By Dale Leuck March 17, 2018 Data available in both text and csv formats at the NASA, GISS website have been routinely cited as indicative of global warming despite their known weaknesses. The three years 2015 through 2017 are widely reported as the three hottest years on record. Tony Heller, however, has demonstrated that tampering with data from the U.S. Climatology Network (USHCN) has created the illusion of much higher temperatures in reported data than in the original data, for the continental United States. This leads one to wonder how much not so widely known "adjustments" in GISS data have been responsible for similar results at a global level. The GISS data are updated around the middle of each month, and I have compared the January and March versions in figure 1, for the years 1881 through 2017. The data are smoothed over two years, in that, for example, the 1881 data point is the average of 1880 and 1881 and 2017 the average for 2016 and 2017. This is commonly done to make data more presentable, allowing movements to be more clearly discerned and to smooth out the effects of "abnormal" years... ...any data set from only 1880, and inadequately covering the earth's surface area, does not provide a definitive answer to the question of "global warming" in terms of geological time of thousands of years, and representing the entirety of the Earth. But, as it has been the data set often referenced to substantiate global warming, one would have thought the substantially lower temperatures of the last many months would have merited highlighting in the mainstream media. Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/03/are_we_undergoing_global_cooling.html#ixzz5A0Cth8cS The data definitely show global cooling in a form I did see mentioned in the article. Instead of seeing new annual temperatures reaching new lows what we really have are past recorded temperatures plummeting year after year [from the article: This has been also happening for temperatures farther back in history which also have been falling at an ever increasing rate: Ministry Of Truth – Erasing The Medieval Warm Period. https://realclimatescience.com/2017/06/ministry-of-truth-erasing-the-medieval-warm-period/
First, you should probably read this first. It's from a well known climate skeptic. https://judithcurry.com/2014/07/07/understanding-adjustments-to-temperature-data/ Second, that chart is for the United States only which represents less than 5% of the total surface area of the Earth. Third, for most datasets like NASA GISS, which actually compute a global mean temperature, the net sum of all adjustments is actually negative. That is, the warming trend is reduced. Fourth, these proxy datasets that require adjustments are actually a small fraction of the data available anyway. Reanalysis uses a completely different methodology that does not require any adjustments whatsoever to the raw data. Most climate scientists use reanalysis as opposed to proxy datasets anyway. And finally, after reviewing the adjustments that are made to this particular dataset which ones do you have a grievance against? Explain what they did wrong and explain what you would have done differently.
Thanks for your thoughts. The Nobel prize Gore got was a Peace Prize and was awarded not by the Academy of Sciences but rather the by the Swedish Parliament. Climate Change (nee Global Warming) is a political controversy and not a scientific question. I've yet to come across any generally accepted scientific definition of "climate change" --what, severe weather caused by the greenhouse affect proven by rising earth temps? If it's severe weather then we'd have to define exactly which phenomena, how much they've deviated from which norm where and how long has it been going on compared to which time frame. If we're blaming greenhouses then we need to admit that it's really just global warming we're talking about so once again we have to say what part of the earth is warming how much for how long compared to when. Even if we did all this, we'd still have to show how it's a bad thing, identify the cause for the change, figure out a guaranteed remedy, and come up w/ a cost effective plan of implementation. The fact that I haven't seen it yet suggests that it's political and I don't speak to political movements, all I can do is deal w/ 'em.
