Global temperature update: no warming for 18 years 4 months
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Since December 1996 there has been no global warming at all (Fig. 1). This month’s RSS temperature – so far unaffected by the most persistent el Niño conditions of the present rather attenuated cycle – shows a new record length for the ever-Greater Pause: 18 years 4 months – and counting.
This result rather surprises me. I’d expected even a weak el Niño to have more effect that this, but it is always possible that the temperature increase that usually accompanies an el Niño will come through after a lag of four or five months. On the other hand, Roy Spencer, at his always-to-the-point blog (drroyspencer.com), says: “We are probably past the point of reaching a new peak temperature anomaly from the current El Niño, suggesting it was rather weak.” I shall defer to the expert, with pleasure. For if la Niña conditions begin to cool the oceans in time, there could be quite some lengthening of the Pause just in time for the Paris world-government summit in December.
Figure 1. The least-squares linear-regression trend on the RSS satellite monthly global mean surface temperature anomaly dataset shows no global warming for 18 years 4 months since December 1996.
The hiatus period of 18 years 4 months, or 220 months, is the farthest back one can go in the RSS satellite temperature record and still show a sub-zero trend.
Given that the Paris summit is approaching and most “world leaders” are not being told the truth about the Pause, it would be a great help if readers were to do their best to let their national negotiators and politicians know that unexciting reality continues to diverge ever more spectacularly from the bizarre “settled-science” predictions on which Thermageddon was built.
The divergence between the models’ predictions in 1990 (Fig. 2) and 2005 (Fig. 3), on the one hand, and the observed outturn, on the other, also continues to widen, and is now becoming a real embarrassment to the profiteers of doom – or would be, if the mainstream news media were actually to report the data rather than merely repeating the failed predictions of catastrophe.
Figure 2. Near-term projections of warming at a rate equivalent to 2.8 [1.9, 4.2] K/century, made with “substantial confidence” in IPCC (1990), for the 303 months January 1990 to March 2015 (orange region and red trend line), vs. observed anomalies (dark blue) and trend (bright blue) at less than 1.4 K/century equivalent, taken as the mean of the RSS and UAH satellite monthly mean lower-troposphere temperature anomalies.
Figure 3. Predicted temperature change, January 2005 to March 2015, at a rate equivalent to 1.7 [1.0, 2.3] Cº/century (orange zone with thick red best-estimate trend line), compared with the near-zero observed anomalies (dark blue) and real-world trend (bright blue), taken as the mean of the RSS and UAH satellite lower-troposphere temperature anomalies.
The Technical Note has now been much expanded to take account of the fact that the oceans, according to the ARGO bathythermograph data, are scarcely warming.
Key facts about global temperature
Ø The RSS satellite dataset shows no global warming at all for 220 months from December 1996 to March 2014 – more than half the 435-month satellite record.
Ø The global warming trend since 1900 is equivalent to 0.8 Cº per century. This is well within natural variability and may not have much to do with us.
Ø Since 1950, when a human influence on global temperature first became theoretically possible, the global warming trend has been equivalent to below 1.2 Cº per century.
Ø The fastest warming rate lasting ten years or more since 1950 occurred over the 33 years from 1974 to 2006. It was equivalent to 2.0 Cº per century.
Ø In 1990, the IPCC’s mid-range prediction of near-term warming was equivalent to 2.8 Cº per century, higher by two-thirds than its current prediction of 1.7 Cº/century.
Ø The global warming trend since 1990, when the IPCC wrote its first report, is equivalent to below 1.4 Cº per century – half of what the IPCC had then predicted.
Ø Though the IPCC has cut its near-term warming prediction, it has not cut its high-end business as usual centennial warming prediction of 4.8 Cº warming to 2100.
Ø The IPCC’s predicted 4.8 Cº warming by 2100 is well over twice the greatest rate of warming lasting more than ten years that has been measured since 1950.
Ø The IPCC’s 4.8 Cº-by-2100 prediction is almost four times the observed real-world warming trend since we might in theory have begun influencing it in 1950.
Ø The oceans, according to the 3600+ ARGO bathythermograph buoys, are warming at a rate equivalent to just 0.02 Cº per decade, or 0.2 Cº per century.
Ø Recent extreme weather cannot be blamed on global warming, because there has not been any global warming to speak of. It is as simple as that.
Technical note
Our latest topical graph shows the least-squares linear-regression trend on the RSS satellite monthly global mean lower-troposphere dataset for as far back as it is possible to go and still find a zero trend. The start-date is not “cherry-picked” so as to coincide with the temperature spike caused by the 1998 el Niño. Instead, it is calculated so as to find the longest period with a zero trend.
The RSS dataset is arguably less unreliable than other datasets in that it shows the 1998 Great El Niño more clearly than all other datasets (though UAH runs it close). The Great el Niño, like its two predecessors in the past 300 years, caused widespread global coral bleaching, providing an independent verification that RSS is better able to capture such fluctuations without artificially filtering them out than other datasets. Besides, there is in practice little statistical difference between the RSS and other datasets over the 18-year period of the Great Pause.
Terrestrial temperatures are measured by thermometers. Thermometers correctly sited in rural areas away from manmade heat sources show warming rates below those that are published. The satellite datasets are based on reference measurements made by the most accurate thermometers available – platinum resistance thermometers, which provide an independent verification of the temperature measurements by checking via spaceward mirrors the known temperature of the cosmic background radiation, which is 1% of the freezing point of water, or just 2.73 degrees above absolute zero. It was by measuring minuscule variations in the cosmic background radiation that the NASA anisotropy probe determined the age of the Universe: 13.82 billion years.
