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Wol at 10:08 AM on 29 January 2015Kevin Cowtan Debunks Christopher Booker's Temperature Conspiracy Theory
@4:
That's exactly what it looks like. Should be fairly simple to check with the Paraguayan met office.
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Stephen Baines at 08:55 AM on 29 January 2015Does breathing contribute to CO2 buildup in the atmosphere?
FreeDubay @ 50
Fossil fuels are from plants, its true, but that carbon was removed from the air hundreds of millions of years before humans ever walked the earth. So releasing that carbon isn't neutral from the perspective of human history or civilization. In addition, burning all of the fossil fuels would return us to a truly ancient pre-human atmospheric chemistry, with all its attendant consequences for climate, in only a only century or two, whereas it took many millions of years to stash away that carbon in the earth in the first place.
The CO2 we exhale, on the other hand, was usually taken from the atmosphere in the last year or two. The uptake of that carbon from the air by food crops contributes fractionally to the regular annual fluctuations in atmospheric CO2. Over scales longer than a year, the net effect on climate of carbon dioxide uptake by food crops and exhalation of CO2 by people is essentially zero.
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citizen42 at 08:35 AM on 29 January 2015Kevin Cowtan Debunks Christopher Booker's Temperature Conspiracy Theory
Over on notalotofpeopleknowthat (Booker's source), Paul has posted another exposé titled All Of Paraguay’s Temperature Record Has Been Tampered With, looking deeper at all the sites in Paraguay.
In the comments someone called Eliza says (among other things):
"My father set up/fixed to specified standrads [sic] all the stevensons boxes stations for the WMO in Paraguay during the 70’s (1964-1976)."
Which is the period around that first drop in the raw data for several of the Paraguay stations. They don't seem to have noticed the connection over there.
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FreeDubay at 08:25 AM on 29 January 2015Does breathing contribute to CO2 buildup in the atmosphere?
Using your reasoning about humans being neutral in terms of CO2. Following that logic the burning of fossil fuels can be deemed neutral as well. Oil and coal are derived from plants. They just happen to be sequestered in the ground. Its interesting though once taken out of the ground they still don't add to the increase in CO2 as they are in a liquid or solid state. Not unitl they are "burned" do they release CO2. I wonder if that is the same for humans, whether you should be buried or sequestered?
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Tom Curtis at 08:16 AM on 29 January 2015Global warming made 2014 a record hot year – in animated graphics
Sorry, forgot to add a footnote. HadCRUT4 has been updated to a new version, but because the data with uncertainties was not currently accessible, I used the data for version 4.3.0.0 in my analysis.
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Tom Curtis at 08:13 AM on 29 January 2015Global warming made 2014 a record hot year – in animated graphics
ryland @various, my argument is not with the Met Office. It is with the pseudo-skeptics who created a furror when (according to them) GISS announced that 2014 was a record year without qualification. The simple fact is that 2014 is the record year in the GISSTEMP temperature index. As it happens, the GISS announcement actually discussed the uncertainty in greater detail than has the HadCRUT4 announcement. They just did not use the form of words that the pseudoskeptics wanted. What is worse about some pseudoskeptics is that when knowledge of the table shown @36 became available, they treated it as a subsequent announcement, as a backdown, and as proof that 2014 was not the record year. Each of those claims was false, and the first two grossly misrepresent the communications from NASA GISS.
Beyond the political agenda of those pseudoskeptics, what is going on here is that people are confused by what is meant by "record x". The record x, for whatever x is, is simply the highest value in the record. The Guiness Book of Records, for example, does not claim that the car that currently holds the land speed record was the fastest ever car. It simply claims that it is has the fastest speed entered in the records. Other cars may have been faster, but been excluded because of the presence of a strong tail wind, the failure to run the test in both directions within a given time limit, or the simple absence of an official observer. They do not even take note of potential error margins in observations which are certainly there, although I do not claim they are significant. Likewise when reporting on the fastest delivery in cricket, nobody worries about the uncertainties in measurement. Indeed, when record cold winters for the US are announced, the pseudoskeptics definitely do not draw attention to uncertainties (which are even more of a factor). They just accept face value, or distort the figures.
So, 2014 is the warmest year in the GISS record, and the warmest year in the HadCRUT4 record, and the warmest year in the NOAA record, and the warmest year in the BEST record. That does not mean it was in fact warmer than 2010, because the measurement of GMST is uncertain - but it is the record year for each of those temperature indices.
Further, distracting from that fact by saying it may not have been the record year is pure obfustication. With HadCRUT4 (having now actually run the numbers), if you allow that obfustication there have been just 3 record years (1850 (by definition), 1990, and 1998), rather than the 15 record years that have actually occurred - 9 of them since 1983 (inclusive); and 4 of them since 1998 (inclusive). (Full list at end of post.) Further, the obfustication means that, if we accept the distorted terminology, the most recent "record year" is 1998, even though 1998 has a very low probability of being the actual hottest year in the last 150 years according to HadCRUT4, (and is "statistically excluded" according to BEST).
