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Comments 112751 to 112800:

  1. The Skeptical Chymist at 11:28 AM on 14 August 2010
    On Statistical Significance and Confidence
    Barry @46 Don't stop asking questions, even if you think they are naive, that's how we learn. Looking at your question, if you are saying the graph suggests the rate of warming in each decade is increasing I think you are over-interpreting the results. But I do think the results suggest that the climate has continued to warm each decade for the last 30 years. There were several decades last century when (due to aerosol buildup) the climate didn't warm. Therefore, adding recent decades where warming occurred will increase the proportion of decades showing warming and increase the century trend. I think this result would occur even if the most recent decade had warmed at the same or a slower rate as past decades. At the same time, the fact that the trend keeps increasing when you add in the most recent decade does show that warming continues.
  2. Has Global Warming Stopped?
    Any thought that warming 'stopped' should be quashed by the July RSS temperatures. This graph shows global (-70 thru 82.5 lat) temperature anomalies. I've calculated an average for Jan-Feb-Mar and one for Jun-July-Aug, setting the times for each average accordingly. The dreaded straight line trend is the same for both, representing 0.17 degC/decade. I like the seasonal averages: nobody remembers what the average temperature was for a given year, but we sure do take note of the extreme summers and winters. Despite the three cold winters ('85,'89,'93) and corresponding mild summers (one cooled by Mt. Pinatubo), its inconceivable that anyone looking at this graph could not see the upward trend. Yeah, its a short time frame (although 30 years is, by most accounts, a generation). So the predictable next step is to condemn all satellite data, as discussed in #67-68 above.
  3. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Even though Mars’ atmosphere is 97% CO2, there is no runaway greenhouse effect on that cold planet. But there should be if the proposition of high levels of CO2 can cause a runaway greenhouse effect. It doesn’t so how could Earth’s 0.038% CO2 cause such an effect?
    Moderator Response: Miekol please note the link above directing you to a suitable thread for discussing the potential effects of C02 on atmospheric temperature. Better yet, here it is: How do we know more CO2 is causing warming? Thanks!
  4. On Statistical Significance and Confidence
    Dikran #57 is correct - there are procedures to correct the number of degrees of freedom (and thus cause a corresponding loss of power) when you think there's something up with the normality of a distribution. This can cause less power loss than the use of a non-parametric statistic, so can be desirable. There are also statistical tests available which can tell you if a non-normality correction is justifiable. In the case of the two charts that BP has posted in this thread, I can pretty much guarantee by eye (from a decade or so of experience) that you'd just be losing power for the sake of it if you insisted on correcting their linear model statistics for non-normality. Generally the linear model stats are pretty robust to moderate deviations from normality, so no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater, unless the p value based diagnostics tell you otherwise.
  5. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Actually Miekol there are not two sides to every debate, in fact some things are effectively beyond debate and to take some positions may be something adults do but will yield no improvement in understanding. Regarding the effect of C02 as a trace gas, here's where to go with that: How do we know more CO2 is causing warming?
  6. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    What's kinda funny is that the denialists who are citing the UHI effect don't seem to know what it is. Hint: it isn't the fact that the middle of a big city is warmer than the nearby rural areas. That's a pretty well-established, well-understood phenomenon that no scientist disputes. RSVP: Thermal inertia can be viewed as the rate of change in the temperature of a system as a function of the rate of heat input. Compare the heat capacity of the planet's oceans to the current planetary energy imbalance. One is a big number, the other is quite a bit smaller. fydijkstra: 12 months isn't irrelevant for a running average, it's the length of time that will average out the seasonal variations. 11 years is useful, too, as it will tend to average out the solar cycle. Somewhere in the 5 to 7 year range is useful, too, since it will average out the ENSO cycle. Also, since we're talking about GISS measurements, 2005 was the warmest year, not 1998. 2009 and 2007 were both slightly warmer than 1998 and 2002, but the four years are probably statistically tied for second-warmest. You must think it a remarkable coincidence that all five of those years came in the last 11 of a 130 year history, and that the 9 warmest years on record came within the last 11 years.
