The source? “Possible artifacts of data bias in the recent global surface warming hiatus,” published this week in Science, by long-time global warming alarmist Tom Karl et al.
Abstract:
Much study has been devoted to the possible causes of an apparent decrease in the upward trend of global surface temperatures since 1998, a phenomenon that has been dubbed the global warming “hiatus.” Here we present an updated global surface temperature analysis that reveals that global trends are higher than reported by the IPCC, especially in recent decades, and that the central estimate for the rate of warming during the first 15 years of the 21st century is at least as great as the last half of the 20th century. These results do not support the notion of a “slowdown” in the increase of global surface temperature.
Proper first impression response (though I confess it didn’t dawn on me first thing): “These results do not support …” does not entail that no other results do. I could study the colors of cats’ eyes in my neighborhood and conclude, “These results to not support the notion of a ‘slowdown’ in the increase of global surface temperature.”
That conclusion would be true. But it would also be irrelevant to the question whether “the pause” is real.
Imagine for a moment that you’re investigating the question, “Is there an elephant in the house?” It’s a 9-room house. Each of eight investigators finds an elephant in a different one of eight rooms. Eight rooms, eight elephants. But one investigator finds no elephant in the bathroom. Would you conclude from his finding, “No elephant in the house”?
So the crucial, first question we should ask is, “Do other results support the notion of a ‘slowdown’ in the increase of global surface temperature”? And the answer, we shall find, is, “Yes.”
But I’ll go there in a moment. First a quick list of early critiques of Karl et al.’s article. Within a day or two of its appearance, the following critical articles had already appeared:
- The most technical so far (not surprising granted the author, my friend) Ross McKitrick’s “A first look at ‘Possible artifacts of data bias in the recent global surface warming hiatus’ by Karl et al. Science 4 June 2015. Ross begins (perhaps having thought of the point I just made about “These results do not support …”) by listing eight datasets that do “support the notion of a ‘slowdown’ in the increase of global surface temperature” (HadCRUT [land surface and ocean], HadSST [ocean surface only], NCDC [land surface and ocean], GISS [land surface and ocean], RSS satellite [lower troposphere], UAH satellite [lower troposphere], and, together in the final graph, Ocean heat content 0-2000 meter [Argo floats] and NOAA SST estimates) and provides nice graphs of all seven. Then he points out all kinds of statistical and data-quality problems in the article and concludes:
Are the new K15 adjustments correct? Obviously it is not for me to say – this is something that needs to be debated by specialists in the field. But I make the following observations:
* All the underlying data (NMAT, ship, buoy, etc) have inherent problems and many teams have struggled with how to work with them over the years
* The HadNMAT2 data are sparse and incomplete. K15 take the position that forcing the ship data to line up with this dataset makes them more reliable. This is not a position other teams have adopted, including the group that developed the HadNMAT2 data itself.
* It is very odd that a cooling adjustment to SST records in 1998-2000 should have such a big effect on the global trend, namely wiping out a hiatus that is seen in so many other data sets, especially since other teams have not found reason to make such an adjustment.
* The outlier results in the K15 data might mean everyone else is missing something, or it might simply mean that the new K15 adjustments are invalid.
It will be interesting to watch the specialists in the field sort this question out in the coming months.
- Likely to be the most troubling to the climate alarmist establishment (because she’s the least identified as a “denier”) so far is Judith Curry’s “Has NOAA ‘busted’ the pause in global warming?” She points out that the datasets on which Karl et al. rely have greater uncertainties than others that they purport to correct. She then writes, “My bottom line assessment is this. I think that uncertainties in global surface temperature anomalies is substantially understated. The surface temperature data sets that I have confidence in are the UK group and also Berkeley Earth. This short paper in Science is not adequate to explain and explore the very large changes that have been made to the NOAA data set. The global surface temperature datasets are clearly a moving target. So while I’m sure this latest analysis from NOAA will be regarded as politically useful for the Obama administration, I don’t regard it as a particularly useful contribution to our scientific understanding of what is going on.”