1850
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Chris G at 07:50 AM on 29 January 2015Climate researcher Bart Strengers wins wager with climate sceptic Hans Labohm
God, if only the stakes were really only a good bottle of wine.
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Rob Honeycutt at 06:55 AM on 29 January 2015Global warming made 2014 a record hot year – in animated graphics
The way climate deniers are currently objecting to this latest record hot year, yes, that's what they're going to do. You'd have to have an extreme record to have the uncertainty fall above the uncertainty range of all previous years.
And, 4C+ is a reference to business-as-usual emissions path leading to a 4C or better rise in surface temperatures over pre-industrial levels by 2100.
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ryland at 06:33 AM on 29 January 2015Global warming made 2014 a record hot year – in animated graphics
I really don't think that will happen as I'm sure at some stage the global temperature of a particular year will be statistically different from the temperature in other years. In any event how important is it for a particular year to be called the "hottest ever"? Apologies but I don't know what you mean by surface temps rise to 4C+.
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gws at 06:23 AM on 29 January 2015Kevin Cowtan Debunks Christopher Booker's Temperature Conspiracy Theory
AFAIK, most changes in data records are either due to changes in sensor type (like going from mercury in glass to electronic sensors) or changes in hour of recording (including how to calculate daily averages). In a particular country, this (a break in teh record) was then probably due to a nationwide switch made by the national body in charge of those measurements. Have to ask our South American readers here to chime in ...
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Rob Honeycutt at 06:08 AM on 29 January 2015Global warming made 2014 a record hot year – in animated graphics
Think it through, though. The way this is all suddenly being re-defined means that there will never be any new record warm years. There will likely always be some statistical likelihood (however small) that another year was actually warmer.
So, now climate deniers can go all the way through the rest of the century stating that no year has been the warmest year, even as surface temps rise to 4C+.
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ryland at 05:40 AM on 29 January 2015Global warming made 2014 a record hot year – in animated graphics
Thanks Rob Honeycutt for actually addressing what te UK Met Office is saying. Yes I agree they are being cautious but, as I'm sure you know, when submitting a paper for publication, to ehance your chances with the reviewers it is usually better to err on the side of caution. From the new post on SkS the bet wasn't scrubbed as the stats weren't conclusive shows that the two bettors didn't really care and fair enough too in the context of the bet. That said however I do think that accepting the constraints on conclusions placed by adhering to the results of statistical analysis is preferable to disregarding the stats
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Rob Honeycutt at 05:10 AM on 29 January 2015Global warming made 2014 a record hot year – in animated graphics
ryland... You may take note that the Met Office was the last to report the 2014 record. They waited (as far as I can tell) to see what responses came out from the other data sets.
In my opinion, the Met Office is taking an overly cautious approach to their statement. The NASA/NOAA folks took the extra step to point out the relative likelihood of each year being a record. In both sets 2014 stands out as being the most likely to be the warmest year. The Met Office soft peddled and merely stated that 2014 is "one of the warmest years" whereas, per Tom's comments above, it's quite clear that 2014 is by far the most likely to be the warmest.
The only thing you're managing to point out is the fact that the Met Office has been more restrained in their definition. That's fine if that's how they want to approach the issue.
The biggest point remains that 2014 was a ENSO neutral year and still managed to statistically beat all the other previous El Nino forced record years.
That... is huge!!
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ryland at 04:37 AM on 29 January 2015Global warming made 2014 a record hot year – in animated graphics
As I tried to make plain in my response to Tom Curtis, I personally, do not have any particular stance on the record heat or otherwise of 2014. The text in my first post (@44) was taken directly from the UK Met Office. Your comments should be directed to the UK Met Office, possibly to Dr Colin Morice, as it is their words to which you take exception. All I did, mistakenly it seems, was to draw attention to a statement by a very reputable institution full of "reality based people" that was somewhat at odds with the title of this particular topic. Why do you and others not address what the Met Office is saying?
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PhilippeChantreau at 03:42 AM on 29 January 2015Global warming made 2014 a record hot year – in animated graphics
Ryland's way of arguing is common and unfortunately typical of a certain mindset. Looking at temperatures in recent years, it is painfully obvious that there is no pause in the warming, and never was. This argument was only made possible by the 1998 whopper year and every drop of nonsense has been squeezed out of it by fake skpetics. Because the trend is still there, every 5 years the argument becomes more stupid. Now they turn the stupid argument inside out and squeeze it the other way to get more out of it. Inevitably, there will be a year in the near future that will be statistically significant way above 1998, but not 2014, so we'll have more quibbling about words and ridiculous hair splitting, just like here. All because the reality based people are actually being honest and describing facts accurately. You can't win with dishonest people. Even if you do, they'll say you didn't. Wrestling in the mud with pigs...
Every record year makes me more disgusted with the reality of this "debate."
