First of all, consider the source, UNSW is the same outfit that sponsored the disastrous “ship of fools” aka The Spirit of Mawson.
Secondly, Dr. Roy Spencer has been looking for this for years in the satellite data and hasn’t found it.
Thirdly, radiosonde coverage in their area of study is pretty sparse. From the University of Graz:
While many users are familiar with traditional radiosonde temperature and moisture data, the spatial and temporal coverage of radiosonde data are limited, especially over ocean and high latitude areas. Satellite remote sounding provides far greater temporal and spatial coverage of the entire planet.
Fourth, if they have really found it, where’s the picture or graph of it in the press release? You’d think that would be front and center. Instead, it isn’t shown, and they don’t even mention the title of the paper or the DOI. Essentially they are saying “trust us, no need to read the paper”. I’ve looked for the paper on the ERL website, and have yet to locate it. It is not listed in today’s ERL news feed (as of this writing) (UPDATE: located, and the abstract is posted below). It’s like Lewandowsky’s seepage paper, that had a press release over a week ago, but the paper is still not published.
Fifth, Steve Sherwood is a well known climate alarmist, and his confirmation bias seems quite strong to me. For example, see this WUWT post where we state “Professor Sherwood is inverting the scientific method”.
Sixth, by their own admission, they had to throw out data, and to do a series of adjustments to station data to find the signal they were looking for. That sounds more like a selecting process in the scope of confirmation bias than science. (added) The real question is, how many stations did they keep as they define as “good”?
Color me skeptical, I’m sure Dr. Roy Spencer will have something to say about it.
From the University of New South Wales:
New publicly available dataset confirms tropospheric hot spot and increased winds over Southern Ocean
Researchers have published results in Environmental Research Letters confirming strong warming in the upper troposphere, known colloquially as the tropospheric hotspot. The hot has been long expected as part of global warming theory and appears in many global climate models.
The inability to detect this hotspot previously has been used by those who doubt man-made global warming to suggest climate change is not occurring as a result of increasing carbon dioxide emissions.
“Using more recent data and better analysis methods we have been able to re-examine the global weather balloon network, known as radiosondes, and have found clear indications of warming in the upper troposphere,” said lead author ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science Chief Investigator Prof Steve Sherwood.
“We were able to do this by producing a publicly available temperature and wind data set of the upper troposphere extending from 1958-2012, so it is there for anyone to see.”
The new dataset was the result of extending an existing data record and then removing artefacts caused by station moves and instrument changes. This revealed real changes in temperature as opposed to the artificial changes generated by alterations to the way the data was collected.
No climate models were used in the process that revealed the tropospheric hotspot. The researchers instead used observations and combined two well-known techniques — linear regression and Kriging.
“We deduced from the data what natural weather and climate variations look like, then found anomalies in the data that looked more like sudden one-off shifts from these natural variations and removed them,” said Prof Sherwood.
“All of this was done using a well established procedure developed by statisticians in 1977.”
The results show that even though there has been a slowdown in the warming of the global average temperatures on the surface of the Earth, the warming has continued strongly throughout the troposphere except for a very thin layer at around 14-15km above the surface of the Earth where it has warmed slightly less.
As well as confirming the tropospheric hotspot, the researchers also found a 10% increase in winds over the Southern Ocean. The character of this increase suggests it may be the result of ozone depletion.
“I am very interested in these wind speed increases and whether they may have also played some role in slowing down the warming at the surface of the ocean,” said Prof Sherwood.
“However, one thing this improved data set shows us is that we should no longer accept the claim that there is warming missing higher in the atmosphere. That warming is now clearly seen.”
