by Judith Curry
A few things that caught my eye this past week.
In the news
The Sun Is Now Virtually Blank During The Weakest Solar Cycle In More Than A Century [link]
Seismologists cannot predict events such as #NepalEarthquake at short notice. But here’s what they can do: [link]
Human activity responsible for three out of four heat extremes, study finds [link]
Prolonged exposure to air pollution linked to brain damage, new study finds [link]
“UAH Release Version 6.0 – Confirms Cooling Trend Since 1998” [link]
Prof Richard Muller: Not adjusting global temperature records would be “poor science” [link]
Polar regions
Gravity data show that Antarctic ice sheet is melting increasingly faster [link]
200-year lag between climate events in Greenland, Antarctica: Ocean involved [link]
Research: Arctic Sea Ice Loss Likely To Be Reversible [link]
PNAS: “Permafrost carbon−climate feedback sensitive to deep soil carbon decomposability but not deep soil nitrogen dynamics” [link]
Microbes play ‘villainous’ role in Arctic climate change [link]
Is there a quasi 60 year oscillation in Arctic sea ice extent? [parker arctic ice]
Carbon budget
Links between atmospheric CO2, the land carbon reservoir and climate over the past milennium [link]
Review of scientific literature finds positive effects outweigh negative for Mammals in a C02-Enriched & Warmer World [link]
Emissions from forests may be underestimated because estimates don’t fully account for dead wood from logging [link]
China contributed the most to a global increase in carbon stored in trees and other plants [link]
Climate dynamics
Interesting looking article here on precessional forcing of the Indian Ocean Dipole (Wang et al.): [link]
Easy to understand explanation of climate feedbacks [link]
Social sciences, history, philosophy
We simply can’t wait to declare a new epoch. Are we losing perspective in our rush to declare the Anthropocene? [link]
FitzRoy and the first weather forecasts at @BBCNewsMagazine [link] …
Brigitte Nerlich: Science as public and condensible knowledge [link] …
No doubt about it: flooding in Samutprakarn, Thailand in 2008 was caused by American SUVs.
“For example, scientists at the University of Oxford found that heavy and prolonged rainfall episodes, such as the one the UK experienced in the winter of 2013/4, are now 25% more likely because of climate change.” Where in the sam h*ll did they get that stat? Did they pull it out of the behinds?
“…pull it out of their …”
Yes. The “climate change” cause of any event is the enlightenment version of “God is angry with us”. We are guilty of carbon emission. As penitence we must install solar panels, build windmills, pay high energy prices, and give rich people and left wing politicians our money. For the recalcitrant, we have the special punishment of almost solitary confinement with Elon Musk, who will recite his miracle battery pitch until the dee nigh err cries “uncle”.
So much money has been spent advertising Musk’s “giga” factory in the desert, it’s almost as if it really existed. Megamarketing is valued more highly on Wall Street than facilities that generate actual profits from hiring actual employees who actually produce actual products that actual people actually buy.
The “climate change” cause of any event is the enlightenment version of “God is angry with us”
+100
Never heard it put any better. I’ll definitely be borrowing this phrase
Tomdesabla
Not only is my quote good, it’s cheap.
Re the arctic sea ice article “previous idealized modelling studies” are wrong? Say it ain’t say. They just can’t be wrong. This is climate change research. It’s settled science. We have a 97% consensus. Models can never be wrong unless you are in the pay of big oil. ~heavy sarcasm~
“Re the arctic sea ice article “previous idealized modelling studies” are wrong? Say it ain’t say. They just can’t be wrong.”
Of course they can – things can always be worse than we thought.
Loved the article on potential benefits as well as negatives of global warming. But, hey, I live in Manitoba in an area commonly colder than Siberia so I have no personal objections to a little warming myself. But yet, that is obviously a denier blog in the pay of big oil so we can ignore that one too.
“We simply can’t wait to declare a new epoch. Are we losing perspective in our rush to declare the Anthropocene?”
I would like to propose a new epoch, also without geologic evidence, to be called the Angzioscene – the time when humans, having solved most real problems such as thirst, hunger, predation, childhood death, and disease, began to imagine new problems like extraterrestrial invasion, nuclear waste, fluoridation, vaccines, GMOs, and CAGW.
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“The Sun Is Now Virtually Blank During The Weakest Solar Cycle In More Than A Century ”
Our grandchildren may indeed see snow. Read about it in my next (first) eBook, “Snows of my Grandchildren”.
Please help, I am stuck on the first line, “It was a dark and snowy winter…”.
I am commenting on the weblog post link [Prof Richard Muller: Not adjusting global temperature records would be “poor science”} that us at
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/04/prof-richard-muller-not-adjusting-global-temperature-records-would-be-poor-science/
I am on the The Global Warming Policy Foundation project that is looking into the surface temperature data. While, we will report what we find [and, perhaps will confirm what Professor Muller concluded], with respect to the land portion of the data, there remain major incompletely assessed issues.
I discussed these in a recent comment on a post by Zeke on the Time of Observation bias, and in a set of several weblog posts
https://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/04/01/comments-on-the-testimony-of-richard-muller-at-the-united-states-house-of-representatives-committee-on-energy-and-the-environment/
https://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/sampling-bias-in-the-best-analysis-reported-by-richard-muller/
https://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/informative-news-article-by-margot-roosevelt-in-the-los-angeles-times-on-richard-mullers-testimony-to-congress/
https://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/07/28/richard-mullers-comments-on-npr-on-april-11-2011/
https://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/comment-on-the-article-in-the-economist-on-rich-mullers-data-analysis/
Unfortunately, Professor Muller never responded to these critiques.
I will mention just three here.
First, with respect to the adequacy of his spatial sampling of the land areas of the world. If the stations he added are in the same geographic regions, the BEST program can add to trend assessment confidence in these regions, but does not add to a better assessment of a global land average.
Also, he has not extended his analysis to maximum and minimum temperatures. We have found a significant warm bias in land minimum temperatures when the surface layer is stably stratified (e.g night and hid latitude winter) with respect to attributing to deeper tropospheric warming;
McNider, R.T., G.J. Steeneveld, B. Holtslag, R. Pielke Sr, S. Mackaro, A. Pour Biazar, J.T. Walters, U.S. Nair, and J.R. Christy, 2012: Response and sensitivity of the nocturnal boundary layer over land to added longwave radiative forcing. J. Geophys. Res., 117, D14106, doi:10.1029/2012JD017578. Copyright (2012) American Geophysical Union. http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/r-371.pdf
His attribution of the increase in surface temperatures to greenhouse gases that he reported could be, in part a misattribution of the reason. He also ignores positive non-greenhouse forcing (e.g. black carbon in the atmosphere and deposited at the surface)
In addition, he does not acknowledge that the robust metric of assessing global warming is ocean heat content changes in Joules, not a two dimensional surface temperature anomaly. As a physicist, I am surprised he has not emphasized this.
I discuss this in my paper
Pielke Sr., R.A., 2003: Heat storage within the Earth system. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 84, 331-335. http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/files/2009/10/r-247.pdf
Roger A .Pielke Sr.
Yes, this is true. On the other hand he was responding to a review of the surface temperatures, so may not have seen why he should comment on something that is not mentioned in the review itself. Additionally, as a physicist, he may have realised that it is virtually impossible for the OHC to have risen over the last 60 years (as the data suggests) without being accompanied by a rise in surface temperatures, and is therefore equally surprised that someone who promotes the OHC as a robust metric would bother associating with a review of the surface temperature datasets?
There is nothing statistically robust about the estimated OCH, quite the contrary. Volume averaging is far worse than area averaging, which is no good to begin with.
Thus David Wojick, you do not agree with Roger A. Pielke Sr, when he writes: “he [Muller] does not acknowledge that the robust metric of assessing global warming is ocean heat content changes in Joules, not a two dimensional surface temperature anomaly.”
The point AndThenTheresPhysics was making is that the ocean heat content is not the topic of the review and that it is thus somewhat surprising that Pielke wanted Muller to respond to the Ocean Heat Content (OHC). Whether you are right or Pielke, that argument seems sound.
Victor, it is sound in that both are wrong.
Phalse Physics is being unmasked.
David,
So we have CO2 rising, which would produce a change forcing and would be expected to produce warming. We have measurements of OHC that indicate an increase since the mid-1950s. We have surface temperature measurements that also indicate that it is warmer now than it was prior to the start of the rise in atmospheric CO2. You’re suggesting that somehow – by chance – these are all wrong?
attp, “We have measurements of OHC that indicate an increase since the mid-1950s.”
We have paleo indicating an increase in OHC since 1700.
Really? I wasn’t aware of that.
attp, the paper has a few issues but in general is pretty solid.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/11/01/pacific-ocean-heat-content-for-the-past-10000-years/
attp, and btw that same team did the IPWP overlay I used in this
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-OvQHzJy8gFU/VLF3XHImAqI/AAAAAAAAMGM/X1vv5Tx0kiI/w689-h411-no/oppo%2Bover%2Bmann.png
The IPWP is one of those ocean regions that strongly correlate with climate and ohc.
ATTP: These are not measurements, they are the output of questionable area and volume averaged statistical models operating on convenience samples. The first law of statistical sampling theory is that no conclusion about the population can be drawn from a convenience sample. This is math not physics.
UAH is closer to a measurement and it shows no significant atmospheric warming 1978-1997 and 2000 to today. But the second flat period is slightly higher than the first so there was some heat introduced by the giant El Nino-La Nina cycle. There is apparently no GHG warming in the entire record.
We have paleo indicating an increase in OHC since 1700.
Here’s the question I have with all OHC.
We’d agree that:
1.) The average temperature of the oceans is much lower than the average temperature of the atmosphere.
2.) Colder water sinks and warmer water floats, which inhibits vertical mixing.
3.) As a consequence, the warmer the surface becomes, the less mixing takes place.
So why are we certain OHC will increase? particularly at depth?
Also, how would we distinguish between increase in heat into the oceans versus a decrease in deep formation ( perhaps because of the increase in Antarctic sea ice cover which insulates the ocean )???
I understand turbulent mixing, but any additional oceanic heat would be opposed by cold deep water formation, which would seem immune to global temperature rise because sea ice limits deep water formation already.
Turbulent Eddie, “So why are we certain OHC will increase? particularly at depth?
Also, how would we distinguish between increase in heat into the oceans versus a decrease in deep formation ( perhaps because of the increase in Antarctic sea ice cover which insulates the ocean )???”
It is actually a very complicated problem. I have seen some paleo that indicates deep oceans lag surface by about 1700 years. Since the majority of the mixing is driven by surface winds, changes in ITCZ, ENSO and just about any long term climate oscillation would vary the rate of uptake. The GFDL has some of the best ocean models and which ocean model is selected makes a big difference in coupled model performance.
I guess I missed seeing the Rosenthal paper before – interesting.
“Original climate model runs on were based assume temperature of their day and didn’t anticipate future adjustments.”
Climate models deal with the real, actual temperatures. Data model sdjustments to raw data are made to obtain exactly that, by removing known biases.
David Appell,
“Climate models deal with the real, actual temperatures. Data model sdjustments to raw data are made to obtain exactly that, by removing known biases.”
What are you talking about? Talk about naive!
ATTP,
Long term trend of atmospheric, aquaspheric, and lithospheric temperatures – four and a half billion years, averaged over the whole Earth – is not one of warming. It is cooling. No doubt, no chance of denying it.
The trend is your friend. The longer it is, the better it predicts what is to come, according to the climatological experts.
The cooling has taken place in spite of CO2 concentrations of up to 950,000 ppm, according to experts.
Over the last couple of hundred years, people have furiously created heat by burning stuff. The population in 1800 was around a billion. Now, about seven billion. Far more heat is being produced by the seven than the one.
