by Tony Brown
Over the last 15 years interesting things have been happening at CET-the world’s longest instrumental record, dating to 1660.
It was partly as a result of watching its evolution that I decided to try to reconstruct it further back than Manley-creator of the 1660 record- reaching 1538 as described in my article ‘The Long Slow Thaw?’
Here is CET from 1772 to the current day, which is the preferred Met Office data
Figure 1
“The graph above shows annual anomalies relative to the 1961-1990 average. The red line is a 21-point binomial filter, which is roughly equivalent to a 10-year running mean.”
Some two and a half years ago I graphed the 2013 version of CET against CO2 concentrations and posed several questions. [link] Do the results demonstrate that once you get to around the 300ppm level that the law of diminishing returns sets in as the logarithmic curve of CO2 versus temperatures takes effect? Does it illustrate nothing at all and the current downward CET slope is merely a blip from the 1990’s ‘hump’ that will increase sharply again as more CO2 is added?
Figure 2 below is an update of the 2013 chart using a 5 year running mean;
As some 30 months have elapsed since the original, several things can now be better discerned. Firstly, the hump has in effect been erased (but not withstanding that 2014 was the warmest year in the 1772 record).
Secondly, there has been a number of rather cold years-compared to the recent norm and thirdly, that the upwards trend line from the start of the record can be seen. This erasure was perplexing and whilst the 15 year upwards trend was widely discussed, the subsequent 15 year decline has received little attention and although the current lower plateau is still at a fairly high level it is matched by periods in the past. To attempt to discover what is happening we graphed the seasons back to 1660 using the Manley Met office data. The result was this;
Figure 3
As can be seen, the graph uses actual temperatures rather than anomalies and shows the evolution of the seasons with a gradual warming over the centuries, although of course with fits and starts. It can be seen that whilst the Summer warming overall since 1660 has been somewhat small , Spring Autumn and Winter are much more pronounced. Note; this is a linear trend
The warming of Winter is perhaps the most notable, but least surprising feature, as the record covers the various periods of the Intermittent Little Ice Age
Clearly, not all seasons in the same year are in sync, and a run of (say) warm Winters might be counter balanced by a run of (say) cool Summers. Where they are all in sync, that will likely cause a substantially warmer or cooler year than ‘normal’. However it only needs one season to be substantially different to the others for it to materially affect that years mean temperature. Indeed one month might do it, for example this has been a very mild November in the UK that has impacted strongly on the entire years CET which, until then, had been rather cooler than usual.
Whilst the relationship of one year’s season in relation to other seasons in the same year can not be observed in the following graph, by including all the data in one graphic from 1660 this enables us to see the generality of the trends better.
Figure 4; 5 year running mean
Eyeballing the hump (figure 1) which reached its peak around 2000 and setting the subsequent trend to coincide with the decline of some half a degree centigrade since then, reveals this;
Figure 5
Clearly all seasons, other than Autumn have shown a noticeable decline, with that season appearing, for some reason, to have remained roughly static. Drilling down to each Autumn month shows this;
Figure 6
So the static nature of autumn can be shown to be comprised of a noticeable decline in September, counter balanced by rises in October and November which, overall, were not sufficient to counter the overall substantial CET decline from 2000. What is the explanation for the erasure of the ‘hump’ which certainly elicited a lot of scientific comment on its way up but somewhat less on the way down?
I asked the following of the Met Office earlier this month:
“ Is the hump and apparent decline we can observe in Hadley CET 1772 in recent decades correct and a true representation of our evolving climate, or did the change of stations and methodology with the advent of the Hadley 1772 data set in 1992 correctly reflect the weighting they should have been accorded, in particular Ringway? The apparent incongruities seem to date from around the time the new data base would have come into use.
In this respect I note the subsequent amendments to the data arising from David Parker and Briony Horton’s paper of 2005 ‘ UNCERTAINTIES IN CENTRAL ENGLAND TEMPERATURE 1878–2003 AND SOME IMPROVEMENTS TO THE MAXIMUM AND
MINIMUM SERIES’.
I received the following reply from the Met Office;
“I note your thoughts on possible inconsistencies/inhomogeneities/’incongruities’ also; of course with best scientific interests at heart, we do ensure as much as possible that any changes in the stations used (and currently we use Stonyhurst, Pershore College and Rothamsted) are allowed for by doing an overlap comparison, so that not just biases but changes in standard deviations of these stations are allowed for to get a series that is as closely homogeneous as possible.”
So the Met office-who have a lot of experience in this, believe the stations used are not showing a bias. I met compiler of the 1772 CET data base, David Parker, at the Met office a couple of years ago and it does indeed seem highly unlikely he would have created a methodology that would allow stations to be selected that would show a notable bias.
So it appears that temperatures have been declining rather than the methodology being at fault . The change point in the direction of temperatures roughly coincide with the last big El Nino. Will the current El Nino add another twist to the decline?
November has shown how susceptible our climate is to the wind direction. Winds from different points of the compass bring very different conditions, ranging from warm wet Westerlies to dry cold Easterlies (in the Winter) generally always warm Southerlies and generally always cold Northerlies. November 2015 has been typified by an extended run of South Westerly winds and has been notably mild, except on the two occasions, separated by some weeks, when the winds came from a Northerly direction and the temperatures briefly plummeted.
A future area of my research relates to updating work by Hubert Lamb who created an interesting graphic of the number of days in a year that the UK (and generally Europe) has South Westerly winds. The data begins in 1340 and ends in around 1978. I have asked the Met Office for the source of the data whereby Lambs’ graphic can be updated on a like for like basis, as the wind direction in recent decades may have a bearing on the current temperature decline.
Will it continue its decline? It has been rising for some 400 years by some measures, so taking a linear historic view I would expect it to continue to rise. However, it depends on what has caused the rise. Its start clearly predates increased CO2, but whether it is now a mix of natural variability and CO2, or whether our natural variability remains the overwhelming factor, perhaps influenced by wind direction and jet streams, amongst many other factors, is difficult to determine.
The final graphic attempts to provide a wider context to recent temperature changes. It illustrates the fluctuating nature of glaciers over the last 1000 years and superimposed is extended CET.
Figure 7
It is drawn from the numerous glacier studies made by E Roy Ladurie and published in the book ‘Times of Feast, Times of Famine’ and also encompasses more recent research by such as C Pfister. It should be seen in its generality, as the nuances of short term advances and retreats cannot be accurately captured. It covers primarily Alpine Glaciers and some from North America. The glacier recession continues to the present day. The general considerable glacial advances from around 1550 during the Little Intermittent Ice Age can be seen, although the numerous warm years, even during glacial advances, nor the cold years during glacier recession, do not show up.
It must be pointed out that the observations that are the subject of this article illustrate a short period that doesn’t really represent a significant trend, although they certainly come under the category of ‘interesting.’