The RSS graph (Fig. 1) is accurate. The data are lifted monthly straight from the RSS website. A computer algorithm reads them down from the text file, takes their mean and plots them automatically using an advanced routine that automatically adjusts the aspect ratio of the data window at both axes so as to show the data at maximum scale, for clarity.
The latest monthly data point is visually inspected to ensure that it has been correctly positioned. The light blue trend line plotted across the dark blue spline-curve that shows the actual data is determined by the method of least-squares linear regression, which calculates the y-intercept and slope of the line.
The IPCC and most other agencies use linear regression to determine global temperature trends. Professor Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia recommends it in one of the Climategate emails. The method is appropriate because global temperature records exhibit little auto-regression.
Dr Stephen Farish, Professor of Epidemiological Statistics at the University of Melbourne, kindly verified the reliability of the algorithm that determines the trend on the graph and the correlation coefficient, which is very low because, though the data are highly variable, the trend is flat.
RSS itself is now taking a serious interest in the length of the Great Pause. Dr Carl Mears, the senior research scientist at RSS, discusses it at remss.com/blog/recent-slowing-rise-global-temperatures.
Dr Mears’ results are summarized in Fig. T1:
Figure T1. Output of 33 IPCC models (turquoise) compared with measured RSS global temperature change (black), 1979-2014. The transient coolings caused by the volcanic eruptions of Chichón (1983) and Pinatubo (1991) are shown, as is the spike in warming caused by the great el Niño of 1998.
Dr Mears writes:
“The denialists like to assume that the cause for the model/observation discrepancy is some kind of problem with the fundamental model physics, and they pooh-pooh any other sort of explanation. This leads them to conclude, very likely erroneously, that the long-term sensitivity of the climate is much less than is currently thought.”
Dr Mears concedes the growing discrepancy between the RSS data and the models, but he alleges “cherry-picking” of the start-date for the global-temperature graph:
“Recently, a number of articles in the mainstream press have pointed out that there appears to have been little or no change in globally averaged temperature over the last two decades. Because of this, we are getting a lot of questions along the lines of ‘I saw this plot on a denialist web site. Is this really your data?’ While some of these reports have ‘cherry-picked’ their end points to make their evidence seem even stronger, there is not much doubt that the rate of warming since the late 1990s is less than that predicted by most of the IPCC AR5 simulations of historical climate. … The denialists really like to fit trends starting in 1997, so that the huge 1997-98 ENSO event is at the start of their time series, resulting in a linear fit with the smallest possible slope.”
In fact, the spike in temperatures caused by the Great el Niño of 1998 is largely offset in the linear-trend calculation by two factors: the not dissimilar spike of the 2010 el Niño, and the sheer length of the Great Pause itself.
Curiously, Dr Mears prefers the much-altered terrestrial datasets to the satellite datasets. However, over the entire length of the RSS and UAH series since 1979, the trends on the mean of the terrestrial datasets and on the mean of the satellite datasets are near-identical. Indeed, the UK Met Office uses the satellite record to calibrate its own terrestrial record.
The length of the Great Pause in global warming, significant though it now is, is of less importance than the ever-growing discrepancy between the temperature trends predicted by models and the far less exciting real-world temperature change that has been observed. It remains possible that el Nino-like conditions may prevail this year, reducing the length of the Great Pause. However, the discrepancy between prediction and observation continues to widen.
Sources of the IPCC projections in Figs. 2 and 3
IPCC’s First Assessment Report predicted that global temperature would rise by 1.0 [0.7, 1.5] Cº to 2025, equivalent to 2.8 [1.9, 4.2] Cº per century. The executive summary asked, “How much confidence do we have in our predictions?” IPCC pointed out some uncertainties (clouds, oceans, etc.), but concluded:
“Nevertheless, … we have substantial confidence that models can predict at least the broad-scale features of climate change. … There are similarities between results from the coupled models using simple representations of the ocean and those using more sophisticated descriptions, and our understanding of such differences as do occur gives us some confidence in the results.”
That “substantial confidence” was substantial over-confidence. For the rate of global warming since 1990 – the most important of the “broad-scale features of climate change” that the models were supposed to predict – is now below half what the IPCC had then predicted.
In 1990, the IPCC said this:
“Based on current models we predict:
“under the IPCC Business-as-Usual (Scenario A) emissions of greenhouse gases, a rate of increase of global mean temperature during the next century of about 0.3 Cº per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2 Cº to 0.5 Cº per decade), this is greater than that seen over the past 10,000 years. This will result in a likely increase in global mean temperature of about 1 Cº above the present value by 2025 and 3 Cº before the end of the next century. The rise will not be steady because of the influence of other factors” (p. xii).
Later, the IPCC said:
“The numbers given below are based on high-resolution models, scaled to be consistent with our best estimate of global mean warming of 1.8 Cº by 2030. For values consistent with other estimates of global temperature rise, the numbers below should be reduced by 30% for the low estimate or increased by 50% for the high estimate” (p. xxiv).
The orange region in Fig. 2 represents the IPCC’s less extreme medium-term Scenario-A estimate of near-term warming, i.e. 1.0 [0.7, 1.5] K by 2025, rather than its more extreme Scenario-A estimate, i.e. 1.8 [1.3, 3.7] K by 2030.
Some try to say the IPCC did not predict the straight-line global warming rate that is shown in Figs. 2-3. In fact, however, the IPCC’s predicted global warming over so short a term as the 25 years from 1990 to the present are little different from a straight line (Fig. T2).
Figure T2. Historical warming from 1850-1990, and predicted warming from 1990-2100 on the IPCC’s “business-as-usual” Scenario A (IPCC, 1990, p. xxii).