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shoyemore at 02:31 AM on 29 January 2015Climate researcher Bart Strengers wins wager with climate sceptic Hans Labohm
Bart, congratulations, not only on the win, but for turning the incident on an excellent scientific commentary.
I am sure the wine did not taste bad, either!
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DSL at 00:38 AM on 29 January 2015Global warming made 2014 a record hot year – in animated graphics
ryland, 2014 has the highest probability of being the warmest year.
This complaint reminds me of the denier Paul Merrifield (aka "mememine") who has filled the internet with the claim that since the IPCC was not using the language of certainty, then they weren't really sure at all. They were just guessing. As long as the public understands uncertainty in the crudest way, the denier program is in control.Let's hope that GMST remains in that complainable gray area where the uncertainty is greater than the difference between years. Unless it goes down, of course, and that doesn't seem probable . . .
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ryland at 20:33 PM on 28 January 2015Global warming made 2014 a record hot year – in animated graphics
Tom Curtis I'm not making any decisions at all about whether or not 2014 was or was not the hottest year but the UK Met Office certainly is. The scientists there are making the point that as the uncertainties in the estimates of global temperatures are greater than the difference in temperatures between years then it is not possible to say definitively that 2014 was the hottest year ever. Are they wrong in this?
With regard to your point "because it is not statistically certain that it was the hotest, you are simply declaring that no year is the record year" again I'm not declaring anything but again, the UK Met Office certainly is. Their comment "Nominally this ranks 2014 as the joint warmest year in the record, tied with 2010, but the uncertainty ranges mean it's not possible to definitively say which of several recent years was the warmest" Are they wrong to make this statement?
And as for making a big deal of it surely the Met Office are to be commended for making a statement that is correct based on the statistical analysis of their results. Should they have ignored that analysis?
And as these statements are coming from the UK Met Office itself your comment they are "signs of desperation by people whose message is coming unstuck in the face of new data" is perhaps not entirely appropriate.
Moderator Response:[Rob P] - Whether or not 2014 was the warmest year recorded in the Hadley surface temperature data is not the really the most interesting aspect. The main takeaway is that global surface warming is still continuing. This is very obvious in the Hadley data:
And of course 93% of global warming actually goes into the oceans, and the oceans are soaking up heat faster than before. The image below (from the IPCC AR5) stops at 2010, but ocean warming in the last two years has been rather spectacular - equivalent to 12 Hiroshima bombs per second in 2013 and 7 Hiroshima bombs per second in 2014.
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Tom Curtis at 18:50 PM on 28 January 2015Global warming made 2014 a record hot year – in animated graphics
ryland @44, the HadCRUT4 dataset shows 2014 to have had a temperature anomaly of 0.563 C (final column). That beats 2010 (0.555 C), 2005 (0.543 C), 1998 (0.535 C) and 2003 (0.507 C). As a matter of curiousity, 2014 is the only one of those top five years not to fall on an El Nino year. So, clearly 2014 is the record year in the HadCRUT4 dataset. It is possible that the actual global temperature was warmer in another year, but the probability of being the record year is stronger for 2014 than for any other year. Therefore, while that it is not statistically certain that 2014 was the warmest should be noted simply on the basis that we should always note uncertainties in observations; it is not relevant. Making a big deal about it shows signs of desperation by people whose message is coming unstuck in the face of new data.
I note that if you (or anybody else) decide that 2014 is not the record year because it is not statistically certain that it was the hotest, you are simply declaring that no year is the record year, for the same was true of 1998, 2005, and 2010 when they set the records; and the same will almost certainly be true for every new record into the future. That should show how empty is the denier rhetoric on this point.
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ryland at 15:59 PM on 28 January 2015Global warming made 2014 a record hot year – in animated graphics
From the UK Met Office release on Jan 26th It may be that 2014 was not in fact the warmest ever. The Met Office stated:
The HadCRUT4 dataset (compiled by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit) shows last year was 0.56C (±0.1C*) above the long-term (1961-1990) average.
Nominally this ranks 2014 as the joint warmest year in the record, tied with 2010, but the uncertainty ranges mean it's not possible to definitively say which of several recent years was the warmest.
Colin Morice, a climate monitoring scientist at the Met Office, said: "Uncertainties in the estimates of global temperature are larger than the differences between the warmest years. This limits what we can say about rankings of individual years.
"We can say with confidence that 2014 is one of ten warmest years in the series and that it adds to the set of near-record temperatures we have seen over the last two decades."
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bjchip at 10:01 AM on 28 January 2015Kevin Cowtan Debunks Christopher Booker's Temperature Conspiracy Theory
Thanks for this. It is excellent and a serious help for those of us who confront the crazies.
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miffedmax at 06:18 AM on 28 January 2015Kevin Cowtan Debunks Christopher Booker's Temperature Conspiracy Theory
Thank you, Kevin. That video was so elegantly simple even I understood it!
