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.
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Ulric Lyons said:
Pumping more water would increase the energy loss from the system yes, but nontheless it warms the Arctic and raises the average global surface temperature, as does an El Nino.
My point was that it does increase energy loss from the system. In doing so it warms the Arctic air through which the energy passes but it is still a net cooling response for the system.
I am talking about system energy content and not air temperatures in isolation.
“They are a negative response, to a drop in solar forcing, see 1997/98 and 2009/10:”
I find that confusing since a drop in solar forcing results in less energy in the system so faster energy losses from El Nino or a warm Arctic would compound that as a positive feedback would they not ?
The warmest Arctic temperatures and least sea ice followed three decades of El Nino dominance and that dominance was a result of reduced global cloudiness with more sunlight entering the oceans, not less.
timetochooseagain says:
January 29, 2014 at 9:22 am
Thanks, time … my problem is I wanted an NCDF file, and they don’t have one at the UAH site, unless I’m missing it.
I suppose I should just go ahead and download the year-by-year data, but it was all too messy for a late night post. I’ll write something up to scrape the data from UAH at some point.
Finally, I doubt you’d see much difference between 5.5 and 5.6. From memory the South Pole is a bit cooler as are some other areas, as well as the globe overall, but we’re talking maybe a tenth of a degree difference … however, if there is I’ll report back to you.
All the best,
w.
Greg Goodman says:
January 29, 2014 at 8:20 am
Have you spoken to E M Smith (Chiefio) and Clive Best about your findings?
They have both been working on Lunar Cycles and their effects on Climate/Tides etc.
RichardLH says: @ur momisugly January 29, 2014 at 6:05 am
Alternatively.
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
Napoleon Bonaparte
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I really really wish I could agree it was just incompetence, but there is just too much evidence out there that this is part of a long term plan. As WTO director-General, Pascal Lamy bluntly stated:
That says there is a Grand Plan and the United Nations, the Bretton Woods system (World Bank and IMF), and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) (World Trade Organization) are all working in accordance with that plan and have been for close to a century.
I strongly suggest reading “Economic Interdependence and War: A Theory of Trade Expectations,” International Security, Vol. 20, no.4 (Spring 1996) it explains the reasoning behind the Grand Plan.
Believe me incompetence is much much better than fanatics with a Grand Plan, especially fanatics with lots of money and reasoning that maybe completely incorrect.
Once you understand the Grand Plan and ‘Interdependence’ then Clinton’s actions with regard to China makes a lot of more sense:
Chasing the Dragon: Clinton’s China Policy
(Back up info)
NY times: Clinton Approves Technology Transfer to China
NY times: The Nation: Open Arms; Spying Isn’t the Only Way to Learn About Nukes
Ross McKitrick says:
January 29, 2014 at 9:45 am
Thanks, Ross. You point to a huge problem with parameterized models. For example, some models are tuned to provide overall radiative balance using the clouds, by adjusting the threshold parameter for ice formation. Here’s how GISS does it:
Of course, when you do that kind of a kludge to fix one thing, it means something else goes wrong, like total cloud area … can’t win for losing. Total cloud area in the GISS model is 59%, vs 20% more clouds than that in the real world.
But the model balances so everything must be OK …
Regards,
w.
richardscourtney says:
January 29, 2014 at 9:42 am
“You did not summarise my point, You ignored it.
Of course I “believe” it is possible to derive a mean!
I can obtain a mean of the weight of stones if I can measure their individual weights.
I can obtain a mean of the height of tides if I can measure their individual heights.
But I do not see how I can combine the mean weight of stones with the mean height of tides to determine a mean from it: of course, I could add the two values together and divide by 2 to obtain a number, but that would not be a mean. And that “others” choose to do that is no reason to accept their number.”
I do apologise for the shorthand I used. I will try to be clearer.
You do not believe it is possible to derive a ‘Mean of Global Temperatures’ at all.
