Climate Science Glossary

Term Lookup

Enter a term in the search box to find its definition.

Settings

Use the controls in the far right panel to increase or decrease the number of terms automatically displayed (or to completely turn that feature off).

Term Lookup

Term:

Settings

Beginner Intermediate Advanced No Definitions Definition Life:

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.

Recommended supplemental reading:

The Moral Outrageousness of Trump’s Decision on the Paris Agreement by Donald Brown, Ethics & Climate, July 7, 2017

jgnfld at 23:43 PM on 8 July 2017

Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter

@27...

Do you honestly think Jo Nova cares one whit about "informing readers"? Or that the majority of the readers there want to be accurately informed as opposed to having their biases confirmed?

SingletonEngineer at 22:53 PM on 8 July 2017

Mapped: How climate change affects extreme weather around the world

@ Nigelj:

My screen is touch-sensitive: I can drag the map with a finger tip.

I can also double-click to re-centre the map and thus bring the full text out from behind the other graphics.

So, problem solved! If only they were all this simple.

rjmhudson at 22:38 PM on 8 July 2017

SkS Analogy 9 - The greenhouse effect is a stack of blankets

Everyone is intimately familiar with warming up their own body with blankets, so this analogy is worth keeping in the tool box. It's actually quite accurate for the Earth at night time and explaining why nighttime lows have been increasing rapidly.

Eclectic at 21:48 PM on 8 July 2017

Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible

Thank you Mr Too@30 and Mr Scaddenp@38 , for pointing to the website Climate4you .com , which I hadn't come across before.

Climate4you seems a trashy website (though not as trashy as WUWT). At first glance at their "Overview" page, they appear to present many graphs scientifically analysing data — but their commentary in text is containing many unscientific statements.

Most outrageous, I thought, was their comment that some rather minor variations of atmospheric CO2 during the (pre-industrial) Holocene period were evidence that the CO2 level had no correlation with Earth's surface temperatures & climate changes over time, and therefore CO2 could be disregarded as a significant factor in climate change.

They also denigrated the validity of any corrections of the various temperature records — calling these corrections "administrative changes" that downgraded the "reliability" of the various data sets (from various organizations).

Then they praised the UAH satellite records of so-called "lower troposphere" [what the man-in-the-street would really think of as upper atmosphere and having little relevance to down here on the surface of the planet] and they pooh-poohed the extensive actual surface records and the ocean heat/temperature records.

On top of that, they implied that various "cycles" in the recent and mid-Holocene were a major cause of the modern rapid warming. And combine that with their strange urge to fit entirely inappropriate polynomial/non-linear trend curves to a plethora of widely-scattered data points.

All-in-all, they appeared to focus on minor variations in temperature data sets, as though these mathematical variations had a real life of their own — and without the slightest acknowledgement that all true data records are merely a representation of real physical events which have real physical causes.

In summary : Climate4you is a trashy website (despite its specious graphs and its temperate language in the "Overview").

AndyF at 20:38 PM on 8 July 2017

A Quick and Dirty Analysis of GHCN Surface Temperature Data

I know this is an old article, but does anyone know where to find the raw+adjusted GHCN data today to repeat the exercise done by Caerbannof and KevinC back in 2011?

scaddenp at 14:20 PM on 8 July 2017

Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible

Hopefully too, the information provided here would have helped you form an accurate impression of the reliability of what you find at climate4you.

Haze at 08:18 AM on 8 July 2017

Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter

@23. Tom Curtis thanks for your detailed, thorough and informative remarks, they are much appreciated and I certainly was not aware of the information you have provided. Perhaps you could post the comment on Jennifer Marohasy's and Jo Nova's sites to inform readers there that the BoM does take care to ensure accuracy and fidelity of its temperature observations and does not make alterations on a whim. Thanks again. With regard to posting on other sites, I really think you should as your comment would challenge the perceptions of readers at those sites. BUt perhaps not as positions are often too entrenched to change

nigelj at 08:08 AM on 8 July 2017

Mapped: How climate change affects extreme weather around the world

What an extremely impressive map. One nit pick, some of the explanations towards Australia are partly hidden under the key.

We have the majority of evidence pointing to the human fingerprint, but it's interesting that a few studies find otherwise. This shows the lack of the great conspiracy theory the denialists talk about, but will be utterly lost on them.