- Patrick Michaels, Richard Lindzen, and Paul C. Knappenberger take on Karl et al. in “@NOAA’s desperate new paper: Is there no global warming ‘hiatus’ after all?” They begin with what ought to be an obvious point but in our innumerate society (and it’s amazing how many scientists, even, are innumerate, not in that they don’t know how to do complicated math but in that they forget basic math principles, like statistical significance levels, especially when forgetting serves their purposes): “The main claim by the authors that they have uncovered a significant recent warming trend is dubious. The significance level they report on their findings (.10) is hardly normative, and the use of it should prompt members of the scientific community to question the reasoning behind the use of such a lax standard.” Then they point out various weaknesses in the reliability of the data on which Karl et al. rely. They conclude, “… even presuming all the adjustments applied by the authors ultimately prove to be accurate, the temperature trend reported during the “hiatus” period (1998-2014), remains significantly below (using Karl et al.’s measure of significance) the mean trend projected by the collection of climate models used in the most recent report from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It is important to recognize that the central issue of human-caused climate change is not a question of whether it is warming or not, but rather a question of how much. And to this relevant question, the answer has been, and remains, that the warming is taking place at a much slower rate than is being projected.”
That’s an important point. The climate models are the only grounds for fearing dangerous manmade warming. The eight more commonly used datasets show that they grossly exaggerate CO2’s warming effect. Karl et al.’s fiddled–er, reconstructed–dataset only shows that they somewhat less grossly exaggerate. That’s not exactly a ringing vindication. It still leaves us with no rational basis to fear dangerous warming, and so no rational basis for policy to mitigate it.
- Bob Tisdale and Anthony Watts take on the new study in the aptly titled “NOAA/NCDC’s new ‘pause-buster’ paper: A laughable attempt to create warming by adjusting past data.” In addition to pointing out all kinds of uncertainties about the datasets on which Karl et al. rely–uncertainties much greater than those that show the “pause”–they point out that Karl et al. choose 1951 to 2012 and 1950 to 1999 as the reference period against which to compare the period of the alleged pause. But of course, there was significant global cooling going on in the 1950s through early 1970s–enough to cause panic about a coming ice age. As Tisdale and Watts say, “If NOAA would like to revise their estimates of future global warming to reflect the more benign warming rate of 0.1 deg C/decade from 1950 to 1999, it would be a big step toward their coming to terms with reality.” Right. That would be essentially cutting IPCC’s estimates of CO2-induced warming by a third, which would put NOAA and Karl et al. solidly in the camp of–horror of horrors!–AGW deniers!
- The Global Warming Policy Foundation chimes in with “Reports of the death of the global warming pause are greatly exaggerated.” (Hat tip to Mark Twain.) The article summarizes “Key pitfalls” of Karl et al.’s paper thus: “The authors have produced adjustments that are at odds with all other surface temperature datasets, as well as those compiled via satellite.” “They do not include any data from the Argo array that is the world’s best coherent data set on ocean temperatures.” “Adjustments are largely to sea surface temperatures (SST) and appear to align ship measurements of SST with night marine air temperature (NMAT) estimates, which have their own data bias problems.” “The extend of [sic; They extend?] the largest SST adjustment made over the hiatus period, supposedly to reflect a continuing change in ship observations (from buckets to engine intake thermometers) is not justified by any evidence as to the magnitude of the appropriate adjustment, which appears to be far smaller.” Then they expand on those in eight numbered points and conclude: “This is a highly speculative and slight paper that produces a statistically marginal result by cherry-picking time intervals, resulting in a global temperature graph that is at odds with those produced by the UK Met Office and NASA. Caution and suitable caveats should be used in using this paper as evidence that the global annual average surface temperature ‘hiatus’ of the past 18 years has been explained.”
- Not to be left out, the inimitable Lord Christopher Monckton weighs in with “Has NOAA/NCDC’s Tom Karl repealed the laws of thermodynamics?” He begins with a humorous rehearsal of a Congressional committee hearing at which both he and Karl were expert witnesses and he had shown that global average temperature had actually been falling for the past eight years, which Karl contested but the data showed true, and that hurricane frequencies hadn’t risen in 100 years, which Karl challenged, whipping out a chart that to his horror showed that Monckton was indeed wrong–they actually hadn’t risen for the last 150 years. The history is entertaining, and I can vouch for its general accuracy–I was there, as another expert witness. Then Monckton zeroes in on the topic suggested by his title. Even assuming Karl et al.’s temperature reconstruction is right, the resulting scenario is that the ocean near-surface temperatures rose at a rate that would require considerable movement of heat into that region from above or below, but neither the troposphere nor the deep ocean showed sufficient warming to be the origin of that migrating heat. Hence, for Karl et al.’s scenario to be accurate, we must assume, as I shall here try to summarize as concisely and simply as I can, that heat radiated, both upward and downward, from cooler to warmer masses, which conflicts with the laws of thermodynamics.