Because this difference between a straight line and the slight uptick in the warming rate the IPCC predicted over the period 1990-2025 is so small, one can look at it another way. To reach the 1 K central estimate of warming since 1990 by 2025, there would have to be twice as much warming in the next ten years as there was in the last 25 years. That is not likely.
Likewise, to reach 1.8 K by 2030, there would have to be four or five times as much warming in the next 15 years as there was in the last 25 years. That is still less likely.
But is the Pause perhaps caused by the fact that CO2 emissions have not been rising anything like as fast as the IPCC’s “business-as-usual” Scenario A prediction in 1990? No: CO2 emissions have risen rather above the Scenario-A prediction (Fig. T3).
Figure T3. CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, etc., in 2012, from Le Quéré et al. (2014), plotted against the chart of “man-made carbon dioxide emissions”, in billions of tonnes of carbon per year, from IPCC (1990).
Plainly, therefore, CO2 emissions since 1990 have proven to be closer to Scenario A than to any other case, because for all the talk about CO2 emissions reduction the fact is that the rate of expansion of fossil-fuel burning in China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, etc., far outstrips the paltry reductions we have achieved in the West to date.
True, methane concentration has not risen as predicted in 1990 (Fig. T4), for methane emissions, though largely uncontrolled, are simply not rising as the models had predicted, and the predictions were extravagantly baseless.
The overall picture is clear. Scenario A is the emissions scenario from 1990 that is closest to the observed emissions outturn, and yet there has only been a third of a degree of global warming since 1990 – about half of what the IPCC had then predicted with what it called “substantial confidence”.
Figure T4. Methane concentration as predicted in four IPCC Assessment Reports, together with (in black) the observed outturn, which is running along the bottom of the least prediction. This graph appeared in the pre-final draft of IPCC (2013), but had mysteriously been deleted from the final, published version, inferentially because the IPCC did not want to display such a plain comparison between absurdly exaggerated predictions and unexciting reality.
To be precise, a quarter-century after 1990, the global-warming outturn to date – expressed as the least-squares linear-regression trend on the mean of the RSS and UAH monthly global mean surface temperature anomalies – is 0.35 Cº, equivalent to just 1.4 Cº/century, or a little below half of the central estimate of 0.70 Cº, equivalent to 2.8 Cº/century, that was predicted for Scenario A in IPCC (1990). The outturn is visibly well below even the least estimate.
In 1990, the IPCC’s central prediction of the near-term warming rate was higher by two-thirds than its prediction is today. Then it was 2.8 C/century equivalent. Now it is just 1.7 Cº equivalent – and, as Fig. T5 shows, even that is proving to be a substantial exaggeration.
Is the ocean warming?
One frequently-discussed explanation for the Great Pause is that the coupled ocean-atmosphere system has continued to accumulate heat at approximately the rate predicted by the models, but that in recent decades the heat has been removed from the atmosphere by the ocean and, since globally the near-surface strata show far less warming than the models had predicted, it is hypothesized that what is called the “missing heat” has traveled to the little-measured abyssal strata below 2000 m, whence it may emerge at some future date.
Actually, it is not known whether the ocean is warming: each of the 3600 automated ARGO bathythermograph buoys somehow has to cover 200,000 cubic kilometres of ocean – a 100,000-square-mile box more than 316 km square and 2 km deep. Plainly, the results on the basis of a resolution that sparse (which, as Willis Eschenbach puts it, is approximately the equivalent of trying to take a single temperature and salinity profile taken at a single point in Lake Superior less than once a year) are not going to be a lot better than guesswork.
Fortunately, a long-standing bug in the ARGO data delivery system has now been fixed, so I am able to get the monthly global mean ocean temperature data – though ARGO seems not to have updated the dataset since December 2014. However, that gives us 11 full years of data. Results are plotted in Fig. T5. The ocean warming, if ARGO is right, is equivalent to just 0.02 Cº decade–1, or 0.2 Cº century–1 equivalent.
Figure T5. The entire near-global ARGO 2 km ocean temperature dataset from January 2004 to December 2014 (black spline-curve), with the least-squares linear-regression trend calculated from the data by the author (green arrow).
Finally, though the ARGO buoys measure ocean temperature change directly, before publication NOAA craftily converts the temperature change into zettajoules of ocean heat content change, which make the change seem a whole lot larger.
The terrifying-sounding heat content change of 260 ZJ from 1970 to 2014 (Fig. T6) is equivalent to just 0.2 K/century of global warming. All those “Hiroshima bombs of heat” are a barely discernible pinprick. The ocean and its heat capacity are a lot bigger than some may realize.
Figure T6. Ocean heat content change, 1957-2013, in Zettajoules from NOAA’s NODC Ocean Climate Lab: http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT, with the heat content values converted back to the ocean temperature changes in fractions of a Kelvin that were originally measured. NOAA’s conversion of the minuscule temperature change data to Zettajoules, combined with the exaggerated vertical aspect of the graph, has the effect of making a very small change in ocean temperature seem considerably more significant than it is.
Converting the ocean heat content change back to temperature change reveals an interesting discrepancy between NOAA’s data and that of the ARGO system. Over the period of ARGO data, from 2004-2014, the NOAA data imply that the oceans are warming at 0.05 Cº decade–1, equivalent to 0.5 Cº century–1, or rather more than double the rate shown by ARGO.
ARGO has the better-resolved dataset, but since the resolutions of all ocean datasets are very low one should treat all these results with caution. What one can say is that, on such evidence as these datasets are capable of providing, the difference between underlying warming rate of the ocean and that of the atmosphere is not statistically significant, suggesting that if the “missing heat” is hiding in the oceans it has magically found its way into the abyssal strata without managing to warm the upper strata on the way. On these data, too, there is no evidence of rapid or catastrophic ocean warming.
