Frozen in Time
Jun 20, 2009
NOAA a Major Outlier Again

By Joseph D’Aleo

NOAA proclaimed May 2009 to be the 4th warmest for the globe in 130 years of record keeping. Meanwhile NASA UAH MSU satellite assessment showed it was the 15th coldest May in the 31 years of its record. This divergence is not new and has been growing. Just a year ago, NOAA proclaimed June 2008 to be the 8th warmest for the globe in 129 years of record keeping. Meanwhile NASA satellites showed it was the 9th coldest June in the 30 years of its record.

We have noted in the last year that NOAA has often become the warmest of the 5 major data sets in their monthly global anomalies. They were second place until they introduced a new ocean data set to be discussed later.

NOAA and the other ground based data centers would have more credibility if one of the changes resulting in a reduction of the warming trend and not an exaggeration which has been the case each time.

THE MANY ISSUES WITH THE STATION BASED DATA CENTERS

NOAA and the other station base data centers suffer from major station dropout (nearly 3/4ths of the stations) many of them rural, there has been a tenfold increase in missing months in remaining stations, no adjustment for urbanization even as the population grew from 1.5 billion to 6.7 billion since 1900 and documented bad station siting in the United States and almost certainly elsewhere. Also 70% of the earth is ocean and the methods for measurement there over the years have changed from ship buckets to ship intake to satellite surface sensing. Each measures a different level and produces different results. Transitioning was gradual making estimation more challenging.

STATION DROPOUT

NOAA’s allowing over 2/3rds of the world’s stations to dropout in 1990. You can see the coverage difference between the stations on this GISS analysis of the NOAA gathered stations from 1978 versus that in 2008.

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Notice the big gaps in Canada (where May was very cold), South America, Africa, western Asia, Greenland and Australia. Since many of these areas are more rural, this dropout led to more urban bias and thus warming.

URBAN HEAT ISLAND

In the United States, NOAA has removed the US Urban Heat Island (UHI) adjustment and performs no UHI adjustment on global data. This is despite the facts that NCDC’s own Director Tom Karl in Kark et al (1988 J Climate) in Urbanization: its detection and effect in the United States climate record, showed the importance of urban adjustment and the Hadley Centre’s Phil Jones (2008) in Jones et al. ”Urbanization effects in large-scale temperature records, with an emphasis on China”, showed UHI’s contamination of data in China. There are many other peer review papers supporting the need for UHI adjustment even for smaller towns to determine climate trends. The removal of the UHI adjustment resulted in an enhanced warming trend as you would expect but an oddball cooling in the 1930s.

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Removal of the UHI for the US resulted in a warming relative to GISS (which still does a UHI adjustment that seems to work for the US) with UHI in the United States of an amazing 0.75F since 1940.

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A new paper coming soon to Nature claims to have forund the CO2 temperature relationship (they say a linear one) but all they found was the urban heat island effect.

BAD SITING

Anthony Watts has clearly shown increasingly bad siting can lead to warm bias here. “During the past few years a team of more than 650 volunteers visually inspected and photographically documented more than 860 of these temperature stations. We were shocked by what we found. We found stations located next to the exhaust fans of air conditioning units, surrounded by asphalt parking lots and roads, on blistering-hot rooftops, and near sidewalks and buildings that absorb and radiate heat. We found 68 stations located at wastewater treatment plants, where the process of waste digestion causes temperatures to be higher than in surrounding areas.
In fact, we found that 89 percent of the stations - nearly 9 of every 10- fail to meet the National Weather Service’s own siting requirements that stations must be 30 meters (about 100 feet) or more away from an artificial heating or radiating/reflecting heat source.  In other words, 9 of every 10 stations are likely reporting higher or rising temperatures because they are badly sited. The conclusion is inescapable: The U.S. temperature record is unreliable. The errors in the record exceed by a wide margin the purported rise in temperature of 0.7C (about 1.2F) during the twentieth century. My report is available in full as this PDF document here. See also in this new post how even when siting or equipment errors are discovered, the bad data and in this case a string of false records are let stand.

TURNING TO THE OCEANS

Now having gotten all the warmth possible out of the land temperatures, they turn to the oceans, so promising as they cover 70% of the earth’s surface. It appears they have found more warming there be reanalysis of past data.

