Image Credit: Compo et al., 2013
From the Huffington Post:
The thermometers got it right. The Earth is warming, another study is reporting.
Climate scientists recognize that changes in weather observation stations’ immediate surroundings — such as neighboring trees being replaced by heat-absorbing concrete — can eventually throw data from such stations into question.
But now, a new study directed by a researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that recreates climate history without the use of land-based observation systems shows the same thing that thermometers have been reporting.
“This shows that global warming over land is real,” said Gilbert Compo, a scientist at NOAA’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado.
“It is not an artifact of the observing system,” said Compo, lead author of the study, which he presented to the European Geophysical Union on Tuesday in Vienna. “It is happening.”
Compo and his colleagues used an alternate method to review the planet’s temperature history from 1871 through 2010.
They deployed what is called 20th Century Reanalysis (20CR), a physically based, state-of-the-art data assimilation system using barometric pressure records, ocean surface temperatures and other factors independent of land-based readings that can be skewed by changes in their surroundings.
Compo’s team came to a conclusion that supports land-based instruments’ reporting that, since 1952, the Earth has shown a 1.18 degree Celsius increase in air temperature over land.
Compo, in an email, stated that the actual number the 20CR analysis showed for warming since 1952 was 0.78 degrees Celsius, which he termed “statistically indistinguishable” from 1.18 degrees Celsius.
Here’s the associated study; Independent Confirmation of Global Land Warming without the Use of Station Temperatures and abstract.
I’ll leave it to WUWT’s readers to do their own distinguishing…
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SkS says:
“How much more evidence do we need? The accuracy of the instrumental global surface temperature record is essentially settled science at this point. The Earth is warming, it’s warming very fast, and continuing to deny this fact is a waste of time.”
If we assume the first sentence is accurate (for the sake of argument), then the second does not follow. If facts and rationality are important at all, the last bit should read: “The Earth WAS warming, it WAS warming at a moderate rate and the effect of that warming was largely beneficial to humans and the vast majority of the biosphere. Too bad it has stopped warming. Denying the benefits of this modest warming is a waste of time!”
The AGW true believers will hold onto any reason to hold onto their faith in apocalyptic doom.
I really don’t understand why everyone is being so harsh ?
This paper by Composte et all follows in the tradition of Muchrot, Scheissen et al’s recent paper and it is without question full of robust excrement. Indistinguishable from B*********.
@Stacey says:
April 13, 2013 at 6:20 am
Outstanding analysis.
The issue is not so much if “warming is real” but what the magnitude of the warming (climate sensitivity) and what portion is anthropogenic.
All this fuss over a temperature record that can never be verified, ever. Land based temperature data is hopelessly contaminated by changes in instrumentation quality and accuracy, recording methods, siting issues, time and frequency of observation, uhi and much more. Add to that spacial coverage that isn’t even close to being sufficient, not to mention the huge variability in both density and longevity of different parts of the world and then add to that the fact that land based temps only cover 25% or so of the globe. What have you got? Crap data that cannot be verified against ANYTHING.
Well, except for the data since 1979 when satellites started gathering data in a methodology that is at least meaningful. Of course they aren’t reporting anything alarming so let’s reanalyze 100 years of data prior to the satellites, knowing in advance the result will be a poor approximation of crap, and hope we find something alarming there.
pffft.
The link is for Campo the article says Compo.
I say potato you say tomato let’s call the whole thing off .
I am so so happy because we have drowning men clutching at strawmen? 🙂
It’s interesting that so much of the “increase” in temperature occurs after the 1990 measuring stations reorganization ( or fiasco), is it even scientifically sound to do a single trend including both before and after 1990?
The Catastrophic Climate Change proponents have too much money at stake to let it go. Zero out the funding and watch the issue die.
Huff Post – now that is political journalism at it best!
What is better is that the editors do the thinking for me!
/sarc off
to review the planet’s temperature history from 1871 through 2010
=====
And they are shocked we’re not still in the LIA………..
Well of course. If temperatures hadn’t warmed from 1871 through 2010, we’d still be in the LIA, and that’s a big step. Now they need to come to grips with what were temperatures like before the LIA, because they must have come down from prior temperatures to say it was like a Little Ice Age. Medieval Warm Period, anybody?
They’ll get it someday. Then they’ll realize anthropogenic CO2 didn’t cause the MWP and they’ll be jumping off bridges and tall buildings. It happens–A is A.
Peter commented April 13, 2013 at 1:59 am on “NOAA meteorologist Jeffrey Whitaker, a co-author of the study, explained why some land-based historical readings have come not to be trusted.”
If some data in a database cannot be trusted and nothing is done about it, doesn’t it make the entire database useless?
This observation reminds me of the recent similar comparison:
If you mix a gallon of sewage with an ounce of wine, you end up with sewage.
