Global Cooling

[dr.placebo]

Computer modeling man-made objects and activities are based upon precise calculation with known values and predictable results.

I'm reasonably familiar with computer modeling, having written at least a few over the past 40 years. One does computer modeling to gain insight and to make predictions about a variety of systems, both natural and artificial. The essence of doing modeling is that one is faced with a system that is too complex to solve for exactly. Every example I gave is related to a system where the external inputs are not precisely known.

Another example where the inputs are even less known than terrestrial climate is galaxy formation. Yet such models are built, and provide insight, and make predictions that are checked against the observed galaxies. The predictions are reasonably well matched with the observations, and are generally thought to confirm the existence of dark matter.

There is no assertion that all of the model inputs are perfectly known, or that all of the mechanisms are perfectly understood. That is why we build models, and why having multiple models is essential. It is also why models are run using multiple different scenarios that capture different assumptions. When the models all point in the same direction one ignores such insight at one's peril.

Most climatologists do not think that the warming ceased in 1998, and most of the data does not support that view:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global- ... n-1998.htm

[can't sit still]

Dr Placebo, are you well read on the electric universe theories?
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2008/ ... anding.htm
Are you aware of all the huge contradictions in the current model of the universe? I'm sure that you're probably aware of some of the necessary tortuous logic that is required by the current models. eg, the sun should not be hotter at it's surface, etc, etc.

[dr.placebo]

I'm aware that there are significant gaps in our understanding of the universe, but I'm not aware of glaring contradictions in either general relativity or the Standard Model. This is an exciting time to be a physicist because there is a lot of work to be done to cope with current observations, and there are a lot of new observations that need to be made.

I'm skeptical of the electric theory because as far as I know there are not enough charge carriers between the stars to have large effects. Also, to be a better theory it should make some predictions that dominated either general relativity or the standard model. On the other hand, if such predictions were made and verified I, for one, would welcome the new insight.

[geekster]

The blue line with the dots represent the number of stations included in the GHCN network.

The bars represent the global average temperature using data from GHCN.

Note the relationship between number of stations and temperature. It becomes even more glaring when one realizes that most of the stations removed are rural and high altitude stations reporting the coolest temperatures.

[dr.placebo]

Hmm, all I got was a broken link.

There has been a lot of forth and back about the quality of the temperature stations. There have been studies that show that the warming trend is quite robust in the face of picking various subsets of the stations. Here are two useful links:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/urban-h ... effect.htm
http://www.skepticalscience.com/surface ... ements.htm

Just in case you'd like to know more about why the Skeptical Science site exists, there is a recent piece at:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Why-I-c ... hange.html

[can't sit still]

dr Placebo,, Geekster, you haven't directly addressed my earlier claim. I'm NOT talking about urban Vs rural stations. Geekster, you wrote "altitude". That too isn't my claim. I'm talking about LATITUDE. Both Russia and Canada claim that hundreds of high LATITUDE stations have been removed as time went by. Systematically culling stations that are colder than the temperate stations will cause a huge skew.
Peru is currently experiencing months of sub-zero temperatures. Argentina is reportedly colder than Antarctica.
The data may be accurate with the high latitude stations removed but, it is NOT representative.
The 100 year old experiment that I posted had no un-accounted-for variables. Go ahead and try to convince me that monitoring our ENTIRE terrestrial weather system does not leave out ANY variables.

[geekster]

Well, as luck would have it, there was a paper published in the past serveral days that addresses your concern and several others:



You can get the PDF of the paper here:

http://rossmckitrick.weebly.com/uploads ... review.pdf

[can't sit still]

GREAT paper, geekster. It is absolutely clear that the data is WORTHLESS.
" The overall conclusion of this report is that there are serious quality
problems in the surface temperature data sets that call into question whether the global temperature
history, especially over land, can be considered sufficiently continuous and accurate to support the
weight of conclusions typically drawn from it.
My first post claimed [by sat] that the heating stopped in 1998. The progression of elimination of recording stations changed dramatically after 2005. One look at the maps easily proves that northern latitude stations were heavily culled.
"Serious quality problems" is sufficiently clear. I have no further questions, your honor.