The heat has to go somewhere. Maybe trapped, absorbed or stored by CO2 for a couple of centuries, and yet you seem to claim that you can’t measure this trapped heat by any means. Maybe it doesn’t affect climatological thermometers because it is anthropogenic heat? I believe experts claim to be able to measure the temperature of the Earth to better than 0.01 C, with a 0.36 probability of being correct.
Where did all the heat go? How much has been stored? How much heat is produced during just one year by creating 10,000,000,0000 metric tonnes of CO2? How much is trapped, making each year warmer than the one before?
Thanks.
David Appell (@davidappell) | May 2, 2015 at 5:56 pm |
“…Climate models deal with the real, actual temperatures.”
LOL!
Bollox.
Stop making stuff up!
Indeed, Roger, Muller gives some obvious (fluff) cases where adjustment is called for, such as a change from centigrade to fahrenheit reporting. But the adjustment issue is far deeper and more complex than this. He mentions that the adjustments are made by computers, as though that makes them unbiased. We are probably looking at algorithmic biases.
For example, my conjecture is that the homogenization algorithm biases toward the majority, which in this case is warming. Also, the BEST algorithms create a continuous temperature field from the discrete station data, in effect using an infinite number of interpolations. There are lots of ways to do this, each with its own mathematical biases. One wonders which way they chose?
A half degree F over the US corn belt isn’t minimal.
That is the uncertainty you will have to live with. The real uncertainty, especially for such a small region, is much larger than just 0.2°C.
You are the ones who think that uncertainty is great. Remember the Uncertainty monster? The wicked problems? That’s not me. I think that uncertainty goes both ways and the surprises, the unknown unknowns, are for me as citizen the main reason to want to act.
We do our best to reduce the uncertainties, to develop better methods to remove non-climatic changes, to digitise and collect more data so that we can find data problems more easily. We do this the moments we are not distracted from our work by FOIA harassment by you guys.
Roger Pielke, on twitter to my surprise you linked to an article by Christopher Booker in The Telegraph (also reposted on the homepage of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, your funder) that announced your review, do you agree with me that this article contains serious errors?
Because Christopher Booker only write that adjustments are made, but does not explain why and how, he gives the impression that any adjustment is wrong. Do you agree with Richard Muller that “Not adjusting global temperature records would be “poor science” and that Booker’s suggestions is thus wrong?
To mention a few examples of the errors in the Booker article:
Booker: The figures from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were based, like all the other three official surface temperature records on which the world’s scientists and politicians rely, on data compiled from a network of weather stations by NOAA’s Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN).
No, the Climate Research Unit and BEST gather data themselves. They do also use GHCN land surface data, but would certainly notice if that data showed more or less global warming than their other data sources.
Also the data published by national weather services show warming. If someone assumes a conspiracy, it would be a very large one. Real conspiracies tend to be small and short.
Booker:In particular, they will be wanting to establish a full and accurate picture of just how much of the published record has been adjusted in a way which gives the impression that temperatures have been rising faster and further than was indicated by the raw measured data.
None of the studies using the global mean temperature will match this criterion because contrary to WUWT wisdom the adjustments reduce the temperature trend, which gives the “impression” that temperatures have been rising more slowly and less than was indicated by the raw measured data.
The homepage of the Policy Foundation team shows a graph for the USA (in Fahrenheit), reprinted below. This is an enormous cherry pick. The adjustments necessary for the USA land temperatures happen to be large and warming, about 0.4°C. The reasons are the change in time of observation and the introduction of automatic weather stations.
https://i0.wp.com/www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/ushcn/ts.ushcn_anom25_diffs_urb-raw_pg.gif
That the US non-climatic changes are large relative to other regions should be known to somewhat knowledgeable people. Presented without context on the homepage of the Policy Foundation and The Telegraph, it will fool the casual reader by suggesting that this is typical.
For the global mean temperature, the net effect of all adjustments is a reduction in the warming. The raw records show a stronger warming due to non-climatic changes, which climatologists reduce by homogenization.
Zeke Hausfather found one more rookie mistake:: Its a bad sign that this new effort features one graph on their website: USHCN version 1 adjusted minus raw. Unfortunately, USHCN v1 was replaced by USHCN v2 (with the automated PHA rather than manual adjustments) about 8 years ago. The fact that they are highlighting an old out-of-date adjustment graph is, shall we say, not a good sign.
Will you ask your Policy Foundation to remove this graph?
I have a similar question as AndThenTheresPhysics, why should Muller have said anything about his attribution study? The topic was the global temperature record, not the research that uses this record. Will your Policy Foundation also study attribution?
Attribution is currently not in the list of questions. As I have asked you before, do you have the ability as expert team to change the silly loaded questions of the policy foundation?
Victor “The fact that they are highlighting an old out-of-date adjustment graph is, shall we say, not a good sign.”
Not really, a large part of the adjustment issue isn’t that adjustments aren’t needed as much as there is no continuity of the original reference temperature reconstructions. For example, Hansen said there would be x number of degrees of warming not x number of degrees past adjusted cooling. Original climate model runs on were based assume temperature of their day and didn’t anticipate future adjustments.
Victor – I have a great difficulty to believe that in order to accommodate 2015 data we have to change (excuse me, adjust) 1915 data retroactively. Is statistics really such a mess?
Curious George, we are not changing data, the raw data is still there for you to download and anyone to analyse.
We generate a new dataset that has less trend errors due to non-climatic changes and is thus better suited for trend analysis. We could also do this in one go: raw data in and trends out, like BEST do, but that would be less transparent. And the division of labour helps, now the people removing the non-climatic changes are experts in that and the people analysing the trends do not have to redo the removal of non-climatic changes for every new region or period they are interested in.
This new dataset is only there for trend analysis. It thus does not make any difference whether old values are made smaller or whether new values are made larger. It is the trend that matters.
Old sea surface temperature measurements were too cold because the temperature was measured by taking a bucket of water out of the ocean. Evaporation makes that the water in these buckets is a little colder than the ocean water. Do you want climatologists to use these raw temperatures or the adjusted ones? The raw temperatures show a larger temperature trend than the homogenized temperatures. The warming adjustments made to the land surface temperature are less important than the cooling adjustments made to the ocean temperature.
I do not care in which direction the adjustments go, I just want to make the best possible assessment of the real climatic changes. That means that the non-climatic changes have to be removed as well as we can.
Given that the land regions, where the warming adjustments are greatest, are where the voters live, is this an accident? Suddenly the USA and Australia, where skepticism is taking hold, are warming faster. Small regions with major influence. Coincidence?
Victor, when you say this ; “That means that the non-climatic changes have to be removed as well as we can.”
Who is we?
Curious George, sounds like a conspiracy theory to me. Do you really think that a conspiracy over multiple decades, coordinating hundreds of researchers is possible? Had I been at the start of this conspiracy and not a scientists, but your fantasy enemy, I would have suggested to claim cooling. That scares people much more. :)
Then the conspiracy would have gotten into trouble with all the warming observed by thousands of scientists elsewhere, in nature, agriculture, glaciers, pole caps, lake temperature, river ice breakup dates, satellite temperatures, radiosonde temperatures, changes in storm tracks and the Hadley cell, changes in precipitation, etc.
The temperature trend in the USA is actually smaller than the one in Europe. That combined with the reduction in warming of the global temperature also pleads against a conspiracy.
Who is we? The group of scientists working on homogenization methods. One or two scientists (mostly part time) at every major weather service in the world and a hand full of academics. I wish there were more, it is an important topic and I would like to thank you guys for keeping station data quality on the agenda. It would only be nice if you would do so with better arguments.
Victor, thank you, but I am still not convinced. The adjusted temperature in the U.S. Corn belt in 1900 has changed by -0.5 degrees F between 2014 and 2015.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2015/03/even-though-warming-has-stopped-it-keeps-getting-worse/
Victor – “I have a great difficulty to believe that in order to accommodate 2015 data we have to change (excuse me, adjust) 1915 data retroactively. Is statistics really such a mess?” If it sounds like a conspiracy theory to you, maybe you read too much Cook and Lewandowsky.
My apologies for mixing up your name.
I hope you do not mind if I do not study the reason for a minimal change of the temperature in a region of the USA. Almost every month we have another example where some mitigation sceptic who does not understand the topic find some change he thinks is strange. When someone does look there is normally nothing to it. It is an unending game of whack-a-mole. With about 40 thousand stations there is a lot to chose from. The USA is already not really important for the global mean temperature, the corn belt certainly is not.
The changes could be due to many reasons: Another selection of stations, more new information on the station histories (for example the observations times), more stations available due to digitization of paper records, which makes homogenization by comparison with neighbours more accurate or better homogenization methods.
If someone shows that homogenization methods do not on average improve trend estimate, I am interested, if someone finds minimal changes to small regions I am not. But feel free to make a strong case out of it and publish it, if you think it is worth your life time.
Nick Stokes has more patience and just this days did check one of these many claims. And found nothing. Naturally.
Apology accepted. But my point still stands; I don’t have a problem with an adjusted temperature in 1900 being different from raw data; I have a problem with the fact that it changes dramatically between 2014 and 2015 – for undisclosed reasons. You list several possible reasons; but they should have been disclosed.
Here’s one for you Curious George. You refer to changes not being disclosed, but are the changes even verifiable? I don’t know offhand what the current situation is, but I know in the past, previous results from some of the groups were overwritten with their new results. That meant not only could the results change month-to-month and year-to-year, you couldn’t even see what the changes were.
Brandon – changes that have not been disclosed are not verifiable. Welcome to the land of Freedom Of Information.
Curious George, I was just trying to draw attention to the difference of disclosure in the sense of, “We told you” and disclosure in the sense of, “We made it possible for you to know.” I am curious if FoI requests could address the issue. I’d hope so. Even if they overwrite old versions on their public servers, I’d hope they’d still keep the old ones somewhere.
If you are talking about NOAA, they process their data every night anew, taking into account the newest observations they received. If the tax payer is willing to pay for it, I am sure the guys at NOAA have no problem with someone writing daily reports about all the minimal changes that were produced. As I do not assume bad faith, I would personally prefer my taxes to be spend more productively. Last year the Republican congress has unfortunately decided to cut the funding for climate research at NOAA.
Everything is archived. If you would like to have a version of GHCNv3 produced on a specific day, all you have to do is send a friendly email and they will get it from their archives.
A half degree F over the US corn belt isn’t minimal. Considering the agricultural output of that region it’s a frickin’ huge scary increase.
Your credibility just dropped to zero by trying to blow that off.
Victor – yes, I am talking about NCDC. It is nice to know that they would be glad to send me an archived copy of the data before and after, and let me sift through millions of numbers to see what has changed.
There is something called “version control” which tells you reasons for changes – look at a Linux Kernel change log. Unfortunately, climate guys don’t even know what e due diligence is.
Victor Venema, I haven’t said anything about bad faith. My comments have only dealt with practices, namely those where previous versions of data are made inaccessible. When you change your data set, you should inform your readers of it and make the different versions available.
And if that’s not feasible due to various constraints, you should at least put up a note explaining what happens and telling people how they can go about getting copies of previous versions.
I don’t know if that’s done right now by any of the groups. It’s been a while since I checked the archiving for the various groups. What I do know is that wasn’t done in the past, and that’s something people should be made aware of.
David Springer: A half degree F over the US corn belt isn’t minimal.
That is the uncertainty you will have to live with. The real uncertainty, especially for such a small region, is much larger than just 0.2°C.
You are the ones who think that uncertainty is great. Remember the Uncertainty monster? The wicked problems? That’s not me. I think that uncertainty goes both ways and the surprises, the unknown unknowns, are for me as citizen the main reason to want to act.
