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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Comments 123251 to 123300:

  1. YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
    1077, i really can't see from what you deduced "The implied assumption here is that climate scientists are above it all, i.e. they are super-human." The experiment is conducted with people with no high level knowledge of the various issues (not just climate change). Why should it apply to scientists as well? The very possibility of warming due to anthropogenic CO2 has been denied for decades by distinguished scientist. The same happened to Galilei and to all the new theories, it takes time to be accepted untill evidence grows enough. I can not see any parallel with the 2% of anti-AGW scientists, there's no alternative theory to be accepted or refuted, they are just the "remains" of the crowd of scientists that once refuted AGW. Given that there are still scientists refuting evolution, plate tectonics, relativity, big bang, quantum mechanics, etc., i can anticipate that a small number of scientists skeptics of AGW are here to stay for ever. Neverthless science will keep going.
  2. Philippe Chantreau at 03:44 AM on 1 March 2010
    Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
    "isn't Oklahoma a large oil and gas producing state?" No and yes. CA produces a more oil than OK, OK more gas. "isn't Oklahoma a large oil and gas producing state?" http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petrosystem/petrosysog.html The real difference reside in the fact that it is dirt cheap to get a candidate elected in OK, compared to CA (about 4.8 times cheaper): http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/ttw/trends_map_data_table.aspx?trendID=19&assessmentID=10
  3. YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
    pdt #3 Feb 28, 2010 Interesting and relevant article. Here is a short paragraph that caught my attention: "This puzzles many climate scientists — but not some social scientists, whose research suggests that facts may not be as important as one's beliefs." The implied assumption here is that climate scientists are above it all, i.e. they are super-human. Well, they are not. Scientists are all too human. Interesting evidence in this direction in the article is contained in the contention that "People tend to conform their factual beliefs to ones that are consistent with their cultural outlook, their world view,". How true. And how revealing that the "left" seems to be overwhelmingly pro-global warming. It seems to be indeed "a Bolshevik plot"… Although I do not contest that many scientists and non-scientists on the AGW side are honest believers. I knew many honest believers in Communism: most of them ended up in Gulags when the philosophy they promoted prevailed. Incidentally, experimental findings "consistent with" a hypothesis are evidence not proof for the hypothesis. Conveniently disregarding this minor nuance is a well established propaganda tool. So is the conflation of environment protection, a necessity, with anthropogenic climate change, a theory which has not been proven. As for only 2% deniers, just think of the percentage of those who denied the heliocentric system in the times of Giordano Bruno and Galileo...
  4. YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
    pdt: Here is the study that Brahan is referring to in that article.
  5. Berényi Péter at 01:48 AM on 1 March 2010
    Temp record is unreliable
    Thanks, Jeff. It's GHCN-DAILY Version 2.1, I'll look into it. $ wget -r ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/daily/
  6. YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
    I thought this was an interesting story related to the "debate" on climate change, Belief In Climate Change Hinges On Worldview.
  7. Hockey stick is broken
    "Good for you, next step will be understanding that unfortunately it does tell us much about the ongoing warming trend." should read "[...] does NOT tell us much [...]" :p
  8. Hockey stick is broken
    protestant, i guess you've just discoved that climate has changed in the past. It has been warmer and colder, what a surprise! Good for you, next step will be understanding that unfortunately it does tell us much about the ongoing warming trend. PDO and solar minimum has nothing to do with the divergence problem and we cannot attribute it to UHI effct. In this post many proxies (other than tree rings) are shown that confirm the recent sharp temperature increase. Please read the comment policy and resrtain from talking about quackeries and the like.
  9. Berényi Péter at 23:45 PM on 28 February 2010
    Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
    kwinters79, with your equations, the projected 2100 sea level rise for these three periods are Period1 => 73 cm Period2 => 84 cm Period3 => 148 cm The equations give your values by the year 2106 (with minor rounding errors) relative to the 6710.8 mm tide gauge level, which is indeed the average for the years between 1856-1876. Not 21 years though, only 20, for the year 1661 is missing (Civil war? The New York Draft Riots occurred in 1863. Some gadget from tide gauge needed for war? Personnel drafted?). However, we get a better view of the quality of data, if we calculated projected 2106 sea level rise based on some more subperiods. I also supply a second column, sea level rise relative to the 1990-2008 average. It is 37.4 cm higher than your reference level, but it has already happened in New York and the city is still alive. 1900-1920: +15722 mm +15348 mm 1900-1930: -1711 mm -2085 mm 1900-1940: +2566 mm +2192 mm 1900-1950: +2313 mm +1939 mm 1900-1960: +1792 mm +1418 mm 1900-1970: +1204 mm +831 mm 1900-1980: +817 mm +443 mm 1900-1990: +557 mm +184 mm 1900-2000: +696 mm +322 mm 1900-2008: +675 mm +302 mm 1910-2008: +596 mm +223 mm 1920-2008: +534 mm +160 mm 1930-2008: +511 mm +138 mm 1940-2008: +754 mm +380 mm 1950-2008: +879 mm +505 mm 1960-2008: +1155 mm +782 mm 1970-2008: +1588 mm +1214 mm 1980-2008: -184 mm -557 mm 1990-2008: -2862 mm -3236 mm Had we faith in this method, the 1980-2008 trend would project an almost two feet sea level drop by the year 2106 and more than 3 m (10 feet) if the judgment is bases on the last two decades. Quite scary, ships stranding at low tide, New York harbor gets unusable. On the other hand, if we only saw data for 1900-1920, would fancy a 15 m rise by 2106. Manhattan submerged. Whenever trends are so sensitive to endpoint selection it does not make much sense to use them. To illustrate it, I give 2106 sea level projections with a finer resolution, relative to present (1990-2008 average). 1970-2008: +1214 mm 1972-2008: +1142 mm 1974-2008: +388 mm 1976-2008: -136 mm 1978-2008: +397 mm 1980-2008: -557 mm Depending on endpoint selection, sea level would either rise by four feet or drop by two. If we consider the 1927-1991 period, for which tide gauge data seem to be most reliable, we get a 64.7 cm drop by 2106 relative to present. It is reasonable to use as much data as one has got. Based on the period 1856-2008, projected sea level rise is 38.2 cm (relative to present). It is basically a linear rate of 2.3 mm/year (acceleration is negligible, 6.7 micron/yr^2). It is not much, considering the difference between low and high tides at the Battery can easily exceed 6 feet. We can see "recent rate of sea level rise acceleration" is meaningless if it is based on a single site. However, for the US alone one can readily find 2523 more gauges. http://www.saltwatertides.com/pickpred.html The PSMSL has 1166 gauges, 75 US sites. Looks like if one is not interested in the deep past, at least ten times more gauges could be used (e.g. for the last two or three decades). It is just a data collection problem, which should be easy and cheap in the Internet age.
  10. YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
    Minor correction: I think the correct wording of the Richard Feynman quotation at the end of the Youtube video is "Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself."
  11. YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
    Generally sceptics are in denial in respect of man made global warming, and consequent Climate Change because they do not wish to make the costly changes to Industrial activity and our way of life,that are necessary to counter them .At least not during their lifetime! Consequently the debate rages over the issue as to whether Global Warming is taking place or not,thereby neatly sidestepping the basic and undeniable fact that human activity is responsible for a greatly increased level of atmospheric pollution. Regardless of whether this results in Global warming there are many other important reasons why it should be reduced without further debate as to whether the cost of doing so is affordable.At this moment it is clear that an unwillingness to take action for cost reasons is not the only problem .More serious is the likelihood that we may not even know how to!! Norman Wells
  12. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Woody Guthrie award, bug-fixes, Facebook and donations
    Keep up the great work. More than ever your site is needed. I've chipped in $50.00. Its only fair as I constantly use your site as my source for countering the sceptics/cynics. This weekend I've fired off several letters to the editors of "The Australian" and "The West Australian" Here in Western Australia we have just had our hottest summer on record and Perth has had the hottest and driest summer on record. Hopefully the letters will be published.
  13. Hockey stick is broken
    Why do you comply same cherry-picking as the IPCC? Many of the graphs presented still have Korrajärvi upside down. And the glacier-graph is ridicilous why do you cut it from 1600 the whole data from Greenland example can be seen here: http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3553 You are presenting a graph which ends just before the MWP and other warm periods. Why? Secondly, what statistical method allows you to do "the trick". Many other proxies than just tree-rings show the same divergence - which happens to be in the cooling phase of the PDO and between solar maximums. Much more likely explanation for the "divergence" is the UHI-effect and the effect of CO2 being weak (cloud feedback). if you use non-tree ring samples and UAH temperature data you get this: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/lanser_holocene_figure11.png The IPCC "hockey stick" reconstructions are just pure quackery to hide the flaws in their biased theory. Even the Institute of Physics is aware of this possible scientific malpractise and cherry picking: LINK
    Moderator Response: [RH] Embedded link.