  7. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Its called being adult and having an adult conversation David. And doug, I've not said "I disagree." There's two sides to every debate. I enjoy trying to understand the world around me. I find it difficult to accept that its man made CO2 that is the cause of climate change. Do you know that in every 85,800 molecules of dry air only 33 are CO2. And of those only 33 is man made. That's one in 85,000. If you include water vapour its even less. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#Composition How is it possible a one in 85,800 atmospheric molecules can be the cause of climate change?
  8. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Miekol it's worth stopping and considering (honestly-- step back, calm down, think about it) that your opinion w/regard to our ability to perform useful measurements on the behavior and direction of our climate is quite divorced from what our best experts tell us. "I disagree" is not an argument, not a means of improving our understanding. "I disagree and here's how, specifically, coherently and constructively" using means and methods specific to the case in consideration is a better approach as well as actually being a complete attempt at argument. Ideology or politics really have nothing to useful to say about what the physical world of instrumentation tells us.
  9. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    David Horton: It is striking to see posts like Miekol's right after yours. There are several people like him/her posting on Skeptical Science right now. How can you reply to a post like that?
  10. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Miekol: Is the ice core data for 400,000 years a long enough record for you? Or do you insist we wait for 5,000 years to get direct temperature measurements? These data show that current warming is not natural and can cause serious problems. Your last post is too extreme for me to reply to. You need to read less denial websites and become familiar with the science. This web site has a lot of good information for the novice.
    Moderator Response: Miekol's last post was moderated out because it was off-topic and primarily ideological/political. Please try to stay on topic.
  11. More evidence than you can shake a hockey stick at
    JohnD, water vapor can store heat in both latent and sensible forms. Latent heat is not what's measured w/a thermometer. What's the capacity for sensible heat of water vapor in comparison w/the rest of the gases in the atmosphere? Water vapor in our temperature realm has a specific heat capacity of ~1.8kJ/kg K versus dry air at ~1.0 kJ/kg K. The mean mass of water vapor in the atmosphere is something like 1.27 × 10^16 kg, the dry air mass 5.13 × 10^18 kg. We don't need to work the arithmetic to see that water vapor is not the dominant reservoir of sensible heat in the atmosphere.
  12. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    #42: better tell that to the vast number of "skeptics" who declared that temps would continue to decline and that we were rapidly headed for a Maunder Minimum when the global average temps had a slight La Nina induced drop in 2008. Looking at the 2009 and 2010 data, it seems that their prediction didn't quite come true.
  13. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    A period that spans only five decades is nowhere near long enough when it comes to the study of planet climate. As the writer says, "we're looking at a system with enormous inertia and so climate shifts will generally show up as incremental creep over a long period of time." Even centuries will not encompass the BIG PICTURE. A minimum would be five millennium.
  14. More evidence than you can shake a hockey stick at
    doug_bostrom at 09:18 AM, doug, I take it then that you do not accept that the atmosphere could be warmer because of the increase in heat content bought about by an increase in water vapour. What carries the heat content that determines the measured temperature of the atmosphere if not primarily water vapour?
  15. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    #32: "In Deniaworld it seems there is no measurement, no series of measurements; no extreme unprecedented weather event, no series of such events; no series of different extreme events in different regions; ... there is nothing, literally nothing that can't be arbitrarily dismissed," You're forgetting the two weather events that Deniaworld uses to set its clocks: the 1998 high temps (hence no warming since then) and the 2007 min ice extent (hence the Arctic hasn't melted at all since then). When you stake your position on only those facts you want, life is sweet. And hence all others must be wrong.
  16. Of satellites and temperatures
    BP, sounds like a literature search is in order. I see something like 11,000 hits on Google Scholar using the term "derivation atmospheric temperature microwave sounding." Adding "calibration" winnows the list down to about 5,000 hits. For sure some duplicates and ringers I'll bet, but somebody appears to be on the case.
