There was a remarkable press release 0n April 15 from the NCAR/UCAR Media Relations titled

“Missing" heat may affect future climate change

The article starts with the text

BOULDER - Current observational tools cannot account for roughly half of the heat that is believed to have built up on Earth in recent years, according to a “Perspectives” article in this week’s issue of Science. Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) warn in the new study that satellite sensors, ocean floats, and other instruments are inadequate to track this “missing” heat, which may be building up in the deep oceans or elsewhere in the climate system.

“The heat will come back to haunt us sooner or later,” says NCAR scientist Kevin Trenberth, the lead author. “The reprieve we’ve had from warming temperatures in the last few years will not continue. It is critical to track the build-up of energy in our climate system so we can understand what is happening and predict our future climate.”

Excerpts from the press release reads

“‘Either the satellite observations are incorrect, says Trenberth, or, more likely, large amounts of heat are penetrating to regions that are not adequately measured, such as the deepest parts of the oceans. Compounding the problem, Earth’s surface temperatures have largely leveled off in recent years. Yet melting glaciers and Arctic sea ice, along with rising sea levels, indicate that heat is continuing to have profound effects on the planet.”

“A percentage of the missing heat could be illusory, the result of imprecise measurements by satellites and surface sensors or incorrect processing of data from those sensors, the authors say. Until 2003, the measured heat increase was consistent with computer model expectations. But a new set of ocean monitors since then has shown a steady decrease in the rate of oceanic heating, even as the satellite-measured imbalance between incoming and outgoing energy continues to grow.”

Some of the missing heat appears to be going into the observed melting of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, as well as Arctic sea ice, the authors say.

Much of the missing heat may be in the ocean. Some heat increase can be detected between depths of 3,000 and 6,500 feet (about 1,000 to 2,000 meters), but more heat may be deeper still beyond the reach of ocean sensors.”

Trenberth’s [and co-author, NCAR scientist John Fasullo], however, are grasping for an explanation other than the actual real world implication of the absence of this heat. 

* First, if the heat was being sequestered deeper in the ocean (lower than about 700m), than we would have seen it transit through the upper ocean where the data coverage has been good since at least 2005. The other reservoirs where heat could be stored are closely monitored as well (e.g. continental ice) as well as being relatively small in comparison with the ocean.

*Second, the melting of glaciers and continental ice can be only a very small component of the heat change (e.g. see Table 1 in Levitus et al 2001 “Anthropogenic warming of Earth’s climate system”.  Science).
Thus, a large amount heat (measured as Joules) does not appear to be stored anywhere; it just is not there.

There is no “heat in the pipeline” [or “unrealized heat"] as I have discussed most recently in my post

Continued Misconception Of The Concept of Heating In The Pipeline In The Paper Vermeer and Rahmstorf 2009 Titled “Global Sea Level Linked To Global Temperature”

Kevin Trenberth and John Fasullo are not recognizing that the diagnosis of upper ocean heat content changes (with it large mass) makes in an effective integrator of long term radiative imbalances of the climate system as I discussed in my papers

Pielke Sr., R.A., 2008: A broader view of the role of humans in the climate system. Physics Today, 61, Vol. 11, 54-55 (PDF) and

Pielke Sr., R.A., 2003: Heat storage within the Earth system. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 84, 331-335 (PDF).

The assessment of ocean heat storage changes in Joules is a much more robust methodology to assess global warming than the use of small changes in the satellite diagnosis of radiative forcing from the satellites which have uncertainties of at least the same order.  Trenberth and Fasullo need to look more critically at the satellite data as well as propose how heat in Joules could be transported deep into the ocean without being seen.