Furthermore, to date no empirical, theoretical or numerical method, complex or simple, has yet successfully specified mechanistically either how the heat generated by anthropogenic greenhouse-gas enrichment of the atmosphere has reached the deep ocean without much altering the heat content of the intervening near-surface strata or how the heat from the bottom of the ocean may eventually re-emerge to perturb the near-surface climate conditions that are relevant to land-based life on Earth.
Most ocean models used in performing coupled general-circulation model sensitivity runs simply cannot resolve most of the physical processes relevant for capturing heat uptake by the deep ocean. Ultimately, the second law of thermodynamics requires that any heat which may have accumulated in the deep ocean will dissipate via various diffusive processes. It is not plausible that any heat taken up by the deep ocean will suddenly warm the upper ocean and, via the upper ocean, the atmosphere.
If the “deep heat” explanation for the hiatus in global warming were correct (and it is merely one among dozens that have been offered), then the complex models have failed to account for it correctly: otherwise, the growing discrepancy between the predicted and observed atmospheric warming rates would not have become as significant as it has.
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I was wondering, does the IPCC have any models for the temperature of the troposphere? Because then you would not have an apples to oranges comparison.
Yes. The CMIP5 models have at least 20, and many use 30, atmospheric grid layers up to TOA. IPCC uses the surface layer T. The other layers exist for comparison to UAH and RSS. But there is no big thing learned by doing so; the divergence between modeled and observed temperature exists not just in satellite data, but also GISS, NCDC, BEST, and HadCruT. Only slight differences in how long indistinguishable from 0. The upper troposphere layers of CMIP5 are where the mythical tropical teoposphere hotspot resides, that does not exist observationally. Another falsification.
You might like to consider this:
http://s1.postimg.org/poncdd4kv/Vert_Obs.jpg
In response to trafamadore, the lower troposphere and surface trends are very, very similar. Phil Jones, at a climate conference I helped to organize in Cambridge in 2011, reported that his HadCRUT3 dataset (as it then was) produced a trend line almost identical to the two satellite trend lines since 1979. The mean of the two satellite trends and the HadCRUT surface trend from 1979-2014 are 0.47 and 0.57 K respectively. Not a lot in it.
“The fastest warming rate lasting ten years or more since 1950 occurred over the 33 years from 1974 to 2006. It was equivalent to 2.0 Cº per century.”
Which is irrelevant to rates of forcing of the climate as it starts on a cold AMO and ends on a warm AMO, which also means going from wet continental interiors to dry continental interiors. That’s why there is such a large temperature divergence between surface and satellite measurements, that divergence does not exist between SST’s and the lower troposphere over the oceans, though it is apparent with land only UAH. The warming of global SST’s is around 0.57°C per century, and warming trends with respect to AMO modes don’t seem to show any particular acceleration of warming rates in the latter part of last century.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst3gl/from:1900/plot/hadsst3gl/from:1910/to:1975/trend/plot/hadsst3gl/from:1945/to:2010/trend
“Terrestrial temperatures are measured by thermometers. Thermometers correctly sited in rural areas away from manmade heat sources show warming rates below those that are published. The satellite datasets are based on reference measurements made by the most accurate thermometers available – platinum resistance thermometers, which provide an independent verification of the temperature measurements by checking via spaceward mirrors the known temperature of the cosmic background radiation, which is 1% of the freezing point of water, or just 2.73 degrees above absolute zero. It was by measuring minuscule variations in the cosmic background radiation that the NASA anisotropy probe determined the age of the Universe: 13.82 billion years.”
RSS produces a data product. That data product is the output of a MODEL and various adjustments.
The scientist who produces this data argues that it is less reliable that surface products.
Most notably RSS ADJUSTS its data based on a GCM.
Lets start with the paper.
http://images.remss.com/papers/rsspubs/Mears_JTECH_2009_MSU_AMSU_construction.pdf
“In this paper, we describe the procedures we have used
to merge data from the newer AMSU instruments with
data from the earlier MSU instruments. This merging
procedure is complicated by 1) the slightly different observation
frequencies and bandwidths used by the two
instruments that lead to slightly different weighting functions
for the same viewing geometry and 2) the discovery of spurious trends in the differences between satellite
pairs during the period of AMSU operation. In section 2,
we provide more details about the two instruments, focusing
on their differences. In section 3, we describe the
spurious trends we find in the differences for AMSU
channels 5 through 9 between measurements made by
the NOAA-15 and NOAA-16 satellites and argue that
NOAA-16 is the source of these trends. In section 4, we
describe the method we have used to merge measurements
from MSU channels 2, 3, and 4 with measurements
from the corresponding AMSU channels 5, 7, and 9. In
section 5, we present the results of our procedures.”
“The challenge presented by these apparent drifts is
that we have no absolute temperature references in the
upper air that would make it possible for us to unambiguously
decide which instrument is producing data
that is closer to the truth. We have concluded that radiosonde
datasets are not suitable for this task, given the
possibility of large errors at high altitude (Lanzante
et al. 2003; Randel and Wu, 2006; Sherwood et al. 2005),
and datasets based on GPS measurements (e.g., Ho
et al. 2007) do not have a sufficient number of samples
early in the overlap period. We instead check the
internal consistency of the data from each AMSU
instrument, similar to the method used by Fu and
Johanson (2005) to evaluate different MSU datasets.
The measurements, and in particular interannual-scale
changes, should be consistent both between nearby
channels and between nadir and limb measurements
for the same channel.”
“tant steps here.