I have heard sceptics say "theres no evidence climate change caused this event" which may be true, but no matter how many times you explain climate change made the events more probable, or more numerous or more severe, it fails to shift their views. They just repeat their mantra. It's like they dont register what we say.

Maybe their mind literally switches off to anything that contradicts their world view, or vested interests etc, and they aren't even aware this mind filtering is happening. It could be a form af sensory gating.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/your-hidden-censor-what-your-mind-will-not-let-you-see/

ubrew12 at 07:38 AM on 8 July 2017

Climate's changed before

About a month ago, I took the Pages-2k graph (last 2000 years of global temperature using tree ring proxies) and roughly calculated the temperature change per century, last 20 centuries, and the standard deviation in this metric for this 2000 year period. I then took 5-century intervals from the Marcott graph (last 11,000 years, ocean sediment data), calculated the average temperature change per century (over 5 centuries), and imposed the standard deviation I'd gotten from Pages-2k to each of these to calculate my best estimate of the temperature change per century for the 100 centuries prior to Christs birth. I then applied this same technique to the Shakun graph (last 20,000 years). However, in that case I used 10-century intervals to get the average temperature change per century and imposed the Pages-2k standard deviation upon that average to get 10 data points representing the likely variance over them. At the end of all this activity, I had 219 data points representing the likely temperature change per century for the 220 centuries (22,000 years) before the 20th century. The average was 0.014 C/century, the standard deviation was 0.077 C/century, so the 3-sigma point is 0.24 C/century. Warming in the 20th century was 0.78 C/century. To me this proves, statistically, that modern warming is nothing like anything that has occurred in the previous 22,000 years. Its about 3 times what would be considered extremely unusual from the natural record. And warming in the last 25 years, if it continues, is about 3 times that again (2.2 C/century). My question is: does anybody know where this kind of analysis has been performed in the Science record? I'm sure it has, and to a much greater degree. I just want to know where to find it so I can refer to it whenever somebody claims 'Its all natural'.

nigelj at 07:26 AM on 8 July 2017

Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter

I agree the reason for temperature adjustments is all there if you look. I have just done some reading on it myself, and put some links on the Republican Party article. If I can find this material in about one minute, sceptics have no excuse to be ignorant. The explanations are utterly compelling, and take little time to read. I have never even seen a sceptic try to refute them, and instead they just nag away, creating confusion, never clarity.

But maybe Haze partly has a point that making mistakes and having to correct them is never a good look. So try and minimise them, and openly explain what went wrong. We should avoid getting too defensive.

Any human based system will make a few mistakes. But do a bit of reading, and you find the climate science process goes to extreme lengths to minimise mistakes, identify mistakes, and biased temperatures or faulty measuring equipment, and correct them. The result is the big picture is very reliable.

Sceptics like Jo Nova are nit picking, and relying on the fact most people dont have time to check the detail. Its a form of cynical manipulation, and is not genuine scepticism that confronts issues openly. It's crowd manipulation. It's not genuine scepticism in the honourable, traditional sense of the term. Proper scepticism has to operate within rational boundaries.

For decent, rational scepticism read "Skeptic, by Michael Shermer"

HK at 06:43 AM on 8 July 2017

Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter

Zeke Hausfather explains the corrections of the RSS TLT data here.
The satellites used by RSS and UAH are launched into so-called sun-synchronous orbits that cause them to pass over the same location at the same local time every day. This is achieved by letting the orbital plane rotate one degree per day in a counter clockwise direction as seen from above the North Pole. The problem is that the very minor atmospheric drag may slow them down by several hours over a few years if they don’t have some propulsion system to offset that.

The chart below shows how much the local time when the satellites cross the equator from south to north has drifted over the years. Two of the satellites, NOAA-11 and 14, drifted 7 hours over a period of about 10 years, while the two European satellites METOP-A and B (still in use) have kept the time almost perfectly. BTW, these same satellites also measure other weather and climate parameters, including the distribution of Arctic sea ice.

satellite drift

nigelj at 06:30 AM on 8 July 2017

Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible

OPOF @29, what you say is true, but better critical thinking would help more people identify the economic, ethical and social villains you are talking about. The system requires good information to work optimally, and only critical thinking can preserve this.

nigelj at 06:27 AM on 8 July 2017

Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible

Too@30, the second graph on your link page is for the history of Greenlands warming. It shows a strong warming in the so called minoan warm period, and an apparent weak warming in the so called modern warming period, according to their labels on the graph.

