Still Waiting For Greenhouse

Time 2021-05-13 18:12:36

Web Name: Still Waiting For Greenhouse

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When using a pair of min/max thermometers for daily temperatureobservations, the time of day at which the readings for the previous 24hours are observed, and the thermometers are reset, will often cause atime of observation bias (TOB). If readings are taken near the times ofdaily highs, or daily lows, those highs, and lows, often affect thereadings of two days.For those who may have some interest in such phenomena, an introductoryreview is availablehere.In case you have not followed the links, Steve McIntyre has many interestingposts at www.climateaudit.org.OTTAWA: On April 13 the University of Calgary, in cooperation with theFriends of Science Society, released a video entitled: ClimateCatastrophe Cancelled: What you're not being told about the science ofclimate change.The 25 minute video is available as a set of five .wmv files atthe Friends of Science Society website.While presented in a Canadian context, the issues are not limited toCanada, and at least several of the participants will be familiar toregular visitors of this website from around the world.It seems that as more researchers examine the McIntyre and McKitrickcritique of the Mann et al "hockey stick", their critique gainsincreased support. Several recent developments are described attheir websites.You might start here and follow pertinent links for additional details.Historical temperature records usually include effects of various changesin the locations, and kinds of, thermometers, and of observer procedures,including times of day of observations, all of which can have"non-climatic" effects on the temperatures that get recorded.Such "non-climatic" effects on recorded temperatures get considerableattention by researchers, and various kinds of methods have been devisedto adjust the "raw" data so as to compensate for those effects.Many people may recognize the name John Christy due to his work oncalculating atmospheric temperatures from microwave data collected byNOAA satellites. He is also the state climatologist of the state ofAlabama, USA, and when he attempted to answer the question "when was the hottestsummer in north central Alabama?", his attempt required a largeamount of research. It is discussed in considerable detail in a paper inthe Bulletin of the American Meteorological Societylinked from the abstract(at that page, click on the "print version" link for a PDF of thepaper), and it included attempts to compensate for such non-climaticeffects.For a data set called theUnited States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN), researcherscompiled monthly data of about 1200 weather observation stations. Theyalso compiled data about changes of equipment, location, observer, andtime of day of observation. Summaries of such changes are included in astation history file, and various adjustments to "raw" temperature dataare based on data about such changes.Other collections of temperature data, such as theGlobal Historical Climatology Network have other methods ofattempting to compensate for such "non-climatic" effects, but for thestations in the USHCN, use the USHCN adjustments. And recently, theNASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) started using USHCNadjustments for temperature data from those stations instead of using themethods used by GISS for temperature data from other stations.One may get the impression that the USHCN adjustments are regarded asrelatively good adjustments, even by at least some other researchers whouse other methods for temperature data from other stations.That may lead one to wonder how good are the adjustments made by thosepeople for temperature data from all of the other stations in theGHCN/GISS collections.Oh yes, the title of this article alludes to an anniversary.October 1, 2004, is the tenth anniversary of the most recent updateto the USHCN station history file. Its mission statement is said to beFirst, to serve scientists through prompt publication of significantadvances in any branch of science, and to provide a forum for thereporting and discussion of news and issues concerning science. Second,to ensure that the results of science are rapidly disseminated to thepublic throughout the world, in a fashion that conveys their significancefor knowledge, culture and daily life.Perhaps you may get some idea of whether that statement means what it saysby visitingthis webpage where, under "Notes and Updates", you will find:UPDATE: September 13 2004: Following our publication last year and theresponse by Mann et al., we planned a 3-part reply. The first partconcerned the provenance of the data used for our analysis and wasreleased in November 2003. The second part would itemize many