The global average lower tropospheric temperature anomaly for December, 2011 remained about the same November, +0.13 deg. C (click on the image for the full-size version):
The 3rd order polynomial fit to the data (courtesy of Excel) is for entertainment purposes only, and should not be construed as having any predictive value whatsoever.
Here are the monthly stats for 2010 and 2011:
YR MON GLOBAL NH SH TROPICS
2010 1 +0.542 +0.675 +0.410 +0.635
2010 2 +0.510 +0.553 +0.466 +0.759
2010 3 +0.554 +0.665 +0.443 +0.721
2010 4 +0.400 +0.606 +0.193 +0.633
2010 5 +0.454 +0.642 +0.265 +0.706
2010 6 +0.385 +0.482 +0.287 +0.485
2010 7 +0.419 +0.558 +0.280 +0.370
2010 8 +0.441 +0.579 +0.304 +0.321
2010 9 +0.477 +0.410 +0.545 +0.237
2010 10 +0.306 +0.257 +0.356 +0.106
2010 11 +0.273 +0.372 +0.173 -0.117
2010 12 +0.181 +0.217 +0.145 -0.222
2011 1 -0.010 -0.055 +0.036 -0.372
2011 2 -0.020 -0.042 +0.002 -0.348
2011 3 -0.101 -0.073 -0.128 -0.342
2011 4 +0.117 +0.195 +0.039 -0.229
2011 5 +0.133 +0.145 +0.121 -0.043
2011 6 +0.315 +0.379 +0.250 +0.233
2011 7 +0.374 +0.344 +0.404 +0.204
2011 8 +0.327 +0.321 +0.332 +0.155
2011 9 +0.289 +0.304 +0.274 +0.178
2011 10 +0.116 +0.169 +0.062 -0.054
2011 11 +0.123 +0.075 +0.170 +0.024
2011 12 +0.127 +0.197 +0.057 +0.043
I’m making very good progress on the Version 6 of the global temperature dataset, and it looks like the new diurnal drift correction method is working for AMSU. Next is to apply the new AMSU-based corrections to the older (pre-August 1998) MSU data.
[Reminder: Since AMSR-E failed in early October, there will be no more sea surface temperature updates from that instrument.]
No comments yet? Where is everybody?
When will a station keeping sat replace AMSR-E???
thanks! 2010 was 2.76x warmer than 2011 (when dividing the annual average based on the monthly data). I am not sure if that is correct but kinda tells me that 2010 was an el nino year and 2011 a la nina year? Double check: yep they were…
how well do this monthly temps correlate with the monthly ONI values (especially if one were to caclulate 3-month running averages of the temo data)? I am sure pretty wekl, or?
why are the tropics cooler than the NH and SH? due to the la nina?
it doesn’t appear as if it’s gotten any warmer since 2001. why is that?
There appears to be a step change up after the 1998 el nino; why is that? (heat distribution over the entire globe?)
david says:
“thanks! 2010 was 2.76x warmer than 2011 (when dividing the annual average based on the monthly data). I am not sure if that is correct but kinda tells me that 2010 was an el nino year and 2011 a la nina year?”
Sorry, the normal reply option doesn’t work for me.
I don’t think that you can say that 2010 was 2.75x warmer than 2011, since it depends which temperature scale you use.
You get a different answer if you use Celsius to that if you use Farenheit or Kelvin. I suppose it would be valid if you used Kelvin, since that starts at absolute zero.
All you can really say is that was x.x degrees warmer, using which ever scale you use, which of course would be the same using Celsius or Kelvin.
Ray, I agree; hence why I wrote “if you can say that”; I merely wanted to underscore the fact that global temperatures in 2010 were influenced by the winter of ’09/’10 el nino and 2011 by the winter of ’10/’11 la nina; showing the strong influence of ENSO events on global temperatures.
Dear Roy,
Where is that serious cooling skeptics are propagating all the time? I am waiting for it for almost two years now.
It’s still too warm for the climate circumstances. The sun is ‘colder’. According to Bastardi the PDO has changed to a cooling phase. We are in a La Niña phase.
In fact the globe should be cooling significantly now. Especially in winter on the Northern Hemisphere. The kind we see in 2008.
Well where is it?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dYzXbGnWg8
“While any single month’s drop in global temperatures cannot be blamed on climate change, it is still the kind of behavior we expect to see more often in a cooling world.” Roy Spencer.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/11/uah-global-temperature-update-for-october-2011-0-11-deg-c/
The world is getting warmer due to CO2. So get used to it.
I hate to see what will happen when the sun is going to get more acive in the future and the PDO changes to a warming phase.
Robbie, who claims “serious cooling”?
I would agree there is probably some warming due to excess CO2 but it hard to see an exponential growth, tipping points and climate catastrophe.
One thing is clear, ALL the IPCC bullshit is just that. Even the most extreme “we shut down the world and stop breathing” senarios where supposed to produce more warming that what we have seen over the last ten years.
They got it wrong because they rigged the models to fit preconceived ideas instead of being scientific. We were lied to. Get used to it.
@Robbie –
I sure could use some of that warming this morening. My tea gets cold between the time I steap it and sit down to drink it. Help Robbie, what do you recommend?
CLIMATE
Since solar activity picked up this past Aug. one can see (as I expected) that the extremes in weather ( AO index positive) have lessened, not to mention the geological activity.
Since Aug. of 2011 the solar activity as measured by the solar flux reading’s have been mostly between 120 to 145 which on my scale is in the high moderate range, for solar activity.
I still think this is just a long spat of activity in the otherwise prolong solar minimum we are in, which started in Oct. of year 2005. We will know for sure within the next 6 months or so.
If indeed we return to solar minimum conditions (solar flux reading of sub 90), expect the AO to be become more negative, and geological activity to pick up,along with more weather extremes, as was the case during the first half of year 2011. Further, if spurts of solar activity should arise,once the sun returns to minmimum solar conditions, expect increased geological activity to be associated with those spurts.
REMEMBER THIS —THE ATMOPSHEIRC CIRCULATION AND GEOLOGICAL ACTIVITY ARE QUICK TO RESPOND TO CHANGES IN SOLAR ACTIVITY, ON THE ORDER OF MONTHS, WHEREAS OCEAN HEAT CONTENT AND GLOBAL TEMPERATURE RESPONSE TO SOLAR ACTIVITY IS ON THE ORDER OF YEARS.
I expect solar minimum conditions to return in the near future ,and along with that, more extremes in weather ,along with falling global temperatures and increased geological activity as this decade proceeds. We are in a temporary reprive, I believe for now. Time will tell.
I have respect for anyone who could argue that global warming caused by CO2 isn’t happening, when faced with the actual data.
In 10 years, comment pages like this will be a different place, as global warming will have made the 2010s the warmest decade on record despite a quieter Sun and cold ‘PDO’.
I’m an unbiased person, I’ve looked at all the data. It’s warming and we’re causing it. Stop thinking it’s the Sun, the oceans and look at the radiative forcing equations.
Or just look at the graph. It goes up. And it’s still going up.
Don’t say it stopped in 1998. That was a massive El Nino year. Take out 1998 and it’s still going up.
I await your pathetic responses, unless you agree with me.
You just can’t take out 1998 because it fits or doesn’t fit with your theory. it is what it is and deal with it. then you, otherwise, might also take out the mt Pinatubo cooling
looking at the graph I see a step function change after 1998: prior 1998 only peaks were positive; past 1998 only bottoms are negative. Given the magnitude of the 1998 el nino -as evident in the same graph- it is very hard to dismiss the notion that this event somehow changed, i.e. increased, the “base line”.
Dr. Spencer,
Looking at the temp record, there is a regular oscillation with peaks and troughs every 4 years or so. This doesn’t match any cycle I know of in climate. Too short for solar or oceanic cycles I think, too long for your cloud feedback story. I’ve never seen this cycle discussed, the models don’t include oscillations. Is this known?
