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…
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Bob Layson says:
April 13, 2013 at 5:53 am
“If I move my sitting-room thermometer closer to the fire will the instrumental record show that my house has warmed? If a brick and concrete city is built around an established temperature recording device will the recent record show that the Earth has warmed? No and ditto.”
A number of folks are failing to understand that this study doesn’t use surface based thermometers. That’s the whole point. JP
Theo Goodwin says:
April 13, 2013 at 7:29 am
“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.”
Why? Better tell NASA they can’t use a laser to measure a rock. JP
John Parsons says:
April 13, 2013 at 2:28 pm
There aren’t many physical objects that are analytical tools. A laser doesn’t qualify. Learn to distinguish between reality and the language, however simple or complex,used to describe it. All the good analytical tools belong to the language.
polistra says:
April 13, 2013 at 12:55 pm
If you have spent a winter in Boulder then “Boulder is warming” will not mean much. Tell me when it has warmed 30 degrees.
April 13, 2013 at 7:29 am
“…analytical tools cannot be more complicated than the object…”
The “object” is the rock. The “analytical tool” is the laser. You’ve got your own ‘hypothesis’ backwards. And by the way, you didn’t answer the question. Why must the analytical tool be “less complicated” than “the object” it’s analyzing? JP
Global warming is real but none of it is anthropogenic greenhouse warming. Within the last hundred years there have been three separate periods of warming. The first one was a period of steady warming that started suddenly in 1910 and stopped even more suddenly in 1940. There was no parallel sudden increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide in 1910 and this rules out the greenhouse effect as a cause. It stopped even more suddenly in 1940 when World War II cooling started. That again is a performance quite impossible for greenhouse warming to accomplish. After the war the cold alleviated a bit but even in 1947 a blizzard was able to completely shut down the City of New York. The next warming period arrived in 1976 and was called the Great Pacific Climate Shift. It raised global temperature by 0.2 degrees and was over by 1980. There was no change in atmospheric carbon dioxide. It is impossible for greenhouse warming to create such short step warming incidents. There was no warming in the eighties and nineties until the super El Nino of 1998 arrived. It brought much warm water across the ocean and caused another step warming. This time it took only four years and raised global temperature by a third of degree Celsius. There was no warming from that point on until today. Again, no change in carbon dioxide level. Both step warminngs, 1976 and 1998, are oceanic in origin. The 1976 step warming is associated with PDO changing from its cool to warm phase and has nothing to do with the greenhouse effect. As you will probably have noticed by now, no warming within the last one hundred years can be assigned to the mythical anthropogenic global warming.
Theo Goodwin says:
“All the good analytical tools belong to the language.” What? A micrometer “belong(s) to the language”? What does “…belong to the language.” even mean? JP
The Holocene Climatic Optimum was 10,000 year ago and overall we have been gradually cooling with a natural variability of +/- 2.5 C per century. The current temp is +0.5C above the mean average and therefore nowhere near anything suspicious. With no warming of the Tropical Troposphere it beggars belief we are even talking about AGW.
Yes, it has warmed over the last 60 years and over the last 140 years. But what I want to know is if their climate models explain anything.
NOAA says the following:
”The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.”
To verify this for yourself, see page 23 at:
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/bams-sotc/climate-assessment-2008-lo-rez.pdf
RSS is flat for 16 years and 4 months. Hadsst2 is flat for 16 years and 1 month. RSS measures the whole globe and Hadsst2 measures the sea surface, and since they say virtually the same thing, I can only conclude the land alone should also be very close to being flat over the last 16 years.
james griffin says:
April 13, 2013 at 3:56 pm
“…it beggars belief we are even talking about AGW.”
Let’s see…for 600,000 years the Earth’s Carbon Cycle moved 800 Megatons of CO2 into or out of the atmosphere yearly. Now humans have perturbed that system to 33.5 Gigatons a year.
And you say we shouldn’t “…even be talking about AGW.”
Tell that to your insurance company, and maybe the Defense Dept. while your at it.
JP
Werner Brozek says:
April 13, 2013 at 4:29 pm
“I can only conclude the land alone should also be very close to being flat over the last 16 years.”
What scientific basis do you have for assuming that? JP
Manfred says:
April 13, 2013 at 1:41 pm
Temperature and pressure are proportional in the equation of state of an ideal gas
p*V = nRT
==============================
No. No. No. Sorry but this is incorrect.
They are proportional only if you hold the volume constant. In the case of earth’s atmosphere if you raise the temperature the volume changes, so pressure is not longer proportional to temperature. In other words, you cannot use a barometer as a thermometer, because there is no practical way to measure the volume of the atmosphere.