It is accurate, but incomplete, as it only shows temperatures to early last century. It is deceitful, or "Lies By Omission".

The full picture is here, and you can see although Greenland was very warm in the past, recent warming is more rapid. The recent instrumental record is grafted on in red.

diggingintheclay.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/3500years.png

gws at 04:50 AM on 8 July 2017

Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible

Along a different tangent ... notice Rick Perry's body languarge in that video (hands, #10). It suggests that he (subconsciously) knows he is going to a place he is uncomfortable with.

Daniel Bailey at 03:40 AM on 8 July 2017

Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible

@too

Note that the next figure (Fig. 3) from your link is a complete fabrication/misrepresentation, as it uses Alley's GISP2 core data (last data point 1855), so it misses all the warming of the instrumental record.

Click to enlarge

Larger Image

Daniel Bailey at 03:33 AM on 8 July 2017

Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible

@too

"Is the graph accurate and what process causes these glacial/interglacial cycles?"

The graph uses "Present" as 1950, like all ice-core-derived products. Thus it purposefully truncates the warming post-1950.

For previous ice ages and why they happen, one of the best summaries of the sceince extent is Berger et al 2016: Interglacials of the last 800,000 years. This paper is a wealth of information, all presented in context. As such, it's no easy read, being 58 pages long (not counting supplemental data).

Concepts covered in the paper:

Ice Ages, Glacial and Interglacial phases (and the transitions into and out of them), Stadials and Interstadials
Forcings (precession, obliquity, eccentricity, insolation)
Isotopes (the ratios of water isotopes are an example of a strong temperature proxy; others exist)
Proxies (temperature, greenhouse gases, ice volume/sea level, marine sediments and corals, terrestrial/speleothems/cave data and ice core gases, etc.)
Marine Isotope Stages

Ice Age - A period where continental-sized ice sheets exist
Interglacials - loosely defined as the absence of Northern Hemisphere land-based ice sheets outside of Greenland and sea levels similar to those of today
Glacials - the time within the past 2 million+ years not found in an interglacial (lower sea levels and widespread continental ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere)
Stadials/Interstadials - generally referred to as much shorter intervals of time (still millennial-scale events themselves) found within glacial phases and within the transition from glacial to interglacial phases (stadials are colder periods and interstadials warmer; transitions between these can be very abrupt; a requirement for both is continental ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere outside of Greenland)
Terminations - the end of an icy glacial phase and the ensuing (relatively rapid) transition to an interglacial phase
Inceptions - the end of a warm interglacial and the slow slide into an icy glacial phase (slow compared to terminations)
Insolation - the warming from the sun received at the surface of the Earth, itself dependent upon the distance of the Earth from the sun, the time of year and the angle at which the sun's rays strike the Earth
Marine Isotope Stages (commonly referred to as MIS) - periods of warmth, as deduced by proxy records from marine sediments; MIS are numbered sequentially backwards from the present Holocene (MIS1) to earlier such.

As a general note, conditions that existed during previous glacial and interglacial phases are not identical, for physical reasons. So while glacial phases were colder, with more ice and lower sea levels than interglacials, the amounts of land-based ice, the amount the sea levels dropped or rose were not identical in different glacial phases, nor were they in different interglacial phases. Why? Because those conditions present then were based on the above mentioned parameters, which all were somewhat different. But what DID occur was the sum of the physics extent at those times.

My main takeaways:

1. Human actions, by increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, ensure that our climate will become warmer in the next century and remain warm for many millennia to come (pages 162 and 163 of the paper).

2. Terminations involve rapid, nonlinear, reactions of ice volume, CO2, and temperature to external astronomical forcing.

3. Glacial inception is a slower process involving a global sequence of changes.

4. Interglacials have been typically 10–30 thousand years long.

5. The slow response of ice sheets mean that sea level highstands (the period of maximum sea level rise experienced in an interglacial) may be attained later than the periods of peak forcing and peak warmth.

6. All ages referenced in the paper refer to 1950 as present.

7. Average dating uncertainties within the ice core records are several centuries to several millennia, +/-.

8. GHG concentrations can only be directly measured for the past 800,000 years from the ice core records; all others use different proxies to infer such or to infer temperatures/sea levels.