UPDATE (April 16 2010) WITH RESPONSE BY KEVIN TRENBERTH PRESENTED WITH HIS PERMISSION

Dear Roger
I do not agree with your comments. We are well aware that there are well over a dozen estimates of ocean heat content and they are all different yet based on the same data. There are clearly problems in the analysis phase and I don’t believe any are correct. There is a nice analysis of ocean heat content down to 2000 m by von Schuckmann, K., F. Gaillard, and P.-Y. Le Traon 2009: Global hydrographic variability patterns during 2003–2008, /J. Geophys. Res.,/ *114*, C09007, doi:10.1029/2008JC005237. but even those estimates are likely conservative. The deep ocean is not well monitored and nor is the Arctic below sea ice. That said, there is a paper in press (embargoed) that performs an error analysis of ocean heat content.

Our article highlights the discrepancies that should be resolved with better data and analysis, and improved observations must play a key role.

Kevin

MY REPLY

Hi Kevin

Thank you for your response. I am aware of the debate on the quality of the ocean data, and have blogged on the von Schuckman et al paper. Since 2005, however, the data from 700m to the surface seems robust spatially (except under the arctic sea ice as you note). An example of the coming to agreement among the studies is Figure 2 in Leuliette, E. W., and L. Miller (2009), Closing the sea level rise budget with altimetry, Argo, and GRACE, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L04608, doi:10.1029/2008GL036010.

We both agree on the need for further data and better analyses. I have posted on this issue; e.g. see here.

However, I do not see how such large amounts of heat could have transited to depths below 700m since 2005 without being detected. I am very supportive, however, of your recognition that it is heat in Joules that we should be monitoring as a primary metric to monitor global warming. Our research has shown significant biases in the use of the global average surface temperature for this purpose; e.g.

Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, S. Foster, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S08, doi:10.1029/2006JD008229 (PDF)

Klotzbach, P.J., R.A. Pielke Sr., R.A. Pielke Jr., J.R. Christy, and R.T. McNider, 2009: An alternative explanation for differential temperature trends at the surface and in the lower troposphere. J. Geophys. Res., 114,
D21102, doi:10.1029/2009JD011841 (PDF)

Would you permit me to post your reply below along with my response on my weblog.

Best Regards

Roger

KEVIN’S FURTHER REPLY

Roger you may post my comments. The V.s paper shows quite a lot of heat below 700 m.
Kevin

MY FURTHER RESPONSE

Hi Kevin

Thanks! On the V.s et al paper, lets assume their values since 2005 deeper than 700m are correct [which I question since I agree with you on the data quality and coverage at the deeper depths]. However, if they are correct, how much of this heat explains the “missing” heat?  It would be useful (actually quite so) if you would provide what is the missing heat in Joules.

Roger

END OF UPDATE

See full post here.

"The Oxburgh report “ is a flimsy and embarrassing 5-pages.

They did not interview me (nor, to my knowledge, any other CRU critics or targets). The committee was announced on March 22 and their “report” is dated April 12 - three weeks end to end - less time than even the Parliamentary Committee. They took no evidence. Their list of references is 11 CRU papers, five on tree rings, six on CRUTEM. Notably missing from the “sample” are their 1000-year reconstructions: Jones et al 1998, Mann and Jones 2003, Jones and Mann 2004, etc.)

They did not discuss specifically discuss or report on any of the incidents of arbitrary adjustment ("bodging"), cherry picking and deletion of adverse data, mentioned in my submissions to the Science and Technology Committee and the Muir Russell Committee. I’ll report on these issues later in the day as they’ll take a little time to review. First, let’s observe Oxburgh’s trick to hide the “trick”.

Long before Climategate, Climate Audit readers knew that you had to watch the pea under the thimble whenever you’re dealing with the Team. This is true with Oxburgh of Globe International as well.

Oxburgh of Globe International alludes to the “trick..to hide the decline” in veiled terms as follows:

CRU publications repeatedly emphasize the discrepancy between instrumental and tree-based proxy reconstructions of temperature during the late 20th century, but presentations of this work by the IPCC and others have sometimes neglected to highlight this issue. While we find this regrettable, we could find no such fault with the peer-reviewed papers we examined.

Without specifically mentioning the famous “trick to hide the decline”, Oxburgh subsumes the “trick” as “regrettable” “neglect” by “IPCC and others”.

