Statistical politics – Prof. Mike Hulme on ‘politically charged’ climate baseline changes from 1961-1990 to 1991-2020:
‘In an instant; today, the world’s climate has ‘suddenly’ become nearly 0.5°C warmer’
From Climate Depot
Hulme: “January 12021, a new World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) climatological standard normal came into effect. The ‘present-day’ climate will now formally be represented by the meteorological statistics of the period 1991-2020, replacing those from 1961-1990. National Meteorological Agencies in member states are instructed to issue new standard normals for observing stations and for associated climatological products. Climate will ‘change’, one might say, in an instant; today, the world’s climate has ‘suddenly’ become nearly 0.5°C warmer. It is somewhat equivalent to re-setting Universal Time or adjusting the exact definition of a metre.”
…
“So, what is the significance of the move to a new 1991-2020 WMO normal in January 2021? On the one hand, it is a pragmatic move to redefine ‘present-day’ climate for operational applications to that of the most recent 30-year period. On the other hand, it puts into play a third climatic baseline. Already existing is the ‘pre-industrial’ climate of the late nineteenth century and the ‘historic’ climate’ of 1961-1990, the latter about 0.3°C warmer than the former. And now there is the new ‘present-day’ climate of 1991-2020, in turn about 0.5°C warmer than the ‘historic climate’ of 1961-1990.”
…
“Combining a climatic tolerance of 2°C—or indeed 1.5°C—with a pre-industrial baseline yields a very different climate target than, say, using a 1986-2005 baseline, the period widely adopted by IPCC AR5 Working Group I as their analytical baseline. The choices of both baseline and tolerance are politically charged. They carry significant implications for historic liability for emissions (La Rovere et al., 2002), for policy design (Millar et al., 2017) and for possible reparations (Roberts & Huq, 2015).”
The paper:
Excerpts:
Climates Multiple: Three Baselines, Two Tolerances, One Normal
By Mike Hulme
Excerpt: Friday 1 January 2021, a new World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) climatological standard normal came into effect. The ‘present-day’ climate will now formally be represented by the meteorological statistics of the period 1991-2020, replacing those from 1961-1990. National Meteorological Agencies in member states are instructed to issue new standard normals for observing stations and for associated climatological products. Climate will ‘change’, one might say, in an instant; today, the world’s climate has ‘suddenly’ become nearly 0.5°C warmer. It is somewhat equivalent to re-setting Universal Time or adjusting the exact definition of a metre.
What started in the 1970s and 1980s as a pragmatic selection of the late nineteenth century as an analytical reference period (Nordhaus, 1977) had, by the twenty-first century, taken on great policy significance. Although the 2015 PACC formally adopted pre-industrial climate as its baseline, the precise temporal designation of ‘pre-industrial’ was left unspecified— whether for strategic political reasons (Geden, 2018), or simply because of a lack of awareness about the significance of the choice. Different ‘pre-industrial’ baselines have been adopted, either as discursive proxies for a general pre-industrial era or else used analytically to test the sensitivity of the ‘pre-industrial’ baseline to different definitions (Schurer et al., 2017). Equivalent diversity afflicts the designation of ‘present-day’ climate. Although often corresponding to a WMO 30-year normal, many other designations of ‘present-day climate’ have been adopted in different IPCC assessments—such as ‘1990’ (in IPCC AR1 and AR2) or the period 1986-2005 (in AR5)—and more generally by individual scientists. The WMO’s decision in 2015 suggests that for the purposes of climate change assessments, the 1961-1990 baseline should continue to be used.
…
Three Baseline Climates
So, what is the significance of the move to a new 1991-2020 WMO normal in January 2021? On the one hand, it is a pragmatic move to redefine ‘present-day’ climate for operational applications to that of the most recent 30-year period. On the other hand, it puts into play a third climatic baseline. Already existing is the ‘pre-industrial’ climate of the late nineteenth century and the ‘historic’ climate’ of 1961-1990, the latter about 0.3°C warmer than the former. And now there is the new ‘present-day’ climate of 1991-2020, in turn about 0.5°C warmer than the ‘historic climate’ of 1961-1990. And in addition to these three climatic baselines, there are the two climatic tolerances enshrined in the PACC of 1.5° and 2°C.