###
UPDATE: The paper has been located. http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/10/5/054007
Atmospheric changes through 2012 as shown by iteratively homogenized radiosonde temperature and wind data (IUKv2)
Steven C Sherwood and Nidhi Nishant
Letter
We present an updated version of the radiosonde dataset homogenized by Iterative Universal Kriging (IUKv2), now extended through February 2013, following the method used in the original version (Sherwood et al 2008 Robust tropospheric warming revealed by iteratively homogenized radiosonde data J. Clim.21 5336–52). This method, in effect, performs a multiple linear regression of the data onto a structural model that includes both natural variability, trends, and time-changing instrument biases, thereby avoiding estimation biases inherent in traditional homogenization methods. One modification now enables homogenized winds to be provided for the first time. This, and several other small modifications made to the original method sometimes affect results at individual stations, but do not strongly affect broad-scale temperature trends. Temperature trends in the updated data show three noteworthy features. First, tropical warming is equally strong over both the 1959–2012 and 1979–2012 periods, increasing smoothly and almost moist-adiabatically from the surface (where it is roughly 0.14 K/decade) to 300 hPa (where it is about 0.25 K/decade over both periods), a pattern very close to that in climate model predictions. This contradicts suggestions that atmospheric warming has slowed in recent decades or that it has not kept up with that at the surface. Second, as shown in previous studies, tropospheric warming does not reach quite as high in the tropics and subtropics as predicted in typical models. Third, cooling has slackened in the stratosphere such that linear trends since 1979 are about half as strong as reported earlier for shorter periods. Wind trends over the period 1979–2012 confirm a strengthening, lifting and poleward shift of both subtropical westerly jets; the Northern one shows more displacement and the southern more intensification, but these details appear sensitive to the time period analysed. There is also a trend toward more easterly winds in the middle and upper troposphere of the deep tropics.
The paper is open access: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/10/5/054007/pdf/1748-9326_10_5_054007.pdf
Here is the figure from the paper that should have been in their press release:
The SI is pretty thin, containing a single figure with no explanation: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/10/5/054007/media/erl054007_suppdata.pdf
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I am not surprised. I think they will be publishing more bogus “proof” of AGW, as we approach the Paris “last gasp”. Many will believe anything “peer” reviewed, no matter how contrived. Just look at the debunked Mann-o-hockey stick, and the amount of “legs” that piece of turd obtained.
This will probably live just as l long, I fear. The deck has been engineered and stacked against us, assuring that skeptics winning battles, will always be losing the war. Facts are irrelevant. GK
Anybody seen any stratospheric cooling in the past 20 years? They always go back to 1979 at a time when there is some ambiguity due to previous vulcanism.
It’s like saying you are not dead yet because we have averaged your heart rate since 1979 and the average has not yet reached zero.
At his website, the lead author recommends RealClimate.org, New Scientist, and Wikipedia as “authoritative sources of information about climate change” (among others).
Some other interesting comments there as well such as “A few of my colleagues claim that model predictions of future warming are excessive. They have no calculations to back this up, and in my view their claims have no valid scientific foundation – though they can’t be proven wrong per se until warming is fully realised.”
http://web.science.unsw.edu.au/~stevensherwood/ClimateFAQ.html
“until warming is fully realised”
Every hear of “Hollywood accounting”?
That’s where blockbuster movies take in hundreds of millions of dollars, but somehow people who are supposed to receive compensation don’t because they will only receive their money when the film makes a profit. The film may make money to pay you, but until “profit is fully realized”, go pound sand.
See: David Prowse
only receive their money when the film makes a profit.
===============
great scam. pay yourself a percentage of the gross, and everyone else a percentage of the profits. you can’t lose and they can’t win.
This is why agents with an IQ over 50 insist that an actor’s remuneration is tied to the gross, not the profit.
Sherwood et al 2008 “found the hotspot” by using wind shear – looks like they are using the same trick
The entire science is now supported by adjusted data only.
There has to be a reckoning some day.
Bill, read it again…it’s even worse……they went back a re-adjusted the already adjusted temp data
From where will the accounting come from? Certainly no government is going to demand it since it is the governments that want the bogus “crisis” in the first place.
The entire scam is now supported by adjusted data only. No longer a science.
These (cough, cough) scientists don’t care about the validity of their methodology – it is all about getting the message out to the media. Government knows the effects of propaganda on the bulk of the human population and the dutiful media is only too happy to oblige.
There is a saying….whoever gets the lie out first, wins.