  17. More evidence than you can shake a hockey stick at
    ...the basis of the greenhouse theory is that the heat content of the atmosphere is absorbed and then carried by those gases that have been identified as greenhouse gases. Stopped me in my tracks, that did. The heat content of the atmosphere, primarily carried by the greenhouse gases, is measured as a temperature... And again. Bruising, really. Letting aside those problems and ignoring the flawed analogy between the taste of coffee versus phase changes in water and what causes and maintains them, the reason why the atmosphere is more humid is because the atmosphere is capable of carrying more water vapor before it condenses. In other words, atmospheric humidity is increasing because an increase in temperature allows it to do so. This is not even slightly complicated and it just boggles my mind to see the gymnastics some of us will go through to avoid looking at a graph and dealing with a conclusion. Or do we believe in an alternate explanation for why precipitation frequently happens as moist air is driven up and over mountains, experiencing adiabatic cooling and thus following the prediction that water will precipitate as the atmosphere approaches saturation? And of course, it's worth noting this increasing humidity is following the simple prediction that a given amount of C02 forcing will be followed by amplification by increased water vapor in the atmosphere.
  18. On Statistical Significance and Confidence
    BP #50 "Yes, but you have to get rid of the assumption of normality. Temperature anomaly distribution does get more regular with increasing sample size, but it never converges to a Gaussian." From a theoretical perspective this is an important consideration, but from a practical perspective it often makes little difference. It is of course quite reasonable to use non-parametric methods whenever you think it's sensible, but NP methods will always have less power for a normal-enough dataset. So it's important to consider whether there's any practical benefit from eschewing the normal distribution. In the case of the two graphs you posted in this discussion, they're what we would consider close enough to normal as makes no odds. (I've spent some time working on this as part of my day job, to satisfy myself empirically of when NP and P approaches are best)
  19. Dikran Marsupial at 09:03 AM on 14 August 2010
    On Statistical Significance and Confidence
    tobyjoyce@51 - maybe a student-t distribution and vary the degrees of freedom to match the kurtosis. IIRC the student-t distrubution can be represented as an infinite sum of Gaussians.
  20. Berényi Péter at 09:02 AM on 14 August 2010
    Of satellites and temperatures
    #17 Ned at 04:52 AM on 14 August, 2010 Bandwidths for AMSU are here, along with a great deal of additional information that might be of interest. Bandwidths for MSU are here. Thanks. I see AMSU-A 5 is actually two closely packed channels at 53481 MHz and 53711 MHz, nominal relative bandwidth is 3.2×10-3 for both, pretty narrow. MSU 2 is 53740 MHz, relative bandwidth 4.1×10-3. As these frequencies are much (by more than two orders of magnitude) lower, than the typical νmax for thermal radiation of Earth, energy flux in this narrow frequency band should be proportional to absolute temperature [at low enough frequencies Planck's law can be approximated by I(ν,T)=2kTν2c-2]. However, it is true only for a black body, one for which absorptivity/emissivity is one. Temperature of a solid opaque surface can only be measured this way if its emissivity is known. With a semi-transparent medium (like the atmosphere) which has different temperatures at different depths and absorptivity can also vary, it gets much more tricky. With no additional information it is utterly impossible to recover anything remotely reminiscent to proper temperature from the signal measured. As at the TLT channel temperature is measured down to the surface, at this frequency the atmosphere should be pretty transparent (meaning it also have a low emissivity by Kirchhoff's law). So thermal radiation directly from the surface (e.g. rock warmed by the sun) also makes through and at he instrument it is indistinguishable from the portion of radiation originating from the atmosphere itself. Therefore not only a sophisticated model of atmosphere is needed to make sense of the dataset measured, but the radiative properties of the surface below have to be known as well. So this kind of temperature measurement is far more complicated than advertised and needs a lot of additional information that should be gathered (and validated) by other means.