“And what is your “proxy methodology”?
It seems to be normalising so the different versions of GASTA can be plotted over each other, and I fail to see what benefit that provides. ”
If the different approaches look at the same problem from different points of view, then it is likely the ‘true’ figure is somewhere between them. Using proxy techniques to derive that ‘true’ figure seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Gail Combs says:
January 29, 2014 at 10:07 am
“I really really wish I could agree it was just incompetence, but there is just too much evidence out there that this is part of a long term plan”
In general conspiracies are just too difficult to organise! Believe me they always fall apart. 🙂
Marion says: @ur momisugly January 29, 2014 at 6:42 am….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Oh MY! The guy who wrote that dreck had to be holding his nose to keep from being asphyxiated by the stench.
@richardscourtney-Almost, but not quite!
By way of your analogy-although it is a bit coarse-GISS, HADCRUT4, and NCDC is like an attempt to measure a sort of “average height of tides” by averaging different heights from different beachs all over the world. There is very large overlap between the beaches each samples from, but there are some beaches not sampled by any of them, and some beaches sample by some groups and not others.
But then we have the analogous RSS-UAH case: someone measures *average wind speeds* at all the beaches all over the world-and there are two groups that analyze the wind data in two different ways. But for the most part, neither group measures different sets of beaches, they both measure at all the beaches.
Now, suppose we have a *theory* or a *model* that can relate the speed of winds at beaches to the height of tides at beaches. The relationship is fairly simple, but not 1-1. But someone comparing the two 1-1 will be significantly mislead. One needs to use the theory/model to *inform* ones analysis of how the two are related to one another.
In this case, the theory and models have to do with the dynamics of the lapse rate, which suggest that we *ought* to see larger variations in the LT data. But of course, if we are good scientists, we don’t *assume* that any data is correct or any model/theory is correct. We test it.
So now in the analogy, suppose someone suggested “I think the average height of tides measured at beaches shows a spurious trend due to” some such reason. Urban Beach Islands or whatever. Being a clever person, I would say “Hey! We can test to see if this is true by using theory and data-at the same time as testing the theory and data!”. It’s simple enough, say I detrend the average tide data and the average windspeed data, the residuals show a good linear relationship, and it is in line with what the theory/models predict. I then take the non-detrended windspeed, multiply or divide by the appropriate factor to get the tide heights. And low and behold, I do in fact find that the wind data suggest less of a trend in tide heights than the tide height data say!
Or, backing out of the analogy, I find that UAH and RSS are ambiguously related to the surface temperature data in a way that we can’t say one is “right” or the other “wrong,” nor do I find that they “agree” with each other. I find specifically that UAH and RSS suggest that the surface temperature data might be *spuriously warming* at a rather high rate.
RichardLH:
I can see no purpose in continuing this ‘conversation’ because I keep asking clear and simple questions which fail to obtain clear answers.
For example in your post at January 29, 2014 at 10:39 am you quote my asking
and you reply
But that ignores one of my still unanswered questions which was
In other words I do not understand how there can be a ‘true’ figure for something which is not specified.
Richard
The 60 year cycle is probably the 55.6 year lunar cycle.
Stephen Wilde says:
“I find that confusing since a drop in solar forcing results in less energy in the system so faster energy losses from El Nino or a warm Arctic would compound that as a positive feedback would they not ?”
It is a negative feedback for surface temperatures. The point is that it is when we are in cooling mode with higher Arctic pressure and more negative AO/NAO states, that there will be greater transport of warm water into the Arctic.
“The warmest Arctic temperatures and least sea ice followed three decades of El Nino dominance…”
The Arctic temperature rise and the acceleration of sea ice loss was distinctly from 1996, with the increase in incidence and strength of negative AO/NAO episodes.
markstoval says: @ur momisugly January 29, 2014 at 7:18 am
Mark you just have to take the long view. as William F. McClenney does in The Sky is Falling – or Revising the Nine Times Rule ( In an advanced course in Psychology taken some 30 years ago I learned that the human being is nine times more susceptible to rumor than it is to fact. That simple rule explains a dramatic amount of human behavior. )
Maybe our Overlords are just interested in making sure the next evolutionary leap occurs during the next glaciation…
Marion says:
“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.”
