NCDC reports that 2010 US temperatures were cooler than twenty-two other years, including five years prior to 1940.
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The temperatures have obviously been adjusted.
this is where it’s going to kick them in the butt…
It’s going to be really hard to convince anyone in this country to pay up…..
Nah. A few no-knock SWAT raids on innocent retirees w/ little dogs killed usually is all that’s needed. OK, might have to kill a few 65+ old men, and seal the records too. No big deal – we have the technology.
NCDC reports that 2010 was the 23rd hottest year on record (1895-2010) … with 22 other years HOTTER!!!! Sorry James Hansen of Nasa… who claims 2010 was the hottest… Then there is the fact that the data show that 9,100 of the last 10,500 years were hotter than any in the last 100 years by many degrees… heck… having lived in Edmonton for 9 years of brutally cold weather in the 1970’s ranging from -46c to +33c (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=edmonton+weather+1970-1979), a range of 79c!, I prefer the heat as most life does.
This is a result for North America. Globally, 2010 was tied with the hottest year.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20110112_globalstats.html
Not according to HadCRUT or RSS.
You should know better seeing as you’re employed at NCARs Daniel.
I am just curious. Do you actually believe that the few instruments available to measure temps most which have been altered over time by method, environment, and spatially consist of an adequate sample to measure the temperature trends of the entire planet ?
They are not a random sample. Their daily & annual variance is huge. The error bars are quite significant. The data has been subjected to unknown and massive and apparently goal-directed manipulation in many cases. Global coverage is extremely spotty with the most variable environments the most poorly sampled.
I would say any conclusions from such a sampling scheme are extremely suspect, especially down to the kind of resolution claimed [tenths or hundreths of a degree].
What was yesterday’s average global temperature? Is that a reasonable question or as absurd as all the rest ?
Any single measurement scheme for deriving global temperature has limitations and should be examined in concert with others. You mention all sorts of concerns about ground stations but don’t quantify any of them. Heat islands, for instance, is a real problem but if you examine the journal articles on it, you can see that the effect is small.
Of course any single day’s (or even year’s) global temperature average is irrelevant in the context of the 150 year concern of AGW. And using the yearly average of North America to find the global temperature is fundamentally wrong.
You are correct that we shouldn’t rely on one scheme. GISS and NOAA both use GHCN.
Thanks for taking the time to respond, Daniel. I really did not expect it, since most other forums like Realclimate simply delete such posts. There is no need to respond any more since I have simply made up my mind on the basis of my own experience in stats, sampling, and field research getting my PhD. In short, I would have been kicked out of Uni if I had pulled the crap that most of the climate scientists have in the past 20 years.
Crap experimental design, crap data collection, crap analysis – just crap as far as the eye can see. I would be ashamed of such ‘hockeystick’ publications, the conclusions drawn from such research, and the corruption of the scientific process foisted on the public in the name of AGW propaganda.
“has limitations and should be examined in concert with others”
a fine sentiment! but why has there never been any consistent and real attempt to indicate the limitations, reliability and variance of the various methodologies to those who scientists target with their absurd claims about such data?
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“all sorts of concerns about ground stations but don’t quantify any of them”
Likely because they are impossible to quantify. How does one quantify missing data, changes in instrument type without calibration, changes in data collection methodology, mysterious undocumented ‘adjustments’, cherry picking by station selection, UHI effects over time, etc., etc., However, others have attempted such quantification and project such results as well over 70% of temp station data in the US alone is unreliable and contaminated with serious error (surfacestation.org) Since UHI effects have not been seriously quantified, and claims of a mere .6 – .8 degree C increase in global temps over a century, I really doubt that ANY unreliability in such data is ‘small’. How would we know how large or small it is? Sorry – just crap data that I would be too ashamed to use.
————————————————
Yes, it is all absurd. Yes even getting a north american average is absurd. Yes, judging the globe on the basis of NA data alone is also fundamentally wrong. The whole concept is fundamentally wrong simply because you are attempting to measure without any cogent measurement schema.
As you say, you have made up your mind. But just in case, you might want to look at what scholar.google.com gives you when you plug in “urban heat island” and global temperature. One such study that shows how small this effect is in China is
http://www.springerlink.com/content/9knq066ce8b6knbf/
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/261st-hottest-year-ever/
And why are you pointing out this regional result?