  21. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    batsvensson: The unusual cold in parts of Europe and the US last winter was caused by an extreme negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation, bringing cold Arctic air to lower latitudes, with warmer air flowing into the Arctic, causing the Arctic temps to rise to unusually high levels. Some info: http://nsidc.org/arcticmet/patterns/arctic_oscillation.html http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/AO_NAO.htm This has been linked to the extreme ice melt and rapid heating of the Arctic, and it is expected that we can see similar weather patterns during the coming winters: http://ipy-osc.no/article/2010/1276176306.8 http://ipsnorthamerica.net/news.php?idnews=3127
  22. More evidence than you can shake a hockey stick at
    CoalGeologist at 03:34 AM, the basis of the greenhouse theory is that the heat content of the atmosphere is absorbed and then carried by those gases that have been identified as greenhouse gases. Water vapour is the primary and majority greenhouse gas and it only becomes a gas, and thus a greenhouse gas upon absorbing heat energy at the earths surface, which it then transports aloft where it is gradually dispersed, finally giving up all the heat where the highest clouds are formed. The heat content of the atmosphere, primarily carried by the greenhouse gases, is measured as a temperature, thus rather than considering rising humidity as confirmation of warming, they must be considered as one and the same, the temperature being merely a measure of the heat content residing primarily within the water vapour. How much water vapour is moves into the atmosphere at any time is dependent on what conditions prevail on the earths surface where the atmosphere and the surface waters interact and not the temperature of the atmosphere, because it is the water vapour itself that primarily determines the temperature of the atmosphere. Much like those who struggle with their coffee each morning. By whatever means they measure the sweetness of the coffee, there will be a correlation found between the measure of sweetness and the amount of sweetener being added to the coffee. For rising humidity to be used as proof of rising temperatures, so too could rising sweetener levels be used as proof of a rising measure of sweetness. That seems rather confused to me. It is not the rising measure of sweetness that causes the rising level of sweetener, but that is what has been suggested regarding the atmosphere.
  23. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Bat the best way to answer your questions with the least ambiguity would be to travel to the NOAA-GISS and WMO links in the article. Or do a literature search and see what's been predicted and what's being observed. However-- boiling down this post to fewer words-- while attributing any single event to anthropogenic climate change is a very high bar to cross the trend of weather extremes we're seeing is in keeping w/predictions and could reasonably be considered a signature of a process dominated on the short term by natural variation but with an overwhelming trend. That's the point both NASA-GISS and WMO are making. Regarding last winter, I'm not an expert but I've read that it was down to natural variation, hardly unexpected as a glance at a host of data shows (see the NCDC data visualization tool linked near the beginning of the article). As both the WMO and NCDC say, as La Nina exerts itself (herself?) we can expect to see a drift back to what are considered more normal conditions but we should not expect trends to vanish. The real story is neatly encapsulated-- variation and all-- in that 12 month running average global mean temperature graph. A picture really does tell a thousand words. A lot of us are terribly dismayed with what such pictures tell us so our first instinct is to disbelieve them. Unfortunately disbelief is not an argument and can't stop the processes driving that graph upward.
  24. 1934 - hottest year on record
    Broadlands, it's no wonder NCDC doesn't want to reply to letters containing questions they've taken pains to answer in bulk. Here's Peter Hogarth's comment conveniently supplying links to the information you claim you can't find. Go read, or choose to remain mystified. Your choice.
  25. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    @michael sweet at 07:36 AM on 14 August, 2010 A lot of snow is not the same as record cold. This is strawman. The rest of your comment is as a red herring.
  26. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Michael - yes indeed - "as soon as one argument is shown to be false they make up a new one". The obvious question to ask them would be - what would you expect to see happening if the CO2 levels in the atmosphere were rising rapidly in the last 30 years or so and with them global temperatures were increasing rapidly? Would you really expect to see nothing happening given that we know about the major climatic shifts the Earth has undergone n the past? And do you imagine that if you pretend that every single unprecedented (I use the word literally) event is somehow "normal" then you can also pretend that rising CO2 levels (with known physical consequences) and rising temperatures are not happening? The really depressing thing, as readers will be aware, is that the current Australian government's plan (the Opposition has no plan at all) to deal with global warming is to hold a conference of "ordinary" people (certainly not climate scientists) to decide what to do. It has been pointed out - http://davidhortonsblog.com/2010/08/11/deliver-da-letter/ - that such a conference would closely resemble the kind of discussion we see in this thread and many others. A denial, based on the most improbable propositions, that there is any problem at all.
  27. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    @michael sweet at 07:36 AM on 14 August, 2010 So many hot records have been set this month that it may no longer be up to date. I don't know where you live, but I can hardly say any heat records been set this month where I live (western Europe) on the contrary this month may be just another "normal" or slightly cooler in the record - but we are not even half way so still far to early to tell what it will be.
