Data doesn’t support Obama’s claim
Guest essay by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
During the July 2013 U.S. Senate hearing at which Roger Pielke Jr. and Roy Spencer gave stellar testimony to the visible discomfiture of the climate-extremist witnesses, none of the “Democrat” Senators and none of the people they had chosen to testify before them was at all anxious to defend Mr. Obama’s assertion that over the past decade global warming has been accelerating at an unforeseen rate.
At a fund-raiser for the “Democratic” Congressional Campaign Committee in Chicago May 29, he had said, “We … know that the climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or ten years ago.” He had added, “I don’t have much patience for people who deny climate change.”
Well, I deny that the climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or ten years ago. But I deny it not because I take an aprioristic position opposite to Mr Obama’s aprioristic position, but because science is done by measurement, not by parroting the Party Line. And the measurements do not support the Party Line.
Let me demonstrate. First, what warming does the IPCC anticipate in its upcoming and much-leaked Fifth Assessment Report?
![clip_image002[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0024.jpg "clip_image002[4]")
The graph above, adapted from Figs. 11.33ab in the draft report, for which I am an expert reviewer, shows that from 2005-2050 (most of the past ten years fall within that period) the models expect an approximately linear warming of about 0.4 to 1.0 Cº per 30 years (this range is also explicitly stated in paragraph 11.3.6.3). That is equivalent to 1.33 to 3.33 Cº/century, with a mid-range estimate of 2.33 Cº/century.
The IPCC’s models’ mid-range projection implies that around 0.12 Cº of warming should happen over five years, and o.23 Cº over ten years. An eighth to a quarter of a Celsius degree: those are the benchmarks. Previous IPCC reports made broadly similar near-term projections.
What, then, is the consensus among the monthly global mean surface or lower-troposphere datasets about whether the climate is warming “faster than anybody anticipated five or ten years ago”? Or whether it is warming at all?
There are three terrestrial datasets: HadCRUt4, GISS, and NCDC. There are two satellite datasets: RSS and UAH. To forestall the usual futile allegations of cherry-picking, we shall look at all five of them.
For each dataset, two graphs will be displayed: the most recent 60 months of global temperature anomalies, and the most recent 120 months.
The graph will display the spline-curve of the monthly anomalies in dark blue, with a thicker light-blue trend-line, which is simply the least-squares linear-regression trend on the data. Over short periods, no more complex trend need be determined.
Nor is there any need to allow for seasonality, not only because the graphs analyze data over multiples of 12 months but also because globally the seasons cancel each other out, so that natural variability tends to make any seasonal pattern near-impossible to detect.
Linear regression determines the underlying trend in a dataset over a given period as the slope of the unique straight line through the data that minimizes the sum of the squares of the absolute differences or “residuals” between the data-points corresponding to each time interval in the data and on the trend-line.
The graphs, therefore, give a fair indication of whether global mean temperatures at or near the surface have been rising or falling over the past five or ten years.
Note, however, that – particularly with highly volatile datasets such as the global temperature anomalies – a statistical trend is not a tool for prediction. It indicates only what has happened, not what may or will happen.
And what has happened is, as we shall see, grievously at odds with the Party Line.
We begin with the terrestrial datasets.
GISS, five years:
![clip_image004[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0044.jpg "clip_image004[4]")
GISS, ten years:
![clip_image006[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0064.jpg "clip_image006[4]")
HadCRUT4, five years:
![clip_image008[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0084.jpg "clip_image008[4]")
HadCRUt4, ten years:
![clip_image010[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0104.jpg "clip_image010[4]")
NCDC, five years:
![clip_image012[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0124.jpg "clip_image012[4]")
NCDC, ten years:
![clip_image014[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0144.jpg "clip_image014[4]")
The mean of the anomalies on all three terrestrial datasets, five years:
![clip_image016[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0164.jpg "clip_image016[4]")
The mean of the anomalies on all three terrestrial datasets, ten years:
![clip_image018[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0184.jpg "clip_image018[4]")
Now for the two satellite datasets. RSS, five years:
![clip_image020[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0204.jpg "clip_image020[4]")
RSS, ten years:
![clip_image022[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0224.jpg "clip_image022[4]")
UAH, five years:
![clip_image024[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0244.jpg "clip_image024[4]")
UAH, ten years:
![clip_image026[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0264.jpg "clip_image026[4]")
The mean of the anomalies on the two satellite datasets, five years:
![clip_image028[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0284.jpg "clip_image028[4]")
The mean of the anomalies on the two satellite datasets, ten years:
![clip_image030[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0304.jpg "clip_image030[4]")
The mean of the anomalies on all five datasets, five years:
![clip_image032[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0324.jpg "clip_image032[4]")
The mean of the anomalies on all five datasets, ten years:
![clip_image034[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0344.jpg "clip_image034[4]")
The only dataset that shows any warming at all is UAH over ten years. The warming is a not particularly dizzying one twenty-fifth of a Celsius degree over ten years, equivalent to two-fifths of a degree per century.
