[NOTE: RSS is a satellite temperature data set much like the UAH dataset from Dr. Roy Spencer and John Christy – Anthony]
Image Credit: WoodForTrees.org
Guest Post By Werner Brozek, Edited By Just The Facts
The graphic above shows 3 lines. The long line shows that RSS has been flat from December 1996 to July 2013, which is a period of 16 years and 8 months or 200 months. The other slightly higher flat line in the middle is the latest complete decade of 120 months from January 2001 to December 2010. The other slightly downward sloping line is the latest 120 months prior from present. It very clearly shows it has been cooling lately, however this cooling is not statistically significant.
In my opinion, if you want to find out what the temperatures are doing over the last 10 or 16 years on any data set, you should find the slope of the line for the years in question. However some people insist on saying global warming is accelerating by comparing the decade from 2001 to 2010 to the previous decade. They conveniently ignore what has happened since January 2011. However, when one compares the average anomaly from January 2011 to the present with the average anomaly from January 2001 to December 2010, the latest quarter decade has the lower number on all six data sets that I have been discussing. Global warming is not even decelerating. In fact, on all six data sets, cooling is actually taking place.
The numbers for RSS for example are as follows: From January 2001 to December 2010, the average anomaly was 0.265. For the last 31 months from January 2011 to July 2013, the average anomaly is 0.184. The difference between these is -0.081. I realize that it is only for a short time, but it is long enough that there is no way that RSS, for example, will show a positive difference before the end of the year. In order for that to happen, we can use the numbers indicated to calculate what is required. Our equation would be (0.184)(31) + 5x = (0.265)(36). Solving for x gives 0.767. This is close to the highest anomaly ever recorded on RSS, which is 0.857 from April 1998. With the present ENSO conditions, there is no way that will happen.
A word to the wise: do not even mention accelerated global warming until the difference is positive on all data sets.
I have added rows 23 to 25 to the table in Section 3 with the intention of updating it with every post. This table shows the numbers that I have given for RSS above as well as the corresponding numbers on the other five data sets I have been discussing. Do you feel this would be a valuable addition to my posts?
(Note: If you read my last article and just wish to know what is new with the July data, you will find the most important new things from lines 7 to the end of the table.)
Below we will present you with the latest fact, the information will be presented in three sections and an appendix. The first section will show for how long there has been no warming on several data sets. The second section will show for how long there has been no statistically significant warming on several data sets. The third section will show how 2013 to date compares with 2012 and the warmest years and months on record so far. The appendix will illustrate sections 1 and 2 in a different way. Graphs and a table will be used to illustrate the data.
Section 1
This analysis uses the latest month for which data is available on WoodForTrees.com (WFT). All of the data on WFT is also available at the specific sources as outlined below. We start with the present date and go to the furthest month in the past where the slope is a least slightly negative. So if the slope from September is 4 x 10^-4 but it is – 4 x 10^-4 from October, we give the time from October so no one can accuse us of being less than honest if we say the slope is flat from a certain month.
On all data sets below, the different times for a slope that is at least very slightly negative ranges from 8 years and 7 months to 16 years and 8 months.
1. For GISS, the slope is flat since February 2001 or 12 years, 6 months. (goes to July)
2. For Hadcrut3, the slope is flat since April 1997 or 16 years, 4 months. (goes to July)
3. For a combination of GISS, Hadcrut3, UAH and RSS, the slope is flat since December 2000 or 12 years, 8 months. (goes to July)
4. For Hadcrut4, the slope is flat since December 2000 or 12 years, 8 months. (goes to July)
5. For Hadsst2, the slope is flat since March 1997 or 16 years, 4 months. (goes to June) (The July anomaly is out, but it is not on WFT yet.)
6. For UAH, the slope is flat since January 2005 or 8 years, 7 months. (goes to July using version 5.5)
7. For RSS, the slope is flat since December 1996 or 16 years and 8 months. (goes to July) RSS is 200/204 or 98% of the way to Ben Santer’s 17 years.
The next link shows just the lines to illustrate the above for what can be shown. Think of it as a sideways bar graph where the lengths of the lines indicate the relative times where the slope is 0. In addition, the sloped wiggly line shows how CO2 has increased over this period.
When two things are plotted as I have done, the left only shows a temperature anomaly. It goes from 0.1 C to 0.6 C. A change of 0.5 C over 16 years is about 3.0 C over 100 years. And 3.0 C is about the average of what the IPCC says may be the temperature increase by 2100.
So for this to be the case, the slope for all of the data sets would have to be as steep as the CO2 slope. Hopefully the graphs show that this is totally untenable.
The next graph shows the above, but this time, the actual plotted points are shown along with the slope lines and the CO2 is omitted.