9. Due to ocean mixing times, a millennia is the minimum duration to measure the mean state of the global ocean.

10. The differences between the interglacials and today (and between the interglacials themselves) are very small between 60 degrees North and 60 degrees South; the differences are primarily found in the high latitudes/polar regions and expressed in high or low levels of land-based ice sheets (or the complete lack thereof).

11. The radiative forcing from GHGs found in interglacials with high levels of GHGs vs those interglacials with lower amounts (~280 ppm vs ~250 ppm for CO2) is about 1 W/m-2, driving a global temperature difference of about 1 degree C.

12. All interglacials were warm enough to lose most land-based ice sheets outside of Greenland in the Northern Hemisphere, with the warmest implying further ice sheet mass losses from Greenland and/or Antarctica.

13. There is strong evidence of higher sea levels (and lower levels of land-based ice sheet mass) during the previous interglacial (MIS 5) and MIS11.

14. The warmth of MIS5 is due to both higher levels of CO2 and insolation being high, whereas MIS11 (one of the warmest interglacials) was warm only because of high levels of CO2.

15. The duration of a termination of a glacial phase is 4,000-9,000 years, with CO2 jumping 50-100 ppm, more or less synchronously with Antarctic temperatures; CH4 makes its transitions within a few decades, toward the end of the CO2 rise (implying terrestrial emissions form peat bogs and wetlands).

16. Terminations generally only occur when a large ice volume/low sea level has been reached (meaning that a nonlinear tendency towards instability is present in the ice sheets).

17. The onset of the last 4 interglacials occurred during the period during which Northern Hemisphere daily summer insolation is rising.

18. The primary source for Co2 injection into the atmosphere during terminations is the deep oceans, with the primary locations for such being the Southern Ocean.

19. Stadial/interstadial seesawing can produce an "overshoot" in Antarctic temperatures, possibly contributing to complete collapses and disintegrations of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (MIS 5e, 9e and 11c), and a rapid pulse injection of CO2 released form the Southern Ocean.

20. No stadial/interstadials have occurred during interglacials, which are less variable than glacial phases; basically, the climate is pretty variable ordinarily, but that variability is suppressed during interglacials (during which variability is of centennial-to-millennial durations).

21. Holocene climate (the last 12,000 years) is preserved in proxy records of decadal scale temporal resolution. Such are also emerging for MIS5 and earlier interglacials.

22. There is some evidence of an anthropogenic contribution to both the warmth and higher CO2 levels of the Holocene (MIS1); i.e., the Ruddiman Hypothesis.

23. By 2100, global temperatures will exceed those during all of the Holocene (MIS1), under all emissions scenarios.

24. Summer temperatures appears to be the most important driver of glacial inception.

25. Glacial inception is unlikely to happen within the next approximate 50,000 years (when the next strong drop in Northern Hemisphere summer insolation occurs) if either atmospheric CO2 concentration remains above 300ppm or cumulative carbon emissions exceed 1,000 Pg C; only for an atmospheric CO2 content below the preindustrial level may a glaciation occur within the next 10,000 years.

Summary: Given the continued anthropogenic CO2 emissions, glacial inception is very unlikely to occur in the next 50,000 years, because the timescale for CO2 and temperature reduction toward unperturbed values in the absence of active removal is very long, and only weak precessional forcing occurs in the next two precessional cycles.

Berger et al 2016 - Interglacials of the last 800,000years (open access)

Tom Curtis at 03:00 AM on 8 July 2017

Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible

too @30, this graph from Hansen shows the relative change in forcing between the preindustrial values and the Last Glacial Maximum, and would be fairly representative for most glacial cycles:

As ubrew12 notes, the trigger for the change in ice sheet extent (the primary driver of albedo changes) and GHG concentrations are changes in orbital parameters that result in near zero change in overall forcing, but significant changes in particularly sensitive regions such as the North Atlantic.

michael sweet at 02:51 AM on 8 July 2017

Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter

Tom,

It is always interesting to see you find exactly the information that is being asked for. Haze asks why the BOM cannot exactly say how they record the data and you provide a link to their methods. Other readers should note that it is very time consuming to find these references and thank you for your diligence. Hopefully casual readers will realize that scientific methods are carefully documented and skeptic claims that changes are made without reasons are false.