Ref. – James says at 10:08 AM:
“In 10 years, comment pages like this will be a different place, as global warming will have made the 2010s the warmest decade on record despite a quieter Sun and cold ‘PDO’… I await your pathetic responses, unless you agree with me.”
I’m an optimist. In 10 years we’ll know a heck of a lot more than we do now, Gore and Mann and Smith and Jones will have been replaced with more educated –less dogmatic and pessimistic– people, the science of climatology will have developed legs (at least 2, maybe not 4 yet), people will be concerned about a lot in life and world events but end of the century doomsday climate change won’t be in the mix, and kids will still believe in Santa Claus. If we’re lucky, the Depression will be over, and we won’t be in another Cold War (this time with the Chinese).
If you can’t, or won’t, do anything about the weather (climate), it sure doesn’t make much sense to think or worry about it, or blame anyone for it, right? But I still think folks will be talking about it over their Mode XCVIII Cell Phones when they have nothing better to talk about.
Dr. Spencer;
As I pointed out last month, UAH temperatures are running warm versus RSS (or RSS is running cold versus UAH). Now that December data is in for RSS and UAH, this is the first year of the satellite record (going back to 1979) that UAH anomaly annual mean is warmer than RSS anomaly annual mean. It’s also the first time for any 12-month running mean, not just Jan-to-Dec. Any comments on the divergence, which appears to have started sometime in the spring of 2011?
On another note, “14,000 ft / 600 mb (AQUA ch05)” data is not being listed at http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/data/amsu_daily_85N85S_ch05.r002.txt I think the programmers may need to add another column for the data. Probably ditto for the other channels.
The difference between me and the climate deniers (um, Mr. Pascvaks?) is they hope I am wrong, and I hope I am wrong.
Yes, it would be nice to be wrong. James Hansen would rather be wrong I’m sure. These aren’t psychopathic idiots who want New York under water, who want to acidify the oceans, who want to melt the Arctic. Nobody wants global warming. It’s happening, though and we’d better get around to being ready for it.
Off topic:
I set up Changedetection.com to see when the latest results were up on the Nasa Giss site. But they seem to be constantly changing old data, even from 1800’s . I don’t get it. see:
http://www.changedetection.com/log/gov/nasa/giss/data/glb2_log.html
Ansgar: Those changes in the 1800s probably come about whenever some recent modification changes the baseline value. GISS’s baseline is fairly recent (1951-1980), so whenever some change occurs in those years the baseline changes, and so all the other values, which are with respect to that baseline, can change as well.
Robbie,
According to HadCRUT3, RSS and NCDC/NOAA, global temperatures have fallen over the last 10 years or longer.
The rate of cooling over a 10 year period, according to HadCRUT3 is the fastest since February 1977, and will probably be the lowest since 1969 within a few months.
O.K. this may not be “serious cooling” in your terms, but I don’t know who predicted that. What was predicted, was warming, which has not so far materialised.
According to the UKMO, about half of the years 2010 to 2015 would be warmer than 1998, but with their prediction of 0.48c for 2012, that will make 3 years which are lower.
The HadCRUT hasn’t warmed as fast as other records since 1998 because it excludes the Arctic, the fastest warming place on the planet.
A persistent negative AO since 2008/9 means whilst the NH landmasses have been regularly cold, the Arctic has been very warm (‘warm Arctic-cold continent’ pattern).
So due to the lack of the Arctic in the HadCRUT, it appears to have slowed down. Such a trend is not seen in the NCDC or GISS temperatures.
And as I have said before, 1998 was an anomalous year. 2010 came close to 1998 on ALL records, despite being a significantly weaker El Nino. If the 1998 El Nino developed this year, 2013 would be, without doubt, the warmest on record.
james, you can’t just cherry pick one (ENSO) event out of many, even if it was “the strongest on record”, since many ENSO events -as you know- happened prior and post the 1998 el nino; and have had there effect on global temperatures.
A simple and easy way to look at this is to calculate running totals of the ONI data, starting 1950 with -1.7. You’ll see that the running total dropped to -67.1 in 1976.5 (with .5 being July, 1976). The ONI running total has since increased and topped at -0.4 on 1998.4 (June, 1998), right after the 1998 el nino. The ONI running total has since fluctuated between -30 (due to the almost 3-yr long la nina following the 1998 el nino) and ~0, and is now decreasing again.
This simple method shows
1) el ninos and la ninas don’t cancel each other out on an event-by-event basis, but follow a multi-decadal phase.
2) The increase in more and intenser el ninos since 1976 until 1998, possibly 2010 coincides with the increase in global temps that have been ubiquitously observed since ~1975.
3) since 2004 the running total has alternated between 0 and -17, which also coincides with the rather stable global temperatures observed since beginning of the new millennium.
4) The increasing running total shows that more and more heat has been released by the oceans than has been adsorbed since 1976 up until about a decade ago.
5) The drop between 1950 and 1975 does coincide with the slight decrease in global temperatures in that time frame, though this is not similar to the increase post 1975. However, ENSO events don’t and can’t explain all global temperature differences as there are many other factors involved.
There are four seasons in some parts of the world, two in others, some have one (and make a distinction between wet and dry). Given what we’re given, we’ll do what we’ll do. I know I can’t save the world so I’m not even interested in thinking about it. I guess I’m bad, unsympathetic, etc., to some. What I worry about more than climate change is people who want to save the world from whatever. They tend to get frustrated and then get mad and start yelling in the middle of the street that the sky is falling, or something.
This crazy country is broke and going out of business because a bunch of people over the years thought we needed to change the system and save mankind. Now a bunch of these same people are demanding that we change pretty much everything we have left and save the world from rising temps and sea levels. Sorry, not me, I’m sick and tired of saving the world. I’m retired.
Roy,
Could you please tell me why my comment of January 5th at 4:10 am is still awaiting moderation?
I do agree that there are perhaps more pressing issues. Stopping global warming really requires total or near total cessation of CO2 emissions, which is, for the next few decades, not a reality.
What I do get riled up about, is the perversion of science and the dissemination of falsehoods. People seem to portray climatologists as demons all gathering to lie to the public.
As a scientist, I want everyone to know the truths that science can bring. I demand accuracy. I have yet to find a skeptic argument about global warming that isn’t wrong.
Even Joe Bastardi, a weather forecaster I admire, makes himself look a fool regularly by spreading myths about climate change.
2011 is the warmest La Nina year on record. Even the UAH dataset says that.
Robbie,
As I pointed out, as well as HadCRUT3, RSS, (which does include the arctic although not the antarctic), and NCDC/NOAA, are also showing negative trends.
Also NASA/GISS is showing very little increase and is declining and may well be negative with in 1 or 2 months.
Ten year trends for GISS over the last 4 years have been:
End 2008 = +0.183c/decade.
End 2009 = +0.112c/decade.
End 2010 = +0.062c/decade.
End 2011 = +0.010c/decade. (end November)
The only series currently showing a significant positive trend over the last 10 years is UAH but even that is declining and is much lower than it was several years ago:
End 2008 = +0.123c/decade.
End 2009 = +0.066c/decade.
End 2010 = +0.088c/decade.
End 2011 = +0.029c/decade.
Ray,
Do you never weary of people telling you that ten year linear regression coefficients are not statistically significant because of the large oscillations due to ENSO? If you include the confidence intervals for these coefficients they will all include 0.0 so they cannot be used to assess whether warming is slowing. This has been rehashed multiple times here. As Roy would say, “they are for entertainment purposes only”
So which is it?
1. You don’t understand why the linear regression coefficients are not statistically significant.
2. You do understand, but use them anyway because out of laziness or deceit.
Just curious,
Tim
James,
“What I do get riled up about, is the perversion of science and the dissemination of falsehoods. People seem to portray climatologists as demons all gathering to lie to the public.”
I agree with you, but in the opposite way to you.
You seem to imply that there has been no “dissemination of falsehoods” amongst the proponents of “climate change”.
Not by the true “climatologists” perhaps, but certainly amongst their supporters and camp-followers.
Ray,
Right now everything should be going down a bit, due to the 2-year La Nina.
