Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I chanced to plot up the lower tropospheric temperatures by broad latitude zones today. This is based on the data from the satellite microwave sounding unit (MSU), as analyzed by the good folks at the University of Alabama at Huntsville. Here are the results, divided into tropical, extratropical, and polar. I’ve divided them at the Arctic and Antarctic Circles at 67° North and South, and at the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer at 23° N & S.
Figure 1. Satellite-based microwave sounding unit temperatures (red line) from the University of Alabama Huntsville. Blue line shows a loess smooth, span=0.4. Data from KNMI (NCDF file, 17 Mb)
So … is this something to worry about?
Well, let’s take a look. To start with, the tropics have no trend, that’s 40% of the planet. So all you folks who have been forecasting doom and gloom for the billions of poor people in the tropics? Sorry … no apparent threat there in the slightest. Well, actually there is a threat, which is the threat of increased energy prices from the futile war on carbon—rising energy prices hit the poor the hardest. But I digress …
What else. Southern Extratropics? No trend. South of the Antarctic Circle? No trend, it cooled slightly then warmed slightly back to where it started.
So that’s 70% of the planet with no appreciable temperature trend over the last third of a century …
What else. Northern Extratropics? A barely visible trend, and no trend since 2000.
And that means that 96% of the planet is basically going nowhere …
Now, that leaves the 4% of the planet north of the Arctic Circle. It cooled slightly over the first decade and a half. Then it warmed for a decade, and it has stayed even for a decade …
My conclusion? I don’t see anything at all that is worrisome there. To me the surprising thing once again is the amazing stability of the planet’s temperature. A third of a century, and the temperature of the tropics hasn’t budged even the width of a hairline. That is an extremely stable system.
I explain that as being the result of the thermoregulatory effect of emergent climate phenomena … you have a better explanation?
My best regards to everyone,
w.
PLEASE! If you disagree with what I or anyone says, QUOTE THE WORDS that you disagree with, and say why you disagree with them. That way we can understand each other. Vague statements and handwaving opinions are not appreciated.
DATA: All data and R code as used are here in a zip file.
The worry was never about actual global warming it was about catastrophic global warming predicted by climate computer models. I was a chemical engineer for 35 years before I retired. The idea that computers can be wrong is something you can’t teach, everyone has to learn it for themselves. But in a way that’s a good thing because then you never forget it.
What part of 67-90°N is covered by satellites, what part is only guesstimated, und what part is used (or not used) by UAH and RSS for their temperatures?
IIRC there are some differences there.
Gerry Parker says:
January 29, 2014 at 7:07 am
“I think Stephen Wilde is correct (above). It makes a lot of sense.”
Possibly. The real question is why this appears to have an ~60 year cycle to it?
“Bluntly, human’s survived the last ice age in Europe (basically up to the margins of the ice), so clearly modern technology is not necessary.”
We have nearly 7 billion people on the earth at the present. Without modern technology and cheap energy the overwhelming vast majority of them would die. I hope you are not advocating that we kill off most of humanity so we can return to a primitive lifestyle.
Warm is good; cold is bad — let us not advocate living on the edge of a glacier with only a fire and animal skins.
Gail Combs says at January 29, 2014 at 6:01 am
And RichardLH says at January 29, 2014 at 6:05 am
This interesting note serves only one reason: to mollify all readers of this excellent portal after the series of embarrassing notes by W.A. on “pattern recognition”. Basically W. A. is trying to tell us that he is sane after all or after he went back on medication regimen.
Or in readable formatting…
Gail Combs says at January 29, 2014 at 6:01 am
And RichardLH says at January 29, 2014 at 6:05 am
I tend to agree with the abundance of incompetence, not malice.
After all if H. L. Mencken had really found out about an institutionally corrupt political system I’m sure he would have been conveniently disappeared.
Do I need to indicate the jest?
RichardLH:
Thankyou for your reply to me at January 29, 2014 at 6:42 am.
It has become obvious that I am failing to understand what you are saying so I am writing to ask for clarification. I explain my problem as follows..
You say I am making a semantic point when I observe that
(a) GASTA has no definition,
(b) GASTA may represent either of two understandings,
(c) GASTA has no possibility of calibration,
(d) The lack of definition means that each team computes a different metric in a different way,
(e) The lack of definition enables each team to alter the definition it uses and so to alter its previous determinations of past values of GASTA, and they often do.