It is impossible for the OBM to satisfy deniers like Marohassy and JoNova. They both know what the BOM does and they ignore those protocols for their own reasons.

ubrew12 at 02:42 AM on 8 July 2017

Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible

too@30 asks "what process causes these glacial/interglacial cycles?" Carbon Dioxide causes them. They are touched off by orbital changes, but since Earth is a sphere there's no 'side' it can point toward the Sun that should automatically cause more warming than any other 'side'. When the Southern hemisphere, which is mostly ocean, is pointed toward the Sun, it vents more CO2 from the Southern Ocean, and this causes the Northern Hemisphere to melt its ice sheets despite the fact that its getting less sunlight overall. SkepticalScience talks about this in 'myth 12: CO2 lags temperature'. Also, potholer54 did a good video explaining this. Google "potholer54 The "800 year lag" unravelled" to find it.

too at 00:51 AM on 8 July 2017

Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible

That article did prompt me to dig a little further. I found the second graph on this page rather interesting and was wondering what other peoples thoughts were on it.

http://climate4you.com/GlobalTemperatures.htm#An overview to get things into perspective

It's the Temp Anomaly (deg C) versus Years BP graphic.

Is the graph accurate and what process causes these glacial/interglacial cycles?

johnlhh at 23:51 PM on 7 July 2017

Increasing CO2 has little to no effect

The whole reason is that CO2 is the GHG that we can do something about. Even if not the main cause. The discussion is entertainment.

Tom Curtis at 22:22 PM on 7 July 2017

Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter

Haze @22, so you are suggesting that BOM should make statements such as:

"The standard scientific practice is to detect potential artificial jumps by comparing data from the station of interest (the candidate station) with data from other nearby stations where the suspected artificial jump is absent (reference stations). If there is an artificial jump in the data, this will be reflected in the candidate station warming or cooling relative to other surrounding stations.
This method of detection avoids falsely identifying actual climatic shifts and natural variability (such as that associated with the 1997–98 El Niño) as spurious artefacts in the data. The comparison with neighbours also serves the valuable purpose of largely rendering the test data free of trends."
(Full explanation here under question 5)

Or perhaps this on the cutoffs:

"3. Internal consistency of METAR and maximum/minimum temperature data
This check flagged data violating either of the following:
•Maximum temperature 4°C or more above the highest METAR temperature of the day, providing that there was no point during the day when there were more than 70 minutes between METAR temperatures.
•Maximum temperature 1°C or more below the highest METAR temperature of the day. (The tolerance on this test was used because many METAR temperatures, particularly manually observed ones, are only archived to the nearest whole degree.)
Equivalent criteria were used for daily minimum temperatures."
(From here, which has a link to it here. METARS are meteorological reports produced for aviation on a regular basis through the day.)

The fact is that BOM has taken the time to detail its methods, their justification, and the relative rate of errors in original observations (" The error rate in temperature observations is low – experience with operational quality control procedures at the Bureau of Meteorology in
recent years suggests that it is in the order of a few tenths of one per cent – but such a rate still equates to the potential for several tens of thousands of errors in a data set of the size of ACORN-SAT"). These detailed explanations are typically ignored by AGW "skeptics", as also by the general public. It is certainly not the practise of the general public, having read some bombshell "revelation" by Marohassy, to carefully read the BOM site conjuring up a twitter storm.

This, then, shows the fundamental problem of the idea that "perception is reality". The perception is artfully generated by people with an intention to distort the data (ie, Marohassy and JoNova etc). They are feeding an uncritical audience who lap it up because it feeds their prejudices. In that context, no amount of careful explanation by BOM will change the perception for that audience because they are not listening. Marohassy has been shown to be wrong on Australian temperature data repeatedly, but creates no perception problem for her because her audience does not care.

In that context, expecting BOM to operate on managing perceptions is an impossible task. What they need to do is concentrate on the science so that anybody who actually thinks critically about the issue can see they are doing a very good job. I mean, think about it. Consider the thousands of observations BOM makes every day, then ask yourself, how many imagined problems have those "skeptics" actually found. Even if all were real problems, the result is a very high accuracy rate.