Thanks to Bob Tisdale, we have a better idea why that is the case with his story “Recent Differences Between GISS and NCDC SST Anomaly Data And A Look At The Multiple NCDC SST Datasets” covered in the recent WUWT post Something hinky this way comes.

NOAA has a revised warmer sea surface data set now implemented that is significantly warmer than the prior and the current version used by GISS.

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SATELLITE A BETTER WAY

Satellite are widely believed to be the most reliable source of reliable trend information if you can calibrate the differences as one bird gets phased out and a new one goes online. UAH and RSS have gotten very good at this in a very cooperative way in recent years.

When you compare the satellite trends of both UAH and RSS with NOAA, you see an increasing warm bias in the NOAA data which explains why months with major cold in the news get ranked so high by NOAA and not by the satellite sources. The difference is approaching 0.5C (almost 1F).

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The satellite data is regarded even by NOAA administration to be the most reliable but they don’t use it in releases as it is only available for 30 years. It has shown a cooling since 2002.

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OCEAN HEAT CONTENT

Roger Pielke Sr. advocates using ocean heat content as a measure of climate change. Bill DiPucchio showed how using Pielke’s Willis (2008) data and Loehle’s data since 2003 deployment of the Argo buoys, ocean heat content has fallen as well.

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These all suggest we ignore NOAA’s nonsense global monthly press releases and follow instead the satellite and ocean temperature trends. See PDF. A much more detailed assessment is being submitted to the EPA and will be posted next week after the EPA deadline.

Jun 20, 2009
“World cooling has set in and it will stay colder for at least 100 years predicts scientist”

By Piers Corbyn, WeatherAction

"World cooling is here to stay and the new round of climate alarmism just announced by UK Government ministers and the Met Office of more extreme weather and warming in coming decades driven by mankind has no merit and is defied by the facts and front-line science”, said Piers as his forecast from three weeks ahead was confirmed for the formation of the first East Pacific typhoon of the season off Mexico.

“Ministers have been saying a lot about accountability recently so now let’s apply that to climate change policy and scrutinize what they are up to in the light of the facts and the application of sound science. “Will Minister Benn - and his opposite numbers in other parties - place before Parliament the evidence on which they base their climate change policies? Or are we to be led into more climate alarm taxes and charges’ and a new war against nothing based on bogus compter models? “

“Climate alarmism is not based on sound science but on a political agenda which has become a new religion to justify any policy or scheme which politicians and self-serving green ideologues, deluded researchers, businesses, oil magnates and the nuclear industry want to adopt. All their long-range models have failed so far so why should anyone believe them? On the other hand our solar based long range weather and climate forecasts have proven power, so why don’t politicians listen?” “We need an independent public inquiry now into climate alarmism and conflicts of interest involving funding bodies which must be based on testable science; or” - he asked - “Will we have to wait for an enquiry when its too late where we in 5 years time will belatedly ask politicians:

- Why did so many children starve to death from food and fuel price rises caused by biofuels and costly energy projects?

- Why was the development of Africa held back in the name of green ideology?

- Why did they repeatedly fail to act on extreme weather event warnings which killed thousands but were ignored because the science used in those forecasts didn’t accord with the new green religion?

- Why did the UK Government continue to rely on failed forecasting systems which cost the UK economy 3billion pounds in the winter of 2008/9 when road salt ran out because the Met Office had forecasted a mild winter.

“Unless the climate circus is stopped we will see another round of hand-wringing in 5 years time against ‘irresponsible risk taking’ in the promotion of the green bubble of false value which has already burst in Spain in 2008” warned Piers. “The facts are:

1. Contrary to the projections of the UN and Governments the world has been cooling since 2002/3 while CO2 has been rising rapidly. (More here and here).

2. Global warming is over and it never was anything to do with mankind. There is no evidence that CO2 fluctuations in the last 200, 2,000 or 20,000 years have caused warming or climate change, in fact the evidence is the other way around. (See Challenge here )

3. There is no evidence of more extreme weather events or increases in the rate of sea level rise or changes in glaciers corresponding to CO2 increases since the industrial revolution. (See Effects of CO2 Nicholson & Soon)

4. All changes in the Arctic and Antarctic follow natural and highly variable patterns which are not new or special and have been recorded for over a thousand years and have been very well known to the British navy for a long time and available in the Met Office library The Antarctic has been cooling for decades and the Arctic has started to cool in the last year or two.  Break-up of ice is a natural process - like the falling down of old trees - and has been happening for millions of years before news media noticed it.