During the last 15 or so years there has, by some measures, been a ‘pause’ in global warming. Taking a global average temperature may disguise the nuances of the temperature changes locally in individual countries and CET may therefore be representative of a group of countries that have shown a decline that has counter balanced continued warming elsewhere.
Notes and comments
- Statistics can often be used to prove whatever point the author wants to make, so in including 1 year linear, 5 year running mean and the 10 year running mean of the Met office itself, hopefully the reader can examine the data from a variety of angles.
- Temperatures can be seen to be rising in the earliest period of my reconstruction-(prior to the official 1772 or 1660 data) The period around 1540 included probably several of the warmest years in the record. Whether it coincides with a longer extended warm period at that time is as yet unknown to this author although in a paper ‘The year-long unprecedented European heat and drought of 1540 – a worst case’ in the journal Climatic Change an international group of 32 scientists shows that in 1540 Western Europe suffered a heat wave and ‘Megadrought’ that were broadly similar to the modern European heat waves of 2003 [link]
The compilation book ‘Climate since AD 1500’ edited by Phil Jones and incorporating work by a number of scientists, notes the warm periods around 1550 and 1630 and the cold intervals that separated them; Growing warmth is confirmed by Professor Dr C. Pfister the noted historian and geographer who identified Heat waves in 1525 and 1616 (authors note; roughly comparable to Europe 2003/2010)
- From a graphing viewpoint it is debatable as to where the CO2 line should be placed. I chose to place figure 2 around the black trend line as the CO2 and temperature trend line probably needs to start together at the same place. This also provides clarity and context to the graphic, although others might feel the CO2 line should be placed elsewhere.
- The Met office, KNMI, Mike Hulme, Hubert Lamb and Mike Lockwood were amongst those believing CET had a wider significance as a reasonable (but not infallible) temperature proxy that might reflect European Wide, Northern Hemisphere or even some sort of Global proxy. However, it is not the intention of this paper to claim that its findings and observations are relevant to any region other than Britain, although this is obviously a topic that warrants further examination at some point.
Tony Brown; November 25th 2015
Charts kindly provided by Ed Hoskins
JC note: As with all guest posts, please keep your comments relevant and civil.
Pingback: The rise and fall of Central England Temperature | Enjeux énergies et environnement
Now I know from where that question on linear trends and running means came you asked the other day.
JCH
Yes, I had examined the data using a linear trend but wasn’t sure as to its validity. Hence my question to you when I saw you had done the same.
Having said that it is useful to get data presented in a number of different ways including 1 year, 5 year and 10 year then we can truly get a picture.
tonyb
Well, I think the single linear trend presents only a small part of the true picture, but that is just me.
Read more commentless.
http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/25/the-new-consensus-97-of-americans-arent-worried-about-global-warming/
What do we know.
Read less drivel; comment as often as you want.
JCH
what, no PDO is the comment from you? Seems like others (esp this good one from Tonyb [up in the northern Atlantic]) are trying to take a broader view of things than we get from your constant “commenting as often as you like” with your customary “PDO” pricking”
Well the budget came in at 5%, I guess no one cares about that either, right?
JW – i would say Tony B’s graph is closer to supporting my viewpoints than it is to supporting his viewpoints.
CET is the best proxy we have for global temperature before the global temperature record. It shows modern “warming” to be nothing at all unusual, being considerably less than the 1690-1730 warming.
And when it is finally admitted, that CET is the best proxy for global temperature – this scam will die on its feet.
Concur, What a rich source of climate information lies
in the historic record, so much natural variation and
there’s something about a glacier advancing and
retreating, ( Figure 7,) kinda’ substantial as a climate
change indicator, – people notice things like that, so,
well, un-anecdotal and kinda’ more reliable than tree-
ring proxies doncha’ think?.
Given that Manley’s CET is non-instrumental and not in England between 1707 and 1722, and between 1723 and the 1760s mostly was taken in unheated rooms and not outside, your faith is touching.
Eli
You regularly pop up to rubbish CET and I regularly put you right but you still continue to make misleading statements. Look st my last three replies to you on this subject. Why does a long record such as CET worry you so much?
Tonyb
Tony, given that some of us haven’t seen your prior responses to eli. could you respond again?
I think it’s fine to doubt any record or series, even newer stuff. (Min/max as record of temps? Gimme a break. I go outside a lot and I have seen those cloud thingies for myself.)
The main thing is to recognise that climate is a long game. Glimpses of past climate give you a blurry impression of some of the game. Close examination of a tiny fraction of a moment of the game gives you no impression at all. Curiously, those who insist that our knowledge of past climate is just too blurred are often those who see future climate with startling clarity. Surely it’s more sporting to wait for stuff to happen before being too exact about it.
Of course, the great thing about CET is that it shakes up the notion of a stable climate rudely interrupted around 1980. Mind you, knowing about the great monsoon failures of the raj, Bond Events, migration periods, dynastic strains and collapses after coolings etc etc also tends to warp those hockey stick handles.
Very interesting post, Tony. But I have to correct you on your reply to Little Rascally Pwofessor Rabbetticus Halpernicus:”You regularly poop up to rubbish CET and I regularly put you right but you still continue to make misleading statements.”
We wonder who is putting his students to sleep, while they are on holiday. They may have to wait to get back to class to get some rest.
Joseph
Unfortunately I wasted a lot of time in the past creating a new response each time Eli made his claim. I had no reason to keep them until I belatedly realised he was doing the same thing over and over again….
This post I did save is not the fulsome ones of the earlier period, but you will be able to see that he seems to have been unaware of an important document that addressed his concerns.
http://judithcurry.com/2015/11/03/natural-climate-variability-during-1880-1950-a-response-to-shaun-lovejoy/#comment-740649
I am just adding this next one in so it remains together with the link above so I can keep it and expand on the subject again at some point
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/documents/421974/1300167/Cornes.pdf/e713de21-8ab4-4d4e-b71d-78233afb43fc
This thesis was supervised by all the great and the good at CRU in 2010 and relates to someone called Richard Cornes whose work on medieval temperatures I was coincidentally referencing today for my next article. Its a genuinely very interesting document on early temperature gathering.
tonyb
It is pretty clear why CET worries Elmerfudd Eli so much. The same reason Kim Jong Un keeps his comrades in the dark about why they are in the dark and he is saying let them eat rice cake while to the south they are saying party on. How ya gonna keep’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree.
CET is what it is, but it is not what you claim. In particular it is not very trustworthy nor useful alone before 1760, which Manley make clear, and it is not global. Early CET is best taken together with Pfister’s Central European temperature record to talk about regional temperatures.
http://www.univie.ac.at/pluslucis/FBW0/FBW2010/Material/2009-11-Dobrovolny-etal-CLIMCHANGE.pdf
Whatever.