  14. Working out future sea level rise from the past
    This is probably a silly question. In Fig 1 of this post, when current sea levels match the interglacial sea levels (the zero line), would the current CO2 levels match with those particular interglacial CO2 levels?
  15. Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
    Oops. kwinters (67) wrote: "Though my analysis here is much too simplistic, it certainly helps convince me that Siddall's results appear quite reasonable. " I meant to say (Vermeer & Rahmstorf 2009) appears quite reasonable. I think Siddall was too low in his retracted paper (which is why he retracted it).
  16. Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
    Berényi Péter, The data quality issue is indeed a problem. But since I'm not working to publish any results and since these are only hobby calculations, I'll just stick with the simplistic approach of using the annual data, as is, except for the 2 years flagged with XX. I subtracted out of all my level measurements the 21-year average tide level from 1856 to 1876. The levels were left in mm. And my Time-0 is 1856. I computed a h0 + v*t + a*t^2 least squares equation for the 3 periods: 1856 - 2008, 1950 - 2008, and 1970 - 2008. The equations I got are: Period 1 => -20.524 + 2.269t + 0.0033t^2 Period 2 => 190.2 - 0.787t + 0.0142t^2 Period 3 => 1133.5 - 14.99t + 0.0672t^2 Projecting these out to 2100 I get the following sea-level rise (relative to the average from 1856 - 1876): Period 1 => 75 cm Period 2 => 88 cm Period 3 => 1.58 m So what can I conclude from this little exercise? Not much, as it's far too simple and only dealing with a single tide gauge. But along with all the recently published papers, the ice sheet dynamics, and the fact that Siddall withdrew his low estimate paper, I'd have to conclude that the IPCC estimate was indeed too low. A 1M rise may actually turn out to be a conservative estimate. It will be interesting to see what additional papers are published over the next year or two.
  17. Douglas McClean at 14:37 PM on 28 February 2010
    Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
    Sure, sea level changes can have either sign. Sure, there are movements of landmasses in both directions. My point was only that sea level *rise* cannot be caused by post-glacial rebound.
  18. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Woody Guthrie award, bug-fixes, Facebook and donations
    Though I do want to give money to this excellent site today, I'm sure you can appreciate that the people of Chile need my charity much more today! Still, I'll be happy to chip in $50 next week!
    Response: Agreed, have just donated to http://www.worldvision.com.au/ and strongly urge everyone to donate to similar relief organisations such as http://www.redcross.org/
  19. Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
    #69 doug_bostrom: "Based on this analysis, you should be careful of your odds: ...http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/pr20091218b.html Dr Roy Spencer has used the International Surface Hourly (ISH) weather data archived by NOAA to see how a simple reanalysis of original weather station temperature data compares to the Jones CRUTem3 land-based temperature dataset. Details are at: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/02/spurious-warming-in-the-jones-u-s-temperatures-since-1973/ Although this analysis is limited to the USA because of the data source, it does result in some interesting results. Spencer did NOT adjust the ISH data for the urban heat island effect. Yet the HADCRUT3 showed a higher trend (for the same geographical area analyzed by Spencer). It also showed some rather strange results, including a sudden change of around 0.4C in the differences between the two series in the 2nd half of Several peer reviewed papers reanalyzing various temperature time series will undoubtedly be published in the next few years. Charlie
  20. Arnold Mousetrouser at 11:32 AM on 28 February 2010
    Skeptical Science housekeeping: Woody Guthrie award, bug-fixes, Facebook and donations
    25AUD to the cause as a starter and more to come in bits and bobs. Glad I found you. Best wishes, Arnold Mousetrouser (Australia)
  21. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Woody Guthrie award, bug-fixes, Facebook and donations
    I've donated a bit - more coming when I get richer. Thanks for writing the best climate nonsense debunking service on the web!
  22. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Woody Guthrie award, bug-fixes, Facebook and donations
    Keep up the good work and congratulation :)
  23. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Woody Guthrie award, bug-fixes, Facebook and donations
    Keep up the good work John! My $25 isn't as much as Big Carbon might pay their proponents, but at least you needn't feel any guilt in accepting it :)
  24. Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
    Re 83: "Satellites show neither warming nor cooling" The UAH satellite record shows warming since 1979. The measure is independent of surface temperature records and it directly refutes the idea that warming in the surface records is due to "station dropout" or UHI or AC units.