However, 2011 remains the warmest La Nina year on record.
Look at the UAH graph. The values in the middle of 2011 were equal to El Nino values, or at least higher than those often seen in 2002-2007.
The warming is still happening, it’s just a noisy signal.
Robbie, You are quoting Dr. Spencer: “While any single month’s drop in global temperatures cannot be blamed . . .” which Dr. Spencer made abundantly clear was a spoof on CAGW statements. He made that it abundantly clear he was having fun in that statement, and you must have gone out of your way to take his statement out of context. If you are that sloppy or that mean-spirited in that quote, that does not bode well for credibility in your other statements.
@ An Inquirer
Let Dr. Spencer be the judge of that and not you about the quotation. He hasn’t responded since. A lot of skeptics are claiming that we would return to the 70s. So climate should cool a little bit faster than the weak cooling we saw so far in the last decade or so.
Besides: If you are so confident about other factors playing a role in the current warm climate you should prove that with research and not providing us some believer’s arguments. And I think you made a mistake: Land has warmed more than the oceans. Not less.
“How long will the trend continue, I do not know. What role has CO2 made in the warming trend, I do not know. But I am confident that other factors have played a strong role. For example, in the last 33 years, land has warmed less than the oceans. A good candidate to explain that divergence is land use changes (including UHI) that would be picked up in land temperatures but not the oceans.”
Statements like “The last decade has been the warmest on record” are so nonsensical that rational discussions on climate trends seem hopeless. To say that “these ten years will be the warmest on record” is like saying that July will be the warmest month this year. Of course the last decade is the warmest on record — that record starts near the emergence from the LIA, and obviously the world has been on a warming trend since then. Glaciers and growing seasons support what our thermometers tell us — the world started a warming trend before CO2 increases were noteworthy.
How long will the trend continue, I do not know. What role has CO2 made in the warming trend, I do not know. But I am confident that other factors have played a strong role. For example, in the last 33 years, land has warmed less than the oceans. A good candidate to explain that divergence is land use changes (including UHI) that would be picked up in land temperatures but not the oceans.
Answer to:
Robbie says:January 4, 2012 at 8:14 AM
Well it’s not getting warmer! And the longer it stay’s like this the more the long trend is comming down towards a flat tendency.
Another reason could be that we have had no major volcano erupting along Equator since Pinatuba 1991.
Soo to judge todays volcano free climate with the 80’s and 90’s volcano affected climate you would have to remove the El Chicon 1882 and Pinatuba 1991 from the 80’s and 90’s.
That would make the 80’s and 90’s warmer and 00’s look colder.
In other words to make a judgment about toodays climate we will have to wait for the next major eruption close to equator.
Tim,
Sorry, I won’t fall for your “have you stopped beating your wife ploy”.
I presented the figures, and it is up to you if you ignore them if you wish. I appreciate that they may be inconvenient to someone who is convinced that the warming is continuing.
It may be the case that according to an arbitrary measure of statistical significance it is not absolutely certain that there is cooling, but on the same basis, it cannot be proven that there is warming either. No short-term change in trends is ever statistically significant, but that does not mean it is not happening. It is a matter of judgement and we shall see who is correct.
Roy, I see my earlier post of 04:10 is still awaiting moderation.
If you could at least tell me why, I could change it to remove whatever is preventing it’s publication.
Is it warming or cooling? What is the Arctic doing? The answer is there.
Ice volume steadily diminishing, methane clathrates starting to outgas, change from last year to this year on an order of magnitude at least.
All indications are for more rapid warming as nature kicks in with it’s share of carbon, and we continue to increase the amount we are putting into the atmosphere.
To the prowarmers: Happy New Year.
The first question I have is: And how warm will it get?
Answer: I don’t really care.
Man, and other plants and animals have survived huge changes in climate and local weather – or not. What I care about is how long the growing season is and whether or not there is enough rain for the farmers.
The second question is: – Can we control the climate and the weather. The answer is a resounding NO. The idea of limiting CO2 so the climate remains the same is the most idealistic and unrealistic thought imaginable.
The third question is: If we had climate science available to us 20,000 years ago, would that climate have been chosen as the best one? What, pray tell, makes the current climate the only choice? Why not a warmer one, where the now frozen farmlands in the north are available for use as is the northwest passage?
What is interesting is learning about how climate works and watching history slowly unfold as we produce measurements and thus records. So far, we have such a minor timescale – less than 100 years – all else by proxy . Man, a blip in the history of the world, has members who believe he can control the climate by his actions.
Let us sacrifice a virgin – maybe that will help, although the world will be less for the loss.
Lewis Guignard
Supporter of global warming because I don’t like cold weather.
Crouse, NC, USA
I really do understand why there is so much confusion over whether the real global warming in the 80’s and 90’s has continued and especially with regards to will it continue in the future.
I also understand why one side takes the “science is settled” and “debate is over” position and calls the other side “deniers.
As humans, after we convince ourselves(or somebody else does) of a position, then our brains interpret information differently than before.
Think of it like religion or politics. You can present great arguments from both sides on an issue and when it reaches the minds of those that already have decided they know, they store the information that supports their preconceived notion in their brain as additional knowledge……and discard the points of the other side as garbage.
In essence, when both sides of an issue are discussed, it often just reinforces the bias that both sides have and creates even more polarization.
As a meteorologist, I’ve spent a great deal of time studying global warming (20 years). My position changed around 10 years ago. I was pretty sure that most of the warming was from man’s burning of fossil fuels(not of all the negatives but of global temps being higher from our influence).
The thing that really first tipped me off that one side was being disingenuous and using brainwashing propaganda to promote a biased unproven theory(which seemed very plausible in my mind 10 years ago) was the intentional and blatant lies about CO2.
Pollution? Anyone that really thinks that CO2 is not increasing world wide plant growth that includes increased crop yields and food production is either:
1. Too biased to see the irrefutable evidence or
2. Too stupid to figure it out.
I earn a living as a commodities trader that specializes in predicting world wide crop yields(and the elements, especially weather that effect them).
If you believe in man made global warming, that’s one thing but if you still think CO2 is pollution or is not causing tremendous benefits to all plants and most animals worldwide(all animals either eat plants and/or other animals that ate plants at some point) then it’s sad for you.
Mike, how do you know it’s increased CO2 that has increased crop production and not better agricultural techniques and technologies? After all, crop production has been increasing since agriculture began about 10 kya.
http://vitalsigns.worldwatch.org/vs-trend/world-grain-production-down-2010-recovering
@Old Rocks, it’s good to see somebody with reason here.
@mike maguire, nobody is denying that CO2 is essential for photosynthesis and that the increasing concentration since the Indust. Rev. is shown to have helped plant life. But it is undeniably a greenhouse gas and is causing warming too. Paleoclimatologists have shown that higher CO2 levels in the past correlate to fertile periods, but also to extremely warm periods. It appears, also, that the current rate of CO2 emission is rather unprecedented, and, as @Old Rocks says, will lead to even more rapid warming.
James
Giss and NCDC don’t have artic measurements either. The only one that does is here. This site.
James
Please show your evidence that CO² is causing warming and I expect empirical as well the physical equivelent equations.
I await your response wit baited breath.
By the way,if you can’t find the suitable evidence then please say so and explain why you ‘believe’ religiously that CO² warms the planet. Don’t forget the equivelent density of H²O and air, step changes in the temperature record etc etc.
Global ice at normal levels, antarctic ice above normal, artic ice recovering near normal.
You need to study soem more. 2007 ice loss was due more to wind than temperature read NOAA site.
Old Rocks says:
January 5, 2012 at 3:49 PM
Is it warming or cooling? What is the Arctic doing? The answer is there.
Ice volume steadily diminishing, methane clathrates starting to outgas, change from last year to this year on an order of magnitude at least.
All indications are for more rapid warming as nature kicks in with it’s share of carbon, and we continue to increase the amount we are putting into the atmosphere.
