Strange that NASA’s Hansen isn’t talking about this remarkable event. It would be easy to get the impression that he has an agenda which has nothing to do with science.
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
What an amazing scandal that the hockey team isn’t talking about this.
Ch5 1/20/2012 anomaly was 1.67 degF lower than 1/20/2010.
What is the importance of temperature at 14,000 feet altitude?
It avoids localized issues like UHI effects.
What I find interesting is that the ‘coolth’ extends all the way up the atmosphere. It might not be significant that one year is running cooler than average but it does point to a factor(s) that are more significant than CO2. I shall continue to observe without forming too strong an opinion.
When they said HOT SPOT they meant COLD SPOT
Yes. Sorry about that typo.
To avoid further confusion to the public, in the future they shall only be called “SPOTs.” Some Place Over There. SPOTs are everywhere, thus ensuring full coverage, and some always fit the model. So, in the interests of clarity, why muddle the picture with irrelevant details?
“What is the importance of temperature at 14,000 feet altitude?”
I suppose it’s important in the sense that this is roughly where climate models predicted we would see the most warming if the CAGW theory was correct.
Strange thing is that winter basically skipped GA this year. I don’t think anyone that I know has even got a cold this winter.
This anomaly shows up all the way to 46,000 ft (~ 80% of the atmosphere by weight).
Has Dr. Roy confirmed the satellites aren’t misbehaving??
Was just looking at the European model. They appear to setting up a historic coldwave for Europe, which will start later this week and continue into next week. Basically a flow of easterlies all the way from central Russia to the UK.
The winter in western Europe has been mild so far, but looks like that all is going to change soon. Global Weirding and Jetstream Disruption at its finest!
I wonder if Joe Romm thinks the sensor is broken.
Maybe I’m reading the graph at the source wrong but it seems that at a high altitude, the yearly temperature graph inverts. Why would summer be colder than winter at high altitudes?
Summer is -19C and Winter is -21C … hence winter IS colder than summer. How are you reading this?
Why are summers colder than winters at high altitude?
The chart is showing GLOBAL average daily temperatures at 14,000ft.
There is no such thing as a Global summer or winter…. when its summer in the northern hemisphere, its winter in the southern and vice versa.
Also it is in fact showing that it is warmer in the northern hemisphere summer than its winter, not colder, perhaps due to the greater landmass.
I think you’re getting a bit confused as the graph is showing temperatures in NEGATIVE degress celcius. eg. Minus 18C, not Plus 18C
With this latest year data on lower temp, where is there a plot of CO2 levels during this lowered temp period.
I would like to see the CO2 values for this past year. The last number for CO2 was around 380-390ppm, but this data is about 3years old.
limate4you.com/ClimateReflections.htm#20080927:%20Reflections%20on%20the%20correlation%20between%20global%20temperature%20and%20atmospheric%20CO2
I’m sorry the link to a specific article did not take.
Go to http://www.climate4you.com and study the portion devoted to plotting CO2 concentrations versus temps. It basically falsifies the AGW hypothesis. CO2 does not drive temperatures. Something else does, or more likely, a combination of several ‘something elses’ drives temperature.
You know he does…
He also, thinks Mike Mann’s Math is real and doesn’t spit hockey sticks with calibration data.
He also thinks a tree, is a “treemometer” which has absolutely no need for WATER, SIXTEEN DIFFERENT MINERALS IN APPROPRIATE RATIO, HEAT,
*LIGHT* etc for growth. He sees no need for OXYGEN at the ROOTS or CARBON DIOXIDE at the CANOPY.
It’s a ‘treemometer’.
He also is confounded by the fact there’s no tropospheric hotspot: LITERALLY the WORLD’S BIGGEST HEATER can’t be DETECTED by a SINGLE INSTRUMENT KNOWN to MANKIND.
He’s a believer in the same kind of ‘sintz’ that had
Creationists telling THE MEDICAL RESEARCH INDUSTRY they were – YOU GUESSED IT -
‘D.E.N.I.E.R.S.’
and that they were going to – YOU can’t MAKE it UP -
‘love away the venereal disease’ called HIV/AIDS and PROVE that THEY were DENIERS of hooker love.
