Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
We discussed the 2014 global surface temperature announcements by NASA GISS and NOAA NCDC in the posts On the Biases Caused by Omissions in the 2014 NOAA State of the Climate Report and Does the Uptick in Global Surface Temperatures in 2014 Help the Growing Difference between Climate Models and Reality?
GISS expresses no doubt that global surface temperatures in 2014 were the highest on record in their news release dated January 16, 2015…same thing with their YouTube video NASA | 2014 Warmest Year On Record. And as we noted in the “Biases of Omissions” post, a reader must scroll down well beyond the Global Highlights to find the uncertainties in the NOAA 2014 State of the Climate report…and click on a link to find out what those uncertainties mean. The mainstream media had a field day, summing up the GISS and NCDC announcements with alarmist sound-bites.
Yet, around the blogosphere and social media, more and more people are realizing that NASA GISS and NOAA NCDC weren’t very open with the public when making their very-certain statements that 2014 was the warmest year on record. A couple of examples follow. That lack of openness can only hurt the credibility of NASA and NOAA.
Luboš Motl addresses two questions in his post NOAA, NASA: 2014 was probably not the warmest year on our record:
- how much do the error margins of the NOAA, NASA temperature records matter?
- And if they change the answer to the question whether 2014 was the warmest one, did they know about this fact when they loudly announced that “2014 was the warmest year” or did they overlook that detail?
The title of David Rose’s article at the DailyMail is Nasa climate scientists: We said 2014 was the warmest year on record… but we’re only 38% sure we were right. It begins with 3 bullet points:
- Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies claimed its analysis of world temperatures showed ‘2014 was the warmest year on record’
- But it emerged that GISS’s analysis is subject to a margin of error
- Nasa admits this means it is far from certain that 2014 set a record at all
The article by David Rose appears to be based on his Twitter exchange with Gavin Schmidt of GISS.
What’s all the hubbub about? Page 5 of the NOAA/NASA Annual Global Analysis for 2014 briefing.
On the thread of the WattsUpWithThat cross post of the “Biases of Omission” post, blogger “Jimbo” linked a tweet from GISS Director Gavin Schmidt that included it. See Jimbo’s comment here. Page 5 of the briefing is reproduced below.
Page 5 of the NOAA/NASA Annual Global Analysis for 2014 briefing
It clearly shows the probability that 2014 was the warmest on record was slightly less than 50% with the NCDC global surface temperature data and well less than 50% for the GISS data. That was one of the points I made in the “Biases of Omission” post. See the discussion under the heading of BIAS OF OMISSION 1.
The other thing hurting the NOAA and GISS proclamations comes from the newsletter The Average Temperature of 2014 Results from Berkeley Earth. Berkeley Earth is another supplier of global surface temperature data, and they rely on most of the same source data as the NOAA and GISS products.
The first key finding of the Berkeley Earth newsletter was:
The global surface temperature average (land and sea) for 2014 was nominally the warmest since the global instrumental record began in 1850; however, within the margin of error, it is tied with 2005 and 2010 and so we can’t be certain it set a new record.
Right from the get-go, Berkeley Earth is open about the uncertainties in the data.
NASA and NOAA need to be more realistic, more open, in their presentations to the media. It could be argued that NOAA and GISS were trying to be open by presenting the probabilities on page 5 of their combined briefing. But you don’t find those uncertainties in the news stories. The media could be partly to blame. Some reporters may have seen the probabilities and ignored them; others may have found sources elsewhere in which the uncertainties weren’t mentioned or were hard to find. To that end, as discussed, GISS expresses no doubt that 2014 was the warmest year on record in their press release and in their YouTube videos…so why should the mainstream media report differently? With NCDC, you have to search for the uncertainties and click on links to see what they mean…and, apparently, few reporters searched for them or bothered to click on links.
Right now, without the up-front qualifiers in every document and presentation by GISS and NCDC about the uncertainties inherent in data—and in climate models—the public is being misled about human-induced global warming and climate change.
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UPDATE: Jo Nova has also posted on this topic. See Jo’s Gavin Schmidt now admits NASA are only 38% sure 2014 was the hottest year.
I enjoy watching the alarmists dig their own graves. When everyone knows the alarmists were crying wolf it will be easier to hold them accountable.
Fellow climate skeptics:
I know you are all aware the only three climate possibilities suggested by ice core studies are mild warming. mild cooling, or an ice age.
