While government science and media begin the ramp-up to claim 2014 as the “hottest year ever” China’s Sea’s biggest bivalve shows that the Middle Ages were warmer than today, when Carbon Dioxide was lower.
From the Chinese Academy of Sciences:
Two recent papers, one is in Earth-Science Reviews and the other is in Chinese Science Bulletin, have studied key chemical contents in micro-drilled giant clams shells and coral samples to demonstrate that in the South China Sea the warm period of the Middle Ages was warmer than the present.
The scientists examined surveys of the ratio of strontium to calcium content and heavy oxygen isotopes, both are sensitive recorders of sea surface temperatures past and present. The aragonite bicarbonate of the Tridacna gigas clam-shell is so fine-grained that daily growth-lines are exposed by micro-drilling with an exceptionally fine drill-bit, allowing an exceptionally detailed time-series of sea-temperature changes to be compiled – a feat of detection worthy of Sherlock Holmes himself.
By using overlaps between successive generations of giant clams and corals, the three scientists – Hong Yan of the Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Yuhong Wang of Fudan University, Shanghai – reconstructed a record of sea-surface temperature changes going back 2500 years.
The Roman and Mediaeval Warm Periods both showed up prominently in the western Pacific and East Asia. Sea surface temperatures varied considerably over the 2500-year period.
Changing patterns of winter and summer temperature variation were also detected, disproving the notion that until the warming of the 20th century there had been little change in global temperatures for at least 1000 years, and confirming that – at least in the South China Sea – there is nothing exceptional about today’s temperatures.
Dr. Yan said: “This new paper adds further material to the substantial body of real-world proxy evidence establishing that today’s global temperature is within natural ranges of past changes.” Dr. Soon added: “The UN’s climate panel should never have trusted the claim that the medieval warm period was mainly a European phenomenon. It was clearly warm in South China Sea too.”
allowing an exceptionally detailed time-series of sea-temperature changes to be compiled…
Actually no…but in the world of tree ring paleoclimatology they are just about as good
Everyone knows that “warmest year ever” applies to measurements around the globe, not just in one place or region. Last year was not especially warm for the US Midwest and East, but was very hot in Alaska, California, Australia, much of Europe etc. Why compare temperatures in the South China Sea with the whole globe? As expected, global warming is fastest in the arctic.
Then, any study trying to prove global warming by using tree ring data from a single tree in Yamal would be suspect?
http://motls.blogspot.com/2015/01/rss-amsu-temperatures-1979-2014-grouped.html
See above for warmest year ever data charts.
“Very hot”? California’s average temp for 2014 was 62.8F, Alaska’s was 64 F ! That’s not very hot to anyone.
The significance of the temperatures in the South China Seas is that the warm period and fluctuations correspond to other areas in the world that experienced warm periods and fluctuations at the same time. It paints a global picture that puts todays temperatures into perspective.
There are studies from all over the world. The fact that this one study only covered one location isn’t relevant. That same complaint could be made of all the other studies.
You missed the crucial points: This study says that
a) The medieval warm period was global and not limited to Europe and the North Atlantic
b) The medieval warm period was warmer than today in spite of much lower atmospheric CO2 levels
c) Consequently: The modern warm period is not unusually at all and not mainly caused by anthropogenic CO2
Gentle Tramp,
That about says it all.
Actually, it wasn’t that hot here “downunder” last year – nothing special. I can remember many decades ago when temperatures were higher and more uncomfortable. Plus our BOM has developed the same nasty habits as NASA/GISS in modifying past temperatures down to make it seem warmer. Unfortunately (for them), there are other records which reveal their tasmpering.
People need to remember that most warming occurs in the Winter and “The Hottest Year” refers to the average. It generally doesn’t mean that Summers are hotter, just that Winters are milder. In Brisbane we had a very nice, mild Winter. I have no doubt that this drove up the annual average to some sort of “record” high.
“The Hottest Year” is just another way of saying “We didn’t freeze our arses off last Winter”.;)
Personally I prefer not freezing.
