By Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science Weblog
There is a post on the Nature website Climate Feedback by Olive Heffernan titled “AMS2010: Data gaps and errors may have masked warming”
This is a remarkable post in that it fails to properly assess all of the data sources for climate system heat changes. Excerpts from the post read:
“New analyses provide preliminary evidence that temperature data from the UK Met office may under-estimate recent warming. That’s the conclusion of a talk given here today by Chris Folland of the Met Office Hadley Centre. Folland says that there is a very good chance that there has been more warming over land and over the ocean in the past decade than suggested by conventional data sets, but he says that the issues with land and ocean data are entirely unrelated.”
“For land, the problem of underestimating warming stems from data gaps in the average monthly temperature data set of the Met Office Hadley Centre, known as HadCruT3. Temperatures over the past decade were recently re-analyzed using a european climate model by Adrian Simmons of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts in Reading, UK and colleagues, and are soon to be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research [subscription]. Simmons and colleagues compared air temperature and humidity data collected over the past decade by the Hadley Centre with re-analyzed data for the same period. Average warming over land was larger for the fully sampled re-analyzed data than for the HadCRUT3 temperature data. The difference between the data sets is particularly notable for northeast Canada, Greenland and nothern parts of Asia, areas which are warming particularly rapidly.”
If the land surface temperatures were actually warmer than have been sampled, this results in even more divergence between the surface temperature and lower tropospheric temperature trends which we quantified in
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.
Chris Folland also ignored the unresolved issues and systematic biases that we identified in our paper:
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.
The Heffernan weblog post further writes
“For the ocean data, it’s a different issue. John Kennedy of the Met Office and colleagues previously reported in Nature [subscription] that changes in the methods used to collect sea surface temperature (SST) data at the end of World War II caused problems in comparing pre- and post-war data. Now they have a new analysis (yet to be published) suggesting that smaller changes in data collection methods since the end of the war could also be significant.
Over the past 20 years, the primary source of SST data has changed from ships to ocean buoys. Because ships warm the water during data collection, there has been a drop in recorded SSTs since bouys, which are more accurate, became the main data source. So what could appear to be a relative cooling trend in SSTs over the past decade may actually just due to changes in errors in the data. Scientists are confident that the buoy data are more accurate because they compare favourably with reliable satellite data.”
The upper ocean heat data shows no appreciable warming in the upper ocean since at least 2005 (and perhaps since 2003) as I discussed in my paper:
Pielke Sr., R.A., 2008: A broader view of the role of humans in the climate system. Physics Today, 61, Vol. 11, 54-55.
The satellite monitored surface temperatures similarly show a lack of warming over this time period; the current global sea surface temperature trends can be viewed at the GISS website (see) where for the period 2003 to 2009 on the annual average, there is a even negative trend in this time period for some latitude bands (see) [see also the land and ocean temperature changes figure in the section “Annual Mean Temperature Change for Land and Ocean here where a divergence between the land and ocean data trens in the last 10 years is quite distinct].
While, whether the trends are positive or negative from 2003 to 2009 does not refute a longer time global warming (which could, of course, recommence), statements by Chris Folland and John Kennedy that can be easily shown to conflict with even a cursory examination of the data, will result in a dismissal of their conclusions by objective climate scientists. See post here.
Icecap Note: Folland admits their data is in error but remarkably reaches the conclusion that it errs on the cool side re-analyzed using a European climate model. To the alarmists, climate models are the truth and data if it doesn’t agree must be made to conform to them. Count on GHCN V3 coming this year to show more warming as NOAA has produced in the USHCNv2 in the blink charts here and here.
By Anthony Watts
Well, now there will never be any question about whether Scripps is political or not. They even made up a graphic to go with the story here. When a prominent scientific organization allows a member to resort to name calling on an issue in an official communications on their website, it cheapens the whole organization.
This appears to be a response to John Coleman’s hour long video special. It was dated the same day as the video release, Jan 14th. Of course, when you read his website at richardsomerville.com you may come to understand that he may not be speaking for everyone there at Scripps. Here’s his page at Scripps. Perhaps the UCSD President might benefit from some communications about the use of his institute to label people with differing views on science.
A Response to Climate Change Denialism
Richard Somerville, a distinguished professor emeritus and research professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, issued the following statement in response to a recent request to address claims recently made by climate change denialists:
1. The essential findings of mainstream climate change science are firm. This is solid settled science. The world is warming. There are many kinds of evidence: air temperatures, ocean temperatures, melting ice, rising sea levels, and much more. Human activities are the main cause. The warming is not natural. It is not due to the sun, for example. We know this because we can measure the effect of man-made carbon dioxide and it is much stronger than that of the sun, which we also measure.
2. The greenhouse effect is well understood. It is as real as gravity. The foundations of the science are more than 150 years old. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere traps heat. We know carbon dioxide is increasing because we measure it. We know the increase is due to human activities like burning fossil fuels because we can analyze the chemical evidence for that.
3. Our climate predictions are coming true. Many observed climate changes, like rising sea level, are occurring at the high end of the predicted changes. Some changes, like melting sea ice, are happening faster than the anticipated worst case. Unless mankind takes strong steps to halt and reverse the rapid global increase of fossil fuel use and the other activities that cause climate change, and does so in a very few years, severe climate change is inevitable. Urgent action is needed if global warming is to be limited to moderate levels.