5. All the UN & Govt forecasts of ongoing warming this century have failed and the UN has still refused to produce evidence of their claims despite reasonable requests by an international group of science experts. (See Letter to UN Sec General 14 July 2008 )

6. Extreme weather and climate change events can be predicted months or years ahead using solar activity whereas standard meteorology and CO2 dogma cannot do this. (PowerPoint & Audio of Piers Corbyn’s & Other Presentations at International Climate Change Conference New York 8-10 March 2009 - section V track 1 see slide 28 for world Temperature forecast to 2030. Scroll for speeches by Prof Bob Carter, Prof Richard Lindzen, Lord Monckton and others). A Layman’s Explanation of Why Global Warming Predictions by Climate Models are Wrong by Dr Roy Spencer here.

7. The Met office long range forecasts for summer 2007, summer 2008 and winter 2008/09 were the opposite of what occurred while solar-based (Solar Weather Technique) forecasts correctly foresaw the floods, more floods and heavy snow in each of those seasons. (Met Office barbecue summer forecast seriously misleading.)

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“Met office season ahead forecasts have consistently failed as they are failing again this summer. For how long will the public have to wait before this circus is called to account. Will the BBC do its duty and expose failed science or will they continue their cover-up?” asked Piers. See World cooling has set-in warns astrophysicist - BBC & ‘Global Warming apologists’ challenged to end ‘cover-up’

Jun 17, 2009
First Ever Ice Wine in Brazil

Team Vinicola Perico, Vinicola Vineyards in Santa Catarina, Brazil

Our friend at the METSUL, Alexandre Aguiar reports that for the first time ever in Brazil icewine has been produced in this unusually cold June in Southern Brazil. This is a release on the Vinicolo Vineyard website. The following is a rough web based translation from Portuguese to English. The original Portuguese story is here.

With pleasure we inform that the Perico team yesterday registered in its vineyards, located in the farm Boy God, District of the Perico in Joaquin - Santa Catarina, a phenomenon of the nature, the most waited of this time: the ice wine. The temperatures had fallen well below-freezing and the thermometers had marked - 7.5 C. A dream if became reality: the harvest of the grapes congealed for this so wonderful act of the nature.

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With this, the Vinicola Perico, will be first ever vineyard in Brazil to produce ICEWINE (Wine of the Ice), a natural licoroso wine, with raised amount of residual sugar of the proper grape.

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The process of production of the Icewine, consists of mature grapes and extreme cold at-6 C, in this condition, the water that if find in the interior of the berries of the grapes congeal and the ice separates the rich juice in sugar. When the grapes are just right, they’re carefully picked by hand. Grapes in this condition have a very low yield - often an entire vine only makes a single bottle. That’s why ice wine can be so expensive and is often sold in half-bottles only ... but it’s worth it! After this long harvest process, the grapes go through weeks of fermentation, followed by a few months of barrel aging in new barrels of French oak, Allier forest. The wine ends up a golden color, or a deep, rich amber. It has a very sweet (of course) taste. After vinificado we will have the pleasure to present this great BRAZILIAN only ICEWINE, which happens in Austria, Germany, north of Italy and Canada. See photos of our vineyard to the dawn, before and after the sun rose. More photos on home page.

We have posted stories on how this cold spring has caused agricultural problems in many locations worldwide. See this post . See David Archibald’s post originally on Icecap in which he forecasted these agricultural issues reposted with comments on Watts Up With That here. See Bloomberg post on spring wheat concerns in Canada due to a very cold May. See more on Spring in Canada here and here.

Despite all these anecdotal evidences of global cooling, NOAA announced May 2009 was the 4th warmest in 130 years of record keeping (and manipulation) with an anomaly of +0.53C just a week after the University of Alabama using the NASA MSU satellite data assessed the global anomaly at just +0.043C, making it the 15th coldest in 31 years. Anthony and I will surely have more to say on this unlikely divergence soon.

Jun 17, 2009
The June 23rd EPA CO2 endangerment public comment deadline looms

By Anthony Watts, Watts Up With That

The EPA on April 17, 2009 released this finding in ”Proposed Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under the Clean Air Act”.

