Guest Post by Werner Brozek, Edited by Just The Facts:
Some of you may have wondered why the title and the above plot are comparing different data sets. The reasons are that GISS and HadCRUT4.3 are very similar. As well, UAH6.0 is now very similar to RSS. However WFT does not have the latest UAH nor Hadcrut. So when you plot UAH on WFT, you actually are plotting version 5.5 and not even 5.6. Version 5.5 has not been updated since December 2014, however HadCRUT 4.2 has not been updated since July 2014, so those slopes are really off by a huge amount due to the fact that HadCRUT had record levels over the last year. But GISS and RSS are up to date on WFT.
The times of 58 months and 162 months were chosen to give a symmetric picture of shorter and longer terms where the slopes diverge between the satellites and ground based data sets.
In the next four paragraphs, I will give information for HadCRUT4.2 in July 2014, HadCRUT4.3 in April 2015, UAH5.6 in March 2015 and UAH6.0 in April 2015. The information will be
1. For how long the slope is flat;
2. Since when the warming is not statistically significant according to Nick Stokes’s calculation;
3. Since when the warming is not statistically significant according to Dr. McKitrick’s calculation where applicable;
4. The previous hot record year; and
5. Where each data set would rank after the given number of months.
For HadCRUT4.2 in July 2014, the slope was flat for 13 years and 6 months. There was no statistically significant warming since November 1996 according to Nick Stokes. Dr. McKitrick said there was no statistically significant warming for 19 years. The previous record warm year was 2010. As of July 2014, HadCRUT4.2 was on pace to be the third warmest year on record.
For HadCRUT4.3 in April 2015, the slope is not negative for any period worth mentioning. There is no statistically significant warming since June 2000 according to Nick Stokes. The previous record warm year was 2014. As of April, HadCRUT4.3 is on pace to set a new record. Note that on all criteria, HadCRUT4.3 is warmer than HadCRUT4.2.
For UAH5.6 as of March 2015, the slope was flat for an even 6 years. There was no statistically significant warming since August 1996 according to Nick Stokes. Dr. McKitrick said there was no statistically significant warming for 19 years, however this would be from about April 2014. The previous record warm year was 1998. As of March 2015, UAH5.6 was on pace to be the third warmest year on record.
For UAH6.0 as of April 2015, the slope is negative for 18 years and 4 months. There is no statistically significant warming since October 1992 according to Nick Stokes. The previous record warm year was 1998 as well. As of April, UAH6.0 is on pace to be the 8th warmest year. Note that unlike the HadCRUT comparison, UAH6.0 is colder than UAH5.6.
A year ago, Dr. McKitrick used HadCRUT4.2 and UAH5.6 to come up with times for no statistically significant warming on each of these data sets. In the meantime, HadCRUT4.2 has been replaced by HadCRUT4.3 which has been setting hot records over the past year. However UAH5.6 has been replaced with UAH6.0 which is much cooler than the UAH5.6 version. As a result, his times are no longer valid for these two data sets so I will not give them any more.
For RSS, Dr. McKitrick had a time of 26 years. From Nick Stokes’s time of November 1992 for last April to the present time of January 1993, there is very little change in the starting time, however we are now a year later. Therefore I would predict that if Dr. McKitrick ran the numbers again, he would get a time of 27 years without statistically significant warming.
For UAH5.6, Dr. McKitrick had a time of 16 years. However, Nick Stokes’s new time for UAH6.0 is from October 1992. Since this is three months earlier than the RSS time, I would predict that if Dr. McKitrick ran the numbers again, he would also get a time of 27 years without statistically significant warming for the new UAH6.0.
For Hadcrut4.2, Dr. McKitrick had a time of 19 years. At that time, Nick Stokes’s had a time since October 1996. However Nick Stokes’s new time for Hadcrut4.3 is from June 2000. It would be reasonable to assume that Dr. McKitrick would get 15 years if he did the calculation today.
In the sections below, as in previous posts, we will present you with the latest facts. The information will be presented in three sections and an appendix. The first section will show for how long there has been no warming on some data sets. At the moment, only the satellite data have flat periods of longer than a year. The second section will show for how long there has been no statistically significant warming on several data sets. The third section will show how 2015 so far compares with 2014 and the warmest years and months on record so far. For three of the data sets, 2014 also happens to be the warmest year. The appendix will illustrate sections 1 and 2 in a different way. Graphs and a table will be used to illustrate the data.
Section 1
This analysis uses the latest month for which data is available on WoodForTrees.com (WFT). All of the data on WFT is also available at the specific sources as outlined below. We start with the present date and go to the furthest month in the past where the slope is a least slightly negative on at least one calculation. So if the slope from September is 4 x 10^-4 but it is – 4 x 10^-4 from October, we give the time from October so no one can accuse us of being less than honest if we say the slope is flat from a certain month.
1. For GISS, the slope is not flat for any period that is worth mentioning.
2. For Hadcrut4, the slope is not flat for any period that is worth mentioning. Note that WFT has not updated Hadcrut4 since July and it is only Hadcrut4.2 that is shown.
3. For Hadsst3, the slope is not flat for any period that is worth mentioning.
4. For UAH, the slope is flat since January 1997 or 18 years and 4 months. (goes to April using version 6.0)
5. For RSS, the slope is flat since December 1996 or 18 years and 5 months. (goes to April)
The next graph shows just the lines to illustrate the above. Think of it as a sideways bar graph where the lengths of the lines indicate the relative times where the slope is 0. In addition, the upward sloping blue line at the top indicates that CO2 has steadily increased over this period.
When two things are plotted as I have done, the left only shows a temperature anomaly.
The actual numbers are meaningless since the two slopes are essentially zero. No numbers are given for CO2. Some have asked that the log of the concentration of CO2 be plotted. However WFT does not give this option. The upward sloping CO2 line only shows that while CO2 has been going up over the last 18 years, the temperatures have been flat for varying periods on the two sets.
Section 2
For this analysis, data was retrieved from Nick Stokes’s Trendviewer available on his website. This analysis indicates for how long there has not been statistically significant warming according to Nick’s criteria. Data go to their latest update for each set. In every case, note that the lower error bar is negative so a slope of 0 cannot be ruled out from the month indicated.
On several different data sets, there has been no statistically significant warming for between 14 and 22 years according to Nick’s criteria. Cl stands for the confidence limits at the 95% level.
The details for several sets are below.
For UAH6.0: Since October 1992: Cl from -0.042 to 1.759
This is 22 years and 7 months.
For RSS: Since January 1993: Cl from -0.023 to 1.682
This is 22 years and 4 months.
For Hadcrut4.3: Since June 2000: Cl from -0.015 to 1.387
This is 14 years and 10 months.
For Hadsst3: Since June 1995: Cl from -0.013 to 1.706
This is 19 years and 11 months.
For GISS: Since November 2000: Cl from -0.041 to 1.354
This is 14 years and 5 months.
Section 3
This section shows data about January 2015 and other information in the form of a table. The table shows the five data sources along the top and other places so they should be visible at all times. The sources are UAH, RSS, Hadcrut4, Hadsst3, and GISS.
Down the column, are the following:
1. 14ra: This is the final ranking for 2014 on each data set.
2. 14a: Here I give the average anomaly for 2014.
3. year: This indicates the warmest year on record so far for that particular data set. Note that the satellite data sets have 1998 as the warmest year and the others have 2014 as the warmest year.
4. ano: This is the average of the monthly anomalies of the warmest year just above.
5. mon: This is the month where that particular data set showed the highest anomaly. The months are identified by the first three letters of the month and the last two numbers of the year.
6. ano: This is the anomaly of the month just above.
7. y/m: This is the longest period of time where the slope is not positive given in years/months. So 16/2 means that for 16 years and 2 months the slope is essentially 0. Periods of under a year are not counted and are shown as “0”.
8. sig: This the first month for which warming is not statistically significant according to Nick’s criteria. The first three letters of the month are followed by the last two numbers of the year.
9. sy/m: This is the years and months for row 8. Depending on when the update was last done, the months may be off by one month.
10. Jan: This is the January 2015 anomaly for that particular data set.
11. Feb: This is the February 2015 anomaly for that particular data set, etc.
14. ave: This is the average anomaly of all months to date taken by adding all numbers and dividing by the number of months.
15. rnk: This is the rank that each particular data set would have for 2015 without regards to error bars and assuming no changes. Think of it as an update 20 minutes into a game.
| Source | UAH | RSS | Had4 | Sst3 | GISS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.14ra | 6th | 6th | 1st | 1st | 1st |
| 2.14a | 0.170 | 0.255 | 0.564 | 0.479 | 0.68 |
| 3.year | 1998 | 1998 | 2014 | 2014 | 2014 |
| 4.ano | 0.483 | 0.55 | 0.564 | 0.479 | 0.68 |
| 5.mon | Apr98 | Apr98 | Jan07 | Aug14 | Jan07 |
| 6.ano | 0.742 | 0.857 | 0.835 | 0.644 | 0.93 |
| 7.y/m | 18/4 | 18/5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 8.sig | Oct92 | Jan93 | Jun00 | Jun95 | Nov00 |
| 9.sy/m | 22/7 | 22/4 | 14/10 | 19/11 | 14/5 |
| Source | UAH | RSS | Had4 | Sst3 | GISS |
| 10.Jan | 0.261 | 0.367 | 0.690 | 0.440 | 0.75 |
| 11.Feb | 0.157 | 0.327 | 0.660 | 0.406 | 0.80 |
| 12.Mar | 0.139 | 0.255 | 0.680 | 0.424 | 0.84 |
| 13.Apr | 0.065 | 0.174 | 0.655 | 0.557 | 0.71 |
| Source | UAH | RSS | Had4 | Sst3 | GISS |
| 14.ave | 0.156 | 0.281 | 0.671 | 0.457 | 0.78 |
| 15.rnk | 8th | 6th | 1st | 2nd | 1st |
If you wish to verify all of the latest anomalies, go to the following:
For UAH, version 6.0 was used. Note that WFT uses version 5.5 however this version was last updated for December 2014 and it looks like it will no longer be given.
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/tlt/tltglhmam_6.0beta2
For RSS, see: ftp://ftp.ssmi.com/msu/monthly_time_series/rss_monthly_msu_amsu_channel_tlt_anomalies_land_and_ocean_v03_3.txt
For Hadcrut4, see: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut4/data/current/time_series/HadCRUT.4.3.0.0.monthly_ns_avg.txt
For Hadsst3, see: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/HadSST3-gl.dat
For GISS, see:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
To see all points since January 2014 in the form of a graph, see the WFT graph below. Note that Hadcrut4 is the old version that has been discontinued. WFT does not show Hadcrut4.3 yet. As well, only UAH version 5.5 is shown which stopped in December. WFT does not show version 6.0 yet.
As you can see, all lines have been offset so they all start at the same place in January 2014. This makes it easy to compare January 2014 with the latest anomaly.
Appendix
In this part, we are summarizing data for each set separately.
RSS
The slope is flat since December, 1996 or 18 years, 5 months. (goes to April)
For RSS: There is no statistically significant warming since January 1993: Cl from -0.023 to 1.682.
The RSS average anomaly so far for 2015 is 0.281. This would rank it as 6th place. 1998 was the warmest at 0.55. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in April of 1998 when it reached 0.857. The anomaly in 2014 was 0.255 and it was ranked 6th.