The wittle wabbette halpernicus prefers a lonesome pine or two, for guessing temps on a global scale. Probably has something to do with the little critter being a radical herbivore.
Eli
Thank you for your link, but as you are aware it has nothing at all to do with CET. It covers CEU (central Europe) and mentions nothing of Manleys reconstruction other than in passing. It rightly admits to the problems of calibration between the different data sets comprising CEU.
It is a good study however which I have referenced in my own work. As they say ‘the summer data appears to be less reliable’
I do not claim it to be global, I merely repeat what others more knowledgeable on its wider application say. This I make clear in the article which is essentially about the decline we can observe in the past 15 years which has erased what went before; My note says;
“The Met office, KNMI, Mike Hulme, Hubert Lamb and Mike Lockwood were amongst those believing CET had a wider significance as a reasonable (but not infallible) temperature proxy that might reflect European Wide, Northern Hemisphere or even some sort of Global proxy. However, it is not the intention of this paper to claim that its findings and observations are relevant to any region other than Britain, although this is obviously a topic that warrants further examination at some point.”
Do you have any comments on the Met Office data showing this decline or fall or that par of Autumn appears to be bucking the trend?
tonyb
Scottish, there is no global temperature record, except perhaps the satellite readings. Arcane adjusted statistical models are not records, quite the opposite.
RSS and UAH do not cover the poles because the sensor has trouble with ice/snow cover falsification.
He knows that wabbette. He said “perhaps”. He is talking relative to the poor coverage of the instrumental record. Any questions?
How do CET changes correlate with changes in Sweden, Spain, and Italy?
Fernando
Here is the European section of my web site. Behind each red dot is a graph. It needs updating.- (although some stations no longer operate) Uppsala is especially interesting as the record is very long.
http://climatereason.com/LittleIceAgeThermometers/Europe.html
tonyb
It’s interesting that Milan appears to trend down while Bologna trends up.
ordvic
Some countries may be warming whilst other countries may be cooling at the same time. Might that extend to cities relatively close to each other?
Those that have ready access to the data do not seem to do this type of comparison.
With cities of course, not only might uhi might be more of factor in one city than in another, but a change of location of a station might also have an impact.
Similarly, the direction of the prevailing wind direction (which changes over time) might have an impact. Milan and Bologna are on the same plain, but a prevailing wind from the alps is likely to affect Milan much more than Bologna. if the prevailing direction comes from the Adriatic Bologna is likely to be affected more than Milan. if the wind comes from the Ligurian sea the Appenines might shield Bologna more than Milan
tonyb.
That’s a fun site you have there, tonyb. I never make much of any statistics, but there’s enough long-term material from a diversity of places to get people thinking. Of course, they have to want to think.
http://www.newclimatemodel.com/weather-is-the-key-after-all/
“I have observed the cooling of the 60’s to mid 70’s, the subsequent warming, the stall in warming that followed and now possibly a move towards cooling.
There is a noticeable difference in day to day weather patterns which over time indicates one trend or the other but it is too rough and ready to diagnose the scale of either. For present purposes however we need only discern the trend. The scale of any trend will require other diagnostic methods.
Simply put, are areas around the 45 degree latitude getting winds mostly from a southerly point or mostly from a northerly point? Could it really be that simple?
When I refer to northerly or southerly winds I mean any flow of air with a component from one direction or the other, not just direct northerly or southerly flows.
To decide whether I am talking nonsense or not all one needs to do is consider the movement of the jet streams in conjunction with the main high pressure systems.
If jet streams, on average, are further south then the high pressure systems to the north of them predominate and the globe is cooling. If, on average, they are further north then high pressure to the south of them predominates and the globe is warming.”
Published by Stephen Wilde June 18, 2008
Thank you Tony for a very informative post.
The 4 graphs showing CET seasonal temperatures and trends seems to have 1900-2015 graph twice? Or am I not reading it right.
Regarding CET as a proxy for NH or global temperatures, have there been any quantification of a correlation? Also, other than MET have there been analysis or statements from the “establishment” that you would interpret as being supportive of CET trends being a good proxy for a greater geographic area. I have a hard time understanding why any specific area would NOT be a proxy over such a long period. On a decadal basis I understand the criticism, but for hundreds of years it defies common sense.
Ceresco kid.
Well done! you were being tested of course….Judith has been informed and hopefully the correct graphic from 1820 to 1900 will be inserted.
In the last point of my ‘notes’ section I mention those who believe CET is a worthwhile proxy.
Certainly the Met office believe it to be so, they have actually said it to my face during meetings there I have had.
As you say it would be surprising if the longest, most detailed and most examined data base was NOT a useful proxy. Hence my interest in extending it, as that should give us a reasonable insight into conditions over a wide area back to medieval times.
Tonyb
fixed!
Tony
Awhile back I did an eyeball comparison between an accepted NH index and the CET; the CET is a good approximate proxie. T rises and falls at about the same time and same rate, with a slight offset between the two.
Thank you for this post. Very informative.
Thanks for this analysis. There is a move to inform world leaders meeting in the Paris Climate Conference that we the people created government to secure our right to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that we are no longer willing to be lead and manipulated by incompetent, fear-mongering world leaders.
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_the_FEAR_the_basis_of_control_of_our_lives_and_our_hopes_by_the_political_and_economic_establishment
there’s something about a glacier advancing and retreating, ( Figure 7,) kinda’ substantial as a climate change indicator,
It snows more in warm times when oceans are warm and thawed. It rebuilds the ice on Antarctic, it rebuilds the ice on Greenland, it rebuilds the ice on Mountain Glaciers. When the ice volume is sufficient, it advances and increases Albedo, it advances and pushes ice into the oceans from Greenland and Antarctic and it pushes ice on land, ice cold water runs into the oceans and down the mountains. This takes a Medieval Warm Period into a Little Ice Age.
It snows lies in cold times when oceans are cold and frozen. The ice depletes on Antarctic and Greenland and Mountain Glaiers. The ice is depleted and Antarctic and Greenland and Mountain Glaciers cannot push ice out into the oceans as fast and cannot push ice down the mountains as fast and this takes a Little Ice Age into a modern warming. Albedo decreases, the Mountain Glaciers retreat, the ice shelves around Greenland get smaller the ice donut around Antarctic get smaller and earth warms until the sea ice thaws enough to increase the snowfall again.
People who think earth must get cold first to put ice on earth have no source for moisture to produce the snow. They freeze the oceans first and then come up water from somewhere. Look at ice core data, like Figure (7), it shows ice growing in warm times.
Tony,
This may be a stupid question but why do you have a chart of just autumn? Also, why don’t you have a similar chart (2000-2015) of the whole year?
