Excerpt from Bishop Hill (plus a cartoon from Josh) showing that the claim of a statistically significant temperature rise can’t be supported, and the Met office is ducking parliamentary questions: (h/t Randy Hughes)
Met Office admits claims of significant temperature rise untenable
This is a guest post by Doug Keenan.
It has been widely claimed that the increase in global temperatures since the late 1800s is too large to be reasonably attributed to natural random variation. Moreover, that claim is arguably the biggest reason for concern about global warming. The basis for the claim has recently been discussed in the UK Parliament. It turns out that the claim has no basis, and scientists at the Met Office have been trying to cover that up.
The Parliamentary Question that started this was put by Lord Donoughue on 8 November 2012. The Question is as follows.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government … whether they consider a rise in global temperature of 0.8 degrees Celsius since 1880 to be significant. [HL3050]
The Answer claimed that “the temperature rise since about 1880 is statistically significant”. This means that the temperature rise could not be reasonably attributed to natural random variation — i.e. global warming is real.
…
The issue here is the claim that “the temperature rise since about 1880 is statistically significant”, which was made by the Met Office in response to the original Question (HL3050). The basis for that claim has now been effectively acknowledged to be untenable. Possibly there is some other basis for the claim, but that seems extremely implausible: the claim does not seem to have any valid basis.
Go read the entire essay here: http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/5/27/met-office-admits-claims-of-significant-temperature-rise-unt.html
Josh has a go at them:
Stephen Wilde says:
May 28, 2013 at 12:01 am
“Mike Jonas says:
May 27, 2013 at 4:58 pm
Stephen Wilde – I think the time has come for you to submit your theory as a post to WUWT.
Already done here and elsewhere:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/06/a-new-and-effective-climate-model/
though it could do with a little refinement now and note that the basis of it is the provision of a negative system response against ANY forcing element.
The harshest criticism came from Leif but I take him less seriously these days.
Good Policy Stephen. Insomnia caused me to read from the link above where Leif left this gem…
Leif Svalgaard says:
April 8, 2010 at 3:24 pm
Stephen Wilde (13:24:30) :
You clearly cannot seperate the solar effects from the other (supposed) effects so your own position is weaker than you admit. You don’t even know what those other supposed effects might be.
By the same token neither can you, and that’s why they cannot be part of a serious model, that is all.
Practical people of good taste can only laugh when considering the effectiveness of CAGW modeling vs. your model and Lief’s statement.
The weakness of being an academic in all its glory.
Latest
Energy and Climate Change UK budget to get 10% chop ?
Reblogged this on Tallbloke's Talkshop and commented:
This is a big story which will be ignored by the BBC
I think we are in danger of missing the point here by having the same old arguments about the contribution of emissions on the climate.
The question here is not whether there is warming or not since 1850. Taking a starting temperature and and end temperature there clearly is. The question is, that if one statistical methodology says it is within natural variation and another does not is why a categorical parliamentary answer was given based on the one least likely to be correct. And why it took a further 5 questions to get better answer.
Someone over at BH has suggested a FOI request for correspondence to elicit how the methodology was chosen. That could be telling.
Kudos to Lord Donahoughue for his tenacity.
Margaret Hardman
You said
‘I would expect everyone on this site to agree that there has been significant warming since 1850, the CET shows it clearly.’
That is quite correct, but if we step back in time we can put CET in better context;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/08/the-curious-case-of-rising-co2-and-falling-temperatures/
That graph is an update from my article that is reconstructing CET from its instrumental limits of 1659 and compares the reconstructions of Dr Mann and Hubert Lamb
http://judithcurry.com/2011/12/01/the-long-slow-thaw/
We can observe a number of things. Firstly that temperatures have been rising since the start of the instrumental record. GISS from 1880 can therefore be seen to merely a staging post and not the starting post. This steady increase is confirmed by BEST.
We can also observe that at a current 0.4 anomaly CET is only fractionally warmer than the 1830 period, the same as the 1730 period and currently cooler than the start of the record in 1538 which I have now extended to 1500AD. I can not comment on its progress to the MWP as looking for the transition point between the MWP and LIA is my current area of research, ironically using some of the extensive records in the Met office library and archives.