But watch the pea under Oxburgh’s thimble.

The Oxburgh Report regrettably neglected to highlight the fact that CRU scientists Briffa and Jones, together with Michael Mann, were the IPCC authors responsible for this “regrettable neglect” in the Third Assessment Report. They also regrettably neglected to report that CRU scientist Briffa was the IPCC author responsible for the corresponding section in AR4.

Oxburgh pretends that the fault lay with “IPCC and others”, but this pretence is itself a trick. CRU was up to its elbows in the relevant IPCC presentations that “regrettably” “neglected” to show the divergent data in their graphics.

It is also untrue that CRU authors, in their capacity as IPCC authors, “regrettably” “neglected” to show the divergent data in the IPCC graphics. The Climategate emails show that they did so intentionally - see for example IPCC and the Trick, which show awareness on the part of CRU scientists that showing the decline would “dilute the message” that IPCC wanted to send. The eventual IPCC figure, as reported here on a number of cases, gave a false rhetorical message of the veracity of the proxy reconstructions.

CA readers are also well aware that IPCC and Briffa were categorically asked by one AR4 reviewer (me) to disclose the divergent data. CRU’s Briffa refused, saying only that it would be “inappropriate” to show the data in the graphic. They didn’t “neglect” to show the divergent data from the Briffa reconstruction. This was a considered decision, carried out in AR4 despite pointed criticism.

Yes, the decline had been disclosed in the “peer reviewed literature”. Indeed, that was how I became aware of the trick - long before Climategate and why, as an AR4 peer reviewer, I asked that IPCC not use the trick once again in AR4.

IPCC presentations are how the climate science community speaks to the world. Climate scientists, including CRU scientists, have a far greater obligation of full, true and plain disclosure in IPCC reports than even the specialist literature. Oxburgh pretends that (partial) disclosure of adverse results by CRU in specialist literature is sufficient. It isn’t. There was a continuing obligation to disclose adverse results in IPCC graphics.

CRU scientists acted as IPCC authors. The complaint about the trick arose out of how CRU scientists carried out their duties as IPCC authors.

In this respect, the Oxburgh report is a feeble sleight-of-hand that in effect tries to make the public think that the “trick” was no more than “regrettable” “neglect” by the “IPCC and others” - nothing to do with CRU. In other words, Oxburgh is using a trick to hide the “trick”.

Trick me once, shame on you.

Update 9.40 am. The Daily Telegraph reports:

Professor Hand did say that “inappropriate methods” were used by a separate university to draw up the infamous “hockey stick” graph showing the rise in global temperatures over more than 1,000 years.

Uh, memo to Oxburgh. CRU produced its own hockey stick graphs in Jones et al 1998, Mann and Jones 2003, for example. For some reason, Oxburgh and his associates regrettably neglected to consider these articles. See post here. See story in the UK Telegraph on Climategate scientists criticized in the report for not using the best statistical tools here.

See Myron Ebell’s summary of the CRU Climategate Whitewash for Pajamas Media here.

Over the years, I have read dozens of books by eminent scientists, climatologists and meteorologists, that exposed the lies that support the greatest fraud ever perpetrated in the modern era, “global warming.” I have always wanted to read one that anyone could understand without having sufficient knowledge of the rather complex science involved.

I finally found that book and, would you believe it, the author is a friend! Every month I put aside time to talk with Brian Sussman, a former award-winning television meteorologist turned conservative talk show host on KSFO, San Francisco.

Like myself, Brian has long known that “global warming” is a bunch of horse hockey and, bless him, after the November 2009 revelations contained in several thousand leaked emails among the handful of perpetrators supplying the phony data to support “global warming”, Brian sat down and wrote “Climategate”, published by WND Books and the best $24.95 you will ever spend because it is the best book on the topic I have ever read.

Its official publication date is Earth Day, April 22.

To put it plainly, Brian got it right and he does so on every page as he walks the reader through what is often a complex topic. He does this by drawing on more than twenty years as a meteorologist and science reporter. In 2001, he shocked San Francisco viewers with a career change to become a conservative talk radio host.