Meanwhile, what seems to me about the most obvious response is this: We should keep comparing apples and apples as much as possible.
The most reliable global temperature data from 1979 to the present come from satellites. They are least subject to local contamination, sample change or inadequacy, and variation in method and instrumentation over time. And they show, as Monckton points out in “El Nino strengthens: the Pause lengthens,” that “For 222 months, since December 1996, there has been no global warming at all (Fig. 1). This month’s RSS temperature – still unaffected by a slowly strengthening el Niño, which will eventually cause temporary warming – passes another six-month milestone, and establishes a new record length for the Pause: 18 years 6 months.”
By the way, keep in mind the psychological effect of the WSJ headline: “Study finds no pause in global warming.” That sounds so conclusive!
But had WSJ reported on the last-cited article, which appeared at essentially the same time as NOAA’s, it could have run the headline “Study finds pause in global warming.”
Indeed, WSJ could have run the two stories exactly parallel to each other on the same day.
No single study settles a matter.
And finding no elephant in the bathroom does not mean there’s none in the living room.
The Karl et al. paper is fatally flawed but that doesn’t mean that eventually the slight warming could not recommence.
But at what rate?- its minuscule so far over 355 years according to the Central England Temperature linear fit of 0.26 Deg per Century from 1659 to 2014. No cherry-picking with this long record and lets face it, its insignificant and of no ‘catastrophic’ consequence.
http://s1167.photobucket.com/user/OSlope/media/1659%20to%202014%20CET.jpg.html
Incidentally on that graph shown above I would challenge anyone to show me the influence of CO2 on the temperature. But I hear someone saying but see the temps lie above the line after 1990. But then so do they between 1700 and 1750 and during the 1800’s when there would have been no significant influence.
Judith Curry has an excellent article:
http://judithcurry.com/2015/06/04/has-noaa-busted-the-pause-in-global-warming/#comment-709175
Again, keep pushing the RSS and UAH datasets as those being most reliable. Buy media time to concisely refute Karl Krap – let’s face it folks, the media isn’t going to suddenly change their stripes from Team Obama to Team Balanced.
Luboš Motl has some common sense observations here:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2015/06/karl-et-al-hiatus-killer-is-research.html
Would somebody please tell me how this changes anything about the current model incoherency? I mean the gap between the present global temperature and what the models average predicted, in the present reality.
If Karl’s paper is accepted as valid, then it is a statement that we don’t actually yet know how to compute a global temperature — past or present. And thus, all of Climate Science is impeached. But if it is rejected, then the pause necessarily exists as we can compute a global temperature — past of present. And thus, all of Climate Science is impeached.
The solution to this will be to trot out Karl if an outgroup mentions the pause. And ignore it and the pause otherwise.
again +100
From that perspective, they’re in double jeopardy, jquip. They really need an “unprecedented” spin in the press and a “Consensus” of the spellbound to “make it go away” now.
Dawg, if you read through the RealClimate thread noted here in a post by Middleton you’ll see that they’re already doing this. For Gavin’s part he begins by stating the obvious — that these are data products and there are no ‘global temperatures’ but ‘global temperature estimates.’ Stating that the NCDC paper is meaningless as the other data products all largely agree with one another. This is the defense of the credibility of Climate Science[1] — including the new paper.
He then goes on a strategic withdrawal with respect to NCDC. He substitutes ‘temperature’ for ‘temperature estimate.’ He tries to bargain with desired ends by noting that the lowered overall trend should be acceptable to skeptics — over an above the raw data. That the skeptics haven’t put forward their own data products (new models) — because data products are superior to data apparently. And that the zero is such a minor number that small changes can move a trend value away from it trivially, ergo the hiatus is trivial — despite that the same is true of every number in the real line.
So there we have it: The NCDC refutes skeptics, even though it means nothing to Climate Science. Because the other Climate Science models refute NCDC.
But mark well that Gavin is permanently on the record as stating that we have no manner in which to measure global temperature. And with it then, there is no validity in speaking of a trend established from numbers that were manufactured, rather than dealing with the raw data directly.
[1] Note he claims these are statistical products. But of course, the normal things you would find with statistics — error bars and density functions — are still in absence. This makes his defense a confession: They have no empirical results, or any plans of such, by which they validate their data products. That they are still tinkering with them endlessly.
This “study” is not directed at weather and climate professionals. It is directed at the MSM, UN cheerleaders, members of Congress, the Beltway, and the so-called “Low Information” crowd. The timing of this study’s release is obvious.
