Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

A Spot Check of Global Warming
NY Times ^ | January 10, 2008 | John Tierney

Posted on 01/10/2008 10:33:38 PM PST by neverdem


How do predictions by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change jibe with reality? The solid brown line shows the warming projected by the IPCC, with a range of uncertainty bounded by the dotted brown lines. The other lines show the actual temperatures recorded during the past seven years by different methods on the ground and by satellite. (The lines...)

Last week I asked if there were any good weather omens to look for. I raised a question originally posed by Roger A. Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado: Are there any indicators in the next 1, 5 or 10 years that would be inconsistent with the consensus view on climate change? Lab readers contributed some ideas (and much invective), but I think the most useful one came from a climate scientist who wrote directly to Dr. Pielke and suggested comparing what has happened since 2000 with the predictions made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Dr. Pielke took up the suggestion and looked at the increase in global average temperature projected by the IPCC from 2000 to 2007. (The IPCC projected various scenarios, depending on the rate of greenhouse emissions; Dr. Pielke chose the scenario that most closely matches the actual emissions since 2000.) The hard part was figuring out what has actually happened the past seven years, because it all depends on who’s doing the measuring, and whether it’s being done on the surface or by satellite. As you can see from the blue line in the graph above, the recent surface measurements by NASA (the blue line) are warmer than those by the United Kingdom Met Office (the green line), and there are different satellite measurements from Remote Sensing Systems and the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

(Excerpt) Read more at tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: climatechange; globalwarming
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-45 last
To: JustDoItAlways
The whole discussion is MOOT because we cannot trust the temperature measurements going back 100 years.

That's not true. Temperature measurements going back to the beginning of the instrumental record just have larger error bars (see below). Larger error bars on measurements is not equivalent to "the data cannot be trusted". Good solid skeptical scientists trying to examine the Sun's contribution to global warming accept the basic instrumental record. So does Richard Lindzen, to drop a name.

As an aside, in many, many postings (including a recent reply to you, I think) I've pointed out that El Nino years are warm years (notably 1998, which is the foundation of much of the recent argument about global warming having "stopped" over the past 8 years).

Well, I took a closer look at this whole graph above when I put it in this reply, and I said to myself, "What the heck happened in 1878?" (Also note that Krakatoa erupted in 1883 during a cooling trend, so a Krakatoa effect is not readily apparent.)

Took a bit of playing around with Google search terms, but I answered my question:

A Possible Connection between the 1878 Yellow Fever Epidemic in the Southern United States and the 1877-78 El Niño Episode

Quoting from the abstract: "The authors suggest that as a consequence of one of the strongest El Niño episodes on record—that which occurred in 1877-78—exceptional climate anomalies occurred in the United States (as well as in many other parts of the world), which may have been partly responsible for the widespread nature and severity of the 1878 yellow fever outbreak.

It sure is nice when a plan works out like that. I have never before noticed or searched on the 1877-1878 El Nino. But in case anyone wonders why I confidently predict that the next year in which a strong El Nino occurs will set a global temperature record, you only have to look at the graphs.

The only data which can be trusted is the lower atmosphere temperature figures from the satellites since 1979 shown here.

That particular data set shows a 0.17 C per decade warming trend currently.

Description of MSU and AMSU Data Products

41 posted on 01/14/2008 1:44:11 PM PST by cogitator
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 38 | View Replies]

To: cogitator
What I was talking about cogitator is how GISS and NCDC takes the old raw temperature records and adjusts them. More than half of the trend upward is just adjustments and throwing out old records.

As shown here. (And each one of these adjustments adds on top of each other.)

And then adjusted again by GISS and Hansen as shown here. Further Playing Around with the Raw Data

42 posted on 01/14/2008 4:10:11 PM PST by JustDoItAlways
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 41 | View Replies]

To: JustDoItAlways
What I was talking about cogitator is how GISS and NCDC takes the old raw temperature records and adjusts them. More than half of the trend upward is just adjustments and throwing out old records.

Are you implying with the above statement that the raw data shouldn't be adjusted at all? No QA/QC process to find bad data and remove it from the record? No corrections for known biasing factors?

43 posted on 01/15/2008 8:02:10 AM PST by cogitator
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 42 | View Replies]

To: cogitator

We need a new temperature measurement agency that is objective and will not adjust old records just to justify their own belief in global warming and verify their prior climate model predictions.

I’m saying that GISS and Hansen and Hadley cannot be trusted to make whatever adjustments might be needed.

Everytime you look in detail into what they have done, first you cannot find out what they have done and secondly there is not back-up to what they done and there is not logic to what they have done.

The Urban Heat Island effect, for example, is estimated to be 0.05C for a large metropolitan centre when all the studies show as much 3.0C.

To prove this point, the temperature measurements from the satellites do not agree at all with GISS’s numbers.


44 posted on 01/15/2008 5:36:53 PM PST by JustDoItAlways
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 43 | View Replies]

To: JustDoItAlways
I’m saying that GISS and Hansen and Hadley cannot be trusted to make whatever adjustments might be needed.

What about NOAA/NCDC? They are independent of the groups above. If you want, I can find the paper that describes the NCDC QA/QC on their data (there are actually several, but one in particular is good and easy to find).

The Urban Heat Island effect, for example, is estimated to be 0.05C for a large metropolitan centre when all the studies show as much 3.0C.

That may be, but I can provide a paper that shows that when you look at rural and urban temperature trends, they are about the same -- and the rural is actually a little bit stronger. Do you want the reference?

To prove this point, the temperature measurements from the satellites do not agree at all with GISS’s numbers.

What reference is this? And just to make sure you know, GISS is surface temperatures, satellites measure lower troposphere temperatures. Are you talking about the supposed observation/model mismatch?

45 posted on 01/16/2008 6:33:21 AM PST by cogitator
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 44 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-45 last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson