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KR at 00:12 AM on 1 May 2015The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
ryland - If your 15:41 comment is directed to me (that isn't clear), and I have been overly brusque, my apologies. However, I have frequently run across the assertion that it's impossible to measure temperature anomalies, sea level rise, and the like to the acccuracies stated in peer-reviewed literature, and that assertion is incorrect.
The math behind the Law of Large Numbers goes back to Jacob Bernoulli in 1713, and is based on the statistics of measurements and random errors. A sufficient number of measurements describes a probability function around the correct value, and the more measurements you make the tighter the bounds of that probability, the higher the accuracy. That accuracy rapidly becomes smaller than the precision of any individual measurement. Given 'n' measurements and a measurement error with a standard deviation of 'S', the uncertainty scales with the number of measures by:
uncertainty = S / n0.5
Again, the simple case of dice is illustrative. If you roll a die five times, you might get the numbers 2, 5, 3, 6, 5, with a mean value of 4.2. But as you roll the die over and over, the measured mean value (assuming, of course that the die isn't loaded) will converge towards the real average of 3.5. After 10000 rolls the uncertainty in the estimate of the mean will 100 times smaller than the standard deviation of a single die roll, far below the single digit resolution of the die faces.
If the die is loaded, the measured mean value will be different, providing a reasonable test of whether or not the die is fair.
Of course, the measurements might be biased high or low, which would be a systematic error. But additive systematic errors (offsets) are wholly cancelled out by looking at changes, at the anomalies. Systematic errors in scaling (such as XBT issues with speed of descent for ocean heat content) can be identified by proper calibration and cross comparison with other measures such as ARGO - and once found they can be corrected to produce a consistent and accurate record.
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DSL at 23:43 PM on 30 April 2015Inoculating against science denial
StraightTalkin, see figures 1, 2, and 3 here:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr6204a1.htm#Fig2
The time series is explained extremely well by the spread of vaccination programs and outbreaks in unvaccinated populations. If you accept the vaccination mechanism for these diseases, you should at least find the mechanism highly plausible for other diseases.
Good sanitation and nutrition will help prevent disease, but they won't cause the precipitous declines described by those graphs. Kids were washing their hands in the 1950s and 60s. Nation-wide (US) improvements in nutrition do not coincide with the precipitous declines described by those graphs. -
Climate sensitivity is low
Klapper - My apologies, S10 in Levitus et al is for the thermosteric component, while S1 shows the OHC (1022 J). Again, there is sufficient data to establish a long term trend against sampling uncertainties 0-2000m.
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Climate sensitivity is low
Klapper - The XBT data does go to (and through) 2000 meters. Yes, XBT data back to the 1950's is sparse below 700 meters, but it is still data, and uncertainties due to sparse sampling are considerably smaller than the ocean heat content trends over the time of observations.
Again, I would refer you to Levitus et al 2012, in particular Fig. 1 and the supplemental figure S10, which shows the 0-2000m 2-sigma uncertainties, variances, and trends for each ocean basin. We have enough data to establish long term OHC trends with some accuracy.
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PhilippeChantreau at 23:18 PM on 30 April 2015Inoculating against science denial
StraightTalkin, that is a pile of nonsense. I'm not interested in books, where anyone can say anything they want. Peer-reviewed scientific evidence leaves no doubt as to the efficacy of vaccines. The recent outbreak of measles in various places in the US where gullible people believe books or blond bimbos instead of their pediatrician have shown all we need to know about the effectiveness of vaccines.
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Jim Eager at 23:09 PM on 30 April 2015The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
ryland: "This suggests that factors other than human activity have an effect on global temperatures."
No one suggests that there aren't factors other than human activity that can affect global temperature. Except those setting up straw men to knock down, of course.
That said, other than an increase in solar intensity (the sole source of energy in) - which has not happened as it has in fact been the opposite recently, none of the internal variability factors that affect global temperature could have produced the monotonic warming over 35 years that we have observed. On the contrary, they all eventually revert to the mean.
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Jim Hunt at 22:56 PM on 30 April 2015There is no consensus
We seem to wandering rapidly off topic? Perhaps this is a more appropriate location to continue this conversation?