Kokoda wrote: “These (cough, cough) scientists don’t care about the validity of their methodology …”
If this were true, it wouldn’t have taken Sherwood more than a decade to produce this method of analyzing the available data. What we don’t know is how many equally valid methods were available for analyzing the data and whether all sensible alternatives produce the same result.
It makes sense to me. The hotspot is causing the sea ice to expand around the Antarctic. / sarc
Now it is a hotspot in trends, where it otherwise was a real hotspot in real temperature.
Last time the hotspot was found, they found it by measuring windspeed instead of temperature.
What is left now, the humidity maybe?
Before the discovery of this hot spot how much of the energy was thought to have gone into the ocean because it wasn’t appearing in the atmosphere?
… revealed by iteratively homogenized …
If that isn’t a red flag, what is?
it·er·a·tion (ĭt′ə-rā′shən)
n.
3. Mathematics A computational procedure in which a cycle of operations is repeated, often to approximate the desired result more closely.
@Svend Ferdinandsen
Now it is a hotspot in trends, where it otherwise was a real hotspot in real temperature.
Last time the hotspot was found, they found it by measuring windspeed instead of temperature.
What is left now, the humidity maybe?
I think you misunderstand the purpose of this paper. It’s to announce that finding the hotspot is no longer an issue. Not to actually describe where the hot spot IS.
This paper can now be cited to senior people like Obama as proof that there is a hotspot. For this you don’t have to have found a hotspot – you just have to have a paper saying there is one,…
Exactly right, Dodgy Geezer. They just needed a paper they can then quote.
Is the hotspot on the equator, where El Nino lives, or further south?
The Southern Ocean means the circumantarctic seas of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans, so a lot farther south.
OK, other than this:
That CO2, as part of the “Green House Effect”, causes some warming in some part of the atmosphere
what does the possible existence of this “hot spot” prove?
I doesn’t prove that humans are the cause of the “hot spot” nor does it show precisely what, if any, portion of the “hot spot” may have been derived from anthropogenic CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.
I suspect that if one were to manipulate enough data in just the proper manner it could be shown that there is a “hot spot” over the South Pole.
“It doesn’t prove that humans are the cause of the {alleged} ‘hot spot.'”
This is, indeed, the point to emphasize here.
It’s worse than that. What would the hot spot temp. have to be in order to warm the near surface by .8 of a degree. Remember, water has 1000 Times the heat capacity of air. My opening bid is 12,000 degrees.
“The inability to detect this hotspot previously has been used by those who doubt man-made global warming to suggest climate change is not occurring as a result of increasing carbon dioxide emissions.”
What unmitigated balderdash! No respectable skeptic claims that climate is not changing due to increasing carbon dioxide emissions. We question the notion that CO2 is the control knob for the atmosphere.
I am a geologist with little statistical training so excuse my naivety. Perhaps someone can explain to me why they need to torture the data as they do. The radiosonde data dates back to the 1930s. Can’t the data at each station be compared directly (corrected for seasons)? If at a particular location (understanding that the balloons drift) changes over time then you have information to focus on. If there is only a random or cyclical pattern then you haven’t seen the change you are looking for. Interpolated data is a “guess” with no real way of verifying it.
“Naivety” is believing evidence of significant man-made global warming can be produced in any way OTHER than torturing measured data. The first step in the “torture” process is knowing what shape you believe that data should form. Then you hammer that baby until it takes on the shape you know in your heart is inside there somewhere. The statistical tool-box at your disposal is almost unlimited, particularly if you do not confine any particular tool to its intended usage.
They try to pull the same thing not to long ago with the Antarctic Sea Ice anomaly. They are also suggesting it with the satellite temperature data.
As I have maintained all along AGW theory is the only theory that makes the data adapt to it rather then the theory adapting to the data.
It is unheard of and as they become more desperate this becomes more and more apparent.
Please see my answer to your question in the reply to the issue of ‘homogenisation’ well up the page.