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I think its safe to assume there has been mild warming since roughly the mid-1800s — perhaps much of the warming is measurement error, as 1800s thermometers consistently read low — but there is almost no evidence of cooling in the past 150 years.
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Of course we all know here how the surface measurements are “fixed” so annual announcements can be made that the past year was the ‘hottest’ on record — leftists often lie in support of their causes — their beliefs are too important to let accurate data create doubt among the riff raff (that would be us).
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Until the 1850 Modern Warming trend ends, there will be repeated new warm year records set — probably not every year, but regularly.
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New highs define a rising trend.
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If there were no new highs for a long time, then the rising trend may have ended.
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I have no idea when the 1850 Modern Warming will end, nor does anyone else — perhaps it ended in 1998?
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I do know ALL real-time average temperature measurements since the late 1800s have been made during this warming trend, so we’re going to hear “new records” being set repeatedly (okay, the 2014 new record that’s only one to four hundredths of a degree C. higher than 2013 sounds like someone “fixed” rthe books, but new records are inevitable until a cooling trend begins.
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The correct response to a new record is: “So what?”.
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Who can prove warming is bad news?
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Who can prove more CO2 is bad news, whether it causes warming or not?
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It’s incredible to me that the climate since I was born in the 1950’s has improved — slightly warmer, and faster green plant growth — yet I can’t enjoy the improved climate because smarmy leftists are so busy convincing people that the improved climate is not really an improvement at all — it is the beginning of a climate catastrophe that will end life on Earth as we know it.
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If I was an alien flying a UFO in the skies and observing Earth, I’d never stop here and want to meet the people — not because they are too violent, which they are, but because their unjustified fear of a coming climate catastrophe proves they are way too dumb for a stimulating conversation!
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The coming climate catastrophe beliefs deserve ridicule, and jokes about the irrational fears — if we skeptics can’t do this, then who can?
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I’ll try to do my part by not taking the warmists seriously:
– After much analysis and very deep thought, aided by caffeine and pacing the floor, it has become obvious to me that skeptics of climate change — those who dare to challenge the climate models — only do so because the changing climate has confused them.
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After all. everyone knows those REALLY BIG COMPUTERS can predict the future climate with 105% confidence (previously 95% confidence — I’m extrapolating the rising confidence level trend two years into the future).
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Roger Revelle’s strategy on how to get a share of the goobermint money was effective: State with great confidence that some environmental catastrophe is coming in the future, and that you must be given a grant to study it, or else life on Earth will end as we know it.
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Doesn’t matter if the coming catastrophe is acid rain, hole in the ozone layer, global cooling — the end result is always: ‘life on Earth will end as we know it’.
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When a coming crisis stops scaring people, you just invent a new crisis, such as global warming, and your friends in the leftist-biased press will never mention the old, forgotten never-hurt-anyone crises again.
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My Due Diligence:
Based on my examination of the most accurate data available:
– I favor a lot more CO2 in the air to green the Earth, and
– I favor more warming (although I’m confident CO2 will cause little or no warming beyond the 400 ppmv level), because I can’t afford a second home in sunny, warm Florida, and it gets pretty cold here in Bingham Farms, Michigan.
Say what you will, things look to get much worse.
Check out this weather report from the future
We’re dooooooomed!!!
Thanks, Bob.
Yes, NASA GISS & NOAA NCDC Need to Be More Open with the Public when Making Proclamations about Global Warming Records. They loose credibility by not being straightforward. They also get a reputation as politically biased institutions.
Yes the institutions themselves are what is getting damaged. The opportunists causing this ruination will just eventually slink away into their next high paying executive position without looking back.
Saying that the year 2014 was the warmest on record is like for someone born in 1990 to say that the war in Iraq was the worst war of my lifetime.
Obviously, even if it were true, it is still of questionable value as an observation. The Iraq War was peanuts compared to WWI, WWII and Viet Nam.
That is true the scope of certain wars is much greater that others. But on an individual basis, the greatest war is the one experienced directly. For people living in London while it was being bombed, WWII was certainly the worst. For people in Iraq, it is the wars that continue there without end.
In terms of climate, if a tornado destroyed your home it is of little matter whether tornadoes were lower than average in that year. And it would be just as farcical to claim CO2 reduced tornadoes as it is to claim CO2 increased tornadoes.
So yes it is of questionable if not meaningless value as an observation, but great value as propaganda.
The issue is political. The announcements and media hype give the president the ammunition to mention the increasing global temperature in his state of the union speech, and we must get behind his green agenda.