Well, after about 40 MILLION of them died, after we ‘DENIERS’ told them “don’t you do it, it’s a retro-virus and it’ll own our equipment with the offhand ease of taking candy from a CHILD’
WHAT did they LEARN? They learned ‘Abstinence doesn’t work.’
Well what it turns out didn’t work was CALLING MAINSTREM SCIENCE D.E.N.I.E.R.S.
then trying to SPEND that DIME in a PHONE CALL to DARWIN.
Darwin sent his DOG to see the makers of those phone calls, and they are now
t*rds in the GUTTER of HISTORY
shat by said DOG.
The people who tell themselves they’ll believe in this hick fantasy of magic gas think that they, themselves, can’t possibly EVER have it come back around a corner and wipe the floor with them, or the people following.
Wrong answer, just as the wrong answer to ‘IT MAKES HOCKEY STICKS BUT THEY’RE MAGIC HOCKEY STICKS CAWS THAY STILL ANNOWNST D.O.O.M.S.D.A.Y. for D.E.N.I.E.R.S.
from
C.A.R.B.O.N.
S.I.N.
The Church of the Apocalypse has a lot of die-hard delusionals connected to it.
Joe Romm being only one.
Sorry for the hanging chad of grammar there, I’ve been over at Topix flaying warmers and there, I just put a message after I mess up saying ‘if the rest of humanity hasn’t gotten them the picture, by now, with CORRECT grammar, what I said using incorrect grammar isn’t going to make much difference.
My apology to he politically/grammatically correctly, oriented.
The plunge continues.
251.787°K
All we hear is how warm it is. This might be the coldest January, globally, in decades.
As Tom note, another record cold day according to AQUA 5. At this point, either it’s an instrument artifact or real (short-term at least) cooling and not just noise. I can make that statement because it’s been 4 days in a row of continuing records. The Jan 22 value is 0.13 C below the previous record for that day and has an anomaly (relative to a 2003-2011 baseline) of -0.55 C, which is 2.4 standard deviations below the average…so cooler than normal at around the 98% confidence interval using a z-score. Given that the number of observations is under 10, it’s probably a bit lower than that for actual confidence interval.
-Scott
I am looking at this graph, and I don’t see a legend for the different colors. I suspect they represent different years. Why is there no legend?
5 coldest days of the last 11 years.
1. 1/22/12 – 251.787°K
2. 1/21/12 – 251.817°K
3. 1/20/12 – 251.838°K
4. 1/19/12 – 251.858°K
5. 1/15/08 – 251.871°K
With all due respect, you’re cherrypicking.
Don’t stoop to the level of AGW alarmists!
That we’re at/below Scenario C is a far more powerful argument – Hansen’s model did not accurately prospectively predict squat.
Today’s cherrypicking may be tomorrow’s trendline. Cherrypicking implies selecting anomalous outliers from a contradictory trend. I’m not sure the term applies given the declining global temperatures since the beginning of this century.
Good point, but picking 5 coldest days in the past 11 years is like what the warmists do with warmest days (e.g. number of record highs exceeding record lows). Taking a few days out of an 11 year sample, when natural cycles last decades/centuries, proves absolutely nothing about the validity/junk science of AGW.
The oceans have a huge heat capacity. Temperatures don’t plunge like this unless something significant is going on.
You suggest taking the high road and that is certainly virtuous. On the other hand, using the same tactics warmists use but turning it back against them to level the playing field has merit as well. Virtue is only appreciated by the virtuous and I don’t count any warmists in that number.
Warmists succeed by generating fear, doubt and confusion with their wild claims and reasoned counter arguments are drowned out by their aggressive tactics. Why not turn up the volume by offering counter arguments using the same sales techniques they employ? At the very least the resulting noise would serve to dilute the warmist message. The public quickly loses interest when confronted with equally loud but opposing views.
It doesn’t matter whether we take the high road, the low road or no road. The alarmists will push warmism until they get no more funding for it. Then they will push something else.
I don’t know about 14k ft.but down on the surface there is so much less ice that new year round routes are being used over the arctic. This can’t happen without significant warming for a reasonably long time. These things are discussed as a matter of corse in professional mariner publications.