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Tom Dayton at 05:12 AM on 28 January 2015Satellites show no warming in the troposphere
Geert Jan van Oldenborgh has an excellent guest post on Climate Lab Book: "Is there a pause in the temperature of the lower troposphere?"
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jja at 04:42 AM on 28 January 2015Climate change could impact the poor much more than previously thought
And this is how a Yaley Skull and Bonesman established an economic analysis pattern that would justify the use of outrageously high multi-generational discout rates. By asserting the kind of unlimited growth projections that were previously found only with the "Chicago Boys" who were advocating total economic dismantling of Chile under the ruthless dictator Pinochet.
If (when?) we reach 3.5 C of globally averaged warming, there will be only a small shadow of the former global human civilization since mass migrations, sea level rise and wars, famines and plagues have destroyed most of the global infrastructure.
Were these real impacts incorporated in the models, the reduction in global output would justify a negative discount rate. But you aren't going to get that from Yale. -
Rob Honeycutt at 02:36 AM on 28 January 2015The Most Terrifying Papers I Read Last Year
Not to pile on here... but I believe PaxInterra's response is more an emotional one than a fact based one. If KXL were not important to the extraction rate of the tar sands, then they really wouldn't care. As it is, investors are pulling out of tar sands projects because it's looking less profitable. If we can get carbon taxes installed, then those FF sources of energy become less competitive and tar sands become even less attractive.
There are lots of reasons to have a positive outlook on how things are going to play out in the coming 10-15 years. Taking a defeatist attitude only plays into the hands of the FF industry.
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The Most Terrifying Papers I Read Last Year
PaxInterra - We certainly need to engage in adaptation. But there's no reason to throw up our hands and say that mitigation is useless. Every bit of mitigation, of avoiding additional emissions, reduces needed adaptation down the line. And it's considerably cheaper to invest in mitigation now than that additional adaptation later.
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CBDunkerson at 23:46 PM on 27 January 2015The Most Terrifying Papers I Read Last Year
Paxinterra wrote: "I have very little faith that we will even begin that process [adapting to climate change] until people are dying on a large scale from famine, drought and conflict."
The process of adapting to anthropogenic climate change began decades ago... people have been "dying on a large scale from famine, drought, and conflict" for thousands of years now. How many of the recent deaths from those (and other) causes are due to climate change is a matter of some debate, but certainly it has already been a factor.
When New York city finally put in better flooding control mechanisms after Hurricane Sandy... that was adapting to climate change. The flooding from the storm wouldn't have been nearly as bad if not for the sea level rise from climate change. Without that extensive flooding damage the city wouldn't have (and for decades hadn't) bothered to act. The same cycle can be seen all around the world. Humans adapt to their environment... it's automatic. We could do so better if we more often anticipated future changes and prepared for them in advance, but the idea that we haven't begun adapting to climate change is inaccurate.
As to your suggestion that we should not worry about reducing CO2 emissions because all of the tar sands oil and other fossil fuels will inevitably be burned eventually... if that is true then "there are going to be a lot fewer of us" no matter what attempts we make at adaptation. Burning all the known remaining 'easily accessible' oil and/or coal, let alone any further supplies made available by future technology and exploration would wipe out most of the human race. Fortunately, it seems fairly clear that fossil fuels are already on the way out... with no 'world economies collapsing' as a result.
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Kevin C at 20:40 PM on 27 January 2015Kevin Cowtan Debunks Christopher Booker's Temperature Conspiracy Theory
Thanks Dana. That was an interesting exercise. Here are a few comments:
- I only picked one point from Booker's article. He makes a load of arguments, most of which have been debunked many times before. The Paraguay one was new, interesting, and rather more complex than the rest.
- We still don't know why there appear to be synchronized breaks across the Paraguay stations. Berkeley list station moves in 1971 for Puerto Casado and San Juan, but we don't have a documented reason for the rest. That's an interesting question for further research.
- Trying to do this kind of work at the speed of the news cycle is hard. The video would be much better if we worked on it for a week. But it would be far less relevant.
- One of the things we really hope to acheive with the MOOC is to equip anyone to be able to test claims like this for themselves.
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michael sweet at 20:35 PM on 27 January 2015The Most Terrifying Papers I Read Last Year
Paxinterra,
When there are two rules for getting out of a hole that you have dug.
1) Do everything you can to get out of the hole.
2) Stop digging deeper.
If the oil sands and other alternate fossil fuels are all dug up it will be a disaster. We have to stop digging and take all measures to deal with the problem. Today, in the developed countries, adaptation is not too bad to deal with. We focus on stopping digging to prevent the problem from growing out of control.
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PaxInterra at 15:11 PM on 27 January 2015The Most Terrifying Papers I Read Last Year
I wish people would stop talking about how we need to do this and that to stop global warming. We have already done enough that global warming is a given. It will happen. If we stopped every emission today, we will still have a warming climate for the next 25 to 50 years. In that regard, it really doesn't make that much difference who or what caused it. What we need is to start thinking about how to cope with it. Shifting crops, drought, insect infestations, disease migration, lost animal habitat and extinctions, population migrations, weather pattern adaptation, and so on.