Exactamento! And in that sense, the “study” is a rousing success for the warmist camp. Whatever the holes that can be poked into it, it’s already too late. The damage has been done.
The pressure will keep mounting all the way to the Paris Climate Conference. The warmists have deep pockets and know how to orchestrate a powerful disinformation campaign.
It will take a lot of underground resistance from discreetly skeptical climate negotiators to make sure that nothing binding comes out of Paris.
I’ll say it may be a joke, a spoof by some of the NOAA’s disgruntled researchers, fed-up with everlasting ‘corrections’ .
Wishful thinking?
Few weeks ago all of the British media was reporting on benefits of large amounts of chocolate consumption, soon to find out it was a send-up by a journalist dr.med.
Since one can’t tell any more what is reality form a ‘joke’, from now on I am using my own ‘corrected’ data, anyone is welcome to it
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CRUTEM4-F.gif
with the accompanying data file . It is free, so don’t expect a refund, but do take apt note of the graphs’ legend.
Muddy up the water some more and the press declares a brand new breakthrough. Started with Nixon, then Clinton and has now become a basic damage control tactic, now most recently applied to science by the flailing desperate alarmists.
Am I premature, or is this excuse #53?
The best analogy I can think of is this: you don’t know you’ve caught a fish until the fish realises they are caught and start struggling to get free.
This is nothing more than a very dim fish whose been caught for years but has been so dim witted that they’ve only just realised they are caught hook line and sinker.
Reblogged this on Centinel2012 and commented:
OK here is the deal Looking back 4 or 5 thousand years there appears to be a cycle of ups and downs ranging around 1,000 to 1,100 years with a swing in temperatures of around 1.3 to 1.4 degrees C. Then there is a shorter cycle of 60 to 70 years with a swing of temperature of .3 to .4 degrees C. Lastly there is warming from CO2 which when modeled properly using a logistics curve (sensitivity value of around .7 to .9 C per doubling of CO2) will give an increase in temperature of between 1.1 and 1.2 degrees C but it peaks at between 800 and 1,000 pppm at that value and at 400 ppm we have already realized about a 1/3 of that amount so CO2 can only add .75 additional degrees C even at CO2 levels well over 1000 ppm.
When these three items are properly alined, based on historic data going back 2,000 years, a model that matches NASA-GISS month values using a running 12 month average very closely can be constructed and it shows there will be a slight pause that will last until 2035 when a different alingment of the cycles will again cause temperature to go up. The model uses 1650 AD as the base year with a world temperature estimated to be around 13.5 degrees back then. The model works because it correctly uses the three observed movements in global temperature. Unfortunately since these movements greatly exceed human life times they can be ignored by politicians that use the hysteria that they generate to get laws that give them power over the people. All this is for COP21 at the end of the year.
E. Calvin Beisner,
Thank you for this post.
Much appreciated.
This is more than a scam. It is the responsibility for lack of preparation people on the harsh winter. Summer temperatures are used. Meanwhile, the drop in temperature of the North Atlantic (AMO) causes severe winter in the eastern US and Europe. Atlantic will be less active in the winter.
Solar activity is falling.
Thanks, Dr. Beisner, for your clear words.
It is very difficult to rewrite climate history. NOAA did not succeed.
Those that reject Science are now in another state (or ‘fit’ might be more accurate) of rationalization — their main argument — the faux ‘pause’– has been once more discredited –but that won’t stop them from using it again.
I very much doubt that warrenlb is capable of rejecting science, for the simple reason that he doesn’t understand science, or even know what it is.
Referring to a “faux pause” is the height of ignorance. Many others, including the recent head of the IPCC acknowledge that global warming has stopped. Just a couple of many:
Dr. Jochem Marotzke – 19th November 2009: ”We don’t really know why this stagnation is taking place at this point.”
The ‘stagnation’ continues, six years after Marotzke’s admission.
And:
Dr. David Whitehouse: Statistically speaking it is accurate to say that according to HadCrut3 the world’s temperature has not increased for the 16 years between 1995 and 2011, though many prefer the more conservative ten years post-2001. This is not a ‘sceptical’ claim just a straightforward description of the data.
And:
Question: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?
Dr. Phil Jones: “Yes, but…”
Yes, but. There are no ‘buts’! Global warming has either stopped, or it hasn’t. Even Nature admits global warming has stopped.
Who to believe, warrenlb, or real scientists?