Where do you think it was hot?
GISS highest anomaly in 2010 was March. The “heat” was over Greenland where temperatures were -20 instead of the usual -25. http://www.remss.com/data/msu/graphics/tlt/medium/global/ch_tlt_2010_03_anom_v03_2.png
Sorry Daniel, but why would I rely on suspect data and studies from China when I have NASA studies where I can poke at the on-line data to at least partially validate the data ? Some of it actually reports raw only partial adjusted absurdly suspect data with all the usual measurement problems LOL.
7 to 9 degrees C is hardly a minor effect !
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/heat-island-sprawl.html
“Summer land surface temperature of cities in the Northeast were an average of 7 °C to 9 °C (13°F to 16 °F) warmer than surrounding rural areas over a three year period, the new research shows. The complex phenomenon that drives up temperatures is called the urban heat island effect. “
Daniel, it really is very simple. If climate scientists wish their data to be taken seriously, they MUST properly design and deploy statistically valid sampling with observational systems for suitably long periods and proper calibration configured to result in GOOD quality climactic data.
Garbage IN Garbage OUT.
What is the big rush ? you don’t actually believe in some sort of absurd immanent catastrophic tipping point do you?
But there is another study from NASA which concludes –
“Rapid urbanization in southeastern China in the past 25 years is responsible for an estimated warming rate much larger than previous estimates for other periods and locations, according to a new study funded by NASA.”
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/climate-04zs.html
And Phil Jones finally admits that the UHI effect is alive and well in China.
“Now Jones et al 2008 are saying in their Abstract, “Urban-related warming over China is shown to be about 0.1 degree per decade, hey that equates to a degree per century. Huge.”
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=204
It really should not upto us sceptics to track down evidence like this. The climate scientists should be bringing facts like this forward if they had any objectivity at all.
The abstract referred to identifies .1 degree per decade associated with UHI and climate warming of .81 degree per decade. I don’t think this result shows what you think it does.
http://climateaudit.org/2010/11/04/phil-jones-and-the-china-network-part-2/
The nasa reference reports some higher (and some lower) summer average temperatures in urban areas. It doesn’t address errors in global annual temperature measurements which are indeed small. It is very simple, really. People exchange their opinions on various blogs exchanging many assertions. Meanwhile, real work is done in peer reviewed journals.
As to tipping points, it is hard to quantify what we don’t know. If we just look at the expected warming of a degree or two over the next few decades alone, we should be just fine. If we look at the expected secondary effects associated with this rise (more intense storms, higher sea level, decreased glaciers and drought) there is plenty to be concerned about. For those who are unconvinced by current evidence, these secondary effects are at some level expected, though rarer, events in any case. If I were czar, I’d immediately build some huge desalinization plants on both coasts (either solar and or nuclear) with cogenerated electricity. I’d make sure this water is available to irrigate the central valley of California. The expected drought in the central states will be hard to deal with in any case.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/2010-was-2nd-coldest-year-of-the-last-decade/
I know, Australia, Europe and North America don’t count.
Daniel:
You refer to a garbage report about UHI in China that was based on guesses with little reliable data to support the conclusions. You rely on research that has been “Peer reviewed” and then been shown to be less than junk.But hey it fit the agenda.
On the other side it is just as likely the global temperature has fallen since 1934 and the sea levels are falling. The extreme storms we are experiencing are the result of global cooling as they wee in the past.
As an American tax payer I am tired of paying for all the Bull Shit you and yours are spreading!
Maybe it is time to STFU because the debate is over because you and yours never brought any quality information to the debate. Just running around crying the sky is falling is not a valid position. You can also take your consensus and cram it! The peer reviewed papers are even to corrupted to uses to wipe.
“If I were czar, I’d immediately build some huge desalinization plants on both coasts (either solar and or nuclear) with cogenerated electricity. ”
Australia took this advice and look where it got them.
Don’t get me wrong, Daniel. We should always be planning to cope with all and any variation in climate as long as it is cost effective. After all climate changes all the time.
I just don’t think we should put all our eggs in one basket based on very poorly understood science especially when the cost is so prohibitive.
I was unaware that Australia was trying to mitigate drought conditions in the US. Cost effective is indeed the key. Any action that beggars large portions of the economy is clearly unhelpful.
Steven:
I tend to get a bit ticked off by people who claim the science is settled!