We do our best to reduce the uncertainties, to develop better methods to remove non-climatic changes, to digitise and collect more data so that we can find data problems more easily. We do this the moments we are not distracted from our work by FOIA harassment by you guys.
So many low maxima and high minima came about because clouds blew in where thermometers happened to be. The cloud is long gone, the empty statistics remain.
We know that heat in both hemispheres was lethal in 1896, we have some temp readings from the east of the US and east of Australia to explain a bit of why people perished. But please don’t give me a “global” temp for 1896. Likewise with the extraordinary round-the-world drought of 1878. It’s hard enough already to get our experts to focus on stuff that actually happened and actually mattered in the physical world, as opposed to Numberland.
Establishing a global temp from guesses about shreds of past measurement is like making a building from tied-together driftwood and stuck-on seashells. Spend enough time and money and it will look like a big deal. It won’t be.
It amazes me that there are people who call themselves scientists that really seem to believe that they can establish “a global temp from guesses about shreds of past measurement” and that somehow this measure can be used to demonstrate (along with bogus GCMs) that CAGW is upon us.
Unfortunately, Professor Muller never responded to these critiques.
##########################################
Well I tried to post a comment on your blog. but you dont accept comments.
1. Dr. Muller does not read blogs.
2. You have not had the common decency to write to him or me
to ask your questions. my mail is steve @ berkeley earth.
most scientists ( Way, Fasullo, Hawkins, to name a few ) just
drop a mail they get answers.
3. You havent done a single critique. YOU are trying to give people homework
“First, with respect to the adequacy of his spatial sampling of the land areas of the world. If the stations he added are in the same geographic regions, the BEST program can add to trend assessment confidence in these regions, but does not add to a better assessment of a global land average.”
1. I have responded to this “critique” of yours
2. giving US HOMEWORK is not a criticism. You have the station
data. you have the lat lon. You Do the work. to prove that your
critique has any merit
3. depending on the time the earth is already over sampled
by extending back in time before 1850 you do have a better assessment both temporally and spatially.
“Also, he has not extended his analysis to maximum and minimum temperatures. We have found a significant warm bias in land minimum temperatures when the surface layer is stably stratified (e.g night and hid latitude winter) with respect to attributing to deeper tropospheric warming;”
again this is not a critique. this is you giving people homework.
here’s an example. I read all your papers roger. In none of them do you address the issues I want addressed. Therefore I have critiqued you.
We look at TAVE. if you think we should look at min amd max, then THAT is why we give you the code. To look at ANYTHING YOU WANT using our tools and methods. You get to pick what you find interesting. We get to pick what we find interesting. Its not FRAUD for us to look at TAVE.
I hope you and your committe will Examine the charges of fraud made by watts and others. My bet is that you will not look at a single piece of code that does adjustments. Instead of that you will do what you always do.
Try to give people homework on different topics, When people accuse NCDC of fraud what the heck did you say?
Nothing. Zero. Zip.
You did what what you always do. You refused to address the charges of fraud and instead piled on by assignng homework on unrelated questions.
Here is clue. When people accuse us and others of fraud of manipulating data.. and you say… Well, they didnt look at Tmin, you are not doing science, you are giving cover to false charges, you are using the opportunity in your own self interested way.
“In addition, he does not acknowledge that the robust metric of assessing global warming is ocean heat content changes in Joules, not a two dimensional surface temperature anomaly. As a physicist, I am surprised he has not emphasized this.”
THIS IS NOT A CRITIQUE OF ADJUSTMENTS ROGER!!
Now I for one have acknowledged the superiority of OHC… BUT WE ARE NOT DISCUSSING THAT. Look, if you abuse this opportunity to merely beat the OHC drum again, you will be doing a dis service to science.
We agree OHC is a great metric. Its not the issue. The issue is adjustments to TAVE. People accuse us and others of fraud your damn response is to say “Well, they didnt comment on my great ideas about OHC ” Really? Thats how you plan to investigate?
Really Roger? and you are going to be on a panel that looks at the adjustment question? really? are you going to turn that opportunity into another soap box to talk about OHC? OHC is important. nobody denies it.
But please dont abuse your position at GWPF to merely promote you and protect your publication record
Booker and delingpole and watts accuse scientists of fraud
and YOUR RESPONSE is to say ” Well Muller never commented on OHC” are you fricking kidding me? Thats your response? thats what we can expect from GWPF? We also didnt comment on the price of tea in china. And some of us have bad haircuts.
have you lost your sense of common decency? Must you take every opportunity to promote your list of publications?
It would have been nice if GWPF had appointed scientists who had no vested interest. But it appears to me that you are just going to do what you always do and make it about your view on OHC.
I don’t normally do a +1, but this comment deserves one.
+1
Mosh
I have contacted both delingpole and booker o protest the accusations of fraud. I personally met Richard Betts from the Met office and suggested they compose a readable and understandable two page critique to clarify the reasons for the alterations that bring these accusations of fraud so people like myself could link to it.
I personally contacted you to suggest the same thing.
If BEST and the Met office were to refute this head on it might be laid to rest and sceptics like me would not get it in the neck for defending you
Tonyb
climatereason, while I agree with you, I’ve seen Steven Mosher pull this same argument a number of times when it was completely misplaced. If I’m participating in a discussion and somebody cries, “Fraud!” I’ll respond. I’ll do the same if I am addressing a post where that done or anything like that.
But as far as I know, I’ve never talked to Delingpole or Booker. I don’t know what the two have said, and it has nothing to do with what I say. Despite that, Mosher has criticized me for not condemning their cries of, “Fraud!” That’s not how it works. People should be able to criticize BEST without having to address what other people criticizing BEST have said.
As far as I can tell, nobody here was talking about fraud before Mosher brought it up. There was no reason anyone would have needed to talk about fraud. Mosher complaining that someone didn’t condemn people for saying something that wasn’t said here is wrong. People should be allowed to have a discussion here without having to talk about every issue that other people might want them to discuss. That’s true even if those issues are relevant to things those people have said elsewhere. It’s even said in this blog’s rules:
There was nothing wrong with rpielke making the comment he made. That’s true even if it wasn’t the comment someone like Mosher would have wanted him to make.
What’s that saying about protesting too much?
How can anyone take the CO2 control knob hypothesis seriously anymore when there has been no significant warming for 18 years despite CO2 increasing by 11% during that time?
I think both Mosher and Pielke have good points.
Peilke is all over Muller’s testimony because it was before Congress. Obviously, Peilke wants to point out problems, potential problems, or uncertainties that will weaken the political impact of the testimony. I see this as a legitimate move with respect to policy, as that is what the real struggle is about. This policy aspect involves science, but strictly speaking isn’t about the science.
From a science perspective, Peilke might be able to take the existing code and data, and after a prolonged period of study modify it to answer his own questions. But on the other hand, I can understand why he would rather the people who created and already understand the code, produce the requested products. They already understand it and would immediately know where to make the mods.
I understand Mosher’s point that they want to examine the parts of the elephant they find interesting. That’s legitimate and every organization has to allocate resources where they believe the effort will produce the most fruit. They aren’t obligated to anyone to produce products willy-nilly. On the other hand, min and max might be interesting to see from a science perspective. And by saying that, I’m not addressing any uncertainties that might exist in BEST.
Here is another article this week. One in six species could go extinct.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/30/species-extinct-climate-change_n_7184082.html?utm_hp_ref=climate-change
Read the paper, not HuffPo. It is a meta analysis of 137 other studies that used some very odd ‘Bayesian Markov chain ‘ methods to combine the uncombinable. Many of those 137 papers are deeply flawed. For example JIm Steele utterly destroyed Parmesan SI#20 on Sierra butterflies. Many others used the species/areal range model S=cA^z, which always overstates. (nevermind that GCMs don’t downscale refionally. And many used endemic species, a selection bias that always overstates. See essay No Bodies in ebook Blowing Smoke for details and examples. The list of papers, species, and methods is in the SI. Not paywalled.
OTH, this is stll a climb down from AR4 WG2, which asserted 21-52% of all species extinct by 2100 if 3C.
BTW, there are no climate attributable extinctions. The Golden Toad was chytridiomycosis. Pound’s 1999 Nature paper was shown wrong in PNAS 2010. And polar bears are thriving. Read more scientific literature and less HuffPo.
> Many of those 137 papers are deeply flawed.
How many?
“See essay No Bodies in ebook Blowing Smoke for details and examples. The list of papers, species, and methods is in the SI. Not paywalled.”
Have you tried this, willy?
Willard, homework for you, not me. Run the following cross correlations yourself to eliminate duplications. Would teach you how to scrutinize this sort of BS paper. All 137 papers are listed in the new meta analysis unpaywalled SI. The titles and or abstracts list species (purely endemic,or only partly endemic, model type, and temp methods. Any paper based on endemic species only is inherently gravely flawed. Mixed with significant endemics are also flawed, but I have not wasted time running them down. My eyeball count is n=43. Any paper employing the species/ areal range (SAR in the SI) model is inherently flawed. n= 7 Any paper estimating from a regionally, downscaled GCM is flawed. n= 11. That sums ~ MANY.
Now, most other models are SDM (species distribution). I have not analyzed its possible flaws, so don’t know how good those models are.
Do not bring your ‘show me’ rubber knife to a gunfight like this. You were explicitly explained how to figure this one out for yourself. I don’t work for you. Just wanted you to know I always do the homework before commenting. Now you know. Please do not assume otherwise again.
Endemic species rely on a specific ecology. If that ecology changes, they are the ones most affected and with no options to migrate. I expect endemic species would be the most likely to go extinct, because whole ecologies will change. This 1/6 extinction rate referred to the RCP8.5 scenario, which probably leaves no ecology alone.
> Do not bring your ‘show me’ rubber knife to a gunfight like this.
Are you sure there are bullets in your gun, Sir Rud?
For now, in this thread alone, we have established that:
(a) You can’t read a web page [1];
(b) You can’t read a one page paper [2].
Please beware your wishes.
## References
[1] http://judithcurry.com/2015/05/02/week-in-review-science-edition-3/#comment-699311
[2] http://judithcurry.com/2015/05/02/week-in-review-science-edition-3/#comment-699354
Willard, see my response to your separate comment, below, which is not the topic here. Did you check the SI? Read the topical papers on species areal and endemic biases? You last comment here is misplaced, unless you are just resorting to ad homs. Which seems the case. See below for a directly topical response to your separate issue comment.
> You last comment here is misplaced, unless you are just resorting to ad homs.
I’m afraid you’re wrong on both counts, Sir Rud.
First, my comment is in direct response to your “rubber knife” remark.
Second, pointing out that your misreadings of a single webpage and a one-page paper (did it really take you 15 minutes to read it, BTW?) provides evidence to my hypothesis that there may not be that much bullet in your gun.
Third, all this is irrelevant to the fact that “many” deserved to be substantiated at the time I asked, which you did by armwaving a bit and did your honest broker infomercial.
***
Speaking of gunfights, your Fortune 500 this and Harvard appeals to your own authority, and is illegitimate for the same reason ad homs are. Climate Club ™ fighters usually learn the hard way not to brag too much.
Please rest assured, Sir, that there’s no need to read the SI, since you simply eyeballed Fig. 4. Incidentally, all the papers are listed in the list of references. Contrary to your own peddling, the author even provides links to his resources. Also note that the authors acknowledge all kinds of uncertainties in his study, in contradistinction with your solemn dismissals.
But it was late and you were multitasking. I’m sure you’ll speed up a bit after this bad start.
Thank you, Sir Rud, for playing.