additionallacunae and inaccuracies in MBH98 descriptions of data and methodologyidentified through examination of Mann's FTP site, and the third partwould show that two undisclosed and questionable methodological decisionsin MBH98 accounted for virtually all of the difference between ourresults and MBH98. These projects went through a lengthy review processwith Nature, with interesting results. We can now provide a publicupdate on this process. Because of its length the new material is onA NEW PAGE HERE and begins with the latter item first.Many of the "interesting results" can be appreciated whether, or not,you have any degrees in statistics. If you have an interest in theIPCC's favorite "Hockey Stick", and the McIntyre and McKitrickcritique thereof, you may find M&M's latest update very interesting. When reading about extraction and analysis of atmospheric gases fromice cores, you may notice some things that seem rather odd. Onefavorite such oddity is a statement in the fileHistorical carbon dioxide record from the Vostok ice core:Using semiempirical models of densification applied to past Vostokclimate conditions, Barnola et al. (1991) reported that the agedifference between air and ice may be ~6000 years during the coldestperiods instead of ~4000 years, as previously assumed.Whether 4000 or 6000, neither number would seem to inspire much confidencethat the results of the analyses are likely to be very accurate.So, when recently visitingWarwick Hughes' website andnoticing, among several other interesting items, a brief description byZbigniew Jaworowski of accuracy problems of CO2 measurements in ice cores,it seemed to be especially interesting. So interesting that there isnow a copy of it right here. Whether here,or there, I trust that you also will find it very interesting.A paper titled "European seasonal and annual temperature variability,trends, and extremes since 1500" was published in the issue dated March5, 2004, of the AAAS magazine named Science. It seems that the authorsconcluded that the summer of 2003 was the hottest summer in Europesince 1500.It also seems than Hans Erren does not share that conclusion, and in anarticle atA debatable European summer temperature since 1500he suggests that the summer of 1540 rivals the summer of 2003 inthe category of hot European summers.Among the points of contention are the accuracy of tree ring, and other,proxies for temperatures, as well as the validity of extrapolation ofsmall geographic area information to large geographic areas. You mayfind the discussion interesting.Let me mention an aspect that particularly caught my attention. In thecomparison of the Luterbacher et al. graph with a graph based on thePfister index, the Pfister index indicates that the notorious summer of1816 was particularly cold, which seems quite plausible to me; theLuterbacher et al. graph does not, which seems not quite so plausible toWas there a tree ring problem, an extrapolation problem, or what?In March of this year a widely reported story aboutCO2 measurements at Mauna Loa was discussed inCO2 Report Makes the Rounds.Since then, the data on which the report presumably was basedhave been posted atCDIAC.Here is a graphic summary of annual averages of the CO2 measurementsat Mauna Loa since 1960, including the data added for 2003.Keeping in mind that the unit of measure is ppmv (parts per million byvolume), it is clear that CO2 is a very small portion of the atmosphere.Among the so called greenhouse gases, it is a very distant second to H2O.And yet, some people portray CO2 as if it had almost mythical powers ofdominating climate around the globe. A glance at some other measurementsmay help clarify the picture somewhat.(3 month averages of lower troposphere temperature variances andinverted SOI)While the atmospheric parts per million of CO2 have continually increasedduring recent decades, atmospheric temperatures have risen, and fallen,uninfluenced by any notions that some people may have about the powers ofCO2. Atmospheric temperatures respond to realities, not myths.As for the amount of the increase of atmospheric CO2 from 2002 to 2003,it was approximately two and one half parts per million, 2.54/1000000.00to be more precise. Here is a graphic summary of the annual increasessince 1960:As he did in March, Miceal O'Ronain has provided, in bothtabular, andgraphical, forms, nice compilations of year to year differences of monthly,and annual, averages of Mauna Loa CO2 measurements. On July 6, 2004, a BBC article, headlinedSunspots reaching 1000-year high, caught the attention ofa number of readers. Related articles soon appeared in otherpublications, for example:Suspot activity hits 1000-year high at Swissinfo.org,The truth about global warming - it's the Sun that's to blameat the London Telegraph, andHotter-burning sun warming the