And The Bering Sea has record ice.
lol, in a matter of course do these mariners discuss movement of water? Dear God! The ice isn’t melting by the overwhelming heat in the arctic! Warm air and water has been moving into the arctic from the south. This year we’ve seen a shift in the Arctic Oscillation. Hence, the accumulation of ice in the Bering Sea as Steve has mentioned. If the AMO doesn’t push warmth up to the arctic, expect the ice to recover.
How come people don’t understand ice doesn’t melt in -10C just like it doesn’t melt in -20C? The observed temp fluctuations in the arctic have little to do with the ice loss.
Summer has bypassed us down here in New Zealand, we have had a string of nighttime temps in the low single figures (celcius) which are normal night temps in the middle of winter.
Well, at least someone is having Winter, which we here in the USA have not been having this year.
How does one explain that?
Parts of the US have had record snow and or cold this winter. Asia and Europe have been having record cold. The Eastern US is not necessarily a good proxy for the global average temperature.
The Eastern US is not necessarily a good proxy for the global average temperature.
This record breaking warm Winter has been going on from the Rockies, where some ski resorts have either closed down due to lack of snow or they’re making artificial snow, to most of the central part of the nation.
In the Midwest, where I live, this is the warmest Winter I can recall in four decades. A few weeks back, there was rain stretching from Arkansas to Green Bay, WI.
Rain this time of year in Arkansas wasn’t unusual, but in Green Bay?
There’s something screwy going on with the weather, that I can see with my own eyes over the decades.
In the 1970′s around here, Winter got cold enough that the ponds froze over and one could skate around on the ice.
No longer, that type of cold stopped around the mid-1990′s.
Yes, parts of the USA have had record cold, like Alaska, but the lower 48 are having an extended Fall.
What’s going on, I’m not sure, but the only agenda we should have is trying to figure out what is going on with the weather and if it’s the climate or man-made change.
Oh … please spare me.
I was planning on driving from Denver to the east coast starting tomorrow, but a huge snowstorm forecast to hit Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa is going to delay my departure.
Texas and New Mexico have had record snow. Alaska has had record snow. The Pacific Northwest has had record snow.
The 1976 ski season had almost no snow in the Rockies
Denver and the front range have just had the largest February blizzard in history. It has just started snowing again after NOT melting in a couple of days. Usually our snow melts fairly quickly, but not this time.
January was very warm for Denver, so go figure.
I guess this illustrates the need to take long term, 30 plus years, views of weather patterns. I personally believe mankind does not have enough data on world wide climate trends to even know what the climate trends are. Give them another 30 years of satellite data and a cleaned up ground temperature record and we might be able to say something about climate trends.
They are having a mild winter in the east US over to Greenland which is running 5 deg C above normal (but it is still way below zero and NOT melting), but the west US is having a harder winter, just as Europe and Moscow are in a deep freeze.
This is due to atmospheric blocking, which occurs more often as the planet cools (last time was in the 1960s). Normally, meanders of the jet stream can become fixed in place by warm and cold air masses for a few days to a few weeks. However, very cold air masses can become stuck in place and lock the jet stream in place for up to 3 months. This is why Russia had that very hot summer two years ago. Currently we have a cold mass roughly over the eastern US and a huge cold air mass over Europe/Russia (running 10-15 deg C colder than normal). The eastern US is in between these masses and, I imagine, there is a warm mass in eastern Russia. They alternate around the Northern Hemisphere.
The Southern Hemispheric jet stream does not have this phenomenon as there are no land masses to get big meanders going. The Tibetan Plateau constantly perturbs our norther jet stream into a wave pattern.
Mr. Higley,
Nice comment!
Greg – I presume if one waits long enough all sorts of winters will happen, eventually,
Oh … please spare me.
OK, I will, since you apparently are the one with an ‘agenda.’ Someone interested in REAL science would be asking questions and seeking answers, and not ignoring the strange Winters we’ve been having, and the hellish Summers.
Yes, parts of Texas have had record snowfall, like El Paso, on the Mexican border, while in the Midwest, it was warm enough for one to only need a light jacket when going outside.
I found your site at “What Really Happened.” A alternative news blog whose owner likes to make fun of Al Gore and any others who dare ask questions about the climate extremes.
The owner, Mike Rivero, does what he accuses the ‘global-warming’ conspiracy types of doing; he cherry-picks news about cold weather in some region of the Ukraine, or some remote village in Peru or Alaska and nary a peep about the warm Winter the continental USA is experiencing.
Reminds me of some grade school child, who will put their hands over their ears and scream “I can’t hear you” repeatedly until the troublesome person goes away.
So, away I go.
Asia and Europe are having record cold – as is Alaska. Do you have any idea how small your little part of the world is?
TO Greb Bacon,
So what? Winters come in many flavors and shades, from year to year and location to location.
However, to assume your memory of past winters this is any indication of a warming trend is ingenuous and parochial of you.
And to head off the subtext, human emissions have no detectable effect on climate, a trace gas cannot and does not drive climate, CO2 is plant food, and there is no downside to having more plants and more oxygen—life loves CO2.
It would also be easy to get the impression that Hansen knows climate change is about decadal changes and is not revealed by every monthly blip in surface temperatures.
That’s nice to hear, and it explains alot. When you fantasy implodes your reality explodes. It all makes sence now Davie A!
Maybe David Appell can explain how “runaway warming” works, but let us try here:
I turn the gas on under a rather large pot of water. 3 minutes from now the temperature is warmer than when I started. 8 Minutes from now it is warmer still. 12 minutes from now it is colder than 8 minutes ago. Is the gas still on? 15 minutes from now the water is colder than when I started. Should I call the gas company yet?
We don’t live in a pot of water, we live on a surface above it. But the pot of water has been, and is still, overall, warming strongly:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
Yes, you can tell that from falling sea levels and declining ocean temperatures.
Dear David Appell,
That has nothing to do with what I said. If the overall heat content is decreasing, how can you claim there is warming?
The overall heat content is *not* decreasing:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
In the oceans it’s increasing at a rate of about 100 terawatts since 1970. Since 1990 the rate is 350 TW. That’s about 0.1-0.2% of the average TOA flux from the Sun. That’s not insignificant.
Withe temperatures so far below his predictions from 25 years ago, he is not doing decadal change any more. His new theory is that it will all happen at the end of the century, when he is 160 years old.
I feel like I’m not on the same planet as David Appell.
Hansen’s repeated revisions of threats of reaching a “tipping point” reminds me of Pastor Harold Camping’s rapture predictions.
David – Perhaps you would provide a link to ANY AGW model which has accurately PROSPECTIVELY predicted global avg temperatures.
I could go look (so could you), but it’s not a very interesting or important question so I’m not going to waste much time on it.
First of all, models don’t predict, they project, based on a set of assumptions about emissions scenarios. None of these scenarios represent what actually does happens.
Second of all, everyone knows models have large uncertainties and cannot yet model some important factors, like aerosols and clouds, and short-term fluctuations like ENSOs and others on the scale of a decade. Hence the saying, “all models are wrong, but some are useful.”
Third, the validity of models needs to be evaluated on the scale of decades, not years.
Fourth, wrong models don’t disprove the validity of modeling, only point out how it can be improved. The climate system is extremely complex, so it’s no wonder modeling it is extremely difficult. (Models of the Arctic have consistently underestimated its melting, for example.) In all sciences, wrong results are an indication of what isn’t properly understood and needs to be worked on. Did the Bohr model of the atom show that the atom would never be understood? Of course not — it showed what needed to be improved.
Decisions about climate change will necessarily need to be made in the face of model uncertainty — perhaps large model uncertainty. If you have a better way of gauging the future than though modeling, by all means, let everyone know.
As Steven said before, “team huddle needed!”Again!
Not interesting and not important? Are you kidding? I actually agree with all of what you said about models. But political decisions involving lots of $ are based on these models and their projections. If AGW alarmists wish to push their agenda on the rest of us, and claim that tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, droughts, etc., are all on the rise, it would be nice to see some evidence that these catastrophes are becoming more frequent and severe.
Who is making those claims? Or is it just easier to toss everyone into a bin labeled “AGW alarmists” so you can criticize everyone without having to look at the details?
Models have uncertainties. Science can only answer so much. Decisions about climate change and energy will need to be made in light of such uncertainties and limitations.
Do you keep smoking just because your doctor can’t tell you the exact month you will get lung cancer — or even if you will get it at all?
David – The IPCC and Drs. Hansen/Mann/Trenberth/et al have made many such claims. Many are in writing on this and other skeptical websites. Besides, in order to convince people to make public policy decisions about AGW, CO2 not only has to cause warming (which I think it does), but warming due to CO2 needs to dominate natural cycles, and also has to have more negative than positive consequences. All you hear from IPCC is alarmism and negative consequences.
As I have been trained in engineering and medicine, I am well aware of models and the limitations of science, and the seriousness of making life-and-death decisions based on incomplete information. Your smoking analogy is not a good one – cause-and-effect there is settled, whereas AGW science certainly isn’t.
If AGW is causing increasing frequency and severity of tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, floods, snow/lack thereof, present the quantitative stats to prove it (not just the model). If AGW doesn’t cause these things, then it is not a clear and present danger, and I would make the case that we need not take action over the next few decades. We’ll be moving towards renewable energy regardless.
Well, here’s a model that did pretty well. It’s a simple model, too:
“Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?” Wallace S. Broecker, Science Vol. 189 no. 4201 pp. 460-463, August 8, 1975
http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/files/2009/10/broeckerglobalwarming75.pdf
Or provide any AGW model which has accurately PROSPECTIVELY predicted any of the numerous catastrophes (tornados, hurricanes, floods, drought, snowfall or lack thereof, etc.). I’m not talking about individual weather events. I’m talking about overall trends for these events on a global scale.
Maybe David Appell can explain the how the total heat content of a system can decrease while the system is supposedly warming. Maybe David Appell can provide us a link to a definition of “runaway”.
Maybe David Appell can provide us with a definition of “decadal” that means “more than fifteen years but less than one year” as he seems to use the word.
Isn’t that funny, when SkS saying something about how Skeptics see the AGW bullshit in that very term and then Davie A here says “It would also be easy to get the impression that Hansen knows climate change is about decadal changes and is not revealed by every monthly blip in surface temperatures.”
As Steven said “team huddle needed!”
Davie A you can thank Cook for that one!
But he will probably change his post there after the team huddle!
The total heat content of the system is not decreasing. See the Ocean Heat Content charts at http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
Wow. You found Trenberth’s missing heat.
New analysis finds that there is no missing heat: Loeb et al, Nature Geosciences, Jan 2012.
OK so Trenberth was wrong. But now Loeb et al are right!
Yeah right.
I would be very wary of accepting any information from NOAA without asking a lot of questions first. Here is R Pielke Snr on the subject of a questionaire that NOAA employees have been asked to participate in on a “voluntary” (ha!) basis. http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/noaa-climate-survey-a-biased-approach-to-assess-noaa-employeess-view-of-climate-science/
I took a quick look at it from a purely mathematical/statistical point of view. I downloaded the data for this series from its start in Jul 2002 to Feb 2012. I calculated a moving 365-day average in order to eliminate all seasonal variations. There were a few gaps in the data (only one significant one of 38 days from Nov 07-Jan 08) which could have adulterated the result, so I filled them by straight-line interpolation. This should provide a reasonably accurate fill, considering the actual temperature movements over short periods of time.
The average temp for the whole 9.5 years is 252.966K/-20.184C. The best-fit linear trend over this period is almost precisely flat – increasing by 0.01 degrees, or 1 degree in 950 years. The curve starts in 2003 at .063 degrees above the long-term average. The average annual temperature ranged from a low of 252.734K on 31 Dec 2008 to a high of 253.242K on 16 Nov 2010 – a range of .508 in less than two years. The curve swings above and below the long-term average in eight distinct peaks and troughs. The current average annual temperature is 252.885K – .356K below the peak, .081K below the long-term average, in the bottom 30% of the range, .144K below July 2003, and is still dropping.
Looking solely at this data we would logically conclude the following:
- There is no discernible trend in global temperature – either rising nor falling,
- Temperature does not move in a linear fashion, but swings significantly around the average,
- The temperature today is lower than average and lower than at any point before the deep trough of 2008, but this is likely just part of the normal variability, and nothing to be alarmed about.
Uh, Roger — please think a little before you calculate. On UAH’s AMSU page there is a link down on the right that says “Temperature Data Caveat.” Please read it; it says this:
“The global-average data displayed on this page have only limited quality control, can undergo unannounced changes, and so should only be used as a general guide. Official, quality-controlled global lower-tropospheric temperatures, using more extensive processing procedures (and possibly different satellite instruments) are updated every month and are available at: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/ ”
In fact, if one takes the monthly UAH LT temperatures, the 10-yr trend (which, recall, is too short to show climatology) is +0.020 +/- 0.098 C/decade; that is, it shows warming, but it isn’t statistically significant (my trend uncertainty is the 95% confidence level).
The 30-yr trend, which is much more significant for climatology, is +0.165 +/- 0.021 C/decade. Even the 15-year trend is statistically significant: +0.085 +/- 0.062 C/decade, though not climatologically significant.
Uh, David – please think before you post. Hansen’s own data shows temperatures below his own zero emissions Scenario C.
You mean a model result from 24 years ago wasn’t right? Stop the presses.
Models make “projections” and not “predictions.” Their projections were done a quarter of a century ago – a huge span of time in this era of vast changes in computer technology. Models cited in the first IPCC report had a grid size of about 500 km; by the AR4 they were down to 110 km. (See Figure 1.4 in the IPCC 4AR WG1 Ch1 p113, http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter1.pdf ). Models also now include much more relevant physics, chemistry, and biology (see Figure 1.2 p99 in the same chapter).
David –
If you are unhappy with Hansen’s 1988 model, would you kindly provide a more recent model that accurately PROSPECTIVELY has predicted temps or shown increasing trends in global hurricanes, EF3-EF5 tornadoes, floods, droughts, lack of snow, decreased agricultural production, etc.
24 years has also been plenty of time to go back and adjust old temp data without providing clear rationale in a transparent fashion. Where can one find the database for original unadjusted temp data, David?
That is such a lame excuse, “the models were so primative in 1988 and now they are wonderful.”
1988 was almost 20 years after we put a man on the moon and we were hardly Neanderthals when it came to technology in 1988.
The fact of the matter is that meaningful warming simply isn’t happening and there is no model in the world that can put lipstick on that pig! So all that is left to your crowd is to manipulate the data sets.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/prediction
projections and predictions are much the same in this context, So what’s your day job again?
Re: Models make “projections” and not “predictions.” Well that’s news to me. What’s the difference. Anyway, scientists (real ones) make “predictions” – or they’re not scientists. There’s no mention of “projections” in the scientific method. And a lot of so-called scientists have confidently made their predictions on the basis of models.
J Calvert N says:
Re: Models make “projections” and not “predictions.” Well that’s news to me. What’s the difference.
Projections are based on assumptions about future emissions (“scenarios”). There are about 36 different scenarios in the recent IPCC Assessment Reports.
Anyway, scientists (real ones) make “predictions” – or they’re not scientists.
Scientists only make predictions about systems that do not not vary with time, or about systems whose future time evolution is known. Since no one knows the future of the world’s population and energy use, no one can know what future emissions of GHGs will be, or of land use changes, etc. Hence they can only projections, not predictions.
Why are you telling me that models are worthless at predicting?
Why don’t you tell the thousands of scientists who have published useless predictions based on running climate models?
Model predictions are made for 100 years, but the models themselves aren’t good for 24 years. Makes perfect sense.
The UAH trends are up, for 5, 8, 9, & 12
Years, and even from the outlier in 1998, despite UAH being noisier than the GIStemp instrumental record.
Arrhenius predicted in 1896 that increasing CO2 would cause the earth to warm more at the poles, and it certainly doesn’t appear to me that Alaska or Europe are particularly cool this winter.
http://www.real-science.com/doesnt-alaska-europe-cool-winter
Why do you ignore Hansen’s massive failures, and instead choose to erect silly meaningless strawman arguments?