  28. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    @doug_bostrom at 04:16 AM on 14 August, 2010 Unfortunately I can not access the full article, I also noticed this article is published 2006 and obviously they can not have any opinion in that paper whether last winter was due to climate or weather or even if it was extreme – if you ask me I wouldn' t say it was extreme more like winters used to be 15-20 years ago about. Anywat, that does not matter. What I am asking for is statements from official institute about what have happen, that is I am not asking for predictions but explanations. Like the one that has been made about the current wild fires in Russia and flooding in Pakistan as contrary to explanation made before about extreme weather phenomena - these has been explained as variation in weather and nothing more, however variations that we can suspect to see much more often – the difference now is that this latest explanation seams to claim that climate change is a direct cause (and I think such strong claims never been made before, has it?) Secondly since this winter was a mess and is directly related to this summer it falls natural to ask the question – was this winter also due to a climate effect or was it just natural variations?
  29. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Batsvennson: Doug Bostrom posted these national records from this year on an earlier thread. So many hot records have been set this month that it may no longer be up to date. There are 17 national hot records so far this year and one (1) cold record. This winter was cold in Europe (and parts of the US), but not record cold. A lot of snow is not the same as record cold. Global warming models show more precipitation and in the winter that comes as snow. Maybe the snow plow crews were not ready for the snow because there has been so little snow in recent years. Perhaps they no longer can clear snow that they could clear 30 years ago when it was colder. The trends are for warmer winters, this was a cold dip. David, It seems as soon as one argument is shown to be false they make up a new one. The surface record drum no longer beats so loud but they find something new. I think this summer will start to tip more people. If I were the commander of Afganistan I would be worried to see all those people homeless in Pakistan-- some of them will go to Afganistan and fight. The military has to plan for the future.
  30. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Yep, and obviously it is because of this increased weight on earth, by all the fat people, that sea levels are rising.
    No, no, the earth's crust is being compressed by all that extra weight, making the sea *appear* to rise!
  31. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    I woke up a bit depressed and this thread certainly tips me into very depressed. In Deniaworld it seems there is no measurement, no series of measurements; no extreme unprecedented weather event, no series of such events; no series of different extreme events in different regions; no record high temperatures, no series of record temperatures; no changes in species distributions or breeding patterns; no changes in ocean acidity: there is nothing, literally nothing that can't be arbitrarily dismissed, "explained" away by appeal to anecdote or bizarre physical mechanism or conspiracy or simultaneous unlikely technological failure or extremely improbably statistical anomaly. The result , if these people had their way, is that we on this little planet would sit idly by watching the climate change rapidly and soon irreversibly, all the while wondering what on Earth global warming would look like.
  32. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    RSVP, at 04:52 AM on 14 August, 2010 There was some cold record broken this last winter. For instance I believed they registered a new lowest temperature in Scotland this winter (around -20C) and as well longest period of a cold snap (but that I will leave unsaid). What the mean temp for the period is I dont know, but think it was "normal". Nor do I know if the precipitation was any bigger than normal. However, when consider Europe, there was some pretty long persistent cold snaps last winter and there was more precipitation coming down as snow than "normal" causing complete chaos in the traffic situations all over Europe. Peopel was asked to stay at home or avoid public transport as public transport was canceled or stopped for several days due to cold and snow. I also think airports also was closed down when it was at worst but cant remember for sure. But I do know in the UK they did closed down all public education for a while when the snowing was at worst and they was not able to keep the roads clean of snow. Many countries had problem with salt stocks running low – salt to keep the roads free of ice. And when it was at coldest there was no use at all to salt but only plow and sand the roads - those road they had time to plow that is. There was real worries about salt stocks would deplete. Since snow plowing was not able to keep up a lot people got their cars trapped in the snow due to this - people was asked to stay home. As a result emergency service had more incidents calls and elder was not able to get public service due to sever traffic disruption etc, etc, you name it. In short last winter was a big mess and I just wonder if there is any finding that tells whether this mess last winter was due to climate or to weather?