planetat the Washington Times.It seems that at a conference of astronomers in Hamburg, Germany, SamiSolanki and colleagues presented a discussion of possible correlationsbetween solar variability and terrestrial climate. The recent articlesprovide some clues to the content of the presentation, but a slightlycloser look may be of interest.Interestingly enough, the principal paper on which the presentation wasbased was published last year, and briefly discussed here by John Daly atEvidence for an Unusually Active Sun.An abstract of the paper is available atMillennium-Scale Sunspot Number Reconstruction:Evidence for an Unusually Active Sun since the 1940s.The paper is available in PDF form atI.G. Usoskin, S. Solanki, M. Schuessler, K. Mursula, K. Alanko, Amillennium scale sunspot number reconstruction: Evidence for anunusually active sun since the 1940's, Phys. Rev. Lett., 91(21),211101, 2003. (Hereinafter, Usoskin et al. 2003)Of several closely related papers I will mentionI.G.Usoskin, K. Mursula, S. Solanki, M. Schuessler, and K. Alanko,Reconstruction of solar activity for the last millennium using 10Be data,Astron. Astrophys., 413, 745-751, 2004.. (Hereinafter, Usoskin etal. 2004)Using records of 10Be (Beryllium 10) concentration in polar ice, and somephysical models for processes connecting 10Be concentration with sunspotnumbers, the authors attempt to reconstruct average sunspot numbers forthe period from the year 850 to the present. Their reconstructionindicates that the period of high solar activity during the last 60 yearsis unique throughout the past 1150 years.The 10Be records they use include annual data from Greenland for theyears 1424 to 1985, and eight year sampled data from Antarctica for theyears 850 to 1900. They supplement those data with some 14C (Carbon 14)data, apparently for most of the period of the study, and with groupsunspot numbers (GSN) from 1610 on. While their methodology has itsproblems, they claim it results in a better correlation of 11 yearsmoothed "reconstructed" sunspot numbers with historical GSN than astatistical regression would do, and they summarize their results in agraph that includes indicators of MM: Medieval maximum, Om: OortMinimum, Wm: Wolf minimum, Sm: Sp rer minimum, Mm: Maunder minimum,and Dm: Dalton minimum. It also includes estimated corrections of theircalculated sunspot numbers in the solid red and green lines.Figure 2 from Usoskin et al. 2003You can readily notice various differences between their Greenland andAntarctic results, as well as between either of those and GSN,particularly during the Maunder minimum. These, and some otherdifficulties, are briefly discussed in Usoskin et al. 2003.Of the presentation in Hamburg there is available a file of slides, SolarActivity over the last 1150 years: does it correlate with Climate?.Among those slides is the above graph, as well as several other graphsnot included in Usoskin et al. 2003. Among the latter are two on aslide labelled: Comparison: Sunspot number & Climate.The next slide from the presentation offersI would guess that the trend that correlates at 0.7-0.8 level is somehowrelated to the very smooth lines that run through each of those twographs, including the sunspot lines that continue climbing right throughthe Maunder minimum. If their models cannot get more realistic about aphenomenon such as the Maunder minimum, they would seem to need much morework before asking people to take their climate correlations seriously.I suspect that one can find a variety of statistical trends that appearto correlate incidental aspects of phenomena. As displayed in thepresentation, the proffered trend seems to me to be a distraction fromidentifying correlations based on physical causation.A subsequent slide of the presentation asserts SN runs ahead of climateby 10 years (SN presumably being their calculated sunspot numbers). Ican imagine various lead times between sunspot numbers and variousclimatic effects, but I cannot see a 10 year lead time in either of thosetwo graphs. (If you can, please let me know.)While Usoskin et al. 2003 and related papers, including theirdifficulties, seem to me to be quite interesting, it also seems to methat the attempt in the presentation to portray a correlation witheither version of the hockey stick, much less with both versions, was notconducive to resolving any of the difficulties.Some incidental comments: Usoskin et al. 2003, and the presentation,emphasize the very much higher sunspot numbers in recent years than inearlier years, even within the historical series of group sunspotnumbers. I estimate that the 11 year smoothed GSN of 1959 is about 57per cent higher than that of 1790, which by my calculations was thehighest before 1935. However, using Wolf sunspot numbers (WSN), the 11year smoothed sunspot number for 1959 seems to be only about 20 per centhigher than that of 1790. Still higher, but not as strikingly so. Thenext two graphs present annual, and 11 year smoothed, comparisons betweennumbers based on each of the systems.