Section 2
For this analysis, data was retrieved from SkepticalScience.com. This analysis indicates for how long there has not been statistically significant warming according to their criteria. The numbers below start from January of the year indicated. Data go to their latest update for each set. In every case, note that the magnitude of the second number is larger than the first number so a slope of 0 cannot be ruled out. (To the best of my knowledge, SkS uses the same criteria that Phil Jones uses to determine statistical significance.)
The situation with GISS, which used to have no statistically significant warming for 17 years, has now been changed with new data. GISS now has over 18 years of no statistically significant warming. As a result, we can now say the following: On six different data sets, there has been no statistically significant warming for between 18 and 23 years.
The details are below and are based on the SkS Temperature Trend Calculator:
For RSS the warming is not statistically significant for over 23 years.
For RSS: +0.120 +/-0.129 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1990
For UAH the warming is not statistically significant for over 19 years.
For UAH: 0.141 +/- 0.163 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994
For Hadcrut3 the warming is not statistically significant for over 19 years.
For Hadcrut3: 0.091 +/- 0.110 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994
For Hadcrut4 the warming is not statistically significant for over 18 years.
For Hadcrut4: 0.092 +/- 0.106 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1995
For GISS the warming is not statistically significant for over 18 years.
For GISS: 0.104 +/- 0.106 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1995
For NOAA the warming is not statistically significant for over 18 years.
For NOAA: 0.085 +/- 0.102 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1995
If you want to know the times to the nearest month that the warming is not statistically significant for each set to their latest update, they are as follows:
RSS since August 1989;
UAH since June 1993;
Hadcrut3 since August 1993;
Hadcrut4 since July 1994;
GISS since January 1995 and
NOAA since June 1994.
Section 3
This section shows data about 2013 and other information in the form of a table. The table shows the six data sources along the top and bottom, namely UAH, RSS, Hadcrut4, Hadcrut3, Hadsst2, and GISS. Down the column, are the following:
1. 12ra: This is the final ranking for 2012 on each data set.
2. 12a: Here I give the average anomaly for 2012.
3. year: This indicates the warmest year on record so far for that particular data set. Note that two of the data sets have 2010 as the warmest year and four have 1998 as the warmest year.
4. ano: This is the average of the monthly anomalies of the warmest year just above.
5. mon: This is the month where that particular data set showed the highest anomaly. The months are identified by the first two letters of the month and the last two numbers of the year.
6. ano: This is the anomaly of the month just above.
7. y/m: This is the longest period of time where the slope is not positive given in years/months. So 16/2 means that for 16 years and 2 months the slope is essentially 0.
8. sig: This is the whole number of years for which warming is not statistically significant according to the SkS criteria. The additional months are not added here, however for more details, see Section 2.
9. Jan: This is the January, 2013, anomaly for that particular data set.
10. Feb: This is the February, 2013, anomaly for that particular data set, etc.
21. ave: This is the average anomaly of all months to date taken by adding all numbers and dividing by the number of months. However if the data set itself gives that average, I may use their number. Sometimes the number in the third decimal place differs by one, presumably due to all months not having the same number of days.
22. rnk: This is the rank that each particular data set would have if the anomaly above were to remain that way for the rest of the year. Of course it won’t, but think of it as an update 30 or 35 minutes into a game. Due to different base periods, the rank may be more meaningful than the average anomaly.
23.new: This gives the average anomaly of the last 31 months on the six data sets I have been discussing, namely from January 2011 to the latest number available.
24.old: This gives the average anomaly of the 120 months before that on the six data sets I have been discussing. The time goes from January 2001 to December 2010.
25.dif: This gives the difference between these two numbers.
Note that in every single case, the difference is negative. In other words, from the previous decade to this present one, global warming is NOT accelerating. As a matter of fact, cooling is taking place.