I see that warren is still trying to define “science” as being anything that agrees with his religion.
MarkW
I see that warren is still trying to define “science” as being only that which agrees with his religion, as written from on high by the anointed priests of his religion in the holy papers of his religion.
So you see Science as religion (and presumably your religion you call science?)
warrenlb, so your contention is that the faux doesn’t give you pause. That you agree wholeheartedly with Gav, that this demonstrates that falsity of the hiatus. Then you must certainly agree that every data product that shows the faux ‘pause’ is scientifically proven to be false. That they all must be scrapped as nasty myth. And that every bit of work, prediction, or model based on them must go the way of phlogistons. That this is part of the self-correcting method of science.
And that we should speak not one more word about any political goals based on provisional knowledge that has now been proven to be inappropriate. That is: Everything the IPCC has ever produced.
If you have the stones to actually embrace Science and falsifiability, then I’ll question your judgement in accepting this new paper. But I will applaud you roundly and justly for valuing knowledge over utilitarian ideological end goals.
I embrace the science and scientific findings of all the scientific institutions on the planet, including this paper by NOAA. Are you saying they’re wrong and you’re right?
Well, I’m glad you embrace all scientific findings. But it’s not about me, NOAA is stating that they’re right and all other data products are wrong. And as we know that you embrace scientific findings, that you also then embrace this proof from NOAA that every other data product is false and therefore no longer valid science. This is necessary if you are to state that the pause doesn’t exist. But it also means that all work derived from those false data products is reliant on false inputs. That is, all previous conclusions arising from false inputs are — themselves — no longer valid. Provably. And we need to start over from scratch.
That is the consequence of stating that NOAA is right about this. Completely aside from whether they in fact are or are not.
You say
“.. this proof from NOAA that every other data product is false and therefore no longer valid science. This is necessary if you are to state that the pause doesn’t exist. But it also means that all work derived from those false data products is reliant on false inputs. That is, all previous conclusions arising from false inputs are — themselves — no longer valid. Provably. And we need to start over from scratch.”
You expect anyone to accept this unsupported fallacy? You’ve provided no data or reasoning to demonstrate your claim.
warrenlb says:
I embrace the science and scientific findings of…
…of everything you agree with, and you arbitrarily reject everything you disagree with.
You are the quintessential cherry-picker. No one cherry-picks more flagrantly than you do. It would be embarassing, but your eco-religion blinds you to how you are perceived by others.
Ten days ago there was a growing list of Warmists who were openly admitting that global warming has stopped (using words like “hiatus”, “pause” and various other synonyms for stopped).
Well, that was getting out of hand, and we could almost hear the Narrative shift gears. The new talking point went out to the Green Congregation: “Global warming never stopped!” Those are your new marching orders, and like a good little parrot you’re emitting that new pseudo science.
So from now on no one in the alarmist crowd will admit that global warming has stopped. It was bad enough trying to keep the public worried over a tiny 0.7º wiggle in temperature, over a century. What if people started repeating the fact that global warming stopped almost twenty years ago? Even worse, what would happen in only 18 months, when the “hiatus” is 20 years old?
Can’t have that! The whole house of cards might collapse. So your new marching orders are: DENY that global warming has stopped! Maintain and reinforce the Big Lie. It worked for Hitler, didn’t it?
“The extend of [sic; They extend?]…”
The sic should be “The extent of…”, not “They extend of…”
Tyrants depend on a Big Lie . The biggest anti-life lie I can conceive is that the molecule which is the 1 = 1 partner with H2O in forming the backbone of carbon based life is Satan .
Too true .
I want to see the audit trail from our distance to and spectrum of the Sun to the spectral map of our sphere to our best estimated mean temperature . The Planck function and its integral StefanBoltzmann put absolute constraints on the radiative balance between our 2 spheres ( considering a control surface surrounding Earth & its atmosphere ) . The divergence theorem then requires that the mean for the interior ( minus any internal source ) must equal the mean calculated for that surface .
It takes about half a dozen APL expressions to implement these functions and this geometry . So I have .
The simplest case , just adding up all the energy impinging on a point in our orbit , which gives the temperature of a uniform gray , flat spectrum , ball . Our estimated surface temperature is about 3% warmer than the ~ 276.3 to ~ 280.9 from ap- to peri- helion of a gray ball ( assuming a Solar temperature of about 5780K ) .