Climatic normals and baselines give precise numerical form to the rather intangible notion of climate: an idea that imposes a degree of imaginative order upon the human experience of atmospheric chaos (Hulme, 2016). While baselines can be either descriptive, predictive and/or normative, climatic tolerances are more explicitly normative. The adoption of particular baselines and tolerances is therefore an overtly political process with geopolitical, ethical and technological consequence. As with the adoption of other universal referential markers— for example the Greenwich Meridian as zero longitude, the metric system, or the formula for water as H2O —these processes entrain historical trajectories, cultural imaginaries, curious serendipities and power dynamics. I will investigate these contingencies at greater length in a subsequent article.
…
‘Dangerous climate change’ can be defined in either absolute or relative terms. But if defined in relative terms then it matters not just how much deviation from ‘normal’ is deemed tolerable, but crucially what is deemed ‘normal’ in the first place. Combining a climatic tolerance of 2°C—or indeed 1.5°C—with a pre-industrial baseline yields a very different climate target than, say, using a 1986-2005 baseline, the period widely adopted by IPCC AR5 Working Group I as their analytical baseline. The choices of both baseline and tolerance are politically charged. They carry significant implications for historic liability for emissions (La Rovere et al., 2002), for policy design (Millar et al., 2017) and for possible reparations (Roberts & Huq, 2015).
Some thoughts from Anthony:
The only temperature plot that isn’t a slave to baseline choices is absolute temperature. Anomaly based temperature is a statistical construct relying on the assumptions and choices of the statistician.
Here is an example of an absolute temperature plot from NASA GISS data.
Of course, to be accurate for “absolute temperature”, we would plot the Kelvin scale. But, few understand the Kelvin scale; Fahrenheit and Celsius scales rule human perception.
Temperature trends in fact don’t change with changes in baseline, but any time there is a perceived step up, i.e ‘In an instant; today, the world’s climate has ‘suddenly’ become nearly 0.5°C warmer’ it could be used for political and propaganda purposes without ever acknowledging that it is a statistical up-tick, and not real.
But Hulme has it backwards, we won’t see a step up in above normal temperature reports.
Since the baseline is going up, the anomaly temperatures going forward, i.e., departure from normal, will be less since the “normal baseline” will now be higher.
In an email exchange with Dr. Roy Spencer, he notes:
No, the climate doesn’t suddenly become warmer. The new baseline is indeed warmer, but since the baseline is warmer, all temperatures relative to it become cooler. It doesn’t matter much to people if the global average temperature is (for example) 59 degrees F or 60 degrees. But they DO pay attention to how much “above normal” temperatures are, and for at least the next 10 years, those numbers will be smaller.
Dr. Roy Spencer, via email 1/16/21
So it appears this will be a non-issue going forward. Lower “above normal” temperatures will cool some debate in the future.
Defund the universities.
Dementia Joe is likely going to put the university money machines on steroids by cancelling outstanding student debt held by the US government, which was the plan when Obama and Dems took over the bulk of student loan underwriting in 2009 with the ACA (aka, ObamaCare) legislative debacle.
Cancelling that debt will be a slap in face to those who struggled to pay off their loans, and it’ll just encourage massive tuition hikes at universities, and be part of the ever ballooning Federal debt catastrophe.
He’s now supposedly only considering up to $10k.
Student loans have been very good for university administrators. They have already allowed schools to push up tuition far beyond what they should be.
I am a big fan of community colleges.
Well John, it’s not just a problem for the black community. White parents would rather that their kids get a four degree in postmodern basket weaving at great expense somewhere out of state, than stay at home and learn to be a dental hygienist.
When I was a pup, the standard idea was that a university education would make you a better thinker and equip you to thrive in an ever changing world. Even if that was true then, I’m not sure it is now given that education seems to have been replaced by indoctrination.
You identify the fundamental problem now with today’s university educations.
They are no longer equipping the students to be “better thinkers” To evaluate critically what they are told and taught. Indoctrination disguised as thinking has become the norm in all the Arts colleges for sure.
Because of that problem with today’s universities, most kids are better off learning a trade skill than wasting 4 years partying, running up $200K+ of debt, and having nothing to show for it but a useless degree.
Mike Rowe continually posts about this problem on his social media feeds and his video productions. I hope Mike Rowe runs for Cal governor on Newsom’s recall.
Eliminating philosophy programs, as suggested where I taught, probably won’t help students become “better thinkers.”
http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-07-14-11.htm
Thanks Ralph. Curiously, the same thing happens in healthcare.
I wonder what the common denominator is for Education and Healthcare that leads to explosive growth in Administration?
The common denominator is they are comprised of organizations.
Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that organizations are likely to be taken over by the wrong people, ie. administrators.