What all the “global warming” fear-mongering is about is not climate science because “global warming” has nothing to do with climate and everything to do with a political agenda conjured up by Karl Marx and set in motion by Lenin and Stalin.

Brian initially takes the reader through the history of communism-socialism in order to put the environmental agenda in context. “It’s all a lie. The earth is not warming, and climate always changes - and they know it.”

“Global warming is the grandest of all tyrannical schemes”, says Brian and he has the credentials and knowledge to back it up. The first chapter of “Climategate” is worth the price of the book, but it just keeps getting better after that as he identifies the key players in a succession of environmental hoaxes that include, for example, the banning of DDT. Without this chemical miracle, an estimated 96 million people have needlessly died from malaria since 1973.

The most difficult thing to comprehend about the environmental movement is its fundamental hatred of mankind. Environmentalism is a spawn of communism. The book will help you make the connection between the millions who died under the regimes that embraced it and the tsunami of lies that maintains environmentalism to this day.

It is no accident that Earth Day, April 22, is also the birth date of Vladimir Lenin, the Marxist who led the Russian revolution that led to the establishment of communism in 1917. The Soviet Union, a nation Ronald Reagan called “the evil empire”, finally collapsed in 1991 from its inherent oppression and inability to produce real jobs, real goods, and a life free of an all-powerful state.

“Earth Day,” writes Brian, “has never been a celebration of God’s wonderful creation; instead it’s always been an assault on man.” That is why the central message of environmentalism is that man is a “cancer” on the earth and responsible for climate change. That is why its leading advocates want to reduce the earth’s population by any means possible.

Neither mankind, nor the bogyman of carbon dioxide has anything to do with climate change. Right now the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency is moving to regulate CO2 as “a pollutant” and it has the authority under the Clean Air Act as the result of one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in modern times.

Regulating CO2 would make about the same sense as regulating oxygen on the grounds that it produces rust or that it is a component of fire. Regulating CO2 is crazy!

“Climategate” is the best book to date about this massive fraud, those who have lined their pockets advancing it, and the political agenda behind it; masterminded out of the bowels of the United Nations. Order it! Read it! You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free!

See Alan’s post here. Climategate is available from the ICECAP Amazon store here.

The issue of the ClimateGate emails leaked or hacked from the East Anglia CRU is not that complicated. The emails are damning because anyone who reads them understands that they show petty, unprofessional, and probably criminal behaviour. We know the guys who wrote them are not people we’d want to buy cars from. They are hiding information. We don’t need a committee to state the obvious.

The emails show some of the leading players in climate science talking about tricks to “hide declines”, they boast about manipulating the peer review process, and “getting” rid of papers they didn’t like from the IPCC reports. It’s clear the data wasn’t going the way they hoped, yet they screwed the results every way they could to milk the “right” conclusion. Above all else, they feared freedom of information requests, and did everything they could to avoid providing their data. ClimateGate shows these people were not practising science, but advocacy and have been doing it for decades.

The House of Commons committee was surely supposed to be protecting the citizens of the UK from being deceived and defrauded, so what did they say when faced with obvious malpractice? Did they draw their swords and declare that honest taxpayers deserve better? Not at all. They whitewashed it.

“On the accusations relating to Professor Jones’s refusal to share raw data and computer codes, the Committee considers that his actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community but that those practices need to change.”

It’s the nice way of saying that Phil Jones really did hide the data, but everyone else in climate science fails the basic tenets of science too (so that’s alright then). Sure. Those practices need to “change”, not now, not tomorrow, but at some indeterminate time in the future. No rush boys. Yes, Jones should have his job back.

This is simple playground politics, not rocket science. Even preschoolers can come up with the Phil Jones defence: “But Mum. Everyone else does it.” The committee tries to defend Jones, and inadvertently damns the whole field of climate “science”.