| Source | UAH | RSS | Had4 | Had3 | Sst2 | GISS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. 12ra | 9th | 11th | 9th | 10th | 8th | 9th |
| 2. 12a | 0.161 | 0.192 | 0.448 | 0.406 | 0.342 | 0.57 |
| 3. year | 1998 | 1998 | 2010 | 1998 | 1998 | 2010 |
| 4. ano | 0.419 | 0.55 | 0.547 | 0.548 | 0.451 | 0.66 |
| 5. mon | Ap98 | Ap98 | Ja07 | Fe98 | Au98 | Ja07 |
| 6. ano | 0.66 | 0.857 | 0.829 | 0.756 | 0.555 | 0.93 |
| 7. y/m | 8/7 | 16/8 | 12/8 | 16/4 | 16/4 | 12/6 |
| 8. sig | 19 | 23 | 18 | 19 | 18 | |
| Source | UAH | RSS | Had4 | Had3 | Sst2 | GISS |
| 9. Jan | 0.504 | 0.441 | 0.450 | 0.390 | 0.283 | 0.63 |
| 10.Feb | 0.175 | 0.194 | 0.479 | 0.424 | 0.308 | 0.50 |
| 11.Mar | 0.183 | 0.205 | 0.405 | 0.384 | 0.278 | 0.58 |
| 12.Apr | 0.103 | 0.219 | 0.427 | 0.400 | 0.354 | 0.48 |
| 13.May | 0.077 | 0.139 | 0.498 | 0.472 | 0.377 | 0.56 |
| 14.Jun | 0.269 | 0.291 | 0.451 | 0.426 | 0.304 | 0.66 |
| 15.Jul | 0.118 | 0.222 | 0.514 | 0.490 | 0.468 | 0.54 |
| Source | UAH | RSS | Had4 | Had3 | Sst2 | GISS |
| 21.ave | 0.204 | 0.244 | 0.459 | 0.427 | 0.339 | 0.564 |
| 22.rnk | 6th | 8th | 9th | 8th | 10th | 10th |
| 23.new | 0.158 | 0.184 | 0.436 | 0.385 | 0.314 | 0.562 |
| 24.old | 0.187 | 0.265 | 0.483 | 0.435 | 0.352 | 0.591 |
| 25.dif | -.029 | -.081 | -.047 | -.050 | -.038 | -.029 |
If you wish to verify all of the latest anomalies, go to the following links, For UAH, version 5.5 was used since that is what WFT used,, RSS, Hadcrut4, Hadcrut3, Hadsst2,and GISS.
To see all points since January 2012 in the form of a graph, see the WFT graph below.
Appendix
In this section, we summarize the data for each set separately.
RSS
The slope is flat since December 1996 or 16 years and 7 months. (goes to June) RSS is 199/204 or 97.5% of the way to Ben Santer’s 17 years.
For RSS the warming is not statistically significant for over 23 years.
For RSS: +0.122 +/-0.131 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1990.
The RSS average anomaly so far for 2013 is 0.248. This would rank 7th if it stayed this way. 1998 was the warmest at 0.55. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in April of 1998 when it reached 0.857. The anomaly in 2012 was 0.192 and it came in 11th.
Following are two graphs via WFT. Both show all plotted points for RSS since 1990. Then two lines are shown on the first graph. The first upward sloping line is the line from where warming is not statistically significant according to the SkS site criteria. The second straight line shows the point from where the slope is flat.
The second graph shows the above, but in addition, there are two extra lines. These show the upper and lower lines using the SkS site criteria. Note that the lower line is almost horizontal but slopes slightly downward. This indicates that there is a slight chance that cooling has occurred since 1990 according to RSS.
UAH
The slope is flat since July 2008 or 5 years, 0 months. (goes to June)
For UAH, the warming is not statistically significant for over 19 years.
For UAH: 0.139 +/- 0.165 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994
The UAH average anomaly so far for 2013 is 0.219. This would rank 4th if it stayed this way. 1998 was the warmest at 0.419. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in April of 1998 when it reached 0.66. The anomaly in 2012 was 0.161 and it came in 9th.
Following are two graphs via WFT. Everything is identical as with RSS except the lines apply to UAH.
Hadcrut4
The slope is flat since November 2000 or 12 years, 7 months. (goes to May.)
For Hadcrut4, the warming is not statistically significant for over 18 years.
For Hadcrut4: 0.093 +/- 0.107 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1995
The Hadcrut4 average anomaly so far for 2013 is 0.450. This would rank 9th if it stayed this way. 2010 was the warmest at 0.547. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in January of 2007 when it reached 0.829. The anomaly in 2012 was 0.448 and it came in 9th.
Following are two graphs via WFT. Everything is identical as with RSS except the lines apply to Hadcrut4.
Hadcrut3
The slope is flat since April 1997 or 16 years, 2 months (goes to May, 2013)
For Hadcrut3, the warming is not statistically significant for over 19 years.
For Hadcrut3: 0.091 +/- 0.110 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994
The Hadcrut3 average anomaly so far for 2013 is 0.414. This would rank 9th if it stayed this way. 1998 was the warmest at 0.548. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in February of 1998 when it reached 0.756. One has to go back to the 1940s to find the previous time that a Hadcrut3 record was not beaten in 10 years or less. The anomaly in 2012 was 0.405 and it came in 10th.
Following are two graphs via WFT. Everything is identical as with RSS except the lines apply to Hadcrut3.
Hadsst2
For Hadsst2, the slope is flat since March 1, 1997 or 16 years, 2 months. (goes to April 30, 2013).
The Hadsst2 average anomaly for the first four months for 2013 is 0.306. This would rank 11th if it stayed this way. 1998 was the warmest at 0.451. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in August of 1998 when it reached 0.555. The anomaly in 2012 was 0.342 and it came in 8th.
Sorry! The only graph available for Hadsst2 is this.