I see Newsom is calling efforts to recall him treason. His grandiose opinion of himself is breathtaking.
Too bad we can’t recall Biden, too.
I fully believe in the dumbing-down of education. At the time our Constitution (I’m in the U. S., so I’m talking 1780s) a “Liberal Arts” degree meant some of everything, including some engineering. Since then, the Liberal Arts degrees were watered down all over the world, until by the 1950s even, a Liberal Arts degree would not get a person a job. Because, I would wager that a Liberal Arts degree earned in 1801 had learned how to think, not simply mastered regurgitation of knowledge, and therefore was better equipped to solve problems, i.e., actually live in the world that existed at that time, than an engineering degree earned any time after 1950.
The real end to education arrived in the U. S. with a) a court case, I think it eventually made its way all the way to the Supreme Court, that found that administering general competency assessment (GCA) to prospective hires was racist, since after all, a greater number of blacks attended lower performing schools at that time, thus blacks performed poorly on those types of exams relative to whites, and therefore no employer could administer a GCA as a condition of employment, so to replace the GCA, employers began requiring university degrees for a large number of jobs that had not previously required such; and b) the U. S. federal government began to throw money at “education”, thus increasing the demand to put more and more people through school, and the only way to do that from the existing pool of applicants was to relax the standards for admission, which meant lower performance in class but in order to keep the flunk-out rates acceptable the universities had to lower the classroom standards, and require all instructors to “grade on the curve”, which became a feedback loop as primary schools began to lower the standards due to the overwhelming influence of teachers unions the quality of student arriving at secondary schools declined thus requiring the lowering of graduation standards even further, etc., etc.
And there you have, the destruction of the World’s best education system!
Because, I would wager that a Liberal Arts degree earned in 1801 had learned how to think, not simply mastered regurgitation of knowledge,
I know someone like this. When I ask her opinions about things, especially anything political or controversial, her answer is “So and so says …”
About the only reason Mike Rowe hasn’t been cancelled yet is because he’s stayed out of politics. Even then, there’s been calls to get a “denier” like him booted off the science shows he narrates.
If debts are forgiven at political whim, who loans money? Free college is the result if the government “loans” money.
Banks and lending institutions were very willing to make mortgage loans to sub-prime borrowers (low credit scores) because Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae (backed by limitless pot of Federal taxpayer money backstop) were in the market buying up the bundled paper from them. The banks and lenders made gobs of cash on the origination fees.
As long as the US Government is involved with the taxpayer bailout ready, there is no reason or incentive for universities to keep tuition rises in check as the kiddies will just borrow whatever they need knowing Uncle Sugar will forgive it.
I read most of the comments and didnt see this thought referenced…
Based on what they have done with the COVID lockdowns, on what Biden appears to have planned, and on what certain states have planned by 2035, wouldnt it be beneficial to them to be able to easily show a “new” cooling trend? This would “prove” that their draconian policies were working….
Just a thought.
No as CO2 emissions will continue and ppm will increase
Correct. The MLO record of CO2 continuing upwards during a global cooling would put a substantial dent in the CO2 control knob hypothesis.
Which means that in 10 years we will not be able to find for ourselves the CO2 level database, it will be well-hidden behind paywalls and numerous blind and broken links.
I think you lack an appreciation for their extremism. This already happened, and they provided their pseudo-scientific (cough “sulfate aerosols” cough) “dog ate my homework” excuses for it and kept right on beating the “climate catastrophe” drum uninterrupted.
They really have entered a Danger Zone, because as Judith Curry pointed out in a 2020 post on temperature trends for the next 30 years, we could be in for a cooling due to natural cycles, volcanos, and the sun as they may “conspire” to undo all the climate disinformation we’ve been assaulted with for 25 years now from the Climate Socialists and rentseekers.
Judith wrote 11 month’s ago on her Climate, Etc site and reposted here at WUWT:
( https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/02/16/plausible-scenarios-for-climate-change-2020-2050/ )
Plausible scenarios for climate change: 2020-2050
where she Concluded:
“Three main conclusions:
(my bold)
This change of baseline will make a global cooling even more apparent (when it occurs, not “if”) and unavoidable to ignore in the next few years.
I note the uptick in volcanic activity now is becoming more apparent in Indonesia with today’s large eruption at Mt Semeru on Java.