For the near-nadir view subsets (MSU2_N5 and
AMSU5_N12), each observation is adjusted to correspond
to the nadir view so that the difference between
measurements at different incidence angles is diminished,
thereby reducing sampling noise in the final
product.1 This adjustment also removes the small effects
of changes in the incidence angle due to variations in
both the earth’s radius of curvature and in orbital
height, and thus the effects of orbital decay. The adjustment
is made using simulated brightness temperatures
calculated from a National Centers for Environmental
Prediction (NCEP) reanalysis–based atmospheric
profile climatology (Kalnay et al. 1996; Mears et al.
2003).”
“A second important correction accounts for drifts in
local measurement time, which can alias any diurnal
cycle into the long-term time series if it is not corrected.
Using 5 yr of hourly output from the NCAR Community
Climate Model (CCM3) climate model (Kiehl et al.
1996), we created a diurnal climatology for MSU channels
2–4 and AMSU channels 5, 7, and 9 as a function of
earth location, time of day, time of year, and incidence
angle using the methods described in Mears et al.
(2002). This diurnal climatology was then used to adjust
each measurement so that it corresponds to local noon.
The adjustments are largest for MSU2 and AMSU5
because of the contribution of surface emission to these
channels. Surface emission can have a large diurnal
signal, particularly in arid land regions. These regions
dominate the global average of the MSU2 and AMSU5
adjustments. “
Mr Mosher, that is a lucid, intelligent, well thought-out objection.
Overruled!
In answer to Mr Mosher, taking the mean of the RSS and UAH datasets gives results similar to the mean of the three long-standing terrestrial datasets. RSS tends to run cool; UAH tends to run hot. But the warming rate, whichever way one looks at it, is simply nowhere close to what the IPCC predicted in 1990 and in 2005: see figs. 2-3. If Mr Mosher wishes to produce graphs of other datasets, he is of course free to do so. Or he can wait for my next six-monthly update on the five principal datasets.
It appears to me that Mr Mosher is simply pointing out that RSS numbers result from using a model, which are so detested on this site.
Not all models are detested. Just ones that have been proven to be inaccurate.
The WMO flag up that Africa needs 5000 temps stations, At the moment land based ones that are used on that continent are very far and few between and in Urban areas. THe WMO have a weighting system for how long a station has been active and it location, For Urban sitings they give a Zero. For a country that is one fifth of the worlds land mass not a good start!! Looks like the dreaded estimations are used big time. Even i can salaami temps up fractions of a degree each year.
Well after reading through the “author’s” objections to his own data, all I can say is that he has made the most compelling argument, for simply reporting the actual readings of his instruments, and not adjusting anything.
It seems as if the author is arguing for a hook and ladder truck with a third driver in the middle of the vehicle to correct the steering mistakes of the other two.
One of the advantages of a “fossil record” is that unlike human data reporting, the fossil record simply records what happened, and not someone’s opinion of what happened.
Just to report on one simple fact from the fossil record. Notwithstanding anything you may have read to the contrary, it is quite true, that Charlie Deans DID score a try which would have given the 1905 All Blacks a perfect lossless record.
But the referee on the day DID call, based on what he saw; and in any case, the Welsh team played a better game anyway, so they deserved the win, even though it was a mistake.
Now back to your regular program.
g
Thanks, Mr Mosher
Note that up to now nobody has objected to your post with this useful information. Not that it’s particularly contentious, but it is a part of the story that the majority of denizens don’t think about very much, if at all.. Usually, your one-liners just bring out the worst in some of the commenters here, and I can perhaps see why. Realise you suffer fools not gladly, but try to see that we are all human beings. Let’s hope in future we can keep the debate within reasonable tramlines!
Seems to me quite reasonable, since there are no absolute figures to call upon, that some aspects of GCMs should be used to calibrate (is calibrate the proper word here?) the adjustments for orbital variations that RSS uses, as long as the basis is not changed over time. Agreed all the temp. datasets have intrinsic problems, but the satellites at least have the potential to present the least recorder-influenced data. I take it your view is different on that?
Yes.
Now everyone can see that Monkton prefers and recommends a dataset that has been ADJUSTED using a GCM.
basically, on one had he criticizes GCMs and on the other hand relies entirely on a dataset that has been adjusted by a GCM.
“The RSS dataset is arguably less unreliable than other datasets in that it shows the 1998 Great El Niño more clearly than all other datasets (though UAH runs it close).”
“However, over the entire length of the RSS and UAH series since 1979, the trends on the mean of the terrestrial datasets and on the mean of the satellite datasets are near-identical. Indeed, the UK Met Office uses the satellite record to calibrate its own terrestrial record.”
“Now everyone can see that Monkton prefers and recommends a dataset that has been ADJUSTED using a GCM. Basically, on one had he criticizes GCMs and on the other hand relies entirely on a dataset that has been adjusted by a GCM.”
Good grief. Lew paper urgently required on the Mosher Stokes Daedal Indignation Syndrome.
Twice this week, I’ve encountered U.S. blog threads mentioning the Welsh team and the All Blacks. Not the same game or year mind you, but minor serendipity. Not so many folks here in the States know what a ‘try’ is. More’s the pity.
Mr Mosher says I criticise general-circulation models. In the head pisting, in figs. 2-3, I merely report the startling divergence between models’ predictions and observed temperatures. My oaoer at Scibull.com examines some of the reasons why the models are over-predicting warming by double.
Thank you Mosher, I love GCMs generally……hopefully that is something we have in common, hopefully 🙂
Cheers
But how did they measure tenths of a degree? I don’t recall but I read that reliable digital thermometers with compact batteries were not in use until the early 1980’s.
Where I live today the temperature swing has been 30 degrees in 5 hrs. how big of a mercury thermometer would you have needed in 1985 that had 300 gradients on it to measure in 10ths of a degree? Did that type of super accurate mercury thermometer ever even exist? Or were just temp.’s rounded off to whole number or to half numbers?