UAH6.0
The slope is flat since January 1997 or 18 years and 4 months. (goes to April using version 6.0)
For UAH: There is no statistically significant warming since October 1992: Cl from -0.042 to 1.759. (This is using version 6.0 according to Nick’s program.)
The UAH average anomaly so far for 2015 is 0.156. This would rank it as 8th place. 1998 was the warmest at 0.483. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in April of 1998 when it reached 0.742. The anomaly in 2014 was 0.170 and it was ranked 6th.
Hadcrut4.3
The slope is not flat for any period that is worth mentioning.
For Hadcrut4: There is no statistically significant warming since June 2000: Cl from -0.015 to 1.387.
The Hadcrut4 average anomaly so far for 2015 is 0.671. This would set a new record if it stayed this way. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in January of 2007 when it reached 0.835. The anomaly in 2014 was 0.564 and this set a new record.
Hadsst3
For Hadsst3, the slope is not flat for any period that is worth mentioning. For Hadsst3: There is no statistically significant warming since June 1995: Cl from -0.013 to 1.706.
The Hadsst3 average anomaly so far for 2015 is 0.457. This would rank 2nd if it stayed this way. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in August of 2014 when it reached 0.644. The anomaly in 2014 was 0.479 and this set a new record.
GISS
The slope is not flat for any period that is worth mentioning.
For GISS: There is no statistically significant warming since November 2000: Cl from -0.041 to 1.354.
The GISS average anomaly so far for 2015 is 0.78. This would set a new record if it stayed this way. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in January of 2007 when it reached 0.93. The anomaly in 2014 was 0.68 and it set a new record.
Conclusion
Why are the new satellite and ground data sets going in opposite directions? Is there any reason that you can think of where both could simultaneously be correct? Lubos Motl has an interesting article in which it looks as if satellites can “see” things the ground data sets miss. Do you think there could be something to this for at least a partial explanation?
Updates:
RSS May: With the May anomaly at 0.310, the 5 month average is 0.287 and RSS would remain in 6th place if it stayed this way. The time for a slope of zero increases to 18 years and 6 months from December 1996 to May 2015.
WFT Update: A few days ago, WFT has been updated and now shows HadCRUT4.3 to date.
UAH5.5 has also been updated but it shows UAH5.6 and not UAH6.0, so it cannot be used
to verify the 18 year and 4 month pause for UAH6.0.
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https://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2013/03/11/is-ocean-heat-content-data-all-its-stacked-up-to-be/
This data contradicts the points Climate Pete keeps trying to make. Climate Pete’s observations being very subjective.
Ocean heat, even if accepted as claimed, represents a 0.01 deg C or 0.02 deg rise in temp in 11 years. I get that water is dense and holds a lot of heat so spare me the lecture. But are we really going to conclude that catastrophic global warming is occurring based on an ‘estimate’ of 0.02 deg of ocean warming in a decade? Especially when many, many other data sources (satellite, wx models, balloons, sea level) disagree.
I suspect my average body temp increases by more than .02 deg when I take a single sip of morning coffee. It has taken the earth’s oceans 10 years to warm that much. Am I supposed to be afraid of that ? This is crazy.
Science or Fiction says on
June 9, 2015 at 3:01 pm
Good point. 🙂 Will it be possible for you to show us the input figures and the calculation?
Yes Mary – you are quite right.
The volume of the oceans is about 1.33 billion cu km
Therefore the mass of the oceans is about 1.33 * 10^21 kgs
To raise the temperature or 1 kg of water by 1 degree C needs 4180 joules
So to raise the oceans by 1 degree, multiply those 2 figures and you will need 5.5 * 10^24 joules
An increase in heat content of 5.5 * 10^22 joules will therefore raise the (average) ocean temperature by 0.01 degrees C
Not too scary
I like the idea of computing the energy in eV. At 6.24 e19 eV/J it makes the numbers look reallyscary – or the original number useless for getting a real feel.
No, you are mistaken, and besides, you aren’t saying it right. The thermal energy content of your body is (gracing you with a body mass of a mere 50 kg) on the order of 50×10^3 x 4 x 310 = 62 MJ. The thermal energy of a 1 gram sip of HOT coffee is 1 x 4 x 360 = 1440 J, but of that only 1 x 4 x 50 = 200 J count. Obviously, the sip of coffee does (on average) “warm you up” but by nowhere near a full 0.02 degree. You’d have to go out to a lot more significant digits than that.
So here’s the way it works in climate science. Presenting the warming in degree C is enormously not alarming, since none of us could detect a change in temperature of 0.02 C with our physiology if our lives depended on it. Presenting the warming as a fraction of the total heat content is not alarming, because one has to put too many damn zeros in front of the first zero, even if one expresses the result as a percent. So instead, let’s use an energy unit that is truly absurd in the context of the total energy content of the ocean, I mean “your body” — joules aren’t scary enough because 1440 isn’t a terribly big number, let’s try ergs, at 10^{-7} J/erg. Now your sip of coffee increased your body’s heat content by 1.44 x 10^10 ergs! Oh No! That’s an enormous number! Let’s all panic! Don’t take another sip, for the love of God, and in fact we’re going to have to ban the manufacture of coffee world wide in case coffee sipper increase their energy content by 5 x 10^10 ergs, which (as everybody knows) is certain to have a catastrophic effect on your physiology, major fever, could cause your cell’s natural metabolism to undergo a runaway warming that leaves you cooked where you stand like a Christmas Goose!
And yes, you said this quite right — you are supposed to be afraid of this, afraid enough to ban the growing or consumption of coffee, afraid enough to spend 400 billion dollars a year (if necessary) to find coffee substitutes that are just like drinking coffee (except for the being hot part), afraid enough to give your government plenipotentiary powers to work out any deal necessary with the United Nations or countries like Columbia that are major coffee exporters since the worldwide embargo on coffee will obviously impact them even more than a coffee-deprived workforce will impact us.
And consider yourself lucky! If they had used electron volts instead of ergs, the numbers would have looked like the graph above on a suitably chosen scale, because 1 ev = 1.6 x 10^{-19} joules, or 1440 J = 9 x 10^21 eV, just about 10^22 eV. Now that is really scary. Heck, that’s almost Avogadro’s Number of eV, and everybody knows that is a positively huge number. If we don’t ban coffee drinking right now you could end up imbibing 3, 4 even 5 x 10^22 eV of energy in a matter of seconds, and then it will be Too Late.
Now do you understand? Your body sheds heat at an average rate of roughly 100 W, and during that one small sip — if it takes 1 whole second to swallow — your energy imbalance was almost 1340 W! In comparison to 0.5 W/m^2 out of several hundred watts/m^2 total average insolation, if you took a 1 gram sip every hour (1440/3600 ~ 0.5 W) surely you can see that you would without any question die horribly in a matter of hours. In fact, you might as well go stick your head in a microwave oven, especially a microwave oven hooked up to a flashlight battery illuminating a couple of square meters, because that’s well known to be able to melt any amount of arctic ice.
Oh, one final comment. If you choose to present your body’s coffee-sip overheating in eV, be sure to never, ever, discuss probable error or the plausibility of being able to measure the effect against the body’s natural homeostatic, homeothermic temperature regulatory mechanisms without which you would die in short order coffee or not. Because 5 x 10^22 eV plus or minus 10^20 or 10^21 eV doesn’t have the same ring to it…
rgb
RGB,
Microergs would be even scarier still!
rgbatduke,
Thanks for posting what’s needed to be said for a long time. As usual, your comments make sense.
The alarmist brigade loves to use those big, scary numbers. To the science-challenged, that’s probably an effective tactic. It’s the “Olympic-sized swimming pools” argument (“Ladies and gents, that is the equivalent of X number of Olympic-sized swimming pools! Run for your lives!”)
Context is everything in cases like these. If the oceans continue to warm by 0.23ºC/century (if…), then on net balance it’s probably a win-win: the Northwest passage will eventually be ice-free, reducing ship transit times and fuel use; vast areas like Canaduh, Siberia, etc., will be opened to agriculture, and so on. What’s the downside? Bueller …?
But when they translate the numbers into ergs or joules, they can post really enormous numbers — which mean nothing different, except to the arithmetic challenged.
That isn’t science, it’s propaganda. Unfortunately, it works on some folks. But the rest of us know they’re trying to sell us a pig in a poke. Elmer Gantry would be impressed with the tactic.
“HadCRUT4.3 is warmer than HadCRUT4.2.”
Steven Goddard has an interesting take on the difference between versions 2 and 3
http://realclimatescience.com/2015/06/data-tampering-on-the-other-side-of-the-pond/
http://thefederalist.com/2015/06/08/global-warming-the-theory-that-predicts-nothing-and-explains-everything/
Can not be said any better. AGW is agenda driven and not based on true observational data.
No matter what way you look at it, what we see hear is the reality of just how ‘unsettled’ this self claimed ‘settled science’ really is .
Exactly! We don’t know. Unfortunately, there are poeple on both sides who think they do.
Ghost, we do know the benefits of increased CO2. We do know the world is not warming like the models predicted. We do know droughts and hurricanes and SL rise and all manner of disaster is not and are not increasing. We do know that energy is the life blood of every economy.
When we get into discussions of a fraction of a degree I always remember back in the 80s being told from many official sources that we could NEVER have accurately measured the earths temps, even in the modern era. The dataset was ONLY useful for longer term and clear trends. Did this stop being true at some point? Havent heard this mentioned in years. All this talk of single hottest years is 100% meaningless from what was being said back then. Also the “pause” is very clear and undeniable.
I have compared the global anomalies of the trend 1978-2015 for GISS and new UAH, Striking is the fact that GISS invents hot data where there are no observations like central Greenland and the high arctic
UAH:
GISS:
Hans are you sure about that? I thought there are stations, at least four? Is that wrong?
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/find_station.cgi?dt=1&ds=14&name=&world_map.x=314&world_map.y=17
yes but the stations are on the edge of greenland, GISS EXTRAPOLATES the data onto the icecap where UAH reports an OBSERVED negative trend.
Hans,
Telling point, but there are only three actually on Greenland, with two nearby in Canada.
So, Climate Pete says there is still AGW but hidden by random external factors that apparently never existed before. So man is causing GW, but we just can’t see it???? Huh!!!!!
“Why are the new satellite and ground data sets going in opposite directions? Is there any reason that you can think of where both could simultaneously be correct? ”
1. They measure different things.
2. They estimate and interpolate in different ways.
3. Both are constructed from differing instruments.
4. Both are heavily adjusted.
5. They measure at different times.
Could they both be “correct”?
That’s a silly question. they are both incorrect. both contain error. both are estimates. they estimate different things in different ways.
Comparing the two is vastly more complex than looking a wiggles on the page. Both wiggles are heavily adjusted, heavily processed, and hard to audit.
If that is the case, then there seems to be no justification for spending hundreds of billions of dollars to mitigate something we are not sure is even happening. Would you agree?
Raises hand uselessly. I live in California.
No.
your conclusion isnt supported by what I said.
we cannot measure the rain correctly.
we cannot measure sea level correctly
we cannot measure hurricane winds correctly.
none of these prevent us from taking action to adapt to floods drought and storms.