It also paves the way for the USA involvement in the Paris Climate meetings later this year.
How political can science get?
I would like to see a post of a histogram of temperatures used by the various agencies and/or the anomalies. Are they normally distributed? If not, do they perform transformations to normalize the data. I made my first year statistics students perform this exercise with every data set. If not normal they had to use non-parametric statistics. Is this info available? Nick or Steve may wish to chime in here.
1936 was the hottest year on raw data records, 1934 close second. The current competition of the warmest year is just from “adjustments”, which is just a homogenization assumption, which are unproven.
http://www.tvw.org/index.php?option=com_tvwplayer&eventID=2013030153#start=1440&stop=5945
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We can’t say that 2014 was warmer than 1998, because what we measure in 2014 is not the same as it was in 1998 (still less when compared to the 1930s).
Because of station drop outs, instrument changes, changes in local environment (vegetation/buildings/development), we are not measuring the same thing. Adjustments are being made to the data, supposedly with a view to homogenising those changes and bring one in line with another, but all we are looking at is the adjustments that have been made to the raw data.
If the adjustments made to the raw data in 2014 are out by a few hundredths of a degree, 2014 is cannot on any criteria be the warmest on record.
Lets get back to the raw data and quality control and we might then have some insight into what if anything is going on..
1. Your link doesn’t necessarily show that the 1930s were warmer than the past decade. Think about it. In the first year of any record then every temperature would be the warmest ever recorded.
2. Your link is for the US only. The discussion here is about global temperatures.
I note that 1998 has been adjusted downwards in the GISS/NOAA graphs. Very easy to make 2014 the warmest year when you constantly adjust everything before it downwards.
It is certainly not the warmest on either the UAH or the RSS records. NOAA’s claim is clearly an artefact of adjustments. ie another con job.
April 1990 — NASA says the satellite data is more accurate.
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/122096963
So … what does the satellite record say? Not even close to the hottest year ever.
I don’t know whether its premature but the “Hottest year on record” story which used to appear on the front page of the local newspaper was buried on the last page of the front section in the bottom left corner. Might that be a sign? Just hoping.
An open question but would love to hear from Nick Stokes or Steven Mosher.
As NOAA NCDC and NASA GISS state that 2014 is now the warmest year on record does this now show 1) there is in fact a pause or plateau in global temperature from 1998 to 2014 and 2) as CO2 is still rising does this not invalidate Dr. Hansen’s scenario C even though that scenario seems to be tracking better to current global temperatures?
Thanks!
2014 being warmest certainly isn’t proof of a plateau. But climate-wise, it doesn’t prove anything much on its own. You need to look at trends over a period. And surface trends are up.
Ok…using the Global Analysis – Annual 2014 report it states that 2014 had an anomaly of 0.69 degrees C and 1998 had an anomaly of 0.63 degrees C, which shows a 100-year projection of 0.375 degrees C that is significantly less than the IPCC projection of 2.8 degrees C/100 years.
As far as I know CO2 is still increasing globally at the same rate since the IPCC’s first report so shouldn’t each year since the IPCC’s first report be the hottest year ever?
And why is the observed trend in temps not matching Hansen’s model projections?
I’ll repeat the question I asked above:
How can a temperature of 14.6 be described as the ‘hottest’
when it’s not even warm ?
And if in fact there has been a plateau of years, and 2014 has
been named as the ‘hottest’, am I allowed to ask which one has
been the ‘coldest’ ?
Nick Stokes January 19, 2015 at 4:57 am
Bob has a post on that here.
My comment is – GISS is right. It is very unwise to try to average absolute temperatures. To make a spatial average of anything, you have to be able to estimate values in between where you measure. With anomalies you can do that, because most of the irregular variation is in special features of the places measured, eg altitude, and goes away when you subtract out the local mean.
Do we want to make features of the temperature record ‘go away’?
Surely the temp at the top of a mountain (due to its altitude) is lower and this fact should be retained in the temperature record, not subtracted out.
I expect the mountain will keep displaying cooler temperatures for a much longer time than man is around to measure it!
How many measurement points were used in 1998, 2913, 2014.
Are they the same measurement points?
How much data has been “infilled” (euphemism for fabricated) for places where there are no thermometer.
Here is a pic of trends from 2001 to now, showing that any major warming is in the Arctic and western Antarctic. Where does this data come from? How is it fabricated.?