Then we have the problem of coverage. And urban heat effect. And proper coverage in the oceans, or in politically troubled countries. To think that these land based system can measure the “global temperature” to a tenth or couple tenths of a degree 40 or 50 yrs ago is absurd!
Regardless of what they measured, the data was recorded to the nearest degree C.
I should add that they used the standard issue, Mark One eyeball to do the extrapolating as well.
GISS estimate up to 1200 from a temp stations, what they don’t take into account is the vast changes in landscape and the effect on temps.
As the MET flag up in an area of 20 miles-
If we compare the climate statistics for three locations in Devon, one upland and the other two coastal,
namely Princetown, Plymouth and Teignmouth, each only 20 miles apart, you would think that the climate
of these three locations would be very similar. However, looking at the statistics below, you can see that their
climates are quite different. The reason for this is due, in the main, to the altitude and their proximity to the
prevailing wind of these locations. Princetown, high up on Dartmoor, is at an altitude of 453 metres above
mean sea-level, whereas Plymouth is 50 metres and Teignmouth is only 3 metres above mean sea-level.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/n/9/Fact_sheet_No._14.pdf
Add in changes in landscapes that have happened over the last , 5, 10, 20, 30…. years,
Nobody claims knowledge of the global average to 1/10ths or 1/100ths.
A global average is simply a prediction of the temperature at unsampled locations.
If you don’t know what the earth’s temperature was to a 1/10th C, then how can anyone claim with certainty that the earth has warmed by 0.5C?
When did we start using predictions as empirical data. We have theories based on predictions and fact based on empirical data.
Empirical data is still the gold standard of the scientific method. Predictions are for those that follow old mother sheppard . Satellites provide empirical data, therefore more reliable. Ignore the land based data sets they contain artifacts and facsimiles.
“Ignore the land based data sets they contain artifacts and facsimiles.”
No need to ignore them as such, rather explain why they are warming faster, and use SST’s instead as they show no divergence with UAH.
Mick.
It’s simple see any book on spatial stats. When you
“average ” temperature what you are really doing is predicting what the temperature is at unsampled locations.
For “prediction” read “guess”.
Fitzroy baroms were scaled in tenths of a Fahrenheit degree a couple of centuries ago.
Then there are those “adjustments”. How many times and for what reasons?
Seems we never hear the whole story in one discussion.
It’s a long story.
A very subtle change in some of the material quoted that I predicted would happen. Figure T3. CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, etc., in 2012, from Le Quéré et al.
First it was Co2 emmissions, then recently it was CO2 and cement production and now….CO2, cement production and land use.
We will soon be drip-fed this trio as if it were always there and nobody can deny. Farmers better watch out. Gov is already coming after your water rights, and will soon raise the heavy hand of taxation on your evil deed of feeding the people.
Obviously, you’re a racist, sexist, homophobe!! 🙂
I am. I cant help it.
Just remember voters, with all this info, it is every, every lib Dem political official in all 50 states and of course the DNC and the WH who believe that CLIMATE and Global Warming are more dangerous to America and to the world than……the Islamofascists. That alone tells me that liberalism is just another word for INSANITY.
“RSS dataset is not a good reference since it is known to be biased. UAH has been corrected for orbital decay,”
Putting aside any bias, known or otherwise- could I ask, what would cause a satellite’s orbit to decay given that they are at an altitude of 600 miles?
I understood that that far out there was nothing to course drag, certainly not enough occasional molecules to cause any noticeable slow down in the brief time they are aloft.
(Thank you for the little cars you keep sending to Mars for us. They are great fun)
Given your title, Sir Fartfarr, it is difficult not to give your words a thorough airing and due respect.
Tidal forces cause orbital decay. And even above the quantum level space is not quite empty.
Dear Chris, thank you for dropping the “Lord” business. It only resulted disrespect from those of us who prefer democracy and equality.
Now if only you’d lose the “Brenchley” bit and the logo as well, we’d start taking you seriously.
wondering when Michael Mann is going to drop the scientist bit.
Perhaps you would prefer that he didn’t use his own name. Lots of people have so little respect for their own opinions that, they will post them under some ersatz handle, to remain anonymous.
Well those folks are the experts on just what their opinions are worth !
Actually, here in the USA, we prefer a Republican form of Government to a Democracy; so much so that we charge the government to guarantee that to EVERY State in the Union. (US Constitution, Article IV, section 4 ).
Cockroaches, and termites also believe in equality.
Bravo, George.
It really is fascinating, the lengths some people will go in order to find an excuse to ignore what they would rather not know.
As homework, look up the definition of ad hominem.
In response to Old Fossil, my family name is Monckton of Brenchley. Get over it. And I have never posted under the name “Lord Monckton”. And Garter King of Arms disappointed that Cluck of the Parliaments by telling him, quite bluntly, that I am entitled to combine my coronet with any heraldic device I like as long as the resultant combination has not been registered by anyone else, which it hasn’t. And, moderators please note, my peerage is off topic. The legal opinion on my peerage is available for all to read at lordmoncktonfoundation.com
oldfossil,
Perhaps you could lose the “we’d” bit.
If you’re all for democracy and equality, how about speaking for yourself, and let others speak for themselves?
Lord Monckton,
But sea level seems to continue rising. U of Colorado says it is going up at about 3 mm/year while I understand that tide gauges indicate about half of that. How much could be due to the suggested slight warming of the ocean, how much to melting land ice, if any, and how much from ??? Or perhaps the sea level measurements are a mess. Could apply yourself to that question and let us know your findings in a later blog?
A non-trivial amount of that increase comes from the continued pumping of aquifers world wide.