"the sample has migrated from colder latitudes to warmer latitudes;" How can one possibly claim any kind of worthwhile baseline if the sampling is skewed every few years?

" The sample size has fallen by about 75% from its peak in the early 1970s, and is now smaller than at any time since 1919."
Terrestrial weather is extremely variable and localized. A 75% reduction in data collection means a huge increase in modeling. What a joke. A HUGE model of a non-homogeneous system. When you consider that the [claimed] increased warming is relatively small,,, consider that, more model and less observation is inherently less accurate and consider the latitude shift,,;"serious quality problems" is a gross understatement. The baseline data is all worthless.

Just in the last 5 years there has been a huge drop in latitude and altitude of measurements. So, no problem. Just throw out ALL measurements over 5 years old. Every worthless one of them.

" In other words, a portion of the warming trend shown in global records derived from the
GHCN-adj archive results from the adjustments, not from the underlying data."
How very convenient.

" Despite promising as long ago as 2003 to release the list of input stations for the CRUTEM products, CRU Director Phil Jones has never published the exact provenance of data sources for CRTUEM (see McKitrick 2010b [48]-[62].)"
The bullshit goes on and on. There is only one justification to refuse to release data. You know it is corrupted. It sure as hell can't be proprietary.
So 10 years ago, somebody decided that we had to have global warming so they could make a buck. It wasn't Gore, he's too stupid.

[geekster]

Well, see thats the problem. People will say hey, if GISS, CRU, and NOAA all show the same thing, they are independent organizations, then it must be true. The thing is, all three use the same input data set. So if the input data are screwed, anything they produce is screwed.

And it was James Hansen who invented the whole notion that humans had some influence on the global climate back when he start armwaiving in the 1970's that burning fossil fuel was going to send us into an ice age. Then when the great climate shift of 1976 happened when the PDO went warm, he did a 180 and now fossil fuel was going to roast us alive. He's not even a climatologist.

Is it warming or cooling? Well, it is ALWAYS warming or cooling. In North America we generally get 30 years of cooling, then 30 years of warming cycling with the PDO. What is it doing on a global scale? I don't "believe" one way or the other but what I do "believe" is that we don't have the data to tell us one way or the other. The only data I believe are the RSS and UAH satellite data and I will tell you why. They use completely different sensors on completely different platforms with completely different processing methods. While their numbers may vary a tiny bit from one month to another, their general output is nearly identical.

The trouble is that data set only goes back to 1979.

Here is UAH up to July:



No record this year. Also we are headed into a strong la nina event. Atmospheric temperatures generally lag 3 months or so from the sea surface temperatures so October's numbers should be following the Nino34 temps.

Notice that in the last la nina event, temperatures dropped to near the mean for the period. This latest strong el nino did not reach the high of the 1998 el nino. It will be interesting to see how this next strong la nina pans out.

Oh, and here is the latest Nino3.4

[can't sit still]

Great post, geekster. The last graph appears to show us below the mean. The upcoming sunspot cycle will have a big effect. Knowing that, I wouldn't want to make any guesses. There is a lot of interesting data concerning self-regulation. I believe that the modelers have only a dim understanding of this. The extraterrestrial effects are a big blank spot on the map also.
Now, sprites are adding to the confusion;
http://www.livescience.com/common/media ... 607sprites
They move / propagate at 1/10 c and are very energetic. Are they in the models? Fat chance. "This discovery demands a new theory for how they form and why they exist."
I seriously doubt that the magnetosphere and interstellar plasma are in the models.
There are FAR more variables than the modelers could ever hope to account for. As you say, sat measurements are better.

[geekster]

The long term climate models don't even include clouds. They are crap. Hell, they don't even take convection into account. Know what happens when you energize a molecule of gas in the atmosphere? It rises. Models don't take that into account and assume an infinitely thick static atmosphere.