This whole fraud is over a variation of about 0.3% , just 3%8 the annual variation , but I have yet to see a quantitative explication of even that 3%
Furthermore , Venus’s surface temperature is 225% the gray body temperature in its orbit . These basic , experimentally verifiable , computations show that James Hansen’s claim that this extreme solar heat gain is due to a runaway greenhouse effect is quantitatively absurd by an order of magnitude . Yet he has never been called on it . ( Well , I guess I am . Show me the equations ; I’ll implement them and see if they make sense . )
These are the essential , classical , experimentally verifiable — even at a highschool level , relationships which must be groked and are not superseded when one moves on to a class in NavierStokes .
I don’t know if Hansen calculated Venus’s runaway greenhouse effect, or not, but here is a peer-reviewed paper that did:
S. I. Rasoonl & C. de Bergh (1970). “The Runaway Greenhouse Effect and the Accumulation of CO2 in the Atmosphere of Venus”. Nature 226 (5250): 1037–1039. Bibcode:1970Natur.226.1037R. doi:10.1038/2261037a0. PMID 16057644.
Comments?
Venus’s problem is that it was too close to the sun, and therefor the water in [its] atmosphere from [its] formation never had a chance to precipitate out.
Had the Earth been in the same orbital position as Venus, it would look the same as Venus.
Had Venus been in the same orbital position as the Earth, it would look as Venus does today.
That alone is sufficient to explain the difference.
BTW, if you are going to compare planets, please explain why Mars is so cold, despite the fact that it has 100 times as much CO2 in it’s atmosphere as does the Earth.
I’ve given the essential argument above . Most “climate scientists” don’t seem to even understand orthogonal function decomposition and why the flat spectrum , gray , body temperature is as fundamental a value as the use of Kelvin temperature itself . I go thru the computations in my Heartland presentation linked at http://cosy.com/Science/HeartlandBasicBasics.html .
I’ve heard Gore give mouth time to radiative balance but I see no evidence that many “climate scientists” appreciate it as inviolable quantitative physical law . To put it colloquially , most don’t appear to know how to calculate the temperature of a croquet ball under a sunlamp .
If there is some way to get around the divergence theorem , it should be able to be stated in at most a few testable equations . I have Zero interest in any non-quantitative verbiage .
& DB , it’s not an issue of Venus being closer to the sun . The gray body temperature factors that out leaving just , essentially , the ( 4th root of ) ratio of the planet’s absorptivity wrt the Sun’s spectrum to its emissivity over the whole spectrum ( the planet’s absorptivity == emissivity at each wavelength ala Kirchhoff-Stewart ) to determine the solar heat gain ratio . There is no material spectrum within an order of magnitude extreme enough to generate Venus’s parameters . It must have internal , geothermal , heat and the net heat flow must be outward , not inward .
MarkW , Like the Earth and Mercury , Mars is within a few percent of its orbital gray body temperature . The fundamental relationship is that the temperature of a body , holding its spectrum as seen from outside constant , is directly proportional to the temperature of the source and inversely proportional to the square root of the distance to it . Here’s a graph :
http://cosy.com/Science/AGWpptSBplanetTemps.jpg
The nature link will not help unless you have a login pass (or lots of money) but NASA – bless their hearts – provide a free copy:
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1970/1970_Rasool_DeBergh_1.pdf
The paper is 1970 vintage . I have not seen any ongoing citations of it so cannot judge whether as a contribution to understanding the Earth situation it has stood the test of more recent research . Nevertheless interesting parts to it , even some geochemistry. Thanks Warren.
mikewaite , Scanning the R&B paper I don’t see that it addresses the radiative balance which determines the temperature of a planet which can be accounted for by energy absorbed from the sun . It has only the most primitive statement of the expression for radiative balance which assumes a black spectrum in the IR — which is in the wrong direction to explain Venus’s temperature . And it does not consider that that needed ratio is over 25 to 1 , and given Venus’s extreme albedo , that is an order of magnitude beyond any known material spectrum .
Then it totally word waves any derivation of temperature at the surface . And it is patently irrelevant because only a couple of percent of incident solar energy reaches Venus’s surface . I think , all tho I see no computation , that all these assertions of increasing heat simply as a function of depth in the atmosphere involve a lot of double counting of energy .
I can look at SB or Planck and find the equations and their derivations and experimental verification w/o any reference to any planet . And then I can apply those equations to the particulars of a planet . Where is a ( now days open on the web ) textbook which goes thru the supposed physics independently of application to any particular planet ? I don’t even know a source , other than my own , for the equations for radiative balance between arbitrary source and object spectra .