This is from a recent paper by Hansen et al:
“…Climate sensitivity, the eventual global temperature change per unit forcing, is known with good accuracy from Earth’s paleoclimate history. However, two fundamental uncertainties limit our ability to predict global temperature change on decadal time scales.
“First, although climate forcing by human-made greenhouse gases (GHGs) is known accurately, climate forcing caused by changing human-made aerosols is practically unmeasured. Aerosols are fine particles suspended in the air, such as dust, sulfates, and black soot…. Aerosol climate forcing is complex, because aerosols both reflect solar radiation to space (a cooling effect) and absorb solar radiation (a warming effect). In addition, atmospheric aerosols can alter cloud cover and cloud properties. Therefore, precise composition-specific measurements of aerosols and their effects on clouds are needed to assess the aerosol role in climate change.
“Second, the rate at which Earth’s surface temperature approaches a new equilibrium in response to a climate forcing depends on how efficiently heat perturbations are mixed into the deeper ocean. Ocean mixing is complex and not necessarily simulated well by climate models. Empirical data on ocean heat uptake are improving rapidly, but still suffer limitations.”
– James Hansen et al, “Earth’s Energy Imbalance and Implications,” 2011,
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110415
Antarctic ice cores show CO2 lagging temperature. Hansen is completely full of it.
What part of below Scenario C isn’t clear? Temperatures have risen less than a modeled zero emissions after the year 2000.
Once again you show that you don’t even understand Hansen’s paper. Scenario C isn’t “zero emissions after the year 2000,” it’s zero *net* emissions after the year 2000 — sources balance sinks. It says this right in Hansen’s paper, pg 9345.
You made the same mistake once before, and even though I pointed it out to you then you are making it again.
What an arrogant and silly person you are.
“Scenario A assumes continued exponential trace gas growth, scenario B assumes a reduced linear linear growth of trace gases, and scenario C assumes a rapid curtailment of trace gas emissions such that the net climate forcing ceases to increase after the year 2000.”
Given the long residence time of CO2 and the outgassing of CO2 from the warming oceans, the only way you could come close to achieving zero forcing increase after 2000 would be by zero human emissions. You speak confidently about things you simply do not understand.
> Antarctic ice cores show CO2
> lagging temperature.
Then explain why the current ratio of CO2-change to temperature-change is 10 times that of the warming after an Ice Age, and why it is 100 ppm greater than previous peaks.
Hansen et al, JGR v93 nD8 (Aug 20, 1988) page 9345:
“Scenario C is a more drastic curtailment of emissions than has generally been imagined; it represents elimination of CFC emissions by 2000 and a reduction of CO2 and other trace gas emissions to a level such that the annual growth rates are zero (i.e., the sources just balance the sinks) by the year 2000.”
Are we all aware that Hansen’s 88 paper was based on a climate sensitivity of 4.2K per doubling CO2?
And that if you adjust his model to fit the actual track of CO2 emissions and temps, that the resulting climate sensitivity turns out to be ~3K per doubling? That matches current IPCC median sensitivity assessment. Not too shabby for an early climate model.
Ahh. That explains why there has been no rise over the last 15 years.
What about the 7 am temperatures in McGrath, Alaska? Climatologists are on pins and needles waiting to find out if it confirms their theories or not. Please let us know, OK?
Also, have a look at northern Europe’s temperature in November. I guess the Earth is suddenly plunging into an Ice Age, and in only 2 months! Weird, isn’t it?
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/images/map-blended-mntp-201111%20(2).png
Of course record cold in Alaska does not mean we are heading into an ice age.
Equally a heatwave in Texas does not mean the earth’s going to burn up.
Of course not. But it does mean ~$5 billion in losses to Texas farmers and ranchers — or to taxpayers, since they pay for much of that in crop indemnities and higher food prices.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aN6t_Wobj5s&feature=related
But it’s just a projection, or prediction!!!
And the Texas heatwave is due to global warming?
BTW David, next time I post a comment at your site, please have the decency to print it. At least Steve does not censor awkward questions.
Cheers Paul!
David,
The crop losses last year were relatively minor. There was only a 2% reduction of the corn crop. There was an 8% reduction in soybeans, that are grown proportionally more in the South.