If you mix an ounce of sewage with a gallon of wine, you end up with sewage.
Ian
Researcher bias is well documented in the peer reviewed scientific literature. It is unavoidable unless steps are taken to eliminate it. Since no steps were taken in this study we can be 100% assured that researcher bias is present. In other words, the study is worthless.
One has to wonder how this amazingly accurate barometric pressure method of calculating temperature was calibrated? Meaning, if barometric pressure is a better barometer a temperature (pun intended) than a thermometer, why not replace all thermometers with barometers?
This yet another in a seemingly endless string of pseudo-scientific claims of extraordinary precision in predictable outcomes. My hunch here is the sample size used was much too small for meaningful extrapolation of the temperature recorded by the much larger set of stations. So the study over a smaller set of stations might (and that’s a large leap in itself) be valid, but the results are likely unreliable.
As with many of the so-called “data analysis” papers reported on WUWT supporting rapid recent warming, reading this article and all the comments so far reminds me of the quote in the introduction of the book we used in the first statistics course I ever took many years ago:
“Figures don’t lie, but liars figure”
David L. Hagen says:
April 13, 2013 at 6:30 am
The issue is not so much if “warming is real” but what the magnitude of the warming (climate sensitivity) and what portion is anthropogenic.
===============================================================
Not only ” what portion is anthropogenic” but how much it would cost to be able to make miniscule changes to the climate (if we actually could).
I can’t readily find it, but I’m sure I remember Ross McKitrick did some analysis of the cost/abatement.
If 0.78 degrees Celsius, is “statistically indistinguishable” from 1.18 degrees Celsius, therefore:
2 + 2 = 4 is “statistically indistinguishable” from 2 + 2 = 5. Oh where have I heard that before? 1984 maybe?
“They deployed what is called 20th Century Reanalysis (20CR), a physically based, state-of-the-art data assimilation system using barometric pressure records, ocean surface temperatures and other factors independent of land-based readings that can be skewed by changes in their surroundings.”
Translation: Their efforts using land based temperatures had been totally debunked so they created this 20th Century Reanalysis system that is opaque to everyone and safe from detailed debunking.
The first step in becoming a good analyst is to learn that one’s analytical tools cannot be more complicated than the object that they are used to analyze.
@Ian L. McQueen says:
April 13, 2013 at 7:11 am
“[…]
If you mix a gallon of sewage with an ounce of wine, you end up with sewage.
If you mix an ounce of sewage with a gallon of wine, you end up with sewage.”
===================================================
Yeah, but… it’s robust sewage.
Is it ‘Compo’ or ‘Campo’? This is significant to UK residents who watch ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ on TV. Both of them.
“Confidence in estimates of anthropogenic climate change is limited by known issues with air temperature observations from land stations. Station siting, instrument changes, changing observing practices, urban effects, land cover, land use variations, and statistical processing have all been hypothesized as affecting the trends presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and others. Any artifacts in the observed decadal and centennial variations associated with these issues could have important consequences for scientific understanding and climate policy. We use a completely different approach to investigate global land warming over the 20th century. We have ignored all air temperature observations and instead inferred them from observations of barometric pressure, sea surface temperature, and sea-ice concentration using a physically-based data assimilation system called the 20th Century Reanalysis. This independent dataset reproduces both annual variations and centennial trends in the temperature datasets, demonstrating the robustness of previous conclusions regarding global warming.”
Notice the spin: the abstract begins with “Confidence in estimates of anthropogenic climate change” – thats “ANTHROPOGENIC climate change” – goes on to say nothing at all about any criteria for attribution of the temperature changes to any cause, and concludes with, “demonstrating the robustness of previous conclusions regarding global warming” thereby insinuating that previous conclusions (what? whose?) about ANTHROPOGENIC global warming were “robust” while carefully and explicitly not saying so.
Phil Jones is a co-author on the paper.
I have re-written a portion of the press release section to more accurately reflect the impact of this research:
The research team’s results support previous research by others that land temperature trends have an upward bias of up to 50% due to weather station siting artifacts.
The researchers stated that the actual number the 20CR analysis showed for warming since 1952 was 0.78 degrees Celsius, which is “statistically indistinguishable” from the sea surface temperature increase of 0.57 degrees Celcius over the same time period. The roughly factor of two difference between these results and the consensus position of a 1.18 degrees Celcius increase over land has dramatic implications for estimates of climate sensitivity and climate policy.
In General Chemistry, we teach the students a quick and simple method to determine error. The equation is the absolute value of (actual value – experimental value)/(actual value) then multiply by 100%. So if 0.78 C is the actual value, and 1.18 C is the experimental value, then we come up with a value of 51 % error.
51% error is statistically insignificant. Got it.