Read the paper then did some research. Sherwood’s previous 2008 attempt got shot down by Christy et. al. In 2010. In 2013 a major paper used COSMIC to develop sensor corrections for both day and night readings at 10 different altitudes for 13 different radiosonde instrumentation packages. These are used to make corrections for numerical weather forecasting. No need for homogenization. There are many radiosonde stations that have had no ‘station moves’, for example 31 along the pacific coast from Panama to Alaska used to calibrate UAH mid and uppertroposphere r^2 0.98, Christy 2014 APS testimony, transcript page 341.
There was no need for this homogenization hash other than to ‘manufacture’ a weak hot spot. Pick a set of good global stations (NOAA provides a set of 87, for example), apply the instrument bias corrections, compute zonal averages without kriging. When done, no hot spot, just like both UAH and RSS. This was done by Christy compared to CMIP5 models for the APS review led by Koonin. See testimony transcript p.352 for the figure.
rist van says: “Sherwood’s previous 2008 attempt got shot down by Christy et. al. In 2010.”
I don’t think so. In his 2010 paper, Christy used the Sherwood data, I would not call that “shot down” in any way. As I understand it, the satellite people use the radiosonde data for calibration.
Exactly how did Christy, et. al., “use” this “data” in “his 2010 paper (cite?)?”
Add another entry into the dictionary for homogenization.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Homogenization or homogenisation is any of several processes used to make a mixture of two mutually [exclusive] [data sets] the same throughout. (The prefix homo- coming from the Greek, meaning the same.)[1] This is achieved by turning one of the [data sets] into a state consisting of extremely small particles distributed [the way we want] throughout the [data set]. A typical example is the homogenization of [temperatures], where the [outliers] are reduced in size and dispersed uniformly through the rest of the [data set).
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homogenization_%28chemistry%29
http://patriotpost.us/opinion/19138
This is the real deal, not the BS this article is conveying.
It will be interesting to follow the development of this. Probably there is some important political event coming up and this type of hit and run science is a negotiations lubricant. Before it is debunked, the damage is done.
I think it would be wise to listen to what Christy/Spencer comment on this. In principle they and the RSS people should be able to replicate the data in this paper now that they all know where to look.
You do not “replicate” data. So, they won’t.
You observe data.
Human agents “replicate” contrived things like “data.”
Why would Christy, et. al. waste their time replicating this junk??
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_%28statistics%29
To be science, results have to repeatable by the same methods by different workers or validated by other means of observation or measurement.
That map is a joke. Looks like kriged spatial data to me. I’m sure it’s just chance that the anomalies all center on the longitude grid lines. Sure.
I don’t know, “linear regression and cringing” Or was that k-rigging the results?
Now I’m not a scientist but is this study trying to explain the prevailing winds that cause the shift in Antarctic ice that was covered in a post at wuwt as a 60 to 70 year cycle tending to shift increasing ice to the west end of the continent and thereby create a bit more “open ocean’ in the east? If that’s the case somebody should send the article to them!
The tone of this blog post is pretty judgmental regarding sherwoods character rather than the research. Shouldn’t we just highlight the publication of a potentially immortal paper and then await skilled analysis +\- critique as appropriate (assuming they have provided enough information.)
The best thing we have going for us as skeptics is that we assess information on its own merits and think for ourselves. If you have already made your mind up about the paper before you read it then there isn’t much point reading it! That sort of stuff makes us look silly which we mostly aren’t
TC,
If the was worth the paper is was printed on it would not be published in a open access pal-reviewed rag like Environmental Research Letters.
“Shouldn’t we just highlight the publication of a potentially immortal paper…”
I think a certain amount of skepticism (and ridicule) is appropriate for a guy who has once again found something no one else can find.
In fact, I’m reminded of the magic potion scene in “Big Trouble in Little China”:
Burton: This [potion] does what again, exactly?
Egg Shen: Huge buzz! [gulp] Ohhh, good! See things no one else can see. Do things no one else can do!
Burton: Real things?
Good question. 🙂
How long do we have to put up with the data being changed ,manipulated or said to be in error when it does not support AGW theory?
This article is so pathetic in that they have tried to make the data once again conform to the theory.
I am fully expecting Dr. Spencer ,to show this is nothing more then AGW manipulation of the data.
More propaganda to promote their asinine theory.