I’d say, pretty trivial
In answer to DHR, I edited a paper by Prof. Niklas Moerner in 2011 under the title “Sea level is not rising”. If DHR goes to Coordinates Journal of Marine Navigation (mycoordinates.org) for November 2014, he will see quite a comprehensive article by me on sea level, showing how little sea-level rise most instruments show. The official U. of Colorado series is, alas, a fiction.
mothcatcher: Then you would be wrong.
Lord Monckton’s article can be found here
http://mycoordinates.org/our-influence-on-sea-level-is-negligible/
DHR, for unknown natural reasons yhenworld has been coming out of the LIA for over two centuries. Land ice has undergone melting, most readily seen in glaciers rather than ice caps. That will cause SLR, as will thermosteric rise from warming seawater. Historic tide guages are problematic because most land does not sit still. Satellite altimetry since 1979 shows SLR has not accelerated. AGW says it should have, given the warming that began around 1975 which should have accererated land ice loss. It is another underlying failure of AGW prediction.
Do we know how much of the estimated rise in mean sea level is accounted for by mid-ocean and unique regional changes (due to warmth or winds). Seeing the significant sea level increases in the western Pacific/eastern Indian Oceans makes me wonder how much that contributes to the “global” results.
I may have answered my own question by looking at Church, et al., (2011) which estimated tidal gauge sea level rise from 1993-2008 at 2.61 ± 0.55 (mm/yr) and tidal gauges plus satellite data at 3.22 ± 0.41 for the same period. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011GL048794/full
Still digesting their estimates and adjustments. But as a review of the consensus, it’s pretty good.
Sea level? Hmmm…
In terms of effects on coastal locations, this will equal the typical UK tidal range in about a thousand years. So, unless you mean it’s an indicator of continued AGW then it has no great significance. For that matter, is this not another example of attempting to measure averages which are way below the noise floor of the system, and which therefore are of questionable reliability?
Below I make the case that all of the rise in the global temperature trend last century can be linked to natural variability.
From 1998-present the rise in global temperatures from the late 1970’s-1998 which was due to natural causes has turned into a temperature pause.
What were the natural causes from the late 1970’s -1998 ,that caused the global temperature trend to rise?
High to Very High Solar Activity which lasted to year 2005.
PDO to Warm Phase during late 1970’s (the great climatic shift)
Volcanic Activity early 1980’s and 1992 then only to become very quiet post 1992.
AMO to warm phase 1995.
Super El Nino in 1998, with periods of more El Nino’s versus La Nina’s from the late 1970’s -1998.
A highly zonal atmospheric circulation as reflected in NAO/AO data.
A rise in ocean heat content which correlates to the rise in solar activity. Sunspot numbers exceeding 40 which translates to warming.
Since 1998 the natural forces promoting warming( from 1978-1998) have all subsided and are presently trending toward promoting a cooler climate going forward. This should persist for the next 30+ years.
Key Fact No. 1 …to March 2015 rather than 2014?
Thank you to Jimrjbob for catching that one.
Martin Armstrong created this graphic of climate cycles and civilizations, it is Armstrong’s belief that it is the Sun that has created the warmth over the past century not humans. He created a AI economic cycles computer model that gives prediction which have been impressive. He is now working with 2 others to create a climate model based on cycles which he says will be more accurate than the 95% of other climate models that have failed.
http://i0.wp.com/armstrongeconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Empires-Rise-Fall-Armstrong.jpg
The sun may well be important, but that’s just paperback stuff. Has he done one on UFOs as well?
“The sun may well be important, but that’s just paperback stuff. Has he done one on UFOs as well?”
No he has not done on on UFO’s but perhaps he should do one on retarded bloggers comments.
If you ask him nicely, maybe he’ll do one, just for you. Since it seems to be about the only thing you are capable of comprehending.
Pyramids of Giza built in Egypt around 2500 B.C. – wouldn’t that be considered a peak?
Rome collapsed in 700 A.D.? Rome was sacked in 410 and again in 455, never really recovering.
This is a graph of wishful thinking.
from Wikipedia…”The Eastern Empire existed as a counterpart to the Western Empire until the West’s fall in 476. Following the West’s fall, the East and West were de jure reunited as a single Empire. Following the fall of the West, the Eastern Empire would survive for another thousand years. During most of its existence, the East remained one of the most powerful economic, cultural, and military force in Europe, despite setbacks and territorial losses, especially during the Roman–Persian and Roman–Arab Wars.”
We the Giza Pyramids considered to be the peak of Egypt as a civilization? Some say 2700 to 2200bc was the peak of Egyptian civilization.
What is the scale of these temperature variations?
I don’t know what scale is being used by Armstrong for this chart. You could send him an email at his blog at armstrongeconomics.com His research is usually pretty careful and he has a huge following on his blog rivaling the New York Times so a few people think he knows what he is talking about. His claim to fame is his pi cycle business model which has had amazing accuracy in forecasting market turns to the day decades in advance and also his AI computer which predicted the breakup of the Soviet Union. Armstrong was named America’s top Economist by Equity Magazine about 25 years ago.
He is warning of a resumption of the Sovereign Debt crisis after Oct. 2015, this coming crisis will be much bigger than the 2008 banking crisis according to his models, the final collapse of the west should happen by 2032.95 which is the culmination of multiple important cycles in his model, he does not think the USA will survive that date.
https://twitter.com/tan123/status/584849140011536384
Natural versus man made ,various GHG contributions.
Since 1990 the temperature fore all datasets the temperature rose 0.25C while the prediction was 0.5C.
And the warmists know.
l think one pointer to the cooling of the climate taking place in the NH (at least on the Atlantic side). ls if the (Arctic blast) winters North America have had in the last 2 years start to become a increasing trend. Because if this weather pattern lasts for long enough then l think it leads to a chain of events that causes major climate cooling on at least the Atlantic side of the NH.