4. The standard skeptical arguments have been refuted many times over. The refutations are on many web sites and in many books. For example, natural climate change like ice ages is irrelevant to the current warming. We know why ice ages come and go. That is due to changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun, changes that take thousands of years. The warming that is occurring now, over just a few decades, cannot possibly be caused by such slow-acting processes. But it can be caused by man-made changes in the greenhouse effect.
5. Science has its own high standards. It does not work by unqualified people making claims on television or the Internet. It works by scientists doing research and publishing it in carefully reviewed research journals. Other scientists examine the research and repeat it and extend it. Valid results are confirmed, and wrong ones are exposed and abandoned. Science is self-correcting. People who are not experts, who are not trained and experienced in this field, who do not do research and publish it following standard scientific practice, are not doing science. When they claim that they are the real experts, they are just plain wrong.
6. The leading scientific organizations of the world, like national academies of science and professional scientific societies, have carefully examined the results of climate science and endorsed these results. It is silly to imagine that thousands of climate scientists worldwide are engaged in a massive conspiracy to fool everybody. The first thing that the world needs to do if it is going to confront the challenge of climate change wisely is to learn about what science has discovered and accept it. Read more and see comments here.
Icecap Note: Scripps is a once great institution in the days of Jerome Namias but like many other organizations and the professional societies, Scripps has let the big AGW grant money pervert their science. Somerville has played a key role in Scripps decline.
And another IPCC Lead Author and co-chair also embarrassed her organization, again. Susan Solomon was quoted in the once great magazine Nature “Even with ongoing questions about the proxy data, the IPCC’s key statement - that most of the warming since the mid-twentieth century is “very likely” to be due to human-caused increases in greenhouse-gas concentration - remains solid because it rests on multiple lines of evidence from different teams examining many aspects of the climate system”. Solomon was a former co-chair of the IPCC team that produced the 2007 physical science report and serves as a climate researcher with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colorado. She also played a key role with another debacle, the CFCs and the Antarctic Ozone hole. Recall that in the late 1970s, the US banned CFCs and in the Montreal Protocol in 1987, the world agreed to follow suit because of laboratory evidence of its role in ozone destruction. The ozone hole almost twenty years later, in 2006 set a new record for size. A story in Nature in 2007, showed how the consensus on the ozone hole was collapsing. It seems the experimenters never bothered to do the lab tests at the pressures where the ozone was being destroyed. When they did so, they found the rate of photolysis that destroyed ozone was an order of magnitude lower than the previously accepted rate.
Now with the IPCC models and projections failing, the Climategate leaked emails showing how scientists seriously manipulated the data and controlled the peer review control and now Glaciergate, the IPCC process and findings have been shown to be a politically driven non-scientific charade and the “very likely” label put on the IPCC finding of man made global warming and the connection of CFCs to ozone has been shown to be equally unwarranted.
By E.M.Smith, Musings from the Chiefio
I’ve completed USHCN vs USHCN version 2 blink comparison charts for Wisconsin. As with the Illinois charts, the majority of stations had their raw data adjusted to show more warming by lowering the temperatures in the first half of the 20th century.
That brings the raw data more in line with the GISS homogenized versions. I haven’t blinked the original GISS with the new homogenized charts yet, but I’d bet a nickle they’ll show even more warming.
Wisconsin original USHCN raw / revised raw data - SEE BLINK CHARTS here.
Illinois original raw / revised raw - SEE BLINK CHARTS here.
Example Lincoln, IL below blink here.
Revised raw data. Oxymoron?
I’ll still do my comparison study (as confirmation of his findings, if nothing else. Independent confirmation is always a good thing) but just with a bit less urgency. The charts in his link have a caption that implies this is the GIStemp STEP0 output (which merges GHCN with USHCN or USHCN.v2) so would be the “blended” data for those stations in both. Luckily, with only 136 USA stations remaining in GHCN, the odds of any one of these being that station or two in that state become quite small. For all practical purposes, you can treat these graphs as a fairly clean USHCN vs USHCN.v2 comparison, even if they are not completely pristine comparisons of the data sets directly.
At least now we know that the decision by NASA / GISS to “put back in the USA thermometers” was not exactly a benevolent act. Until just a while ago, GIStemp ran on USHCN (which had a data cut off in May of 2007. This left only GHCN to cover the last 3 years and had such effects as leaving only 4 thermometers in California mostly on the beach and near L.A.) Well, OK, they put the USA back in, but it sure looks like they had to re-cook the data first.
So now instead of only 1176 thermometers surviving into 2009 in GIStemp, all from GHCN, we will have them plus a couple of thousand in the USA, but with those USA thermometers having been “adjusted” to show sufficient warming.
I need to re-run some of the thermometer count reports, but with USHCN.v2 data in the system, and see what it does to the USA numbers. So now it looks like we’ll have more than 4 thermometers in California, but though they won’t be “on the beach”, they will be near a sun lamp.
BTW, I’d heard a press release discussed where NOAA / NCDC says that a new revision of GHCN is due out near February that uses the same “enhanced” “corrections” applied in USHCN.v2. So watch out for a New Improved, and much Warmer Global Temperature History coming to a computer model near you!
Call me old fashioned, but I really liked it better when my history did not keep changing and past temperatures did not require frequent re-writing. See post and comments here.
See also his excellent dig deeper look into the Central Park story we posed here a while back.