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Has-Arctic-sea-ice-recovered.htm -
CBDunkerson at 22:07 PM on 30 April 2015Inoculating against science denial
Straight Talkin, you are deluding yourself. Setting aside your fiction based dismissal of the effectiveness of the polio vaccine... smallpox? Diptheria? Rubella? Tetanus? Heck, measles?
If you really believe that vaccines haven't vastly reduced the number of infections from these and other diseases you just are not grounded in reality.
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Straight Talkin at 19:48 PM on 30 April 2015Inoculating against science denial
Although I agree with the general tenor of the article I challenge anyone to read 'Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and The Forgotten History' 2013 and still believe that vaccinations achieve any real benefits. Most things that they vaccinate for have very little risk in societies with good sanitation and nutrition. Everything that is vaccinated for was already well on the way to either being erradicated or had receded to a minor condition. Polio had become a very rare condition with a temporary upswing in the 50's, most probably due to DDT poisoning which has the same symtoms. After vaccinations for polio began many conditions that had similar symtoms were differentiated from polio whereas before they were often classified as polio. These conditions are not affected by polio vaccination. That is just the tip of the iceberg with regards to the level of misinformation about how 'vaccines safed us from all of these dangerous deseases'. Some of them actually make it morelikely to get it more severely after a few years. I consider myself a very objective person and the science on human created climate change is overwhelming. The science behind vaccinations effectiveness and safety is not.
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Klapper at 17:40 PM on 30 April 2015Climate sensitivity is low
@Tom Curtis #322:
"...That Klapper is still using it shows he is clinging to old data simply because it is convenient for his message..."
Absolutely not true (and an unecessary cheap shot to boot). I extracted the multi-run per model ensemble mean numbers from KNMI data explorer, CMIP5 rpc4.5 scenario. I also checked one individual run from the GISS EH2 model, same emissions scenario (although it makes no real difference between the scenarios in the 2005 to 2015 period).
I used the rlut, rsdt, and rsut variables (absolute values, not anomalies) to calculate my net. I'm looking into the difference between my Net TOA imbalance and Smith et al, but not tonight.
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Klapper at 17:29 PM on 30 April 2015Climate sensitivity is low
@KR #327:
The problem is the XBT data only go down to 700 m. If I had tried to use only 0-700 heat gain as my metric, I would be jumped on big time since I was "ignoring" the deeper ocean. The amount of sampling below 700 m prior to the ARGO network is extremely sparse, as noted in the Smith et al paper, particularly in the southern ocean.
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Klapper at 17:25 PM on 30 April 2015Climate sensitivity is low
@Rob Honeycutt #326:
"...assuming they have to be somehow correct..."
Oh I don't assume they have to be correct at all. You can take the Net observations (satellite) from the Smith paper and throw them in the trashcan. However, that's not true of the ARGO data. Our knowledge of ocean heat is much much better since 2005 or 2004 than pre 2005 or 2004.
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ryland at 15:41 PM on 30 April 2015The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
Thank you for your "Well duh!" . I trust that if you are participating in the MOOC your responses to students will be somewhat less denigrating even if you regard questions asked/comments made as infantile. Having been a university professor for a very long time, I can assure you students regard responses such as "Well duh!" very unfavourably indeed.
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jja at 13:59 PM on 30 April 2015Heartland takes climate foolishness to a Biblical level
What does the Heartland Institute and Satan, Prince of Darkness have in common. . .
Moderator Response:[PS] Very close to the line here.
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Climate sensitivity is low
Klapper - It is wholly unreasonable to discard ocean heat content data prior to 2005. While the XBT data has higher uncertainties than ARGO, and there have been several calibration issues with it that are recently resolved, the sampling back to the 1960's is more than sufficient to establish long term growth in ocean heat content. There simply isn't enough deviation in temperature anomalies over distance to reject long term warming of about 0.6C/decade even with sparse XBT sampling.
For details on this, including evaluating the standard deviation of anomalies against distance, see the Levitus et al 2012, specifically the "Appendix: Error Estimates of Objectively Analyzed Oceanographic Data", which speaks directly to this matter. The uncertainty bounds from Levitus et al are shown in Fig. 2 here. And they are certainly tight enough to establish warming.
