Forget homogenization, that is so 2010. If the pause is bothering you and your belief is that there must be more warming, we only need to find it in the data, then what you need is “Karlization”, named after director of the National Climatic Data Center, (now NCEI) Tom Karl who pulled a fast one this summer trying to adjust the past down, so the present would be warmer. The sleight of hand on this was so obvious that even warm-oriented scientists such as Michael Mann and Ben Santer co-authored a rebuttal paper that said Karl was dead wrong and the pause was real. There is now a congressional investigation into Mr. Karl’s apparently political actions disguised as science
Now we have a new player in the “Karlization” process – Carl Mears, who is the chief scientist for RSS (Remote Sensing Systems) in Santa Rosa, CA. This is a private business that just happens to make a satellite based climate data set that is similar to the UAH satellite data set produced by Roy Spencer and John Christy. For years, the RSS data set showed very little warming, and on the RSS web page they were so bold to say:
Source: http://www.remss.com/research/climate Archived here – http://www.webcitation.org/6fiQcrQDQ
All that is about to change. Readers may recall a video produced by the execrable “Climate Crock of the Week” activist Peter Sinclair that we covered here where the basic premise was that the “satellites are lying“. It seems to me based on his recent comments that Dr. Mears has gotten fed up with people using his RSS data set to suggest that the world isn’t warming as he expects it should. From the video Mears states:
They just wanted to know, you know, they wanted to fine-tune their statement about, you know, whether , you know, the surface temperatures are more accurate or the satellite temperatures are more accurate, and initially they wanted to say something like “But you really shouldn’t trust the satellite temperatures, you should go with these surface temperatures”, and I said, “Well, what I would like to emphasize, you’d really want to look at all the different datasets, so you don’t want to trust only the satellite temperatures, you want to look at the surface temperatures, and – and that sort of thing.
On his website, Mears makes this statement:
Recently, a number of articles in the mainstream press have pointed out that there appears to have been little or no change in globally averaged temperature over the last two decades. Because of this, we are getting a lot of questions along the lines of “I saw this plot on a denialist web site. Is this really your data?” While some of these reports have “cherry-picked” their end points to make their evidence seem even stronger, there is not much doubt that the rate of warming since the late 1990’s is less than that predicted by most of the IPCC AR5 simulations of historical climate. This can be seen in the RSS data, as well as most other temperature datasets. For example, the figure below is a plot of the temperature anomaly (departure from normal) of the lower troposphere over the past 35 years from the RSS “Temperature Lower Troposphere” (TLT) dataset. For this plot we have averaged over almost the entire globe, from 80S to 80N, and used the entire TLT dataset, starting from 1979. (The denialists really like to fit trends starting in 1997, so that the huge 1997-98 ENSO event is at the start of their time series, resulting in a linear fit with the smallest possible slope.)
Source: http://www.remss.com/blog/recent-slowing-rise-global-temperatures Archived here: http://www.webcitation.org/6fiS2rI7k
Mears uses the term “denialist” so there goes his objectivity when he feels the need to label people like that.
Clearly, he’s miffed. So what to do? Taking a cue from the other Karl, he publishes a paper and claims that new and improved adjustments have “found” that missing warming.
Mears, C., and F. Wentz, 2016: Sensitivity of satellite-derived tropospheric
temperature trends to the diurnal cycle adjustment. J. Climate. doi:10.1175/JCLID-
15-0744.1, in press.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0744.1?af=R
Here’s the result:
Here are the differences between the old version and new version of RSS
The new version V4.0 has the warming rate of almost double that of UAH V5.6 … (see Figure 9 below of the paper)
If you think that’s something, for the tropic-30S-30N: the new rate of warming of RSS V4.0 is almost five times larger than UAH’s!
Dr. Gavin Schmidt of NASA GISS seems thrilled that the new adjustment is coming:
Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr. John Christy have already looked into this latest “Karlization” and have found what appears to be a fatal flaw. Spencer comments in an email to me:
The paper is for MT, not LT…but I think we can assume that changes in one will be reflected in the other when Mears completes their analysis.
From what little we have looked at so far, it appears that they did not correct for spurious warming in NOAA-14 MSU relative to NOAA-15 AMSU…see their Fig. 7c. They just leave it in.
Since this spurious warming is near the middle of the whole time period, this shifts the second half of the satellite record warmer when NOAA-14 MSU (the last in the MSU series) is handed off to NOAA-15 AMSU (the first in the AMSU series).
Why do we think NOAA-14 MSU is at fault?
1) AMSU is supposed to have a “Cadillac” calibration design (that’s the term a NASA engineer, Jim Shiue, used when describing to me the AMSU design, which he was involved in).
2) NOAA-14 MSU requires a large correction for the calibrated TB increasing with instrument temperature as the satellite drifts into a different orbit. The NOAA-15 AMSU requires no such correction…and it wasn’t drifting during the period in question anyway.
So, it looks like they decided to force good data to match bad data. Sound familiar?
Yes, yes it does.