By the way, here is Nino3.4 superimposed on global sst anomaly:



Notice how global sst lags Nino3.4 sst (sst = Sea Surface Temperature for those who might be curious).

[geekster]

NCDC has the numbers for July in the database. Still going on four straight years of temperature decline in the continental US. The following graph is the most recent 12-month period since 1998. So that would be August of last year through July of this year (and each of the other years).

Note that this database does not use the GHCN, it uses the USHCNv2 data set. While some stations of the USHCN are also part of the GHCN, the USHCN as a whole is not a subset of the GHCN. The USHCN includes many stations that are not part of the GHCN. California, for example, has only 4 coastal stations in the GHCN while there are several California stations in the USHCN. There are 1221 stations in the USHCN and only something over 100 stations in the US that are part of the GHCN.




So we continue to see 4 straight years of temperature drop. Trend since 1998 is -0.85 degrees F per decade (green line). Current North American temperature over the past 12 months is about a half a degree above the 1901-2000 mean (black horizontal line).

[dr.placebo]

One more time -- moderate short term effects over local areas are not germane. The global trends over the past 100+ years show warming consistent with significant human contributions. Citing the last 4 years of data for the US does nothing for me or for anyone else.

[ygmir]

oh Doc.......you're agenda is showing............

[dr.placebo]

oh Doc.......you're agenda is showing............

That's because it's such a humongous agenda! And growing bigger and hotter all the time!

[geekster]

One more time -- moderate short term effects over local areas are not germane. The global trends over the past 100+ years show warming consistent with significant human contributions. Citing the last 4 years of data for the US does nothing for me or for anyone else.

That isn't a fact, though. The fact is that during the period when human CO2 emissions were growing at the fastest rate, temperatures cooled.

From the late 1800's to about 1935, temperatures warmed. This was a period when human CO2 emissions were very low. From 1944 to about 1976 temperatures cooled, this was a period of very rapid CO2 emission increase. From a period of 1976 to about 2000, temperatures warmed. And since 2000, global temperatures were steady for about 4 years and have been cooling since.

The rate of atmospheric CO2 increase has been roughly linear even though the rage of human emissions has been irregular. There is very little relation between CO2 increase and temperature increase. In fact, there is no correlation between the two other than it appears that CO2 follows changes in temperatures, not leads them.

But its ok. It doesn't matter what either of us "believes", we are about to enter a cycle of 30 years or so of significant cooling based on natural climate variation cycles. By the end of it, people will be claiming there is another ice age coming just as they were in the 1970's.

The major problem with people claiming that there is correlation between CO2 and temperatures is that they tend to use data sets that represent the ground temperature that are constantly being biased warmer. So yeah, the data look like they are getting warming when what is happening is that they are being modified to be warmer by changing stations used, eliminating colder stations, and "adjusting" modern temperatures higher and older readings colder. Sometimes these adjustments will be changed. Look at a GISS data set produced in 1998 and look at one today and you will see that temperatures older than about 1955 are today shown to be colder than they were in 1998. Why is that? Nobody seems to want to say. It certainly makes modern temperatures seem like the hottest of all times but in 1998 the record was still 1933.

Show me a data set that shows temperatures warmer today and I will show you one that has been manipulated. Neither of the two satellite records show today being warmer than 1998.



That temperature record bears no resemblance to the atmospheric CO2 record:



Which has risen about 75ppmv since 1955 or so. The first 20 years of that record, global temperatures were declining.

Also note that CO2 levels are only now approaching what they were in the last interglacial (according to Vostok ice cores) , when temperatures were much warmer than now (tree line was some 400 miles North of where it is now in Northern Canada and sea levels were about 4-6 meters higher).

[geekster]

Also might want to check out this reconstruction using 18 different temperature proxy series:



The graph is a 30-year rolling average (the last year of input data is 2007)

According to these data series, we are currently near the 2000 year mean.