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Rob Honeycutt at 12:53 PM on 30 April 2015Climate sensitivity is low
Klapper... The Smith etal paper that Tom links to bears reviewing, especially the summary and conclusions. This sums up some of the things I've been attempting to state with regards to the relationship between observations and models, where I've said that it's reasonable to conclude that the models are better representing the climate system and our observations are challenge our ability to "close the Earth's energy budget."
What I see you doing (or at least believe I see you doing) is getting stuck in down in the weeds of our observations, assuming they have to be somehow correct. I think that's a misdirected approach. As I've said several times in our conversation so far, there are lots of uncertainties in the empirical evidence and the models are there to contrain those uncertainties.
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Klapper at 12:04 PM on 30 April 2015Climate sensitivity is low
@Tom Curtis #322:
"...First, ...the TOA energy imbalance...from observations and models match closely except for the period of 1972-82"
Where would you get observations from 1972 for the TOA energy imbalance? For that matter exactly how accurate are the current observations for the TOA imbalance? There's an post over at the Guardian on the water vapour/climate change story by "MaxStavros" which claims the satellite numbers in raw form show an imbalance of 6.5W/m2 at the TOA. Since we know that is impossible the number has been adjusted down to something more believable. I can understand the instruments on the satellite are precise but not accurate, but that means the "observations" are not that reliable. I'm guessing the most reliable number is ocean heat, but that is true only since the ARGO era, from 2004 or 2005. From the NODC data, the warming rate of the oceans, corrected to global area, is about 0.5 W/m2. This is close to other estimates. The following example is ocean plus melting, plus land, but since most of the heat goes into the oceans we would expect the ocean only and total should be close (and they are).
Here's a quote from Jame Hansen et al 2012 at the NASA website: "We used other measurements to estimate the energy going into the deeper ocean, into the continents, and into melting of ice worldwide in the period 2005-2010. We found a total Earth energy imbalance of +0.58±0.15 W/m2 divided as shown in Fig. 1"
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_16/
Here's the problem with an energy imbalance of +0.58W/m2: the models show a much larger TOA energy imbalance. The GISS model shows +1.2W/m2, and the CMIP5 ensemble mean is +1.0 W/m2 for the 2000 to 2015 period.
Moderator Response:[JH] Link activated.
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Klapper at 11:38 AM on 30 April 2015Climate sensitivity is low
@Rob Honeycutt #321:
"... who are the experts you're asking?..."
You, and Tom Curtis and if not direct me to the peer-reviewed research that you know of. I admit I have in the past used Skeptical Science as a sounding board for ideas I have, since after a few back and forths on the numbers I can normally see if there is a concrete reason to reject the reason or not.
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Tom Dayton at 11:24 AM on 30 April 2015Climate sensitivity is low
Perhaps Tom Curtis might use this recent study to add to the "It's the Sun" post, a counter to the myth that the Earth's temperature still is catching up to the increased input from the Sun that happened before around 1960? The counter to the myth is that if the myth is true, energy imbalance should be decreasing since then, as the increased outgoing radiation due to the Earth's higher temperature increasing compensated for the now-stable input from the Sun. Pretty please?
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mercpl at 10:51 AM on 30 April 2015A revealing interview with top contrarian climate scientists
As a keen gardener I feel qualified to comment on the "CO2 makes thing grow" argument. Well of course it does, but then so does water, sunshine and fertilizer. The problem is, of course, getting all of those things in the right balance. If I put either too much or too little water on my vegetables, they will die. Too much fertilizer will burn the leaves of many plants. And too much sunshine will kill many shade loving plants.
The same goes for CO2, having more available isn't automatically better. The question is "Can they use it?". It's such a stupid and simplistic argument.
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John Hartz at 10:32 AM on 30 April 2015There's no empirical evidence
Recommended supplemental reading:
Is 2015 The Year Soil Becomes Climate Change’s Hottest Topic? by Natasha Geiling, Climate Progress, Apr 29, 2015
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Tom Curtis at 09:22 AM on 30 April 2015Climate sensitivity is low
Rob Honeycutt @321, there has been a recent paper by Smith et al (Feb, 2015) on "Earth's energy imbalance since 1960 in observations and CMIP5 models". For your discussion with Klapper, the key graphs are figs 3 a and b.