Bob Armstrong,
Correct. The Venus question has repeatedly been put to bed. climate alarmists won’t even pay attention to the fact that Venus is considerably closer to the Sun.
The Venus question rarely comes up any more, because there are far too many arguments refuting the Venus/Earth comparison. A keyword search for “Venus” will get anyone started who might be interested. They will see that the CO2 argument is nonsense.
Lot of straw men arguments in this article – they are easy to spot. I can list some of them out if anyone cares, it has been discussed many times before.
Translation: I know I can’t refute anything, but I’ll pretend that I’m too important to be bothered and hope that nobody catches on.
Mr. Bob Armstrong.
…
What percentage of the surface temperature on Venus is due to atmospheric effects (radiative) and what percentage is not?
That’s a good question . You know the equations ? I’ll implement them in succinct executable notation .
Venus is a much larger planet than Mars, and has a more condensed atmosphere because of its higher gravity. Higher pressure; higher temperature.
Show me the equations .
Does a fully compressed scuba tank sitting in the sun come to a higher temperature than an empty one next to it ?
So you are saying that when you pump up your bicycle tyre the heat it generates is forever maintained?
Because it is under pressure?
Venus’ atmospheric pressure does not cause it’s high temp. In a mind-experiment that creates it’s atmosphere instantaneously then it would …. but it does not maintain it. Same with your bike tyre … it cools.
Also Venus may be nearer the Sun than Earth but it’s albedo is ~3x less than that of Earth (Bond) with only 10% of Solar insolation warming it.
Makes a big difference.
The ave temp of 464C is caused by CO2.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/venusfact.html
“The ave temp of 464C is caused by CO2.”
That’s no explanation .
The extremely low albedo wrt the sun is why it is impossible for its surface temperature to be explained in terms of the energy it absorbs from the sun . To get that > 25 to 1 ratio in absorptivity to emissivity to create the 2.25 ratio of surface to gray body temperature in its orbit , it would have to be an order of magnitude more reflective , less emissive in the IR than aluminum . And there is no substance which fits the bill .
Venus must have very substantial internal , ie , geothermal , heating .
That NASA fact sheet , btw , lists its grossly misnamed “black body” temperature based on the calculation for same step function spectrum which produces the ubiquitous 255K meme for Earth , but shows its utter uselessness .
Black-body temperature (K) 184.2 254.3 0.724
The only value useful in computations is the gray body , flat spectrum , temperature calculated from the total incident energy density via Stefan Boltzmann .
Toneb says:
Also Venus may be nearer the Sun than Earth but it’s albedo is ~3x less than that of Earth
Is that why Venus is the brightest object in the sky, after the sun and moon?
The hypothesis that CO2 is the entire cause of Venus’ high temperatures cannot withstand scrutiny. To find out why, see here and here and here and here and here.
Venus is hotter than Mercury and Mercury is closer to the sun than Venus
Yep , much hotter . Did you see my graph above : http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/06/noaa-study-takes-world-by-storm-no-global-warming-pause/#comment-1956104 ?
It is impossible to explain that temperature by the energy it absorbs from the Sun . And it only takes what should be undergraduate computations of radiative balance which should be required in any curriculum claiming to award degrees in “climate science” .
The fact is, the HEADLINES in the mainstream media were all about how the pause doesn’t exist. Boom.
End of story. Since 90% of all liberals believe we are roasting to death even in winter, this soothes them and prepares them to attack anyone pointing out these obvious lies, that ‘we are going to roast to death’ and thus arm the robbers who want to tax thin air so they can collect trillions in taxes on energy.
And this is why the fraud is happening and relying more and more on blatant lies.
It’s primarily an “income redistribution” plan; theft legislated by the UN, whose leaders have been involved in numerous financial frauds and global anti-environment scams.
It’s always been an evil plan, and deception is essential – it’s a game, and it’s sponsored by the same people who sponsored the PR that instigated all US war involvement this century.
We should start a lottery on the date thermometer bans become the focus of government hysteria that replaces gun bans.
And the MSM buys in.
http://www.weather.com/news/weather/video/climate-change-hiatus-an-illusion
The more this research paper is promoted the more damage it does to NOAA and the IPCC. Even my school teacher brother-in-law was too embarrassed to defend it during our regular climate “biffo”. All you have to do is ask, “who’s right, the IPCC and 100’s of scientists who have identified the pause, or NOAA who has gone back and adjusted figures to make the pause disappear?” Enough confused sheep and the whole flock panics.