The RSS satellite dataset, on the other hand, now shows no global warming at all for an impressive 199 months, or 16 years 7 months:
![clip_image036[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0364.jpg "clip_image036[4]")
Not much “acceleration” there. Will it reach 200 months? I’ll report next month.
Finally, here is the monthly Global Warming Prediction Index, which compares the projections backcast by the modelers to 2005 and published in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report with the real-world outturn as measured by the two satellite datasets.
![clip_image038[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0384.jpg "clip_image038[4]")
The lower bound of the orange zone is the IPCC’s low-end projection. Warming should be occurring at a minimum of 1.33 Cº/century. The thick bright red line is the IPCC’s mid-range projection: warming should be occurring at 2.33 Cº/century.
The real-world trend, represented by the thick bright blue trend line, shows global temperatures declining since January 2005 at a rate equivalent to almost a quarter of a Celsius degree (half a Fahrenheit degree) per century.
You may think that going to the trouble of producing so many graphs is overkill. Yet when I first spoke up at the U.N. climate conference in Doha and pointed out that there had been no global warming for 16 years the delegates were furious. So were the news media. One reason for their unreason: they simply did not know the facts.
One would have thought that among all the hours of hand-wringing on the air and pages of moaning in print about “global warming”, most of the news media would be faithfully reporting the monthly temperature anomalies. But no. The facts do not fit the Party Line, so they are not reported. They are consigned to the Memory Hole.
As for Mr. Obama’s statement about “acceleration”, he was plain wrong. Instead of the warming equivalent to 2.33 Cº/century global warming that had been “anticipated”, there has really been no change in global temperature at all over the past five or ten years.
Will somebody tell the “President”?
Michael Moon,
The west antarctic ice sheet is losing more mans than the east is gaining, also the peninsula is losing land-based ice somewhat, but more gradually.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6111/1183
Between 1992 and 2011, the ice sheets of Greenland, East Antarctica, West Antarctica, and the Antarctic Peninsula changed in mass by –142 ± 49, +14 ± 43, –65 ± 26, and –20 ± 14 gigatonnes year−1, respectively. Since 1992, the polar ice sheets have contributed, on average, 0.59 ± 0.20 millimeter year−1 to the rate of global sea-level rise.
izen says:
July 21, 2013 at 10:52 am
Is a longer time period a better indication than a shorter one, what would be the minimum time period to avoid the ‘noise’ obscuring any trend?
Santer talks about 17 years. As the article mentioned, RSS is at 16 years and 7 months. However in addition, Hadsst2 is at 16 years and 4 months and HadCRUT3 is at 16 years and 2 months. So just a bit of patience is needed.
Gail Combs
no, not like the picture you show. More like if you place a bowl of ice cold water in a room it will gain more heat than if you place a jar of air that is only .5 degrees fahrenheit cooler in the same room.
heat is transferred between two objects according to their differences in temperatures. when the sea surface temperature has a slightly greater mixing, its surface stays cooler and it can acquire more heat than it did before.
Pablo an ex Pat says:
July 21, 2013 at 11:01 am
As for the Deep Ocean story it’s a meme that smacks of desperation :
4) We know we can’t show that by measuring it to any meaningful degree, but trust us, it’s there.
On another post, the following was quoted.
“0-2000 m (last 8.3 yrs): (0.80 +/- 0.09) e22 J/yr”?
It sounds huge, but when you translate that into a temperature change, it seems to disappear!
From an earlier article by Bob Tisdale:
“That obviously means that about 48% of the ocean volume is above 2000 meters.”
The volume of water from 0 to 2000 m is about 48% of 1.37 x 10^9 km^3 or 6.58 x 10^8 km^3. With 1000 m in a km, this would be 10^9 m3 in a km3, for a total volume of 6.58 x 10^17 m^3.
So let us assume that the last 8.3 years got 0.80 x 10^22 J x 8.3 = 6.64 x 10^22 J.
The specific heat capacity of sea water is 3850 J/kgC.