We should all take action to mitigate things that can affect us wherever we live. Whether or not we can prove that 15 floods per century may rise to 18 floods per century should really have no effect on how we ought to prepare for example.
“none of these prevent us from taking action to adapt to floods drought and storms.”
Floods, droughts, storms, earthquakes, volcanoes etc. have all happened in the past.
Catastrophic anthropogenic global warming has never happened. There is currently no evidence that it ever will. There are many predictions of CAGW, but then there have been many predictions of the end of the world, too.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
A fundamental principle within measurement, or estimation if you like, is to have a well defined measurand. I Think that temperature data products fails to meet this criteria.
I think that the measurand, the product, of the various temperature data products is not well defined. Even though it is not well defined, it is obvious that it keeps changing. Also, water temperature and air temperature seems to be combined without taking into account differences in mass and heat capacity.
When measurands are not well defined how are you supposed to compare the output from various temperature data products or test the output of climate models?
Science or Fiction
You say
Yes. Indeed, it is worse than you say for the following reasons.
1.
There is no agreed definition of global average surface temperature anomaly (GASTA).
2.
Each team that provides a version of GASTA uses a unique definition of GASTA.
3.
Each team that provides a version of GASTA changes its definition of GASTA almost every month with resulting alteration of past data.
4.
There is no possibility of a calibration standard for GASTA whatever definition of GASTA is adopted or could be adopted.
In case you have not seen it, I again link to this and draw especial attention to its Appendix B.
Richard
Thank you for the link. This makes me think that it is appropriate to draw attention to a quote by Karl R. Popper in his book “The logic of scientific discovery”.
“It is still impossible, for various reasons, that any theoretical system should ever be conclusively falsified. 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.”
We could add that the the global warming theory is also not well defined. Exactly what is supposed to be warming? By how much?
Exactly the behavior Karl Popper warns about.
No, Mosh, they don’t measure “different” things. The surface measurements are a tiny subset of the satellites, the sats measuring the bulk of the atmosphere and the ground measuring, well, just above the ground. So the ground measurements are a tiny, 2-dimensional subset of the sats, volume-wise.
Yes, you know that, but the continual pushing of the “they are different” meme is dishonest.
The surface stations measure air temperature at 2meters. they measure TMIN and TMAX once a day.
Satellites measure BRIGHTNESS at the sensor. This measure is not a tmax or tmin measure. a single temperature in INFERRED from the radiance .
“AMSUs are always situated on polar-orbiting satellites in sun-synchronous orbits. This results in their crossing the equator at the same two local solar times every orbit. For example EOS Aqua crosses the equator in daylight heading north (ascending) at 1:30 pm solar time and in darkness heading south (descending) at 1:30 am solar time.
The AMSU instruments scan continuously in a “whisk broom” mode. During about 6 seconds of each 8-second observation cycle, AMSU-A makes 30 observations at 3.3° steps from −48° to +48°. It then makes observations of a warm calibration target and of cold space before it returns to its original position for the start of the next scan. In these 8 seconds the subsatellite point moves about 45 km, so the next scan will be 45 km further along the track. AMSU-B meanwhile makes 3 scans of 90 observations each, with a spacing of 1.1°.
During any given 24-hour period there are approximately 16 orbits. Almost the entire globe is observed in either daylight or nighttime mode, many in both. Polar regions are observed nearly every 100 minutes.”
The brightness is then transformed into a ESTIMATE of temperature kilometers above the surface.
This estimate depends on no less than…
A) idealized atmospheric profiles
B) a radiative transfer model for microwave.
In short, if you have Brightness at the sensor you have to run a physics model to estimate the temperature of the atmosphere that could have produced that brightness at the sensor.
An analogous problem might be this: Your vehicle gets hit by a bullet travelling 1000 fps. you know the enemy as a gun with a muzzle velocity of 3000 fps and you then can figure out how far away he was when he fired. In this case Distance is inferred from terminal velocity and laws of motion. In the case of satilletes temperature is inferred from brightness and the laws of radiative transfer.
Its those laws.. the laws of radiative transfer that tell us doubling c02 will add 3.71 watts to our system.
( all else being equal)
FYI
“The temperature of the atmosphere at various altitudes as well as sea and land surface temperatures can be inferred from satellite measurements. These measurements can be used to locate weather fronts, monitor the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, determine the strength of tropical cyclones, study urban heat islands and monitor the global climate. Wildfires, volcanos, and industrial hot spots can also be found via thermal imaging from weather satellites.
Weather satellites do not measure temperature directly but measure radiances in various wavelength bands. Since 1978 Microwave sounding units (MSUs) on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration polar orbiting satellites have measured the intensity of upwelling microwave radiation from atmospheric oxygen, which is proportional to the temperature of broad vertical layers of the atmosphere. ”
“Satellites do not measure temperature. They measure radiances in various wavelength bands, which must then be mathematically inverted to obtain indirect inferences of temperature.[1][2] The resulting temperature profiles depend on details of the methods that are used to obtain temperatures from radiances. As a result, different groups that have analyzed the satellite data have produced differing temperature datasets. Among these are the UAH dataset prepared at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the RSS dataset prepared by Remote Sensing Systems. The satellite series is not fully homogeneous – it is constructed from a series of satellites with similar but not identical instrumentation. The sensors deteriorate over time, and corrections are necessary for orbital drift and decay. Particularly large differences between reconstructed temperature series occur at the few times when there is little temporal overlap between successive satellites, making intercalibration difficult”
or read:
Uddstrom, Michael J. (1988). “Retrieval of Atmospheric Profiles from Satellite Radiance Data by Typical Shape Function Maximum a Posteriori Simultaneous Retrieval Estimators”.
As I have said many times in the past week, and on different threads, we really shouldn’t be looking at satellite data. But you have people here (no need for me to name them) who think it is the only dataset to use! I have to smile though; if satellite data showed warming in excess of that of the surface, warmists would be using it! I’m absolutely positive about that – they would be hugging it and saying, ‘See, we told yer’. It’s a nonsense way of ‘recording’ temperature, no matter what it shows. We don’t have a reliable and unadulterated dataset. They’ve all been abused and altered beyond comprehension now. Science is the loser. As I said before, we need to start again, with 100-metre high towers, topped with Stevenson Screens, unadjusted data beamed live to the internet.
“As I said before, we need to start again, with 100-metre high towers, topped with Stevenson Screens, unadjusted data beamed live to the internet.”
That won’t solve anything. Then there will be the issue of blending the old data with the new and lead to a new round of cooling the past.
Mosh & Ghost,
I think you’re missing the point. Whether any particular data point is accurate is not the point. What is important is the trend.
Satellites cover (almost) the whole globe. Thus they can show temperature trends more accurately than land-based thermometers (or ARGO for that matter).
The central metric in the man-made global warming debate is the temperature trend. Satellite measurements do not show any real trend. If global T is up or down by a tenth of a degree or two, that is to be expected. Global temperatures are never absolutely flat. Naturally, temperatures will fluctuate.
The elephant in the room, as they say is the fact that despite a large rise in CO2, global temperatures have not responded as predicted. That means the CO2=AGW conjecture has something seriously wrong with it. What other conclusion could you arrive at?
I have no problem whatsoever in saying that, quite evidently, CO2’s effect on climate is nothing like we were warned (if at all, even!). I find predictions of doom absurd. As you say (and I have said myself, many times), despite ‘massive forcing’ the global temperature has hardly risen at all, if it has. It has made a mockery of CO2-induced warming. But I come back to satellites being a curious metric. If I said to you that the width of leeks growing in Norfolk have shown no trend at all in the past 18 years, they would still be a rotten tool to use in climatology. The trend doesn’t matter, satellites are still a rotten tool to use, given the peculiar way ‘temperature’ is arrived at. Trend just doesn’t come into it. dbstealey, you should really desist from welcoming RSS and UAH as a scientific way to indicate temperature and temperature trend. But it’s up to you.
Mr Ghost….
..
The chief scientist, and vice president of RSS Mr. Mears says…
” A similar, but stronger case can be made using surface temperature datasets, which I consider to be more reliable than satellite datasets (they certainly agree with each other better than the various satellite datasets do!). ” ( Reference: http://www.remss.com/blog/recent-slowing-rise-global-temperatures)
..
Now, that statement is significant coming from the man responsible for the RSS dataset.
That statement had various degrees of being true, depending on the time we are thinking about. For example, it is only recently that GISS and Hadcrut4.3 agree. But a few years ago, there was no comparison between Hadcrut3 and GISS. For example Hadcrut3 still has 1998 as the warmest year while it is about 5th for GISS.
As for the satellites, with UAH6.0 out now, it agrees with RSS.
So what is true today is the satellites agree with each other; NOAA, GISS and Hadcrut4.3 agree with each other; but the satellites do not agree with the latter three.
A question: Does Dr. Mears have any biases that could prompt the above statement?
“As for the satellites, with UAH6.0 out now, it agrees with RSS.”
…
Yes, the original data from the satellites has not changed at all, but the output from the algorithms used by UAH have been “adjusted”
…
Funny how this adjustment doesn’t seem to bother people all that much.
I find Carl Mears ideas on the ‘hiatus’ odd, to say the least. First of all, his “bad luck”! Random fluctuations in climate obviously exist, but not in any model, it appears. Can a random fluctuation really overcome massive CO2 forcing? No, not if CO2 is as dominanting to the climate system as we are told. I remember reading on realclimate that CO2 could even alter the effect from Milankovitch cycles, and thus stop an Ice Age. Yet it cannot overcome a ‘random fluctuation’? But much more importantly, what IS a random fluctuation in climate terms? I understand its role in statistics and sampling, but in a climate system? Secondly, his idea on trade winds. Unless I’m reading it wrong, there appears to be zero correlation between trade winds and warming…
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n3/images/nclimate2106-f1.jpg
Ghost,
I agree with most everything you wrote there. I will still rely on satellite trends though, like most folks. Their measurements may not be 100% perfect, but they are more accurate than any alternative (except maybe for your 100 meter high towers. But that’ll never happen, will it? And see Mary Brown’s comment above. She’s right, you know.)
Satellite data is sufficient to show the trend — and there is no trend! For almost twenty years there has been nothing to speak of, either warming or cooling. The past century has been as flat as anything in the entire geologic record.
That’s where the alarmist crowd falls on their collective faces. They incessantly predicted runaway global warming, based on just a couple of years in the late ’90’s. But now that they have been decisively proven to be wrong, they cannot admit it. I wonder what it would take? Personally, I don’t think another Snowball Earth would be enough.
And J. jackson says:
The chief scientist… Mr. Mears…
Mr. Mears will be glad to know he’s been promoted from “Senior Scientist” to “Chief Scientist”.
That designation really smacks of the old ‘Appeal to Authority’ logical fallacy. Mears constantly denigrates skeptics with pejoratives like “Denialists” and “Deniers”. No ethical scientist would publicly label other scientists who simply have a different point of view with brainless and insulting terms like that. Those labels make it clear that Mears isn’t an ethical scientist, he’s just another self-serving politician. When we ask, “Cui bono?” the answer that comes back is: Mears.
Both NOAA and UAH made adjustments recently. The UAH adjustments made it more similar to the only other satellite data set, RSS. Why should that bother anyone? On the other hand, NOAA became an outlier with its adjustment to get rid of the hiatus. When adjustments push you away from all others rather than toward others, that is cause for serious soul searching.