  33. 1934 - hottest year on record
    "What your references have in common Broadlands is that they're all at least 34 years old." Doug... The fact that they are "at least 34 years old" should not change their values unidirectionally. Why should thermometers at least 34 years ago have measured higher temperatures most of which seem to have required lowering? Some specific examples. According to NCDC 1895-2009 in North Carolina it was 60°F in 1900 and 59°F in 2009... the two are essentially the same. No statistical difference, no warming or cooling. A level trend for 114 years. In 1921 it was 61°F in NC according to the NCDC and it was 61.0°F according to the US Weather Bureau's reports. Maybe a 0.1 degree difference... easily within expected variability.. No problem. No corrections? BUT... in other states? Official weighted Weather Bureau data list Arizona in 1921 at 61.6°F and Idaho at 46.5°F. The NCDC 1895-2009? Arizona in 1921: 59.4°F, 2.2°F lower. Idaho in 1921: 44.9°F, 1.6°F lower. Were the thermometers in 1921 that bad in AZ and ID? I will write again to NCDC. BTW, do you know what the temperature of the northern hemisphere was in 2009?
  34. Berényi Péter at 05:55 AM on 14 August 2010
    Three new studies illustrate significant risks and complications with geoengineering climate
    #45 batsvensson at 04:20 AM on 14 August, 2010 Well Lewis, we will all look forward to see you and your familly be the first to move in to these spot where they plans to put these SO2 exhaust plants Don't worry. China takes care of the SO2 exhaust plant program just fine. Her altruism borders self-sacrifice.
  35. actually thoughtful at 05:45 AM on 14 August 2010
    NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Pete Ridley, others who would claim there is no trend in the trend: Can you explain why NONE of the zigs or zags take us back to below an arbitrary zero line of 1960-1990 (or pick any other 30 year period that excludes the 2000s)? If this is all random, natural, modulating behavior, isn't it necessary to spend some time BELOW the zero line?
  36. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    fydijkstra if you read a little more carefully you'll see "This is what global warming looks like" are the words of NOAA-GISS, not John Cook. The 12 month running average was not invented for the purpose of presenting this year's weather; your eagerness to invent and then run with that notion is quite remarkable. And of course decades of running averages pointed in the same direction contain some thought-provoking information.
  37. On Statistical Significance and Confidence
    Berenyi Peter #54, I know at least one statistician who would love to get his hands around a problem like that and who would not walk away with "There's no unique solution, anyway"!!! :))
  38. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Why all of the excitement about weather events? You may be interested in the comments a Russian scientist about the unusual (but not unheard of) weather presently being experienced in western Russia. “Russian Scientist: Extreme Central Russian Heat Wave Not An Indication Of A Future Climate Catastrophe By P Gosselin on 12. August 2010” (Note 1) QUOTE: Time to calm down everybody. .. Michail Kabanov, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences and advisor of the Institute For Climate And Environmental Monitoring. .. Deviations in one direction or the other, in this region or the other, are explained completely by the instability of the climate system. It meanders constantly and reaches various anomalies as a result, and does include extremes. The weather conditions of this year are precisely a result of this. Scientists must still determine if this anomaly is part of a trend in one direction, i.e. global warming, or if it’s just another climate fluctuation says the scientist. According to Ria Novosti: The earth also experienced climate warming in the past, which was then followed by cooling. The question is: To what extent does the anthropogenic factor effect the fluctuations? Kabanow says the current drought is not the start of a future catastrophe. Rather it is simply one extreme event that rarely occurs. Michail Kabanow also says the thawing of the permafrost also poses no threat to man. The permafrost has been thawing since the last ice age 10,000 years ago. The rate of thawing is by no means catastrophic. The expert sees no approaching global catastrophe UNQUOTE.. Note 1) see http://notrickszone.com/2010/08/12/russian-scientist-extreme-central-russian-heat-wave-not-an-indication-of-a-future-climate-change/ Best regards, Pete Ridley
  39. Of satellites and temperatures
    Doug Bostrom, thanks for the reminder of that investigation into the annual cycle in UAH. I think the other problem with that discussion at Watts's site is the analysis of 5-year (!) trends in the difference between RSS and GISS. Those fluctuate around a lot -- over the past few decades, they've ranged from GISS warming faster by +0.03C/decade to RSS warming faster by +0.03C/decade. In other words, you can pick five-year intervals to show either one "diverging" from the other ... but they keep converging again. As noted above, over the entire 1979-present interval RSS and GISS both have a warming of +0.16C/decade
  40. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    The present situation with floods in Central Europe and Pakistan and wildfires in Portugal and Russia strongly reminds me of 2005, when many people thought that global warming was to blame for the extreme hurricane season. Even some IPCC members declared global warming to be the culprit. In later years this soon was shown to be wrong. At the moment we have already seen several years with extremely low hurricane activity. The IPCC has learnt its lesson from 2005. So far we have not yet heard any false attribution claims for the present disasters, but John Cook thinks, that this is what global warming looks like. I think, that we can wait for the next few years to come without fires and floods, so that global warming again will be exonerated. An interesting feature in this article is figure 2: the 12-month running average of the temperature. Maybe I have not read the right papers, but so far I have never seen this indicator before. Was it really necessary to invent this indicator, now that the 2010 El Niño is over, and the average of 2010 as a whole will probably not break the 1998 record? Please, remember, that 12 months is a completely irrelevant interval in climate science. The climate is the average of 30 years of weather.