The density of sea water is about 1020 kg/m3, so a volume of 6.58 x 10^17 m3 has a mass of 6.7 x 10^20 kg.
Plugging in these numbers into Q = mct gives:
6.64 x 10^22 J = 6.7 x 10^20 kg x 3850 J/kgC x dt
This gives a change in temperature of 0.0257 C if I did not make a mistake.
Well, Matt G–Look at it this way:
CO2 is the most important gas in the world.
Want proof? Just remove oxygen equal to the weight of CO2 from the atmosphere and nobody would notice any difference.
Remove the same weight of CO2 from the atmosphere (i.e., all of it) and we’d all be dead in short order. We’d all starve to death in a few months.
So pound per pound, CO2 is the most important, and hence the most valuable gas in the world.
And Obama wants to curtail it.
He’s completely daft, along with his “science” advisors.
Obama’s statement is perfectly understandable. All politicians understand “The Big Lie”.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie
Robin
My favourite line from Medawar’s demolition of the very much not UN Teilhard de Chardin is: “it’s author can only be excused of dishonesty on the grounds that before deceiving others he has taken great pains to deceive himself.”
I shall leave it to you to decide who is the self-deceived.
OT but urgent:
DC Superior Court judge has been placed under the severe mis-impression that nearly one dozen formal investigations have examined the scientific merits of Michael Mann’s work and that it has always been “found to be proper”.
Since most of the so-called (pseudo) investigations did not even pretend to examine Mann’s work, this is of course an enormous misconception which has been pressed upon the judge. [cross-posted at CA, with h/t to Matthu at Bishop Hill for the link]
I realize that the legal vs. scientific distinctions go in varied ways, and also that this blog typically avoids the use of the “F” word in relation to Mann’s work. However, it may be time for someone (I’m not suggesting Steve, but maybe a close follower of Mannian issues who knows a lot more than I do) to write a succinct summary of why and how the various “investigations” have done little or nothing to prove that Mann’s work is “found to be proper.”
The legal status is simply that Mann’s suit can go forward in September. It would be a shame if anyone at NR or CEI stopped defending Steyn or fighting the case, simply because the issues were not well enough understood.
DC Superior Court thinks Michael Mann’s work has been investigated by nearly one dozen investigative bodies and “found to be proper”
It is evident that the temperature did not rise since 2000.
at this web-site:
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/#astronomical_model_1
you find the latest updated figures comparing both HadCRUT3 and HadCRUT4 global surface temperature records and the IPCC model projections. The figures also show a comparison with the model that I propose which is made of specific harmonics + a significantly reduced anthropogenic effect, which works much better than any IPCC GCMs in reconstructing past temperatures and projects a significantly lower 21st century warming.
All details are found in my latest “invited review” publication
Scafetta N., 2013. Solar and planetary oscillation control on climate change: hind-cast, forecast and a comparison with the CMIP5 GCMs. Energy & Environment 24(3-4), 455–496.
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/pdf/Scafetta_EE_2013.pdf
RR says “And Obama wants to curtail it.”
Well he’s going to have to invade China and India then. 🙂
All he will be doing is moving even more industry to these areas, at the expense of American industry.
Thereby pushing the GLOBAL CO2 level up even faster.
Which is GOOD !!!
Thank you Mr Obama for considering the biosphere.
Obama is not credible as the people he uses to obtain and skew it are part of the “agenda”.. The world would be such a better place if we were truly honest with one another. Man being flawed and corrupt is the problem. Sadly the reasons for religion are being swept under the rug to allow corruption to run unabated.
There is a reason that the signers of the Declaration of Independence Pledged their HONOR and their LIVES under GOD… The preamble of the US Constitution also alludes to this fact and why three separate branches were tightly constrained in there job duties. Specifically limiting each and using the checks and balanaces was the way to keep men honest. Our form of government has become corrupt.
The EPA is an abomination of an organization as it negates a branch of government (congress) and places itself above them because “they know best”.. Time for congress to take back the reigns of this runaway unaccountable organization. Until We the People get a clue about what the founders meant for us and why we will most certainly loose this country.
Facts are dammedable things. You are not entitled to your own set.. Those in that senate hearing looked like deer in the head lights when Spencer presented facts. Many Thanks to a Brit who knows our system of government better than most Americans and is willing to present the facts.
rogerknights says: July 21, 2013 at 10:23 am
I would like to see what script his advisors would provide for Obama in case he ever has to explain his more recent sermonizing in Soweto, where he told his audience that if the world continues on our current path, “the planet will boil over”.