BTW I do not think that either you or Nick Stokes are trolls and am glad you weathered the earlier storm on the other thread as we need alternative views if we are not to become the echo chamber that so many alarmist sites have become
tonyb
Meanwhile in Germany it looks like they are having the coldest Spring in 40 years.
In France it is worse. France is experiencing one of the coldest Mays in last 60 years. The 24 May was the coldest one in the whole temperature record. Many days were more than 10°C below 30 year average.
Weather is not yet climate on monthly average scales.
However the probability to break cold records even on monthly scales IS supposed to be dependent on a climatic trend if a trend is there.
Of course as nobody knows the PDF, it is not possible to tell how probable such a phenomenon is but clearly the natural variability seems to be much greater than what we previously thought.
N.Stokes
The Arimas don’t violate any energy conservation laws because the exercice done here is applied to arithmetical spatial averages on a surface.
I leave you as exercice to show why a weighted surface average of temperatures can follow any probability distribution without contradicting energy conservation.
One may suppose a function T(x,y,z,t) continuous in time but not necessarily in the space variables which is then spatially averaged on an arbitrary closed surface of a body.
Again, there seems to be grate deal of fanfare surrounding the discussion. And whilst, in a world where honesty is essential to debate then it would be. But if such a world did exist then there would be no climate scare either. In short, while WUWT might consider this significant it will not make much of an impact in the UK press (if it even registers at all) and will sway no one in the mainstream world of politics or in the general public.
TomV,
How can a process with constrained temperature-dependent fluxes have no fixed long term mean? How can an unconstrained random walk not, over time, reach temperatures that would kill all life?
Margaret Hardman says @ur momisugly May 27, 2013 at 11:23 pm
“The null part, as you know, indicates no change, no correlation, no link. I am surprised that you made that error.”
Err….excuse me. So you are trying to foolishly claim that the Earth’s climate should still be stuck at the last little ice age ?
Given that the ‘Null Hypothsis’ means that there must be some warming therefore it is indeed you who is in error.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/04/30/global-warming-alarm-continued-cooling-may-jeopardize-climate-science-and-green-energy-funding/ what will the global warmers scammers all do when the grants stop
Margaret Hardman says:
May 27, 2013 at 11:07 am
I would expect everyone on this site to agree that there has been significant warming since 1850, the CET shows it clearly.
Margaret – The fact that temperature has risen is one issue. The explanation ‘why’ is another.
You can see a number of links in my post up-thread which give the reasons why. CO2 is only a minor component of the rise.
But since you mention the CET specifically, you may be interested that my own small model very successfully fits the CET. And has successfully modelled the CET since I built it. I built it just after Climategate and the Copenhagen meeting when I wanted to independently test for myself whether climate sensitivity was low or high. The finding: low.
I should mention my professional experience includes building of such models for corporate customers. I was just doing what I know. There is sufficient detail at the first link for you to replicate it should you wish.
Having read all the posts on this thread, and ignoring (for the time being) the ongoing agitation being generated by Mssrs. Stokes, Hardman, et al, many replies have simply remarked ‘just how cold it is right now’. Germany, UK, Cleveland, New York, Brisbane and now France.
Ok, this to all those out there who remain resilient in their belief of CAGW. This is a golden opportunity to finally set the record straight once and for all. We’re throwing down the gauntlet.
Please can you tell me (and every other regular WUWT reader like me who is in total disagreement with AGW);
WHAT COUNTRY, RIGHT NOW, IN THE WORLD, IS SIGNIFICANTLY WARMER THAN IT NORMALLY IS FOR THIS TIME OF YEAR?
I look forward to your reply.
N.Stokes
How can a process with constrained temperature-dependent fluxes have no fixed long term mean? How can an unconstrained random walk not, over time, reach temperatures that would kill all life?
Don’t forget that we are just talking about models here and that the time scales considered are only hundreds of years.
In other terms don’t forget that fluid mechanics and spatio-temporal chaos (which what the system really is) have really nothing to do with Arimas or surface averages.