"Earth's energy imbalance. (a) Time series of 5 year running mean N and Ht (as Figure 2, second panel) for 21 CMIP5 coupled model simulations (N in green, Ht in orange, ensemble mean in thick lines) compared with Ht from MOSORA (red) and No (blue, see text). Black squares (diamonds) show where differences between MOSORA and No (CMIP5) are significant with 90% confidence. (b) N averaged over different periods in No (blue, with 1 sigma uncertainties) compared to the CMIP5 models (green, box showing the mean ±1 sigma and whiskers showing the range) and estimates from the IPCC fifth assessment (red) [Rhein et al., 2013, Box 3.1]. Numerical values are given in Table S3."
To interpret that, No is the net downward energy flux at the Top of the Atmosphere (ie, TOA energy imbalance) determined from observations, being the net difference between satellite observed outgoing long wave radiation and incomeing short wave radiation benchmarked against ocean heat content data from July 2005 to June 2010. Ht MOSORA is the ocean heat content from a Met Office reanalysis. That makes it semi-emperical, being emperical over those zones of the ocean of which we have observations, but using a computer model constrained to the emperical values over those zones where we have observations to fill in those zones in which we do not have observations. Ho and Ht CMIP5 are the multimodel mean equivalents.
Several things are worth noting in Fig 3a. First, No (ie the TOA energy imbalance) from observations and models match closely except for the period of 1972-82. They certainly match well over the last decade, although the observed No is slightly less than the modelled No in that period (of which more later). Second, TOA energy imbalance and OHC should match closely, and do for the models. There are, however, wide disparities between them in observations. That indicates there are more problems with the observations than there are with the model/observation comparison. (For what it is worth, the problems with observations probably relate to the limited region of the ocean in which OHC is directly observed, coupled with problems in the reanalysis.)
Fig 3b is much simpler, and simply shows a direct mean TOA energy imbalance comparison between models and observations over various periods. As you can see, the observations are statistically indistinguishable from the models for all periods. More importantly, "the missing 0.5W/m2 between models and reality" is seen to be a fiction. The actual difference over the most recent decade is 0.11 W/m^2. The 0.5 figure is based on old figures from CMIP 4 and far less accurate observations, and even then is exagerated by rounding. That Klapper is still using it shows he is clinging to old data simply because it is convenient for his message.
The paper also has some interesting information about the cause of the discrepancy between models and observations, encapsulated in Fig 4:
As you can see, the discrepancy between model and observed short wave radiation (ASR) is greater and more persistent than the discrepancy in longwave radiation (OLR) after 2000. Ergo the primary cause of the 0.11 W/m^2 discrepancy between models and observations is the reduced observed shortwave radiation compared to the models. At least part of the explanation of that is that the models cease to use historical data from about 2000 onwards, and hence do not include the short wave forcing from a series of recent volcanoes. If that forcing were included, the discrepancy between models and observations would be smaller, possibly non-existent.
(Note to Rob - I've spelt out in detail a number of points I know you know quite well for the benefit of Klapper and other potential readers.)
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mancan18 at 08:22 AM on 30 April 2015Inoculating against science denial
Very informative.
William and the trust of this article make a very good point. Knowledge does not come from being buried in massive amounts of information. However, if this knowledge accumulates over many years of serious disciplined study, it will ultimately lead to expertise and the ability to make coherent arguments within said discipline. However, knowledge also comes from being asked the right questions, engaging the mind and then exploring the logical consequences of the answers. At the end of the WW2, psycologists working for the Allies were engaged to de-program the Nazi ideology of the extremists in the Hitler Youth, who had been brought up in an environment where anti-Semitism, eugenics and militarism were the norm. That de-programming involved asking the right questions, allowing those whose views had been distorted, to engage their minds and explore the logical consequences of their firmly entrenched beliefs. Their de-programming did not come from being told that they were wrong and burying them in massive amounts of information. In fact, the non-threatening questioning techniques used, allowed the psycologists to de-program most of the young Nazi extremists in about a week.
On an alternative point, made elsewhere in the article and discussion, is that correlation does not necessarily imply causation, as has been already pointed out. But it can imply a reliability and consistency. However, it does not imply the validity of the relationship being correlated. Also, if there is no correlation then there can never be validity. In other words, validity implies correlation but correlation does not necessarily imply validity. That has to be done through logical argument using relevant knowledge and understanding.