The further solution is for people to stop giving others a pass on lazy, motivated reasoning. If somebody feeds you a Marohassy article, call them out for not fact checking, for the (often) implicit conspiracy theory they are accepting, and for their uncritical thinking. This should be particularly the case if the person involved is in a position of relative authority (journalist, MP, etc). There is no excuse for spreading ignorance and falsehoods, and that they are doing it second hand only makes them more foolish.

Haze at 20:53 PM on 7 July 2017

Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter

"So what do you propose that BoM do differently?" In this case to allay suspicion, state explicitly what the cut off points for automatic temperature adjustments are, how they are determined, what is the range around the cut off point and what form does human intervention take. Surely it wouldn't be too difficult to say (for example only) that automatic adjustments occur when a recorded temperature measurement is 1-2 C above the highest or lowest temperature rcorded at the particular station, that human intervention is based on assessment of several factors and giv e examples And as for appeasing deniers, politicians who are any good, spend considerable time and energy to sell their message to the public. If the BoM thinks that that is not their role, well, fair enough but spending, say, a day to put an explanation on their web site doesn't seem a huge ask to ensure corrections made are entirely undedrstandable and above all, transparent.

scaddenp at 20:30 PM on 7 July 2017

Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter

So what do you propose that BoM do differently? Not put QC controls on data because idiot deniers will misrepresent it? Guess what, BoM is actually trying to do their job with as much precision and care as budgets allow. Appeasing deniers that continue to invent, distort, misrepresent your actions because they are wedded to the idea that global warming is the invention of a global comspiracy of scientists is not their job.

Haze at 19:54 PM on 7 July 2017

Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter

You clearly are not au fait with the saying "perception is reality" The point I am trying, very badly it seems, to make is that to those who seize on anything that reinforces their prejudices, a report showing a BoM temperature was altered upward and then, after attention was drawn to the alteration, changed back to the original, reinforces their belief that temperatures are adjusted to fit the "Climate Change scam". And your comment "That is, unless your real "concern", as in the case of Jo Nova, is neither meteorology nor climate science but rather something else entirely" is a typical example of shooting the messenger. My "concern" as you put it, is, in fact, trying to show that actions by the BoM such as those reported by Jennifer Marohasy and picked up by Jo Nova are meat and drink to those who deny or who are sceptical about, the role of humans in Climate Change

jgnfld at 18:57 PM on 7 July 2017

Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter

@Haze...

Your "concerns" are noted.

As for your concern that this could have muddied the climatological record, did you know this station is not even part of the Australian Climate Observations Reference Network
– Surface Air Temperature (ACORN-SAT) dataset? You are arguing that a .4C difference in one value at one location that is not even used in climate analysis in the first place somehow introduces doubt in the whole science. That's a real denier stretch. Even if this station was part of the climate record this value if not edited would change the Australian monthly reported value about .0001C. Values are not reported to 4 decimal places as no one would make the claim the aggregated values are accurate to that level, so it would not affect the record at all.

Have you ever dealt with a high quality national- or global-sized database? Those who do have a huge number of real concerns all designed to keep the error rate as low as possible. See the various tabs at http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/acorn-sat/ for a detailed description of all these issues and how they are dealt with.

Their concerns are much different from those reporting on daily values in daily meteorological forecasts and reporting as is the case here where .4C at one time at one locale is absolutely trivial. That is, unless your real "concern", as in the case of Jo Nova, is neither meteorology nor climate science but rather something else entirely.

bozzza at 18:10 PM on 7 July 2017

Planet Hacks: Flying

@4,

Ger, may I ask how you come to that assertion?

<...feels a Richard Branson moment coming on!>

bozzza at 17:48 PM on 7 July 2017

Planet Hacks: Flying

Does that mean there is a business case for cheaper flights at night?

Haze at 16:10 PM on 7 July 2017

Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter

@ 17 Yes I did look at the web site and although I read "The large volume of data associated with the more frequent observations (such as one minute data) limits the quality control of these observations to automatic processes, whereas some human interaction is involved in quality controlling maximum and minimum temperature data" I didn't see any reference to what the human interaction was nor were minimum and maximum cut off points and their range for automatic temperature quality control mentioned. It is these to which I was referring. As I noted, BoM did change the temperature from the -10.0C cut off that had previously been used to -10.4C. The inference that could be drawn, particularly by those receptive to such inferences, is that the BoM would not have reversed the initial change had it not been noted by others

One Planet Only Forever at 15:25 PM on 7 July 2017

Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible

nigelj@27,

My concern is deeper than critical thinking. Why don't the supposedly advanced societies raise the vast majority of their members to be 'moved by rational consideration of distant motives'? Why do they fail to raise responsible considerate adults?