Oh never mind you do have the whole year and you wanted to demo noticeable decline! putz (me)
I think there are various time series that show a cyclic dance of around 1000 years. These are not perfect waveform but because of the nature of climate it is unlikely to be composed of perfect waveforms. The causes of this could logically be:
1) A longer cyclic ocean heat transfer process than PDO/AMO that
a) is caused by movement of heat itself in the ocean in waves much like the atmospheric movements but over much longer times.
b) periodic large or more sustained mantle heat releases due to some geographical features
c) the sun with periodic variations inducing a sympathetic amplified fluctuation in an ocean temperature cycle
d) biological source
e) some combination of the above where for instance increased gamma rays from the sun induces biologic activity or chemical processes that create additional heat or cold that amplifies the sun effect
2) Purely some cyclic phenomenon with the sun combined with chemical or biological interaction that induces longer term probabilities of warmer or colder conditions
3) The sun affecting cloud formation, altitude or types of clouds depending on magnitude or type of radiation
4) A wave function related to albedo of glaciers or other changes that creates a longer cyclic wave with feedback mechanisms that generates a cycle of increasing and decreasing glaciers, temperature
5) Some interaction of humidity and the sun, clouds possibly combined with other things above
These are the types of factors that seem like they might have enough heat potential to impact global temperatures and have a wavelike characteristic. It is clear there is wave-like characteristics and long wave behaviors in the system working over centuries, millenia, millions of years, etc…
Becuase of this it seems a very precise and long term observation platform has to be built to measure all the possible sources. This is essentially a big data problem. We need to accumulate much longer term data on a wide variety of what are assumed today to be relatively static things.
a) We need to establish a way to measure clouds, type, altitudes and cover.
b) we need ARGO Phase II which would go deeper and collect more types of data including different chemicals and even lifeforms, bacteria counts
c) sun observations (we are probably doing this.)
d) with the deep ocean surveys we should try to see and correlate any eruptions that occur so that we may correlate these with any changes
e) static buoys that measure particular locations all over the ocean with higher frequency and regularity.
f) better satellites to measure humidity and detect clouds per measure a) above.
g) measurement of albedo of the earth (probably already have this?)
Co2 is a simple explanation and scientists like to look for simple explanations to complex problems. It is always the case the simple explanation is wrong. Usually it misses very significant aspects that actually determine the behavior of nature and the systems being studied. Yes, newtonian mechanics still suffices for much of mechanical engineering type problems but genetics would be useless without epigenetic code, biology without understand more than humors of the 1800s or the where would we be without plate tectonics. CO2 is extremely unlikely to be the key variable in the temperature variation of the earth. Clearly other things overwhelm CO2 easily and therfore it cannot be the “huge amplifier” to explain why the sun is correlated with many temperature oscillations.
Could some gases we are traveling through in the milky way or circling around the sun modify the suns radiation producing variations in cosmic or other radiation?
I realize this is random looking stuff but I think it is a logical extrapolation of the idea that the record is complex and we don’t know what could be causing all the variations observed, not even at a first order level or principal level. So, we must look more widely and think outside the box.
Co2 is a simple explanation and scientists like to look for simple explanations to complex problems. It is always the case the simple explanation is wrong.
It is frequently the case that a simple explanation is right.
Ewing and Donn told us about a simple explanation in the 1950’s. Ice accumulation always is more in warm times and less in cold times. Ice always advances after warm times and always retreats after cold times. Temperature always correlates with the ice. Climate is complicated, but this temperature regulation is simple The temperature that Polar Oceans freeze and thaw provides the thermostats, in the North and in the South and snowfall is always turned on in warm times and turned off in cold times.
You are right that the rule in science and in much of life is that the simplest explanation for any one thing is usually the simplest answer. However, we are looking at a climate record that is full of a massive number of superimposed wave functions. A simple explanation of CO2 cannot be the cause as CO2 by itself has to my knowledge never been the actual reason for a temperature change to be initiated. There is no simple set of formulas that when you apply explain the temperature record or any part of it. If that were the case I’m sure someone would have already demonstrated that. It is believed by some for instance that about 3 million years ago the opening of isthmus of panama doubled the cycle time of ice ages. This is amazing that a simple geographic feature may have suddenly changed the entire globes cycle of temperature variation. What other not so obvious geographic changes might affect temperature in such major ways? If it wasn’t the isthmus, then what caused the sudden slowdown of ice ages? An asteroid? Certainly it wasn’t CO2!
In my view climate scientists need to do the following to come clean:
1) Withdraw the statements that they have any idea from computer models at least about what the temperature in 2100 will be.
2) Admit that in any case it is extremely unlikely to get 2C by 2100 and we don’t really know long term ECS or if it will be different than TCS.
3) Admit that studies of consequences of global warming have serious deficiencies that make such predictions essentially worthless.
4) Return to a campaign of scientific research that will be focused on data collection, research and most important experimentation to the extent possible on possible relationships of various factors by themselves and in combination.
5) Admission that errors have been made in previous reports that are serious as to attribution of CO2 and other factors to the climate record.
6) Admission of unknowns in the climate science area that need further research in order to eventually create better understanding of climate in the past and therefore in the future.
7) A return to a “skeptical” mindset that doesn’t use “verification” as the main method of proof but instead returns to the scientific principle of testing and rejection of hypothesis that all other sciences use.
“It is frequently the case that a simple explanation is right.”
Karl Popper had a take on simplicity as well in The logic of scientific discovery
“The epistemological idea of simplicity plays a special part in theories of inductive logic, for example in connection with the problem of the ‘simplest curve’. Believers in inductive logic assume that we arrive at natural laws by generalization from particular observations. If we think of the various results in a series of observations as points plotted in a co-ordinate system, then the graphic representation of the law will be a curve passing through all these points. But through a finite number of points we can always draw an unlimited number of curves of the most diverse form. Since therefore the law is not uniquely determined by the observations, inductive logic is confronted with the problem of deciding which curve, among all these possible curves, is to be chosen.
The usual answer is, ‘choose the simplest curve’. Wittgenstein, for example, says: ‘The process of induction consists in assuming the simplest law that can be made to harmonize with our experience.’ In choosing the simplest law, it is usually tacitly assumed that a linear function, say, is simpler than a quadratic one, a circle simpler than an ellipse, etc. But no reasons are given either for choosing this particular hierarchy of simplicities in preference to any other, or for believing that ‘simple’ laws have advantages over the less simple—apart from aesthetic and practical ones.”
Reading this, one might say the state of the monitoring system for energy flowing through the earth system is a travesty. I just do not see how somebody who might say that would be mocked for saying it.
That climate scientists openly oppose systems like ARGO, which I think was initiated by CATO or Heartland or the business editorial department of the WSJ, and satellites is just another example of the climate scientist devious trickiness.
I was trying to figure out what to take away from all this but you stated it nicely; “During the last 15 or so years there has, by some measures, been a ‘pause’ in global warming. Taking a global average temperature may disguise the nuances of the temperature changes locally in individual countries and CET may therefore be representative of a group of countries that have shown a decline that has counter balanced continued warming elsewhere.” Pausation with representation.