GISS
The slope is flat since February 2001 or 12 years, 5 months. (goes to June)
For GISS, the warming is not statistically significant for over 18 years.
For GISS: 0.105 +/- 0.110 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1995
The GISS average anomaly so far for 2013 is 0.57. This would rank 9th if it stayed this way. 2010 was the warmest at 0.66. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in January of 2007 when it reached 0.93. The anomaly in 2012 was 0.56 and it came in 9th.
Following are two graphs via WFT. Everything is identical as with RSS except the lines apply to GISS. Graph 1 and Graph 2
Conclusion
So far in 2013, there is no evidence that the pause in global warming has ended. As well, all indications are that RSS will reach Santer’s 17 years in three or four months. The average rank so far is 8.5 on the six data sets discussed here. ENSO has been neutral all year so far and shows no signs of changing. The sun has been in a slump all year and also shows no sign of changing. As far as polar ice is concerned, the area that the north is losing is close to what the south is gaining. So the net effect is that there is little overall change and this also shows no sign of changing.
August 25, 2013 at 10:38 am
I just have two unimportant, trivial questions. What is the absolute Global average temperature today and what was it fifty years ago?
Approximate decadal absolute global surface air temperatures, correct to 1dp
August 1953 to July 1963, 13.9(+0.4, -0.7)°C
August 2003 to July 2013, 14.5(+0.4, -0.7)°C
(1) The figures of 13.9, and 14.5 are as per GISTEMP’s “LOTI”.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
(2) The assymetric error estimates, (+0.4, -0.7), are as per GISTMP’s “The elusive absolute surface air temperature”, which is one of the most remarkable, and subversive, documents in climatology. If you’ve not read it already, I urge you to read it.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/abs_temp.html
(3) The temperature for 08/1953 to 07/1963 could have been as high as 14.3°C.
(4) The temperature for 08/2003 to 07/2013 could have been as low as 13.8°C.
A marvelous reply. I agree that the GISS document is remarkable and subversive. It is also wrong, rather horribly wrong. Specifically, the paragraph that justifies using not only the anomaly, but the anomaly in an offhand, casual, almost anecdotal way, in a way that if anything shows a sort of disdain for the actual temperature is shocking. Shockingly wrong. Wrong minded.
This is wrong in a way that can only be compared to the error involved in reporting a global average anomaly when the only quantity that actually matters in the Earth’s radiative budget is the spatiotemporal integral of the fourth power of the temperature. This is still inadequate — outgoing radiation is emitted everywhere from the surface itself to a whole region in depth in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere, so one really has to deal with the fourth power of temperature in a vertical volume of atmosphere down to at least the surface of either ground or water, and quite possibly at down further to some depth in at least water. Incoming radiation has to be handled as well.
“Surface Air Temperature” is thus a truly, remarkably, meaningless quantity no matter how it is computed or reported, the more so given the enormous error. And what KIND of error is it, he wonders, given its asymmetry? Surely not a normal error, e.g. standard deviation. How is the error computed, or “estimated”? Since it isn’t normal (and certainly isn’t sharp) what are the probabilities that the real temperature is actually (say) 0.5C warmer than the reported value, instead of 0.4C? Surely not zero. If the error was a standard deviation (and hence symmetric) we could actually make a definite statement, such as it is 96% probable that the true SAT was within one whole degree C either way of the reported value. What kind of statement can be made for these asymmetric limits, and why are they so very asymmetric with the lower error almost twice the upper?
But in the end, the real point is that the SAT from 1953 to 1963 is within the mutual error of the SAT from 2003 to 2013. That means that one would be justified in reporting that there was no statistically discernible warming over that interval, that the increase in the anomaly might be a result of statistical noise, not even natural variation.
The final (very interesting indeed) observation is that the rate of warming over this entire interval is 0.12 C/decade (with error limits on the rate that are larger than the value as noted). Simply linearly extrapolating this to 2100 implies a total warming of a single, solitary degree Centigrade over the rest of the century. And yes, that includes the effects of CO_2, since the fifty years in question are all in the “rising CO_2” era that began with World War II and beyond. This in turn implies that average feedback from all sources (all things being equal) is almost perfectly neutral (zero amplification) as 1.2 C is what one expects from doubling the CO_2 alone.
rgb
rgbatduke says:
August 25, 2013 at 8:36 pm
Thank you! I know it has been done before with one of your replies. I am wondering if someone in charge who may be reading this would consider making your reply a separate post.
stryNo it hasn’t. Solar variations have been shown to be a very poor proxy for temperature trends. In addition you have no mechanism. Therefore your solar connection to the trend is about as good as the fact that I have grown older during the same time period. Therefore I am just as good a candidate as your solar sunspot number is as a driver.
Damn! I knew it was your fault! I was thinking that it might have been caused by my weight gain over the same period and didn’t look forward to starving myself and exercising heavily to save the whales.