Ghost,
What do you do about the variation in altitude? For the 71% of the planet’s surface that is close to mean sea level, no problem, but what about land, which varies in elevation from well below MSL to 29,000 feet above it? Apply some lapse rate?
And where do you place the towers? Do you avoid urban areas?
Even at just one per 1,000,000 sq km (the area of TX and NM combined), you’d still need 510 of them. Anchoring them in pack ice might present some engineering challenges.
But I’m for your suggestion. Until then however, the satellites and balloons are the best we have. The surface station “data” are worse than worthless and those responsible for perpetrating them should at least fired and more properly prosecuted for fraud, grand larceny and mass murder.
Moshers long post stated this…
This estimate depends on no less than…
A) idealized atmospheric profiles
B) a radiative transfer model for microwave.
============================
Mosher failed to point out that the satellites are calibrated against very accurate weather balloons. Mosher failed to point out that they measure far more of the atmosphere far more often and their methods have been far more consistent then the disparate means of surface measurements.
I guess the author doesn’t want any new readers. What else would account for his not defining acronyms or giving any background on these data series? Oh well, each tribe preaches to its own choir. Sad.
Is there any reason that you can think of where both could simultaneously be correct? Lubos Motl has an interesting article in which it looks as if satellites can “see” things the ground data sets miss. Do you think there could be something to this for at least a partial explanation?
There isn’t any. But it’s obvious why the ground stations spuriously diverge: They ignore station microsite bias and then homogenize the data, which forces the well sited ground stations to conform with their poorly sited counterparts.
The Satellite LT trends are an upper bound. They exceed surface trends by 10% to 40%, depending on latitude.
Please see the following which has everything you may want to know and more. If something is missing, please let me know.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/14/april-2015-global-surface-landocean-and-lower-troposphere-temperature-anomaly-model-data-difference-update/
Sorry! The above is for Jake J.
Jake J,
Here’s a glossary:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/glossary
Nobody cares what the atmospheric Temperature is 100 metres above the ground.
Nobody really lies there or even visits there, so it isn’t of critical importance to living species. Maybe the Canada Geese, but not much of anything else.
And the last flock of geese of any extent I’ve seen. was more like 3,000 metres above the ground. I guess they heard about the 100 metre high towers and go up to avoid them.
Window cleaners for the CN tower may care. But perhaps more importantly, how are temperatures at the surfaces of mountains incorporated? The metres above sea level are more important for mountains than metres above sea level for a coastal city.
Thanks for the links. I think people well schooled in all of this forget how steep the learning curve is. Understandable, yet intensely frustrating to me at times.
Anthony the new automatic ad policy is pathetic. Have you lost faith in Social Security to resort to this nonsrnse
Anthony, you rent our eyeballs to see ads in return for money so you can keep this web site up and running, That way, WE don’t have to pay for it if we don’t want to. (Although I do kick in a Grant or Franklin every now and then.) Keep up the good work, we NEED you to stay in business.
The way the surface instrument temperature data is gathered, adjusted, massaged or manipulated, and all justified as being necessary, one can only suspect the outcome is meaningless.
It reminds me of the accounting world in which certain provisions at balance sheet date used to be determined traditionally using an historical calculation that actually represented a best case estimate. Then an accounting standard was introduced to ‘better calculate’ the provision by taking the historical estimate and applying to it at least three judgemental estimates in order to derive the final provision that supposedly showed a “true and fair view”.
Yet how can an estimate of an estimate of an estimate of the original estimate be more accurate than the original estimate in the first place? It can’t. Same with thermometer temperature raw data.
Of course it can be more accurate. It’s nothing like accounting.
NOAA scientologists are now looking at ways to correct spurious RSS and UAH trends with corrections from ship intake manifolds.
RSS already corrects their data with a GCM.. little known fact
There are models and then there are models.
GCM: Global Circulations Model
GCM: Global Climate Model
What do you mean?
Are all models wrong or are all model right?
Are all models useless or are all models useful?
I do not think that RSS is based on what can reasonably be referred to as a GCM.
I can hardly think of any electronic instrument which does not contain a model of some sort.
Do you think that RSS provide a consistent result within stated uncertainties or don’t you?
Can you elaborate your view?
Thanks, Werner Brozek. This is very informative article, good work.
Thank you! We can never let them think they are not being watched closely.
here is a document that Werner should read before he writes another word about UAH and before folks write another comment.
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/sds/cdr/CDRs/Mean_Layer_Temperatures_UAH/AlgorithmDescription.pdf
some exerps
“The satellite-observed quantity which is interpreted as a measure of deep-layer average
atmospheric temperature is the microwave brightness temperature (Tb) measured
within the 50-60 GHz oxygen absorption complex. For specific frequencies in this band
where the atmospheric absorption is so strong that the Earth’s surface is essentially
obscured, the rate of thermal emission by the atmosphere is very nearly proportional to
the temperature of the air. For example, the lower stratospheric temperature product
(TLS) is almost 100% composed of thermal emission from atmospheric molecular
oxygen.
In the more general case, the brightness temperature also depends upon the emissivity
of the object being measured, as well as its temperature,
….
As a result, the middle tropospheric temperature (TMT) and lower tropospheric
temperature (TLT) products have a component of surface emission “shining through”
the atmospheric layer being sensed which, depending upon the surface, may or may
not be directly proportional to temperature of that surface.
….
These sources of contamination have been found to be relatively small (but not totally
negligible) in the time-variations of the TLT and TMT products, so throughout this
document Tb variations will be assumed to be loosely proportional to temperature
variations.
The goal is to provide a long-term record of space- and time-averaged deep-layer
average temperatures for three atmospheric layers, while minimizing errors due to
incomplete spatial sampling, calibration, the varying time-of-day of the measurements,
contamination by surface effects on the measurements, and decay of the satellites’
orbits over time. The easiest part of this process is the actual calibration of the
instrument measurements, which in the absence of contaminating influences from the
Earth’s surface or hydrometeors in the atmosphere, provides Tb’s which are directly
proportional to air temperature, which is what we desire to measure.
…..
As discussed previously, decisions regarding limb correction procedures involving the
linear combination of many different channels, or computation of the TLT “pseudochannel”
from various view angles of AMSU channel 5, or how to interpolate the
gridpoint products, were optimized based upon how well two different AMSUs flying on
different satellites in different orbits agreed with each other in the resulting products.
Thus, the products and procedures used have been optimized to be fairly robust in a
statistical sense. Especially when regression is used for the development of a product
based upon a huge volume of satellite data, “over-fitting” of the regression equation
coefficients is quite common. This potential problem was indeed seen and avoided to
the extent possible.
Nevertheless, algorithms using remotely sensed data are never perfect. Thus, the
algorithm might or might not be sensitive to long-term changes in (say) surface
emissivity, or sensor changes, or satellite orbit changes, depending upon the nature and
severity of these various influences.
There has been little effort to explore all of the potential sources of these problems and
potential mitigation strategies. Instead, issues are addressed as they arise when
anomalies are seen in the products
Thank you! I did not read the 24 pages, but from the above, I am content to take the word of the RSS and UAH people that they know what they are doing. And with the recent alignment of UAH6.0 with RSS, that seems like a safe assumption for now.
Speaking for myself, it is very easy for me to miss a later reply post to earlier post if I have gone past that point in my earlier go around. On this thread, there are many excellent replies, however in case you may have missed it, I would very highly recommend the somewhat long but excellent reply by rgb near the beginning here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/09/huge-divergence-between-latest-uah-and-hadcrut4-revisions-now-includes-april-data/#comment-1959685
It goes to the very heart of the matter as to why there should not be a huge divergence between satellite data and the others.
Absolutely Werner, the facts you have shown, RGB’s excellent posts and the sateliite records show the truth. Mosher is an obfuscationist and spin merchant. He, Zeke and his bunch are not to be trusted on anything they say it regards to climate and temperature trend measurements. They have shown themselves to be unreliable.
UAH6.0 Update: With the May anomaly of 0.272 for UAH6.0, the pause there stays at 18 years and 4 months from February 1997 to May 2015.
(RSS has a pause of 18 years and 6 months from December 1996 to May 2015. GISS and Hadcrut4.3 do not really have a pause at all since it is only a few months.)
Even if the pause went away, 1998 would EASILY be the warmest year ever in the satellite data sets.
The new question would legitimately be; How long as it been since the earth experienced it warmest year since the little ice age?
That would certainly apply up to 2015. And that is a good argument that could be made should the pause disappear by November 30 in Paris. Granted, there was a very strong El Nino in 1998, and to mention this for 7 to 10 years after 1998 is perhaps fair game. But after 17 years, that argument starts sounding a bit lame in comparison to what CO2 would allegedly do.
True Werner, but also remember that 1998 was also a strongly positive AMO. I consider it likely that if we had the opposite of 1998, a very strong La Nina, as well as a strongly negative AMO, 100 percent of the warming in the satellite data base would vanish. Also consider that the period of the late 1990 was very low for volcanism. Add in a strong volcanic event, and we may even have cooling over the entire satellite record.
True, but with that they would have the excuse that it was not due to natural variation. But the ocean cycles alone are natural variations that would trump CO2.
Science or Fiction said :
Chris Schoneveld said :
The issue is not the warming that has gone on in the deep oceans. Neither is there an expectation that the heat already stored will come out and bite us – it won’t. The issue is whether more of the energy imbalance is going to start going into surface warming, and not virtually all of it into ocean warming. In the long run this is bound to happen.
The warming of the oceans 0-2000m just gives us yet another measure of the energy imbalance of the earth, and it boils down to 0.53 W/sq metre.
The maths behind this is simple and copied from a post above. The NOAA/NODC chart shows that between 1998 and 2012 the 5-year-smoothed energy content of the oceans from 0-2000m has risen from 5 x 10^22 (5 times 10 to the power 22) to 17 x 10^22 Joules relative to 1979. Since the earth’s area is 510 million square km = 5.1 x 10^14 square metres, and there are 442 million seconds in 14 years, then this rise equates to a rate of heating of 12 x 10^22 / (5.1 x 10^14 x 4.4 x 10^8) = 0.53 W/square metre continuously over the whole of earth’s surface.
Now the issue is that where the excess energy from the top-of-atmosphere goes varies from time to time. When there is a La Nina state then more of it goes into the ocean. When there is an El Nino state more of it goes into surface warming.
What would happen if all the heat providing the one thousandth of a degree per year warming of the top 2000m of the oceans had actually gone into atmospheric warming? Well the ocean is 4km deep on average, and has 4,000 times the heat capacity of the atmosphere, so the top 2000m has 2,000 times the heat capacity of the atmosphere. The heat which warms the top 2000m of the ocean by 1/1000th of a degree per year would warm the atmosphere by 2 degrees PER YEAR. If only 10% of the energy imbalance goes into atmospheric (and surface) warming then they would warm by “only” 0.2 degrees PER YEAR. Not every year, because not every year is an El Nino. But some years.
In other words, the energy imbalance is too high – and what proportion of that goes into surface warming is essentially random (with weather”) but is expected to average out to a few percent in the long term, even if you can put forward an argument it has been lower than normal over the last 20 years.