Plenty of Youtube videos available of today’s eruption, quite spectacular (but scary if that’s where you live)
Here’s my local TV station article on Smeru’s eruption today with a Reuter’s video embedded for your viewing.
https://www.kold.com/2021/01/16/watch-semeru-volcano-erupts-indonesia/
Not to worry; they’ll just trot out the cynically preposterous “warming causes cooling” argument and continue to blame humanity for its fossil fuel use, or they’ll trot out “natural variability” or “random internal variability” excuses which will provide them with another three decades of cover as they insist that the cooling “isn’t over a long enough period to be a “meaningful trend” and/or that the “long term trend is still up” [when measured from LIA cold as a “standard”] which will provide them even more decades of cover.
Niven seems to have gotten it about right in “Fallen Angels”
Someone needs to update Jame’s original “how temperature looks on a thermometer” graph…it’s 4 years old now
I could update it out to 2100 today. I’d just copy and paste and append the same bars, extending the x axis out another 100 years and relabel the new ones to 2100.
“But, few understand the Kelvin scale…”
Ah bs. Graphs are meant to convey meaning. The only reason to present temperature data like that on a meaningless scale of 160 degrees – is to hide the trend. Is that how you’d like your doctor to track your body temperature; hidden on a thermometer with 10 degree increments?
The only reason not to graph it on a Kelvin scale? it’s pointlessness would become too obvious. Stop disinforming.
As Willis E and others have pointed out repeatedly through the years here at WUWT,
The remarkable thing about Earth’s climate is not its changes, but its clear stability.
The climate alarmists (like you Loydo) are just Chicken Little’s trying to scare un-informed people into acquiescing to the Socialist-Marxist agenda from the Climate Trojan Horse and a resulting destruction of Western capitalism.
There is no reason from the past 10,000 years of Holocene temperature paleo-record reconstructions to think the slight warming of a degree or two and additional CO2 fertilization effects will be anything but beneficial to both the biosphere and to humanity. The biggest thing to fear, and thus a threat, is NOT Climate Change, but Climate Change policy enacted by those with an agenda of authoritarian control, destruction of Western economic might via a lost middle class, and hungry for evermore power.
I am convinced now more than ever that you want people to experience energy poverty. You are they type of person that tells people to turn down their thermostat and get a coat while you sit in shorts.
I just turned up my thermostat as I sit in shorts. I used to live in Massachusetts and froze my butt off for 9 years as I watched the electricity rates skyrocket under Democrat assault on affordable energy.
Natural gas heat is good. Really good. Here in the SW US it is cheap and plentiful. It’s affordable (at least for now until Dementia Joe’s flying monkeys enact some inane methane rules) because of well fracking on shale. Fracking is the thing the Democrats hate because it destroys their renewable energy scams and weakens their climate change scam arguments.
My comment was for Loydo. My apologies. I have no idea this showed under your post.
“I used to live in Massachusetts and froze my butt off for 9 years as I watched the electricity rates skyrocket under Democrat assault on affordable energy.”
It’s going to get far worse here in MA with a new “2050 decarbonization bill” having recently been passed. A few days ago I watched a webinar by the state’s “climate czar”. The plan is to get solar on every roof in the state and maximize wind energy at sea. Even that won’t do it- so the plan is that from 60-120 thousand acres of forest land in this TINY state will have to be sacrificed for solar “farms”. I bet that’s not enough to become “net free”. Only electric cars can be sold here after 2035. All oil, coal and nuclear power in the state has been shut down. The state will not allow woody biomass power plants because the green crowd hate biomass. Many of the greens also hate solar “farms” but when I ask how they’ll get to their net free paradise without it- they go mute. Ironically, the “net free bill” also says they want to avoid any loss of farm and forest land so needed to sequester carbon. When I asked how ordinary people will be able to afford electric cars in 2035 he said that won’t be a problem- they price will come down. Well, he has a 6 figure income so it won’t be a problem for him but there’s a lot of poor people in MA who aren’t going to afford them. I guess we’ll become like the people in Cuba who keep old cars going for decades. Heck, I’ve been doing that all my life! The price of electricity is already very high in this state but will become much higher- driving many people to leave the state- leaving only high paid state workers, ivy league professors, hospital administrators and computer company executives.
Nassim Taleb, the author of the Black Swan and other modern day thinker books, calls these types IYI’s, Intellectual Yet Idiots.
William F Buckley Jr said he rather be ruled by the first 2,000 people in the Boston phone directory than the Harvard faculty.
The only good thing about it is Massachusetts will set an example for the rest of us of what *not* to do.
The United States has several Climate Crash Test Dummies going now. All based on Human-caused Climate Change which has never been shown to exist.