However, you could place a fixed volume of air inside a sealed container along with a barometer for example, and then use the barometer reading inside the container to measure the pressure. This would them allow you to calculate the temperature of the air inside the container after a calibration period. However, the device would no longer be a barometer. What you have invented is a Rube Goldberg thermometer. It is an unnecessarily complex, over engineered version of the thermometer and will suffer from all the same problems.
John Parsons says:
April 13, 2013 at 5:02 pm
What scientific basis do you have for assuming that?
To give an analogy, suppose you had 100 kg of rock and determined the density was 5.0 g/cc. Then if you took 70 kg of that rock and determined its density to be 4.8 g/cc, it would be reasonable to assume the density of the rest was a bit above 5.0 g/cc.
Or see:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/crutem3vgl/from:1997/plot/crutem3vgl/from:1997.9/trend
The slope since December 1997 is = 0.00265249 per year. (Granted, this is only 15 years and not 16.) This is certainly nothing to be alarmed about and it is not worth spending billions to avoid. This is in contrast to 0.78 C/60 or 0.013 C/year for the period since 1952 in the article.
Bruce Cobb says:
‘Next they’ll be “telling” us that climate change is real’. Our glorious PM of OZ is way ahead of you, Bruce, but you’d be hard pressed finding anyone who’d believe her on that or any other subject under the sun.
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/45244.html
ferdberple says:
April 13, 2013 at 5:17 pm
Manfred says:
April 13, 2013 at 1:41 pm
Temperature and pressure are proportional in the equation of state of an ideal gas
p*V = nRT
==============================
No. No. No. Sorry but this is incorrect.
They are proportional only if you hold the volume constant. In the case of earth’s atmosphere if you raise the temperature the volume changes, so pressure is not longer proportional to temperature. In other words, you cannot use a barometer as a thermometer, because there is no practical way to measure the volume of the atmosphere.
——————————————
You are right, but my point is, that siting issues have effects not only on local temperature, but volume and pressure as well.
The equation of state gives the relationship. As you said, it is rather unlikely (but in some cases possible) that the volume does not change and only pressure and temperature (then equally).change.
However, the opposite, that only temperature and volume change and p remains unchanged is just as unlikely.
And this is exactly what is assumed and given in the paper and there is no reason put forward by the authors why siting issues should not affect pressure.
Do they show 1936 getting colder every year? I’m becoming concerned that time-travelers are stealing heat from our past.
Excuse me sir, but isn’t it a fact, that 70+% the globe over land, is actually over the water ?
Shouldn’t the heading be changed to Local warming over land is real ?
george e. smith says: April 13, 2013 at 8:07 pm
Excuse me sir, but isn’t it a fact, that 70+% the globe over land, is actually over the water ?
Shouldn’t the heading be changed to Local warming over land is real ?
One could argue that the heading/title should be changed to a number things, but these suggestions should be directed to the Huffington Post, as the heading/title is verbatim what they published:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/12/cu-boulder-led-study-conf_n_3068291.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green
“Here’s the associated study; Independent Confirmation of Global Land Warming without the Use of Station Temperatures” … it’s at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50425/pdf
So I read it, and on page 4 it describes the analysis method…
“We use the 20th Century Reanalysis (20CR), a physically-based state-of-the-art data assimilation system, to infer TL2m given only CO2, solar and volcanic radiative forcing agents; monthly-averaged sea surface temperature (SST) and sea ice concentration fields; and hourly and synoptic barometric pressure observations (from the International Surface Pressure Databank.”
Physically based? Given “only” CO2 and a few other things?
So it’s a model that’s fit to some data. That’s not “independent data” where I come from (I left Boulder 30 years ago), it’s a model!
SteveM posts data going back to 800 AD
http://climateaudit.org/2013/04/13/new-light-on-svalbard/
Greg Goodman says:
April 13, 2013 at 4:05 am
NotTheAussiePhilM says: The figure of 0.13C / decade seems to be fairly consistent no matter what the measurement method (satellites, CR20 etc).
for what period are you making that comment?
20CR was from 1952, and the satellites from 1978… that was obvious, I think …
Not linear..
– I agree that there seems to be a sort of 60 year cycle on top of the underlying trend…
The 20CR covers pretty much a whole 60 cycle, the satellites, not so much …
So global warming is real, over land, but, the Earth is about 70% covered with water, so, if the world is only warming over land that can’t be “global” warming.
And The Strawman Argument of the Year for 2013 goes to……NOAA and CU-Boulder!!!!
My first response is who peer-reviewed the study?
My second response is has it been scrutinised by an independent party necessarily holding a sceptical point of view?
It is vital that we know that this study is not just more propaganda… you know, the type where the hypothesis is supported only by cherry-picked data.
Global Warming Over Land Is Real
We sure hope so. Not looking forward to another little ice ages. That would be a travesty for the food supply.