UPDATE: There’s a response from the Met Office here
A report in the UK Daily Mail reveals a Met Office report quietly released… and here is the chart to prove it:
By David Rose
- The figures reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012 there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures
- This means that the ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996
The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released last week.
The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.
This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years.
The new data, compiled from more than 3,000 measuring points on land and sea, was issued quietly on the internet, without any media fanfare, and, until today, it has not been reported.
This stands in sharp contrast to the release of the previous figures six months ago, which went only to the end of 2010 – a very warm year.
Ending the data then means it is possible to show a slight warming trend since 1997, but 2011 and the first eight months of 2012 were much cooler, and thus this trend is erased.
Some climate scientists, such as Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, last week dismissed the significance of the plateau, saying that 15 or 16 years is too short a period from which to draw conclusions.
Others disagreed. Professor Judith Curry, who is the head of the climate science department at America’s prestigious Georgia Tech university, told The Mail on Sunday that it was clear that the computer models used to predict future warming were ‘deeply flawed’.
h/t to reader “Dino”
regarding the significance of the period from 1997, recall that Dr. Ben Santer claimed 17 years was the period needed:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/17/ben-santers-17-year-itch/
They find that tropospheric temperature records must be at least 17 years long to discriminate between internal climate noise and the signal of human-caused changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere.
MIT Professor Richard Lindzen said something similar in a WUWT guest post:
There has been no warming since 1997 and no
statistically significant warming since 1995.
Bob Tisdale did a 17 and 30 year trend comparison here
Here’s the HADCRUT4 4.1.1. dataset
see david rose article in daily mail 29/01/12 ” data issued without fanfare by met office” : he’s re written the same story !
“New data”?
Also, while I don’t disagree with the thrust of the headline, the Daily Mail has, let’s say, a bit of a reputation amongst UK readers.
Son of mulder; the UHI is mainly the increase of temperature needed to maintain constant convective plus radiative heat transfer when convection is restricted. There is also an effect of reduced evapo-transpiration.
it would be good to see the original Met office report, it wasnt linked to in the story and I can’t fid it on te Met offce website.
Anyone got a link so we can see the original wording?
tonyb
@ur momisugly S Dalton 1:28am
In his article, David Rose refers to the previous story:-
“Not that there has been any coverage in the media, which usually reports climate issues assiduously, since the figures were quietly release online with no accompanying press release – unlike six months ago when they showed a slight warming trend.”
I refuse to believe climate change is either man-made or accelerating. Why should I have to give up my 7 litre Hummer with Amazonian Rosewood & Snow Leopard skin interior? I’ll have you know I run this little beauty on the tears of poor people, which are carbon neutered… or something. These bloody hippy radicals and crackpot scientists just need to shut the hell up! I have important lifestyle choices to make, and no socialist terrorist pedo-scientilologist is going to tell me how to live my life!!
The Met Office have responded to the Daily Mail story:
http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/category/met-office-in-the-media/
From barry on October 13, 2012 at 10:44 pm:
But if you checked the raw data, you might have noticed HadCRUT4 at WFT only runs to the end of 2010.
Currently at the HadCRUT4 download page, these new numbers aren’t available, everything I’ve checked still ends at the end of 2010.
The main page has a map of surface temperature anomalies for August 2012, but that’s it. Wherever the new numbers are, they’ve yet to be released.
Plus, I have no idea what the hell HadCRUT4 actually is. One hundred versions, called “realizations”. The FAQ sure isn’t helping much. WFT just uses the first two columns of the first set on the download page, HadCRUT4 time series: ensemble medians and uncertainties: Global (NH+SH)/2: Monthly.
It looks like they’ve just thrown their hands up and said “We can’t do single numbers”, tossed out their info on bias and measurement and sampling uncertainties, boxed it up a hundred different ways, and left it up to the user to figure out what it all could possibly be good for.
I’ll stick with HadCRUT3 when using Hadley land and sea temperatures. It’s also screwed up, but it’s a sensibly displayed and well-packaged screw-up.
In a blog for serious scientific discussion it is dismaying that some posters are indulging in schoolyard language. There is plenty of talented discussion here and the noise of the taunts threatens to ruin the music.