  25. Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
    Until about 2000 "satellite temperature measurements" used to show cooling in lower troposphere in direct contradiction to both direct surface temperature reconstructions and GCM predictions. It was a long and painful process to develop atmospheric models and fine-tune backward calculation procedures to bring satellite data in line with expectations.
    Bull. Other researchers found a series of *algebraic* errors in the derivation of the Christy/Spencer algorithm, one of which was a *sign flip*. After correction, the UAH product shows rough agreement with both the surface temps and model outputs. A logical person might conclude that this increases our confidence in the robustness of GCMs and GISTEMP/HadCRUT.
  26. Have American Thinker disproven global warming?
    At the risk of flogging this one to death, and for my own benefit, I have been thinking about the differences in the 1972 & 1997 spectra. The Harries (2006) paper finds significant differences in the spectra between 1997 & 1972 for certain wavelengths (or rather, the subtracted spectra are significantly different from 0 over certain wavelength bands). Is this enough to show a difference in general - for some wavelengths, there seems to be no difference, right? Suppose there are equal numbers of wavelengths with and without significant differences (which is Gary Thompson's point)? What does that prove? My way to resolve this is mathematically. Suppose 1972 radiation = f(x) + noise 1997 radiation = g(x) + noise To investigate if f(x) and g(x) are equal we look at f(x)-g(x)for values of x.. if we just get noise (mean 0) at all values of x then the functions are equal f(.)=g(.) Now functions may be equal over part of their support e.g. f(x)=x and g(x)=x^2 are equal at x=1. If you just took samples from x=0.95 to x=1.05, you might be hard put to tell a significant difference. So (to repeat!) functions can be equal for parts of their support, and unequal elsewhere. It is where there are significant differences that count. Strictly speaking, you can say that these functions are equal over the inverval [x1,x2] and unequal over the interval [x2,x3]... but clearly there are not equal over [x1,x3]. Therefore, clearly the functions f(x) & g(x), representing the values in different years are not equal over the wavelength range, & Gary's point is unproven.
  27. A brief history of our iPhone app
    Holy cow, the iPhone app is FREE?! Heck, that shamed me into making a app-sized donation to the Skeptical Science site. Vote with your wallet...
  28. A brief history of our iPhone app
    How about porting the app to a pay-to-enter Website? One where the fee to join was the same as the cost of the iPhone app. Can you tell that I don't own an iPhone? (grin) Put up the site, and I'll be first in line to pay an app-priced fee... Porting the app to a Web-based delivery system could potentially generate MANY more users than porting it to other smartphones!
  29. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Woody Guthrie award, bug-fixes, Facebook and donations
    $56 AUD just sent (I know, weird number but I thought it was equal to $50 USD). I was waiting for you to put a donate button up. You are a tireless, scientific workhorse and should get a little $$$ for your efforts. BTW, thanks to Kate over at ClimateSight who turned the lightbulb on for me, I just created a Facebook group called Global Warming Fact of the Day. I will post a small factoid each day related to climate change that is geared toward the general public. From what I gather, anybody who joins the group will get this daily factoid automatically on their Facebook page. I like the concept because people will get information without having to go find it. I started with three factoids to wet appetites.
  30. Jeff Freymueller at 07:13 AM on 28 February 2010
    Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
    #78 Berényi Péter, I replied to you on the other thread, but I don't use that kind of data so my reply may be of limited use.
  31. Jeff Freymueller at 07:10 AM on 28 February 2010
    Temp record is unreliable
    #57, Berényi Péter The details are outside my specialty so I can offer only very limited help here. I went to the ftp site and poked around for a minute or two and found this readme file: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/daily/readme.txt The ftp site looks like it is designed to make it simple for people to write automated scripts to grab all the data or updates, which is what I would be doing if I used this data. I do know from reading other blogs that the raw data is also available in addition to adjusted data, so you will have to poke around a bit, or send a question to the email address in the readme file if you can't find what you need after reading the documentation. GISS has the source code for its software online, so you can look into that for examples of reading the files and so on.
  32. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Woody Guthrie award, bug-fixes, Facebook and donations
    Congratulations! $5 to you. BTW, when I donated I was sent to a site that offered me premium cartoons. Qui? You deserve more, and when I have more, you will get some of it.
  33. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Woody Guthrie award, bug-fixes, Facebook and donations
    Well done, excellent blog.
  34. Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
    Berényi Péter, the UAH satellite analisys showing cooling was not a problem of comparison, it was just flawed.