The best explanation I have is that those who want to get away with the easier/lazier, less responsible, less considerate behaviour would struggle to be winners in such a society.

And once a few of those types get away with their undeserved competitive advantage others are eager to follow the unacceptable examples.

As more people focus on believing whatever they want to excuse what they want to get away with the society devolves to the point where the callous greedy and the intolerant can actually win popularity contests by the easy appeals to tempt people to try to benefit form being greedier and less tolerant (far easier than getting people to be moved by the rational consideration of distant motives). And if things are allowed to degenerate far enough the most abusive and aggressive among them can win the Presidency and the unfit for Leadership likes of that 'Winner' can be appointed to leadership roles by that undeniably undeserving President.

And the fuel for all of this is the creation of unsustainable and undeserved perceptions of prosperity and opportunity by over-development of the economy in the wrong direction (unsustainable and damaging development).

A main demand seems to be that people will change as long as the change is an improvement on their current developed perception of prosperity and opportunity (or fond regional memories of the prosperity of past-times before an unsustainable way of living came to its inevitable and deserved end).

Trying to get people to understand climate science also requires many of them to understand the unacceptability and unsustainability of their perceptions of personal prosperity and opportunity. And it requires many wealthy powerful people to accept that they deserve to lose the economic gambles they made.

A critical thinker is not immune to the powerful temptation of personal Winning. In fact, a critical thinker can choose to behave less acceptably and be 'very smart' about how they behave unacceptably.

scaddenp at 15:05 PM on 7 July 2017

Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible

ubrew - models dont put ENSO/PDO etc into model at all. These are emergent features from running the physics. Its just that because they are essentially chaotic, each different model run produces a completely different wiggle.

I not sure about the subtely lost - the deniers writing up about perceived model/obs mismatches have to get the data in first place and publications very much emphasize what models predict and dont. If someone wont read your text, how are you supposed to communicate?

scaddenp at 14:56 PM on 7 July 2017

Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter

"What is the point is that the use of these filters and their set points have not been generally disclosed."

Hmm, so on the BOM page for Observation of Temperature we find under quality control:

"Once the data arrive at the Bureau they proceed through a number of quality control processes to detect errors, which includes checking for:

Consistency in the observations (e.g. checking that the maximum is not less than the minimum);
"Flat-lining", where values do not change for several days;

Values close to or outside the normal climatological range of values for the time of year (which may be real or incorrect).

(Emphasis mine). If putting this on their web page isn't "general disclosed", what more do you expect? Took me seconds to find, did you bother to look? This is more faux outrage from Nova/Marohasy/deniers because they dont know what they are talking about.

nigelj at 14:19 PM on 7 July 2017

Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible

Scaddnp @17, one of my obsessions is why people dont teach critical thinking better in schools. It's crazy that they don't. I agree maybe it's so people dont question religion too much.

Another additional reason might be so people dont question and analyse politicians or lawyers too cleverly, or authority in general. Never underestimate the power of lobby groups behind the scences influencing how schools do things. I suppose teachers might not like it either, but they have a duty to teach these skills in my view.

nigelj at 14:13 PM on 7 July 2017

Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible

Tom Curtis @23, yes we have so many lies by omission in sceptical climate articles it's frustrating. Thank's for the link to the NASA explanation for adjustments.

Regarding these temperature adjustments. The graph on page 11 in the Wallace research study appears to be land temperatures, im not sure it doesn't say.The adjustments adjust temperatures upwards anyway. The research is critical of this, but doesnt really say why in any detail, just vague accusations.

This link below shows a broader picture, with graphs showing adjustments for all three: land, ocean and combined. It also gives explanations on why they are made.

variable-variability.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/homogenization-adjustments-reduce-global-warming.html

It shows land adjusted upwards, oceans steeply downwards and the net result is land and ocean combined actually adjusted downwards slightly. Interesting that the Wallace study didn't bother to mention all that. You are obviously aware of all this, but its a great article with clear visuals, and may be of interest to us non experts.