(f) The different teams which provide values of GASTA do not object to their different determinations of GASTA being treated as representing the same metric.
(g) Acceptance that the different determinations of GASTA represent the same (unknown and undefined) metric prevents determination of whatever different effects are being by indicated the different teams each providing its unique metric which they all call GASTA.
I fail to understand how it is a semantic point to explain that this is the antithesis of science.
And I am completely failing to understand your points which are
If is is undefined and may have no meaning then what use is it?
The different approaches are all seeking to derive an answer of what type?
What do “THEY” claim?
Proxies of what?
How can one have a “conclusion” of something which is a “proxy” for something which is undefined and may not exist?
I would appreciate answers which would remove my puzzlement.
Richard
Very interesting how the extreme north and south poles are so unstable relative to the rest of the earth. I wonder why that is. I’ve never seen that mentioned by any of the “experts”. Seems like they are allowing the tail to wag the dog, without explaining why the tail is wagging.
“Should we be worried?”
Answer: Yes, by the rising cost of electricity, the direct result of ‘climate change’ policies and consequently having to subsidise expensive and unreliable energy ‘renewables’.
“Any other worries?”
Answer: No.
We DO have to worry – about a committed ideologue in the White House who is determined to continue using the AGW meme as his excuse for destroying the country’s energy infrastructure.
There’s the new Salem witch trials (war on coal), and more wars are to come against petroleum and even natural gas (Holdren and Podesta are gearing up for those new spates of witch-burning)
This man cannot be reached by logic, facts or even the coldest winter in 50 years right in his face. It would be laughable except for the horrific harm the AGW ideology/religion is still capable of doing in his hands.
John Marshall says: January 29, 2014 at 3:22 am
“Forgive the pedantry, but I was taught that Kelvin was Kelvin, & there were no “degrees” about it!”
I was taught that 273K was 273,000 and left to wonder what the units are.
South polar region, ‘ends up where it started.’ That’s over 35 years of data. Looks like half of a 60-70 year cycle. Also two shorter cycles between 1986 and ~2008. Loess is not a good choice that analysing cycles (not that Willis was doing that) but there seems to be something like that underlying the data.
John Christy told me recently that area was interesting, I should to find out what he’s pointing me at.
Tropics , bump in 1988, 1997, 2010 . Each of those is about 2 after solar minimum and is preceded by a slight dip. Tropical governor trying to recover energy deficit?
Zonally analyzing the reannalysis data will give you similar results. Atmospheric moisture (clouds with condensation and freezing) is contolling OLR which in turn affects surface and atmospheric temperatures. The seasonal variation is the greatest at the poles where atmospheric moisture is the least. Do a running standard deviation along with your running mean. I find that increasing CO2 concentrations at the poles possibly enhances OLR rather than having a “greenhouse effect”. CO2 is being delivered to the poles in the stratosphere. Unlike in the tropics where air rises in clouds, at the poles there is an inversion and CO2 is being delivered to the surface from the stratosphere. CO2 will radiate at the temperature of the air with which it collides. Radiation at the top of the atmosphere goes mostly to space with a lesser fraction reaching the surface to be reradiated. I think tropical clouds are controlling the atmospheric concentration of CO2.
[snip – too stupid of a trolling remark to even print, bugger off – Anthony]
N. Pol , slight downward trend since 2010 against prior rise. This is in agreement with the eased rate of melting I derived last year. That shows melting continuing at a reduced rate: aka “decelerating melting”. End of the “run-away melting” which was one possible interpretation of the limited data up to 2007. That description no longer fits the data.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/on-identifying-inter-decadal-variation-in-nh-sea-ice/
Wednesday night on Coast to Coast AM radio–a critic of temperature data manipulation:
10pm – 2am PT
Science Fraud/ Elec. Harassment
Wed 01-29
First Half: Space historian Robert Zimmerman will discuss the fraud and dishonesty which has permeated the sciences of climate and environmental studies including how scientists at NASA and NOAA have consistently manipulated the temperature records.
PMHinSC says:
John Marshall says: January 29, 2014 at 3:22 am
“Forgive the pedantry, but I was taught that Kelvin was Kelvin, & there were no “degrees” about it!”
I was taught that 273K was 273,000 and left to wonder what the units are.