We are saddled with a lot of delusional people in positions of power. A *lot* of people.
On what basis are you convinced. If anything, quite the opposite is correct of his comments. From what I’ve seen of you warmists, you seem to pull your remarks from your fundamental orifice.
Derg said his comments were in reply to Loydo, not Joel, but the attribution got messed up.
I see that now. Pity I can’t delete my remark. Thanks for the correction.
The ice is coming! The ice is coming! Temperatures here have dropped 19 degrees Fahrenheit!
Oh, since this afternoon. I guess that I (and Joel, somewhere on the other side of Tucson) can cancel our Amazon orders for parkas.
I went for a nice 5K run in shorts and no shirt this afternoon. Quite pleasant I’ll say, and I got some Vitamin D recharge. But now quite chilly outside as the lack of GHG-water vapor in the desert air makes for rapid cooling.
Yep. I’ve been showing < 10% RH for a couple of weeks.
At least you know how long your record is. Loydo doesn’t have a clue.
“Stop disinforming.”
Stop being a jerk on my blog.
Big ask Anthony – jerking off is what Loydo does several times a week, here and probably elsewhere. I’m thinking he’s after a black belt in jerking off.
It has long been considered a cheap graphic trick to hack off the Y axis to exaggerate an effect. The normal protocol before the reproducibility crisis was to have the Y axis show the full range of the data to allow the reader to quickly make an assessment of physical significance of the trend. Plotting anomalies is simply shameless Y axis cropping to exaggerate the effect. This is a practise made acceptable by big pharma and now adopted by utterly boring science everywhere.
Within the human experience of Earth conditions, temperatures can range from 130ºF in Death Valley to almost -80ºF at the South Pole Amundsen station. Is that what you propose? Or do you want anomaly temps from some baseline average?
Indeed, in just one City – Toronto – I have experienced bone chilling cold, extraordinary heat (over 100 degrees Fahrenheit), and humidity the likes of which I have never experienced anywhere else. Amazing what CO2, the wonder molecule, can do.
Whilst where I live, the South West of England, the climate is pretty much as it was as when I was a kid, over 60 years ago.
I totally agree, deliberately manipulating the y-axis to mislead is shameless. A cheap graphic trick.
One used by the climate scammer all the time.
,,,,and one that’s been done by every climbit cyan tit since 1985
Mmm, its appalling.
Yes, YOU are.
Appallingly loy-DUMB and MORONIC !!
Poor UN-INFORMED loy-satte !!
Facts mean nothing to you, do they.
BTW, little UN-INFORMED trollette.
That graph is HIGHLY INFORMATIVE
You just can’t process the message it sends…
….. your brain-washed ignorance won’t let you.
I would expect the doctor to use a scale fit for the task.
Human temperatures shouldn’t move more than a couple of degrees either way from 37ºC.
Under your reasoning, an even better graph would be one covering the planetary extremes on the vertical axis,
say from -90ºC to + 60ºC
This would show the “change” in “calculated surface temperature” as a dead flat line even after all the homogenisation, infilling and other manic attempts to show some SMALL amount of warming.
Few people outside of science groups know and understand what a Kelvin is, that is why C and F temperature are used, since that is what most people see in newspapers and on TV for their weather report.
When you read instruction on cooking food, they post either C or F temperature NEVER Kelvin,
Wikipedia entry should be understood by people who see things the way YOU do:
That is why your post is idiotic.
I recommend that we use the Rankine scale.
“Few people outside of science groups know and understand…blah blah”
So lets make a tricky graph to really fool ’em.
Any squiggly line would fool you loy-satte,
…. so long as it backs the AGW mantra that is brain-hosed into your tiny little mind.
In that respect, you are the most gullible AGW cretin on the planet. !
Of course DATA and graphs that don’t support your mind-numbed fantasies are just deliberately ignored.
FACTS and DATA mean NOTHING to you.
You have NONE, and you are belligerently and petulantly determined to keep it that way.
That seems a little harsh. That was pure vindictiveness.
Do not try to reason with one who is a believer, whatever the religion. it is very difficult to convert them, unless you have a knife at their throat. Loydo is faithful to his cult, and cannot be swayed. Give him a break – and I encourage you to just ignore him rather than let him get under your skin.
It’s not a “tricky” graph. It’s based on the typical thermometer sold to US consumers with a scale running from -40F to 120F. It is more immediately understandable to the general US public than almost any other graph might be. Cretin.
If what you’re measuring is varying by a hundred degrees.
Dickhead.