Jim D, deadish threadish, but to respond generally to the endemic species selection bias so you have a better understanding. Endemics have naturally restricted ranges by definition, so are inherently more threatened by climate change. Sure. Take birds. There are about 2500 species in 218 worldwide EBAs (endemic bird areas) compared to about 10518 total species. The extinction bias trick is not to say 1/6 of the endemic 2500 might go extinct. That would be only 417, or (417/10500) 4%. it is to model the endemic fraction and then extrapolate it to all birds. This is done over and over again in the climate extinction literature for both animals and plants. South African Fynbos Proteaceae was an example in the essay. Thats what Urban effectively produced with his new statistical meta analysis hash, which HuffPo just repeated and amplified.
Well, I guess we need to pump out that CO2!!! Cutting CO2 emissions will result in less food for the furry animals (and the slimy animals, and the slithery animals, etc.) and more habitat pressure from humans. That can’t help but speed extinctions.
Extinction claims really don’t stack up just considering the glacials and inter-glacials. Throw in inter-annual variability and we can ask if species were that sensitive to temperature change, why weren’t they selected out of the gene pool long ago?
Indeed, some years fluctuate by more than agw and yet, when I take an occasional hike, the native flora and fuana seem to do be doing just fine.
TE, my essay cited a peer reviewed paper shredding species/areal range models. Its abstract makes exactly your point. If species are so sensative to climate change, where are the bodies? Hence its title. Amazing how far a little common sense carries one in climate change wonderland.
Good lord Jim. You will believe anything. Which is not a recommended trait if you keep getting your info from Huffington Post.
Care to inform us of a species which has been declared extinct in the last couple of decades?
Learn a little statistics, and learn to believe in evolution. In the long run, 100% of species will go extinct.
Jim D,
Two points.
First, 99.5 % of all species on Earth have become extinct anyway.
Second, do you believe creation of new species to have ceased, or to be ongoing?
Hey, I just linked an article and am glad some people took the time to read it. No opinions from me on it. I have no way to judge this kind of study.
Jim D, that is the most encouraging thing you have posted in many threads. I spent over three months researching this ‘deep dive’ for the book essay years before this most recent paper. It has much more than just the previous guest post. Bogus claimed examples beyond the Golden Toad. Extinction/extirpation confusion. ‘Species’ confusion. Taxonomic species discovery bias (most newly discovered species are inherently endemic, rare, and fragile–else they would have been discovered before). It is a fascinating topic. It also illustrates how IPCC and ‘climate consensus’ omit, distort, and otherwise violate the fundamental observational principles of science.
I am an ardent environmentalist. The big problems are habitat destruction, pollution, invasive species, and overexploitation. All anthropogenic, all adressable. Nothing to do with CAGW.
Is that all your handlers from huffpo gave you today, jimmy? What happened to the part where they tell you what your opinion is? Failure to communicate?
You reserve your time for more important matters. Nice guy.
It was the lead story at HuffPo a few days ago, so I thought I would link it. Not hard to find.
You did really well, jimmy. Your huffpo merit badge is in the mail.
Jim D, I appreciate your bringing widely seen distortions of science published in liberal and MSM. This I think should be the true alarm for those who want accuracy in reporting.
Jim D | May 2, 2015 at 1:40 pm | Reply
Here is another article this week. One in six species could go extinct.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/30/species-extinct-climate-change_n_7184082.html?utm_hp_ref=climate-change
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110823/full/news.2011.498.html
There are 8.7 million species.
1/6 is 1.45 million species.
1/10 of that is 0.145 million species.
When you have identified 0.145 million species that have gone extinct, there will be some evidence for the claim that there is a problem with animal extinctions.
Maybe I set the bar too high, please provide a list of 14,500 species (1% of the claim) who died out from global warming. If we might kill 1.45 million species – at least 1% must be dead already. This claim is based on “real” evidence, not just more of the activist’s “virtual” evidence, isn’t it? I guess not.
Well…
When the activists have a verified list of 14,500 species that have gone extinct due to global warming there may be some substance to their claim that warming is causing animal problems. Until then they are just blowing smoke and they can “talk to the hand”.
On the new Antarctic ice loss paper, color me unimpressed. There are three space based ice sheet measurement methods: laser altimetry, radar altimetry, and gravimetric (GRACE). In 2012, NASA’s Zwally found the first (ICEsat) shows statistically significant net Antarctic gain, and the second (ERS) shows slight gain, but not statistically significant. Only GRACE shows growing loss. NOAA concluded net loss by averaging all three, when NASA concluded net gain. See my previous guest post Tipping Points for details and references.
Using only GRACE is problematic. It is known not to agree with the other methods. The mission is nearing physical end of life via orbital decay (2016, kaput, replacement system launching 2017). It launched in 2002 with an original planned mission life of 5 years.The lead/follow satellites were swapped to slow measurement degradation. What is not in the PR or the paper is the underlying drift/error of measurement in GRACE beyond its planned mission life. The error creeps in from the way GRACE functions. An accelerometer is supposed to measure and correct dor slight non-gravitational accelerations/decelerations (e.g. Atmospheric drag). As the orbit has decayed, the drag becomes larger and the gravitational acceleration/separation signal fainter since increasingly attenuated by drag. Drag by definition retards acceleration. That alone could account for the difference to the other methods and this paper’s result: less ice, less gravity, less acceleration. Or, less acceleration because more drag? This paragraph’s GRACE information is verifiable at NASA.gov/mission_pages/GRACE/
In summary, we shouldn’t believe the GRACE measurements because they are retarded?
Let’s call GRACE rather indirect (but still on a believable side). As usual in climate science, it is 90% belief and 10% data.
In regard to GRACE’s Antarctic measurements, NASA’s site mentions that:
Really? Has anyone examined the unadjusted GRACE data?
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/multimedia/chart20121129.html#.VUYP_0ukPwI
Furthermore, in the GRACE gravity data in Antarctica study:
It would be nice to know the uncertainty of the adjustment model, if one wants to present an uncertainty range for your GIA-dependent findings.
I like that there is increasing mention of the role of Europeans on American Indians post Columbus. I do wonder just how strong the provenance is linking CO2 level reductions with North American depopulation; if such is true, I’d expect similar patterns with the Black Death era which was only 150 years before Columbus and definitely killed more people.
I’ve read accounts – not validated in any way – that Jamestown was relatively open when the Pilgrims landed in contrast to the heavy undergrowth of today, and that this was due to the Algonquin Indians burning out the undergrowth periodically to maintain habitats for hunting.
However, it is still far from clear the linkage between the reductions in Native American populations along the Mississippi, where there is evidence of large and dense communities that were destroyed, vs. the Native Americans of the NorthEast, much less the rest of North America and Central and South America.
The belief that native Indian tribes lived in harmony with the environment is a myth, unless one wants to equate a subsistence level society with being harmonious. Using fire to clear land or stampeding bison off of cliffs are examples of their ingenuity, but hardly “green”. The primary reason native populations exhibited a “light” footprint was the simple fact there were not very many of them and they lacked the knowledge and tools to better access the reasources around them.
The Parker Arctic ice paper is a good read. Uses the qualitative DMI summer ice maps to show general ice extent consistency with what is known of temperature variation. Although the paper does not discuss it, also generally accords with Reykjavik (IMO records, GISS raw) temperature information.
“Our results show that the basis for a sea ice tipping point doesn’t hold up when these additional processes are considered,” said Wagner. “In other words, no tipping point is likely to devour what’s left of the Arctic summer sea ice.
Suppose this will make headlines anywhere else?
actually this paper got a pretty reasonable play in the media
Human activity responsible for three out of four heat extremes, study finds
Claims heavy rain and heatwaves attributable to agw.
But both depend on the dynamics all agree are unpredictable.
Justified?
Mother Nature giggles at the term “anthropocene epoch.”
Pure green hype. I guess nobody actually goes outside anymore. Too busy watching the computer tell them what will happen. Out here in the world we are watching the forecast miss by ten degrees. Not to worry, in the long run they will get it right by tenths of a degree. They have computers.
Here’s one for Dr ATTP Rice, and anyone else who wants to chip in with their comments about transparency w.r.t. regional temperature adjustments.
It concerns a very clear and simple-to-understand description by a Mike Brakey titled ‘Black Swan Climate Theory’ of what appears a clear-cut example of prima facie evidence that official agencies have been monkeying about with some US temperatures in a way that appears to support the official GW narrative!
It’s a simple and short post that even I could comprehend which, if verified, should be totally understandable to non-scientific journalists looking to making a name who are strong enough to take the undoubted flak that they would attract from their media ‘buddies’.
http://notrickszone.com/#sthash.AJ2Cao22.Nh71OORW.dpbs
Unfortunately, the NTZ website is unable to accept comments after a recent word-press update so if anyone could point its host Pierre to how to fix this problem, I’m certain he would be most grateful:)
I think it’s an important post and it does deserve to be more visible.
Well… this is interesting.
There are some knowledgeable people on the blog. Perhaps they can explain how to retrieve the original data archive.
Let’s assume that this is just a misunderstanding and the data is still available. If someone can point to the original data that would be helpful.
From NoTricksZone.
http://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Brakey_1.png
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/homr/#ncdcstnid=30081045&tab=MSHR
Trying to identify the station was a little challenging. Without a COOP station identifier it is hard to tell what is going on. It isn’t obvious which station is being referred to.
If he identifies the station at some point I’ll look at what is going on.
200 year lag. “There is probably some kind of threshold in the system — say, in the salinity of the surface ocean — that triggers temperature reversals.”
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/366/1875/2525
Like a Ghil diagram. Why is salinity interesting? Its persistence. Warmth can be emitted by ocean water relatively quickly, but with salinity values I think they let us look further back into the past. High values near Greenland would indicate high evaporation rates to the South. With persistence, information can better be transmitted over long distances.
Perhaps this is the diagram I meant:
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/roypta/366/1875/2525/F1.large.jpg
The article by Roy Spencer on adjusted satellite temperatures is excellent. IMHO the satellites are measuring something closer to a global temperature than the plethora of thermometers. Both data sets are subject to interpretation, adjustment and readjustment. I’ll take the UAH product any day of the week over the hodgepodge thermometers. The data is more extensive and the analysts are beyond reproach.
Why is it that the media never talks about the implications of the satellite data but focuses on bogus warmest year ever junk coming from NOAA and GISS?
+10
I believe this latest version of UAH comes with a gridded product. It would be interesting to apply some various lapse rates to the sat data, on a monthly basis if possible, and see how that comports with corresponding ground grid cells that have thermometers.
Because the satellites are not very good at estimating the temperature of the surface of the earth.
Weather stations aren’t very good at estimating the temperature of the surface of the earth and apparently the guesses keep changing.
JCH, Did you notice the UAH April temperature anomaly? It’s down to 0.07 C. Are you revising any predictions? What was your predictions again and for the UAH anomaly by the end of the year?
I’ve consistently said that April 2015 looked like it was going to cool.
I do not pay any much attention to UAH as, unlike RSS, none of their scientists have come out and honestly admitted they do not do a very good job of measuring the temperature 2 meters above the surface of the land.
JCH,
Nothing can be relied upon to measure the temperature of the air 2 meters above the ground. Thermometer height within an enclosure used to be allowed between approx. 1.25 m and 2 m, or thereabouts.
I’ve never been able to figure out the reason for the infatuation with air temperature, rather than surface temperature. People have been measuring ground temperatures for hundreds of years. I assume satellites measure temperature of the surface, or what solid objects are in their line of sight.
Images by police using FLIR don’t show the air. They show the temperature differences between objects, hopefully showing the perp standing out from the cooler shrubbery in which he is hiding.
Nor at estimating the sea levels?
Tonyb
They admit this is not a surface temperature proxy, and that the surface is warming faster than their version of a temperature.
It would be helpful if NOAA admitted that their weather station data is not a surface temperature proxy, and that the surface is warming slower than their version of a temperature.
Jim D, you do agree that the UAH is a consistent relative measure of temperature trend since 1979, right?