Compare that to two major droughts of the 1980′s where well over 20% of the corn crop was lost or the Dust Bowl 1930′s where there were two losses around 50% and a third one over 20%. There was another big crop disaster in 1894. No matter what we do to curb CO2, you are never going to prevent crop disasters.
Paul Homewood: All comments on my blog are automatically published, except those on posts more than 7 days old, which are held for moderation only to prevent comment spam. And all of those are approved unless they are crude and/or ad hominem attacks. So if your comment didn’t appear it either fell into this latter category or you messed up the comment process.
Communications from David Appell are our first clear proof of communications from a planet in a different galaxy. Clearly on planet ‘X’ things are heating up while here on Earth we are increasingly gripped by cold.
I’m losing track of David Appell’s claims. Apparently Hansen wrote about scenario C:
oops…the blockquote didn’t close…
(Sigh.) Did you read Hansen’t paper??
Models are experiments; different assumptions and inputs help you understand the effect of different factors.
I state I have lost track of your thoughts, and all you can answer is a “sigh”???
Well…can we agree that scenario C has nothing to do with what has happened in reality?
Models are NOT experiments! They are sometimes used instead of experiments where experiments would be too costly – or impracticable. But they are worse than second-best. CFD models (for example) have cut down the need for costly wind-tunnel and water-tank testing. CFD models are regarded as pretty reliable, but they are models are of very simple and well understood systems with few variables compared to climate models.
That’s why they’re used to influence global policy decisions.
Models are tools, not evidence. An achaeologist does not point to his shovel as evidence of evolution, he uses it to uncover evidence. If he designs a shovel that leaves impressions of fossils, that is fraud.
From AR4…
“2.9.1 Uncertainties in Radiative Forcing”
The table on this page describes the IPCC’s understanding of climate drivers. 13 out of 16 forcings are listed as ‘low’ to ‘very low’.
How many accurate models have been built of chaotic systems when there is less than 80% understanding of their intricate workings?
Zero.
@David Appell: “Models are experiments”
You have got to be kidding. Have you ever actually done a real experiment in a lab in your life? Models are NOT experiments, nor are they a substitute for experiments.
Of course models can be an experiment and it’s easily demonstrable. How was the earth’s atmospheric circulation explained? By using models. Most experiments make use of models. I run experiments all the time. Even when I can make direct measurements, I use a model first. It’s a great waste of time otherwise.
Err, what does that have to do with CO2 lagging behind temperature? Are you seriously trying to suggest that CO2 travels back in time to cause temperature to increase? I mean, did you even read the papers dealing with this?
There is no way temps and CO2 could correlate within such small time periods. There are too many other things affecting global temperature on a year-to-year basis to glean anything meaningful about trends in relation to these two variables.
We are all, surely, by now familiar with the notion that global temp data for the surface and atmosphere require a time period no less than 17 years (and preferably a bit more) to succeed statistical significance tests? If you want to obtain meaningful trend analysis for shorter periods, you need to analyse a lot more data than global air or surface temperatures, and the synthesis must be carefully done. Short-term linear trends from one metric will have zero explanatory power for the energy budget of the planet.
Just a blip;
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps
Maybe that is why the ‘hockey team’ didn’t talk about it, they knew better?
Just a quick observation: Is there any statistical significance?
Why don’t you go to Venice, Italy and ask people freezing in their unheated homes if their hypothermia is statistically significant?
Kevin:
There is no statistical significance in the temperature records for the last 300 years. Humans have experienced weather extremes since the dawn of human existence and they can expect to experience weather extremes as long as there are humans on this planet.
Humanity has learned to adapt and deal with the consequences of extreme weather, now some want to use a natural event as an excuse to control humanity.
Barry:
17 years is meaningless when we know there are weather patterns that display an approximate 60 yeas cycle. That is regional patterns that do not necessarily follow the same time line as patterns in other regions. Globally they sometimes come together and repeat about every thousand years or so. And there are some patterns that show a 40 thousand year signature and those with a 100K year pattern. The longer periods are approximate because we no nit have enough fine resolution data for a long enough period to pin the time line to within a few thousand years.
On a regional basis 17 years is just weather noise!