  35. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Woody Guthrie award, bug-fixes, Facebook and donations
    Very well deserved, always my first point of call when debunking nonsense. Keep up the good work on the facts and keep on trying to make the site as welcoming as possible to sceptics.
  36. Berényi Péter at 06:04 AM on 28 February 2010
    Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
    #80 wingding at 03:00 AM on 28 February, 2010 "they invoke numerous vague arguments [...], but don't explain why the satellites also show similar warming" Satellites show neither warming nor cooling. They show radiance changes in certain narrow em radiation bands. To convert it to surface or lower troposphere temperature is a tricky business and depends on the model used. Until about 2000 "satellite temperature measurements" used to show cooling in lower troposphere in direct contradiction to both direct surface temperature reconstructions and GCM predictions. It was a long and painful process to develop atmospheric models and fine-tune backward calculation procedures to bring satellite data in line with expectations. However, this complex inverse transform can only be verified by direct measurements performed in situ. In this sense satellite temperature trends are not independent sources. JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 111, D03106, doi:10.1029/2005JD006392, 2006 Temperature trends at the surface and in the troposphere Konstantin Y. Vinnikov, Norman C. Grody, Alan Robock, Ronald J. Stouffer, Philip D. Jones, and Mitchell D. Goldberg Received 20 June 2005; revised 12 October 2005; accepted 7 November 2005; published 11 February 2006. www.atmos.umd.edu/.../VinnikovEtAlTempTrends2005JD006392.pdf "As explained in section 1, it is for this reason that we compare the MSU channel 2 measurements directly with forward model calculations that include the stratospheric contribution, rather than attempt to correct the measurements for stratospheric effects"
  37. Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
    For those of you who point to the similarity of the various global average temperature time series, I would recommend that you look into the history of expectation bias and confirmation bias. An interesting article is "A selected history of expectation bias in physics", by Monwhea Jeng. http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/physics/pdf/0508/0508199v1.pdf In particular, look at Figure 2 showing the history of measurements of the speed of light. Note how for much of the first half of the 1900's that the consensus on the value was well below the currently accepted value. Also note that the currently accepted value for the speed of light is _outside_ of the error bands reported in paper after paper. As Skeptical Scientists we should keep in mind the problem of confirmation bias and expectation bias. I don't have a reference at hand, but as I recall, the electron charge to mass ratio has a similar measurement history where there were periods of consensus where the measured values converged, with increasingly smaller error bands, upon a value that later turned out to be erroneous.
  38. Miriam O'Brien (Sou) at 05:07 AM on 28 February 2010
    Skeptical Science housekeeping: Woody Guthrie award, bug-fixes, Facebook and donations
    Congratulations John. I'm sure you will receive many more accolades for your fantastic service. And I'm only too happy to contribute, you're helping so many of us by you clear and concise explanations.
  39. Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
    Karl_from_Wylie, "It looks like NOAA might have its own issues with removing climate measuring stations that report cooler than expected values." It looks very likely the way too often people do not distinguish (or do not want people to distinguish) between absolute temperature and anomaly. Indeed, high northern latitude stations have shown higher trends. The ovreall effect of dropping those stations is (if any) a decreasing trend. As for the urban vs rural stations dropping, anyone can see that less rural stations has been droppend in relative numbers. So there's no "preference" on urban stations, which anyways have the trends corrected and made equal to those in rural stations. It's just one of the many bogus claims on the surface temperature dataset.
  40. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Woody Guthrie award, bug-fixes, Facebook and donations
    well done John :)
  41. Arctic icemelt is a natural cycle
    Argus, a good overview is cce's The Global Warming Debate. It will give you a good base from which you can more efficiently and effectively pursue particular topics here.
  42. Arctic icemelt is a natural cycle
    Argus, I'm glad you now realize that we all think that there's not just CO2. It's an important point to make clear as did our host writing a post on it. It is only by looking at all the important factors that scientists can be so confident on the causes of recent and past climate variations. Please keep reading and asking, it won't take that much time :)
  43. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Woody Guthrie award, bug-fixes, Facebook and donations
    You certainly deserve this award!!! (Love the photo!) We need you more than ever now to fight the Climate Denial Machine! You are the best when it comes to layperson's explanations that can tell us non-scientists what is going on. Thank you so much! Tenney
  44. Philippe Chantreau at 03:01 AM on 28 February 2010
    Skeptical Science housekeeping: Woody Guthrie award, bug-fixes, Facebook and donations
    Congrats John. You deserve that much and more...