This article is also interesting, and gives more detail on why adjustments are made

theconversation.com/why-scientists-adjust-temperature-records-and-how-you-can-too-36825

I cant see a problem. The links all provide good reasons for adjustments to compensate for various biases, and urban heat island effects, etc,etc. The fact that the land / ocean combined is actually downwards seems lost on the sceptics.

I hope Im interpreting it all right. But the graphs in my link are pretty clear and the sources legitimate.

Maybe mistakes are made in adjustments, but I would like to see proof and none is on offering. It seems unlikely that every adjustment would be an error, especially when you look at the checking process and how good it is. It seems unlikely there is a global conspiracy across countries to adjust things one way on land. This is in the region of nasa moon landings conspiracy nonsense. And if so why would they do the opposite for the oceans?

Like you say it doesn't remove the alleged "cycles" anyway.

Haze at 14:07 PM on 7 July 2017

Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter

Interesting that Jo Nova should be mentioned in posts 13 and 14. In actuality the original report came from Jennifer Marohasy and was picked up and put on line by Jo Nova. Personally, I prefer, whenever possible, to go to the original source rather than subsequent re-iterations as this approach removes the possibility of distortion on retelling. And @13 as for the "automatic recording of any value regardless of how nonsensical it is" it is obvious that, after challenge, the -10.4C was recorded and eventually pubished as such. This rather negates your point but raises the interesting questions as to why the filtering was reversed and why the -10.4C value was not entered in the CDO database.

And @14 your guess about filters on upper temperatures might well be right and my guess is Jo Nova has no problem with filters on low temperatures either. That really isn't the point. What is the point is that the use of these filters and their set points have not been generally disclosed. That they have not may introduce another element of distrust as to the veracity of the readings to those who are already distrustful of what they regard as manipulation of temperature data

Tom Curtis at 13:46 PM on 7 July 2017

Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter

Curiously the very low temperature on July 2 at Goulbourn Airport was not reflected by similarly low temperature at the nearby stations of Goulbourn TAFE College, Taralga Post Office, or Nerriga (the later two being very distinctly rural stations). Please note also that BOM preliminary (ie, non-audited) data for Goulbourn Airport show the -10.4 value, contrary to rocketeers claim. The curiously low values at the airport relative to nearby stations, however, suggest there may have been some factor causing spurious readings.

ubrew12 at 13:44 PM on 7 July 2017

Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible

scaddenp@24: none of that is a subtlety the deniers claim to understand. 'In the Eyes of the Law' (which are the same 'eyes' that would today be calling for a 'honest-broker' red team/blue team debate on climate change), the models didn't match reality, and therefore are wrong. You know, and I know (well, maybe I don't know, exactly), that a random-number-generator is probably used to determine if 'this year' is a La Nina/ a neutral/ or an El Nino. I presume that most models don't even include the PDO cycle, or knew that the ramp-up in Chinese and Indian coal usage, with associated aerosols covering the N Pacific and Indian Oceans, was imminent. But what is that saying, other than that they are friggin' models? Only a Lawyer is going to 'prosecute' a model for not matching the reality, because Only a Lawyer would think it should. And that is the actual problem. It doesn't matter that climate models should only match the 30-year trendline, because what matters is what the Koch-funded lawyers think. And that's where this battle must be fought, since lawyers, depending on who is paying, can argue themselves into thinking humans can breathe seawater. And if you disagree, and can't, then you must not be human.

scaddenp at 13:22 PM on 7 July 2017

Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter

My guess is that Jo Nova has no problem with limits on upper temperature filtering values the require checking.

jgnfld at 12:48 PM on 7 July 2017

Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter

@12...I guess you'd rather have automatic collecting instruments set to record any value regardless of how nonsensical it is without being further checked?

It's really not a conspiracy to set limits on data collection instruments such that suspect readings can be validated no matter how much Jo Nova thinks so.

scaddenp at 12:14 PM on 7 July 2017

Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible

ubrew - what model claim is to be able to predict is climate - ie 30 year weather averages and that they have skill in doing that. What they do not claim and have no skill at, is predicting decadal-level variation. Models have ESNO-like features but are incapable of predicting the size and timing of ENSO event even months out let alone years. On short term, ENSO dominates. On long term, you have climate and that is what models are attempting to predict. They should be evaluated only against the predictions for which they claim skill.

Climate Science Glossary

Term Lookup

Settings

Term Lookup

Settings

Latest Posts

Recent Comments