Yes, he really did say this! (Audio-visual evidence available here. Scroll down for video; Obama segment begins at approx.6:45)
‘was at all anxious to defend Mr. Obama’s assertion that over the past decade global warming has been accelerating at an unforeseen rate.’
Ok, let me be perfectly clear here. Ok, well, somewhat clear. Ok, well, maybe clear. Ok… Anyway, I don’t think a defense must really be mounted in favor of the truth. Well, that’s not true, but skip that last statement for now. See, what Obama was really referring to was the acceleration of Air Force One. He super secretly modified it (where did you think that measly 800 billion stimulus really disappeared to?) to where it’s the fastest accelerating obscenely large presidential jet compared to all the other incessantly growing obscenely large presidential jets. Now, even Obama couldn’t foresee just how fast the AF1 acceleration program would proceed. But proceed it did because he needs it. His time is valuable. (If you think that last sentence was hard to read just think of how hard it was to type.) So, that’s what he was talking about. Obama’s assertion is really that over the past decade (Obama always rounds to the nearest highest number…unless it’s advantageous to always round to the nearest lowest number) global jetting has been accelerating at an unforeseen rate.
Does the foregoing sound really stupid? Well, does it sound any stupider than putting the fate of over three hundred million people in the hands of one man? And, in consequence, both overtly and covertly, indirectly the fate of one whole helluva lot more than 300,000,000 people? Does it sound any sillier than putting the fate of the economy and energy sources for over 300,000,000 people unilaterally in the hands of one man – one man – who really doesn’t know diddly squat about economics and energy? Does it sound thoroughly insane to put one man – one man – in charge of national security for 300,000,000 people when the only time he ever fired a gun it was for a photo shoot and it was obvious he didn’t know how to aim it? Does it sound like pure lunacy to put one man in charge of disaster relief for 300,000,000 when the only thing he knows what to do for disasters is put on a leather bomber jacket and grin for the cameras? Does it sound like the highest attainment of idiocy to put all these functions for 300,000,000 people in the eenie meenie mieney moe pen of self serving executive orders? Does it…
Welcome to Detroit.
@Nicola Scafetta
When even the highly adjustable HadCrud cannot show a warming trend,, it must be getting cold !!!
@Nicola Scafetta
To me, Figure 2 in your pdf illustrates the problem that the models have.
HadCrud intentionally removes the peak around the late 1930’s by using what they call adjustments.
They then “hindcast” (ie fiddle their fudge numbers) to match this highly manipulated fabrication.
They CANNOT hope to get projections correct., EVER.
William Astley says:
July 21, 2013 at 12:51 pm
The solar magnetic cycle is rapidly changing, it appears the sun will be spotless based on observations by the end of this year.
Clairvoyance beats science every time…
“Mr. Obama’s assertion that over the past decade global warming has been accelerating at an unforeseen rate.”
Certainly Mr. Obama is correct with his assertion, as the “rate of acceleration” of approximately 0 or even negative acceleration has been occurring. Zero and negative numbers are also valid rates of acceleration. Mann fools while Nature Rules!
The zero and negative rates of acceleration where certainly “unforeseen” by the Soothsayers of Co2 Climate Doomsday. Unforeseen since they are overly dedicated to their CAGW Nature Falsified hypothesis.
Interesting.
Dr. Cullen’s testimony makes many statements that sound like “it can be shown that”, when in fact there should be easily referable studies that do show that warming is increasing.
If that’s the point she’s trying to make, which is not at all clear. What it instead sounds like is: we could make a case for warming, if we wanted to. Because weather is changing. We are for instance recording many more heavy downpours now with our more extensive weather stations than we did a century ago. Some places, are seeing much more drought than e.g. Oklahoma did in the 1930s. The oceans are maybe warming, which we could easily show you but won’t. Weather is changing, which of course means that we’re changing it.
It all sounds very dodgy.
I wonder if his advisors told him that. If so, it would be in character. The temptation to do so would be strong.
Many thanks to everyone who has taken the trouble to comment. Some responses to commenters’ queries:
One or two have complained that the periods of study – five years and ten years – are too short to draw definitive conclusions. I agree, but I generated the graphs in response to Mr Obama’s specific statement that global warming had accelerated over the past five or ten years at an unforeseen rate.
I have conducted sensitivity analyses on the data, and the most rapid period of warming lasting more than ten years is in HadCrut4, which shows a warming rate equivalent to 2 K/century from 1974 to 2006 inclusive, a period of 33 years.