[geekster]

http://www.boliviabella.com/1-million-f ... aster.html

(3 Aug. 2010 - Update: The number of dead fish and other water-dependent wildlife has increased to about 6 million.)

----------

Over 1 million fish and thousands of alligators, turtles, dolphins and other river wildlife are floating dead in numerous Bolivian rivers in the three eastern/southern departments of Santa Cruz, Beni and Tarija. The extreme cold front that hit Bolivia in mid-July caused water temperatures to dip below the minimum temperatures river life can tolerate. As a consequence, rivers, lakes, lagoons and fisheries are brimming with decomposing fish and other creatures.

Unprecedented: Nothing like this has ever been seen in this magnitude in Bolivia. Inhabitants of riverside communities report the smell is nauseating and can be detected as far as a kilometer away from river banks. River communities, whose livelihoods depend on fishing, fear they'll run out of food and will have nothing to sell. Authorities are concerned there will be a shortage of fish in markets and are more concerned by possible threats to public health, especially in communities that also use river water for bathing and drinking, but also fear contaminated or decaying fish may end up in market stalls. They've begun a campaign to ensure market vendors and the public know how to tell the difference between fresh and unhealthy fish.

In university fish ponds and commercial fisheries the losses are also catastrophic.

http://en.mercopress.com/2010/08/05/sno ... ish-frozen

Light snow storms in Brazil were concentrated in areas of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina. O Globo network aired snow flakes falling in early morning, cars covered with a thin white coating and some roads dangerously slippery because of ice.

In Argentina the phenomenon extended to Northern provinces, geographically sub-tropical while in the Patagonia and along the Andes snow reached over a metre deep, isolating villages and causing yet undisclosed losses to crops and livestock.

The extreme cold weather is expected to peak Thursday dawn with below zero temperatures and even lower with the wind chill factor.

After a harsh weekend, Argentina’s National Weather Forecast Service announced the cold weather is expected to stay until Thursday although it could again reach a freezing peak over the coming week-end.

...

“The last time something of this magnitude happened was 47 years agoâ€

[can't sit still]

"18 different temperature proxy series"
SO, You think that this actually PROVES something

[dr.placebo]

[youtube][/youtube]

[can't sit still]

Spineless propaganda.

[can't sit still]

Here's some links that I found in "comments". I don't have time at the moment to follow up. I'm sure that someone on the E-Playa is just killing time.


http://www.climatedepot.com/a/429/Report-D emocrats-Ref
use-to-Allow-Skeptic-to-Testify-Alo ngside-Gore-A
t-Congressional-Hearing

http://sc ienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/o riginals/Monckton-Caught%20Green-Handed%20Climat egate%20Scandal.pdf

http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~dbun ny/research/global/215.pdf

http://www.tech-know .eu/uploads/IPCC_deception.pdf

http://www.ijis. iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm

http://s cienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/ reprint/trebilc
ock_wind_power.pdf

http://scien ceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/orig inals/Monckton_Arctic_and_Sealevel.pdf

http://j oannenova.com.au/globalwarming/skepti
cs-handboo k-ii/the_skeptics_handbook_II-sml.pdf

"Anyone saying they KNOW definitively whether or not AGW has been proven is quite simply a liar. The debate is NOT over, it never started!"

"Just remember: Carbon Dioxide is NOT a "greenhouse gas." Anyone who wishes to confirm this, and expand on his education, should Yahoo, Google, or Bing "Dr. Roy Spencer, University of Alabama at Huntsville.""

Bon Apetite

[geekster]

Oh, I don't doubt that CO2 is a greenhouse gas because it does block (absorb) certain bands of IR energy. But it is GREATLY swamped by water so that the atmosphere is already opaque to those wavelengths anyway.

Also, the greenhouse effect would not be expected to increase high temperatures. In fact, it would tend to moderate daytime highs. What it does is increase nighttime and winter low temperatures.