I believe these lectures are consistent with this thread.
Dr Jennifer Marohasy – Climate Tricks Continue 9th ICCC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ge9Nwu8MxE
Tiffany Roberts – California’s Climate Change Insanity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN_JT18VGk4
Mann’s Hockey Stick “Whitewash” – Steve McIntyre
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ge9Nwu8MxE
Mark Steyn – The Fraudulent Hockey Stick
oops, I did one twice
Are you gonna put this one up: ‘Mann’s Hockey Stick “Whitewash” – Steve McIntyre’ ?
I missed
Mann’s Hockey Stick “Whitewash” – Steve McIntyre
The Steyn one didn’t work.
tonyb
It worked for me right after I posted it and again just a minute ago
Thanks Tony
Excellent review and a useful reference.
Tony, Thanks for this fascinating look at one of the most interesting long-term climate records!
Tonyb
Thanks so much for the hard work and outstanding contributions. Very interesting and exciting. At least as far as weather can be.
Good luck in the muslim century in Great Britain, if it is still that. If not best wishes to England. I hope the scots stay with you guys.
Scott
So, El Nino conditions also affect the weather in Great Britain… interesting –e.g., although not cast in snow, there’s the possibility that it could bring warmer weather; and, there’s also the possibility that colder temperatures across Europe are likely during the winter months and possibly, exceptionally cold temperatures in the UK, as when the elderly in the UK were forced to burn books to stay warm during the winter of 2009/2010. Given that the sun has gone on hiatus, the certainty of disaster looms in the offing…
Last year, I watched a programme about the 1962-3 winter, dating from a year or so afterwards. The El Nino was “blamed” for the bitterly cold & snowy weather we experienced. We’ve just had the mildest October/November since 1947.
Now, that’s a worry!
Adam
I well remember the 62/63 winter. It was my job to spread cold soot from the fire on our pathways. It worked very well which is why I think the arctic melting warrants closer examination as so many pictures show the huge swathes of soot that is present.
Let’s hope we do not have a repeat performance of That cold winter
Tonyb
Excellent post! Very interesting and thorough! Nice work!
This paper is relevant on the role of synoptic wind direction on temperature trends in western Europe including the UK..
Otterman, J., R. Atlas, S.-H. Chou, J.C. Jusem, R.A. Pielke Sr., T.N. Chase, J. Rogers, G.L. Russell, S.D. Schubert, Y.C. Sud, and J. Terry, 2002: Are stronger North-Atlantic southwesterlies the forcing to the late winter warming in Europe? Int. J. Climatol., 22, 743-750. https://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/r-238.pdf
Roger
Thanks for the paper, as I mentioned in the article I have asked the met office for the data to update lambs graph of south westerlies from 1340 to 1978 . Have you seen it?
It may well be that you already have the data to update it or know of the location where it can be obtained?
Tonyb
I hope that at least H.M. Government Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ms. Amber Rudd (not much chance for the P.M.) on her way to Paris conference finds the time to take (even a cursory) look at the Tony’s article. Unfortunately neither of two, Ms Rudd or the PM have necessary essential knowledge of the climate change subject.
This is not case for the H.M. parliamentary opposition.
Leader of the Labour party Jeremy Corbyn is the younger brother of the UK’s best known private forecaster Dr. Piers Corbyn who dismissed global warming as ‘nonsense’ . Btw. he is bidding to provide BBC’s weather bulletins after BBC ditched the Met Office.
Leader of the Liberal Party is Norman Lamb who is the son of Professor Hubert Lamb who established the Climate Research Unit, the ‘CRU’ (Crutem people), abandoning standards of its founder and eventually getting embroiled in the ‘climate-gate’.
Again, it is unfortunate that both leaders of the H.M. opposition, despite of their family connections are in the AGW camp.
Tony B, thank you for the essay.
Global warming has become a lust-fest of Moby Dick-ian proportions… Who but someone in the UK would give a hoot about what was happening in the Western world back in 1660? Who wants to go back? There is nothing in the mean temperature record in the UK — no matter how far back it’s pushed — that’ll change the simple reality that there are zero Western academics who actually wish to give up the benefits of modernity. Facts are facts.
“Statistics can often be used to prove whatever point the author wants to make, so in including 1 year linear, 5 year running mean and the 10 year running mean of the Met office itself, hopefully the reader can examine the data from a variety of angles.”
The standard we require of climate scientists is that they post their code and data.
That way people can BUILD on the work.
To examine the data from a variety of different angles, rather than the angles, you selected, is the goal.
Mosh
This is data direct from the met office which is freely available and downloaded by many people daily.. I am sure you must have used the CET data often, as you frequently comment on it and you wouldnt do that unless you knew what you were talking about.
They have agreed with the trend, indeed it is clearly visible on their own web site via the graph in figure 1 , but naturally caution that 50 years would give a better trend than 15 years. They have seen the south westerly wind correlation and are interested in filling in the missing period frm 1978 to today.
If you don’t know where the CET data is kept on the met office web site please let me know and I will send you a link. Please feel free to build On the work. The Decline actually started sometime in 1998 and the pause can be traced Back to 1990 but that is an awkward time scale which some might call cherry picking.
Tonyb
That was the same argument given by Jones to Willis.
We didnt let Jones get away with that argument so in fairness we hold you to same requirement.
post the data, post the code.
Mosh
Are you seriously saying you don’t know where the CET data is on the met office web site?
If you don’t why not just say so and I will find the link, but it will be a few hours as I am just going out.
Tonyb
I will make it simple.
One day, you dont say which, you visited the site.
The site had version A on it.
You downloaded this. This is version A1. it may differ from version A
That has to be checked ( download errors)
You copied version A1 into some program to process.
That is version A2. it may differ from A1.
You drew charts using A2.
There can be errors in that process.
Now I ask for version A1 and A2
you send me to the site.
is version A there? I have no way of knowing if the version there now
has changed from when you downloaded it.
So.. that is why Willis and I always request the DATA AS USED
and the CODE as RUN
Its basic
I might call it PDO like. if you said, “The CET is an excellent proxy for what would have happened if NV had any teeth at all, I’d be on board.”
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cetml1659on.dat
@ Steven
On the Met Office prior to 1st Jan 2015 it was version (An). I wrote to the MO demonstrating that their annual version is incorrect, suggesting a revision. They did revise the annual values (mainly upwards, variable but all less than 0.1C). Now the Met office website shows version (An+1).
Yes
Vuk deserves credit for pointing out their mistake and the met office deserve credit for changing the data. I have always found them to be a very reasonable organisation and until concrete evidence is presented to the contrary will believe that all the other major database organisations including BEST are equally professional.
Tonyb
Tony B: Are you seriously saying you don’t know where the CET data is on the met office web site?
If you don’t why not just say so and I will find the link, but it will be a few hours as I am just going out.