From the mouth of Jones himself: “no reviewer has ever asked to see the data”. What exactly does the haloed peer review mean if you can just get a friend to “tick the box” without investigating the codes, data, adjustments and reasons? Remember that the next time you are unfortunate enough to read an IPCC report - they may have 2500 scientists on their books, but not one of them checked the original calculations for something as basic as global temperatures.

Indeed even today not one of them (not even Jones himself) could check them if they wanted too, because it’s been “lost”. The Met Centre says they’ll need three years to reassemble the data.

Independently Not Verified

So are the CRU’s graphs right or not? Who can say? Jones and the committee say that the graphs have been confirmed by other independent sources, which all sounds fine until you look closely. One independent source is the satellite records, but there weren’t too many satellites orbiting in 1850, and they don’t verify anything until 1979. And since 1979 there’s been an increasing divergence between the thermometers on the ground and those in the satellites. Those on the ground show more warming, and since it’s documented that they’re near airconditioning exhaust vents, concrete slabs, heated buildings and at airports, it seems likely that they’re in the wrong. Rather than verifying the surface records, satellites are suggesting the surface records exaggerate.

But what about the other “independent” verification? NASA has already admitted its data set is not as good as the flawed, bug ridden, missing one at the CRU in England, so that doesn’t look promising, and in any case, NASA doesn’t agree with NASA: as in, Hansen in 1981 shows a different global graph to Hansen 1987, or Hansen 2007. The twenty year period before satellites arrived has been adjusted and readjusted in nearly every decade since that period ended. Look at the red and blue lines in each of the graphs. These are global temperatures, and the seventies kept getting warmer for decades after the seventies! Again, the smell of advocacy.

This is supposed to be “verification”? Which graph independently confirms the CRU work? (Take your pick.) “Agreement” is not the same as verification. Just because two graphs agree doesn’t make them both right. In any case, these “independent” graphs are created from overlapping data sets, and by people who email each other their “tricks”.

(Enlarged here. Graph references 2,3,4)

More excuses that don’t wash

Phil Jones is “in charge” of one of the three big global temperature sets, and he admits he’s lost the raw data. All he can offer is “adjusted” data. He admits he wrote those damning emails. He makes excuses that a “trick” is a clever way of doing something, which it might be, but when it’s a clever way to “hide a decline” it’s obviously deceptive. (And deception when money is involved, as it certainly is here on a massive scale, is fraud.)

He claims that the decline they carefully hid was reported in other graphs on other papers, so it wasn’t really “hidden”, but it’s like admitting that the stock prospectus graph was made up of two different company results and the poor ones were “hidden” in the fine print of an annual report 5 years ago.

The truth is that the decline he “hid” was a decline in tree-ring-temperatures that matches what the surface temperature records used to say was real. It’s another clue that the adjustments that have been made are questionable. Or it’s a clue that tree-rings themselves might not be good thermometers. Either way, it’s potentially important.

Weasel Words

To cover up the devastating enormity of the East Anglia CRU’s unscientific failings, the committee report defends them with weasel words. All the data and methods ought to be available, instead, we’re supposed to settle for “most”.

The British Parliament apparently thinks “most” of an audit trail is OK. After all, no one would expect them to provide all their tax receipts come audit time, and no one would mind if “most” of the National Budget for the United Kingdom was online, (but the rest was lost).

Likewise, all the raw data ought to be available, but instead we’re supposed to settle for “adjusted” data. The committee asked for an assurance that none of the data had been destroyed, and seemed happy when the UAE dodged the question and replied: “none of the adjusted station data referred to in the emails that have been published has been destroyed.”

As it happens, before ClimateGate we already knew the raw data was unavailable. Phil Jones told Roger Pielke Jnr it was gone and he could not provide it. “Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites.”

If the committee really wanted to know the full story they would have made sure Steve McIntyre was there for the hearing. He was the man who the CRU team feared the most.