If we stopped trying to place blame and simply look at the trends, perhaps we could begin the process of adapting. Unfortunately, I have very little faith that we will even begin that process until people are dying on a large scale from famine, drought and conflict.
There is roughtly $15.7 trillion of sellable oil in central Canada's tar sands. If the XL pipeline is not built, then they will resort to trucks or trains. There is no way that the owners, investors and the government will agree to leave $15.7 trillion in the ground just because of the damage it will do to the atmosphere. Money is power and money has absolute control over the US government and msot of the Canadian government. Even if Saudia Arabia is successful in its current effort to undersell oil so that the tar sands are not profitable now, there will come a time in the future when it will be again and eventually they will sell all 178 billion bbls of tar sand oil. The money involved is so large that world economies would collapse if we suddenly stopped using oil.
So let's stop talking about who or why or reductions and get on with simple survival. If we don't, there are going to be a lot fewer of us to continue the arguing.
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billthefrog at 10:29 AM on 27 January 2015The oceans are warming so fast, they keep breaking scientists' charts
jja #46
The full text of the additional paper from Berkeley Lab to which you refer can be found here.
This has caused some predictable responses from the ostrich brigade along the lines of "new study proves climate models are crap, blah, blah, blah". What does not seem to have penetrated various skulls is that this paper basically suggests that Arctic Amplification could be even worse than otherwise expected.
The Berkeley paper strongly suggests that emissivity values used in radiative transfer calculations may be incorrect under certain conditions - e.g. at high latitudes and/or altitudes, and low water vapour content. In particular, this would seem to be of importance when linked to the presence or absence of sea ice.
Surface properties apparently can greatly affect emissivity in certain spectral regions. The paper states that, in the far infrared region of the spectrum, a frozen surface can radiate more effectively than open water. So, when sea ice disappears, the amount of far infrared lost to space would appear to be less than previously expected.
The Ice/Albedo Effect is a well known example of a positive feedback mechanism. Less well known perhaps, is the fact that it also has a built-in negative feedback: temperatures over open water do not plummet the way they can over ice, and this in turn allows easier transfer of heat energy from the ocean into the atmosphere which, in turn, is lost to space. (There is a very strong analogy with ENSO: when el Nino conditions prevail, although this leads to a surface warming, it also enables heat energy to escape from the ocean into space.) If this negative feedback is diminished, then the overall heating effect is enhanced.
(NB The authors actually characterise this as a positive feedback, rather than as a reduced negative feedback as I described it. To be honest, I can't be bothered arguing semantics.)
If the Berkeley paper stands the test of time, we could quickly see a deleterious effect on Arctic winter sea ice area/extent, which will inevitably feed back into summer values. Once we start regularly getting significantly reduced sea ice levels by mid May (or thereabouts) then it's game over for the September minimum.
With truly delecious irony - that is obviously lost on some - Berkeley use a climate model to do the donkey work for this paper.
Cheers Bill F
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John Hartz at 05:37 AM on 27 January 2015Climate change could impact the poor much more than previously thought
As documented in the following article, the leaders of the U.S. and India have just agreed upon a plan to simultaneously fighting warming and fighting poverty.
Obama & Modi Link Zero Carbon and Zero Extreme Poverty by John H. Cushman Jr., InsideClimate News, Jan 26, 2015
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jja at 04:37 AM on 27 January 2015The oceans are warming so fast, they keep breaking scientists' charts
http://postimg.org/image/iv4cty0df/
This is the top of atmosphere energy imbalance data sheet I came up with.
by the way, another paper published about the same time as the Caldeira paper above showed that the far-infrared response of sea ice is vastly different than that of open ocean. This calculus was not included in the Caldeira & Cvijanovic modelling. -
jja at 04:31 AM on 27 January 2015The oceans are warming so fast, they keep breaking scientists' charts
dr2chase, BtF,
The paper refers to the arctic only.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI-D-14-00042.1
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Far North Wind at 04:09 AM on 27 January 20152015 SkS Weekly Digest #4
Here's a actuarial article
http://conservationmagazine.org/2014/07/science-of-risk/
Moderator Response:[PS] Fixed link. Please note that comments policy discourages posting of links without comment.
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dr2chase at 04:01 AM on 27 January 2015The oceans are warming so fast, they keep breaking scientists' charts
billthefrog #43 - the reference to June 1 blew right past me so indeed this might be about Arctic only, but is that the paper, or jja#38's interpretation of the same?