——————————————————
I’ve got to tell you that that is the biggest pile of merde de taureau I have ever read. What do you mean when nature kicks in, you clown. Of all your so called CO² outgassing the human contribution each year is 3.27% of the total that’s 1.5ppm /an out of 390ppm. The rest is nature kicking in. Go get educated.
Ray
According to Dr Phil Jones of climategate fame “there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995”
Stephen,
This is for you, but more importantly for Ray (by the way Ray, thanks for confirming the answer to my question is 1.)
Here is the quote from Jones:
BBC: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?
Phil Jones: Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods…
If you have the attention span to read the whole response, what he says is that the 14 years of data is too short to rule out no warming with 95% certainty, even though the linear trend was 0.12C at the time. So here we have one of those supposedly dishonest climate scientists showing that at least he is honest when it comes to linear regression. He could have just said, “The trend is +0.12C for 14 years, of course it is warming”. But he didn’t because he (unlike Ray) understands the significance of linear regression coefficients when the time window is not sufficiently long compared to ENSO periods.
I imagine Jones is stilling kicking himself for leaving a quote which has been edited and used over and over in a misleading way.
Ray, this is not a case where each individual is allowed to decide if data is meaningful or not. But each individual can decide to learn some statistics or not.
Tim
do you know on what type of data-set he performed the regression analysis? GISS, HADCRUT etc doesn’t matter; what matters is if it was performed on raw monthly data or on seasonally adjusted data. If the former than the regression-analysis is statistically flawed, as one HAS to adjust for seasonality before doing any type of (linear) statistical analysis. If the later, than the regression analysis is correct. Regression analysis of seasonally adjusted GISS data since summer 2001 until now shows neither warming nor cooling. Regression analysis of seasonally adjusted data since the winter of 1991 shows statistical significant warming. Hence, IMHO all warming in the past 20 years occurred between 1991 and 2001.
Tim says:
“Phil Jones: Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods…
…So here we have one of those supposedly dishonest climate scientists showing that at least he is honest when it comes to linear regression….But he didn’t because he (unlike Ray) understands the significance of linear regression coefficients when the time window is not sufficiently long compared to ENSO periods.”
Em Tim, Jones went back on himself after saying that (I think he included the 2010 data)and decided there was statistically significant warming. He made the pronouncement without producing any calculation, but the UK media lapped it up.
At the time Lucia did an analysis and concluded he couldn’t make the statement using the CRU temp data. There was the suggestion that perhaps he had just made it up! You can see why him and Mike Mann are good buddies!
Cheers,
Paul
The plot on Lucia’s site right now is another good example of why we shouldn’t assign much meaning to the 10 year linear regression coefficient.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/UAHSince2001.png
The 2-sigma confidence on the trend goes from quite negative to quite positive (roughly -0.15 to 0.29 depending on which measure). The 10-year linear regression coefficient of 0.057 is not a statistically significant indicator of positive warming. If your confidence range is 4 times the size of the estimate, you should either view your estimate with extreme caution, or even better, get a new estimator.
What is the fascination with 10 year regression? Why does nobody want to do multiple regression to account for ENSO?
Or use 17 year periods where you have a chance of getting something significant.
Anyway, back to Ray. He is suggesting the short term *change* in linear regression coefficients is relevant. This is even more statistically invalid.
If you want to try an educational exercise, try to figure out when Spring is coming (or Fall down south) by looking at the change in linear regression coefficients ocomputed by fitting sets of 100 consecutive hourly temperature readings.
You just might convince yourself that spring will never come (unless you get wise and control for daily variation of course)
“nobody is denying that CO2 is essential for photosynthesis and that the increasing concentration since the Indust. Rev. is shown to have helped plant life”
James,
I assume that what you really mean is that “you” don’t deny this.
What’s ironic is that the term “denier” was invented to label those who are not convinced that the increase in CO2 is responsible for most of the warming as having their “heads is in the sand”.
The reality, is that most of those who believe the warming did come from increased CO2, also deny the irrefutable evidence of most of the benefits of CO2.
CO2 pollution as the EPA, Al Gore and other warmers refer to it, is anything but pollution.
If that side at least recognized this, then I might believe their intentions were to discover the objective truth using legit science.
When somebody lies to me about something that I know is a lie(benefits of CO2) then it’s very difficult to find that source credible on any issue.
Hi people,
I don’t understand why do you argue about CO2 has/hasn’t effect on global warming, or if warming happens at all or not.
I thought it is pretty much clear that raised CO2 level warms troposphere to some pretty much known degree, and that warming really takes place without much doubt.
But, being that pretty much of true, there is still one big unknown – how much is climate system sensitive to this process. One possibility is that there is high sensitivity in the system with lot of positive feedbacks. If that is true, then climate will be in unstable state and we will see faster and faster warming and scenario like IPCC predicts.
But, on the other hand, if climate system is NOT that much sensitive, that is, if there are more negative than positive feedbacks, then climate will be in stable state, and warming due to raised CO2 levels won’t accelerate at all. It will still warm up, but steady and pretty much slow, like we see it through 2nd half of 20th century up to today.
To generalize, we have 2 possible scenarios – one is catastrophic with exponential like warming trend if climate system is unstable, and one is very slow and steady warming if it is stable.
Of course, that is only an idealized approach to CO2 effects on climate, without being influenced with any other external causes like Sun activity, etc.
That’s my standpoint of global warming problem.
“To generalize, we have 2 possible scenarios – one is catastrophic with exponential like warming trend if climate system is unstable, and one is very slow and steady warming if it is stable”
In other words, the science is settled, we just need to fine tune our “for sure” warming scenario.
What I think is interesting, is that thru the 1970’s almost nobody thought CO2 was causing warming, though it had been increasing for 100 years. In fact, there were some that were worried about globlal cooling.
Then, we had real warming in the 80’s/90’s and all of a sudden almost everybody got convinced it was that CO2 that had been increasing for over 100 years. This included me, as I stored biased and convincing views from what I thought were credible sources as knowledge.
Then, the warming stopped for a number of years, despite convincing arguments and predictions that it would continue.
Ivan,
What would have to happen for you to no longer be positive that CO2 is causing most of the warming?
In retrospect, if we had not seen warming of the 80’s/90’s, it’s very likely, that our views would still be the same as prior to that time frame.
So, the reality is that temps during a 2 decade time frame is what suddenly tipped off the world that CO2 had actually been warming the planet for 100 years and we just never realized it.
The reason it had to be CO2 is because there isn’t anything else that could explain it. CO2 is a greenhouse gas and temperatures are a bit warmer than 100 years ago, that’s the proof.
Well, as a scientist, I would like to see more evidence. This must include a better understanding of the many natural cycles. How one assume it’s CO2 with certainty when we really can’t rule out several other potential explanations?
Assuming it must be CO2 would be like me leaving my car parked on the street overnight, finding it damaged in the morning and assuming it was the neighbor that drives home drunk every night.
We all know that drunk drivers cause car accidents and his car had to pass by mine. I look next door and can see there is damage on his car. That settles it, it was him.
I go with this assumption, even though dozens of other cars drove by and there are no witnesses. I file a police report and now the cops want to file hit and run charges. They just can’t get a hold of the guy.
Finally, a week later they do find him, just returned from a 2 week cruise. His car was damaged weeks before he left and before my car got hit.
Whoops! Sorry about that neighbor. Hope you understand.
As human beings, we naturally make quick assumptions based on what we think we know. This always causes a bias in us that causes us to view new information differently(when I saw the damage on his car-it was him for sure-I hadn’t noticed the damage weeks earlier because I didn’t have the bias of blaming him). This bias, then causes our search for other explanations to stop………because we already know the answer.
You’re certain you know the answer and just need to figure the rate the for sure warming will be in the future.
You might be right. I can’t prove you wrong even though there appears to be a ton of things that are not consistent with CO2 causing most of the warming.
Once somebody has become positive on a position, whether it’s politics, religion or science, it almost impossible to change their view or for their view to include objectivity.
The same folks here and elsewhere, who feel strongly on one side or the other just continue to say the same things.
I consider Roy as pretty objective but maybe it’s my own bias because his views are so close to mine.