The bottom line

So what it boils down to is that the world is thinking of developing a two trillion dollar market to dramatically change your choices (and those of everyone you know). It will affect the food you buy, the holidays you take, the way you heat your house, the cost of your clothes… and their core reason for this is that climate models run by guys like Jones predict things will get warmer. Right now, we don’t even know if the temperature record fed into those models was accurate, and they’re asking us to go all the way with them, based on “trust” of guys who are essentially untrustworthy.

We’re supposed to “trust” that guys who wish harm on their opponents, who are hell-bent on finding support for their personal favourite hypothesis, who fear and thwart any effort to audit them, we’re supposed to believe these guys care about getting the research right?

If they were directors of a small publicly listed company that refused to give up “receipts” they would have been issued with a summons. But when the global economy hangs on their pronouncements, they don’t have to provide the data, we’ll forgive them, and they get to keep their jobs too. I say put them in front of a jury. You don’t need to be a scientist to spot rampantly suspicious behaviour. The public is not fooled, and that’s why the Big Scare Campaign is running aground, and why pre-ordained whitewash committee reports won’t change anyone’s mind.  See post and add comments here.

Listen to her archived interview on blog radio here.

The prophets of global warming continue to lament as their carefully crafted yarn unravels before their eyes. Ross McKitrick, an intrepid economics professor from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, has tugged apart the thin mathematical threads that once held together the story of climate change.

Recent attempts to silence Mr. McKitrick illuminate the extent to which the alarmists have abandoned proper scientific method in their pursuit of political goals.

Mr. McKitrick has spent the past two years attempting to publish a scientific paper that documents a fundamental error in the 2007 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. This U.N. document serves as the sole authority upon which the Environmental Protection Agency based its December “endangerment finding” that will allow unelected bureaucrats to impose cap-and-trade-style regulations without a vote of Congress. The cost to the public in higher gas and energy prices will run in the billions.

One might think that the scientific community would be extra diligent in double-checking the conclusions of a report carrying such weighty real-world consequences. In fact, the opposite happened. Seven scientific journals circled the wagons to block publication of Mr. McKitrick’s explosive findings.

The IPCC report argued that temperatures rose one degree Celsius over the course of a century as a direct result of man-made carbon-dioxide emissions. This tiny change in temperature was calculated through the use of an “adjusted” set of global surface-temperature readings. Mr. McKitrick found that factors unrelated to global climate contaminated this data set, resulting in a higher temperature reading. He showed a statistically significant correlation between the change in temperature readings and socioeconomic indicators. It makes sense, for example, that replacing trees and forests with concrete and glass skyscrapers might contribute to the .01 degree annual increase in local temperature readings. This “urban heat island” effect would not be present in readings taken outside the asphalt jungle.

Scientific journals evaluate arguments of this sort using a peer-review process by which purportedly impartial experts in the relevant field verify the paper’s accuracy and suitability for publication. By addressing issues raised by reviewers, researchers are able to present an improved and refined final product. In Mr. McKitrick’s case, the process appears to have been abused to stifle dissent.

The leading journals Science and Nature both rejected the paper as too specialized and lacking in novelty. The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society did not respond. Reasons given for refusing the paper in other outlets frequently contradicted one another.

One of the famous leaked e-mails from the former head of the Climatic Research Unit at Britain’s University of East Anglia sheds light on what really happens behind the scenes. “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report,” professor Phil Jones wrote in reference to a 2004 journal article by Mr. McKitrick. “Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

Mr. McKitrick’s views were indeed excluded from the IPCC report, but his paper will now be published in a forthcoming edition of Statistics, Politics and Policy. One of that journal’s editors told The Washington Times that the submission was treated as “fairly routine.” That is to say, they treated it as scientists should.

The soundness of a statistical analysis does not change simply because the numbers point to a truth inconvenient for those seeking to manipulate science to advance political policy. Thanks to the exposure of East Anglia’s unscientific method, the public can peer behind the curtains and see that the emperors of warming have no clothes. See story here.

See the SPPI expanded version here.
See today’s excellent post on The Perils of Peer Review by the Scientific Alliance here. See a recent post on The Polluted Peer Review Process by Pat Michaels here.