So what we should be working on to prevent global warming is a time machine, so we can reverse your personal aging process.
Time to write a grant proposal!
rgb
P.S. — good proxy, bad proxy, everybody needs to visit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc
and memorize it! Seriously, nobody (not you, Pam) should ever do it again. Correlation is not causality. In a complex, nonlinear, highly multivariate system, causality itself is blurred. For example, it makes little sense to describe my thoughts in terms of quantum mechanical transitions and transfers of electrons in molecular orbitals, even though at some level that is what they are. As my good friend and founding father of the science of complex systems used to say (in the class I took on them, long long ago) “more is different”, and in physics it is a bitch and a half to go from one domain (say, pure quantum mechanics) to the one a single notch up (say, quantum chemistry) and makes almost no sense at all to do something like describe organic chemistry in general in terms of pure quantum theory, and even less sense to try to describe biochemistry as an extension of organic chemistry in terms of pure quantum theory.
One of many reasons I am more than a bit cynical when CAGW enthusiasts assert that the GCMs are all “based on physics”. Sure they are. The question is, are they a correct implementation of that physics, and is the answer computable? Not so clear. I suspect that predicting the climate on the basis of “physics” is even harder than predicting the emergence of living forms and their subsequent biochemistry by solving a really big example of Schrodinger’s equation. More is different. The rules of biology bear almost no resemblance to the quantum physical laws that ultimately support them, and that is long before one reaches the point in biology where one is trying to (say) understand Shakespeare by understanding electronic transitions!
Ordinarily, in physical modeling in the real world, we build semiempirical models by coming up with rules of thumb that we often CANNOT microscopically derive or generalize, to the point where one builds entire ontologies out of rules of thumb, heuristic ontologies. For a long time, thermodynamics was such an ontology; then statistical mechanics allowed most of it to be derived from more fundamental principles. Chemistry was another — rules and laws for chemistry preceded their quantum mechanical explanation by decades and their moderately accurate quantum mechanical computation for over a century. It is almost impossible to conceive of jumping two or more level in this sort of game of self-organizing complexity.
Weather prediction was at one point such an heuristic ontology, then it got better; it turned out to be borderline computable using macroscopic physics and thermodynamics (plus a heft dose of heuristic correction).
I wonder how many levels GCMs attempt to bridge? Radiation physics is purely quantum mechanical, although there are some derivable semi-heuristic rules like Stefan-Boltzmann. Petty’s book is pretty complicated, and he simply shrugs and inserts one of several not particularly compatible approximations where the going gets too tough to be computable otherwise. Then there is the Navier-Stokes equation — a nonlinear PDE so fiendish that mathematicians cannot yet prove that solutions to it always exist, let alone compute them. Oh, make that two of them, one for the atmosphere, one for the ocean. While we are at it, don’t forget to figure out clouds and water vapor and water in general, because water has the peculiarity of being most dense at 4 C instead of in solid form, which really bends the usual Navier Stokes equation even further. Don’t forget to take into account the specific shapes and structures of the continents (at least) because the physics on the spinning, tilted, oblate spheroid that is being diurnally and differentially heated and cooled by a moderately variable star as it careens around it in a slowly varying but remarkably elliptical orbit somehow conspires to make it coldest (globally) when it is closest to the sun and hottest when it is the farthest away, while its top of atmosphere insolation varies by 6.6% (90 watts per square meter) over the course of the orbit.
Can’t we ignore this? After all, all we care about is the anomaly, the change, whether or not it is going to get warmer or colder. In a linear system, perhaps, although it would bother me to linearize any system that has a thermal oscillation in precise counterphase with the primary driver. But this is not a linear system. It isn’t even close to being a linear system. The system itself is perfectly capable of ripping off decades of aggressive warming — or cooling — even though none of the macroscopic drivers we know of are changing in a way that migth explain it. It is demonstrably capable of starting a glacial era — or even progressing through an entire ice age — straight into the teeth of CO_2 levels ten times higher than they are today. We are in the middle of just such an ice age right now — in an interglacial era of the ice age. We have no good idea why the last glaciation ended, why we warmed and then bobbled back down into glaciation, then warmed again to the Holocene Optimum that was even warmer than it is today, spent most of the last 9000 years as warm or warmer than it is today, cooled to the coldest century in the last 11,000 years a mere 400 years ago, and then warmed, at first gradually, and then more aggressively, since then.
How can anyone even think of linearizing a system like that? Or pretending that they can predict the feedbacks and average over the nonlinearities?