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/nmaps.cgi?sat=4&sst=1&type=trends&mean_gen=0112&year1=2001&year2=2014&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=rob
DMI only shows a maybe small amount of Arctic warming during the deep winter. Is that really all that is driving “GLOBAL” warming ???
From 2001 to 2013 all 4 main climate series were basically flat.
Why does the GISS/HadCrut trend suddenly start to diverge from the satellite record in 2013 ?
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2013/plot/rss/from:2013/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2013/trend/plot/rss/from:2013/trend/plot/uah/from:2013/plot/uah/from:2013/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2013/plot/gistemp/from:2013/trend
For 1998 and 2014 we could probably find the data, for 2913 we’ll have to check the climate models.
Thanks for noticing the typo, Richeard :-).. 2013, of course.
Now can anyone answer the questions ?
I read it as 2013 Andy, I just wanted to have a little fun by injecting the climate models into your typo. Unfortunately I don’t have the answers to your questions.
Richard.. I’m sure Nick could have the answer the first questions…., but he won’t do it.
For the last question, ask yourself what happened at GISS in 2013, who took over ! 😉
So infilling is a problem AndyG55
And then you say: “DMI only shows a maybe small amount of Arctic warming during the deep winter.”
I guess you think that there is no infilling in the product DMI uses?
A bit wrong. They use reanaysis. The infilling is done with a MODEL Or more correct: 4 models. Three different models after 2002
So that is the way to do it. Use model output.
We have been coming out of the Little Ice Age. Temperatures have been rising.
Anyone interested in figuring out how many years have taken their turn as the warmest year since 1880? They must have occurred quite regularly if, coming out of the LIA, the temperature has been continually rising.
How many times since 1880 could someone have proclaimed — this is the warmest year since 1880 and we are all going to die!
I bet there have been 40 years that were once the warmest year since 1880. Anyone interested?
Eugene WR Gallun
And those years would be ever changing as the data is adjusted to create the upward trend.
Not that long ago 1940 was a nice peak in the temperature record.
Squashed and gone now !!
Yes. There were 21 such years in the GISS record, excluding 1880. They were:
1881 1889 1926 1931 1937 1938 1940 1941 1944 1973 1980 1981 1987 1988
1990 1995 1997 1998 2005 2010 2014
Nick Stokes,
Thank you very much.
I said — I bet there were 40 — but there were only 21. I am slipping.
So, coming out of the Little Ice Age we have had a new record about every 6.4 years.
O Noes! It worst than we thought!!!!!!! We are all going to die!!!!!!!
Eugene WR Gallun
Eugene,
Here is a plot of the progress of the record over time:
http://www.moyhu.org.s3.amazonaws.com/misc/timeseries/rex.png
Why not just do it? Hadcrut4 goes back to the mid-1800s, CET a cenury or two further back (CET isn’t global of course, but it’s the best available). Hadcrut4 data is easily downloaded as a csv which you can pick up in Excel. It’s something I intend to do, but have no Excel while travelling (back home late next month). Post it to WUWT’s “Submit a Story”. I’d be happy to see someone else do it and save me the effort.
Thanks, Nick, all I had to do was wait a few minutes. I see there were 5 records in 8 years 1937-44 and only 3 records in 10 years 2005-14. Makes one wonder what all the fuss is about.
Mike Jonas,
Records come along more frequently in a shorter history. There were 2 records in 1880-1881.
Nick Stokes
January 19, 2015 at 2:56 pm
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Nick
5 in 8 is considerably more than 3 in 10. So the point that Mike Jonas makes is a good one.
There was an 8 year period (1937 to 1944) before manmade CO2 emissions played any significant role in warming, which set then record highs.
Now that it is alleged that CO2 plays a significant role, there is a paucity of now record highs in comparison.
The earlier then record highs (and I am now going back to include before 1937) shows that there is a large component of natural variation in the upward warming trend seen through to 2014. In fact, it could easily be all natural.
Richard,
“Now that it is alleged that CO2 plays a significant role, there is a paucity of now record highs in comparison.”
Well, check the GISS graph I showed just above. Contrast the 1940 pattern of a few consecutive but mainly small rises, with the big rises following 1980.
So you are saying that we get warmest years on record because it is getting warmer.
I agree.
Mike Jonas says:
Makes one wonder what all the fuss is about.
Yes. What is all the fuss about??
Observations confirm natural variability in action. Enjoy it, because warmer is better; cold kills.
The whole man-made global warming scare is nothing but a giant head fake. That’s all.