As for CC deniers versus CC acceptors. It is unlikely that there will ever be 100% consensus on either side. It is an argument that has to be won in the probabilities. Deniers seem to want 100% certainty, but considering the chaotic phenomonen being studied that is very unlikely. On the other side, acceptors seem to want 100% acceptence and 0% denial. This again is unlikely considering human nature. The best you can hope for is, as John points out in this article, an inocculation point, a critical mass of acceptors, which leads to wide spread acceptence in the public consiousness which should then lead to support for positive political action. Only then, will denial be seen by the public as merely a fringe idea, to be banished into the realms of other questionable and unsubstantiated scientific theories. How you do that effectively in the time frame needed is, of course, the million dollar question.
I do believe that the acceptor side of the CC debate will eventually become widely accepted in the public mind. The basic science is well understood by scientists and will eventually penetrate through to the public. However, will it be in time to take the positive action needed to alleviate the worst aspects of AGW? One can only hope.
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Rob Honeycutt at 08:01 AM on 30 April 2015Climate sensitivity is low
Klapper: "....or where is the missing 0.5W/m2 between models and reality?"
Rob: "Really? Who've you asked about this one?"Klapper: "You for a start. However, while you've dismissed this as irrelevant, you're not very knowledgeable about greenhouse physics (your repetitive references to the irrelevent heat seeking missile examples says a lot), and I think this is time to take this argument over to Skeptical Science where there are more knowledgeable posters to discuss/argue the point."
Just to pick up the conversation with Klapper.
I don't know why you're asking me questions like this that are best answered by people who are experts in the field. All I can do is try to read the relevant research and give my non-professional opinion.
What I'm asking you is, on all these questions you're asking, which you seem to think are evidence of a failed theory of AGW, who are the experts you're asking? You say they're not answering these questions, but are you actually asking anyone who actually would best know the answer?
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Rob Honeycutt at 07:52 AM on 30 April 2015Climate sensitivity is low
Stub for Klapper to move conversation from Guardian to SkS where he believes there are more informed commenters than me.
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scaddenp at 07:50 AM on 30 April 2015The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
"This suggests that factors other than human activity have an effect on global temperatures".
Well duh! Someone suggesting that there arent other factors? However, England is talking about the yearly to decadal variations in surface temperature which are strongly dominated by internal variability due to an unevenly heated, water-covered planet. Climate is by definitition about the 30-year averages. The currently observed change in climate (ie the long term trend) since 19th C however is mostly if not all due to human activity.
Surface temperature is important because that is what we experience but it is also prone to high levels of variability. As the article points out, you can look at other metrics instead - OHC, sealevel, global glacial mass which have a much lower degree of internal variability.
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The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
ryland - In response to your second, and quite unrelated question, ""...can ocean temperatures be accurately measured to fractions of a degree or to 100 or so zeta joules?, the answer is simply Yes, we can.
This opinion that we cannot measure to the stated level of accuracy is a common misconception - from the Law of Large Numbers we find that as the number of observations increases the accuracy of the observations as a whole converges towards the real answer, regardless of the resolution of the individual measurements. Roll a sufficiently large number of dice, and the average fo the die values will converge towards 3.5, with precision increasing along with the number of dice rolled.
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The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
ryland - Attribution studies, looking at how much of recent climate change is due to us and how much is due to natural variations, is a very significant aspect of climate study. And multiple studies using different methods have come to the conclusions (see figure 2) that we are responsible for more than 100% of recent warming (with a small cooling influence from natural forcings).
See also an excellent overview of the current understanding of attribution at Realclimate, summarizing the information from IPCC AR5 - the best guess is that anthropogenic forcings are responsible for 110% of warming in the last half century, with only a 5% chance of the attribution being less than 50%. In other words, a 95% chance, given the evidence, that we are the dominant cause of recent warming.
To the extent we wish to minimize climate change, we have to address our responsibility for it.
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SkepticalinCanada at 05:13 AM on 30 April 2015The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
Sea "temperature" is not given in joules, ocean heat content is.