Of course that all these statistical models (regardless of the number of parameters) have nothing to do with the reality. I hope you don’t take them seriously 🙂
They just fit somme better and some worse over the extremely short data period we have.
Over much longer periods (multi kyears) we already know that there are pseudo periodical cycles e.g deterministic chaos.
So because what we are actually only talking about is what statistical model fits better over, say 100 or 200 years, I wanted to strongly state that no statistical distribution of spatial averages violated any conservation laws. They are all equally valid.
And if one wants to take the road of stochastical modelling (which doesn’t make much sense for me for physical fields like temperatures and velocities that obey determinstic field equations) then any model is good and those that fit better are better.
And of course none can be extrapolated very far.
GeeJam says: May 28, 2013 at 3:21 am
“I look forward to your reply.”
Well, here is the GISS map for April. Yes, cold in N America. But very warm in Russia, and fairly warm in S Am and Australia. Here you can see the last week summarised. East Europe stood out, but also quite warm in E US, N China, India.
I can tell you that in Melbourne, where I am, it has been an unusually warm autumn overall (even a very good day today). I think it was our fourth warmest April ever.
Margaret Hardman (May 28, 2013 at 1:41 am) “Current slowing in the warming trend explained by La Niña events in 1999-2000, 2005, 2007, 2010 and 2011. Biggest El Niño was in 1997-8, coinciding with that peak in temperature anomalies in 1998 so beloved of those that tell me incessantly that warming has stopped. ”
I assume you are talking about this? http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/ts.gif It’s hard to quantify the effects of ENSO without getting handwavy or over-simplistically assuming that La Nina “stores” heat that El Nino releases. For one thing you need to factor in changes in outgoing long wave due to changes in cloudiness, precipitation patterns, etc. That heat is gone, not “absorbed” in the ocean. Another is that if La Nina “absorbs” or “stores” heat in the deep ocean it is gone for time scales that we care about. There is very little support for an argument that La Nina is suppressing warming.
OTOH, you are correct warming has not stopped. I realize lots of people say that, but often that is shorthand for an insignificant rise. Here’s a plot starting in 1997 rather than 1998 which I agree is an outlier: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1997/to:2013/plot/uah/from:1997/to:2013/trend which shows a linear trend of 0.09C per decade which is consistent with benign warming. Starting from 1996 I get about 0.12C per decade, still benign.
The main point you are missing in all your posts above is that there are some explanations for a natural rise in temperature, one prominent one is that the late 20th century had TSI about 1 W/m2 higher than the early 20th century. That’s 0.25 W/m2 of rise when hitting the earth as a sphere or roughly 1/15th of the warming from a doubling of CO2 or the same as the warming from about 13 or 14 years rise in CO2 at current rates close to 2ppm / year. That’s nontrivial amount of warming just from TSI, not counting other warming effects from high solar activity.
It looks as if SkS has got its fingers in its ears and is singing la-la-la-la as when I try to bring their attention to this I just get cut.
Presumably this will get to the MSM and we will then see the “rebuttal” phase but I have to say that having to ask 6 times is kind of a clue in and of itself.
@Nick Stokes:
“So did “Met Office admits claims of significant temperature rise untenable”? Where? How?”
Yes they did, in the second paragraph in their response to Lord Donaghue. The two numbers you should look at are 0.08 and 0.001. DK explained further:
“The relative likelihood is 0.08, if we analyze years 1900–2012 , and it is 0.001, if we analyze years 1850–2012 (using Met Office data). In either case, then, the trending autoregressive model is much less likely than the driftless model to be the better model of the data. Hence, the statistical model that was relied upon in the Answer to the original Question (HL3050) is untenable.”
They may not have said it explicitly, but that is the conclusion that can be drawn from the reply. It’s not opinion, those are the numbers.
“And if you follow the link to BH, there’s a long ramble from Doug Keenan on his opinions about the meaning of statistical significance, and confused discussion in the House of Lords.”
So are you suggesting that his “opinions” are wrong? Why do you characterise it as a “ramble” rather than putting the inquiry into context? And the discussion “confused” – what was confused about it?