Bill — pray tell — how do you balance not so warm here, with very hot there, irregularly distributed samples of surface temperature data and come up with a global value
Its even hard define a “Global Temperature” for Greater Boston based on tens of regularly, reliable surface reporting stations.
Depending on weather conditions such as cloud cover, sea breezes, etc., all can agree within 1 or 2 degrees, or they may exhibit divergent values exceeding 10 degrees — and all this within a few tens of km extent horizontally and 200 m or so vertically
The only reliabe Global estimate of temperature is derived from satelite data which has true global coverage
That clam was put in the South China Sea by Exxon
Why should we believe this clam, when billions of clams were invested in the hockey stick graph?
+1
+2
reminds of this
http://theinfosphere.org/images/d/da/Easter_egg_1.jpg
Well that’s it then. We should all abandon our thermometers and get a clam !
Clamometers!
I’m reminded of this comment I wrote here in October of 2013.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/25/claim-inability-to-adapt-to-changes-in-climate-patterns-is-causing-losses-in-third-world-countries/
Climate change is here to stay and always has been. Alarmists need to get over it.
“Climate change is here to stay and always has been. Alarmists need to get over it.”
[reply trimmed. duplicate id’s. .mod]
*shrugs* I’m over it, but then again, I use data and research, not cherry-picked excel-spreadsheet hackjobs.
Having gotten a detailed climate record from a dead clam, the Chinese Academy of Sciences will now attempt to get blood from a turnip.
Clam it change !!
sorry I’ll get my coat.
[Reply: You came close to getting banned for that one. ~ mod.]
The best puns are the worst ones.
I heard it the voice of a Hollywood stereotype of a southern police officer, circa 1968.
LOL! Please stay! That is one of the best puns I have ever seen!
Oh dear. Can you spell that out for a foreigner?
It is a play on the pronunciation of the words – climate and clam-it. And the fact that clams are being used as a proxy for past climate.
It’s about time the world media took a long hard look at what has been done to the reputation of scientific research and the dismal complicity of large media organisations funded in the main by governments, and government funded skewed scientific creations that allowed promotion of a religious style myth dressed up in scientific robing, a creation, swallowed hook line and sinker.
The mainly economist driven ideas of inventing a new monetary taxing system predicated on a convenient base of a rising but beneficial C02 and blaming that solely on the sinful activities of mankind rather than a combination of natural and normal cyclic changes, and the whipping up of that religious blame that masked the money making motives and corruption of climate science.
The exposure of the CRU climate cabal activities should have rung huge bells of alarm, but they chose to ignore and participate in a cover-up exercise to aid and provide excuses for those that stood to make huge monetary gains. That is a huge story in itself, a moral and ethical issue that has been costly and destructive to economies and the direction of scientific research that could have made much more for the poor of the world by taking advantage of the known beneficial effects of rising C02 rather than creating scary scenarios for the immediate and long term benefit of the economic schemers and scammers.
How many nails in the coffin of this created myth that suited the agenda of social engineering rather than pure science, not to mention the trillions of wasted dollars that fuelled the travesty, when so much could have been achieved had the world media been up to the task.
Or is this the lie that is too big to expose? lest it destroy the last vestiges of trust in both media and governments, how could they be so stupid or is this just another modern example of corrupting influence?
Not sure what all this sciencey stuff is, but I get MY data from online posters, and I know that one of them once told me that the MWP was ONLY a localized phenomena related to Europe. And maybe a bit of North America. And some of Asia (his goalposts continued to move as I fed him, slowly, published papers that said otherwise…).
Further confirmation of the Rosenthal 2013 Pacific Ocean heat content paper.