But CO2 is such a tiny amount of the atmosphere, the atmosphere is already loaded with a much more powerful GHG, and most of the greenhouse effect offered from CO2 takes place in the first 100 parts per million of concentration, that there really is no evidence that CO2 concentration increases will noticeably increase global temperatures in such a way as to be distinguished from natural climate variation.

The problem is the data the alarmists use to scare everyone. None of it is actual recorded data, the data are cherry picked and then "adjusted" to give the desired result.

The wheels started falling off that cart when Keith Briffa finally admitted that he used a small sample of trees to produce his proxy series because they provided the desired result when one of those trees was weighted much higher than the rest. Then when the series turned counter to his desired outcome, he simply truncated the series at the point where it diverged from his desired result. There was a much larger series of samples available from the same general area that showed no correlation at all to Briffa's work and that was when people started looking into why and eventually the fudging of the data exposed.

Phil Jones is on record earlier this year as saying the temperature reconstructions done to date by his group are probably meaningless on a millennial scale.

But in any case, the land surface temperature record is such a mess that it is not useful for anything. Most of the stations are not designed for precision climate recording. When you hear of temperature changes of a degree over a course of a century, the correct response is to laugh, particularly when "adjustments" to individual stations are often larger than that. If you have a degree of average rise, and a good number of stations regularly have their readings adjusted up by a degree, it just becomes embarrassing.

[dr.placebo]

I'm not sure whether CSS thinks that CO2 is a greenhouse gas or not. The comment he included says it's not, but what is CSS arguing?

Geekster thinks that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but that it is irrelevant given the effect of water vapor. Here's a link that has some info on the relation:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/water-v ... se-gas.htm

The trouble with the carbon skeptics is that CO2 (and CH4, which oxidizes to CO2 after a moderate amount of time in the air) accumulate and rock weathering (which removes CO2) takes place on a long scale. Small CO2 additions mount up, while H2O seeks equilibrium much more rapidly. Additional humidity (which is climbing over time) and rising temperatures go together with rising CO2.

One more time, the trends point in the same direction.

[can't sit still]

Read the Doc;
http://maths.ucd.ie/met/msc/ClimSyn/heldsode00.pdf
It's all modeling crap with huge variables and huge assumptions.

" Results
from current climate models indicate that water vapor increases of
this magnitude cannot be explained by climate noise alone. In a
formal detection and attribution analysis using the pooled results
from 22 different climate models, the simulated ‘‘fingerprint’’
pattern of anthropogenically caused changes in water vapor is
identifiable with high statistical confidence in the SSM/I data.
Experiments in which forcing factors are varied individually sug-
gest that this fingerprint ‘‘match’’ is primarily due to human-
caused increases in greenhouse gases "anthropogenically caused changes in water vapor
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0702872104v1.pdf
"anthropogenically caused changes in water vapor"
I see no mention of man's enormous utilization of water to irrigate desert areas. I'm certainly a believer in anthropogenically caused changes in water vapor.

It's very convenient to cite big increases in water vapor as a driver of climate change,,,, and then blame the H2O on CO2.
The papers claim that CO2 causes "forcing". They claim that none of the other forcing factors could cause it. They cite their models. They "suggest" that it is caused by CO2.

There was an experiment done recently to measure what a cow gives off. They put cows in a sealed room and measured gases, etc. They were extremely surprised at the results. Their assumptions were WAY off.
Any climate models that are derived from partial measurements of the atmosphere are bound to have assumptions, variables and unknowns that lead to a + - factor that renders them imprecise.