  45. Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
    Karl_from_Wylie: You earlier implied that people were being asked to spend money based on the HadCRUT analysis. But that isn't true and that is why the CRU "lost data" issue is scientifically irrelevant. The HadCRUT analysis is but one analysis of global surface temperature that uses station data. Even without HadCRUT there would be the same picture from GISTEMP, the NCDC and the JPA analysis. Therefore nothing hinges on HadCRUT. There is no need for the HadCRUT data. The HadCRUT result has already been reproduced by these other studies. In the case of GISTEMP the source code is available online. So there are no excuses for focusing on the CRU "missing data" as if this impacts a scientific result. The report you link to, which mainly consists of smear-like questions without bothering to find out the answers, takes issue with NOAA GHCN. But similar issues apply here too. Even though the surface temperature records all use GHCN station data (except HadCRUT) - they only do so for the land. The ocean data also shows warming. And completely independently both satellite records show warming over the past 30 years too. If the NOAA GHCN data is incorrect, how come the derivative surface land temperature records (GISTEMP, NCDC, JMA) agree well with the ocean and satellite derived temperatures which don't rely on NOAA GHCN data? There's too much agreement between these different sources to possibly regard it as an error. Worse of all skeptics just can't make up their mind where the errors are. Contradictions abound. One moment the issue is HadCRUT, next it's GHCN, then suddenly it's GISTEMP (but never UAH). They can't make up their minds what kind of size of error they are talking about, they invoke numerous vague arguments like station dropout in the 90s, or UHI, microsite biases, etc, but don't explain why the satellites also show similar warming (given they are immune to these arguments). It's all very vague and very unscientific. They are all over the shot and none of them have bothered to even try and reproduce the global surface temperature record from station data.
  46. Karl_from_Wylie at 02:56 AM on 28 February 2010
    Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
    . #77 Deech56 The first question to be addressed is sloppy research. And the amazement scientest exhibit when they are asked about their adherence to the standards they set themselves.
  47. Arctic icemelt is a natural cycle
    Thank you very much for acknowledging that there are other forcings than CO2, and that climate changes similar to what we are experiencing now, have occurred before. It seems to me that 99% of what is presented here is focussed on CO2 only, as if there were no other explanation to anything at all happening on this planet. Also, thanks for the links! I am continually reading up on more facts presentations and connected debates within this great site (and some others). I am slowly learning, and by now I know a lot more than the average person in the street, but I also recognize how little I know compared to those who have studied this field seriously for years.
  48. Berényi Péter at 02:48 AM on 28 February 2010
    Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
    #72 Jeff Freymueller at 17:00 PM on 27 February, 2010 "Anyone can download the original data and reanalyze it" Jeff, I am trying to reflect on this statement, but John keeps deleting my posts. In a _political_ thread, full of off-topic comments. I really do not know why he does it. Anyway, I give it another try following Doug Bostrom's advice in #50, this thread and repost under "Are surface temperature records reliable?" as #57. http://skepticalscience.com/argument.php?p=2&t=57&&a=110#9491
  49. Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
    Karl_from_Wylie, you might want to check here.
  50. Berényi Péter at 02:34 AM on 28 February 2010
    Temp record is unreliable
    Re: #72 Jeff Freymueller at 17:00 PM on 27 February, 2010 (in: Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming) http://skepticalscience.com/news.php?p=2&t=76&&n=147#9477 "Anyone can download the original data and reanalyze it" Jeff, I am trying to do that, but the only source I know of is GHCN-Monthly Version 2 at the NCDC site: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/ghcn-monthly/index.php Do you know a better source? If so, a pointer is welcome. For this particular dataset is a complete mess. It is dominated by USHCN, poorly documented, metadata are insufficient, the adjustment procedure is arbitrary, coverage AFTER 1990 is deteriorating rapidly. Look into it and you'll see. In a post deleted by John I have provided some details. Suffice to say the NCDC adjustment algorithm has at least four outstanding break points at 1905, 1920, 1990 & 2006. On average for the 1920-1990 period they have applied a 0.36°C/century warming adjustment to the entire dataset. It's essentially the same for sites flagged "rural" and the rest (urban & suburban), no statistically significant difference in adjustment slopes (based on counterfactual assumption of no urbanization in this period perhaps). The dataset does not meet any reasonable open source standard. Still, NCDC at its site says it was "employed" in IPCC AR4 20th century temperature reconstruction. http://ber.parawag.net/images/GHCN_adjustments.jpg Looks like it is high time for a transparent open source community project to recollect worldwide temperature histories along with site assessments and ample metadata.

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