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PluviAL at 01:59 AM on 27 January 2015The Most Terrifying Papers I Read Last Year
I guestimate we will settle at about 4 meters for the first century of this challenge. Just for reference I roughly calculated what 1% of insolation retention would do to the cryosphere, if all that additional heat went there. I was guessing centuries, or millennia for 20 meters of sea level rise. If my back of the envelope is right, its only about 14 years of such retention rate. What is the maximum that increased CO2 and methane and other GWG can cause? We don't know. Fortunately, just like Pluvinergy can resolve our energy issues, Pluvicopia, not published becasue of patent processes, can resolve 20 meters of sea level rise in 500 years. These technologies are geoengineering of the good sort, but it is totaly upon us to decide what this means. If we convert the deserts into gardens, what kind of moral statement is that making? Etc.
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PluviAL at 01:50 AM on 27 January 2015The Most Terrifying Papers I Read Last Year
sgbotsford, good argument on logical response, although I do feel terrified when I consider the implication of the coming changes for my kids and grandkids. When 40% of civilization's infrastructure is threatened or destroyed, and when reconstruction will worsen the case, it will be terrifying. In net, it may be good for Canadians, but for the rest of the world it is bad. Terrifying is appropriate if one can see beyond one's little life, which this problem requires.
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billthefrog at 01:05 AM on 27 January 2015The oceans are warming so fast, they keep breaking scientists' charts
dr2chase #42
In your first point, you correctly state that total loss of sea ice in the Antarctic is not going to be happening any time soon. (Centuries? Millenia?)
However, jja#38 did actually write...
"FYI Caldeira & Cvijanovic (2014) showed that the removal of all sea ice produced a global forcing factor of 3 watts per meter squared. If we attain an ice free condition by June 1st we will experience a significant portion of this forcing."
Although not explicitly stated as such, the reference to June 1st (my underlining) makes it implicit that the Northern Hemisphere is being discussed. (There being not much of an Ice/Albedo effect in the SH that close to the boreal summer solstice.) :)
As regards your second remark, whilst it is certainly in no way contentious, I don't know where it is being directed. I did a "Find on Page" for "1000" and for "much", but I couldn't find what you were referring to.
(On the other, as my wife never tires of reminding me, I did once fail to find a pair of tracksuit bottoms in an otherwise empty sports bag!)
Cheers Bill F
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CBDunkerson at 00:05 AM on 27 January 2015Just when did humans first start affecting the climate?
william @8, in addition to Tom's comments about rate of change, it should be noted that "a new ice age" due to low atmospheric CO2 levels is off the table unless we develop some technology which rapidly decreases the CO2 content of the atmosphere and then use it to excess. Take a look at natural CO2 shifts over the past few million years;
Repeatedly, CO2 spikes up ~100 ppm over the course of 10 to 20 thousand years and then slowly declines back down ~100 ppm over a period of 90 thousand years or so. We've taken the atmospheric CO2 level from ~280 ppm to ~400 ppm over the course of the last 150 years or so. That 120 ppm increase, let alone however much further we drive it up before we get emissions under control, will take tens of thousands of years to reverse naturally. If we could somehow stop fossil fuel emissions today we'd be getting back to ~280 ppm right around the time the next 'interglacial' warming period / CO2 increase was set to start.
Human technology and society today is radically different from that of a thousand years ago. What human technology and society will be like more than 100,000 years in the future is inconceivable. Ergo, we can pretty much ignore the idea of 'the next ice age' (i.e. glaciation). If it ever happens it will be in a world so different from our own that we would have no basis on which to plan contingencies.
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dr2chase at 23:45 PM on 26 January 2015The oceans are warming so fast, they keep breaking scientists' charts
Two remarks --
Regarding "removal of all sea ice" (38/jja), isn't that unlikely (for a while) in the Southern Hemisphere because of the supply of more easily frozen fresh water from the Antarctic glaciers? The ice itself could be a factor as glaciers thin and slide into the ocean.
And as far as the 1 part in 1000, "that's not much, is it?", if the average depth of the oceans were increased by .1%, sea levels would be 12 feet higher.
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Tom Curtis at 23:31 PM on 26 January 2015Temp record is unreliable
MEJ, a new resource on the Paraguay data is now available. It really makes Booker (who it directly addresses), and by extension Homewood, look like fools. The video is by SkS's Kevin Cowtan (another expert on global tempertues, but one I rarely disagree with in other areas).
(H/t to Victor Venema)
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MA Rodger at 21:32 PM on 26 January 2015The oceans are warming so fast, they keep breaking scientists' charts
One Planet Only Forever @39,
Most of that is fine; perhaps the description is a little awkward in places. The CO2 emissions from land use (mainly chopping down and burning trees) was the largest source of CO2 emissions until after 1900 and wasn't until the 1970s that fossil fuel emissions can begin to be described as "dominant."
The long term proportion of our emissions of CO2 in the atmosphere will drop to about 20% (or more if we emit way past 1,000GtC) as the oceans will continue to absorb with deep water cycling to the surface and that 20%+ level is reached in about 1000 years. Archer et al (2009) (PDF here) is the standard reference.
