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…
John Parsons says:
April 13, 2013 at 3:50 pm
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’
Take the sentence “Some man is not mortal.” Take the sentence “All men are mortal.” Both belong to the English language, right? Both can be used to make easily understood claims about reality.
Now, notice that the two sentences contradict one another. If one is true then the other is false, right? Where does that logical relationship exist? It is a relationship that holds between the two sentences. Logic belongs to the language and not to the world that language is used to describe. (Actually, Karl Marx and his followers denied this point. They claimed to find contradictions in the world.)
Some physical objects belong to our set of analytical tools. Maybe objects used for measurement belong there. Maybe computer code belongs there. But logic and the vast majority of our analytical tools belong to language. You might want to get a copy of Irving Copi’s “Introduction to Logic.” Any edition of that book will do.
Increasing waste heat flux, albedo mods, irrigation. Any questions?