However, the warming phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation from 1976 to 2001 accounted for all but seven of those 33 years. Inspection suggests that the ocean oscillations appear to follow a 60-year cycle, with approximately 30 years’ warming followed by 30 years’ cooling. For an interesting discussion of this, see Nicola Scafetta’s remarkable recent paper, and also Tsonis et al., 2006.
Therefore, one should either take 60-year periods so as to cancel out the visible naturally-occurring influence of the ocean oscillations or take periods centered on a phase-transition in those oscillations.
Taking the most recent 60-year period, from June 1953 to May 2013 inclusive, the trend on the mean of the three terrestrial datasets (GISS, HadCRUt4 and NCDC) is 0.74 K over the 60 years, equivalent to a not very terrifying 1.25 K/century. And if Michaels & McKitrick’s intriguing economic analysis of the startling correlation between regional rates of industrial growth and of increase in temperature is correct, half of the land-based warming in recent decades was caused by inadequate adjustments in the datasets for the urban heat-island effect.
Some commenters have questioned whether seasonality is evident in the global temperature anomalies. I have conducted sensitivity analyses recently in response to a private commenter who raised the same question, and the answer is that no seasonality is detectable in the temperature datasets, while it is of course detectable in the CO2 concentration dataset, precisely because of the asymmetric distribution of land masses between the northern and southern hemispheres that the commenter had mentioned. That asymmetry does not appear to cause a discernible seasonality in the temperature data.
I have looked at the temperature records in the round, and I cannot discern any unmistakable signature of manmade warming. There has been some warming over the past century, though it stopped about a decade and a half ago. The 60-year quasi-periodicity in the temperature data is plainly not caused by CO2, because it has increased monotonically, not cyclically, and absence of correlation between the CO2 and temperature datasets necessarily implies absence of causation between one and the other as far as the cyclicity is concerned.
That is not to deny the possibility that CO2 may have contributed something to the warming of the past half-century: indeed, it may even have contributed as much as half the warming, or less than 0.4 K, as the IPCC suggests. But one cannot definitively discern this supposed anthropogenic effect from the temperature data.
Some ground-breaking work on the far more interesting correlation between changes in solar activity and in global temperature is now being done in Australia by at least two separate researchers, following Herschel’s observation in 1801 that the fluctuations in London grain prices and in the sunspot number over the 11-year cycle were anti-correlated. The research appears to indicate that the short-term fluctuations in solar activity, though they discernibly cause the short-term cycles global temperatures in a manner that the monotonic increase in CO2 manifestly does not, are absolutely predictive of global temperature change on all timescales provided that the time-integral of the solar-activity change is taken.
Since multiple time-scales are being researched by both parties (I have not yet persuaded them to talk to each other, for they would each learn much if they did), both parties are using a mathematical weapon ideally suited to such studies – Fourier analysis. This technique is well beyond the capacity of most climatologists. It may – I stress may – allow a definitive determination of climate sensitivity. The difficulty, if the researches now in train come to a successful conclusion, will be in explaining to climatologists who simply do not have enough math to understand the method that climate sensitivity is remarkably low, as both researchers have provisionally concluded.
However, it is these careful, meticulous, lengthy mathematical analyses – and not the half-baked modeling used by the IPCC – that are more likely to produce a reliable interval of climate sensitivity. That remains the holy grail of current climate research. Watch this space: the cry-babies and bed-wetters are going to hate the results, but few of them have the necessary knowledge to refute what is coming.
John West said at 8:29 am
“none of the “Democrat” Senators and none of the people they had chosen to testify before them was at all anxious to defend Mr. Obama’s assertion that over the past decade global warming has been accelerating at an unforeseen rate”
Spectacularly awkward moment: [YouTube]
Dr.Cullen says around the three minute mark and again around 4:30 that there’s been an increase towards drought in the Southwest.
A quick check at NOAA’s “Climate At A Glance” page
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/
shows us that precipitation in the Southwest has trended upwards over the last century, 50 years and 25 years. It looks like Dr. Cullen doesn’t know what she is talking about.
As always, I am impressed and humbled by Monckton’s dedication to this subject. Thank you.
Anyone who claims that above 400ppm co2 and below 500ppm of co2 in the atmosphere will damage the biosphere is lying to you. Same goes for up to 600ppm and 700ppm.
Sorry for this OT comment but I just realised it has to be a lie. Paleo and current greenhouse crop measurements tell me so (up to 1,000ppm).
References: recent global observations of co2 fertilization effects.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50563/abstract
http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/5/5/2492
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gbc.20027/abstract
I have more references deflating this lie.