The problem is that computer models are wildly inaccurate. For example, not one GCM was able to predict the current 17-year long halt in global warming. If models cannot predict such a major event, then it is time to stop wasting any more taxpayer dollars on them.
timetochooseagain:
I am amused by the fact that while I am struggling to understand RichardLH you say in your post at January 29, 2014 at 10:56 am that you and I only “Almost, but not quite!” agree when I fail to see any disagreement.
Perhaps it is that you say
whereas I say none of the data sets can be trusted to indicate anything about the others so they all provide indications which are “spurious” because none of them has a ‘true’ definition so none of them is ‘right’.
If so, then our difference is too trivial to be worth debating.
Richard
John Andrews says:
January 29, 2014 at 10:57 am
“The 60 year cycle is probably the 55.6 year lunar cycle.”
It could be many things. Expressed in many ways. For instance, given that we are constrained to the overall Annual cycle, it could be a mix of 50 – 60 – 70 years components mixed in a 1:1:1 ratio of randomly ordered half cycles.
Just like you often see in chaotically ordered but constrained systems.
Strange graphs Willis. If I’m reading them correctly, they each have (each zone) a +/- 0.3 deg. C scale of Temperature. Now I think those norty boys in Huntsville really meant to say temperature anomalies, rather than lower troposphere Temperature. But we have learned here at WUWT how to understand Dr. Roy’s and Prof. John’s accents, so we know what they mean.
But that is not the mystery.
Howcome; on the same scales the north pole and the south pole have whacking great peak real signal amplitudes, and everywhere else has ho-hum real signals ??
And my calibrated eye can almost detect a phase delay, between the output of your Loess filter, and what my eye says the real signal is. So that begs the question. If you extract your blue lines, from the five graphs, and put them all on the same strip, either with a color coding, or just a small vertical (Temperature / temperature anomalie) offset between them, so they don’t overlap too much; and maybe a gain increase to give a bigger signal, I wonder if there is a constant phase offset for all of them.
The weird signal amplitude dis crepancy, is doubly weird, because it looks same at both poles (other than smoothed “trend”) yet we know that the north pole, has a huge; 18-20 ppm, annual CO2 cycle amplitude, compared to just 6 at ML, while the south pole is totally different with almost none (well about a -1 amplitude; (out of phase with north).
So how do the Huntsville chaps explain the quiet of the three middle earth zones; versus all the polar racket ??
I thought a Loess, was some sort of landslide associated with volcanos, or mudslides ??
richardscourtney says:
January 29, 2014 at 10:56 am
“Proxies of what?”
OK. terminology change (only)
‘Close approximations to an underlying factual property that it is technically difficult to express as a single number. Different views may provide slightly different approximations’.
Go it now?
LT says, January 29, 2014 at 4:30 am:
“Why is there such a difference between UAH and RSS ?”
Well, it is just seemingly so. In reality they would globally track each other to near perfection all the way from 1979 to 2013 if only the two teams did one (1) small adjustment each. UAH needs to lift the midsection of its timeseries (1992-2005/06) en bloc by 0.06 degrees, while RSS should lift its final section (post 2005/06) in a similar manner by 0.03 degrees. That’s it. After that it all fits. No more fundamental difference or discrepancy:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1979/to:2005.67/offset:-0.07/compress:3/plot/rss/from:2005.67/offset:-0.04/compress:3/plot/uah/from:1979/to:1992/compress:3/plot/uah/from:1992/to:2005.67/offset:0.06/compress:3/plot/uah/from:2005.67/compress:3
dbstealey says:
January 29, 2014 at 11:08 am
“The problem is that computer models are wildly inaccurate.”