Added: here is Figure 7 from the paper that Dr. Spencer refers to:
h/t to Willie Soon with thanks to Dr. Roy Spencer
UPDATE1: Given this sort of work has only two groups doing it, it is a very narrow field of scientific specialty, I asked Dr. Spencer this question:
I assume neither you or Christy were asked to review this paper?There aren’t many satellite temperature data experts in the world.
He replied:
Interesting question….
John reviewed their original paper submission to JGR, in detail, asking for additional evidence — but not advocating rejection of the paper. The JGR editor ended up rejecting it anyway.
Mears & Wentz then revised the paper, submitted it to J. Climate instead, and likely asked that we be excluded as reviewers.
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RSS for USA In February still shows almost exactly the same temperature as in 2005.
Guess USCRN is still keeping them about 2% honest.
As I said earlier.. near ALL this El Nino forced warm peak is coming from WINTER in Europe and Russia.
and I BET no-one up there is complaining..
least of all the “recent immigrants”.
“You know”, I’m not surprised at all. Liars all.
It seems that Paris was a real confidence booster. Now they feel free to just make it up as they go.
I knew they would come after the satellite data.
“has not warmed quite as fast” ????
They make it sound like we’re only talking a couple percentage points of difference.
Once again, I urge everyone to stop reporting anomalies and start reporting temperatures.
Regarding the NOAA-14/NOAA-15 treatment, as far as I can tell, this was handled very similarly in RSS v3.3. If this is indeed the case, then, it is evidently not the source of the reported trend increase from RSS v3.3 to RSS v4, and the statement that “it looks like they decided to force good data to match bad data” in this regard is misplaced (by at least several years). Is there something I am missing regarding a new handling by RSS of the NOAA-14/NOAA-15 transition? (Also I think UAH v6 uses NOAA-14 through July 2001).
Mears et al have published a response to some of the questions raised:
http://www.remss.com/blog/RSS-TMT-updated
It was obvious for some time that we were being lied to about global temperature by official ground-based temperature sources because they simply denied reality that satellite observations reveal. I kept saying to myself that luckily they still don’t control satellites or we would have no idea what the temperature is doing. It looks now like they have succeeded in taking control of one of the two satellite services that exist by converting Mears. Wonder what’s in it for him to make such a radical change after years of reporting actual observations. The warmists have so revised most ground-based temperatures that it is hard to know what to believe. As far as Karlism is concerned, I wrote a paper that you published on October 29th pointing out that his attack on the current hiatus is not the first one nor the only one on record. Their first attack on hiatuses involved suppression of knowledge that a hiatus existed in the eighties and nineties. They covered up its existence in official records by a phony warming called “late twentieth century warming.” As a result, this phony warming has been part of the official temperature record since the nineties. Fortunately, I was still able to show the hiatus, based on satellite data, as Figure 15 in my book “What Warming?” It was also an inspiration for the title of my paper last October which reads “Karl et al. do not know that we have had two hiatuses, not one.” When that little warmist spy calling himself “Bob Tisdale” saw it he immediately libeled me by stating that “Arno: it’s good to see you up to your old tricks of misrepresenting data.” On top of which he also produced a totally phony temperature chart, allegedly of satellite origin, that did not exist. This and similar garbage should be snipped, but you, Anthony, did nothing about it. We should all get to know why they hate the hiatuses so much that they are willing to falsify records. The answer is very simple: if observations of hiatuses are accurate the greenhouse warming, their only reason for existence, does not exist. It goes like this. First, during a hiatus, atmospheric carbon dioxide increases but global temperature does not. The Arrhenius greenhouse theory they use for climate predictions requires that if carbon dioxide increases global temperature also must increase. This of course is a false prediction during a hiatus and it invalidates the Arrhenius greenhouse theory The only correct theory of greenhouse warming is the Miskolczi greenhouse theory, MGT. It has been known since 2007 but was summarily rejected by IPCC because of its predictions. According to MGT carbon dioxide and water vapor, a greenhouse gas, form a joint optimal absorption window in the infrared whose optical thickness in IR is 1.87. There are two orders of magnitude more of water vapor than there are of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere but the Arrhenius theory completely ignores water vapor. According to MGT, when carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere it starts to absorb in the IR, just like Arrhenius says. But as soon as this happens, water vapor starts to diminish, rain out, and the original absorption window is restored. Miskolczi showed empirically in 2010 that even if carbon dioxide goes up by 20 percent over a 61-year period the value of the absorption window is maintained within three significant figures. This is what water vapor does, not that imaginary warming assigned to it by IPCC. As a result, Arrhenius, being unaware of water vapor, predicts that infamous “greenhouse warming” when carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere. What actually happens is that reduction of water vapor has reduced the combined total absorption of carbon dioxide plus water vapor to the point where warming is no longer possible. And that is exactly what we have seen for the last 18-plus years – addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere has failed to supply the greenhouse warming that is the life blood of IPCC.
February 16th, 2016 The SUPREME COURT sided with SCIENCE against OBAMA! This is an important step forward for jobs.