Yup. And Frank Landsner’s non- tree ring multiproxy reproduced in The Arts of Truth. And more…
Found in my archives another amazing similarly misbegotten alarmist conclusion in the article linked below. The claim is it has never been warmer but the evidence they use to conjecture that implausibility suggests quite the opposite. Trees do not now grow where those trees grew. If you are not an alarmist what does that suggest to you? Possibly that it was warmer when those trees were growing?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081204133853.htm
dp,
You may like to read this:
Historical Aspects of the Northern Canadian Treeline by Harvey Nichols
http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic29-1-38.pdf
I disagree dp. They are simply saying that temps in that region apparently haven’t been this warm since the Holocene Optimum. They reach this conclusion from the fact that the stumps haven’t been previously uncovered I see nothing alarmist or incorrect with this line of reasoning.
Moreover it provides an interesting counterpoint to the Alpine Glaciers with their multiple cycles of growth and shrinkage over the last few thousand years.
They make this claim:
Now, clearly it was warmer when those trees were alive. It is a given. If that is natural then why can we assume the current warming since that intervening glaciation is anything but natural? And what is so unique about this past century? No trees are growing in that area so it is still not as warm as it was then. There is an uncontrollable urge to place the blame on people (cleverly disguised as not being natural mechanisms) when there is zero evidence people have had anything to do with it. It requires defective models to suggest that.
That is not science – that is creative writing.
Sorry, but I think they are properly hedging their bets. Any look at the ice cores shows the gradual decline in temps for the last 7,000 years. A reversal of such a long term trend is certainly “anomalous” and therefore there is nothing wrong with considering the possibility that it is not entirely natural.
Glaciers in general unfortunately don’t tell us much about temps, besides whether they are above or below freezing that is. The fact of glacial melting just tells us that it is above 0, not how far above, and tells us little about relative temps. Glaciers take time to melt and so the recent uncovering of stumps doesn’t say that we are approaching the previous temps, we may already be above them and the ice melt is still catching up.
All this means is that statements should contain proper caveats and try to avoid reading too much into data. With the forcings of CO2, land use change, albedo change and everything else I think that to ignore the idea that 20th Century warming is not “100 percent the result of natural mechanisms” is simply ludicrous.
He didn’t even say that a mostly anthrop forcing should be considered, just the concept that it might not be 100% natural. There is nothing wrong with this concept.
Clams or no clams, 2014 was the warmest year in the CET records that go back to 1659:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30683339
I wonder why it matters. The temperature today all over the UK is within a normal range. Sounds like 2014 was very pleasant for the UK, actually. Have you or anyone else broken down the temperature readings to determine the gridded changes, time of day of the excess, time of year, dew point, other scientific stuff or do we just blindly accept the alarmist conjecture and chalk it up to another human-caused disaster which just happened to have avoided Ireland? If it was, for example, an uptick in overnight temperatures it may only be an indication of increased evening retention caused by clouds. That isn’t warming so much as a lack of cooling which is local and temporary (which is exactly what the data predicts).
Because we’re talking about things that don’t reflect climate change, we’re buried under 7″ of fresh snow and it’s still falling.
18″ hrs 8 ! ago and still falling at a rate if 1″ per hr, last measurement taken at 31 cm (12″).
last measurement taken at 31 cm (12″). oops that one was 24 hrs ago, this morning it was 6″ on top of that, ( terrible sentence construction I hope we can edit comment before posting in the future) sorry.
It matters because it is the warmest year in the longest measured temperature data set in the world considered to be reliable.
It is an annual mean, which as you should know is significant. You can break down the figures of course and they reveal that all months were warmer than average except August.
Eight of the UK’s top ten warmest years have occurred since 2002.
The rest of your post is about weather. But if you want to talk about that, we have had no snow here in mid – Essex so far this winter and we had none at all last winter – very unusual.
There has been snow in Egypt the past two winters. Very unusual.
At our little lemon ranch near Santa Paula, Ca, the weather has been volatile over the last month. Global Warming?
http://www.spweather.net/ChartMonth.htm
Reliable applies to RSS and UAH, or haven’t you been paying attention. CET used to be reliable, until homogenization kicked in.
The article neglects to mention how much warmer, but I make the trend about 1C in 300 years. I usually see 3 times that over the 8 mile/15 minute commute into work in the morning. I also note more than half a dozen spikes to within a few hundredths of a degree of 2014 levels, going all the way back to 1730.