More CO2 means a higher energy imbalance – whether the surface happens to warm more at the time or not – and the energy imbalance has now been closed off in the last half dozen years. This means that the direct measurements and calculations of the additional heat coming in via the top of the atmosphere square off reasonably well with the heating which is going on in the ocean.
The very slight (tens of milli-Kelvins) of warming of the ocean has a direct effect on sea levels, though not catastrophic on its own. Glacier and ice sheet melting is generally more significant and the rate depends on surface warming.
Sooner or later the random elements of El Nino / La Nina and other weather effects mean a higher proportion of incoming heat will go into surface warming. If there were no energy imbalance there would never be a problem. However, there is an energy imbalance, so at the moment you should just keep your fingers crossed it virtually all keeps going into the ocean for a while. Though with the 2015 El Nino which appears to be growing in strength all the time, it is unlikely that we will escape without significant surfae warming for 2015 as a whole.
Pete,
There is no evidence that the “missing heat” is going into the ocean. It most likely just simply isn’t there.
The best supported conclusion from actual data, such as they are, is that the net GHG warming, if any, is simply too insignificant to be detected, given the large margin of error in the temperature “observations”, or balanced out by other human activities, also negligible.
I don’t know where you get that result from. The NOAA / NODC chart is supported by Argo float data from the fleet of up to 4,000 floats which have now been sampling ocean temperatures down to 2,000m since the early years of this century. The specification of the accuracy is 0.003 degrees C. And retrieved Argo floats recaptured after 1-3 years in the water beat that figure on subsequent retesting. The NOAA evidence is therefore statistically significant. By contrast, the number of samples of temperatures below 2,000m is too small to draw any significant conclusions from. This is apparent from the IPCC AR5 graph pair below :
http://www.ipcc.ch/report/graphics/images/Assessment%20Reports/AR5%20-%20WG1/Chapter%2003/Fig3-02.jpg
The highest NOAA number with all of their new revisions is 0.129 C/decade which happens to be from 1951 to 2012. I do not see this as a problem at all. Do you? Furthermore, heat cannot just go into the air without some being absorbed by the ocean which is an infinite heat sink for all intents and purposes.
It is only about 1000, not 4000. See my earlier article here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/06/it-would-not-matter-if-trenberth-was-correct-now-includes-january-data/
Correction. The heat capacity of the ocean is around 1,600 times that of the atmosphere, not 4,000 times. The weight of the atmosphere is around the equivalent of the weight of 10m of water but the oceans are 4,000m deep (x400), and the specific heat of nitrogen is around 1kJ/kg/K whereas water is around 4x that value giving a total multiplier of x1,600. So the relevant paragraph above should read as follows :
“What would happen if all the heat providing the one thousandth of a degree per year warming of the top 2000m of the oceans had actually gone into atmospheric warming? Well the ocean is 4km deep on average, and has 1,600 times the heat capacity of the atmosphere, so the top 2000m has 800 times the heat capacity of the atmosphere. The heat which warms the top 2000m of the ocean by 1/1000th of a degree per year would warm the atmosphere by 0.8 degrees PER YEAR. If only 10% of the energy imbalance goes into atmospheric (and surface) warming then they would warm by “only” 0.08 degrees PER YEAR (or 8 degrees C per century). Not every year, because not every year is an El Nino. But some years are.”
Just for discussion sake, let us assume the 0.08 C/year is correct. You cannot then infer this is 8 C/century because as you say, not every year is an El Nino year. So even though 0.08 C/year converts to 8 C/century, if we assume that only every 5th year is an El Nino year, that then becomes 1.6 C/century. And 1.6 C/century is not alarming, but even that is higher than any number in the NOAA numbers.
Werner B,
Correct. 1.6º is not only un-alarming, it would be very beneficial. The Northwest Passage would be ice-free for most of the year, allowing much shorter transit times and the saving of fuel.
The Arctic would hopefully be ice-free, at least in summer. There’s no downside to that, either.
I am hoping for a 2º – 3º global temperature rise. It would be a net benfit to humanity and the biosphere. Huge areas like Canada, Mongolia, Siberia and Alaska would be opened to agriculture, driving down food prices and greatly helping the one-third of humanity that subsists on $2 a day or less.
But you’re wasting your time trying to convince “Climate” Pete of anything. His mind is made up, and truth be told, he’s hoping for a climate catastrophe so he can say, “I was right!”
He’s wrong. The catastrophe would happen if there was global cooling. Global warming is as beneficial as the rise in harmless CO2. We need more of both.
You may be right, but for the benefit of the few who may still be reading this post, we must reply in case they thought Pete may be on to something.
The “climatological probability” of an El Nino varies by time of year, but averages at least 30% (nearly 1 in 3). See continuous thin red line and key in the following :
http://iri.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/figure1.gif
30% of 8 degrees C per century is 2.6 degrees C per century.
In other words, ocean warming down to 2,000m averaging only 1 milli-Kelvin per year is indicative of an energy imbalance which potentially could mean the earth warms something like 2.6 degrees C per century. That’s based on some straightforward maths.with some approximate assumptions.
You can debate the approximate assumptions, but the point is that a small figure for ocean temperature or CO2 rise is no guarantee that there is no problem.
True. There may be more El Ninos however the step change could be smaller than 0.08 C/year for each one. As a matter of fact, there may not even be a step change. Things may simply get back to the previous anomaly after the El Nino. But one thing is clear. We have never had a warming of 2.6 C/century for a period of at least 10 years. So why should we expect one in the future? And even if it does happen, it certainly would not happen over a period of a century. Do not forget the 60 year cycles.
” The specification of the accuracy is 0.003 degrees C.”
No one here really believes that. And of course even if it is true, it is almost irrelevant because the instrument error is dwarfed by the sampling error. We have one buoy per 100,000 Km2 and they are drifting around…and the results therefore must be “model adjusted”. And in the sample you posted, they all had a temperature measurement error in the same direction, suggesting the entire sample could have directionally biased estimates rather than randomly distributed errors which makes a statistical mess.
Do we really think we can estimate the temperature of the entire ocean within .01 deg C ? Even if we can, then the noise is as big as the signal and… poof… all those joules don’t really exist.
If the heat is this hard to find, then it’s simply not worth worrying about.
Joel,
I showed from your own source that the “now trend” (since 2004) is for a slow down in sea level rise. Before that, there was no significant difference between the early and late 20th century.
What part of “deceleration” don’t you understand?
Bear in mind also that we’re talking about big margins of error here. IOW, absolutely nothing for a sane person to worry about.
PS:
The blog cites the article.
This reply may be out of place.
What part of “deceleration” don’t you understand?
He doesn’t understand any of it.
Much of this would be true, could be true… except for one problem. It’s all based on 0.01 deg C of ocean warming, which most of us here think is laughably too small to mean anything of significance. No matter how many joules that is.
Also, if so much heat is being added to the oceans, then why the flat-lining of sea level, too? Warm water leads to thermal expansion. Plus ground water has now been shown to increase sea level. Yet, sea level rise rates are steady or declining, not accelerating.
So, the scary ocean heat remains the outlier in the data… and it’s all based on 0.01 or 0.02 of warming from a brand new measuring system (ARGO) with unknown real world error distribution. Not to mention we aren’t sure at all how ARGO aligns with previous data to get any kind of trend.
I also find it amusing that this .0.01 deg warming in 11 years has killed all the corals reefs.
Stealey says: “Yet, sea level rise rates are steady or declining,”
…
Citation for your false statement please.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/files/2015_rel2/sl_ns_global.png
Joel,
There is effectively no difference in the rate of sea level rise between the first half of the 20th century and the last, and that rate has held steady or slowed in this century. This graph is missing the last decade or so, but illustrates this point. Your satellite data, BTW, is for scheiss. Tide gauges are better:
http://l.yimg.com/fz/api/res/1.2/VUJDvq0y832Oyj4eh6Dewg–/YXBwaWQ9c3JjaGRkO2g9NTYyO3E9OTU7dz04MDA-
sturgishooper
…
Reference: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00319.1
…
“In the last two decades, the rate of GMSLR has been larger than the twentieth-century time mean, because of increased rates of thermal expansion, glacier mass loss, and ice discharge from both ice sheets (Church et al. 2011).”
…
2nd to last paragraph in section 8. “Discussion and conclusions”
J. Jackson says:
Citation for your false statement please.
Got your mind made up and closed tight? That’s OK, you’ve got company: Climate Pete has the same problem you have.
For others with open minds, here are just a few citations:
click1 [sea level rise moderating]
click2 [SL anomaly vs ENSO]
click3 [Long term chart; SL rise decelerating]
click4 [No acceleration in SL rise]
click5 [No acceleration]
click6 [Raw vs adjusted data]
click7 [Sometimes there is no acceleration; sometimes there is deceleration]
click8 [The SL trend over the 20th Century.]
click9 [SL anomaly trend, ’05 – ’08]
click10 [The definitive sea level analysis. The late, great John Daly shows a marker carved into rock in the early 1800’s. The sea level today is indistinguishable from back then. Who should we believe? Self-serving scientists? Or solid, irrefutable real world observations?]
And from Nature, raw (L) vs adjusted (R) SL rise:
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n5/carousel/nclimate2159-f1.jpg
Joel,
Apparently you didn’t read the conclusion of the abstract of the paper you cited, which agrees with what I pointed out to you with the tidal gauge graph:
“The reconstructions account for the observation that the rate of GMSLR was not much larger during the last 50 years than during the twentieth century as a whole, despite the increasing anthropogenic forcing. Semiempirical methods for projecting GMSLR depend on the existence of a relationship between global climate change and the rate of GMSLR, but the implication of the authors’ closure of the budget is that such a relationship is weak or absent during the twentieth century.”
Link number 1 …spliced data….we’ve seen that trick before right ?
Link number 2 …. “detrended” …..look up the meaning of “detrended” ….it means the trend has been removed
Link number 3…..sourced from a blog……not very bright there DB
Link number 4 …I see why you like that picture….it has your hero in it.
Link number 5 …Another picture from a blog…….seriously, do you know what is considered a “primary source?”
Link number 6 … Not only does it come from a blog, but the X-axis goes to 2007 wand the referenced paper was published in 2000 ….You are funny DB
Link number 7 …. Nice solid trend in that picture….Oh, by the way, did you notice that the trend in that picture is much higher than the 20th century average? Thank you for that, it does show that recent acceleration is happening
Link number 8 …. Your “Proudman Institute” graph doesn’t show anything from the 21st century. You’d better get rid of that picture because it is outdated.
Link number 9 ….has no source citation….totally useless
Link number 10…. One data point proves what?
LInk number 11…….no citation there buddy…just pictures….try something like this… http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v517/n7535/full/nature14093.html
You know DB…..throwing tons of $hit against the wall to see if any of it sticks is not how science is done.
I asked for a citation…..you know, a published article, and all you do is post pictures.
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Do you even know what a CITATION is?
Let me make it simple for you DB
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The rate of sea level rise for the 20th century is 1.7 mm ± 0.3 mm per year.
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http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2005GL024826/abstract
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Current measurements put the rise at 3.3 mm ± 0.4 mm per year.
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http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v5/n6/full/nclimate2635.html
….