I would like to thank Daniel for dropping into the lion’s den.
I do have to say though that his argument seems to be :-
1) Accept what our temperature record says. It must be right because we say it is.
2) If temperatures keep rising there might be secondary effects, but we can’t really tell you much about them.
I am afraid, Daniel, that an increasing number of people these days will want a lot more convincing argument before they see their standard of living and the country’s economy as a whole put at risk.
Paul
I’d modify your list a bit to read
1. Accept what the journal articles say about climate change or have something other than opinion pieces to rely on. This is extraordinarily difficult science that spans many disciplines. With a lot of graduate work in fluid dynamics, radiative transfer and atmospheric physics it can still be difficult to critically read much less critique scientific journal articles.
2. There is a natural hierarchy of uncertainty associated with different elements of this field. The most fundamental result of global temperature rise (rise at the surface, decrease at height in the atmosphere) is followed by expected increased extreme weather events, droughts and glacier retreat.
Anything that affects standard of living and the national economy is a fundamentally different proposition. Forward thinkers like Amory Lovins have practical ideas to make money while being kinder to the environment.
Daniel,
Try running RRTM (the radiative transfer model used by NCAR) for a tropical atmosphere. Then remove all the CO2 and run it again. You might be surprised how little effect CO2 has.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2010/09/05/quantifying-the-greenhouse-effect-in-the-tropics/
“This is extraordinarily difficult science that spans many disciplines.”
_______________________________________________
Word.
Which is exactly why it is nonsensical – not to say unspeakably arrogant – for AGW proponents to claim that the “science is settled.”
The radiative transfer code you refer to is a linear product. We already know that water vapor is more important for the same concentration than CO2 and we also know that the tropics tends to be wet. What do you think this exercise really shows? Are you generalizing to the entire globe without applying a coupled global model?
Water vapor has been in the atmosphere for billions of years. It isn’t the issue. The issue is what happens when a lot of CO2 is injected. A simple minded explanation is that more CO2 leads to more heat which leads to more evaporation which leads to more clouds which leads to cooling. So at first order, one might expect the temperature to not change much, but the velocity of water in the hydrosphere to increase. And this is precisely the concern – stronger storms, bigger swings from normal.
How do you explain the 1930s? Huge swings in temperatures, drought, massive floods in China, and the strongest hurricane in US history?
“kinder to the environment”
I will assume you were speaking metaphorically. The earth is inanimate and has no human attributes. “The universe is indifferent to our concerns”
Variance and extreme events are expected anyway, so citing a given year or even a decade isn’t proof of any long term trend. Hurricanes are particularly problematic since they depend on both high water temperature and just the right vorticity to form. Also, the press tends not to report hurricanes that don’t make landfall. This last season was expected to be very active and it was, but thankfully there was no major landfall events.
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/landsea-eos-may012007.pdf
sorry – many experts in the field have concluded in peer reviewed publications that there is no observed relation between purported warming and either frequency or storm intensity. end of that baseless narrative.
As I said, hurricanes are tertiary events at best. In addition, they are few in number with no integrative effect of time – that is, each year is independent of others. Glacier retreat is, on the other hand, an integrative effect that can be seen over many years.
As to variance, I don’t think we are in a position to conclude anything about trends yet. The reference you quote seems to be looking at something like climate variance or changes in averages over longer time and larger spatial scales than I was contemplating. An interesting question.
As to “kinder to the environment”, that might be a bit too vague and anthropomorphic. Read it as having less of an effect on the environment (more renewables, less emissions).
Yes, glacial retreat has been going on for 15,000 years. Check out more recent retreat in Alaska. Is CO2 the culprit?
http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2001/07/glacierbaymap.gif
Yes.
So, like, you totally reject natural climactic oscillation as the cause of glacial advance and retreat ? repeated ice ages and retreats were all a function of human and otherwise produced CO2?
Of course there are natural oscillations at much longer frequencies. The last 150 years is a different matter.
“Variance and extreme events are expected anyway..”
I’m glad you cleared that up. Perhaps you’d like to tell all the alarmists that are spouting that extreme events equals AGW.
Seriously, why ?
The variation is clearly well within previous natural range.
We find Viking graves and farms when the Greenland ice sheet retreats and 3000+ year old bronze age mummies when Glaciers in the Alps retreat. So we know that such advances and retreat have occurred in both the near past and medium past as well as more remote times as indicated by ice cores.