===
I doubt you were taught that , you were probably looking out of the window and listening with one ear. 😉
Since precision is good in science: 273,000 would be 270k not 270K . Similarly kelvin is a unit without “degree” but not Kelvin. ie K or kelvin, not Kelvin.
Similarly kilowatt-hour is kWh , not KWh, Kwh, KwH, kWH or other ignorant variations we get just about every time someone writes about energy consumption or production.
Well done and much appreciated. Looking back at the 1980’s/90’s warming in some places, it seems obvious that this was distorted and spun into a new, permanet trend at that time that ignored what is becoming more and more obvious today.
Global climate models were programmed with the physics and equations that would extrapolate the trend out for the next 100 years and sold as settled science.
Now that this trend and that theory of CAGW has been badly busted and keeps getting worse, many of the ones selling this with convincing propoganda and misrepresentation of the science, weather and authentic empirical data are still not backing off.
What should be a discussion based purely on science and the scientific method was morphed into something completely different by one side. A battle to win approval in the minds of the billions of non scientific minds(especially with regards to climate) using marketing and brainwashing techniques effectively.
Hitler would have been impressed.
Its funny. If you look at it another way (please forgive the use of RSS rather than UAH …), you get a very different impression (UAH trend plot which can be visualized via the KNMI explorer is rather similar. btw). See the link below. So, what is going on here? Well, Willis shows the the underlying month-to-month variability. If the trend is small compared to the month-to-month variability you will probably conclude that the change is not that relevant, given that one month to the next can vary much more than the overall warming over tehse 30+ years. That’s why you will mainly see plots like the one below and rarely the one that Willis shows. How you visualize your results does matter. The figure below is much more in line with the notion of dramatic climate change then the one by Willis. Like stating that the last 15+ years were the warmest on record sounds much more dramatic than the notion that there has been no change over those same 15 years.
Well done.
http://images.remss.com/data/msu/graphics/tlt/medium/global/MSU_AMSU_Channel_tlt_Trend_Map_v03_3_1979_2013.730_450.png
Marion: Met Office propaganda:
“Are computer models reliable?
“Yes. Computer models are an essential tool in understanding how the climate will respond to changes in greenhouse gas concentrations, and other external effects, such as solar output and volcanoes.
Computer models are the only reliable way to predict changes in climate. “
They are not even a reliable way…
I wrote to them two years ago objecting to that lie. They are still presenting it to the public.
euanmearns says:
Willis, one further thought. In the Arctic there is no / little GH effect in winter since there is no / little incoming solar. And so, if you could plot the temps for only the winter months and the warming trend was still there, it would strongly suggest that it isn’t GH warming but something else.
====
Not strictly correct since there is a major heat transport from equator to poles. It could be the result of GHG effect in tropics, regulated by tropical governor and exported polewards. ie not _local_ GH effect but global GH effect.
You may then need to evaluate the feeble tropical troposheric “hot spot” that would be part of the process and evaluate whether is matched the heat transport needed. Less trivial than you suggest.
Incompetence is indistinguishable from malice when policy makers are the incompetents.
izen says . . . .
There are several shortcomings in your posting. First, there has not been stratospheric cooling since 1994 — since the last major mid-latitude volcanic eruption.
Second, lower tropospheric temperatures is the best place to analyze “global warming trends.” Not only is it the critical spot for temperatures to rise in the greenhouse gas theory, but also surface temperatures appear to be hopelessly compromised. Surface thermometers have issues with siting consistency, UHI, and observational variability. When the people with a political agenda adjust the historical data by more than the trend that is supposed to lead to catastrophe, then you have an unreliable record.
Third, there is an open and collegial relationship between RSS and UAH personnel on MSU data. The two centers come at the global warming theory from different perspectives, and we are insured by their interaction that biases are not affecting their trend data. In addition, UAH and RSS have been far more forthcoming and responsive to my inquiries than GISS and NOAA.
Richard: The claim made by the various parties is that they are representing “Mean global temperature anomalies and trends”.
Regardless if you think that is valid or possible to do.
That is what they claim they are doing.
I am purely pointing out that the true, physical, implementation of this is not possible because we do not have sufficient instruments of sufficient characteristics to, from an engineering standpoint alone, complete that task to the degree of precision required.
What we have, however, is a set of methodologies that may well represent a proxy or close approximation to that figure, derived from the various different standpoints.
Hence the approach defined and the results shown.