The temperature where I live typically varies from 0F to 100F on a seasonal basis. I’ve seen it vary from -10F to 120F over the years. Why would I want a thermometer that couldn’t measure a temperature that varies by 100 degrees?
What is the difference you couldn’t analyze it … so who is the dickhead high school dropout?
Loydo old chum where I live we have a temperature range of 135 F. Low temperature -37 F to 98 F for a high, the 160 range is about right.
Besides guys like you and I know that -40 F and -40 C are equal so we only have train the others to understand how to use their tablet to google, “convert F to C or K”.
And you are correct on the pointlessness idea. Why try to show something that isn’t happening? Your graph on showing the udder BS of the forcing equation was great. Keep it up.
By your standards, your doctor should use a thermometer that converted to anomaly. Imagine the swings that would show!
At least you’d know something; like how ill you are.
And you wouldn’t know how ill you are by the absolute temperature?
You would be in grave danger if you relied on the confected con of a thermometer depicted above.
I spent more clicks getting past this idiotic comment and its responses, from which I have learned nothing, than all the rest of the comments combined. Is there a “Hide Comment and Its Responses” key? And for the rest of you not named Loydo, stop feeding Loydo’s ego. Loydo does enough of that all by himself! In other words, can we ignore the trolls? Except for you, Anthony, maybe you can find a way to run him off? Politely of course, we wouldn’t want the WUWT comments section to be ONLY agreements. I really like seeing some of the hashing and arguing over statistical treatments, those are actually educational!
“Of course, to be accurate for “absolute temperature”, we would plot the Kelvin scale. But, few understand the Kelvin scale; Fahrenheit and Celsius scales rule human perception.”
Yes, but we are talking about science here. And the only temperature scales with a meaning in Thermodynamics are Kelvin which uses Celsius size degrees but which begins at absolute zero and Rankine which uses Farenheit size degrees and also begins at absolute zero.
K = °C + 273.15, °R = °F + 459.67, and °R = 1.8 K.
Looking at the chart above current global temperature is about 60°F or 15°C which are 288.15K or 519.67°R.
The entire climate change scare is based on a possible fluctuation of less than 1% on those scales.
If you showed temperatures on their proper thermodynamic scale. The controversy would disappear.
“But Hulme has it backwards, we won’t see a step up in above normal temperature reports.”
Yes, he has. The anomalies will be lower.
But more is wrong. In fact, the official WMO baseline was 1981-2010, not 1961-90
https://public.wmo.int/en/media/news/new-two-tier-approach-%E2%80%9Cclimate-normals%E2%80%9D
The earlier period did have a function as a historical reference period, and of course that will not change. The other utility of 1961-90 is that it is the period when the greatest number of stations had data, which maximises its utility as a base. So NOAA used it, and then converted to other periods that seemed more meaningful (eg 20th Cen). There is no reason why that use of 1961-90 should change. As said, base period doesn’t affect trends. “Meaningful” is in the eye of the beholder, and you can convert to any period that suits you.
Nah.. its just that it covers the very bottom of the AMO cycle and the New Ice Age scare of the 1970s
Its “convenient ” for CLIMATE SCAMMERS, like you, to use it to show natural warming as being not natural..
A 30-year trend is too short for analyzing ‘climate.’ Given the measurement problems, the last 100 years is probably the best choice. Paleo data puts modern temperature measurements in perspective.
It’s the German DWD, Weather Service, always using 1961-90 baseline to show the unprecedent, alarming human made global warming.No interest to use the official prescribed baseline 1981-2010.
It’s less alarming, so not of interest.
Why not use a running 30-year climate span? i.e. Drop the first year of the previous 30-year span when adding the newest completed year.
It seems likely that UAH will drop close to or below zero anomaly at some point in the next few months.
(1981-2010 reference period)
Will be fun to watch the reaction of the climate clowns. 🙂
You’re assuming that the below zero value would be visible ‘after adjustment’.
I know Roy is a “lukewarmer”,…
… but I’m pretty sure he is and honest scientisit and would not go “adjusting” data to make it follow some ideal.
No, I’m pretty sure you’re right and I’m not really suggesting that they would. However, given the vehemence on certain sites about UAH having ‘issues’ with readings and/or having either misapplied the correct adjustments or applied the incorrect ones, I’m very sure that there will be a long queue of helpful souls ready to fix their supposed mistakes and adjust any downwards trend out of existence. Wouldn’t be the first time honest scientists were vilified for just doing their jobs.