Agenda 21 is alive and well. Global Governance is the aim and Climate change is the key, it’s as simple as that.
I would add that Agenda 21 and ‘climate change’ are merely new fronts in the Gold War.
Re ARGO. It is adjusted, the raw data showed oceans were cooling see
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/page1.php
Here Josh Willis, the data gatekeeper, explains how when and why he adjusted the argo data. Bear in mind that temperature is one of the seven basic SI measurements and one we can measure with considerable accuracy, so apart from making depth corrections for changes in salinity and temperature the temperature record should stand unadjusted.
Willis however noticed that the net energy flux at the top of the atmosphere showed earth was gaining energy (recent paper says that IPCC models have made fundamental error in TOA )
Then he points to the satellite sea level data (including GIA adjustments) to say that after snow and ice melt are subtracted the sea level rise is due to thermal expansion, therefore oceans must be warming.
Finally the computer models say oceans should be warming.
Combining all three of these he justified altering the temperature data to show warming consistent with the models.
Given that all three data sets he used to make this correction are themselves riddled with uncertainty, large error margins, high noise to signal ratio then his temperature data should be the start from which the other data sets are challenged.
This is a prime case of altering good data from observation, to make it match the hypothesis.
The complete opposite of the proper scientific process.
PF, you don’t quite have the story right. Willis published the cooling paper, then a retraction after it wqs discovered that a number of the early ARGO floats had a cold temperature bias. See essay When Data Isn’t. He did not modify Argo data to solve the so called closure problem (SLR doe not equal the sum of estimated ice mass loss plus thermosteric rise). Three papers that attempted to calculate closure for short periods during the ‘pause’ all started from a presumption that SLR had appreciably slowed, and all had different estimates for the relative contributions. See essay Pseudo Precision. Monckton’s technical appendix is well worth a reread; ARGO is the best we have, but for many purposes still not good enough by far.
Willis made two adjustments. Mr Istvan is talking of his adjustment to the XBT bathythermograph data. XBT preceded ARGO. He then adjusted the ARGO dara too. The first adjustment may have been justifiable. The second, not so much.
I think its funny that people are calling the author out for ‘cherry picking ‘ given that climate ‘science’ and CAGW claims are based on the picking of some rather ‘rotten cherries’ Mann’s infamous stick being a classic example of not just ‘rotten cherries’ but artificial ones too.
The Guardian on Dana’s blog is now in paroxysm’s of furious angst at this development. No warming? Humanity saved? Can’t have that – think of my grant cheque! Think of Paris!
What Dana fails to understand is that the alarmists of the 70s who were saying that our coal burning was helping to bring on a new ice age had the better argument. After all, we are overdue for a major cooling episode and cold kills people. Cold brings starvation. Cold is brutal.
The whole bunch of rent-seekers need to get on the “new ice age” bandwagon as that will be much more salable over the next 30 years or so.
Reading over the post and the comments here today I was reminded of a quote that I think all involved in the climate “debate” should read and meditate upon.
I think that, at present, almost everyone involved in climate “science” does not understand how our weather system works. I think we may be a generation away from even beginning again to understand it.
Mark It is not necessary to understand how the climate system works to be able to make useful forecasts.
For forecasts of the possible timing and extent of the coming cooling using the perfectly obvious natural periodicities in the temperature time series see.
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2014/07/climate-forecasting-methods-and-cooling.html
What was the anomaly and was it up or down from February?
February was 0.327 so it dropped to 0.255 in March for RSS. For all anomalies since 1979, see:
ftp://ftp.ssmi.com/msu/monthly_time_series/rss_monthly_msu_amsu_channel_tlt_anomalies_land_and_ocean_v03_3.txt
18 years 4 months is Numberwang!
Thoughts,
The ocean heat content graph shouldn’t have a linear trendline slashed over it, the increase from 1965 and up through to last year shows a power-law curve.
The ocean heat content analysis from the early to mid 1970’s is the closest analog to the current sulfur dioxide atmospheric loading ramp up that has taken place in South East asia over the last 10 years. China has quadrupled its air pollution. This has a large cooling effect and is likely a driver of the negative PDO in recent years.
Using UAH and RSS combined is not a useful tool, Just because “they pull in opposite directions” could simply mean that the UAH has a problem with its Diurnal drift calculation and both RSS and UAH improperly account for tropical lower stratosphere impact in the TLT channel. One can’t simply combine series and expect that the compounding errors won’t make that new combined series useful at all.
The reason that the NODC converts to zetajoules is because this is the most useful output when looking at the earth’s energy (im)balance.
More empty trollery from the reverse entropists.
Re orbitaI decay.
I wish someone could confirm this for me:
90% of the atmosphere is below you at 13 miles altitude, yes? You can see the curvature of the Earth and the atmosphere is seen as blue band against the inky void.
(Jeremy Clarkson or James May went up in an English Electric Lightning fighter of the South African Air Force and he told me.)
The ISS orbits at, what, 200 miles- and it needs the occasional nudge from the thrusters to keep it there due to orbital decay caused by drag from the wisp of atmosphere remaining even at that height.
What sort of atmospheric drag remains to act on anything at 600 miles?
Surely that far into space the vacuum is as total as anywhere else in the inner solar system?
Recall too, what happened to the Skylab station in the 1970’s, when the expansion of the outer atmosphere due to the changing solar cycle was not taken into account, and the thing crashed to Earth before steps could be taken to boost it’s orbit a nudge.
Oh, well, and least we got another chance to play that old Devo tune.
Point being that the outer extent of the atmosphere is not static.
Awesome