Please do know, that in the 1990’s, I thought CO2 caused most of the warming but was able to break free from that subjective assumption.
Mike, it’s just not true that no one had thought about CO2 and warming through the 1970s.
By then many people were thinking about CO2’s potential to cause warming. There was Arrhenius in 1896, of course, and Guy Callendar in the 1930s, and Gilbert Plass who expanded on Callendar’s work in the ‘50s and ‘60s.
The 1965 report to the Johnson Administration has a chapter on CO2’s potential to cause warming. And a 1969 memo from President Nixon’s Democratic adviser, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, wrote about concerns over CO2’s impact.
In 1967 Syukuro Manabe and Richard Wetherald had a model that found a climate sensitivity of 2.3 C. Wallace Broecker’s 1975 article in Science was directly worried about CO2: “Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?”
Wallace S. Broecker, Science Vol. 189 no. 4201 pp. 460-463, August 8, 1975
And it just wasn’t true that there was any consensus on global cooling in the 1970s — see:
“The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus” W. Peterson et al, Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 89, 1325–1337, 2008
(I tried posting links to all these, but the comment wasn’t approved.)
Hi Mike,
To answer this:
“What would have to happen for you to no longer be positive that CO2 is causing most of the warming?”
Well, I don’t know what cause MOST od the measured warming. Like nobody knows for sure, of course. We can just guess for now.
And, to be honest, my personal bias is directed toward opininon that observed global warming is mostly naturally caused. But, I still take that with big reservation. Might be that I’m not right there, and this possibility, that I’m not right in that presumption, is for me, significant.
So, I believe, and trully hope, that climate system will be stable and that natural causes will bi more important to global temperatures than CO2 effects. Just I leave possibility not being right here, at least for next 10-20 years, when we should know much more than today.
Sorry about the excessive length of my previous reply.
Response to the post of Ivan Toman of January 8, 2012 at 4:07 AM.
Ivan Toman in that post writes: “To generalize, we have 2 possible scenarios – one is catastrophic with exponential like warming trend if climate system is unstable, and one is very slow and steady warming if it is stable.”
The IPCC is very clever. It uses the very emotive term “positive feedback” in a special way that is misleading so as to provide emotional support for the idea that we are facing a catastrophe. Many people in the area allow them to get away with this, but we should not be deceived by it.
There are two different concepts of “positive feedback”, and the IPCC cleverly rides on people being confused between the two.
For students of dynamical systems theory, “positive feedback” is not a strict term of art, but is a general loose word vaguely used to indicate that the system locally has a linearized model with a rate matrix with at least one positive eigenvalue. Such a system is as you say unstable in an important sense, and behaves more or less catastrophically with exponential explosiveness, as you indicate.
But for students of electronic circuits and some other engineered systems, the term “positive feedback” is a term of art with a specific meaning. The IPCC people say they are using the term in that way, but they hardly do so. One might say they ride the term. For this usage of the term, “positive feedback” comes in two varieties, one with a positive loopgain of magnitude less than 1, and one with positive loopgain of magnitude greater than 1. The loopgain is clearly defined in electronics, but is not properly defined in IPCC theory, but they don’t care about that. What matters for them is the emotive effect. Their “positive feedback” has, in a sense, a ‘loopgain’ positive but of magnitude less than 1. This means stability, not instability as you have been lured into reading them. For them, instability requires ‘loopgain’ positive and of magnitude more than 1.
This may be more or less understood in terms of the LeChatelier-Braun principle of equilibrium thermodynamics, though the climate system is a non-equilibrium system in the thermodynamic sense.
For many thermodynamic systems, the elementary view of the LeChatelier-Braun principle says that a perturbation will provoke a response that eventually reduces the initial effect of the perturbation, the system settling to a new equiibrium, obviously stable.
But for some thermodynamic systems, that elementary view of the LeChatelier-Braun principle does not apply; for such systems, a perturbation will provoke a response that eventually increases the initial effect of the perturbation, the system settling to a new equilibrium, but does not lead to an explosive catastrophe. In this case the system may still be regarded as stable. This kind of system response is described in only one thermodynamics textbook that I know of. That is Priogine, I. and Defay, R., (1954), “Chemical Thermodynamics”, translated int English by Everett, D.H., from the second French edition of 1950, Longmans Green and Co., London, Chapter XVII, pages 262-269, “Theorems of Moderation”.
world ice level now above normal. temp. for globe running near normal.
Once solar activity becomes low again,and more volcanic activity starts up again, look for more extreme weather and colder temperatures as this decade proceeds.
co2 global warming fraud is a proving to be just what I said, a fraud.
David,
“Regression analysis of seasonally adjusted GISS data since summer 2001 until now shows neither warming nor cooling. Regression analysis of seasonally adjusted data since the winter of 1991 shows statistical significant warming. Hence, IMHO all warming in the past 20 years occurred between 1991 and 2001.”
Does NASA/GISS publish seasonally adjusted data, or did you do the adjustment yourself? Is there evidence that temperature anomalies show a seasonal pattern, since the anomalies are relative to the “normal” temperatures for the months?
Actually, calculating the linear trends over annual figures, which presumably removes any seasonal effects, produces very similar trends to those calculated over (non-seasonally adjusted) monthly anomalies:
HadCRUT3:
1999-2008 = +0.077c/decade
2000-2009 = +0.033c/decade
2001-2010 = -0.028c/decade
2002-2011 = -0.087c/decade (based on MO estimate of 0.36c for 2011).
NASA/GISS:
1999-2008 = +0.204c/decade
2000-2009 = +0.133c/decade
2001-2010 = +0.072c/decade
2002-2011 = +0.008c/decade
UAH:
1999-2008 = +0.120c/decade
2000-2009 = +0.059c/decade
2001-2010 = +0.088c/decade
2002-2011 = +0.027c/decade
The correct statement is actually
“Regression analysis of seasonally adjusted GISS data since summer 2001 until now shows either warming or cooling.”
The confidence interval for the regression statistic is large enough that it includes both positive and negative values. So David’s logic is flawed.
It is like saying, “I know I made $1000 dollars on my investments between 1991 and 2011, and I am not sure if I gained money or lost money between 2001 and 2011, so I must have made all my money between 1991 and 2001”.
BTW, all of Ray’s estimates are not statistically significant, since the confidence interval on each will contain zero. But he has some addiction to 10-year regression coefficients that can’t be cured.
The act of doing linear regression assumes that there is some underlying linear trend plus variations in the data.The problem that any non blind person can see from looking at one of Roy’s plots is that the deviations from any underlying linear trend (assuming it is even linear) are far larger than the change in the linear trend over a 10 year period. In other words, the graph of temperatures doesn’t look anything like a line. If you want to estimate the trend accurately enough to tell if it is positive or negative, you need a longer time period or you need to regress against another variable that accounts for the variation or part of it (in this case ENSO).
Here is another example. Suppose you have a scale in your bathroom, and you weigh yourself every morning. You know you weigh about 90kg, but your scale is only capable of telling you that your weight lies somewhere in some 20kg range (and not necessarily in the middle of the range). If you go on a diet, how will you know if you lost weight?
Ray/Tim, Seasonal adjustment is an analysis technique that estimates and then removes from a series influences that are systematic and calendar related. So a seasonally adjusted series can be formed by removing the estimated systematic calendar related influences from the original series. A trend series is then derived by removing the remaining irregular influences from the seasonally adjusted series.
Given the fact of systematic seasons on our globe, it would therefore be prudent to remove this systematic calendar related influence on global temperatures (unless you disagree that summers are warm and winters are cold). The fact that seasons are opposite on NH and SH is irrelevant as they still are systematic and calendar related influence that should be removed prior to trend analysis. I seasonally adjusted the GISS data myself. Note that GISS is a deviation of the average. Simply add 14.40 deg-C to get the absolute temperatures for each month.
Anyway, using annual averages works of course too, but you loose statistical power since the number of data points is reduced by 75%. Nevertheless, the analysis you provided of the 3 data sets confirms that the rate of warming is decreasing and may be even negative now, though it’s safest to say there’s no trend currently (0).