Quote:
“”But Hulme has it backwards,””
It’s not the only thing Climate Scientists have backwards/wrong
Apart from the horrendous oversimplification in their application of Stefan’s Law
They really do need a crash course in understanding what happened inside the ‘Ultraviolet Catastrophe’
On 2 significant levels…
1) That when dealing with radiation, colour/wavelength matters (Wien’s Law)
2) The use of the word catastrophe in that phrase did not refer to an actual physical catastrophe/crash/disaster.
Just as in the (mis) understanding of Green House Gases causing A Climate Catastrophe, the Ultraviolet Catastrophe was a misunderstanding of basic science.
The Only Problem was inside the heads of the scientists
Therein is The Problem with Climate Science.
The entire thing is based upon the premise of Trapped Heat – nonsensical in the first place BUT, assuming there is such stuff, ‘heat’ is an actual physical thing.
Heat/energy can be measured in terms of real things, such as time, distance, mass etc
It is and can be measured/counted in Joules – actual tangible ‘things’
It is A Thing with ‘dimensions’
But Climate Science trashes its own credibility by totally fixating on temperature – which in NOT an actual tangible thing.
Temperature is a dimensionless quantity. As in the Ultraviolet Catastrophe, it only exists inside people’s heads.
Having said that, temperature is useful BUT and only BUT IF, everything else in the system you’re observing stays the same.
i.e. All the actual things that have dimensions (time, mass, length etc)
But they don’t.
Just 2 of the most significant things..
1) As per here, they are arbitrarily changing the time dimension. Trashing their own science
2) The very premise of the GHGE requires water, an actual tangible thing, to change from liquid to vapour – in order that extra water-vapour traps more heat than does the CO2 on its own.
Thus they are required to change the ‘length’ or volume dimension of water, without any repercussions elsewhere in the Climate System, to get their science to work – yet seem/are entirely ignorant of what they’ve done??!!
While perfectly ignoring the volume of the atmosphere – that if it did warm up and as a near Ideal Gas it would simply expand and absorb/disappear the extra (trapped heat) energy without as large a temp rise it would experience if it didn’t or couldn’t expand.
How can they so cheerfully ignore 13 Billion Light Years of near perfect vacuum, just above everyone’s heads, that the/our atmosphere might expand into?
How many times is it possible to have and eat one piece of cake and not choke on it?
how many times. how crazy can anything get.
But think we know, pretty well anything can go on inside people’s heads
and in climate science, ‘anything’ happens on a daily basis
”The ‘present-day’ climate will now formally be represented by the meteorological statistics of the period 1991-2020, replacing those from 1961-1990”
Wah?
1958 to 2002 (+) please…
Good luck getting this past the cancel culture critical theorists.
Critical Climate Theory demands that data (truth) is relativistic in its goal of deconstructing the west.
It is a new metanarrative to replace liberalism and science. It is a new religion, and its fervour is such that it will not tolerate this kid of dissent.
Yes, yes and yes! The “anomaly” value is a scam, a misdirection, a sleight of hand as in how a magician tricks his subjects into a distraction from what’s really going on.
http://temperature.global/?fbclid=IwAR1mhZfsFG7WnZYOjTznx_Yvy-_MguXETmvV-cioDlJGGsEqNoWppwAMrUo
The link above is an ongoing assembly of worldwide ground and ocean temperature records. And for those who are going to object to it’s veracity, I will point out most of the records are from METAR’s which are the data used by pilots to safely navigate and avoid weather that would otherwise bring airliners and general aviation craft down. So if you consider these to be inaccurate, you should never set foot on an aircraft again!
Absolute values are what rules, whether it’s temperature or just as important for a general understanding and then dismissal of this Climate Change Cult ideology – WATER VAPOR concentration.
Most people only know relative humidity. But when you look at the absolute humidity in ppm, you immediately see that water vapor is on average 50 to 80 times more effective as the climate control knob than is CO2. Water vapor dominates the climate by modulating the outgoing radiative loss to space, on top of all the convective and phase change effects it has!
I have been doing my own experiment for over a year now. I measure the ground temperature, the vertical sky temperature and obtain the absolute humidity level at dawn. Plotting this data finds a straight line trend for the relationship between the two temperatures against absolute humidity (there are only a small handful of overcast conditions per year in my location, so the trends apply to clear sky readings) (and other tests verify the vertical measurement is accurate to about 27,000 feet ASL)
These data trends can predict the sky temperature if you have the ground temp and absolute humidity – with better than 96% confidence or R value. Therefore water vapor, not CO2 is in control of the climate. Likewise the average absolute humidity here, in southern Florida is 22,500 ppmv. There can be no question the outgoing IR to space is mitigated by water vapor as the dominant factor.