These people are making assumptions about water vapor and then piling on assumptions about CO2. They used 22 different climate models. How the fuck do they know the precision of the variables of these 22 different models? They've introduced so many variables, how could they possible validate all of them ?
BTW Doc, keep up the good work

[can't sit still]

Dr. placebo, I'd be willing to claim that ALL those models consider the "solar constant" to be a non-variable factor. Not so;
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/200 ... 714-6334r/

[dr.placebo]

I don't think that knowledgeable climate scientists would claim that the solar input to the earth was constant, not even adjusting for the 11 year solar cycle. The Washington Times report was OK but sloppy (better than their average climate coverage). Here's a quote from Solanki himself in a 2004 press release:
[quote]“Just how large this role is, must still be investigated, since, according to our latest knowledge on the variations of the solar magnetic field, the significant increase in the Earth’s temperature since 1980 is indeed to be ascribed to the greenhouse effect caused by carbon dioxide,â€

[can't sit still]

Interesting papers. How ever, I see huge gray areas;
"However, researchers at the MPS have shown that the Sun can be responsible for, at most, only a small part of the warming over the last 20-30 years. They took the measured and calculated variations in the solar brightness over the last 150 years and compared them to the temperature of the Earth. Although the changes in the two values tend to follow each other for roughly the first 120 years, the Earth’s temperature has risen dramatically in the last 30 years while the solar brightness has not appreciably increased in this time."

"temperature has risen dramatically" According to who and based on what measurements? The data do not support this. I like the beryllium 10 data though. Also;
"Sun is in a state of unusually high activity, for about the last 60 years" OK so the first 30 years of this time period was attributable to the sun but, the most recent 30 years was not. This is STILL predicated on questionable models and Disastrously distorted data acquisition.
"significant increase in the Earth’s temperature since 1980 is indeed to be ascribed to the greenhouse effect caused by carbon dioxide,â€

[Token]

Last time we went from a strong El Niño into rapid La Niña the Playa in the two subsequent years was rainy cold and miserable. That was 1999 and 2000.

Since the ENSO cycle just repeated, if we have two years of cold wet miserable Playa, we can all conclude that R. Spencer is right and there is no Global Warming!

I say bring warm clothes this year and an umbrella.

[dr.placebo]

CSS, I was simply digging back for the source of the Washington Times article you cited. If you are going to trust Solanki on the solar estimates you have to at least consider his estimate of the effect.

Token, the West Coast weather has been mostly cooler and wetter than normal, so I'd say that predicting the playa to follow suit is simply playing the odds. Although I don't remember 1999 as being that bad, 2000 did suck weatherwise.

We are seeing a lot of extremes this year. Record hot in eastern N. America, Russia, much of Asia. Unusual snowfall (indicative of moisture, not cold). Several record floods. Record cold of lesser extent in S.America. Record or near record Arctic ice loss, increasing near record Antarctic sea ice but decreasing Antarctic land ice. Weird all around, but generally near record average temperature.

Suspicion is that the extremes are at least partly driven by extra thermal energy in the system, but suspicion is not proof. So what evidence are we getting about climate change in the last 30 years?

Increasing global average humidity has been observed. The temperatures keep rising, on average (even during a strong solar minimum). The temperature stratification in the atmosphere (warmer at low altitude, cooler at high altitude) is what one would expect from greenhouse gases (yes, including moisture). Combined satellite and ground measurements of infrared radiation support a greenhouse gas model (the earth is retaining more heat energy than it is losing). The arctic ice extent and volume is shrinking, quite possibly faster than linear. Ocean heat measurements indicate retained heat. Most of these trends are detailed in the NOAA 2009 State of the Climate Report:

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories201 ... imate.html

The problem I have with climate skeptics is not the skepticism, but rather the apparent lack of willingness to consider that warming is happening and that humans play a substantial role.

As an analogy, suppose that I had a health problem of unknown origin. I am (in this scenario) a very wealthy individual, so I consult 100 specialists in the condition. 97 of them state an opinion and urge similar action. 3 give a contrary opinion and urge no action. I choose to take the action urged by the 97. One can quibble with the accuracy of the analogy, but personally I think that it is close enough, so that's why I write my posts here.

The one place where I think that my analogy is weak is that I'm not going to suffer a lot from the condition, but my grandchildren will.