So I don’t see why my analysis is therefore flawed? Or in other terms, if the rate of increase in seasonally adjusted global temperatures over the last 20yrs (1991-2012; 0.020C/yr) is almost the same as the rate of increase over the first 10yrs of those 20yrs (1991-2001; 0.022C/yr), while the rate of increase is -0.001 over the last 10yrs of those 20yrs (2001-2012), it is obvious that the rate of increase over the entire 20yrs is predominantly due to the rate of increase over the first 10yrs and certainly not due to the last 10yrs.
Also note that this doesn’t predict if any future warming or cooling will occur; it’s just a data analysis of data from the past 20 yrs.
The observation of no significant warming over the last 10yrs doesn’t mean the observer doesn’t “believe” in AGW or that there will be no warming or even cooling over the next 10yrs. It’s just an observation, and time will eventually tell what global temperatures will do.
david: data analysis isn’t complete unless you provide a measure of the certainty of your result.
For example, you show that the linear trend for HadCRUT3 anomalies for 2001-2010 is -0.028c/decade. But that’s only a statistical ESTIMATE of the “true trend,” not the true trend. Therefore you need to estimate the probability that your estimate differs from the actual trend.
There are different ways to do this (as well as different ways to estimate trends), but one common way is outlined in “Statistical Issues Regarding Trends” by Tom M.L. Wigley in the report by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, “Synthesis and Assessment Product 1.1”. (It’s easily found by Google.) See section 5.
When I do this on the HadCRUT3 data I find the linear trend for 2001-2010 to be -0.016 +/- 0.028 C/decade. I’m not sure why we have a difference in the trend estimate, but that’s not important now — what’s important is that this estimate DOES NOT DIFFER FROM ZERO with any degree of statistical significance.
In fact, there’s a not unsubstantial probability that the true trend is positive, since 0 lies only 0.57 standard deviations away from -0.016. That probability is easy to calculate via a Gaussian distribution if you want — eyeballing it I’d say it’s something like 25% or so.
A trend means nothing without a measure of its significance.
Excel lets you do quick calculations, but you have to interpret them for yourself.
david: Another thing you need to ask is if a 10-yr trend is even relevant, climatologically. For example, in August 1989 the UAH global LT linear trend for the previous 10 years was -0.071 +/- 0.054 C/decade. But look what happened after that. It was also -0.071 C/decade in April 1997.
Santer et al. argue that “…17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature.”
Santer, B. D., et al. (2011), “Separating Signal and Noise in Atmospheric Temperature Changes: The Importance of Timescale,” J. Geophys. Res., doi:10.1029/2011JD016263, in press.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/pip/2011JD016263.shtml
David,
Thanks for the reply.
Since the figures in the NASA/GISS data files are anomalies, I had assumed that they were relative to the monthly normals 1951-90, not the annual normal figure.
I think that this means that the seasonal factor has already been taken into account and that no further seasonal adjustment is necessary. I have calculated the average deviations of monthly anomalies from the annual anomalies for 1951-90 and the results are very small, i.e. they are usually less than 0.001c, so I would have thought that any monthly seasonal adjustment would make little difference. Also, the NASA/GISS data file does state that you can only add 14c to the anomalies to find the absolute temp. in the case of annual means.
I think that what Tim is saying is that we cannot be statistically certain whether temperatures have risen or fallen over the 10 year period. Otherwise, it is equally likely that they have fallen or risen. Actually, while I believe that it is slightly more likely that they have fallen, I am quite happy to accept that we cannot be certain one way or another, since it means that those who insist that warming is continuing, cannot be prove that, at least over the last 10 years.
I agree with your last two paragraphs, in that I am not claiming that a zero rise over 10 years means that warming has stopped entirely, only over the 10 year period.
However, due to apparent cyclical patterns in longer term trends (e.g. 50 years), I do believe that as time goes on, the period over which there has been no warming will extend, so that it will eventually become statistically significant.
Ray,
I agree 100%. However, I can’t find anywhere stated explicitly that NASA has seasonally corrected their GISS data (ps: in case of global temperatures, seasonal adjustment is kind of misleading as one instantly thinks of real seasons, i.e. winter, spring, summer, fall, though in the statistical term, it means simply something that is related to a systematic calender). So I think one should assume they didn’t.
I also agree that 10yrs is on a climate-scale too short of a time period. But is 30yrs long enough, 100? I don’t think we can really give a definitive answer to that. I chose this time frame because our calendar is based on years, decades, centuries etc. So from a decades point-of-view the last 10yrs have simply been “record” warm (and with record meaning an “to set down in writing or the like, as for the purpose of preserving evidence.”) but not warming.
Anyway, I have been applying stock market technical analysis -called TI- to the temperature data; which help identifying if a stock price is about to go up or down based on the previous price-action, and these TIs are mostly based on exponential moving averages and therefore objective and unaffected by the underlying data. One of these TIs is the Moving Average Convergence-Divergence (MACD): http://stockcharts.com/school/doku.php?id=chart_school:technical_indicators:moving_average_conve
Both on a seasonal adjusted basis as well as on the raw monthly data basis, the MACD of the GISS is showing a “top is in signal”, where the signal line has been crossed by the MACD line from above. If global temperatures were stock prices, further price-action would need to confirm if this top is followed by decreasing prices (substitute prices with temperature in this case). This indicator doesn’t lie. It’s simple and straight forward.
Time will tell, but at least this TI also shows that global temperatures have not increased and may decrease. ps: the MACD is in this case lacking 9yrs, and crossed in 2010… you do the math…;-)
David Appell,
“I know that your post was in reply to the other David, but I have some questions. I quote from your post:
When I do this on the HadCRUT3 data I find the linear trend for 2001-2010 to be -0.016 +/- 0.028 C/decade. I’m not sure why we have a difference in the trend estimate, but that’s not important now — what’s important is that this estimate DOES NOT DIFFER FROM ZERO with any degree of statistical significance.”
Did you you calculate the linear trend using monthly or annual figures. My own calculations produce trends of -0.030c/decade using monthly figures and -0.028c/decade using annual figures. Even if we accept your figure, that puts the likely range to between -0.044c to +0.012c/decade.
Do you agree that this makes it more likely that the trend is negative than it is positive, or am I wrong?
“In fact, there’s a not unsubstantial probability that the true trend is positive, since 0 lies only 0.57 standard deviations away from -0.016. That probability is easy to calculate via a Gaussian distribution if you want — eyeballing it I’d say it’s something like 25% or so.”
So that means that the probability that trend is negative is 75%, or am I wrong again?
If that is the case, why to you give more emphasis to the probability that the trend is positive to the probability that it is negative?
Ray, I use monthly figures. But HadCRUT’s past numbers change frequently as their station data updates, so it’s hard to know if we’re working off the same dataset or if one of us made an error. My comment was about the principle of uncertainty, not the actual numbers.
> Even if we accept your figure, that puts the
> likely range to between -0.044c to +0.012c/decade.
> Do you agree that this makes it more likely that
> the trend is negative than it is positive, or am I wrong?
What do you mean by “likely?”
I’m not trying to be difficult. I’m trying to (again) explain that one’s answer depends on how one interprets the statistics. There is no “correct” answer. Different fields, and different people within fields, have different answers about what “likely” means. Until you define how you are using the word, and why you choose that definition, your number has little meaning.
> So that means that the probability that trend is
> negative is 75%, or am I wrong again?
> If that is the case, why to you give more emphasis to
> the probability that the trend is positive to
> the probability that it is negative?
I didn’t give more emphasis to anything. I said there was a “not insubstantial” chance that the trend was positive, where “not insubstantial” meant about 25%. No scientist in the world would consider that insignificant.
Would you take a pill if you knew there was (say) a 75% chance it was safe and a 25% chance it was unsafe?
Earlier in this thread, I posted a comment about the latst UKMO decadal forecast, which predicts an increase in the HadCRUT3 anomaly from 0.36c this year, to 0.48c in 2012, to 0.83c by 2016 and 1.06c by 2021.