This is known as a ‘teachable moment.’
Does anyone remember last week, when we had an 18 year hiatus?
I miss that hiatus already.
But can anyone clarify for me.
Did Karl create the upward trend from 1998 by reducing the warming trend from the 1980’s to 1998? Is that what happened? If not, then please ignore the following:
Because I distinctly remember thinking, when I first came across skeptical talk related to temperature record tampering – that if they were fiddling the historical temps downward and the current temps upward, then at some point they would press against the limits of what they considered to be permissible adjustments – and then, especially with more accurate modern instrumentation and wider coverage, nature would be forced to show herself.
What are they going to do if the “hiatus” continues through until 2030? Would they tell us that they now realize that the 1998-2015 hiatus was actually a period of cooling, so that they can call the 2015-2030 hiatus a warming period?
Now, it seems possible that EVEN IF we found ourselves in a world of perpetual hiatus, it would be feasible to create an ongoing warming trend – by continually depressing the warming trend of the past. This could be done every 15 years or so, so that we would at all times be told that we live in a world of ongoing warming, whilst the century would end at more or less the same temperature as when it began.
(P.S. I don’t actually expect any more hiatus. I didn’t expect this one. But who knows?)
As another aside, has it occurred to anyone that Karl et al. have by reducing the trend of the 1990’s and the 1998 peak warming, expressed doubts about the seriousness of global warming in the 1990’s.
This effectively makes them global warming skeptics.
Quite specifically, they are suggesting that the extent of global warming recognized for the 1990’s by the IPCC was and is still exaggerated.
Doesn’t that make them Global Warming Deniers?
But jokes aside, this does seem like pure comedy now. We surely can’t go on borrowing claimed warming from the past to create trivial upward trends for the present. Can we?
Is that what these people have been reduced to?
If I have misunderstood the precise nature of the so-called “correction” then excuse my rant.
The more you borrow past time (to add to your graph) then the ‘increasing’ line becomes longer, and this gives you (or rather, Karl) the position statement you are looking to make. What surprises me is that I can’t see anywhere what this does to ‘per decade’ rise. anyone?
“Hydrogen-containing polar molecules like ethanol, ammonia, and water have powerful, intermolecular hydrogen bonds when in their liquid phase. These bonds provide another place where heat may be stored as potential energy of vibration, even at comparatively low temperatures. Hydrogen bonds account for the fact that liquid water stores nearly the theoretical limit of 3 R per mole of atoms, even at relatively low temperatures (i.e. near the freezing point of water).”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_capacity
Only the oceans are able to accumulate heat, thanks to an unusual properties of water. Their heat capacity is huge. With ocean circulation cycles we have the type of AMO and PDO. They are mainly regulate the temperature in the northern hemisphere.
And your point is?
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:1979/plot/wti/from:1979/to:2011/trend/plot/esrl-amo/from:1880/plot/esrl-amo/from:1979/to:2011/trend/plot/wti/from:2010/trend/plot/esrl-amo/from:2010/trend
The average difference surface temperature the North Atlantic in AMO cycle is about 0.5 degrees C. Is it enough?
It is remarkable that the trend of temperatures in the North Atlantic so quickly turned away.
http://weather.gc.ca/data/saisons/images/2015060700_054_G6_global_I_SEASON_tm@lg@sd_000.png
“For it is always possible to find some way of evading falsification, for example by introducing ad hoc an auxiliary hypothesis, or by changing ad hoc a definition. It is even possible without logical inconsistency to adopt the position of simply refusing to acknowledge any falsifying experience whatsoever. Admittedly, scientists do not usually proceed in this way, but logically such procedure is possible”
Spot on – formulated by Karl Popper in “The logic of scientific discovery”.
Here’s a plan.. somewhat off topic and probably not possible (or is it)
Launch a few satellites to look back at earth day side and night side with wide spectrum radiation detectors and measure the radiative energy coming from earth and compare that with the radiative energy being added by the sun and presto energy balance??
what are the problems with this? accuracy? cost?
sorry if this post is out of place but its gotta be better than guessing with a bucket and a thermometer
Re: “The extend of [sic; They extend?] the largest SST adjustment made over the hiatus period…..”, I would guess “the extent”. I base this on other postings where “extend” is often written instead of “extent”, and the fact that “extent” appears to make sense here.
Apologies if this has already been covered; I have not read the other comments yet.
IanM.