We must all understand that the job of reporters is NOT to report the facts. They and their editors win when a headline attracts readers or viewers, because that delivers $$$. So which headline would you use?
– 2014 temperatures about the same as previous years.
– 2014 Hottest Ever!
But if anyone complains that you misled their readers, bury a reference to uncertainties towards the end of the report that most people will never read.
I listened to an interview on BBC Radio 4 on Friday with Gavin Schmidt, he was given ample opportunity by the interviewer to express any uncertainty and was explictily asked by the interviewer, bt he chose not to mention this 38% certainty factor.
That is deliberate deception, nothing less, but they got their headlines and there will be no retractions on BBC Radio 4, so mission accomplished.
GISS AND NCDC’S data I consider not acceptable. I therefore ignore it. It is meaningless.
Glad to see NASA confirming they are 62% sure that 2014 wasn’t the hottest year on record.
I am 100% certain they didn’t place this information on page 1 and that the BBC, Guardian and most MSM were not expected to report it.
We need to be mindful that when we start discussing things like error bars and uncertainties on these two dataset, we automatically cede the ground on whether these datasets show anything real in the first place. They don’t. This is a “win the battle but lose the war” situation. As stated in many comments above, and as mentioned many times in previous articles, these datasets are artificially inflated (or rather, the past is deflated) and thus all discussions regarding new records is moot.
We need to fight the right battles.
We (the skeptical community) should simply dismiss these claims as spurious. Getting bogged down in discussions about uncertainties simply makes these claims seem to have some validity. The fact is these annual temperature spikes aren’t real, wouldn’t exist without their adjustments, and don’t exist even in their own satellite data.
Let’s focus on the right problem. The problem is not the uncertainties, but the data itself (or rather the adjusted data).
Well it is both. Bad methodology in defining and collecting the data AND bad methodology in using the bad data.
See recent financial crisis as to how well using this approach helps in making executive decisions.
Ya’ know, I don’t care if the head of a bureaucracy is a Republican or a Democrat. As long as they are honest.
Whoever wins the next election for President here in the US needs to clean out everyone Obama put in power and everyone they hired.
Start from scratch with people who put facts before politics.
(I know, I’m dreaming. I was into lots of “stuff” before I was delivered. Maybe I just had a flashback?)
What is the raw data because UHI is huge in any city, large or small. I live 1 mile outside of a small 6,000 person town. During the winter it is 8-12 degrees warmer in town than it is at my house a mile outside of town. There is no elevation change as it is flat farmland for miles around our little town. UHI is huge for a little 6,000 person town in the middle of farmland so it has to be enormous for metro areas. If Gavin disagrees then I’d love to invite him to where I live. A little field study wouldn’t hurt this office chair academic.
2014 was not the hottest year on record nor the hottest ever recorded. Both GISS & NOAA are not comparing last year to the actual record or what was actually recorded. They are comparing an adjusted record for 2014 versus all the other adjusted years. So in reality, 2014 global temperature was the highest adjusted temperature of any of the previously adjusted years’s temperatures.
When I read today that Gavin had said that the pause will end within 10 years, I wondered how he had arrived at such a revelation. And then I realized what his process must be…
But how can the pause go on for yet a further 10 years, if CO2 drives temperature and if CO2 rises as quick (or quicker) than BAU?
Come back in 10 years time, if the pause has continued through to then, the cAGW case will look extremely shakey.
In fact people like Gavin should advise what CO2 sensitivity is likely to be if the pause continues for a further 10 years. In this scenario, we know what temperatures will look like 10 years hence (ie., the same as today), and we can estimate the level of CO2 on the assumption that CO2 emissions continue unabated (ie., BAU).
In this scenario, climate sensitivity (if there is such a thing) will be less than 1.5, in fact probably less than 1.2.
So scare over.
If you take the view that global temperatures are driven by planetary cycles of 1000 years and 60 years, he may not the too far off – thing will go flat till 2030 then shoot up for the next 30 years and then its all downhill from there. Is there any credibility to the planetary model? The Global Warming establishment poo-poos it as “astrology”. However, even Monckton’s Pocket Calculator model does not predict “flat for 18 years 3 months” – it is jut less wrong that the other climate model projections.
Gavin is playing the tabloid psychic game.
A psychic in a tabloid newspaper predicts event A for celebrity B. If it doesn’t happen no one notices, it is forgotten, but if event A does happen the psychic proclaims his amazing ability to predict the future.
It is cheap, it is exploitation but it pays the rent for the exploiter.