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ryland at 04:24 AM on 30 April 2015The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
Professor England says
"As a result, surface temperature is strongly affected by natural variability. Beyond year-to-year variability such as El Niño there are decade-to-decade changes, such as the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation, which has been shown to have a marked impact on global temperature rise.
In particular the negative phase of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation can lead to dramatically increased trade winds and fewer El Niños – as has been occurring since 2001. The modulation of these processes can significantly impact global average temperatures".
This suggests that factors other than human activity have an effect on global temperatures. But what percentage of global atmospheric temperature/ocean temperature change is due to natural factors and what to human activity? Without knowing this how can the extent of the appropriate action be taken to limit huan impact be determined with any degree of accuracy? And why is the sea temperature given in joules rather than in degrees C or conversely why is surface temperature given in degrees C rather than joules? And can ocean temperatures be accurately measured to fractions of a degree or to 100 or so zeta joules?
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Heartland takes climate foolishness to a Biblical level
"Policy group", i.e. lobbyists.
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Satellites show no warming in the troposphere
Tom Curtis - Thank you, I had not been aware of that code release.
Although from Connelley's report it seems to be rather horrifying (gah!) from a software perspective, with code changes and recompilation needed every month due to fixed arrays that have to be resized for each additional data point, huge chunks of code commented out or unreachable due to gotos and program logic, etc.
I suspect the most useful part of that information will be the algorithm description, which should permit cross-checking by other investigators, for example Po-Chedley and Fu (relevant 2012 article on UAH reconstructions here). I hope they'll put out an update that includes the V6 changes - the linked documentation refers to multi-view angle data, which has been abandoned in favor of multi-channel data for the computation of lower troposphere temperatures.
I'm not entirely certain how comparable the 5.6 and 6.0 UAH versions are as a result of those method changes.
I'm also curious to see if the new version of UAH temperatures has a significant effect on the Cowtan and Way temperature reconstruction - the changes in the UAH V6 Arctic temperature trend (by a factor of almost 2) is quite significant.
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Dennis at 01:56 AM on 30 April 2015Heartland takes climate foolishness to a Biblical level
As stated on their website, Heartland is a libertarian/free market economic policy group. Their ventures into religion as are far off-topic from their stated purpose as their ventures into scientific research.
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One Planet Only Forever at 23:34 PM on 29 April 2015Heartland takes climate foolishness to a Biblical level
It is important to not refer to the Heartland Institute as a 'religion based group'. They are simply one of the many groups created by the collective of people who want to be able to get away with their desired but unacceptable attitudes and activity. Some of the groups created by this collective of callous greedy and intolerant people try to disguise themselves as 'religious'. Others claim to be objective investigators of economic matters. Heartland does boh the religious and economic masked nonsense.
All such disguised groups make selective use and misrepresentation of information, including selective parts of religious texts, as the basis for their claims. They will try to claim things even though it is possible to better understand the objective truth that has recently developed about those things. And religious objective truth seekers will indeed justifiably tear apart and dismiss claims made by such people.
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Tom Curtis at 14:28 PM on 29 April 2015Satellites show no warming in the troposphere
KR @41, it has emerged lately that Spencer and Christy have revealed their code here (under Mean Layer Temperatures - UAH). William Connelley recently bloged about it. Apparently Eli mentioned it in 2013, but Spencer and Christy have certainly not advertised it.
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dcpetterson at 14:08 PM on 29 April 2015Satellites show no warming in the troposphere
Tom Curtis and KR ---
Thank you for the informative replies. Very revealing!
I was not aware that Christy and Spencer have never revealed their code or algorithms. That rather makes a mockery of scientific rigor, doesn't it? Or am I mistaken?
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Satellites show no warming in the troposphere
Tom Curtis - "...truly informed comment on UAH v6 will have to await release of the code and examination by experts..."
Of course, Christy and Spencer have never released their code or algorithms (unlike the other temperature records). Making such examination difficult in the extreme. External corrections have come from various groups reconstructing the UAH record without assistance from UAH, discuvering where they may have gone wrong, and then after some (often considerable) period of time the UAH group has updated their results.
It's been 26 years so far, and the UAH group has yet to release their methods. I don't expect that to change any time soon.