I doubt that. They do demonstrate the difficulty in building things from the detail up rather than combination down. Inside view or outside view.
Like trying to model fluid flow by tracing each individual atom. Can be done but it is a LOT of computing power and very difficult to get right.
Ah, but kind sir Willis, you have accumulated data for “the arctic” as only two entities: from 67 – 90 north, and from 67 south to 90 south. We do have now daily temperature summary (an average of several stations and observatories at 80 north latitude) from the DMI since 1959.
Four relevant observations:
Up north.
1) Since 1959, the summertime (melt season, solar “observation” season when SW radiation actually can get down to the surface, days when the sun is above the horizon, days when the air temperature is above 273 K) daily temperature at 80 north has been constant. Further, the std deviation during that whole time has been as close to zero as one can plot. That the “true” ice-and-water-covered Arctic” (not the highly-interpolated tundra/taiga/forested land area from 67 to 72 north but the actual 2 degree band centered at 80 north) has a constant temperature throws much suspicion on any claims that any “hidden heat” could be transported to that area around 80 (or past!) 80 north.
In July 2010, a reader here at WUWT showed that the average melt season DMI daily temperature across that 80 north band were actually declining since 1959, and have been declining faster since 2001 even as CO2 levels have steadily risen!
2) The winter temperatures reported in DMI’s 80 north latitude show very, very striking differences: The standard deviation of air temperatures in winter is much higher (almost 8 degrees during a time when the average daily temperature is only -25 degrees. Further, average winter temperatures are getting higher over time. It is only the YEARLY average Arctic temperatures (summer (which is declining slightly) combined with winter (increasing much more when the sun don’t shine!) that leads anybody to conclude “Arctic temperatures are increasing” …. And even that conclusion that isn’t true for Arctic ocean and islands (the area above 72 north) but for the land-covered-with-more-trees between 60 north and 72 north.
3) The south should be divided into the southern ocean (55 south to 70 south) and the continental Antarctica (70 south to the pole) or about 17.4 Million km^2. The first will be regularly covered with sea ice (part of the time – expanding from 70 south to 60 south latitudes every year) and a massive ocean heat sink all of the time.
The other area will be a “near constant” solid ice-covered land mass (14.0 million km^2 of ice-covered rock + 3.5 million sq km’s of ice shelf) always reflecting sunshine.
4) It is only that single tiny pennisula sticking into the ocean near Cape Horn that is warming down south. the rest is either static or declining. And all the while CO2 is increasing steadily, each of the past 3-1/2 years the Antarctic sea ice is steadily increasing towards Cape Horn.
What is the SI unit of “psychological susceptibility”, and what instrument do you measure it with ??
I believe that Ricky Ricardo, was absolutely correct, when he called that dismal science ; “pee-sick e-atry” with the accent on the “sick”.
Well psychology, is somewhat more credible; excuse me, that is, it can be. But it often is as credible as statistics.
Willis
Good article as usual. I’m not too clear on what you mean when you say “no trend”. It seems to me that there is a trend and it is that there is no significant change in temperature. Or do you mean that in a statistical analysis there is no correlation with time and temperature?
just some guy says: @ur momisugly January 29, 2014 at 7:27 am
Very interesting how the extreme north and south poles are so unstable relative to the rest of the earth. I wonder why that is.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
LESS TROPOSPHERIC WATER VAPOR.
Because the poles are cold the air can hold much less water vapor. Water modifies the temperature making day time highs lower and night time lows higher. The Antarctica is the driest continent on earth. BTW
This graph of the Arctic from last year (2013) shows how even the temperature is during the Arctic summer when water can evaporate and how erratic it is during the cold winter: (click on 2013 to get last years graph)
Astronomers with IR telescopes go to the Antarctica to avoid the water vapor. link
Excellent post Willis! Beautifully illustrates the bigger picture perspective in this “debate”.