On the science side, I notice that some posters appear to confuse a change in what is purported to be measured atmospheric temperature with a change in the accumulation, or reduction, in global heat. The Daily Mail article, IMHO, would have improved its scientific credibility considerably if it had addressed this difference explicitly. The clear risk is that we examine atmospheric temperature symptoms to death while ignoring the fact that the patient is thriving; or sick, as the case might be. Clearly, we need to take an approach which integrates temperature and heat.
In terms of unscientific language, the following are examples that I believe demean the otherwise excellent scientific discourse of WUWT:
[DDP says:
Typical Phil Jones. …. He’s not a scientist, he’s a gambler. And a cheating one at that.]
[ferd berple says:
October 13, 2012 at 6:01 pm
“Phil Jones,…
At one time the folks walking around proclaiming the “end of the world” were regarded as nut cases. Dressed up in lab coats and business suits, we now call them climate scientists and politicians.]
[Jim Clarke says:
Now, they just look stupid, even to the average Joe.]
[pat says:
October 13, 2012 at 8:11 pm
CAGW alarmists ignore or pretend to ignore…]
[SAMURAI says:
October 13, 2012 at 8:25 pm
Given that Al gore and Streisand are the two biggest global warming hypocrites on this cooling planet,…]
[JJ says:
October 13, 2012 at 9:08 pm
“… regarding the significance of the period from 1997, recall that Dr. Ben Santer … runs from the question of falsifyability criteria like a frightened schoolgirl.
These guys ..Their beliefs are not scientific. They are religious. The problem for us becomes how this particular priesthood is going to handle its version of the Great Disappointment.]
[jb frodsham says:
October 13, 2012 at 9:57 pm
[Trenberth : …those numbers are just a figment if your alarmist imagination.
He (of Trenberth) is an idiot!]
While I am on the topic, there are the usual unscientific references to ‘deniers’, ‘warmists’, ‘alarmists’, ‘skeptics’ and ‘catastrophists’. These are not scientific terms and, IMHO, should be avoided on a scientific blog. They might be useful in Political Science 101 or in Bible Studies Class. But I doubt even that. They have caused immeasurable, and completely wasted, ill-will. They appear to trigger much illogical emotional rhetoric which has absolutely nothing to do with rational scientific discourse. It is time to move on from them. But to where? I propose, for discussion, the following scientific terms:
Supporter of natural climate theory. (SNCT)
Supporter of anthropomorphic global warming, superimposed on natural climate, theory. (SAGWSNCT)
I have tried to eliminate any sense of religion or faith in these terms. I have tried to remove any pejorative implication about the scientific validity of the positions. I have especially tried to eliminate any reflection on the personal moral and ethical qualities of the person concerned.
Obviously, there are distinctions which would need to be made in individual cases. For example some SAGWSNCTs might think that the degree of AGW is not a serious enough issue to be of concern.
s dalton says: October 14, 2012 at 1:28 am
“see david rose article in daily mail 29/01/12 ” data issued without fanfare by met office” : he’s re written the same story !”
Yes, indeed. From today’s post:
“The new data, compiled from more than 3,000 measuring points on land and sea, was issued quietly on the internet, without any media fanfare, and, until today, it has not been reported.”
And from last January:
“Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.”
30,000 ->3,000.
Some journalist, this David Rose.
@R. Shearer says:
“15 or 16 years is too short a period from which to draw conclusions.” Wait til next year.
Umm… I think that Michael Mann is 47 years old. I assume that he will retire at 65. That will be in 2031.
So it is obvious that the required period to wait before agreeing that warming has stopped MUST be at least 34 years.
Lucky old Phil Jones! He is 60. So he only has to argue that a suitable period is more than 20 years…..
Trenberth : ”With the links between weather and climate for instance – we know they are there, but the specific numbers need work”
The plan is revealed…the numbers will be tortured, sorry adjusted, until they get the anawer right. I also see visions of the recent past 1997/8 being quietly adjusted down to show it’s warming and that the warmth is causing the cold.
[Phil Jones…] last week dismissed the significance of the plateau, saying that 15 or 16 years is too short a period from which to draw conclusions. […]
I think I see how this works now. Where something can can be used to promote the alarmist narrative then 17 years is plenty long enough. For everything else we just make up a suitably long period (preferably falling after retirement) that will be required in order to reach any firm conclusions.
Ah, the joy of climate science.