Is it really all that surprising that GCMs have a hard time giving consistent results even for toy problems, ones that are missing almost all of the complexity of the real Earth?
rgb (again)
RGB
“I agree that the GISS document is remarkable and subversive. It is also wrong, rather horribly wrong. “
It’s neither remarkable nor subsersive. It is something Hansen has been saying for over 30 years. The NOAA has a very similar statement (see para 7).
rgb I rather like the last half of my life. So skip the reverse aging machine. Who in their right mind would want to relearn all those life lessons?!?!?!?! Sure as hell not me. I can’t wait to get to retirement age! And I intend on getting there with as many fishing poles as my allowance allows. So, sorry about the temperature rise everyone because I intend on getting older. I like older.
Pamela Gray says:
August 25, 2013 at 11:01 pm
because I intend on getting older. I like older.
certainly beats the alternative…
Leif. I am not a scientist so perhaps I would phrase my words differently to you. I am a professional though and highly skilled in the profession I work in which is motor insurance where I take massive amounts of data and attempt to predict risk moving forward.
In terms of the measurement of temperature trends I would say that the current data is insufficient to make conclusions about what might happen in coming decades.
Some of the SHORTER term data displays indications of cooling whilst SOME displays indications of warming dpending on what time frame you choose to look at. I think such trends either way are somewhat meaningless in terms of their predictive values.
I would also argue that even when your looking at terms in excess of 20 years we are yet to have sufficent data and knowlege of multi-decadal climate influences to the extent it allows us to make accurate predictions.
One of the most important aspects of the work I do is to recognise the limitations of the data you have.
My biggest hope to arise out of the climate change debate is that we have improved our ability to monitor our climate that in another 30 years our predictive models develop some degree of effectiveness.
Whilst I understand and respect your immense capabilities in your field I am not convinced your understanding of the suns impact on our climate system is as conclusive as you seem to believe.
That’s what you call extreme temperature stasis.
We have another line of evidence on the temperature stability timeline.
That of the lower stratosphere temperatures. These have now been stable (perhaps increasing slightly) since the start of 1995 after they reached their new equilibrium level post the Pinatubo eruption.
The stratosphere is supposed to cool in global warming theory. But it has been stable for going on 18.5 years now.
David W says:
August 25, 2013 at 3:10 pm
“Thus no global cooling…”
For a scientist this post is very poorly worded. It seems to say more about your ideology than anything else.
David, Leif is quite capable of defending himself, but I would like to suggest that his comments are entirely valid based on the data. Also, Leif correctly predicted that SC24 would be weak, contrary to the “official” NASA prediction (Hathaway?) that it would be strong. That history provides Leif with some predictive credibility.
Leif’s position is that solar variability is too small to be the primary driver of observed temperature changes on Earth. Even though I hold a different opinion, I also accept that there is a real possibility that Leif is correct. I also suggest that Leif s position is based on his expertise and on scientific principles.
Sallie Baliunas, Tim Patterson and I published the following statement in 2002 that appears to be correct, since there has been no significant global warming for approx. 10-20 years:
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
http://www.apegga.org/Members/Publications/peggs/WEB11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
In the same article we also predicted the current debacle in “green energy”:
“The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.”
I suggest we have also demonstrated a track record of predictive credibility.
Regarding the temperature data, I believe Earth experienced mild warming from about 1975 to 2005, and that temperatures have now leveled off and Earth is probably entering a natural global cooling period. I (we) predicted in an article published in 2002 that natural global cooling would commence by about 2020-2030, but the timing is approximate. I really hope this prediction is incorrect, because global cooling has caused great suffering for humanity in the past.
I suggest that global warming hysteria will soon be fully discredited, and its advocates will be held responsible for our lack of preparedness should global cooling occur.
David W says:
August 25, 2013 at 11:33 pm
I would say that the current data is insufficient to make conclusions about what might happen in coming decades.
I didn’t say anything about ‘coming decades’, I simply noted that the flat RSS shows that for the last 16 or so years, there has been no cooling and no warming. This contradicts the folks who say that the warming continues and the folks who claim that the cooling has begun. This is contrary to the wishful thinking of both camps. I also noted that had there been warming, the warming camp would claim vindication while the cooling camp would say the data is insufficient, and had there been cooling, the cooling camp would claim vindication while the warming camp would say the data is insufficient. That is: if the data goes your way you believe the data, but if the data does not go your way, you say the data is insufficient or inclusive. I suggest that at present the data shows that both camps are incorrect or at least that the data cannot be taken as support for either of the views. I fail to see how that ‘says more about my ideology’. I do note that I was talking about the data while you were talking about my person. I suggest we stick to the data.
My point is that just because the RSS trend doesn’t show cooling doesn’t mean it is not now cooling which surely when you read the context of the entire article is what is being discussed. No one would argue that the 200 month RSS trend is flat but this in no way empirically shows the globe is not now cooling,
Just because a method of measurement is incapable of measuring something doesn’t disprove its existence.
If we were 5 years into what turned out to be a 30 year period of cooling would it not be “cooling” during those first 5 years because we couldn’t yet measure it with any degree of statistically relevant accuracy?