  41. actually thoughtful at 04:52 AM on 14 August 2010
    NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Doug - great article, interesting perspective. I will use the 2:1 ratio in discussions with skeptics. Another twine in the massive AGW rope!
  42. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    batsvensson #29 Sorry. I overlooked you specifying winter, but was it actually a colder winter or just one with more precipitation?
  43. Of satellites and temperatures
    Sorry, Berényi Péter. Let's see: TLT uses AMSU-A channel 5, which as you can see is quite close to MSU channel 2. "Rotate with scan angle" refers to fact that the plane of polarization changes as the instrument scans back and forth perpendicular to the nadir line. Bandwidths for AMSU are here, along with a great deal of additional information that might be of interest. Bandwidths for MSU are here.
  44. Of satellites and temperatures
    Doug Proctor, that situation has been superseded by events. There was no genuine physical basis for longitudinal drift between the various measurements, or that is to say the drift was down to an error in satellite data analysis. See this for a narrative of what happened. Some remarks by Dr. Spencer are here. Another "leaping to conclusions" moment, one of many. I'm surprised Watts has not amended that article so as not to continue propagating an incorrect impression.
  45. Berényi Péter at 04:41 AM on 14 August 2010
    Of satellites and temperatures
    #10 Ned at 03:48 AM on 14 August, 2010 BP, this chart compares the bands on MSU and AMSU instruments. Thanks.
    MSU 253.74 GHz (5.58 mm)
    AMSU-A 553.60 GHz (5.59 mm)
    AMSU-B 5176.3 GHz & 190.3 GHz (dual channel)
     (1.7 mm & 1.58 mm)
     All of these rotate with scan angle, whatever that means. I still don't know the bandwidths and whether TLT uses AMSU-A or AMSU-B.
  46. Of satellites and temperatures
    Also, Doug Proctor, if you're interested in the accuracy of surface temperature records, you might want to check out another recent thread: Assessing global surface temperature reconstructions
  47. Of satellites and temperatures
    Doug Proctor, actually the RSS satellite temperature trend is rather similar to the various surface trends over the same time period: Trends 1979-present NASA GISS: +0.16 C/decade HADCRUT: +0.16 C/decade NOAA NCDC: +0.16 C/decade RSS TLT: +0.16 C/decade UAH LT: +0.14 C/decade The only outlier is UAH, which is slightly lower than the others.
  48. Three new studies illustrate significant risks and complications with geoengineering climate
    @LewisC at 22:39 PM on 8 August, 2010 Well Lewis, we will all look forward to see you and your familly be the first to move in to these spot where they plans to put these SO2 exhaust plants. Good luck with your new home.
  49. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Bat, w/regard to cold air outbreaks see this article which interestingly enough refers to changes in "blocking," the same issue apparently contributing to extreme weather in Russia this summer: The behavior of extreme cold air outbreaks under greenhouse warming
  50. Of satellites and temperatures
    Thanks BP and Ned. So TLT is roughly equivalent to AMSU-A 5. Frequencies are similar. A chunk of air far wider than the surface standard measurment.

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