The fact is that nothing that HAS happened is new or unusual. Only the wildly exaggerated fantasies/wetdreams of AGWarmists are out the boundaries of the natural background.
The last time CO2 levels were as high as they are now humans weren’t on the earth. Depending on your point of view, this is unusual.
Well, that is debatable certainly, depending on your proxy and how reliable you think it is. Stomata proxies say current CO2 levels are as high as now.
However, I will grant you that they are increasing. That’s about the size of it. The size of the universe is increasing too. So, your point is ?
And don’t tell me that we KNOW that an increase from 300 to 390 ppm has had any known effect because we know that is not provable in this universe. It is simply an assertion without any experimental proof, since we do not have a spare solar system to play with, even if we ants could play with it.
mistype – recent past co2 levels were as hi as now
Do you have a peer reviewed reference for the stomata-derived CO2 levels?
Your assertion of lack of proof since we only have one solar system denies any knowledge in advance. You really think we need a perfectly duplicated solar system to examine this subject?
10) Atmospheric CO2 fluctuations during the last millennium reconstructed by stomatal frequency analysis of Tsuga heterophylla needles; Lenny Kouwenberg, Rike Wagner, Wolfram Kurschner, Henk Visscher; Geology, January 2005.
11) The Preboreal climate reversal and a subsequent solar-force climate shift; J. van der Plicht, B. van Geel, S.J.P. Bohnche, J.A.A. Box, M. Blaauw, A.O.M. Speranza, R. Muscheler, and S. Bjorck; Journal of Quaternary Science (2004) 19(3), pp. 263-269.
12) Rapid atmospheric CO2 changes associated with the 8,200-years-B.P. cooling event; Friederike Wagner, Bent Aaby, and Henk Visscher; PNAS, September 17, 2002; vol. 99, no.19, pp. 12011-12014.
13) Reproducibility of Holocene atmosphere CO2 records based on stomatal frequency; Friederike Wagner, Lenny L.R. Kouwenberg, Thomas B. van Hoof, Henk Visscher; Quaternary Science Reviews 23 (2004), pp.1947-1954.
14) Stomatal evidence for a decline in atmospheric CO2 concentrtion during the Younger Dryas stadial: a comparison with Antarctic ice core records; J.C. McElwain, F.E. Mayle, and D.J. Beerling; Journal of Quaternary Science (2002), 17(1), pp. 21-29.
15) Early Holocene Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations; Technical Comments; Science, vol. 286, December 3, 1999
16) Stomatal-based inference models for reconstruction of atmospheric CO2 concentration: a method assessment using a calibration and validation approach; W. Finsinger and F. Wagner-Cremer; The Holocene, 19,5 (2009), pp. 757-764.
17) Last interglacial atmospheric CO2 changes from stomatal index data and their relation to climatic variations; Mats Rundgren, Svante Bjorck, Dan Hammarlund; Global and Planetary Change 49 (2005), pp. 47-62.
18) Stomatal frequency adjustment of four conifer species to historical changes to atmospheric CO2; Lenny L. R. Kouwenberg, Jennifer C. McElwain, Wolfram M. Kürschner, Friederike Wagner, David J. Beerling, Francis E. Mayle and Henk Visscher; American Journal of Botany. 2003; 90: pp.610-619.
19) CO2 radiative forcing during the HoloceneThermal Maximum revealed by stomatal frequency of Iberian oak leaves; I. Garc´ýa-Amorena, F. Wagner-Cremer, F. Gomez Manzaneque, T. B. van Hoof, S. Garc´ýa A´ lvarez, and H. Visscher; Biogeosciences Discuss., 5, 3945–3964, 2008.
20) Abrupt climatic changes and an unstable transition into a late Holocene Thermal Decline: a multiproxy lacustrine record from southern Sweden; Catherine A. Jessen, Mats Rundgren, Svane Bjorck, and Dan Hammarlund; Journal of Quaternary Science (2005), 20(4), pp. 349-362.
“You really think we need a perfectly duplicated solar system to examine this subject?”
If you wish to get definitive experimental proof of the effect of CO2 concentrations on climate, YES.
Anything less is observational science — a poor second best at most considering the complexity and our lack of understanding of the underlying physics of climate and global heat engines on planetary bodies with oceans.
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