On Feb. 9, the court upheld a delay of Obama’s war on fossil fuels, which is supposed to “stop climate change,” in the form of new restrictions on factories’ greenhouse-gas emissions. Apparently a majority of the court is less confident of the “science around climate change” than Obama is.
http://nypost.com/2016/02/15/the-supreme-court-sided-with-science-against-obama/
Amazing. Trouble is the only real validator of these changes, the weather of the planet Earth, has its own ideas. If we do indeed fall into a minimum it’s Game Over for the climate change gang – as people will be too busy trying to keep warm and alive.
Also I get the inkling that a lot of those in the political classes are getting cold feet behind closed doors, quite a few cases of Eco lip service down under (ex Eco ministers going on to work in the fossil fuel business etc) – they need to be seen to be on right side of the fence when the publc attention gets shifted.
This guy has been declaring “cherry-picked” ever since Monckton’s analysis was published. But it’s quite clear that the start date (about 1998) is determined by the data, so not cherry-picked. The analysis answers the relevant question “what is the longest current period (i.e., ending with the latest data) for which the trend shows no additonal warming?”. If the longest current trend was a couple of years, it’s wouldn’t have been very relevant. When it’s almost two decades, (and considering that the alarmists began chanting about the warming back in the 80s long before then) it’s informative.
Obviously the alarmists have had to come up with dozens of excuses to explain why co2, at its highest, has been having no impact. Well, the current El Nino may diminish that period. However, what goes up, comes down, so watch out for the follow-up La Nina !
With February anomaly for RSS, all trend lines are upwards starting from any point in the record.
It’s funny, if consistent, that pause-o-philes are fretting because a statistically non-significant pause has been ‘ended’ by a statistically non-significant warming trend. No doubt we’ll be hearing soon that the new warming trends since 1997/98 fail statistical significance. But where was this interest in statistical significance for the duration of the pause? MIA – because the statistical uncertainty interfered with the whole pause meme. The inconsistency won’t bite, though, because most critics will ignore it.
But where was this interest in statistical significance for the duration of the pause?
It was discussed here. Where were you? Learning climatology at Hotwhopper?
Do you have a link? A proper discussion should have revealed that the uncertainty intervals (particularly the notion in any change from previous trend) scotched the idea of a pause. I’d be interested to see how such discussion went, if that was actually discussed here.
barry,
Here’s a link.
You stated somewhere upthread that no scientists believe that there was a ‘pause’ (paraphrasing your comment). I gave you numerous quotes that debunked your claim. You will still ‘Say Anything’ to keep the Narrative going.
You can see in the link above that the one and only Michael Mann now admits that global warming stopped for many years. Argue with him if you want.
Stealey, it doesn’t matter what anyone other than YOU has said.
..
You have said “global warming has stopped”
..
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/04/06/el-nio-or-ot-the-pause-lengthens-again/#comment-1899436
…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/01/13/the-abject-failure-of-official-global-warming-predictions/#comment-2124443
…
YOU ARE WRONG time for you to admit your error.
I wish governments would impose the same standards on the climate industry as they do on other industries.
“ISO/IEC 17025 General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories is the main ISO standard used by testing and calibration laboratories. In most major countries, ISO/IEC 17025 is the standard for which most labs must hold accreditation in order to be deemed technically competent. In many cases, suppliers and regulatory authorities will not accept test or calibration results from a lab that is not accredited.”
– Wikipedia
Governments (European Union) impose ISO 17025 on the industry for determination of the tiniest amount of CO2, while global temperature records are adjusted in ways which would never pass accreditation.
How about imposing ISO 17025 on organizations performing measurement and reporting of climate data?
It’s such a funny coincidence, that all modern adjustments seem to shift the trend only ever upwards.
What an amazing coincidence.
A casual consideration might lead a person to imagine that errors would be located and adjustments made, on average, equally in both directions.
Since an overlooked error or bias, has no specific preference for whether it warms or cools.
Surely errors and bias, simply exist, prior to their discovery and suitable correction.
(sarc on) Yet no!! This is clearly a mistake assumption.
Earlier methods of elucidating the temperature series always resulted in false warming of the past and false cooling of the present.
And so, now in the modern era of sophisticated climate science the past can be correctly cooled and the present suitably warmed.
Thank goodness for honest climate scientists discovering this remarkable unidirectional bias in all temperature measurement techniques.
Everything from land to sea to troposphere. From Argo, to Satellite, to Bucket SST, to Radiosonde.
Everything suffered from this perplexing false warming of the past and need to knuckle down and get with the agenda.
What a remarkable coincidence.
We are all saved from nasty errant cooling and perplexing pauses. (sarc off).
It’s all so simple, as explained by the great scientific genius, Josh Willis:
““First, I identified some new Argo floats that were giving bad data; they were too cool compared to other sources of data during the time period. It wasn’t a large number of floats, but the data were bad enough, so that when I tossed them, most of the cooling went away. But there was still a little bit, so I kept digging and digging.”
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/page1.php
Sadly, this made it to the local newspaper. Pause is cancelled, Ted Cruz is wrong, we really do have a crisis. A brief mention of UAH was made at the end for anyone who reads that far.