Not at the surface, and they say as much.
It looks to me like the satellites have to have a balance between El Nino and La Nina to achieve a semblance of accuracy. That balance has not existed in recent years, and they wondering around in the dark. It’s getting really bad.
Sounds to me like denial. ;)
do you believe in fairytales?
JCH, Jim D, it looks like there is good correlation of GISS and UAH since 2003 until end of 2013 when they diverge. Any thoughts?
The UAH article says Version 6 reduced their trend by 20%, so you can throw that one away now. People who believed that were taken for chumps.
La Nina dominance/negative phase of PDO.
Also, that’s an older version of UAH.
They admit this is not a surface temperature proxy, and that the surface is warming faster than their version of a temperature.
What misguided soul ever thought they were the same?
MSU ( and RAOB ) analyses indicate trends lower than the surface trends. Models predict upper temperature trends higher than the surface.
That is the significance of the upper air data sets.
Now, unlike previous versions, version 6 of UAH excludes the polar regions. If you caclulate surface temperature trends from the same area, 60S to 60N, you will arrive at a lower surface temperature trend.
You can’t hold it up for the pause if you don’t even include the Arctic warming. That alone makes it irrelevant for the discussion.
You can’t hold it up for the pause if you don’t even include the Arctic warming. That alone makes it irrelevant for the discussion. Can we include the 6 year trend of increasing sea ice volume?
“Human activity responsible for three out of four heat extremes, study finds”
From the link provided “A new study says 75% of extreme hot days and 18% of days with heavy rainfall worldwide can be explained by the warming we’ve seen over the industrial period.”
I love the specificity. Must be a really good study.
A study says this. A study says that. I say study harder.
I’d say more like 77.5% of extreme hot days and 18.3% of days with heavy rainfall. Ball park.
The Nautalis report on feedbacks gives insufficient attention to cloud feedbacks especially the potential for negative feedbacks. It is shameful that this aspect of study has so little resource applied. Is it going to take another 30 years of neglect before we go to work on cloud developments?
“The Sun Is Now Virtually Blank During The Weakest Solar Cycle In More Than A Century”
The farside is busier: http://farside.nso.edu/
“Is there a quasi 60 year oscillation in Arctic sea ice extent?”
Whether this is so, Arctic sea ice comes and goes over decades. You would think a very large fact like this, not doubted by anyone not long ago, would be inescapable in an era of intense concentration on climate.
You would think that. But, like a certain ash layer the size of Wales near Pine Island Glacier on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, some very large and obvious things are just not for noticing any more. Certain things are real…but not really.
Confused? Ask a mullah.
“Human activity responsible for three out of four heat extremes, study finds”
“While the authors acknowledge that there’s more to be done in terms of separating out any influence on extreme weather trends from other factors like solar activity, the new study seems to go a long way towards achieving that goal.”
I predicted every UK heat wave since 2010 with solar based long range forecasts, so from my frame of reference the study is baseless.
“200-year lag between climate events in Greenland, Antarctica: Ocean involved”
Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extent have been going in opposite directions since 1995 with no lag.
“Is there a quasi 60 year oscillation in Arctic sea ice extent? [parker arctic ice]”
Funny that there is no mention of the ~69yr AMO.
Could someone explain something to me about the article quoting Richard Muller ? In it, he’s quoted as saying:
I’ve looked everywhere on the page he links to, but I don’t see a link to any data. I don’t even see a link to the data underlying the graphics on that page. I certainly don’t see a full data set showing the results BEST would get if they “re-analyzed all the data with ZERO adjustments.”
The last time there was a post about BEST here, I pointed out BEST had never made their results sans adjustments available for people to examine. I’ve been wanting that data for over a year now. If it was available all along, why did nobody from BEST contradict me when talking to me about the issue? And if it wasn’t available then but is now, why hasn’t there been an announcement informing people it has been released?
And for the most troubling possibility, if the results were not available before, and they still are not available now, why did Richard Muller go out to falsely tell the public they are?
Brandon, BEST purports in their first figure per station to show the ingested raw data, also meta data station moves, regional expectation QC ‘fails’, and statistical ‘breaks’. It is graphical only. If you google hard enough, you can backdoor into tabular ‘ingested’ raw data and metadata. I did that for Shub for the Puerto Casada kerfuffle. Maybe just got lucky.
By example, I can also prove that BEST regional expectations QC produces spurious results. BEST 166900 (South Pole Amundsen Scott, see footnote 24 in essay When Data Isn’t (which you proclaimed you stopped reading because objected to the NASA GISS historical collage figure). And that their data ingestion is faulty. BEST 155459 for metadata (Reykjavik), BEST 151882 for temperature records (Rutherglen). The last two are in a possible guest post Judith did not publish, but which you should have just received separately, and which has also been submitted to the GWPF review that Pielke Sr (comment above) is part of.
Finding raw data for stations is pretty easy with BEST. That’s not the issue I raised though. My concern is what happens if you run the raw data through BEST’s methodology without adjusting it. I’ve wanted to know what results you get for quite a while. Richard Muller publicly states those results have been published, even providing a specific link for them.
As far as I can tell, they’ve never been published, and there is no basis for what Muller said. If there isn’t, that’s a pretty big deal. You can’t go around telling the public you’ve published results for them to look at and verify when you haven’t done so.
Then again, now that I’ve read the entire article, I can confirm Muller said a number of highly questionable, if not completely wrong, things. It’s really quite troubling.
Brandon, I made a submission to the International Temperature Data Review Project sponsored by GWPF. The study compared unadjusted and adjusted GHCN3 station records.
For a randomly selected set of US stations, the chance of adjustments producing warming was 83%
The submission is here: https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2015/04/26/temperature-data-review-project-my-submission/
Um, okay…? I don’t see what any of these responses have to do with the question I asked. I asked a simple question. I don’t see why that should be taken as an invitation to discuss completely different issues while ignoring the question I asked.
http://politicsthatwork.com/img/450x375x110.gif.pagespeed.ic.PQ7aRxh0Ne.png
http://politicsthatwork.com/graphs/climate-change-polls
How about school children? Do they also rank above Senators in this knowledge league.
Willard, I checked you figure’s reference. Claims to ‘pull together results of several polls’. But give no references to which ones, in order to check things like question framing, sample size, methodology. So a pretty opinion figure from some uncredentialed website called politicsthatworks, nothing more. Works for whom? As trustworthy as BarackObama.com. Please try to do factually better next time.
> But give no references to which ones, in order to check things like question framing, sample size, methodology.
Ask them and report, Sir Rud.
Or better yet, Read harder (h/t BartR):
http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/29/public-and-scientists-views-on-science-and-society/
http://www.gallup.com/poll/182807/conservative-republicans-alone-global-warming-timing.aspx
http://www.gallup.com/poll/167972/steady-blame-humans-global-warming.aspx
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/27/12107.full.pdf
http://www.nationaljournal.com/energy/how-senators-voted-on-whether-climate-change-is-real-and-human-activity-significantly-contributes-20150121
Please, Sir Rud, retract your claim.
INTEGRITY ™ – Read Harder
Willard, for,the record, you are correct. They did list the ‘poll’ sources. i missed that. So cursorily checked all of them. There is still a big problem. Look at the top bar, climatologists. Looks suspiciously like Cook’s 97% paper, which is not a listed source, not a poll. The two ‘sources’ that arguably address this bar are PEW and PNAS (a meta analysis). Neither supports 97%. The two Gallup and the NJ sources do not address this top bar at all. And NJ is not even a poll, it is a Senate vote tally of Republicans voting against specific legislation.
So on further analysis, I stand by my conclusion about your graphic. A distorted infomercial. Not more.
BTW, thanks for bestowing knighthood. I respectfully decline your honor.
Here:
http://judithcurry.com/2015/05/02/week-in-review-science-edition-3/#comment-699354
Wrong threading, or broken threading?
The climatologist percentage is interesting. Between 97 and 98% of the most actively published, but in the supplemental material link in the supplemental material, they break down CE (convinced by evidence) and UE which comes down to 903 CE versus 472 UE. That is about the same as college graduates.
That’s some cute propaganda you got there, willy. Have you seen this one:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/182105/concern-environmental-threats-eases.aspx
You jokers have been hollering about the world burning up for decades and the folks are about as scared as they were back in 1989. Y’all is failing. Betta up yo game.
=============> Is Paris burning?The pause is killing the cause!<=========
Where is Mr. T. when you need him, willy?
Here’s some more for you, Willard, 7,432,002 global respondents to the United Nations My World survey of causes for concern.
http://data.myworld2015.org/
Climate change comes flat last, sixteenth out of sixteen.
By comparison, “reliable energy at home” comes eleventh.
Seems you alarmists are doing a poor job of convincing the World’s population that we’re all doomed.
Perhaps the World’s population are smarter than you lot seem to think.
> Looks suspiciously like Cook’s 97% paper, which is not a listed source, not a poll.
Ask them and report, Sir Rud.
Or better yet, read harder (h/t BartR):
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/27/12107.full.pdf
Now, please retract your claim, Sir Rud.
If you could reconcile that you “cursorily checked all of them” and “on further analysis,” that would be nice too.
***
Everyone who cursorily checked A10’s results may see that cohere with C13’s. On further analysis, they might even see that C13 cites A10.
Willard, you become tiresome. I said cursory. 15 minutes wasted. So, this paper shows that 97 % of the most active publishers on climate change support climate change. I should have read it more closely late on a Saturday when I was double tasking. Active publishers surely include Mann and his paleoclimate gang, Trenberth, Dessler, Schmidt, Jones, Salomon’s group, Santer, Marcott, Shakun, England, and the rest of the gang who follow climate grant money. Now, deal with the many factual counter examples. The Mann gang paleoclimate stuff has been discredited by McIntyre and McKittrick. I took on Shakun, Marcott, Trenberth, Solomon (volcanic aerosols), and England in Blowing Smoke. Schmidt embarassed himself with 2014 hottest ever (but 68% chance not true). Santer’s 2011 criterion is the one that says 18 years pause falsifies models.
Science is not about consensus. It is about whether observations agree with hypotheses. Ma Nature is not being kind to your consensus hypotheses. I will continue to point that out. And, do more diligence before responding more carefully to your consensus stuff. Thanks for the additional snake handling education.
BTW, done your upthread homework on Urban’s extinction SI yet?
> Science is not about consensus. It is about whether observations agree with hypotheses.
Put the two ideas together, Sir Rud, and you get intersubjective verifiability:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersubjective_verifiability
Show me might be a more potent weapon than you surmised earlier.
***
However, this false dilemma of yours is also a boring squirrel. We were not talking about science, but the results of your “further analysis” meant to your first misreading. You now fail to acknowledge that you mistook A10 for C13. Instead, we now know that by further analysis, you might have meant 15 minutes while multitasking late. Also note that the abstract said 97-98%, not just 97% as you said.
Please say hi to Ma Nature for me next time you meet her.
The trick was this – they left out people primarily doing solar and geophysical and chemistry research of relevance to climate, if a significant number of their actual publications weren’t ‘climate’, narrowly defined.
At the time, the trick was this:
http://judithcurry.com/2011/01/11/politics-of-climate-expertise-part-ii/#comment-30967
Four years seem to reinforce the hypothesis about ears.
t
So, Dr. Curry, getting 97-98% in the population they studied is not significant to you?
No. The key issue is detection and attribution. If you subset the entire population considered for people that have done ANY primary research in detection and attribution (no chemists, no ecologists, no economists, etc) then the numbers are substantially different. Note that skeptical scientists work predominantly in the area of detection and attribution.
joseph, “So, Dr. Curry, getting 97-98% in the population they studied is not significant to you?”
97-98 percent of selected population of 200 out of 900 isn’t all that impressive. If they had used their whole initial and stated population it would have been ~62%.