That is called “acceleration”
Joel,
Sea level rise decelerated during the plateau in warming, ie from 2004:
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/11/sea-level-rise-slowed-from-2004-deceleration-not-acceleration-as-co2-rises/
sturgishooper
…
Please try to post a citation from the primary source, and not from a blog. Now carefully examine the blog post you posted. Note the time frame of the study, …..“r in the ten years from 1993-2003 than they have since. Sea levels are still rising but the rate has slowed since 2004. ”
….
Now, please find something that compares the 20th century average with the recent 21st century numbers. Remember….the longer your time frame the more accurate your trend determination.
sturgishooper says:
Sea level rise decelerated during the plateau in warming, ie from 2004…
That does no good for someone like Jackson, whose mind is closed tighter than a submarine hatch.
After Jackson posted only one graph purportedly challenging my statement that sea level rise is either decelerating, or not accelerating (and failing to refute it as usual), I posted thirteen links contradicting him. One was published by the journal Nature, which clearly shows that sea level rise is decelerating. Doesn’t matter to a True Believer. Just look at jackson’s response.
Jackson cannot accept anything that conflicts with his eco-religion. I could post a hundred links that demolish his belief system, but it wouldn’t do a bit of good. Because Jackson believes. That trumps anything logical or rational. As the great psychologist Dr. Leon Festinger wrote:
A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.
We have all experienced the futility of trying to change a strong conviction, especially if the convinced person has some investment in his belief. We are familiar with the variety of ingenious defenses with which people protect their convictions, managing to keep them unscathed through the most devastating attacks.
But man’s resourcefulness goes beyond simply protecting a belief. Suppose an individual believes something with his whole heart; suppose further that he has a commitment to this belief, that he has taken irrevocable actions because of it; finally, suppose that he is presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong. What will happen?
The individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before. Indeed, he may even show a new fervor about convincing and converting other people to his view.
That is J. Jackson to a ‘T’. Dr. Festinger describes jackson perfectly. Nothing can, or will change jackson. He is a religious convert to Greenism, and anything that contradicts his Belief will only make him double down, dig in his heels, and argue louder.
Out of 13 links contradicting jackson’s belief, he arbitrarily rejected every one of them! A rational person would find at least something worthwhile in a few of the links provided, even if they still disagreed. But not Jackson. Because he is not rational. His arguments are religion-based, not science-based.
Religious belief is based on emotion. Thus, no matter how many facts, evidence, measurements, or real world observations contradict what Jackson is trying to sell, he will find a way to reject everything that doesn’t align with his eco-religion. Earth to Jackson: the flying saucer isn’t late. It never existed in the first place. No matter what you believe.
Dbstealey says, “I poste thirteen links.”….yes, and not a single one of them was a citation of a published article in a scientific journal. Only a dolt posts links to pictures, a real scientists posts references to prior works of his/her fellow scientists. Thirteen pieces of carp ?….yup….not a single citation. Do you know what a citation is?
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He writes “One was published by the journal Nature,” but did he post the citation of the article it was published in? Nope…….
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Absent context, the picture is meaningless. But then, a good scientist would post the link to the article it was in.
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Then DBSTEALEY starts posting stuff about “religion” but neglects to mention the fact that he is an adherent to the “ABC” religion.
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Anything…
.
But….
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Carbon….
…
PS
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Dbstealey thinks that posting thirteen pieces of garbage will be significant.
.
I post two links to published scientific articles that together prove the acceleration of sea level rise.
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Too bad for Mr. Stealey that hard data refutes his claims.
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But ….that is how science works.
Lesson for the attack dog of this blog
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When it comes to links, quality trumps quantity
See what I mean? Now I’m a “dolt” because I don’t buy into jackson’s silly green eco-religion. And anything that contradicts Jackson’s Belief system is automatically “garbage”. Just ask him, he’ll tell you. Expert that he is. heh
And three posts in a row! Jackson is letting it get to him that facts, evidence, and real world observations trump his religion. As far as being an attack dog, notice that I don’t refer to jacksons one link as “garbage”. I don’t call him a “dolt” and other names. I tell it like it is, and that gets to him. I suppose jackson thinks he’s the arbiter of what is “quality”. Lemme guess: “quality” is what he posts, and “garbage” is what I post. That about it? Earth to Jackson: readers here decide what is or isn’t quality. Not you.
Next, I could post the Nature submission that I got the chart from. Anyone can find it. But would it make any difference to a True Believer? Nope. Facts are irrelevant to jackson. Does anyone think that Jackson can be convinced by anything?? Nope. A new Ice Age could descend on planet earth with the midwest buried under a mile of ice again — and Jackson would still be saying exactly the same thing. Martyrs will die to be right, eh? Dr. Festinger has Jackson’s number. So do I.
It is obvious to the most casual observer that Jackson is obsessed with his “carbon” scare. He’s just like Chicken Little, running around in circles and clucking that the sky is falling.
It isn’t. It wasn’t even a tiny acorn. Dr. Festinger describes jackson perfectly. Everyone else sees it except Jackson himself. Very amusing, no? His responses are a combination of Chicken Little, and the little shepherd boy who cried “Wolf!” Jackson is a parody of the usual climate alarmist: rejecting anything and everything that doesn’t fit his wacky world view. He’s very amusing to the adults here. I look forward to his next irrational outburst. They’re very amusing.
Stealey says: “I could post the Nature submission that I got the chart from”
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But you didn’t
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That’s the point.
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You were asked for a citation, and you failed to provide one.
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Now wonder you lose arguments here.
G’night, jackson. I’ve had my fun with you. Maybe tomorrow I’ll school you on how to find the article the Nature chart came from. It’s a piece o’ cake when you know how.
But for now, I’ve had my amusement. Spinning up eco-religious folks like you is like pulling the wings off flies. Fun for a while, but I really crave intellectual stimulation, and you don’t provide any. When I can get you to post three wild-eyed comments in a row, I’m satisfied.
So goodnight, try to avoid your fevered dreams of eco-calamity. That’s all in your mind, not in the real world. The real world is just fine.
“Maybe tomorrow I’ll school you”
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good luck with that pipe dream.
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Maybe tomorrow I’ll teach you how to provide a citation when asked for one, instead of posting pictures of Homer Simpson.
When it comes to “schooling” maybe I could enlighten you to a few insights into the Constitution, specifically when it comes to Governor’s Moonbeam’s inability to expel immigrants due to the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution.
Joel D. Jackson
June 12, 2015 at 8:13 pm
Are you really so computer illiterate that you don’t know you can find the citations for DB’s graphs by right-clicking on them?
Why does this not surprise me?
sturgishooper
When you right click on his picture you get this
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n5/carousel/nclimate2159-f1.jpg
This link http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n5/carousel
Gets you the home page of “Nature.com”
..
So…..why don’t you provide us the link to the article?
Joel,
I am also not surprised that you imagine immigration law is settled, just as you so wrongly suppose “climate science” settled:
http://immigration.findlaw.com/immigration-laws-and-resources/federal-vs-state-immigration-laws.html
If Jerry wanted to do so, he could make sure that alien criminal suspects in his jails were held on other charges, to include federal, until immigration officials arrived to deport them. He doesn’t because the last, best hope of anti-American Democrats is to change the electorate by letting more and more illegals vote illegally and by changing the demography of the US, to turn it into a banana “republic” ruled by a kleptocratic oligarchy with a puppet dictator, like Obama.
Joel,
It takes a computer literate person mere seconds to find the article:
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n5/fig_tab/nclimate2159_F1.html
Consider yourself schooled:
Figure 1: GMSL trends during the 1994–2002 and 2003–2011 periods.
From The rate of sea-level rise
Anny Cazenave, Habib-Boubacar Dieng, Benoit Meyssignac, Karina von Schuckmann, Bertrand Decharme & Etienne Berthier
Nature Climate Change
4,
358–361
(2014)
doi:10.1038/nclimate2159
Received
16 October 2013
Accepted
04 February 2014
Published online
23 March 2014
GMSL trends during the 1994-2002 and 2003-2011 periods.
a, GMSL trends computed over two time spans (January 1994–December 2002 and January 2003–December 2011) using satellite altimetry data from five processing groups (see Methods for data sources). The mean GMSL trend (average of the five data sets) is also shown. b, Same as a but after correcting the GMSL for the mass and thermosteric interannual variability (nominal case). Corrected means that the interannual variability due to the water cycle and thermal expansion are quantitatively removed from each original GMSL time series using data as described in the text. Black vertical bars represent the 0.4 mm yr−1 uncertainty (ref. 2).
Thank you, thank you thank you thank you Mr sturgishooper
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Now just for fun…..compare the GMSL from the 20th century to the 21st century.
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You will find the acceleration.
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Unfortunately the study you cite in Nature does not include any data prior to 1994
You seem to have ignored the data from 1900 thru 1994.
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Oh well, if you wish to cherry pick your data, that is your prerogative.
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Everyone knows that the longer the time span you examine, the closer to reality your trend line is.
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See my above two links to compare the 20th century with the 21st.
PS sturgishooper
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For the record, the Nature graphs are good.
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They show the 21st century sea level rise very well
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At 3.0 mm per year.
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Now…..look at the average for the 20th centutry.
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It was 1.7 mm per year
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Do you need me to “school” you about ACCELERATION?”
Joel,
You’re welcome.
DB tomorrow will show you where you are wrong as to his graph.
I have already showed you repeatedly that sea level rise decelerated after 2004. Your objection was that I cited a blog, even though the blog contained a link to the study.
Must we hold your hand on every single source paper and walk you through what is literally child’s play?
No offense, but it appears that your grasp of science is on a par with your computer literacy. Seriously, any person of average intelligence in the developed world could have found DB’s source simply by Googling key words from the graphs.
Sorry, but the seas are not rising to obey the commands of the totally corrupted IPCC and its CACCA acolytes. Your anti-scientific cult is as false as creationism.
Not that continued rise in MSL at even the normal post-LIA rate (which has been higher than during the past decade) is in any way worrisome.
Joel,
No, the graphs don’t show that.
They show instead that the MSL “data” have been adjusted with extreme bias, although they have been mutated and metamorphosed less than the NOAA, NASA and HadCRU “surface” GASTA “record”.
So-called “climate science” is an almost thoroughly corrupted enterprise. Only the satellite and balloon observers remain as a bastion of genuine science. To his credit Mears practices good science despite his apparently sincere attachment to the “Cause”, which has of course been yet again falsified by the incorrectly so-called “Pause”.
Well…..I’m glad you get all of your information from blogs.
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Do any of those blogs tell you that looking at a 10 year interval is significant?
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You can tell me all you want about what happened post 2004, but you have failed to address the fact that in the 20th century the average sea level rise was 1.7 mm/yr. It’s 3.0 mm/yr now. Please look at longer time intervals before making unjustified assertions.
Actually, if you wish to do science, yes, you must post each and every source. If you ever did real science you would know that, and not ask such an ignorant question.
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“Googling key words from the graphs.”
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Oh…I see…..you’re a googler. No wonder you can’t fathom the intricacies of real science. Did you know that real scientists were able to do science before Google? Yes….they were…and, they did a pretty good job of it.
The seas are rising at 3.0 mm/yr. NOW
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That’s a fact.
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There are two reasons for it.
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Melting glaciers.
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And thermal expansion.
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They are rising at 3.0 mm/yr now…….
.
Ther were rising at 1.7 mm/yr throughout the 20the century.