These anomalies are relative to the 1961-90 average, and are equivalent to about 0.22c, 0.57c and 0.80c respectively over the UAH period of 1981-2010.
Unfortunately, for some reason that comment is still awaiting moderation, so I assume that nobody else can see it. This may be due to the fact that my comment included three direct links to the MO website, although I can’t understand why that would be a problem.
If you wish to see the actual UKMO web pages you can find link to the the latest forecast for 2012 on the UKMO main web page and you can find the latest decadal forecast if you put “decadal forecast” into the UKMO search box.
Following is an analysis of sunspot number sums by solar cycle, dating back to 1750. Since we have recently shown a direct correlation between sunspot numbers and radiated solar energy, it is reasonable to use sunspot numbers as a good proxy for solar energy during years when satellite data is unavailable.
Linear trendline (inappropriate to use for cyclical natural phenomena) calculates to +144 avg increase per cycle, which is normalized to +2.1% avg increase per cycle, over the past 260 years. More importantly, the increases & decreases from 1850 to 2010 can be correlated with long-term (60+ year cycles) in the “global” temperature anomaly.
It is very important to establish an accurate time constant associated with ocean warming, and another one associated with land warming, for a given increase in solar energy. Only then can +80ppm of atmospheric CO2 be shown to have had a non-measurable effect on mean global temperature.
Cycle # SSN Duration Min Max
Sum #Mos. Peak SSN SSN Rise Fall
Start End Mos. Mos.
1 5634 133 107 0 3 72 61
2 6421 108 158 3.3 12.3 40 68
3 7395 110 239 1 10 35 75
4 10102 166 157 10 0 37 129
5 3412 155 62 0 0 76 79
6 2821 143 96 0 0 70 73
7 4736 122 106 0 1 84 38
8 7871 123 206 7 4.2 42 81
9 8271 143 180 5.3 3.1 49 94
10 6563 137 117 0 0 59 78
11 7497 138 176 0.7 0.1 40 98
12 4529 125 96 0 6.7 45 80
13 5634 159 129 0.8 12.4 56 103
14 4441 134 108 0 0 59 75
15 5361 127 155 0 2.8 51 76
16 4924 119 108 0.5 0.6 72 47
17 7208 124 165 0.3 11 56 68
18 9079 122 201 0.3 0.8 38 84
19 11462 123 254 0.2 9.3 41 82
20 8384 137 136 4.7 8.1 55 82
21 10022 124 188 4.3 13.7 44 80
22 9419 124 200 1.1 1.6 51 73
23 8119 154 170 0.9 3.2 46 108
Avg-3s 95 87 5 11 23
Min 2821 108 62 35 38
Avg 6926 133 153 53 80
Max 11462 166 254 84 129
Avg+3s 13758 178 300 95 137
Std Dev 2277 15 49 14 19
Linear Trend (normalized)
+145 +2.1%
Sorry for the formatting issues. I can forward the Excel spreadsheet to anyone who is interested.
@mike maguire
“When somebody lies to me about something that I know is a lie (benefits of CO2) then it’s very difficult to find that source credible on any issue.”
Thanks, Mike — I have been unable to put my finger on why I have such a strong visceral reaction to the folks who are defending AGW pseudo-science. You’ve helped me identify it: so many arguments are simply false. If an expert can overlook something so simple and basic as the benefits of added CO2 to plants and crops, then what else can they overlook?
Unsolicited reply to Ray’s post of January 13, 2012 at 12:19 PM.
The blog doesn’t allow more than two links, for I suppose some security or similar reason. I don’t know its exact rules. Yours with 3 links would I think have been blocked for that reason alone.
Christopher Game,
Thanks for the information, which probably explains the problem. No doubt the rules are probably available somewhere but it does seem a bit arbitrary.
David Appell,
“I didn’t give more emphasis to anything. I said there was a “not insubstantial” chance that the trend was positive, where “not insubstantial” meant about 25%. No scientist in the world would consider that insignificant. ”
If 25% is “not insubstantial”, then what is 75%?
If 25% is not insignificant, then what is 75%?
Is “not insubstantial” the same as “substantial”?
“Would you take a pill if you knew there was (say) a 75% chance it was safe and a 25% chance it was unsafe?”
That rather depends on why I was taking the pill and what the odds were of my dying if I didn’t take the pill.
Ray says:
> If 25% is “not insubstantial”, then what is 75%?
Not substantial.
> If 25% is not insignificant, then what is 75%?
Not significant.
Science isn’t a blackjack game where you bet if your odds are greater than 50%. Climate scientists seem to routinely use 95% as the standard for significance. Other sciences use other numbers, but rarely (if ever) less than 95%. High-energy physicists often use 6-sigma, which is something like 99.999999%. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution#Cumulative_distribution_function)
Look, I know what you’re trying to say–you want to say something like “it’s *probably* getting cooler.” But the data simply doesn’t justify that statement, as a scientific statement subject to the usual rules of scientific evidence.
David Appell,
So 25% is “not insubstantial” and “not insignificant” while 75% is “insubstantial” and “insignificant”?
If that isn’t a demonstration of bias, I don’t know what is.
You clearly can’t bring yourself to admit, to consider the possibility that it may be cooling, even in the short-term, (which doesn’t preclude the likelyhood that it is warming in the long-term).
If the data doesn’t justify that it is “probably” getting cooler, then it certainly doesn’t justify it is “probably” getting warmer. In any case, all I am saying is that it is “possibly” getting cooler over the 10 year period, which you don’t seem able to even contemplate.
To use your own analogy, would you rather take a pill which had a 75% chance of being safe or one which had a 25% chance of being safe?
Ray wrote:
> You clearly can’t bring yourself to admit, to consider
> the possibility that it may be cooling,
Of course there is a possibility that it might be cooling. But it’s not a statistically significant possibility as determined by the usual standards of science.
> If the data doesn’t justify that it is “probably”
> getting cooler, then it certainly doesn’t justify it is
> “probably” getting warmer.
I didn’t say the data justifies that statement either. It doesn’t, in a statistically significant way as determined by the usual standards of science.
> In any case, all I am saying is that it
> is “possibly” getting cooler over the 10 year
> period….
And I repeat: this statement means nothing unless you define the word “possibly.” If you define it to mean a nonzero possibility, then it’s always true and always will be true. It would also always be true that it’s “possibly” warming.
A wider lower solar cycle can have the same influence on climate as a narrow high one. The sunspot time-integral (properly reduced by the energy radiated from the planet) exploits this. Google ‘sunspot “time integral”‘ to find an analysis that calculate average global temperatures since 1895 with 88% accuracy and accurately predicts temperatures since 1990.
I post again the links to the recent UKMO predicted temperatures for 2012 and 2012 to 2021, this time only two links, which hopefully will mean they will pass moderation.
Please note that the 2012 prediction is relative to 1961-90, and the ones for 2012 to 2021 are relative to 1971-2000 (why is anyone’s guess).
Based on the UKMO figures, you have to add 0.12c to the 1971-2000 figures to convert them to 1961-90.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2011/2012-global-temperature-forecast
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/seasonal-to-decadal/long-range/decadal-fc
Note also the confidence ranges on these forecasts. Judging from the performance over the last 10 years, the actual temperatures seem likely to be at the lower end
of the new forecasts.
Ray I looked at the UKMO article in your link.
I smiled when I look at the three data sets used in the article. First, is HadCRUT3 which does not adjust for the urban heat island effect nor for movement of thermometers closer to buildings two decades ago, nor for siting issues that raise temperatures. (And HadCRUT3 original data sets have been lost according to Phil Jones.) Second is NCDC which also does not madke adjustments as noted for HadCRUT3 and puts on a TOBS adjustment which accounts for about all of the increase that the US has experienced. Third is GISS which does adjust for the urban heat island effect but also argues that urban sites should be adjusted upward for other reasons and produces a net positive adjustment for almost half of the urban sites. Also, for areas not covered by a local thermometer, GISS will project the temperature from a warming spot to areas 1200 km away.