And I don’t know about what individual chemists who are active in climate related research, but the American Chemical Society that represents these same chemists seems to agree with the IPCC.
Have you heard much from chemists disputing this statement?
I have heard from several chemists disputing this statement (and disputing that the ACS should even be making such a statement); their statement goes up for review in 2016
Can’t assess your argument here so I am not going to respond.
> The key issue is detection and attribution. If you subset the entire population considered for people that have done ANY primary research in detection and attribution (no chemists, no ecologists, no economists, etc) then the numbers are substantially different.
Quotes beat caps locks:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es501998e
Here’s Figure 3:
http://pubs.acs.org/appl/literatum/publisher/achs/journals/content/esthag/2014/esthag.2014.48.issue-16/es501998e/production/images/medium/es-2014-01998e_0003.gif
Was V14 ever discussed at Judy’s?
***
Also note what was said in the abstract: The phrasing of the IPCC attribution statement in its fourth assessment report (AR4)—providing a lower limit for the isolated GHG contribution—may have led to an underestimation of the GHG influence on recent warming. The phrasing was improved in AR5.
***
All this for an infographic that clearly shows the disparity of opinion between scientists and elected Republicans.
Joseph,
I am a chemist (and ACS member), and I have complained multiple times that the ASC statement on climate change does not reasonably reflect the thinking of many chemists, and does not accurately reflect the credibility of the scientific evidence. The ACS weekly house publication (C&E News magazine) published a multitude of openly angry letters from members complaining about the ACS statement and about the editorial position (strident CAGW advocacy) of Mr. Rudy Baum, editor.
For a while just about every issue of C&E News carried multiple articles about inevitable thermal doom unless fossil fuel use is dramatically cut. When I was asked some years ago to be interviewed for a story in C&E news (unrelated to global warming) I agreed to the interview under the condition that Mr. Baum would receive my personal complaint about his editorial stance on global warming. Baum’s reply was “I note that your voice has been added to the chorus.” But Mr. Baum refused to stop the blatant advocacy. The ACS was losing membership over the issue; I resigned in protest until Mr. Baum was removed. Mr. Baum was finally replaced as editor (they couldn’t or wouldn’t fire him, they appear to have just moved him to a closet), and C & E News has toned down the CAGW advocacy. I still disagree with how they report on the issue, and find most every story they write is factually inaccurate (the editorial staff is a bunch of scientifically “light weight” greens IMO), but the situation is improved with Mr. Baum gone.
I plan to write to the ACS again when the statement is up for review, and make clear that the statement should reflect the thinking of the ACS membership, not the thinking of a bunch of CAGW advocates who volunteer to sit on an ACS committee.
This paper is only a small cut above Cook et al. How they classified individuals as ‘supporting’ or ‘not’ mainly included activists on both sides. Also, some key skeptical scientists were thrown out (e.g. Akasofu) since his solar research wasn’t deemed to be ‘climate science’.
> e.g Akasofu
That rings a bell:
http://judithcurry.com/2011/01/11/politics-of-climate-expertise-part-ii/
Always providing the same name rings hollow.
The climatologist survey looks like it would be great for a climate science peer review gate keeping paper. Also a Steven Schneider hair splitting example.
I love how the 1300 plus gets reduced to 900 plus after eliminating duplicates and the 97-98% is based on 200 of the most highly published.
Take B10 if you prefer then, Cap’n:
http://ars.els-cdn.com.proxy.bibliotheques.uqam.ca:2048/content/image/1-s2.0-S1462901110000420-gr1.jpg
Source: doi:10.1016/j.envsci.2010.04.001
The lowest bound justified desingeniousness can buy you should be around 85%, which is still quite far from the 4 Republican Senators willing to publicly take the position that human activity is causing climate change.
Wait. Why are we comparing opinions about attribution with AGW denial, again?
Damned squirrels!
Willard, “The lowest bound justified desingeniousness can buy you should be around 85%, which is still quite far from the 4 Republican Senators willing to publicly take the position that human activity is causing climate change. ”
As it is worded, I could see 85% for Climateologists and 65% for scientists, but the poll is worthy of its own poll. “Significant” is pretty open to interpretation and “climate change” has morphed as well. I will give you that something like human activities are responsible for at least 50% of the warming since 2000 would nail that 97% magic number y’all seem to like.
Since there are political strings attached, you can pretty much count on republican senators only agreeing to the “classic” definition of climate change.
How many? Why aren’t they speaking out?
Do they oppose this part of the quoted statement because ACS shouldn’t be making such a statement or do they disagree with it?
Steve I am glad you have an opinion and have the courage to express it,. But I want to know how representative your opinion is in he context of chemists in general and especially those who do climate related research.
Ah, so most scientists who make a living writing catastrophist papers about AGW believe in AGW.
In other news, most Roman Catholic prelates believe in God, and bears defecate in the woods.
Surprise, surprise!
Willard and Rud,
Willard does appear to be on top of this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenet
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tenet
Links. It’s what we do in climateball.
And it’s all about the “tenets”
..and Then There’s Physics – OHC change is the robust way to assess and quantify global warming. However, surface temperatures are still important, obviously, as we live at that height. I said this in my paper
Pielke Sr., R.A., 2003: Heat storage within the Earth system. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 84, 331-335 https://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/r-247.pdf
“Since the surface temperature is a two-dimensional global field, while heat content involves volume integrals, as shown by Eq. (1), the utilization of surface temperature as a monitor of the earth system climate change is not particularly useful in evaluating the heat storage changes to the earth system. The heat storage changes, rather than surface temperatures,
should be used to determine what fraction of the radiative fluxes at the top of the atmosphere are in radiative equilibrium. Of course, since surface temperature has such an important impact on human activities, its accurate monitoring should remain a focus of climate research (Pielke et al. 2002a)”
Roger Sr.
Well, yes, I agree. I was simply pointing out that it seemed odd to criticise Richard Muller for not mentioning OHC given that the review he was commenting on does not mention it either.
Maybe I can ask you another question. What do you hope to achieve through this review? The GWPF is very obviously a political lobby group. That’s neither good nor bad, but it has a very obvious agenda. Even if your review is fully objective and unbiased, it is almost certainly not going to be taken seriously by many in the climate science community, and rightly so – IMO. Why would anyone take such a review seriously, given who is running it? You could apply the same logic to WWF, Greenpeace, … so my question is not GWPF specific. It seems to me that you’re going to be wasting your time, unless you think that getting it promoted in some media outlets (Booker, Delingpole, ….) is somehow worth it.
aTTP:
You could add the IPCC Executive Sumary, while you’re at it.
opluso,
Sure, but we can ignore the IPCC if we want to. The literature exists. If you don’t trust the IPCC you can always go to the original sources. You can also read the actual WG1, WG2, and WG3 documents which are – as far as I’m aware – not influenced by the political representatives.
What do you hope to achieve through this review? The GWPF is very obviously a political lobby group. That’s neither good nor bad, but it has a very obvious agenda. Even if your review is fully objective and unbiased, it is almost certainly not going to be taken seriously by many in the climate science community, and rightly so – IMO.
ATTP, if you want to be consistent, apply the same criteria to the IPCC.
It was born of a political institution with a Club of Rome agenda ( and used quickly recanted, once it was discovered WWF ‘analysis’ of the Himalayas we can recall ).
And why do you care so much about what the GWPF is doing?
You may be exhibiting 1. & 2.:
1. Absence of doubt
2. Intolerance of debate
3. Appeal to authority
4. A desire to convince others of the ideological “truth”
5. A willingness to punish those that don’t concur
That much being the case, there’s a line:
‘Everyone believes the measurements, except those who take them, and
No one believes the models, except those who make them.”
Everyone who considers global warming is confronted with how much to trust the observational data. All measurements appear suspect and subject to ‘corrections’ to analysis. As a bottom line consumer, we look for a final result that always seems to shift. That’s true of the Tsfc, SST, RAOB, MSU, and OHC.
The terms I’ve come to with the data sets is comparison of the four major measurement modes: Tsfc, SST, RAOB, and MSU. All exhibit warming trends that are roughly similar, though the surface temperature trends are two to three times larger than the upper air trends. That’s important because it means the models are screwed up with internal energy transfer and implies that earth is more capable of emitting to space than is understood.
I don’t know all the ways the data sets are prone to error – there’s uncertainty we must accept, but I don’t have any problem with anyone looking which you seem opposed to.
Eddie,
Well, except the IPCC’s remit is specifically to be policy relevant, not policy prescriptive. You may not believe this, but that is their remit. The GWPF does claim any such balance. Additionall, which I should have mentioned in my response to Roger, the GWPF has explicitly highlighted reports that indicate that the review was motivated by claims of tampering with data. Matt Ridley – an academic advisor to the GWPF – mentioned this in his recent article. So, they don’t even seem to be even willing to pretend to be unbiased.
I don’t particularly care. I think the review is a waste of time and that the qeustions are loaded. I also think it is a blatant publicity stunt, and not a genuine attempt to understand the temperature adjustments. They can do it if they want, of course, but I can’t really see the point if the goal is to actually produce a report that will be taken seriously by anyone other than those who already think that there is data tampering.
Of course I doubt things, but I’m not about to put too much effort into considering a report from a group that appears to have a very obvious bias. As far as debate is concerned, I don’t think science progresses via debate, so I have no great interest in debates. Discussions, on the other hand, are much more interesting and valuable. I would have thought – given that we’ve engaged in many – that you would at least accept that I’m willing to discuss things.
I don’t have a problem with it either, but I’m not going to take a review all that seriously if it is so poorly motivated. Booker? Seriously?
– as far as I’m aware – not influenced by the political representatives.
I think if you look, you may find a discernable human influence.
Okay, what I was meaning was that – as far as I’m aware – the only document that is formally influenced by people who are the explicit, political representatives of the various governments, is the SPM. Yes, I realise that human beings are involved in writing the other documents, but it’s hard to see how they could be written by any other type of being.
The IPCC WG1 reports are meta analyses artfully designed to make the case for AGW. In that sense they are entirely political. The WG 2 and 3 reports assume CAGW.
Here’s an interesting question. What percentage of IPCC WG1 report authors have received funding from governments with CAGW based policies? My facetious guess is 97%. I would not be surprised if it were 100%.
I’m thinking wednesday to discuss this topic
aTTP:
Please note that I specifically mentioned the IPCC Executive Summary — which many believe to be a one-sided, politically motivated document that as much distorts as displays the research dicussed by the working groups.
However, if you are suggesting that being “taken seriously” requires impartial, trustworthy leadership, then I suppose IPCC’s entire opus should be tossed out along with Pachauri.
opluso,
Well, I maybe didn’t make me point clearly enough. The GWPF review will not – IMO – be taken seriously by anyone other than those who already think there are major issues with data manipulation of the surface temperature data. That seems self-evident, to me at least. This would probably be true even if the GWPF tried to make it seem objective and unbiased. What they’ve promoted (Booker and Ridley), and who they’ve selected, makes it even less likely. So, what’s the point?
“Well, I maybe didn’t make me point clearly enough. The GWPF review will not – IMO – be taken seriously by anyone other than those who already think there are major issues with data manipulation of the surface temperature data. That seems self-evident, to me at least. This would probably be true even if the GWPF tried to make it seem objective and unbiased. What they’ve promoted (Booker and Ridley), and who they’ve selected, makes it even less likely. So, what’s the point?”
Sounds like you’ve already made up your mind about what will be in the analysis, and that you already know what will be in it is incorrect.
Or, perhaps even worse, that what will be in it is correct but ignored because of who’s doing the analysis.
…and Then There’s Physics | May 3, 2015 at 11:39 am |
opluso,
However, if you are suggesting that being “taken seriously” requires impartial, trustworthy leadership, then I suppose IPCC’s entire opus should be tossed out along with Pachauri.