.
.
.
Thoes are the facts. that you need to come to grips with. Yes….the acceleration is there, and you can cherry pick any interval you want that shows otherwise, but you won’t be able to avoid the reality of what is happening.
PS sturgishooper
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Do yourself a favor and read the abstract from the published article from Nature
.
.
Pay close attention to the part that says, ” thermal expansion are quantitatively removed from each original GMSL time series ” </b.
…
Thank you.
Joel,
Why would you suppose that I get all my information from blogs? I get most of it from observation of the world, as a successful private sector geologist. In my line of work, results count, unlike in government and academic “climate science”. Some of the rest I get from reading good scientific papers, references to which I sometimes find on scientific blogs.
I wonder where you get your misinformation.
It appears your only purpose is to ask for references, then when given them, to attack the way in which they were obtained. How can you live with yourself?
Joel,
OK, I have to reply to your other comment.
Read the article to see how “thermal expansion” was “calculated”. It’s just another means of “adjusting” the data to get the required result.
Your attempt to pretend to play a scientifically literate person on a blog is a miserable failure. Sorry, but you really should try to get a genuine job and work for a living. You’ll feel better about yourself and possibly be able to contribute to society and support yourself and maybe even a family some day.
” How can you live with yourself?”
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Quite easily, especially when people who think they understand science post garbage as their references.
“I wonder where you get your misinformation.”
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Check out the two links I provided that show the acceleration.
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IF you don’t like them, I can provide additional supporting evidence. It all depends on what you want.
Joel,
If you knew anything at all about statistics, you’d see that your links do not show acceleration.
You have been shown valid study after study showing deceleration, associated with the cooling of the atmosphere observed by satellites and balloons, so you have neither a statistical nor physical leg upon which to stand.
That’s the end. Happily, your unfounded opinions don’t matter, and, thanks to my advice to officials responsible for budgets, mine do.
It’s deeply sad that you can live with yourself despite espousing the anti-scientific lies of those responsible for mass murder and the waste of trillions in treasure.
Hey sturgishooper.
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Keep Googling for your info.
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I prefer to deal with the guys that go out into the real world ad drill the ice cores, or the lake bed sediments. They’re more in tune with the reality of what is happening out there in the real world. I’m sure Google will eventually tell you all about the results they find.
FYI, there are not a lot of WiFi hot spots on the top of the Greenland ice sheet, so if we lose contact with you, you’ll know why.
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Keep on Googling there buddy.
Joel,
I am a real world guy, unlike you.
Those who drill the ice cores have shown that the Holocene Optimum was hotter than the Minoan Warm Period, which was toastier than the Roman WP, which was balmier than the Medieval WP, which was warmer than the Modern WP. That means that for 5000 years the planet has been cooling, a trend uninterrupted by the Modern Warming.
Those who go out into the field to study soil radionuclides confirm that the Antarctic Ice Sheet quit retreating at least 3000 years ago.
Glaciers are growing. Sea ice is growing. Lake ice is growing. Snow cover is growing. GASTA is cooling. Planet Earth says you’re wrong as wrong can be.
Based upon actual field science, you have not a leg to stand on. Not even a toe.
You lose. Actual observational and experimental science wins.
sturgishooper says to J. Jackson:
Actual observational and experimental science wins… If you knew anything at all about statistics, you’d see that your links do not show acceleration.
Sturgis, Mr. Jackson knows nothing about statistics. He doesn’t know that GRACE is inaccurate, and that the most accurate sea level data comes from multiple tide gauge records. Jackson cannot accept any data that contradicts his Belief. Based on his comments, I don’t think the guy has any science background at all. I’ve offered to post my qualifications once again, if he will be so kind as to post his first; after all, I asked first, and repeatedly. I keep asking, but he won’t answer.
I regularly read comments here from readers who say they began as global warming alarmists, but by reading this site and others, they realized that even basic data was missing, such as any measurements of AGW. By thinking critically and being skeptical of baseless claims, they gradually became very skeptical of the ‘dangerous MMGW’ narrative. We see lots of comments like that. But I have yet to read a single one that says someone began as a skeptic of MMGW, and then gradually became an alarmist. And as we know, skeptics are the only honest kind of scientists.
I posted a very helpful link to John Daly’s excellent site, showing this. It is a picture of the high water mark carved into rock in the early 1800’s. Where is the mythical SL “acceleration”? There is none, in almost two hundred years. There’s not even much SL rise at all. I would helpfully recommend Daly’s site to Jackson, but for two things: first, he will refuse to read it, and second, since it contradicts his belief system he will reject it out of hand.
So, Sturgis, the guy is beyond our help. His mind is closed and riddled with confirmation bias. Only factoids that he believes in are acceptable. Everything else is automatically rejected. I’m sure Jackson finds comfort in his religious true belief; no critical thinking is necessary, just click on SkS or Hotwhopper, and Presto! Instant confirmation bias.
If someone refuses to accept an empirical observation like a high water mark carved into rock almost 200 years ago, that person is irrational. That marker is corroborated by dozens of tide gauges throughout the world, and they show no acceleration in the natural sea level rise since the LIA. To automatically reject such strong evidence displays a religious belief. This is the wrong site to argue religion, and anyway Jackson is now into the name-calling stage. I’ll engage Jackson again if he agrees to read the John Daly links I posted here. Otherwise, he’s barking up the wrong tree.
Stealey
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GRACE doesn’t measure sea level.
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Thanks for showing us how misinformed you are.
dbstealey said
dbstealey has mentioned a number of cold regions which might warm, and claims that this would help the one-third of humanity subsisting on $2 a day or less.
Unfortunately, most of the world’s poor live in parts of the world which are already warm, and where the agricultural problems are not cold, but drought. 2 degrees C of further warming causing increased drought would undoubtedly make the problems of some parts of Africa much worse.
So would the USA and Canada be prepared to pay for, say 1 billion of the world’s poorest 3 billion people who are likely to l be adversely affected by increased drought, currently living in places like Africa, to settle in Alaska and the vast spaces of the Yukon with full citizen rights of the USA and Canada?
And is dbstealey happy for US citizens to pay additional taxes to compensate coastal property owners in Miami as the projected less than 1 metre sea-level rise exposes them to increasing probability of devastating storm surges?
What about California, currently the market garden of the USA? Given the future precipitous drop in rainfall, with drought made somewhat more frequent already by climate change, who will be growing Californian raisins and tomatoes for the US market?
And yes, there are some big winners from climate change in the USA. One is the dengue mosquito which can now survive the lessened winter cold in around 50% of the US states. Another is a brain-eating amoeba which frequents ponds in which people might bathe. These guys are both licking their lips and rubbing their hands (metaphorically that is, amoebas don’t have these things) together in glee at the further expansion of their North American range brought about by another 1 degree C of warming in the US.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dengue-fever-makes-inroad/
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/brain-eating-amoeba-lurks-warm-summer-water-n156551
Mary Brown says:
It’s all based on 0.01 deg C of ocean warming, which most of us here think is laughably too small to mean anything of significance. No matter how many joules that is.
Thanks for a good comment. The silly “joules” posts are no different from “olympic-sized swimming pool” comparisons. They are intended to be big, scary numbers. But in the scheme of things, it doesn’t matter.
And Climate Pete says:
…a small figure for ocean temperature or CO2 rise is no guarantee that there is no problem.
That’s just the argumentum ad ignorantium logical fallacy.
Who is making ‘guarantees’? We go by facts, evidence, empirical measurements, and observations. Based on all of those, there is no problem from the rise in CO2, which by any measure has been completely harmless, and a net benefit.
That is one of the central problems with the alarmist narrative: they say that just because something happened, it must be an alarming occurrence. As the rest of us know, that does not automatically follow.
If CP has evidence that CO2 is causing global harm, he needs to post it here. Otherwise, all he is doing is displaying his belief. That’s not science, is it?
Right now, the professionally sited thermometer in my front yard reads 86.4. The one in the back yard reads 87.6. That difference is greater than the sum total [of] all anthropogenic global warming in the history of earth.
Eays solution to your problem there Mary.
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Record the readings for both of your thermometers for a 30 year span.
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Take the average of all of the readings from each, and tell us what the trend is.
CP,
Why do you suppose more drought would occur from two degrees C higher GASTA?
For starters, the tropics won’t be affected much, according to the models, but the polar regions will.
Secondly, the models assume an increase in atmospheric H2O concentration as a positive feedback effect of more CO2, so there would be more water vapor available to condense and fall as rain.
Climate Pete says:
So would the USA and Canada be prepared to pay for, say 1 billion of the world’s poorest 3 billion people who are likely to l be adversely affected by increased drought, currently living in places like Africa, to settle in Alaska and the vast spaces of the Yukon with full citizen rights of the USA and Canada?
And is dbstealey happy for US citizens to pay additional taxes to compensate coastal property owners in Miami as the projected less than 1 metre sea-level rise exposes them to increasing probability of devastating storm surges? What about California…& etc.
Pete, WHAT are you talking about? Your response has nothing to do with whether some minimal warming like 2º – 3º would be beneficial or not. Your rant is completely emotion-based. Who (beside you) said anything about granting citizenship rights, or re-settling populations? And what ‘drought’?
Try to relax, and consider the basic points I made:
• a little global warming would be a net benefit, and
• The rise in CO2 has been completely harmless
I understand your need to deflect, because if you simply accepted those two bullet points the climate alarmists’ argument would be gutted.
Climate Pete
I’ve stood in downtown Miami looking at the “sea level” while standing on the “land” … A 1 meter rise threatens nothing. Does no harm.
Why would ANY California resident be threatened with a 1 meter sea level rise? Their coast line rises sharply from the sea: The sand itself rises more than 1 meter from wave front to top-of-tide water. The low flatlands and marshes and wetlands inside the north and south extremes of San Francisco Bay have no residents: They’ve been thrown off that land (can’t farm, can’t raise cattle or animals, can’t build anything, can’t fix dikes or dams or roads or farm the land) years ago by the eco-enviro’s who want their mudflats back! How the bloody blue blazes do you even ask that foolish a question? Who is feeding you your lines?
There is nothing but good from a global average temperature rise of 1-3 degrees worldwide. And, at best, only a 2% chance of even the much-benefit/little harm rise of 4 degrees in global average temperature. And, “IF” all the carbon restrictions and the deaths and the harm from that carbon restrictions were fully implemented 100% right now ….. There would be NO measurable change in global average temperatures anyway.
It might be worth adding that there isn’t a shred of actual evidence that a warming earth is a drier earth with more droughts. The worst droughts in history occurred in much cooler times. For example, there were some stupendous droughts in the southeast US during the heart of the LIA. Then there is California. Even today, they pray for El Nino — with its warming — to bring them rain, because La Nina cooling kicks CA into drought. For most of the Little Ice Age, California was literally a desert. So when you say that warming will cause drought, I’m afraid I will have to ask you to demonstrate that on the basis of some evidence that past warming increased rates of drought in some permanent, clearly resolved way. I don’t think you will be able to do this, any more than you will be able to produce evidence that warming has made the world stormier or that any of the other dire catastrophes that are supposed to be attendant on warming have exhibited the trend that you assert that they will with such certainty.