James, relax, check out the satellite temp. data, you’ll feel a lot better. Stay away from that CRU stuff, those types have inflammation of the brain (caused by CO2 allergies).
Why ? The satellites do not measure true surface temperature – which is where we actually live.
We do not live in the surface of the sea either. Yet that is where 2014 is getting its reputation from (the pacific north actually).
James, do I correctly understand you to say that satellites do not measure surface temperatures? Is that what you are saying?
James, ground based devices are at least 2m above the surface.
Satellites measure the “lower troposphere” which actually gets pretty high. You can look it up, I’m late for work. One advantage of that is you avoid all the microclimate effects near ground level, like cold pools of air due to radiational cooling on cloudless nights.
It would be nice to have an accurate ground record, but shifts in times of observations, adjustments, etc have muddied the view. The CRN stations are getting to have a long enough record to be interesting though. I’m not surprised that NCDC and GISS don’t talk about them much.
“2014 warmest year since 1659..” Didn’t know we had such detailed temp. records back in 1659. But either way, still doesn’t prove why it was (allegedly) warmer then. And the odds it was warmer at sometime in the 4 billion years we don’t have comparable data for? Yes, I thought so.
I look forward to the ironically named SKS folks correcting their propaganda.
To All Dyslexic Climate Alarmists : Remain Clam!
2014 was not the ‘warmest year evah’…
Good one
Dyslexics of the World: Untie!
do you believe in dog?
For Australia, 2014 was the third warmest.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/weather-2014-australias-third-hottest-year-on-record-20150105-12ignf.html
Clams cause global warming! I knew it, co2 was just a cover-up by the clams to destroy human society… The IPCC must act now time is running out. Kill the clams…
So who will be assigned the task of officially adjusting the clam temperature data (up)?
Keep calm: that type of clam, according to what I read in Wikipedia “can weigh more than 200 kilograms (440 lb), measure as much as 120 cm (47 in) across”. Wow.
Just another unsubstantiated clam.
+10
Humanity evolved from clams (*)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology:_A_History_of_Man
* It was inevitable that someone would bring this up. Might as well be me!
Climategate Email 3759.txt
Here is the Oroko Swamp RCS chronology plot in an attached Word 98 file and actual data values below. It certainly looks pretty spooky to me with strong “Medieval Warm Period” and “Little Ice Age” signals in it. It’s based on substantially more replication than the series in the paper you have to review (hint, hint!).
Oroko Swamp is in New Zealand
I find this clamometer very in interesting. However, the guiding principle of climate studies, as viewed by the UN, the POTUS, the Catholic Pope, and fellow travelers, is to provide support for international cooperation to – __fill in the blank__ –. It is stated as fact [see my bold below] humans are the cause. Certain countries have already been convicted and, in Paris later this year, the indulgences are to be assessed and codified.
“Today the IPCC’s role is as defined in Principles Governing IPCC Work, “…to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.”
http://www.ipcc.ch/organization/organization_history.shtml
Steve McIntyre looked at the Oroko swamp data in more detail here:
http://climateaudit.org/2014/11/11/gergis2k-and-the-oroko-disturbance-corrected-blade/ May be a MWP but little indication of Little Ice Age
The Chinese Science Bulletin paper is available online here:
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/265966436_Higher_Sea_surface_temperature_in_the_northern_South_China_Sea_during_the_natural_warm_periods_of_late_Holocene_than_recent_decades
Incidentally the correlation between the chemistry of the clamshell and the instrumental SST record in the modern period (1994-2005) is really impressive. This is probably the best SST proxy yet!
Not only the correlation. The subannual resolution (granularity). Man, the Chinese are catching up to world class science way too fast.
Next, they will use their actual science to explain why they will not join UNFCCC in Paris 2015…
oh my, what will the warmunists do then?
tty
Thanks for the researchgate link to the article.
Wow – the MWP was not as hot as the current warm period, but hotter.
And the Roman WP hotter still.
Thanks for that link !