(Data for these two graphs are from:GSN andWSN ).I am not aware of the relative merits of the two numbering systems. Oneobvious advantage of GSN is that they extend back to 1610, while WSNextend back only to about 1700, and some might suggest only to about1750.Update added 30 July 2004A recent UPI article,Climate: The Vanishing Solar Factor, has been added to the mix.I will comment briefly on just a couple of parts of it.In order for the sun to force the climate to the little ice age observedduring the Maunder Minimum, the change in the solar constant had to beabout twice what has been observed during modern, zero-sunspot periods.1. Modern zero-sunspot periods have been very brief. The most recentcalendar month with a zero WSN was June 1913; the most recent calendaryear with a zero WSN was 1810. A zero sunspot day, or week, may nottell us much about what the so-called solar constant would do duringa zero sunspot year, or a zero sunspot decade.2. The statement implies an assumption that variations of solar wind andthe magnetic heliosphere, and variations of the flux of cosmic rays,have no climatic effects, but without addressing research resultsindicating that they do. Raimund Muscheler probably could direct theauthor of the article to some of that research.In the 2002 Harold Jeffreys Lecture to the Royal Astronomical Society inLondon, Solanki said: After 1980, however, the Earth's temperatureexhibits a remarkably steep rise, while the sun's irradiance displays atthe most a weak secular trend. Hence the sun cannot be the dominantsource of this latest temperature increase, with man-made greenhousegases being the likely dominant alternative.1. That statement suggests that Solanki had not yet read Usoskin et al.2003, which he co-authored. :-) Again, solar irradiance is not theonly solar variable.2. If the "latest temperature increase" refers to a globally averagedsurface temperature increase which allegedly exceeds lower freetroposphere temperature changes, then it refutes, rather than supports,notions of greehouse gases being a plausible, much less a likelydominant, alternative.Steven McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have posted an update about theprocess of resolving issues raised by their assertions of errors in theMann et al 1998 paper of Hockey Stick fame:The Corrigendum in Nature today (July 1, 2004) by Professors Mann,Bradley and Hughes is a clear admission that the disclosure of data andmethods behind MBH98 was materially inaccurate. The text acknowledgesextensive errors in the description of the data set. Even more importantis the new online Supplementary Information (SI) site, which reveals forthe first time that key steps in the computations behind MBH98 were leftout of (and indeed conflict with) the description of methods in theoriginal paper.There are additional comments atRoss McKitrick's website (scroll down a page to the update).Those who missed it may find John Daly's related article,"Broken Hockey Stick"of interest. Links to Selected Articles Under construction: alist of articlesat various websites whichmay be of interest. At this time, a very short list.Last updated: (14 Apr 04) Cyclonic Storms Over Western Europe by Max Beran (Britain) (15 Dec 03). Max Beran analyses claims by the Hadley Centre that a significant trend in UK storminess over the past half-century or sohad occurred. He finds that a faulty treatment of the North AtlanticOscillation resulted in the claimed effect being a statistical artefact, notactually real. Variations in CO2 Growth RateAssociated with Solar Activity by Dr Theodor Landscheidt (Germany) (21 Sept 03). Solaractivity and solar motion variations are found to explain much of thevariability of CO2 growth over the last several decades. The averageannual increase over the last 10 years was 1.66 ppmv/yr, which is less than halfthat assumed by climate models.(Click below for other, mostly rural, weather station records from around the world.) Also in ... Español(Also of interest: a previously published,but quite apropos,John Brignell article) Sea Level at Hobart, Tasmania: A Failure to Authenticate - The authors of the `sea level rise at Port Arthur' scenario are shown to have failed to authenticate a vital claim they made about sea levels at Hobart, Tasmania (11 Jun 03) Tasmanian Sea Levels: The Isle of the Dead Revisited - A detailed report on the 160-year-old sea level benchmark at Port Arthur, Tasmania, which some scientists think is evidence of sea level rise, but which actually shows no such thing (2 Feb 03) Suzuki's Home Town - London, Ontario, Canada - David Suzuki says winter comes later