In fact at 5 years the best we could say is that the climate might be cooling. And then at the end of the 30 years we could say it was.
Your statement “thus no global cooling” seemed rather absolute. I know its somewhat nit picking but I think when a scientist speaks he should choose his words very carefully.
David W says:
August 26, 2013 at 4:59 am
My point is that just because the RSS trend doesn’t show cooling doesn’t mean it is not now cooling
Cooling can only be defined over an interval of time. Cooling ‘now’ is meaningless.
I’m rather sure that if the trend had shown a strong cooling, that you would not have said ‘just because the RSS trend shows strong cooling doesn’t mean it is cooling’
But, regardless, your statement was an un-called-for attack on my person which is more than just nit picking.
Thus no global warming…
No global cooling, yet.
In fact, global temperatures have basically flatlined.
We have killed our climate!
Pamela, brilliant hypothesis! (@5:24PM).
I must confess though that I encountered a little glitch. The correlation of WW temps with your age works from 1988 to 1996 but a temp plateau after the turn of the century gave me pause.
But have no worry! Being a long time student of Manniac Science I quickly discovered the answer.
Clearly you are no longer getting older!!
(You may even be getting younger but I have to make some adjustments to the data in order to confirm.)
Ok I apologize for the personal attack.
Now in terms of the other part of your last post. Let me put it differently.
If the RSS trend for 200 months showed strong cooling except for the last 5 years which showed warming I would then assert that just because 200 month trend does not show warming it doesn’t mean there’s no warming. And if someone said “thus no global warming” I might post my disagreement depending on who they were.
I don’t react to everything people post or I would never get anything else done in life. When someone such as yourself whose contribution here is generally insightful and well respected posts something I strongly disagree with then I probably will respond if I see it. As far as what justthefactswuwt posts I’m not familiar with him or any of his previous posts and so I didn’t respond to his post.
At this point in time if I had to place a bet on what I think the next decade will bring I might as well toss a coin. I think solar will have a cooling influence but to what degree I couldn’t tell. I think CO2 also provides a not insignificant degree of forcing too so I’m not sure how things will balance out. The longer term I’d probably bet my house on cooling.
What does worry me is if Camp and Tung found an average 0.2C temp amplitude for the last 4 solar cycles of the 20th century I suspect the accumulated energy reduction from 2 very quite solar cycles might see us lose far more than 0.4 C. If the temp drops 0.2C in 5 years during the path to solar minimum, what is going to happen when it drops to minimum and remains there for 20 years? How much of the current global temp is represented by 5 decades of historically strong solar activity (note I don’t say unprecedented). Will the rate of temp decrease remain constant. Will it accelerate will it decrease? How much reliable data do we have from history.
Have we had 2 very quite cycles that followed a period of 50 years of strong cycles in the past? If the Lean reconstruction of TSI is to be believed it shows that at least over the past 400 years we’ve seen nothing like the rapid transition from a sustained period of strong solar activity to very low activity that were just about to see.
The Lean TSI reconstruction shows that the transition into the Dalton minimum was preceded by TSI levels considerably lower than those seen in the later solar cycles of the 20th century. Likewise the transition into the Maunder minimum. As far as I can tell the solar transition were about to encounter is not something that has a mirror over the past 400 years. Beyond 400 years its a little more murky. The TSI and temperature reconstructions are far less reliable.
It would have been nice to have a clearer understanding of how much the current temperature level is a result of 5-6 decades of solar forcing. Instead everyone has been focused on CO2 so the answers really aren’t clear. We will find out in coming decades.
Bill Illis says:
August 26, 2013 at 1:13 am
We have another line of evidence on the temperature stability timeline.
That of the lower stratosphere temperatures. These have now been stable (perhaps increasing slightly) since the start of 1995 after they reached their new equilibrium level post the Pinatubo eruption.
The stratosphere is supposed to cool in global warming theory. But it has been stable for going on 18.5 years now.
Nice sleight of hand there Bill, you quoted data for the Lower Stratosphere and implied that this represented the whole Stratosphere! If you look more carefully you’ll see that the upper Stratosphere in fact shows a sharp decline.
http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_time_series.html
Pam – You need to get past your fixation on sunspot numbers, which don’t work, to the [INTEGRAL] of sunspot numbers which works. It works because the equation is physical; an expression of conservation of energy.
The TSI effect, which is what most are talking about, happens to be complimentary but is an insignificant factor.
David W says:
August 26, 2013 at 8:08 am
What does worry me is if Camp and Tung found an average 0.2C temp amplitude for the last 4 solar cycles of the 20th century I suspect the accumulated energy reduction from 2 very quite solar cycles might see us lose far more than 0.4 C.
The solar cycle is cyclic, so after each cycle the temperature is back to where it was.