This is one of the points that Steve Mosher and I agree on, and is the stated standard of Nature and Science, though they do not enforce their standard: it is better if you post, someplace, the data and the code that you used. That is the only way anybody can be sure that they did exactly what you did with exactly the data that you used. Otherwise there is the likelihood of untraceable errors and miscommunications.
Post.
While I actually agree with the idea of posting data and code as used, I have to point out Steven Mosher is completely and utterly full of it when he says:
Leaving aside the trivial issue of Phil Jones not actually responding to Willis Eschenbach, the excuse given to Eschenbach was never that he could find the specific information he wanted on a specific page, the location of which would be given to him if he didn’t know it. That’s pure fantasy on Mosher’s part.
What Eschenbach wanted was a list of stations used to produce certain work and the data for them. He was told the data for those stations could be found in a larger data set at a particular location. That obviously didn’t answer his request as he had no way to know which stations from the data set had been used. Additionally, it turned out there were problems with where he had been told the data was located. None of this is remotely similar to the current situation.
It’s rather remarkable given Mosher literally wrote a book on (or at least covering) this subject, but he has somehow crafted a strange fantasy and claimed it as history to try to portray some sort of false balance here. I have no explanation for that, but him tarring Tonyb here by associating him with the dishonest actions used to withhold data by the CRU is inappropriate and insulting.
Mosh
Here is the link to their various databases. It is the 1659 Data you want
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/data/download.html
Tonyb
eli rabett (@EthonRaptor) @ Tony B| November 25, 2015 at 12:40 pm
Given that Manley’s CET is non-instrumental and not in England between 1707 and 1722, and between 1723 and the 1760s mostly was taken in unheated rooms and not outside, your faith is touching.
If Eli Rabett did a bit of research of his own he/she would find that the Manley’s CET was mostly correct.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-10Be.gif
Thank you, Tony, for all the work you did to get this information to us.
The climate debate has little to do with climate. It is the re-enactment of a classic battle between the:
1. Rights of humans to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness vs
2. Rights of leaders to control all humanity for their own best interest.
Ancient teachings of various religions suggest #1 the eventual winner.
Tony, WRT CET as a proxy for global. Given that over the past 15years or so CET has declined while global has remained flat one would have to think that CET as a proxy needs to be qualified. For example on shorter timescales (15 years) its possibly not that good.
Here is comparison of Global, N. Hemisphere and CET
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CGNh1.gif
R^2 > 0.7 can be considered as significant.
Human1ty1st
As I remarked in a post above, the decline can be dated more accurately to around 1998 /99 but if you travel back to around 1990 then from that date to now we have a pause, thereby realigning itself wth a possible wider proxy
Tonyb
Mosh
At the end of The article I say this;
‘During the last 15 or so years there has, by some measures, been a ‘pause’ in global warming. Taking a global average temperature may disguise the nuances of the temperature changes locally in individual countries and CET may therefore be representative of a group of countries that have shown a decline that has counter balanced continued warming elsewhere.’
Now, we have had this discussion before! in as much the globe consists of lots of different climates. It appears unlikely that CET is the only one to be declining. I have said before that Richard Muller said to me that around 30% of global stations are cooling. You say that there are numerous caveats within that.
Don’t you think that it would be a very useful addition to our knowledge of the climate if you felt it was useful to utilise your expertise and extensive temperature information in order to identify those stations that are cooling and as an extension to that, which are static and which are warming?
Tonyb
” I have said before that Richard Muller said to me that around 30% of global stations are cooling. You say that there are numerous caveats within that.”
you keep repeating that. its wrong.
Tony I spent many many months on “cooling” stations.
nothing.
nada
zip.
Mosh
So CET is unique? There are no more to be found? Anywhere?
tonyb
Tony,
I suspect Mosher is incorporating the tools of relevant timescale and significance. Clearly there are many stations which will have reported cooling trends over the past 15 years.
If you want an idea about where in the world is cooling/warming over a given period use the GISS mapping tool
You can map trends for monthly, seasonal or annual averages, choose your start and end years, change to 250km smoothing radius and go.
Concern over perceived global warming measured in tenths of a degree over decades is ridiculous when you consider that, even a rapid climate change — i.e., rapid in a geophysical sense, would not be that noticeable on a human timescale. An inexorably slow global warming caused by humanity or for whatever reasons is of no practical concern. Rather, it’s catastrophic conflagration that could be worrisome. And even then, what could humanity realistically do in the event of large and abrupt changes in climate, such as has actually happened before in Earth’s history and for reasons we cannot explain:
I can’t see any reason to doubt the basic pattern of recent variability – relevant grid cells of the global datasets show very similar changes.
Regarding what we expect here due to human influence, this shows the historical+rcp45 CMIP5 mean for England grid cells against hadcet.
For a longer term view this plot shows an England average from two millennial model simulations back to 1500, 10 year running mean.
Oh, hiatus fans should note the 200+ year pause in the 400 year warming.
Good stuff TB. I met with Dr Bountempo at the Met office a couple of years ago too. When I presented him with Met office SST data relating to how the equatorial Atlantic is warming (in line with the GW gradient) but the probable cause is Easterly Wave cloud coverage, he tried to order me not to dig into this problem! CET is obviously much related to ocean heat transport from the equatorial Atlantic via the gulf stream, add easterly wave frequency and its effect upon the Azores high is the 500 lb gorilla which nobody apparently wants to deal with…….. Here is my email address so I can bring you up to date on current events – it would be useful is somebody else did some digging into this particular pond so we could compare notes.
mcmenemieconor (at) Hotmail (dot) com
Hi Conor
I have sent you an email.
tonyb
From a solar perspective, the 20th century was remarkably uninterpreted by solar minima, the previous century had two. The hump though distinctly starts at 1988, at an unusual sunspot cycle maximum, as was SC23 maximum, in that the typical drop in the solar wind speed at sunspot maximum didn’t occur. That’s why there are La Nina through SC22 & SC23 sunspot maxima rather than El Nino, that doesn’t happen so often, especially twice in succession.
http://snag.gy/hSqT4.jpg
http://images.sodahead.com/polls/002395023/3620262673_0101fall_answer_4.png
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/08/10/07/2B3DC90700000578-0-image-a-2_1439189365207.jpg
Well done tonyb. Another excellent essay. I can understand where Mosher is coming from, however, because if anyone is to emulate your work, the data series and code needs to be as you used it so that misunderstandings should not arise. I understand that you have been working with the anomalies and not the actual temperatures themselves so any measurement bias wouldn’t be an issue? As an aside, would it be possible for you to give an account of your research techniques and assumptions that some of our less sciencey readers can follow what you have done to produce your very interesting graphs?
climatereason,
You wrote in one place –
“Will it continue its decline?” This is the takeaway message from most analyses. Will the trend continue? Up or down or no change, makes no difference.