While the sun does emit infra-red, there is almost no overlap between the incoming & outgoing radiation spectra. So it would be confusing mentioning the solar infra-red which may infer there is an overlap. Insolation is higher frequency that out going which is all low-frequency infra-red.
And the resulting ΔOHC from a warmed climate won't see deep temperatures rising the same amount as surface temperatures. You have to ask yourself why the oceans are so cold. The surface is warm (on average) and the rocks below are molten if you go deep enough. So why are the oceans so cold? The answer is the cold salty waters from the poles is the densest water on the planet and that sinks into the ocean depths where it is well insulated from the surface and the Earth's core. Until the poles are free from ice, the very deep ocean will remain roughly at the temperature of freezing salt water.
The actual path of global temperature when CO2 emissions stop will depend on how quickly the emissions are ended. And remember there are other GHGs being emitted.
The IPCC RPC2.6 shows one such pathway with climatic forcing peaking by 2040. Models show the resulting temperatures remain flat to 2100 although there is a drop in succeeding centuries as this graphic from Meehl et al (2012) shows.
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MEJ at 15:17 PM on 26 January 2015Temp record is unreliable
Thanks 'RH' I will shorten the links next time (A noob mistake)
Thanks so much scaddenp, Rob and Tom. Tonnes of info there for me to study up on. You have me going in the right direction now. Like most folk I don't have the depth of knowledge many of you people do so it is pretty easy for a seasoned campainer like Homeswood to 'punk' me.
So glad I have SkS as backup.
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Tom Curtis at 12:55 PM on 26 January 2015Temp record is unreliable
MEJ @332, in addition to my prior comment, ATTP shows the BEST unadjusted record for Puerto Casado, with dubious data noted, and break points shown:
You will note that the break points coincide with known station moves. As they are known station moves, Homewood is arguing without evidence that those station moves had no effect on the temperature, whereas comparing the station temperature record with the regional average clearly shows that there were effects (as we would expect).
We can also see the break point adjusted data:
Steve Mosher, one of the BEST team comments:
"The first step we take is to find all those stations that are duplicates. And the duplicate test involves fuzzy logic. So you look at the locations and see how close they are, you look at the name and see how close they are.. and then we look at the first differences in data to see. how close they are.
There is second pass that looks for data similarily first, cause sometimes you get stations that have exactly the same data, but due to metadata issue the metadata is way wrong. These are really rare. I can’t recall one off the top of my head.
This particular record has multiple sources and multiple locations that differ very slightly. When the location differs we ‘slice’ the record. In other words the record is NOT adjusted for a station move, rather its computed as three different stations.
Slicing has ZERO effect if there was in fact
A) no real station move
B) a station move that doesnt result in a change in tempThat is something most people dont get. That is, if you “over slice” or split a record that should not be split the effect is zero. In this case we have three difference locations given for a station with the same name. So we treat it (mathematically) as if it is three different stations. If there was a move and the move had an effect on temperature, then splitting the record will allow us to fit the final surface treating those segments as independent. Again, if the metadata was wrong and there was no move or a move that didnt effect things, then there is no adjustment to make."
"Actually one of the largest adjustments is the ‘bucket correction’, which aims to remove a systematic cold bias earlier in the SST record which arose from sea temperatures being measured in buckets hauled up to the deck, rather than at engine intakes as more recent measurements are. The bucket correction reduces the apparent warming over the 20th Century – it’s very well-known, but Mr Booker seems to have either not heard of it, or somehow forgot to mention it….!"
(As fair notice, I disagree with Betts and Mosher on a number of topics. On the area of temperature records, however, they are undoubted experts and I would not disagree with them on that record unless I was aware of other similar experts with whom I not only agreed, but agreed for the same reasons those experts give for their views. Recognition of their expertise does not, however, mean I agree that they are right, or even sensible in some cases, in other topics outside of that expertise.)
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Tom Curtis at 12:14 PM on 26 January 2015Temp record is unreliable
MEJ @332:
1) You cannot have been shown to be a total fraud unless it has been shown that you have knowingly used false information yourself. It may (though very doubtfully) have been shown that you also are decieved, which is an entirely different matter.
2) Paul Homewood is definitely pulling a swifty when he compares with NCDC data. The reason is that the NCDC uses a 5ox5o grid, equivalent to 555 x 555 km at the equator. That is a much lower resolution than NASA GISS's 250 x 250 km grid shown at the same location as the normal 1200 km radius he shows above.
Here is the NASA 250 km grid equivalent to the graph he shows:
And here is the GISS map and NCDC map side by side, for northern South America:
Note that for the GISS 250 km grid, every gridpoint over land has at least one temperature station in its bounds. Yet clearly the GISS 250 km grid covers much more of northern South America than does the equivalent lower resolution, NCDC map. It follows that GISS uses more temperature stations in South America than does the NCDC, and that using the NCDC map entirely misrepresents the basis of the GISS data.