If the Lean reconstruction of TSI is to be believed
I don’t think it is to be believed. Lean has made several recontructions of TSI and each new one has had a smaller variation. In one of her presentations she says: “longer-term variations not yet detectable…do they occur?”
http://www.leif.org/research/Does%20The%20Sun%20Vary%20Enough.pdf slides 15 and 16.
My views on solar activity the past several centuries are summarized here http://www.leif.org/research/swsc130003p.pdf
I end with:
“Observations by Livingston and Penn since 1998 until the present show that the average magnetic field in sunspots has steadily decreased by 25% (Livingston et al. 2012), regardless of the fact that we are now again at the maximum of a solar cycle, so there has not been a solar-cycle-related reversal of the trend. Since their magnetic fields cool sunspots, a decreasing field means that sunspots are getting warmer and that their contrast with the surrounding photosphere is getting smaller, making the spots harder to see. There is a minimum field strength in visible spots of about 1500 Gauss (0.15 T) and as that 1500 G threshold is approached, magnetic fields appear at the solar surface which do not seem to form dark sunspots or pores. Owens et al. (2012) suggest that the photospheric flux emergence in such cases may take place in flux tubes with field too weak, or of too small a diameter, to form sunspots, citing Spruit (1977). The observed distribution of number of spots vs. field strength has been shifting steadily toward that limit. If, and that is a big IF, this trend continues, the number of visible spots in the next cycle (and perhaps beyond) may fall to values not seen since the Maunder Minimum, but without dramatic changes in the emerging magnetic flux. Without the dark spots, Total Solar Irradiance might even be a bit higher. It is not clear what this will mean for the impact of solar activity on the Earth’s environment, if any, but it portends exciting times for solar physicists.”
Dan, my logic was entirely valid and within the context of your preceding comment which referred to SSN and was very much a part of the link you provided.
It’s your fixation, not mine. Are these not your words copied from your link?
“Conclusions
This assessment demonstrates that the annual average temperatures of the planet, for at least as far back in time as accurate temperatures have been measured world wide, are accurately calculated by considering only natural oscillations and the sunspot numbers, and that credible changes to the levels of non-condensing greenhouse gases have no significant influence on average global temperature.”
Dan Pangburn says:
August 26, 2013 at 9:16 am
Pam – You need to get past your fixation on sunspot numbers, which don’t work, to the [INTEGRAL] of sunspot numbers which works. It works because the equation is physical; an expression of conservation of energy.
Apart from your physics being wholly, the integral doesn’t work either. Here is a plot of the integral of the sunspot number’s deviation from their mean value [if you just integrate the SSN you get an ever-rising curve which clearly is nonsense]: http://www.leif.org/research/Roger-Integral-Comparison.png Where is the high temperatures in the 1930s, for instance? And note the strong maximum around 1790 [even higher than today].
The global cooling trend will pick up as this decade proceeds, and the prolonged solar minimum becomes more established.
Their theory will be obsolete before the decade ends.
solar readings needed for cooling sustained following several years of sub-solar activity
solar flux sub 90
ap index 5.0 or lower
solar wind 350 km/sec or less
solar irradiance off .015% or more
UV light off upwards of 50%
Those solar conditions if persistent enough should along with the secondary effects associated with those solar conditions set the climate toward a definitive cooling trend going forward.
Pam – I’m not questioning your logic and perhaps ‘fixation’ was a poor choice of words. I am trying to convey that while SSNs don’t work the INTEGRAL of SSNs works astoundingly well (Of course, the radiation from the planet must be subtracted out which the next part of the equation does). The equation does the (numerical) integration.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
August 26, 2013 at 9:53 am
The global cooling trend will pick up as this decade proceeds
This proves my point about the wishful thinking flying in the face of the fact of ‘flat RSS’.
Dan Pangburn says:
August 26, 2013 at 10:02 am
Pam – I’m not questioning your logic and perhaps ‘fixation’ was a poor choice of words. I am trying to convey that while SSNs don’t work the INTEGRAL of SSNs works astoundingly well
Well it doesn’t.
Apart from your physics being wholly, the integral doesn’t work either. Here is a plot of the integral of the sunspot number’s deviation from their mean value [if you just integrate the SSN you get an ever-rising curve which clearly is nonsense]: http://www.leif.org/research/Roger-Integral-Comparison.png Where is the high temperatures in the 1930s, for instance? And note the strong maximum around 1790 [even higher than today].
Bravo. This has been one of the very best discussions EVAH!
Allan MacRae says:
August 26, 2013 at 2:50 am: “…I suggest that global warming hysteria will soon be fully discredited, and its advocates will be held responsible for our lack of preparedness should global cooling occur….”
One hopes you are correct on two accounts (discredit and attribution of responsibility) but wrong about cooling of any significant sort occurring (if that is something you are in fact projecting).