And the truth of the matter seems to be – no one knows. On the one hand, one might assume that the longer a trend has persisted, the longer it will persist into the future. Of course there is no logical or rational reason for this belief. Even floggers of financial “products” are usually forced to admit (albeit in the smallest print possible) that past performance is no guide to future performance.
Another might say that the longer a trend persists, the closer the change of the trend approaches, if the trend has shown changes in the past.
Analyses such as yours help to demonstrate what has happened in the past. If an atmospheric event has occurred in the past, it is irrational to claim that such an event cannot ever occur in the future.
Let us hope the inhabitants of the U.K. are not subjected to the same disastrous weather patterns as have occurred in the past. Hope is all we can do, I believe.
Cheers.
My complements on an excellent post. The Mosher comment exchanges are amusingly enlightening. The delta SST/wind stuff is fascinating, as those factors obviously must affect the British Isles. Unfortunately, probably no long history to evaluate unless the Admiralty has stuff. Wind, maybe, from log books. SST, maybe not.
Its pretty simple rud.
We ( me willis and mcintyre) demanded the code and data from hansen and jones.
Skeptics cheered this.
Now when you ask a skeptic for the same thing,,,, They have a cow.
its funny
Tony? Can you share your code and data… ?
In the nuclear industry, what has been done for projects such as Yucca Mountain is that all versions of the data, all versions of the analytical software, and all versions of the methods and their documentation are placed into a unified archive under the project’s own direct control which allows one to reference which version of the analytical method used which version of the software used which version of the data to derive which particular version of an analytical end product.
This is done for every analysis process which produces analytical material in support a conclusion, even for the most simple and basic of the analytical processes and techniques.
The process tools and the data material used in developing an analytical product must be accessible and reproducible from beginning to end. If all the parts and pieces of the analysis aren’t there in the archive, the analytical end product is automatically rejected on that basis alone, regardless of any other consideration.
There simply isn’t any other way to do it if the goal is to assure ease of access for interested stakeholders; to assure the transparency of methods and techniques; and to assure the overall integrity and credibility of the analytical approach as a whole.
Mosh
Nobody had a ‘cow’. They were just bemused at your question.
I supplied the link to the Met Office 1659 data within a few minutes of being asked, I was just surprised that you did not appear to know where to locate it, bearing in mind how many times we had discussed CET in the past
If you are not as familiar with CET as I had thought you were from your past interventions here, it is my bad.
As for the version, there is only one. My link yesterday led you to the page in which various papers could be downloaded explaining any changes made for a variety of reasons ( which are very limited) and to the specific link whereby the 1659 or 1772 data itself can be accessed.
The series is not updated daily with new information that may change the past. The last change was a very minor one when vukvecic pointed out the method of calculation was technically wrong.
I give below the Met Office reply to me as to why this was done and the impact on previous versions.
“The effect of re-calculating the annual CET values, which would have improved the accuracy by correctly weighting in proportion to the number of days in each month, would be to increase every value slightly – because February, which is one of the coldest months of course, was being given too large a weighting before this revision was made. We also re-calculated the long-term averages, so there was not an unwarranted increase in all the anomaly values. The change in each year’s annual-mean value came out generally between 0.03 and 0.06 degC. So, given that the annual CET values have only altered slightly, and all years have moved in the same direction, the values you downloaded before that change was made will still have an acceptable degree of accuracy, especially with regard to hunting down any temporal trends.”
So any CET version you have downloaded in the past will be essentially the same as todays, any differentiation only being visible through a microscope
However, your apparent assumption that there would be constant changes to CET thereby making it essential you knew the exact ‘version’ I had used, perhaps reveals something rather interesting.
CET is what it is. Because of its special nature it is somewhat fixed. However, it would appear that other temperature databases are much more fluid. CET reveals what is happening in the real world, that UK inhabitants can validate through colder winters or something as mundane as tomatoes not growing as well as they did in the summer. The climate has notably cooled over the last 15 years compared to the previous fifteen years
If other databases are constantly corrected, have they departed from the current real world whilst changing the past record? Have their adjustments made things cooler in the past, relative to today?
Would a graphic of GISS global for 1880 to 2000 graphed in 2001 look exactly the same if the same information had been graphed last week?. In other words, is the target moving? Continuing on from this, can CET really be the only temperature database in the world that has been cooling for 15 years, as you state there are NO cooling stations?
To confuse my bemusement with your comments, with the traits exhibited by Hansen or Jones when asked for data is somewhat amusing. The data is NOT mine. It is the Met offices and is freely and publicly available to download twenty four hours a day from the link I provided very early on, that I had thought you were already aware of.
tonyb
Prior to Hansen and the global warming theory, temperature records were looked at as “records”, like an LP, hard and inflexible.
The warmer viewpoint is like Humpty Dumpty, “temperatures mean what I choose them to mean.” and they treat data like pictures on an SD card that you pull up, photoshop, and write back out again.
The data after adjustments is getting closer and closer to the GCM model output. Since the GCM output is wrong,the adjusters are making the data wronger and wronger. The happy dance they use to justify the adjustments is entertaining but not persuasive.
The claim that skeptics are as bad as warmers about methods and data is just an hysterical claim.
The UEA permanently deleted some temperature data so the only version available was the processed copy, just to avoid giving the original data to the skeptics, they moved other data onto a laptop and scrubbed it from the servers. They lied with conviction and inventiveness in response to FOIAs. Mann has some data requests he has never honored going back to the start of the century. And so on and so on.
PA
I have arbitrarily appointed you as official analogy consultant to CE . You have made some very apt and colourful ones Over the last few weeks.
I like CET because it is a solid LP record. THe others seem to be evolving as we speak and it is difficult to come to grips with a moving target. I don’t believe in deliberate conspiracies at the heart of the various agencies involved, but the over complex methods of processing information seems to make the finished data somewhat remote from the person who recorded that piece of written information on a specific time on a specific day perhaps a hundred years ago.
As for nowhere else in the world cooling as Mosh maintains? Really?
Tonyb
As we celebrate Thanksgiving, please contemplate ways to inform world leaders at the Paris Climate Conference that we the people created governments to secure our rights to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and we do not want to be manipulated or led by fear-mongering leaders that exploit scientific uncertainties to create chronic stress in society.
Please post your insights and suggestions on ResearchGate:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_the_FEAR_the_basis_of_control_of_our_lives_and_our_hopes_by_the_political_and__economic_establishment
Hey guys. I had told Tonyb I’d take a look at this post tonight, but unfortunately I don’t have as much time as I expected. I got completely sidetracked while throwing darts tonight by one of the most remarkable things I’ve ever seen in the game (if you play, you should take a look). I did want to quickly and heartily endorse one part of the post that jumped out at me though:
I do not think CET should be treated as a proxy for global temperatures. I’ve said this several times before. Another thing I’ve said, however, is people place too much emphasis on global temperatures.