Well, I maybe didn’t make me point clearly enough. The GWPF review will not – IMO – be taken seriously by anyone other than those who already think there are major issues with data manipulation of the surface temperature data. That seems self-evident, to me at least. This would probably be true even if the GWPF tried to make it seem objective and unbiased. What they’ve promoted (Booker and Ridley), and who they’ve selected, makes it even less likely. So, what’s the point?
The actual GHG forcing is about 1/3 the IPCC TSR and much less that used by GCM models. If the IPCC or the US NSF & EPA were objective and unbiased don’t you think they would have noticed by now? The US has had a global warming program since 1988. If they haven’t wised up after 27 years perhaps it is time to cut global warming funding from the budget.
The atmosphere CO2 level from two lines of evidence, chronological trend and trend by concentration, isn’t going to exceed 500 PPM.
CAGW is off the table. Anyone who believes in CAGW is an advocate or an unwitting tool.
Since the Federal government and the IPCC are CAGW believers they should be viewed advocates and less reliable than the GWPF. Because of advocacy and bias the research of the Federal government and the opinion of the IPCC should be ignored for purposes of scientific discussion.
Eddie,
Neither, really. I see no reason to take it seriously, one way or the other. Why would I?
Victor Venema – The article by Christopher Brooker in the Telegraph was partisan and does not accurately represent how the review will be conducted. It certainly conflicted with my view.
Indeed, I am on the committee as NCDC and others (including BEST) have failed to completely assess the surface data set quality and representativeness. If you recall, I was on the CCSP 1.1 Committee but was forced off when I urged we recommend such an assessment; e.g. see
Pielke Sr., Roger A., 2005: Public Comment on CCSP Report “Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences”. 88 pp including appendices. http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/nr-143.pdf
You also asked
” Do you agree with Richard Muller that “Not adjusting global temperature records would be “poor science” and that Booker’s suggestions is thus wrong?”
My answer is that I agree with Richard Muller. Indeed Zeke has very effectively shown why TOB corrections are needed.
However, what Muller failed to do, as just two examples, is discuss the importance of presenting i) the spatial representativeness of his data and its degree of spatial independence from the NCDC, GISS and CRU data that they use, and ii) the statistical uncertainty associated with each step in the homogenization used by those groups.
Moreover, he should also have presented analyses of maximum and minimum temperatures, not just the average. Why has he not yet done this?
Roger Sr.
As I read this there has been no statistically significant change in OHC for the last decade.
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V18/apr/a21.php
Latest I’ve seen is no warming in upper ocean 0-700m; some warming 0-2000 m (what is going on in deep ocean is unknown)
Take with a sip of salty water, but
http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/october/nasa-study-finds-earth-s-ocean-abyss-has-not-warmed/#.VUYu50ukPwI
I think the issue is one of statistical significance. These are crude estimates and the temperature changes are very small, not global by any means, then volume averaged for the whole globe.
Watching physicists struggle to explain numbers that have no real meaning has a certain fascination.
http://www.aviso.altimetry.fr/fileadmin/images/data/Products/indic/msl/MSL_Serie_J2_Global_IB_RWT_GIA_Adjust.png
we had this discussion last week; this graph does not agree with NOAA, Univ of Colorado, etc, none of whom find a big spike
Roger Pielke, and whomsoever else might weigh in:
The narrative is that oceans are absorbing AGW. I understand that 2xCO2 does mean increased downward infrared into the surface globally ( though not so much in the tropics ).
But when I examine the temperature (oceans versus atmosphere) and the abyssal water formation below, it’s obvious that the oceans store cold waters, not warmer than average waters. Though the oceans have had millenia of exposure to the warmer than ocean atmosphere, the average ocean temperature remains well below the average atmospheric temperature:
http://www.ipcc.ch/report/graphics/images/Assessment%20Reports/AR5%20-%20WG1/Chapter%2003/FigFAQ3.1-1.jpg
The little squiggles in the 0-1000m depth insets at the bottom of the image indicate diffusion of heat through turbulent mixing. But squiggles is apt because the warmer the sub-polar oceans become, the greater the buoyancy mixing must overcome and the less effective that mixing should be.
Since polar cold water formation evidently exceeds diffusion and since warming surface waters inhibits mixing, how certain can we be that energy from climatic forcing will enter the oceans?
Related to OHC,
is it possible that recent changes in OHC are more a reflection of abyssal water formation rate than diffusion of surface heat? Much of the very deep OHC change is not global but Antarctic(see below). It occurs to me that the increase in Antarctic Sea Ice reduces exposure and heat loss and thus reduces abyssal water formation.
http://www.ipcc.ch/report/graphics/images/Assessment%20Reports/AR5%20-%20WG1/Chapter%2003/Fig3-03.jpg
TE, so what do you think would happen to the deep ocean temperature if the water at the Arctic surface gets warmer?
TE, so what do you think would happen to the deep ocean temperature if the water at the Arctic surface gets warmer?
Are you suggesting warm water sinks?
But further, what difference in the rate of cold water formation occurs at -43C versus -45C? The answer may be not so much because sea ice is mother nature’s pool cover. Lower than a certain polar temperature doesn’t matter so much because sea ice stops the heat loss of the oceans. That may be why the anomaly shows up in the Southern ocean because Antarctic sea ice has been anomalously high. It will be interesting to see what happens when it reverts to the mean.
turbulent eddie, “It occurs to me that the increase in Antarctic Sea Ice reduces exposure and heat loss and thus reduces abyssal water formation.”
http://curry.eas.gatech.edu/Courses/5225/ency/Chapter11/Ency_Oceans/Bottom_Water_Formation.pdf
More sea ice should mean more deep water formation. Salinity would determine how cold and how deep it sinks.
TE, if the Arctic water is colder than any other surface water, it sinks and gets replaced by warmer water coming in. However, circulations could slow down while the deep water gets warmer. The other thing that could happen is that the Arctic water becomes too warm to sink, which may be what you are suggesting, in which case the AMOC stops. Seems drastic to me, but OK.
TE, if the Arctic water is colder than any other surface water, it sinks and gets replaced by warmer water coming in. However, circulations could slow down while the deep water gets warmer. The other thing that could happen is that the Arctic water becomes too warm to sink, which may be what you are suggesting, in which case the AMOC stops.
Are you predicting Arctic temperature will rise 30C in winter?
Good luck with that.
TE, I was trying to figure out why you think the deep water won’t be replaced by warmer water when the Arctic warms. There are times in paleoclimate when the deep water was 14 C.
TE, I was trying to figure out why you think the deep water won’t be replaced by warmer water when the Arctic warms.
For the same reason that the deep tropical waters are not replaced by warmer waters – cold water sinks, warm water floats.
There are times in paleoclimate when the deep water was 14 C.
Irrelevant.
What’s happening around Antarctica might be related.
http://ecowatch.com/2014/03/03/climate-change-effects-ocean-salinity-traps-heat/
Cap’n,
That paper is great.
But do check the second page ‘Formation of Antarctic Bottom Water’:
‘Normally, sea ice acts to insulate the ocean from further heat loss’
The ‘Polynyas’ are formed by wind to open fissures in the ice which allow heat loss ( and ice formation between the cracked ice sheets ). The formation of sea ice does create deep water ( because the temperature is right at freezing and freezing also sheds salt, so the water is as dense as can be.
But having thick ice reduces both the heat loss, and, I speculate, reduces the number of polynyas because the thick ice doesn’t separate as easily.
There’s not a good trend of Arctic Ocean heat content, but I wonder if the thinner Arctic sea ice is allowing more ocean heat to escape and if that doesn’t explain some of the multi-decadal variability of Arctic Sea Ice.
Supposedly newer Argo floats will be Arctic capable, so maybe we learn soon.
In what world is this not significant?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Ocean_Heat_Content_(2012).png/400px-Ocean_Heat_Content_(2012).png
It may be.
But should also consider the whole plate of spaghetti, not just a single strand:
http://www.ipcc.ch/report/graphics/images/Assessment%20Reports/AR5%20-%20WG1/Chapter%2003/Fig3-02.jpg
The world which shows the same trend line for the last 1,000 years.
Someone claims to have ocean heat content as accurate as Argo for the last 1000 years, and you believe them? Why not be skeptical of that claim?
Not my point. As usual, inductive reasoning overwhelms common sense. You have no data showing this trend line is any different than what could have been in the past. Your logic is symptomatic of those without baselines who want to pass off any occurrence as unprecedented.
Poor science. But then what’s new.
The reference I responded to said no significant trend. I see a significant trend. Maybe you don’t.
Jim D | May 3, 2015 at 12:58 pm | Reply
In what world is this not significant?
Well… Let’s start with a current chart.
https://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content2000m.png
If you aren’t on crack, the pre-2003 numbers are pretty meaningless.
The post 2003 numbers (ARGO era) are probably worth discussing. I see 100-110 zettajoules. Mass ocean (top half) 0.7 zettakilograms. Specific heat about 3990 J kg−1 K−1. We’ll be generous and use 110 because that is just the kind of people we are. So the top 2000 meters has warmed 0.0393841747 or about 0.04°C in 11 years or 0.0036°C per year.
In what world is this not significant?
I would say it isn’t significant in this world or the next world and that should just about cover it.
PA, so the ocean surface has warmed nearly 0.5 C since the 1970’s and that is not a clue to you that the heat content may also have risen since then?
Roger,
Sorry for the dumb question but what is the CCS 1.1 committee?
Also, what is a short summary of the impacts of vast areas of unmeasured survace data on the Africa, South America and mid Asian plus wide ocean on the precision of surface temperatures increase?
Thanks for your help.
Scott
Judith
I have read the link regarding Richard Muller.I first contacted him some three years ago to say that one third of the world seemed to be cooling,some stations for a considerable period of time. He agreed. I note his linked article seems to say the same. I have asked mosh to clarify this at least three times but his answer never seems to relate to the specific question I asked on the subject.
Perhaps this would be an interesting article in order to satisfactorily clear this up once and for all
Tonyb
This was interesting. I didn’t see it above, so here ya go.
http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/gps-data-show-how-nepal-quake-disturbed-earth-s-upper-atmosphere
Re: “Gravity data show that Antarctic ice sheet is melting increasingly faster”
It is a university press release about a paper that falls in the general category of “We were wrong, it’s much worse than we thought!”, with quotes from some of the papers’ authors…. and one author’s comment about “tens of feet” of future sea level rise. The press release itself seems to have been written for 6th graders… OK, maybe more accurate is it seems to have been written by 6th graders. The paper is typical of what Nature and Science accept in climate science: surprising, alarming, and maybe very wrong.
The paper reports an acceleration in net ice loss from Antarctica from 2003 to 2014, based on a new method of analysis of Grace gravitational data. The claim is that the new method improves the Grace signal enough to have confidence in the acceleration in mass loss, in spite of contrary evidence based on surface altitude measurements (which is increasing on average due to more precipitation). The authors claim that the increase in surface altitude does not accurately reflect mass change because the assumed density of the increased precipitation is not accurate, that is, air in the snow/firn is not being accounted for accurately by altimeter readings.
The claimed rate of acceleration in mass loss between 2003 and 2014 is 6 * 10^9 tons/YR^2. The increase in annual loss is 6.6*10^10 tons over the period (and about equal to that many cubic meters of water). So, based on the total area of the Earth’s oceans (3.6 * 10^14 M^2), the added increase in seal level rise from Antarctica should been ~0.183 mm/year. This is about 5.7% of the rate of rise that has been measured since 1992 vial satellite altimetry (3.2 +/- 0.4 mm, http://sealevel.colorado.edu/files/2015_rel1/sl_ns_global.png). Alas, the sea level data are too noisy to exclude the possibility of an acceleration of 0.183 mm/yr which is actually present but lost in the noise.