When the absolute humidity is 30,000 ppm, the ground/sky delta T yields 125 W/m² outgoing radiation. When it’s 5,000 ppm, the outgoing radiation is 250 W/m², and at the average at this location it’s 160 W/m² on an annual basis.
CO2 is said to contribute about 1.8 W/m² according to the IPCC (therefore water vapor is on average over 80 times more dominant than could be CO2) (this will be less at higher latitudes, but it still swamps any purported effect of CO2)(it’s less at higher latitudes because the absolute humidity is lower for colder climates)
My point with this post is that just as temperature anomaly is a sleight of hand to obfuscate the reality, even more profound is the fact no one ever talks about absolute humidity – if average folks routinely see that water vapor concentration is 2 orders of magnitude higher than CO2 and is at least double the greenhouse potential – the Climate Scam about CO2 would be over in a heartbeat!
What you are doing, in essence, is measuring the enthalpy (heat content) of the air. It depends on temperature, absolute humidity, and relative humidity.
Specific enthalpy of moist air is the sump of the specific enthalpy of dry air and the specific enthalpy of the water vapor in the air.
The climate alarmists try to use temperature as a proxy for enthalpy but is is a very *poor* proxy. It is heat content that determines what is happening, not temperature. And heat content is very dependent on the amount of water vapor in the air.
This is why averaging the temperature in Death Valley (low humidity) with the temperature in Miami (high humidity) is so misleading about what is actually happening with the thermodynamic system we know of as Earth.
Not exactly new, “shifting baseline” has been in ecological analysis with the presumption that everything got worse. Like many ideas logical, but used for naught. Don’t have the marine papers handy, but they are there.
Muller, R. A. 1977. A synoptic climatology for environmental baseline analysis. Journal of Applied Meteorology. 16(1):20-33.
One example from fisheries, everything due to fishing syndrome. Pauly, D. 1995. Anecdotes and the shifting baseline syndrome of fisheries. Trends in Ecology and Evolution. 10:430.
http://legacy.seaaroundus.s3.amazonaws.com/doc/Researcher+Publications/dpauly/PDF/1995/Journal+Articles/Anecdotes&ShiftingBaselineSyndromeFisheries.pdf
Of particular interest to UK readers, the annual average temperature of Glasgow (Scotland) is 8.5 C. That of London is 11.1 C, some 2.6 degrees higher.
The world has warmed roughly 1 degree since the end of the little ice age (or circa 1850 when the HadCrut crew chooses to start it’s easily-accessed public records).
Now there are some influential and powerful people who think, or claim, that an extra 1 degree of warming might constitute some sort of a climatic civilization-threatening disaster.
I find the words “dick” and “heads” spring to mind.
And yet James Hansen likes to use 1880-1920:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2021/20210114_Temperature2020.pdf
As well as claim that global temperature recording at that time was ‘adequate’, despite the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) ignoring anything earlier that 1910.
There’s that famous quote by (possibly) Charlton Ogburn jr: “We trained hard – but it seemed like every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while actually producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation.”
Why not use an average for 1900-2000 as we`re now in a new century? The idea that it has to be 30 years is ridiculous, it´s just a made up number of years.
“The WMO’s decision in 2015 suggests that for the purposes of climate change assessments, the 1961-1990 baseline should continue to be used.”
Why would that be?
In one of the Climategate emails from Jan 6 2005, Phil Jones said:
“There is some discussion of going to 1981-2000 to help the modelling chapters. If we do this it will be a bit of a bodge as it will be hard to do things properly for the surface temp and precip as we’d lose loads of stations with long records that would then have incomplete normals. If we do we will likely achieve it by rezeroing series and maps in an ad hoc way.
Parker, David (Met Office) wrote:
There is a preference in the atmospheric observations chapter of IPCC AR4 to stay with the 1961-1990 normals. This is partly because a change of normals confuses users, e.g. anomalies will seem less positive than before if we change to newer normals, so the impression of global warming will be muted.”
One of the coldest periods of the last century as a baseline? Guaranteed warming when compared with temperatures returning to more pleasant levels.
“The only temperature plot that isn’t a slave to baseline choices is absolute temperature.”
If you plotted the temperatures using the Rankine scale, the graph would look exactly the same, except that the numeric values would differ by an additive constant – just like two anomaly plots with different baselines ;o)