This may be partially just ignorance from Homewood. It is well known that NCDC uses only the GHCN for land only data, while GISS also uses the GHCN. GISS, however, uses additional stations to those found in the GHCN (something not commonly known, but which should be known by anybody commenting on global temperatures). However, given the existence of the GISS 250 km product, it should have been used regardless, if only so that readers knew that this was information GISS presented publicly, on a website, as easily accessible as the 1200 km version. Homewood creates an impression that this is something GISS does not want us to know, whereas it is something they actively publish.
2) The use of the 1200 km version is based on known properties of temperature anomaly change over distance. This information was published in peer reviewed papers, as was the method whereby GISS uses it in constructing their temperature data. If Homewood wanted to make an honest critique, he would have cited those papers and stated his objections to the reasoning therein. That he does not leaves the impression he has not even thought about the topic, let alone considered the relevant empirical data. Indeed, as a mater of scientific reasoning, as he does not discuss, that must be our presumption. So, we have from GISS cogent, evidence based reasons for their methods - and from Homewood, an argument from personal incredulity, and nothing else.
3) The reasons for, and method of adjustment of temperatures are also heavilly discusses in the scientific literature, and based on detailed examination of evidence, including direct comparison between temperature readings for different thermometer types, thermometers at different altitudes etc. Again, in response to that literature, Homewood argues by, first, ignoring it so that he readers do not know that there is an objective basis for the adjustments; and second presenting an argument from personal incredulity and nothing else.
As it happens, I have seen similar arguments presented regarding data from New Zealand and Australian stations. These arguments have been much better presented, actually relying on more than personal incredulity. On examination, however, in every case that I have examined, they have been wrong. In most cases it has been trivial to show that they are wrong.
I do not have the ready access to the relevant data in South America that I have in Australia and New Zealand, so I will not repeat the excercise. I know from that prior experience, however, that Homewood's argument from personal incredulity is almost certainly wrong. I will go one step further than that. The Berkeley Earth project (BEST) uses an even larger data base than GISS, an entirely different method and does not adjust the raw data. Rather, where there is a clear break in the temperature record for a particular station, they treat it as a separate station and let things fall were they will. That method is well justified in that "stations" are often composites of records from differnt instruments, locations and site conditions which vary over time. In one case from NZ, the site moved to several different places in the city, from buildings to garden settings, with changes in altitude in 10s (and in one case I remember which may not be the same city, 100s of meters), and in one mover from an east facing coast (with typically warm offshore waters) to a west facing coast (with typically cool offshore waters). Every such move would have changed the temperatures read, and treating it all as just one continuous record without adjustment would be a farce.
In any event, here is BEST's temperature record for Paraguay:
So, overall Homewood makes his case, for the most part, by simply not addressing the relevant evidence. Indeed, some of the crucial evidence he keeps carefully out of sight. As is standard for "skeptics", he is very careful to make his arguments to the uninformed who will not be able to pick up the flaws in the argument, rather than submitting it to peer review by experts who will be able to pick out those flaws. I think, in so doing, he fairly judges the quality of his argument.
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Rob Honeycutt at 11:48 AM on 26 January 2015Temp record is unreliable
Oh! I see. He's also comparing a GISS image to a NOAA image.
Talk about apples and oranges all around.
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Rob Honeycutt at 11:47 AM on 26 January 2015Temp record is unreliable
MEJ... I can already pick out a big mistake that Homewood makes in his first two figures. Top figure is relative to 1951-1980. Second one (of his creation through the GISS site) is relative to 1981-2010.
Why would he use different base periods? We have two choices. 1) Stupidity, and 2) Deceipt.
I decided to try to check which.
When you go to the data page at the GISS website where you generate these maps you get a lot of clues. First, the default base period presented in 1951-1980. You have to change it to get a different base period.
When you switch it back to the 1951-1980 base period you get this:
But even when we select his exact parameters, we still don't get the same image he presents. So, I don't know where he's getting that figure.
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MEJ at 11:37 AM on 26 January 2015Temp record is unreliable
Thanks 'Rob P' I have poured over these graphs to see where he has manipulated the data but with my limited understanding I just need a Scientific person to go through it for me and explain it. A couple of things make me suspicious No link on the NOAA/NCDC Global Map showing 'no data' areas and his raw data graph has a diferent ID code 30886086000(4) and he is showing graphed Temperature rather than Anomaly and comparing the two?
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MEJ at 11:24 AM on 26 January 2015Temp record is unreliable
Hi scaddenp Booker in The Telegraph is simply quoting Homewood's article on his 'notallpeopleknowthat' website as are all the usual suspects. Skeptics don't see it as junk at all. To them Homewood is the actual truth and his graphs demonstrate to them how all the Science is just fabricated rubbish. You can sit back and laugh but the Scientific community will lose the debate. Thanks for that link I just couldn't find ANY redress on the issue. If you Google to try and get a Scientific view the denialists have that absolutely locked up page after page. Science simply doesn't get a look in.
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