I just sent my comments in, and have included excerpts from them below for structure and ideas. If you have not done it yet, get your comments in. I did mine via email. Some excerpts from my commentary are listed below. You can send public comments here:  ghg-endangerment-docket@epa.gov

To submit a comment, identify them with Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2009-0171 and submit them online, by email, by facsimile, by mail or by hand delivery.

The docket # is Re: Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2009-0171 Be sure to include that number in email. They must be received by EPA by June 23.

ADDRESSES: Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2009-0171, by one of the following methods:

- Federal eRulemaking Portal: http://www.regulations.gov. Follow the online instructions for submitting comments.

- E-mail: ghg-endangerment-docket@epa.gov

- Fax: (202) 566-1741.

- Postal Mail: Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Docket Center (EPA/DC), Mailcode 6102T, Attention Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2009-0171, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20460.

- Hand Delivery: EPA Docket Center, Public Reading Room, EPA West Building, Room 3334, 1301 Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20004. Such deliveries are only accepted during the Air Docket’s normal hours of operation, and special arrangements should be made for deliveries of boxed information.

Instructions: Direct your comments to Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2009-0171. EPA’s policy is that all comments received will be included in the public docket without change and may be made available online here.  including any personal information provided, unless the comment includes information claimed to be CBI or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Do not submit information that you consider to be CBI or otherwise protected through http://www.regulations.gov or e-mail.

The Web site is an “anonymous access” system, which means EPA will not know your identity or contact information unless you provide it in the body of your comment. If you send an e-mail comment directly to EPA without going through http://www.regulations.gov your e-mail address will be automatically captured and included as part of the comment that is placed in the public docket and made available on the Internet. If you submit an electronic comment, EPA recommends that you include your name and other contact information in the body of your comment and with any disk or CD-ROM you submit. If EPA cannot read your comment due to technical difficulties and cannot contact you for clarification, EPA may not be able to consider your comment. Electronic files should avoid the use of special characters, any form of encryption, and be free of any defects or viruses.

This Climate Audit post can also be useful for ideas. As a guide for doing this, WUWT reader Roger Sowell has some useful guidelines that I find helpful. See Anthony’s full post here.

Icecap Note: Anthony follows in this post with his powerful comments on siting isues he has found with the surfacestations.org volunteer network effort. Icecap will be submitting a dozen comments later this week. We will post links to all of the comments after the deadline. Please send us your comments and we will provide links to them as well. This can be a handy reference for those who will be challenging the EPA on any proposed rules or regulations.

Jun 15, 2009
Suggestions of “strong negative cloud feedbacks” in a warmer climate

By Anthony Watts, Watts Up With That

Here is a pictorial showing a cross section of the ITCZ with a cumulonimbus cloud in the center.I thought this post on clouds and climate modeling below from Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit was interesting, because it highlights the dreaded “negative feedbacks” that many climate modelers say don’t exist. Dr. Richard Lindzen highlighted the importance of negative feedback in a recent WUWT post.

One of the comments to the CA article shows the simplicity and obviousness of the existence of negative feedback in one of our most common weather events. Willis Eschenbach writes: Cloud positive feedback is one of the most foolish and anti-common sense claims of the models.

This is particularly true of cumulus and cumulonimbus, which increase with the temperature during the day, move huge amounts of energy from the surface aloft, reflect huge amounts of energy to space, and fade away and disappear at night. Spot on Willis, I couldn’t agree more. This is especially well demonstrated in the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) The ITCZ has been in the news recently because early analysis of the flight path of Air France 447 suggests flying through an intense thunderstorm cell in the ITCZ may have been the fatal mistake. There is a huge amount of energy being transported into the upper atmosphere by these storms.

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Here are some diagrams and photographs to help visualize the ITCZ heat transport process. First, here is what the ITCZ looks like from space. Note the bright band of cumulonimbus clouds from left to right.

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Here is showing a cross section of the ITCZ with a cumulonimbus cloud in the center.

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And finally, a 3D pictorial showing ITCZ circulation and heat transport. Note the cloud tops produce a bright albedo, reflecting solar radiation.

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And here is the post on Climate Audit “Cloud Super-Parameterization and Low Climate Sensitivity” by Steve McIntyre on June 11th, 2009.

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