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Tom Curtis at 12:55 PM on 29 April 2015Satellites show no warming in the troposphere
dcpetterson @37, truly informed comment on UAH v6 will have to await release of the code and examination by experts (of which I am not one). Several of Spencer's graphs stood out to me, however, as allowing some form of preliminary assessment of the difference between v5.6 and v6.
Of these, the most important is that showing weights by altitude:
Because satellite data does not come from just one layer, satellite temperature products show the weighted average of temperature data from different altitudes. Because of their new method, UAH v6 gives a much lower weight to near surface temperatures and a higher weight to (cooling) lower stratosphere temperatures. This is partially balanced by an increased weight to warmer upper tropospheric temperatures (can any body say "upper tropospheric hotspot"). Spencer says this cools the record by " less than 0.01 C/decade". As the difference between v 5.6 and v 6 trends is 0.026 C/decade, that represents about a third of the difference just by changing the weighting profile.
Also of interest is the chart of trends by zone:
Ignoring the inappropriate use of a line chart rather than a bar chart, what stands out is the huge reduction in Arctic temperature trends. The other note worthy cool changes in the record are, in order of magnitude, the NH north of the Tropic of Cancer (NExtraT), the USA 49, the USA 48, and the NH. Clearly almost the entire change comes from high latitude NH temperatures. That is clearly inconsistent with surface temperature records by GISS, or DMI:
It also does not pass the smell test in relationship to changes in Arctic ice (sea ice, glaciers and ice sheets).
Finally comes the data excluded from the analysis:
Caption:
"Fig. 1. Local ascending node times for all satellites in our archive carrying MSU or AMSU temperature monitoring instruments. We do not use NOAA-17, Metop (failed AMSU7), NOAA-16 (excessive calibration drifts), NOAA-14 after July, 2001 (excessive calibration drift), or NOAA-9 after Feb. 1987 (failed MSU2)."
If you look at the excluded satellites, that means that from late 1998 to mid 2003, NOAA 14 was the only satellite from which Spencer and Christy would accept data. Curiously, a general warming trend of UAH v6 relative to UAH v5.6 reverses in 1998, and flattens out in 2005 (ie, the onset of NOAA 18). That is a noteworthy coincidence at least, and suggest their diurnal temperature correction has problems. Whether it does or not, of course, can only be answered by detailed analysis which I am unable to provide.
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Rolf Jander at 12:52 PM on 29 April 2015Heartland takes climate foolishness to a Biblical level
The pontifical Acadamy will tear heartlands "expert" a new one!
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william5331 at 10:09 AM on 29 April 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #15B
It is disquieting that while the NSISC reports figures like 14.54 square miles of ice - 4 significant figures - , Cryosat2 reports figures like 21000 cubic km of ice. What is happening with their satellite or their soft ware or with whoever is processing the data. By now we should have had three or so years of a graph for ice volume similar to the one that the NSIDC gives for ice extent and it should be to more significant figures. Even if the measurement is off, if it is off by a certain amount in a certain direction, we would have a trend which is arguably more important than the absolute value. Cryosat is said to be able to see through clouds so it should be able to give very good results during freeze and melting periods, clear and stomy weather and in summer and in winter. What is going on at the ESA.
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Tom Curtis at 10:08 AM on 29 April 2015Lomborg: a detailed citation analysis
ryland @52, out of interest I did a google scholar search for the author of the opinion piece in The Australian, Jennifer Oriel. It turns out that after a publication in 2005 based on her PhD thesis, she has published two further academic journals plus one for the organ of the Australian Union of Students. From those publications she has a google scholar h-index of 3 (strictly 2 counting purely academic journals alone). She has also published two book reviews and an article for the Institute of Public Affairs, the later suggesting (though not proving) a right wing ideological bias. Her academic affiliation was (and may still be) with Deakin University, who list her research output as zero.
I looked this up because her argument is based on the charge that academic pubication is a poor measure of research output because of a supposed left wing institutional bias in academic publication. Given that is the nature of her argument, the question arises what claim does she have to expertise in this area, and it turns out the answer is none. (That it also shows she has a personal interest in rejecting h-indexes, or publication records as a measure of research merit is a bonus.)
As to her argument I will make three points.