It is also a very simple fact that so far, the CO_2 added to the atmosphere has been an unadulterated blessing. CO_2 isn’t “harmless” — CO_2 is beneficial. Roughly a billion people worldwide are dining on the increased agricultural productivity associated with the extra 100+ ppm we have added over the last few hundred years. Plants grow faster and are more drought resistant. These facts are validated by innumerable greenhouse experiments — it isn’t even science any more, it is engineering and people add CO_2 to greenhouse atmospheres (the real kind used to grow plants) because the increased productivity pays for the hassle of adding it many times over.
The Earth’s biosphere has been starved for CO_2 for several million years (at least). During the Wisconsin, atmospheric CO_2 bottomed out just over the critical concentration where its partial pressure was inadequate to support at least some species of plants. If we understood the planet a hundred years ago as well as we understand it now (which admittedly isn’t very much) we might well have elected to bump CO_2 to 400 ppm deliberately, if not 500 ppm or even 600 ppm.
The same general issues are attendant on predictions of SLR. I have watched James Hansen — director of NASA GISS at the time — state on television that he thought SLR would be 5 meters by the end of the century. If one extrapolates current rates of SLR to 2100, one might see 30 to 40 cm, and that’s assuming that our current estimates are as accurate as they are claimed to be. An inch a decade is very close to the rate of SLR as measured by tide gauges over the last century (one could argue well within error bars of being identical) and last century was not catastrophic. Even sober and rational warmists have carefully distanced themselves from Hansen’s fantastic predictions (which have been repeatedly falsified by the mere passing of time, as well).
All I would suggest, Mr. C. Pete, is that you contemplate the merest possibility that with the head of NASA GISS making pronouncements of this nature, far beyond any possible reasonable bound, at the same time that he was the director of the national effort to mobilize a militant attack on CO_2, a man who would conspire to shut off the air conditioning on capitol hill the day in which he was going to present his warnings of doom, a man who truly believes with a religious fervor that is still openly apparent in his public statements and affairs, that there is a tiny chance that you are not seeing the orderly progression of science but instead a thinly disguised political/religious save-the-world movement masquerading as science, using the language of science to advance its own ends.
You also might want to confront the inescapable reality that the measures required to prevent the “catastrophe” Hansen and many, many others have relentlessly overpredicted from the moment of their first involvement to the present, but that is nevertheless supposed to catch up and cause global catastrophe in fifty, seventy, a hundred years (it doesn’t matter when as long as it is long enough in the future that the visible lack of catastrophe in the meantime won’t falsify their claims — any more) is causing a real-time global economic catastrophe right now. Why do you think India and China are more or less ignoring global warming? Because they have more immediate problems — the bringing of two billion people, nearly a third of the world’s population in their countries and the countries of their neighbors and trading partners out of 17th century poverty and at least up to a 20th century standard of living. And all poverty is at heart energy poverty.
Every measure that makes energy more expensive directly benefits only two groups. The first, by far, is the energy companies. They make a marginal profit, and given a state sanctioned monopoly selling a commodity with highly inelastic demand, if you want to make electricity and gasoline twice as expensive they will cheerfully sell it to you at that price and make twice as much money, plus all that they can rake off from the government itself developing inefficient energy resources. Don’t t’row me into dat briar patch, say b’rer energy company. They can do arithmetic as well as you or I, and can therefore see that coal and oil will be with us, making them ever more money, unless and until technological progress produces an economically viable, unsubsidized alternative that can work on demand. In the meantime, sure, make them as expensive as you like — they’ll just make more money from less coal.
The second is first world countries, developed countries. They have the wealth to afford to screw around with something as basic to every form of human endeavor and production as energy. In the US, people drop more on a rooftop solar project than a poor person in India might live on for years, and not be inconvenienced in the slightest. The decade or more required to amortize the investment doesn’t matter when you make far more than enough to live without the money invested. It also helps to maintain their competitive edge with third world countries, since when global energy prices rise, they can afford the rise (and indeed, don’t even experience the price rise as an additional real cost as it is carefully inflationary) but developing nations cannot and hence have to delay their development by decades more with their rising, energy hungry populations.
Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you, or Hansen, or anyone else involved in this mess is saving the world. They are not. You are simply playing your part in one of the most beautiful spontaneous schemes for preserving the economic status quo the world has ever seen, one that if China or India did buy in would have the sole effect of ensuring China’s continued relative poverty for at least another half century, India for even longer. Not unreasonably, China and India have publicly stated that they will build all the coal plants they can afford to build as long as coal is cheaper than the alternatives, because not to do so is to perpetuate not an imaginary catastrophe in 80 years but a real, ongoing, human catastrophe right now, the catastrophe of several hundred million people living in the 21st century without safe water supplies, sewage treatment systems, refrigeration, electric lights, and all of the other things you literally cannot imagine living without. Their contribution to the Earth’s “carbon budget” at this time is the charcoal or dried animal dung they burn in order to cook their daily food, often indoors in a poorly ventilated mud hut.
I grew up in India, and witnessed this world firsthand. If you want to experience it for yourself, go pull the main circuit breaker in your house, let the air out of the tires of your car, move your entire family into a single bedroom and abandon the rest of your house, and don’t forget to turn off the water main so the only bathroom you can use is pretty much your front or back yard. That won’t quite make it — you probably don’t live in the subtropics and hence have no clue as to what it is like to live there without air conditioning in the summer — but a week or two of living like that might give you a whole new appreciation for the urgency of dealing with the cow we have in the ditch right now, worldwide, before we start throwing trillions of dollars around that do nothing but enrich the rich, keep the poor from getting richer, and as a general rule won’t even solve the problem they are supposed to solve if the problem is a real one and not an elaborate case of scientific self-deception.
I’m all for investing money into research directed at improving our energy supply, and think that coal and oil are far too valuable to burn if we can possibly help it. But if the research is successful, we won’t have to do anything about CO_2 — burning carbon will be supplanted only when and if alternatives are economically cheaper and just as reliable and stable, not before. Because not even you are going to be crazy enough to vote yourself into energy poverty today to prevent a dubious “catastrophe” in a century. Energy poverty sucks.
rgb
RGB,
Another trenchant comment. Thanks for being here late on a Friday night in almost summer.
I didn’t know that you grew up in India. Ironic that Patchy Cootie hails from that neck of the jungle. My experiences in what used to be called the Third World (and might still be in some quarters) make me second your conclusions.
I hope that Pete and Joel, if they in fact be two different entities, will take your wise words to heart. It could be however that posting anti-scientific, anti-human palaver here is his/her/their job.
Seconded. The only shame is that RGB’s comment isn’t at the top of the thread. They’re always worth reading, even if the subject material has been covered before.
Thirded! Another great comment from Prof.rgb, who writes:
…all poverty is at heart energy poverty.
In one short sentence rgb condenses the whole debate: this isn’t about windmills, or global warming. It’s about the haves and the have-nots.
Just about every $billionaire has their ticket punched on the global warming express. If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect that they want to be one of the few ‘haves’.
The Economist reported on a psychology experiment, where people were asked if they would rather have an income of $300,000 a year, and everyone else in their neighborhood also had that income — or if they would rather have an income of $150,000 a year, while everyone else had half that income.
The result was overwhelming: most people would rather have the smaller income, if it meant they had more than their neighbors. Status is more important than having twice the income.
So that explains the billionaires. But what about the Climate Petes and the J. Jacksons? What do they get out of their anti-science acceptance of something with no measurements? What drives them to be so irrational and unquestioning?
Well, these people find global sea level rise is accelerating… a whopping 2mm per century. The rate was 7.5 inches of rise for the 20th century but that slowed to 7″ per century since 1970.
I’m still here waiting for that 20ft wave to wipe out half of Florida after that 0.01 deg C deep ocean heat melts all the glaciers.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Trends and acceleration in global and regional sea levels since 1807
• S. Jevrejevaa, b,
• J.C. Moorea, c, d, , ,
• A. Grinsteda, e,
• A.P. Matthewsb,
• G. Spadaf
Abstract
We use 1277 tide gauge records since 1807 to provide an improved global sea level reconstruction and analyse the evolution of sea level trend and acceleration. In particular we use new data from the polar regions and remote islands to improve data coverage and extend the reconstruction to 2009. There is a good agreement between the rate of sea level rise (3.2 ± 0.4 mm•yr− 1) calculated from satellite altimetry and the rate of 3.1 ± 0.6 mm•yr− 1 from tide gauge based reconstruction for the overlapping time period (1993–2009). The new reconstruction suggests a linear trend of 1.9 ± 0.3 mm•yr− 1 during the 20th century, with 1.8 ± 0.5 mm•yr− 1 since 1970. Regional linear trends for 14 ocean basins since 1970 show the fastest sea level rise for the Antarctica (4.1 ± 0.8 mm•yr− 1) and Arctic (3.6 ± 0.3 mm•yr− 1). Choice of GIA correction is critical in the trends for the local and regional sea levels, introducing up to 8 mm•yr− 1 uncertainties for individual tide gauge records, up to 2 mm•yr− 1 for regional curves and up to 0.3–0.6 mm•yr− 1 in global sea level reconstruction. We calculate an acceleration of 0.02 ± 0.01 mm•yr− 2 in global sea level (1807–2009). In comparison the steric component of sea level shows an acceleration of 0.006 mm•yr− 2 and mass loss of glaciers accelerates at 0.003 mm•yr− 2 over 200 year long time series.
Steric = thermal expansion + salinity
HADSST3 results for May are now in, and the sea surface temperature warming anomaly is up:
Global +0.12C over last May,
NH +0.16C over last May.
That will show up also in air temperature estimates, since 71% of the earth’s surface is covered by oceans. For example, UAH TLT anomalies show Global oceans +0.06C over last May, but Global land -0.1C, so Global UAH is only up +0.02C over May 2014. (Note: UAH uses satellites to measure air temperatures many meters above land or ocean, while surface datasets like HADCRUT, BEST, GISTEMP use the measured SSTs in their global mean temperature estimates).
The Blob difference shows up in UAH in the NH results: NH anomaly is +0.07 over May 2014, with the same increase showing over land and ocean. Interestingly, UAH shows the North Pole cooler than a year ago, the TLT over the Arctic being -0.06 less than a year ago. The South Pole land air temps are a whopping -0.2C colder than last May.
More info here: https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2015/06/13/how-about-that-blob-june-13-update/
Considering we have had El Nino conditions since October, this is rather interesting.
GISS Update:
GISS for May was 0.71 so the average for the first 5 months is 0.77 and this puts it in first place ahead of last year’s record of 0.68.
Even though we have had an El Nino since October, May 2015 at 0.71 is below May 2014 at 0.79.
RACookPE1978 said
The problem does not start when the sea level gets to the land level, of course. Storm surges cause the problem, just like it did in New York.
According to this source 6 inches more of sea level rise would start to cause significant problems for Miami.
http://www.climatecentral.org/blogs/florida-and-the-rising-sea
And here are some maps.
http://wamp.ihrc.fiu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Storm_Surge_Broward_Figure_01.jpg
I hope you do not own a waterfront property in Miami with a mortgage out to 2030.
“According to this source 6 inches more of sea level rise would start to cause significant problems for Miami.”
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Well, we will likely get those 6″ by the year 2100 at current rates which don’t seem to be changing much.
This is what Miami looked like 85 years ago when sea level was about 6″ lower.