More to the point, you characterise DK as merely giving his opinion on this matter, where what he is stating was an assertion of fact that he justified. Are you saying that his choice of statistical model does not give a better fit to the data than the one chosen by the MetOffice or the IPCC? Are you saying that the IPCC did – in complete contradiction to what he stated – give justification for their choice of statistical model in their report? If you agree that they didn’t, do you disagree with his assertion it was unscientific not to?
It’s a fairly straightforward issue: The MetOffice issued a statement on statistical significance which can be shown to be untenable, so they should therefore withdraw it.
You can say that the lack of statistical significance is not all we know about potential AGW, that the climate is extremely complex, that the physics of radiative transfer is solid and implies AGW, that we know more about various forcings (de-forestation, land use changes, CO2 emissions) that make a case beyond the issue of significance, but my understanding of the framing of this question and the answer is that its pretty cut and dried. You can’t claim statistically significant warming beyond natural variability based on the 1880 to present near-surface data sets if you follow proper time-series analysis procedure.
If that’s wrong please explain.
Nick Stokes
said
“I can tell you that in Melbourne, where I am, it has been an unusually warm autumn overall (even a very good day today). I think it was our fourth warmest April ever.”
Its ok, you can relax. It seems that Melbourne did not experience its 4th warmest April ever (in its very short record)
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/month/vic/melbourne.shtml
More interestingly your own Met office seems to attribute much of the observed warmth to UHI
tonyb
Nick Stokes
Just been looking up the Melbourne history. It seems you have incredibly short records and for something to be the 7th or 12th warmest is not really saying much. I see that Scoresby is near you. He is buried not 7 miles from my home and was of course the first Arctic scientist who went there tin 1818 to discover why it was melting
tonyb
Nick Stokes says:
May 28, 2013 at 3:36 am
Well, here is the GISS map for April.
http://www.moyhu.org.s3.amazonaws.com/TempLS/Apr13/GISSApr13.gif
Yes, cold in N America. But very warm in Russia, and fairly warm in S Am and Australia. Here you can see the last week summarised. East Europe stood out, but also quite warm in E US, N China, India.
………………
And here is population map of the world. It is ‘warmest’ anomaly in the coldest areas and in areas very few people live.
Well, here is population map for 2012
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/World_population_density_map.PNG
So get all this nonsense in perspective.
Tony / Vukevic,
Not a word of what Nick Stokes says is to be believed without your independent corroboration as you know by now. He’s part of the AGW cabal and his job is to obfuscate, lie, distort and generally do anything to try and defend the indefensible.
The man from Whitehall is always right and the taxpayer a buffoon.
It is something of a British tradition that we lions are fated to be forever led by donkeys!
PS it was quite warm in my greenhouse yesteday in North Wales where I was sheltering from the real late spring weather outside. Can I take the Met Office to court?
Nick Stokes says:
May 28, 2013 at 3:36 am
“Well, here is the GISS map for April.”
Thank you Nick. Yes, I’ve already seen last month’s GISS anomalies (April). I was intrigued to find out where it was warmer right now (late May) considering the amount of regular WUWT readers who were complaining of the cold. As you know, your link to last weeks summary is for mean temperature – so does not indicate how much warmer it is than normal.
Here in central UK (where it’s been depressingly cold and unsettled for 6-months except for 11 x ‘nice’ days), I am pleased that you’re enjoying (quote) “a very good day today” at Melbourne following an unusually warm autumn overall. By this, I gather that, like most others, you also prefer it when it’s warmer – so you’ve answered another argument – why the global fixation and costly obsession to prevent our planet warming up a little? My wife and I would love it to be warmer – we only planted our tomatoes outside yesterday (which is about 3-weeks later than normal) and our salad crops will only be ‘set’ next weekend (June). This time last year, I had already mowed our lawn on six occasions. This year, I cut it for the third time yesterday. And as for traditional ‘May Blossom’ (Hawthorn), it’s only just coming out – which is unusually late.
Lord Donoughue sure is tenacious. There’s a man that doesn’t like being stonewalled…