now in his boyhood home town. But the weather records from there and nearby show his claim is false. (26 Apr 03) TOPEX-Poseidon Radar Altimetry: Averaging the Averages (5 Dec 2001). Just how accurate is sea level monitoring fromsatellites? `Making' the News: The Sunday Times and British Climate (20 Nov 2001). How the London Sunday Times has distorted climatic data for Britain without so much as a murmur from the originators of that data. The `Hockey Stick': A New Low in Climate Science (12 Nov 2000) The new dogma by both the IPCC and US National Assessment is that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age during the last millennium never happened. Their claim is false and politically inspired. A Smoking Pea-Shooter (19 March 2001)Human influence on the greenhouse effect has now been measured in a British study of two sets of satellite data 27 years apart. This report reveals some surprising facts about the study not reported in the media. The Top of the World: Is the North Pole Turning to Water? (2 Feb 2001) Water at the North Pole was big news in August 2000. Was it just another media scare story, or is the Arctic sea ice really disappearing? This report details the whole issue of Arctic sea ice. Also - See this BBC report on Arctic Sea Ice Testing the Waters: A Report on Sea Levels (July 2000) Has global sea level risen 10 - 25 cm during the 20th century as claimed by the IPCC? This report presents evidence to show that the claim is false and based purely on modelling. The Surface Record: Global Mean Temperature and How it is Determined at Surface Level (June 2000) An argument for an independent review of the `surface record'. Thesatellites were reviewed, so why has the `surface record' escaped independentexamination? Sea Levels: The `Isle of the Dead' Is this the picture that takes the heat out of global warming? - asks the BBC Photo 29th Aug. 1999, 1.04 pm, AEST (around mean tide) they provided for this new information proved to be of no value in supporting their claims. But another, much more significant, problem in their paper was also discovered. Full details here Sea Level at Hobart, Tasmania: A Failure to Authenticate and equipment, shows their claims to be both alarmist - and false. (Data from the National Tidal Facility (NTF), Adelaide)In March 2002, the NTF stated "The historical record shows no visual evidence of any acceleration in sea level trends."Instead, they suggested coastline degradation and sinking islets in Funafuti, were the result of entirely localconditions, not sea level rise. (AFP story)This record is compiled by the Goddard Institute (GISS)in the US. It indicates a global warming of +0.8 C. Isit real? Or is it just a statistical product of urban warming skewing thedata, and bad site management in non-OECD countries? The pre-1940 warming is widely regarded to have been caused by the warming sun during the earlier part ofthe 20th century.than in the rest of the world and the US also has the best maintained network of weather stationsin the world. This must therefore be a better representation of the globalpicture too. The US record also agrees with the satellites (shownbelow) July 2008 Global = 0.048°C, (Northern Hemisphere = 0.094°C, Southern Hemisphere = 0.003°C.) (Caveat: Update 3 Jan 2008 from John Christy and Roy Spencer)We now have data from AQUA added to the time series beginning withday 221 of 2002. AQUA is a spacecraft with on-board propulsion andthus has stable station-keeping. Thus, AQUA's AMSU will not be subjectto diurnal temperature drifts. Upon comparison with NOAA-15's AMSU, wefind only minor differences for their 5+ year overlap, with NOAA-15being slightly warmer near the end of the time series for LT and MT.The error values for NOAA-15 are much smaller than what we indicated(in an earlier update).At this time we are merging AQUA into the time series while keepingNOAA-15, with its slight, spurious warming, in the mix through thepresent. There will be some slight month-to-month differences versusthe version from last month, but these are very small so we will keepthe version numbers as they are since nothing has changed except themerging of AQUA into the time series. We note that 1-11 Dec 2007 aremissing in AQUA and are hoping these will be recovered. We do have alldaily values from NOAA-15 for December.See The Surface Record: Global Mean Temperature and How it is Determined at Surface Level by John L. Daly. An argument for an independent review of the `surface record'. Thesatellites have been independently reviewed several times, so why has the `surface record' escaped an independentexamination in the public interest?Spam and dubious emails are deleted without being opened.Executable attachments are not executed except by priorarrangement.

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