases both absorb and radiate and all calculations take this into account.
Henry@joel
Guess? We don’t do that. Calculations?
Have not seen anything that shows me the balance sheet for each GHG.
Where is it?
You cannot throw all of them together in one pot,
How do know if the CO2 is cooling or warming?
I cannot check ur ref. In the country now.
No computer. Suggest you check main blog
http://www.letterdash.com/henryp/more-carbondioxide-is-ok-ok
Happy New Year
Joel, just out of curiosity, what do you consider a scientist to be? You seem to have a stereotype of such a thing as well as a stereotype of a non-scientist. Is it based on degree only? Occupation only? What is your criteria please.
HenryP: You might start by looking at MODTRAN: http://geoflop.uchicago.edu/forecast/docs/Projects/modtran.doc.html I don’t know whether or not this old version of the code that is publicly available has the features that you would need to do what you want to do, but you could see.
But a little hint to you: If something is so well-accepted that even Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer agree with it, then your chances of finding something counter to it are less than zero. And, it is not like Lindzen and Spencer have shown intense discretion in their willingness to embrace ideas that go along with their strongly-held bias that AGW is not an issue. That they accept the forcing due to doubling CO2 is about 4 W/m^2 ought to tell you something.
Joel – I Iooked at all that. They made assumption for water vapor.
They ignored oxygen-ozone absorption. They ignored radiative cooling.
They ignored cooling of air by CO2 due to life cycle.
You see what I am saying? You cannot calculate that which has
never been measured first..
http://www.letterdash.com/henryp/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
Henry: I really don’t know what to say at this point. If you want to waste your time arguing points where even Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen concede the conventional scientific wisdom is correct, then have fun! I am not sure who you are trying to convince, but whatever.
Joel
Science is not politics. I am not really interested in finding majority agreement or consensus.
Remember Galileo?
I just wanted to know the truth for myself.
As can be seen from my tables: http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
humidity decreased over the past 35 years by about 0.02% RH per annum. That is 0.7%
That again translates to almost 0.1% absolute humidity. Yet in the “calculations” they adhere t0 0.48% (average) absolute humidity.
In the case of CO2 we are looking at an increase in 0.01%, namely from 0.03 to 0.04% for the past 50 years.
ergo
it cannot possibly be right to allocate blame to CO2 for warming?
On top of that
They ignored oxygen-ozone absorption. They ignored radiative cooling.
They ignored cooling of air by CO2 due to life cycle. (How much is that?)
You see what I am saying? You cannot “calculate” that which has never been measured first……
Try and understand what I am saying here:
http://www.letterdash.com/henryp/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
and argue with me on the points that you don’t agree. Don’t worry about who says what.
Try to understand the logic yourself.
Henry: I don’t know where you are getting your claim of decreasing absolute humidity. It is not correct. There is some radiosonde data that has known problems…and is contradicted by the satellite data. Furthermore, both the satellite and radiosonde data agree that for shorter-term fluctuations, the absolute humidity increases when temperature increases and decreases when temperature decreases (and by about the expected amount), just as elementary physical arguments suggest.
People can spend their time however they want and if you want to spend your time disputing things without regard to how well-settled the discussions on that point are in the scientific community, that is your prerogative. I prefer to spend my time in other ways (although admittedly, I have been drawn into arguments about stuff that is well-settled when I thought that I could quickly and easily clarify the obvious errors in the arguments that were being presented).
Joel says:
I don’t know where you are getting your claim of decreasing absolute humidity. It is not correct.
Henry@joel
It is an estimate, after evaluating the (measured) daily average results from 20 weather stations from all over the world.
My estimate is -0.02% RH per annum since 1974
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
My estimate for temperature change is + 0.0137 degrees C per annum, since 1974
which compares well the 0.14/decade reported in this post (I don’t know if you read it)
and what is being reported here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/01/a-big-picture-look-at-earths-temperature/#comment-850833
So why would my estimate for change in water vapor be far from correct?