A big part of the variation in the sea level data is related to the influence of ENSO on global precipitation patterns, and the University of Colorado Sea Level Group shows how detrended seal level correlates with ENSO (http://sealevel.colorado.edu/files/2014_rel4/sl_mei.png). I think that if you “removed” the effect of ENSO from the sea level data, the uncertainty in the calculated trend (between 2003 and 2014) might be low enough to determine if there is any evidence of acceleration of 0.183 mm/yr. My eyeball based guess is that there will be no evidence of acceleration… but that is only by eyeball, no numbers.
I suspect the people who calculate mass balance based on surface altitude measurements may have some “constructive criticism” of this paper. I will not be surprised if the paper turns out to be less than … ahem… completely correct, but that’s what they like to publish at Nature (eg the Steig et al Antarctic warming fiasco). Seems to me they are looking more for “impact” than accuracy in climate science articles.
stevefitzpatrick:
If you have seen the paper, did they quality check the satellite results with on-the-ground gravimeter readings?
Sorry, I have only read the abstract and press release.
I cannot find anything about gravimeters (or alternative confirmation testing) in the Princeton materials. As far as I can tell, their original articles on Slepian functions don’t include any comparison to gravimeter readings across the areas of interest. They did, however, test their theoretical results against white noise.
https://eos.org/project-updates/a-suite-of-software-analyzes-data-on-the-sphere-2
http://www.princeton.edu/geosciences/people/simons/pdf/Handbook-2010.pdf
Their methods may, in fact, be an improvement over prior efforts which have come to similar conclusions. See, for example http://www.livescience.com/48099-antarctica-melting-earth-gravity-changes.html.
But I would like to see comparisons to local gravity readings that test the validity of these techniques. Some aerial and handheld gravity data for West Antarctica has been collected in the past, for example:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Aygi1TqTee8J:repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/18359+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
Hi Scott – I am referring to the CCSP 1.1 report in the link I provided. Here it is again.
Pielke Sr., Roger A., 2005: Public Comment on CCSP Report “Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences”. 88 pp including appendices. http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/nr-143.pdf
Roger Sr.
How can anyone take the CO2 control knob hypothesis seriously anymore when there has been no significant warming for 18 years despite CO2 increasing by 11% during that time?
25% of the anthro CO2 has been emitted since 1998
And here I thought the CO2 control knob hypothesis couldn’t be more wrong.
I could play that game and say it has been warming for the last 17 of those 18 years. We started another continuous warming trend after 1998.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/mean:12/from:1998/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1998/mean:12
Sorry Jimmy. Any trend less than 0.1C/decade is not significant. It’s less than the margin of error in the measurement,
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/mean:12/from:1998/trend/detrend:0.125/plot/gistemp/from:1998/mean:12
See you gots 0.125 warming over 17 years which works out to a decadal trend of 0.125/1.7 or 0.73C/decade.
So you really can’t play that game too. The pause is real Jimmy. You’re in denial. You’re the denier now. Isn’t that just precious? LOL
.
Sorry Jimmy. Any trend less than 0.1C/decade is not significant. It’s less than the margin of error in the measurement,
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/mean:12/from:1998/trend/detrend:0.125/plot/gistemp/from:1998/mean:12
See you gots 0.125 warming over 17 years which works out to a decadal trend of 0.125/1.7 or 0.73C/decade.
So you really can’t play that game too. The pause is real Jimmy. You’re in denial. You’re the denier now. Isn’t that just precious? LOL
Correction: make that 0.073C/decade!
You can take the 30 year trends from 1970-2000 and 1985-2015, and you get this (both trend lines here).
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/mean:12/from:1950/plot/gistemp/from:1970/to:2000/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1985/to/trend
If you want significance, you take 30-year trends which are much more stable in the vicinity of 0.166 C per decade, and completely unaffected by the so-called pause. What does that say about the pause? It was a short-term blip that cancels itself out with the 1998 step.
JimD,
You probably know that GISS has the highest recent trend, and so may not be the best representation of reality.
It is the one the skeptics like least because it has a better representation of the amount Arctic warming.
If we are in the negative phase of some 60 year cycle you can probably expect more rapid warming in the future than we saw with the last positive phase. The step ladder seems to be an accurate description of the temperature record over the last century or so.
This is the 30-year low-pass filtered temperature. It is considered that 1940 was already a high anomaly on the millennial scale, so what has been happening since then is extremely abnormal, and, no, it hasn’t stopped. The gradient since 1970 corresponds to 2.5 C per doubling. If I was planning, I would use that gradient.
oops link
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/mean:240/mean:120
David Springer,
Depending on what temperature data set you believe, it is more likely than not that there has been some modest warming over the last 18 years (http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:1997.3333/plot/wti/from:1997.3333/trend), though much less (0.2C per decade). The models are filled with grotesque kludges, and they are IMO, incapable of projecting much of anything accurately. The accuracy of climate model projections of warming is clearly now broadly questioned, even within climate science, due to mounting observational estimates of low sensitivity to GHG forcing (Lewis & Curry, Otto et al, Lewis, Troy Masters, Bengtsson & Schwartz, Schwartz et al, and many more). Each year of continued divergence of reality from the models makes their projections even less credible. At some point the modelers will either become embarrassed enough to change their kludges to produce lower sensitivity, or they will become irrelevant in discussions of climate sensitivity.
But putting the crazy models aside, the truth is: we can’t yet be certain of the extent of long term (century scale) warming that will result from increasing GHG’s in the atmosphere, but we can be sure that in the long term it is not going to be zero. The important technical question is (and has always been) not ‘if’ but ‘how much’ warming. Once the question of true sensitivity is answered, and I suspect it will be answered to within a fairly narrow range within a decade due to continuously improving observational data, the final technical question will be what the consequences, both good and bad, of warming will be.
No, we can’t be sure of anything that will happen in the future. Humanity has a very poor track record of predicting the future that far in advance.
The history of technology however offers some guidance.
A transformative technology is very likely to emerge which will make atmospheric CO2 into a valuable commodity. Carbon is the most versatile building block in the periodic table. Virtually any material needed to build anything important from food to clothes, housing and transportation, and medicine and entertainment, can be fabricated with carbon compounds.
The most reliable distributed source of carbon for terrestrial life to use is in the atmosphere. That’s why the primary producers in the food chain acquire their carbon from it. Once the emerging science of synthetic biology matures we will be able to command armies of photosynthetic microbes to build virtually any macroscopic materials and constructions we need with unprecedented precision at the molecular scale powered by sunlight and using local materials which will primarily be atmospheric carbon.
Mark my words. Before this century has passed the world will need laws that restrict how much carbon can be removed from the atmosphere rather than laws restricting how much may be added.
Ken Rice (ATTP) says if you don’t believe the IPCC then go to the literature.
Okay Ken. And if you don’t believe the pal reviewed literature then go to the data. The data is 18 years w/o significant warming despite an 11% increase in atmospheric CO2.
No amount of literature can change the facts on the ground Kenny boy.
Cards on the table.
Apparently 18 is significant, but 17 isn’t, but it was last year. How does that work?
Who said 17 wasn’t? Each year the pause continues it becomes more significant. Duh.
Slightly O/T but on the topic of ‘going to the literature’ there’s this in Nature.
Crowd sourced review of Psychology peer reviewed literature finds only 39% papers reproducible i.e 61% of peer reviewed literature in the field of psychology is gumpf.
http://www.nature.com/news/first-results-from-psychology-s-largest-reproducibility-test-1.17433?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews
I wonder @curryja if similar results would be found in climate science.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_April_2015_v61.png
So far, Nino nada.
Which is why no two temperature series have ever been this lost in the dark.
RSS and UAH sampling coverage is AWESOME. That’s what really bothers you, isn’t it.
Do you believe in fairytales?
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2010/anomnight.4.29.2010.gif
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2015/anomnight.4.30.2015.gif
Which is why no two temperature series have ever been this lost in the dark.
Well, unlike land based thermometers and the various thermometers ( engine intake, buckets, et. al ) that measured SST, MSU does have a corroborating data set – the radiosondes, so we can and do have a lot more confidence in the upper atmosphere trends than the surface.
That much being the case, the upper air signals of ENSO do lag a month or two. From what I can gather, it’s not heat jumping out of the signal area in the tropical Pacific, but rather different land based areas absorbing greater than normal amounts of solar energy ( from the pattern shifts of ENSO ). Isaac Held had some interesting videos describing wave patterns a la ENSO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8J4uw0UrTRw
Here’s another interesting clue about how ENSO anomalies don’t appear to repeat ( they’re in different locations from ENSO to ENSO ):
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/ElNino-LaNina/ElNino+LaNina_maps.gif
“jim2 | May 3, 2015 at 8:34 pm | Reply
So far, Nino nada.”
So far we have gotten an “Al Nino” (“El Nino’s uncle on his mother’s side).
It is what it is. The sea is doing the seay thing but the wind isn’t doing windy thing. I call the El Nino as a sea only phenomenon an “Al Nino”.
TE – those are some cool animations!
http://www.aviso.altimetry.fr/fileadmin/images/data/Products/indic/msl/MSL_Serie_J2_Global_IB_RWT_GIA_Adjust.png
Right, the trend over land is negative because of RSS’s vast coverage at the surface. They’re using drones?
You do know the legend on the left side of the chart reads sea level?
If this applied to a land trend. it would read “land level”.
The point is obvious.
Yes. And the point is land subsidence due to pumping of ground water. Thanks for pointing out a REAL problem civilization faces in this century – emptying of aquifers.
David Springer | May 4, 2015 at 7:05 am |
Yes. And the point is land subsidence due to pumping of ground water.
A good point… but It isn’t just water, the pumping of any gas or liquid out of the ground causes subsidence.
http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/gc-subsidence/images/blafourche.jpg
Picture of land level fall in Louisiana (like sea level rise but in the other direction).
The land level fall depicted above is attributed to oil production.
The amount of land subsidence is going to unfairly bias satellite sea level rise measurements unless compensation is made.
Oil pumping isn’t significant source of subsidence globally. About 4000 cubic kilometers of groundwater depletion occurs annually. About 8 billion barrels per km^3. That’s 32 trillion barrels of water vs. 33 billion barrels of oil. In other words a thousand barrels of water for each barrel of oil.
Eh sorry. Correction. 4000 cubic kilometers is total depletion since 1900. Current rate is closer to 400 per year.
Oil pumping isn’t significant source of subsidence globally. About 400 cubic kilometers of groundwater depletion occurs annually. About 8 billion barrels per km^3. That’s 3 trillion barrels of water vs. 33 billion barrels of oil. In other words a hundred barrels of water for each barrel of oil.
Lol.
David Springer:
Groundwater extraction needs to be net of recharge rates. Not sure if your data source was net extraction. In addition, most groundwater extraction occurs far from the shoreline. In that event, any groundwater that makes it to the sea contributes to sea-level rise even though the extraction/subsidence takes place far inland.
Another complicating factor is that oil production typically co-produces far greater amounts of associated formation water. Near the end of a well’s oil production the water production ratio can be 100-to-1. However, in most places the produced water must be disposed of by reinjection into saltwater disposal wells (the suspected source of recent earthquakes in Oklahoma).
Subsidence calculations for coastal areas in Louisiana are also compounded by lack of siltation (channelization of the Mississippi River results in the silt load being discharged into the Gulf of Mexico). Silt-starved areas both subside and become more vulnerable to storm erosion.
In addition to the problems for major river deltas arising from groundwater extractions (example: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/9/8/084010/article), coastal areas near Houston, Texas also have subsided due to oil/gas production and groundwater extractions. (http://hgsubsidence.org)