Would this be global temperatures moving in line with the PDO??????
The most interesting quote from the Daily Mail article is by Professor Phil Jones of the infamous University of East Anglia:
‘Bottom line: the “no upward trend” has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried.’
Get worried? What does that mean? Surely, if anyone really believes that global warming is going to lead to catastrophic consequences for humankind, then news that it’s stopped shouldn’t be a reason to worry. It should be a cause for relief and joy!
……unless perhaps your funding depends on it.
Scootle says:
October 14, 2012 at 1:24 am
It says a lot about the mindset of ‘Professor’ Phil ‘I leave Excel to the experts’ Jones (and his fellow CAGW travellers, unless he’s using the royal ‘we’) that he considers the idea that CAGW might not be happening something to be ‘worried’ about. Is what he’s really worried about is that the grant money will dry up and he might have to get a real job?
Richard,
relating to trend statistics, the term robust, which has a wide application, generally means that the result (trend) is resistant to noise variation. Non-robust results for linear trends are typified by a significant departure from the derived trend with the addition of one or a few more data points.
For example, while a warming trend is a ‘robust’ result of trend estimates for the last 30 years, results become much more variable with shorter time peroids (5 to 15 years, for example). but this is not the only application.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robust_statistics
<a href=http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1986/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1986/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1988/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1990/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1992/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1994/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2004/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2006/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2008/trendVisual example
Linear trends from 1986, 1988, 1990, and 1992 to present are very similar. The signal is much stronger than the noise, and adding or subtracting another year’s data little changes the result. But once we shorten the data period the trend results change quite dramatically. Therefore, trend estimates of 20 years or longer are ‘robust,’ and trends results for shorter periods are less so, because they are more strongly influenced by the variability in the data. Post 1995, the results become non-signficant in statistical terms.
Exactly; and there’s a danger nobody will want to take this report seriously precisely because it was reported in the Mail, which the greeny Left hates with a passion. It has by the way a huge readership, far greater than any of the broadsheets, mainly of die-hard Tory voters.
It’s true that linear trends have limited application. But my point was against the Daily Mail chart, which has no statistical analysis whatsoever. It is even less reasonable to eye-ball a bunch of noisy data, pick the endpoints, and use that to say something about trends (warming/no change/cooling) – exactly what David rose has done, unfortunately, in the article.
Clearly this is lies from a fossil fuel funded lobby group 😉
We all now the period for significance is directly related to ‘whose significanc’e your out to prove so that 16 years means nothing for AGW but one year of extreme but not usual weather provides undeniable proof for ‘the cause ‘
Re: signal and noise.
It would be worth reading forecaster Nate Silver’s new book on the subject, helpfully titled ‘The Signal and the Noise’. He says some things which upset a certain M. Mann, although he’s not a sceptic. His message is (summarised from a review):
‘The level and sources of variation in the earth’s climate, for example, are so great that “there would be much reason to doubt claims about global warming were it not for their grounding in causality.” ‘
In other words, AGW has little empirical evidence to support it – you have to believe the theory, which is Man -> CO2 doubling -> +3C. The figures *don’t* tell their own story, pace Richard Muller.
He complains that “growing technological sophistication is threatening to bury the world in the pseudo-sophistication of 95 percent confidence intervals and r-squared values.”
Lucia has had a series of statistical posts on signal and noise at her blog. She finds that temperature trends do not support the IPCC AR4 projections.
As a non-scientist daily lurker I am fully aware that my disappointingly alarmist offspring require more than just a Daily Mail article to make them rethink their beliefs. It’s reassuring to see a quote from Judith Curry but I can see nothing about it on her own blog. You do give a url for HADCRUT4 but this tells a layman like me very little. There seems to be more pink and red on the chart than anything else. I have to agree with Bob Fernley-Jones at 11.39pm on 13th October – “Where pray is a link to the source of the allegedly original authoritative graph?” We would all deride any alarmist blog that trumpeted a tabloid article without giving proper sources.
See Met Office rapid response to David Rose here
http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/
Don’t worry about the carbondioxide.
Start worrying about the cold……
it is coming sooner than you thought.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
Neglected to close the HTML tag.
Visual example
You can see here the stability 9’robustness’) of trends 20 years or longer, and the results of shorter trends, which are more susceptible to noise variation in the data.