I am not disputing that current temperatures are higher than during the LIA, but the severity may be exaggerated!
Interesting about UKMO prediction was they openly stated it’s based mostly on co2 increase. So if the Earth is not warmer by 0,4C within next 5 years they quit their belief in AGW? Just curious…
Dr. Spencer:
I had not had time to check temperatures for a bit.
I just checked the column temperatures and they are all in a short term negative trend.
I can not remember seeing this before. Are all the sensors etc in order?
Bertrand,
I think they use the term “greenhouse gasses”, rather than CO2, although I don’t know if that makes any difference.
The decadal forecast says that temperatures are expected to rise TO between 0.36c and 0.72c v 1971-2000, with the most likely being 0.54c, which according to their figures would be TO between 0.48c and 0.84c v 1961-90, with the most likely being 0.66c, over the period.
Given that the latest MO estimate for 2011 was 0.36c, that implies a rise OF between about 0.12c and 0.48c, with the most likely being 0.3c by 2016.
I think that this means that even if the temperature only rises by 0.12c in 5 years, the MO would claim the forecast was correct, even though such a rise would only make the 2016 anomaly about 0.48c, which is the same as their latest forecast for 2012.
Ch05 is reporting an all-time low since 2002. We’re likely to see a big drop in UAH temps in Jan.
Roy,
In your previous post you agreed that CO2 and other “greenhouse” gasses are likely responsible for the small amount of warming witnessed by your own satellite data. What if any climactic changes do you predict will happen if the same degree of temperature increase recurs in the next thirty years of satellite monitoring?
John,
Why do you think Roy would know the answer to such a question?
Since the planet has warmed about .5C-1C over the last 100 years and the biosphere has apparently thrived, and certainly nothing ‘bad’ has happened, why do you think there would be any bad consequences if there was a little bit more gradual warming added?
Will Nitschke,
You asked:
“why do you think there would be any bad consequences if there was a little bit more gradual warming added?”
You truly get a great deal of exercise leaping to conclusions. I never claimed that their would be any bad consequences if there was a little bit more gradual warming or even significant warming for that matter and I gave know reason to suggest it. Nor do I believe that warming is a “bad” thing in and of itself since their is evidence the planet has been significantly warmer in the past and has had more abundant life on the planet over a greater range. Their is significant evidence that the polar ice caps at a previous time may not even have existed.
You also asked:
“Why do you think Roy would know the answer to such a question?”
I don’t believe Roy “knows” the answer to such a question and never claimed such. I asked for an opinion. No one knows the future. All such inquiry is speculative in nature. He is trained in the sciences and has access to information that may prove informative.
Why do you assume motives behind a question not even directed at you?
John, you’re posting on a publicly viewable forum. If you don’t want others to chip in, perhaps send Dr Spencer an email directly? I would be inclined to suspect that warming by itself is not necessarily a bad thing, but rather the rate of warming. A very gradual warming or cooling would not have the same consequences as a rapid event, historically speaking.
Will,
Thanks for your reply. I don’t mind anyone chipping in, but if you can avoid assumptions you will have my appreciation.
You wrote:
“I would be inclined to suspect that warming by itself is not necessarily a bad thing, but rather the rate of warming. A very gradual warming or cooling would not have the same consequences as a rapid event, historically speaking.”
True, but any change in the rate of warming (accelerated or decelerated) I believe could also pose consequences. Roy’s MSU satellite data goes back to 1979. From 1979 to 1997-8 their is no clear indication of warming at all. After the 1997-8 temperature spike the average temperature increases step-ladder like by approximately half a degree centigrade for more than a decade and we may be seeing the beginning of further increases recently. Temperature data prior to 1979 is in my opinion not of global significance since it primarily consists of isolated surface measurements and upper atmosphere balloon data. While MSU satellite data does not measure temperature directly it may provide useful indirect information. Perhaps Roy has some helpful insights.
If you want to think about what the consequences are of increased global average temperature due to rising CO2, it is important to think beyond temperature and CO2. It is true that plants like more CO2 and humans like warmer temperatures (for the most part anyway). But if you start to think about things like rainfall patterns and sea-level rise, it looks less positive.
If the temperature goes up, sea levels will rise because of thermal expansion and more melting of surface ice. This might not seem like a big deal in Kansas City, but if you live in a country like the Maldives where the HIGHEST point in the country is 2.3 meters above sea level, a few centimeters here and there add up. It was a lot warmer long ago on earth, and when it was the eastern coast of the US reached about to Columbia, SC then (if you don’t know where that is, it is a two hour drive to the beach now). I used to live there and we used to find sharks teeth in our backyard. So if it gets too warm too fast, coastal communities all over the world will be affected.
As for rainfall, we all know how sensitive seasonal rainfall essential to stable farming is to weather and climate events like La Nina. Just ask the folks in Texas how they liked their warm summer last year. Too much rain or too little is disastrous to farmers. If the climate changes, then . . . the climate changes and some places will get wetter and some dryer. If dryer means Iowa, then we have to move all that corn somewhere wetter. More C02 does nothing for corn if there is no rain.
So lets hope it doesn’t get too much warmer too fast.
A worthwhile reality check is to remember that the planet has experienced nearly 1C of warming over the last 100 years already and I don’t believe any negative consequences have been observed. Various positive consequences have been noted, however. That doesn’t mean, of course, that the next 1C will also be fully positive should it happen. But it does imply that the possible consequences of that are not at all clear or obvious as some try to imply.
The question remains: Can we, by our actions or inactions, control the climate? Certainly change will affect some things differently than others, but what if we had the information we have now 20,000 years ago? Would we have tried to stop with a climate which had much of the northern hemisphere covered in ice? What then is so wonderful about the current climate? Why not one where NYC and Miami and others are underwater and Canada and northern Russia are open to agriculture?
Ah, we want to keep it just like it is, because that suits US. Well guys, whether or not you agree with AGW, the climate is going to change, and there’s not a thing you can do about it. So enjoy the ride. Work hard. Procreate.
Quo,
I agree.
Unless there is “something wrong” with the AQUA CH5 figures, and/or there is a BIG upturn in temp. before the end of the month, we appear to be heading for -0.1c to -0.3c!
Ray, Here is my almost-monthly reminder: The “AQUA CH5 figures” are not what the graph says they are. They are not as labeled for 14000 ft / 600 mb level. Rather the AQUA CH5 figures represents the combined numbers for all elevations. Dr. Spencer and his assistants will filter out the data for lower troposphere levels at the end of the month. Therefore, there can be great disparity between the “AQUA CH5 figures” and the monthly reported lower troposphere temperatures. We will see how much in a little over a week.
An Inquirer,
I am aware that there is a disparity between AQUA CH5 and UAH figures, but they are (afaik) the only real time daily figure we have to go on.
In any case, the last time I checked, there was an approximately 80% correlation between AQUA CH5 and UAH.
Why do you wish to deprive us of the harmless fun of attempting to anticipate UAH?
Curious as to know the significant importance, that CO2/the GHE is the one and only mechanism that allows/causes convection, winds, waves, lightning, clouds, storms, etc…which is all kinetic/electric energy, and reflected incoming SW radiation.
It would seem much of not all of CO2’s ‘energy additions’ are going into kinetic form rather than thermal form, the kinetic portion of the energy budget is actually quite large, especially when lightning is taken into account as discharge from such into electrical form.
The ideal gas law has to come into play in a free atmosphere, some just don’t think that maybe the ‘missing heat’ is actually not in thermal form? Kind of gets obvious now when the magnetic solar wind is what would have the most significant ‘hands on’ access to the kinetic portion of the budget in cloud cover modulation, which when changes where and how much SW reaches the surface, is where in turn we have a direct alteration in the thermal portion of the budget, warmer oceans, yet no real hotspot as the entire profile would warm evenly.
As a father, I am distressed to hear about your daughter’s accident. Best wishes and prayers for her speedy recovery and your continued good health.
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