The truth is we don’t even have global temperature records as the indices we use aren’t global and don’t actually measure temperature, if you drill down into the technical details. We just handwave any number of issues away with approximations, estimations, suppositions, loose semantics and, well, pure handwaving. On top all the vagaries this introduces, there’s the simple fact averaging out to a global record requires discarding nearly all the information we actually have available.
Which isn’t to dismiss the result. The global temperature indices have value. I just suspect there could be a significant amount of value gained by examining data at finer scales, especially by comparing how different areas change in comparison to one another. I think the value of records like CET is if they can be made well, and representative of the area they’re for, they may allow for regional examinations which could otherwise be impossible.
Brandon
I am not a fan of average global temperatures (although it has its purposes) as an average encompasses so many climate states and interesting nuances.
Temperatures appear to have been rising in fits and starts for hundreds of years which is interesting in itself. Of equal interest is to know what the various constituent parts of that overall rise are doing.
Mosh says above no stations are cooling (except apparently CET?) . If so that is interesting. Unfortunately a regional examination of the data is a big project which is beyond my resources.
Tonyb
I think Mosher is saying there’s nothing meaningful to the cooling stations issue, or something like that, not that there are no cooling stations. It’s hard to tell though. Mosher seems to intentionally make unclear statements so people will have a difficult time understanding him. I’ve sometimes wondered if the reason isn’t because whenever he makes easily understood statements, they tend to be wrong, like as seen above.
In any event, I can definitely confirm there are cooling stations, and as long as you don’t use massive amounts of spatial smearing, to the extent you destroy all regional information, like BEST does, when creating your temperature results, there are also cooling regions.
You have led a very dull life, junior.
Tony Brown, thanks for the analysis. Adding better information definitely won’t hurt the debate. Even if only for the sake of credibility I’d like to hear fewer of my fellow sceptics saying “Oh what BS” and more saying “Perhaps there is some truth in this; should we see exactly how much?” Unless scepticism is an ideology, there should be no party line to follow.
When we look at Figures 1 and 2, our attention is immediately drawn to the recent hump starting around 1980, because it’s recent, the only substantial period above the anomaly line, and the topic of hot debate (pun intended). No matter where you drew the anomaly line, there are a lot more slumps than humps, but the line appears to give credence to the existence of a hockey stick. The 1961-1990 average might not have been the best choice on which to base the anomaly.
Totally agree. There are, after all, 50 shades of grey aren’t there? There needs to be more constructive debate and less tribalism.
I particularly appreciate data presented in seasonal format. An annual average (or anomaly) masks the most important information on actual climate change and its likely impact.
opluso
Yes, an ‘averaged’ year can disguise all sorts of fluctuating temperatures and weather conditions that eventually cancel each other out, thereby disguising what has been going on.
tonyb
OT, but kind of funny in a warped sort of way. From the article:
…
It’s become a media tradition for left-wing blogs to publish “survival guides” for liberal youth fated to attend Thanksgiving dinners populated by crazy right-wing relatives, who have grown increasingly skeptical of the accomplishments of our glorious President Obama.
Things are going to be especially rough this year, what with the collapsing enrollment, soaring premiums, agonizing deductibles, and shaky insurance company finances created by ObamaCare – developments those cranky old wingnuts somehow interpret as indications Obama’s genius health care reform is “failing.”
Then you’ve got all the terrorism filling the streets with blood, which nutty Republican uncles are likely to misrepresent as evidence Obama was talking out of his turkey baster when he described ISIS as a thoroughly “contained” junior-varsity squad. Actually, Obama suddenly stopped talking about ISIS that way, just this week – but hey, nobody’s writing survival guides about how to talk to Barack Obama at Thanksgiving dinner.
What we really need is a handy guide for discussing global warming with your crazy ISIS relatives. President Obama just declared his intention to “rebuke” the Totally Not Islamic State by attending a climate change conference in Paris. Hopefully our intelligence community is searching social media and the Dark Net for indications that ISIS militants and sympathizers feel “rebuked” by this, and will publish their Tweets of shame, as soon as they become available.
…
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/26/talk-global-warming-crazy-isis-relatives-thanksgiving-dinner/
Maybe it’s because I am enjoying Thanksgiving in Palo Alto, but Obama and climate change never came up.
I wasn’t going to bring up the latter and I don’t think any of the relatives were excited about bringing up the former.
Maybe it’s the BA in History, but i have to say I love reading your work Tony.
timg56
Thanks very much! As Judith might say, stay tuned for an insight soon into the truly dreadful climatic extremes of the 13th Century. No really, its much more exciting than it sounds, especially as the climatic effects of the 1258 mega volcano are examined
tonyb
Tonyb, I have a question for you concerning your own software and data archiving practices which is a follow up to a previous Mosher comment:
Where I’m coming from with my question is that in the nuclear industry, an analytical product — and the methods, software, and data used to produce that analytical product — are all considered to be one thing for quality assurance purposes.
They are not separate things for quality assurance purposes. If any of the parts and pieces that went into the development and publication of an analysis product aren’t readily available for examination, the analytical product is automatically rejected on quality assurance grounds.
So my question is this: Do you maintain an independent archive of all versions of the data, all versions of the analytical software, and all versions of the methods and their documentation that you employ in generating your analysis and your conclusions?
For any of your analytical products, could we go to one comprehensive archive and find all the parts and pieces of your analysis in order to ascertain which version of an analytical methodology used which version of software used which version of data to derive any particular version of an analytical product that you have developed and published?
Beta Blocker
I think I gave a comprehensive reply to that up thread
http://judithcurry.com/2015/11/25/the-rise-and-fall-of-central-england-temperature/#comment-746349
CET is what it is. There are no multiple versions. It is graphed generally using Excel, then the results subjected to logical thoughts as to what it means, and what other data may be needed in order to support any conclusions. So there are no corrections, smoothing, homogenisations, algorithms or any other things that need to be explained in a separate version analysis. The Met Office agree with the nature of the decline but caution me that we need to wait fifty years before we can pronounce on any firm trends.
Mosh gave me food for thought, in as much in making his comments he was presumably not aware that CET is in effect, fixed in stone, unlike GISS (and presumably BEST) which evolve constantly. So in order to analyse them you need to know which exact version was accessed and what complex corrections have then been made to it.
You will see me making numerous comments in various blogs that I do not believe that the purveyors of global databases are perpetrating a hoax or fraud (to the irritation of other sceptics) but from Mosh’s comments it is easier to see why the claims of fraud are made, in as much a version of Giss today will yield results substantially different to that of Giss from a decade ago.
This is something I am currently working on that may be worth an article.
tonyb
‘Giss today will yield results substantially different to that
of Giss from a decade ago. ‘
Gives new meaning to the words, ‘ a changing climate.’
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