First, it is irrelevant. What the h-index measures is the ability and willingness to make your case to those who have the relevant expert knowledge to actually pick up your mistakes in argumentation, mistatements of data, etc. Anybody unwilling or unable to do that has no place heading an academic think tank at government expense. Indeed, the selection of such a person for that role shows the government is using public money to promote its private ideology - something event the IPA should be able to recognize as bad.
Second, her argument is evassive. There is substantial evidence that that Lomborg in addition to evading scrutiny by his peers, has indulged in a host of academic sins including cherry picking, framing of straw man opponents, misrepresenting data and employing different discount rates when making cost comparisons. That is, on the public record is is reasonable to suppose that his "research" is not only not presented to his peers, but that it would not survive such a presentation because it lacks academic merit. The low h-index is merely a symptom of this larger problem.
Third, her own google scholar record proves her wrong. Specifically, it shows that google scholar cheerfully includes not only peer reviewed publications, but publications from ideological think tanks such as the IPA. It includes 18,200 articles from Australia's most influential, but not peer reviewed journal Quadrant. Ergo, even if her self serving claims about academic publication are accepted as true, there are more than sufficient alternative means of publication with a designed right wing bias to establish a significant publication record, and more than sufficient authors of articles in those journal to establish a respectable h-index.
So, all in all, her argument has no merit.
I will not bother, however, submitting an opinion piece (or even a letter) to The Australian because long experience has shown they have an overwhelming bias against policy relevant opinions they do not like. So much so that on climate change their opinion pieces appear to represent an exact reversal of the AGW consensus, with around 3% of opinion pieces from those supporting the consensus, and 97% from those opposing it.
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william5331 at 09:59 AM on 29 April 2015Inoculating against science denial
I think one of the best ways to argue with the "faithful": that is to say someone that basis his opinion on faith rather than belief is simply to ask them penetrating questions. Don't ever, if you can help it, give them your opinion. Wethere there faith is Christianity or climate denial, they can tie themselves in knots and the questions remain like trogen horses in their minds. The problem is to start them thinking rather than just parroting the faith based line.
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bozzza at 07:50 AM on 29 April 2015There is no consensus
What happened circa 2007- 2008 I wonder?
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dcpetterson at 05:41 AM on 29 April 2015Satellites show no warming in the troposphere
Thank you, Michael. I know that the people at UAH have had a lot of trouble, and have a history of unreliable calculations, as this article shows. I suspect the contrarian crowd are about to seize on the latest UAH numbers, and I’m hoping to have some responses I can give.
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michael sweet at 05:15 AM on 29 April 2015Satellites show no warming in the troposphere
Spencer's post does not link to any peer reviewed paper. Will they submit it for review? The blog post is written in the style of a scientific paper. I wonder if they have allowed anyone to look over their new mothods to find errors or if they will wait for others to find them later. In the past other scientists have found major errors in UAH data processing. Most of those errors have caused the trend to be falsely low.
The surface record does not have a history of making major adjustments to the data like the atmosphere data do. It is more reliable.
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Ian Forrester at 05:06 AM on 29 April 2015Lomborg: a detailed citation analysis
Pluvial says:
who get upset at my lack of scientific acumen and jump to the conclusion that it makes me wrong.
You cannot make statements like that, which is completely against any published science, without at least citing a source for the comment. If you found this erroneous statement (and I'm certain it wasn't in any science paper) then at least let us know where you are getting your information from.
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CBDunkerson at 04:11 AM on 29 April 2015There is no consensus
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dcpetterson at 03:51 AM on 29 April 2015Satellites show no warming in the troposphere
UAH has apparently completed a reivew of their methods and data, and re-written their software. Their new calculations seem to indicate a lower warming trend than they had been reporting. I don't know enough math or physics to make sense of their recent claims. Can someone comment?
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John Hartz at 03:47 AM on 29 April 2015Heartland takes climate foolishness to a Biblical level
Over the past few days, I have been posting links to articles about the Pope's initiatives on the SkS Facebook page. This week's News Roundup will also include a number of articles on this topic.
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jenna at 03:07 AM on 29 April 2015Inoculating against science denial
Dr. Judith Curry has posted some thoughts on this subject at her blog if anyone is looking for a few laughs.
I won't post a link, those who follow the propaganda from 'that' side of the argument will know where to look.
Jen.
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