Yeah....weird isn't it. One half of he Earth gets cold in winter while the opposite gets hot in summer....whodathunkit. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/07/world/australia/heat-wave.html
I highly recommend not listening to Gore on the subject of climate change. He's an alarmist that blows everything out of proportion. His predictions do not echo those of the majority of climate scientists. Climate change itself is 100% pure science. It's the debate over mitigation policies that is highly political. The defining metric of climate change is the global mean temperature. Climate change is usually in reference to properties of the biosphere that are changing in response to an increasing global mean temperature. They're good questions. Scientists have some pretty good ideas, but specific questions like these are still actively researched. Scientists don't have all of the answers yet. But, they are learning. Yes, the primary focus of climate change discussions is almost always the increase in the global mean temperature as a result of the net effect of all anthroprogenic components. To answer some of your questions regarding global warming here are some predictions of AGW. All of these have been confirmed via 6 decades of observations. 1. The global mean temperature will increase. 2. The diurnal temperature range will decrease. 3. The warming will be more pronounced during the night as opposed to the day. 4. The warming will be more pronounced during the winter as opposed to the summer. 5. The NH will warm faster than the SH.. 6. The high latitudes (polar) will warm faster than the low latitudes (equatorial). 7. Polar sea ice extents will decrease. 8. Arctic sea ice extents will decrease faster than those in the Antarctic region. 9. The troposphere will warm while the stratosphere cools. 10. Water vapor mixing ratios will increase. 11. Sea levels will rise. And here some predictions AGW didn't get quite right. 1. The global mean temperature will increase by 1.5-4.5C/century with a median of 3.0C/century. Right now the warming is rate is about 2.0C/century. However, it does seem to be accelerating. On the other hand, we probably entering a grand solar minimum that will put some downward pressure on the increase IMHO. 2. The warming in the tropical regions will be more pronounced in the middle troposhere. Right now the warming is higher in the lower troposphere in the equatorial zones. However, over the last decade the ratio of lower-to-middle error on this prediction has decreased from 3x to 1.7x. Perhaps this prediction is going to turn out to be right in the long run, but wrong in the timing? Only time will tell. 3. The first ice free Arctic summer will be around 2050. The sea ice is melting out WAY faster than computer models predicted. It's unlikely that we'll make it to 2050 before this happens. Then, of course, their are regional and event based predictions. Many of these will turn out to be right while many turn out to be wrong. There many of these types of predictions and are too numerous for me to enumerate here. But, I'll mention just a few. 1. Tropical cyclones may occur less frequently. However, when they do occur they may be more intense. This is still actively researched and there's a lot of debate in the academic community. 2. Tornadoes in the United States may largely stay unchanged. However, the time of year in which they occur may move from April-May-June to March-April-May. There actually doesn't seem to be much of consensus on this yet so it's really not fully known what effect global warming really may have. 3. Droughts will increase in frequency in the United States especially in the southwest. 4. Floods will increase in frequency in the United States especially in the southeast and midwest. 5. Snowfall will decrease from south to north over time. Honestly, it's really hard to say whether either of these will pan out. Climate scientists aren't as confident as the media wants you to think. You're absolutely right. Some warming isn't bad. It's been shown that global warming can, to some extent, increase growing seasons and enhance food production. However, there is probably a limit to the amount of warming the Earth can accept before it switches from net beneficial to humans to net problematic. I don't know where that line is drawn though. The other thing we have to consider is whether it is better to spend the money on global warming mitigation or is it better to spend it on adaptation. Personally, I think policies trying to curb greenhouse gases could end up being a waste of money. There are actually scientific reasons why I think that. If you want I can post my thoughts regarding this.
Global warming is normally followed by global cooling. Eventually it all ends up with another ice age. These run in 10,000 year cycles. The insects and humans that inhabit the Earth cannot change anything.
Thanks so much for your serious reasoned approach. I'd be grateful if you could clarify a couple things we often hear asserted in the climate controversy. If I may translate at this point it sounds like what we're saying is that the problem is the biosphere's heating up. Now, if we mean this scientifically and physically (as opposed to politically) then we're saying the average kinetic energy per mass of biosphere is increasing. The overwhelming majority of the biosphere's mass is ocean water and the "consensus" is that most of that is not in fact heating and the reason often given is that the ocean isn't mixing when people heat it --supposedly just the top is heating. So we don't really mean the entire biosphere we really mean just a tiny part of it. So if we're serious we need to say how much we're talking about so we can identify a specific heat which would give us a conversion of sun radiation energy to temp that would in turn generate hard widely accepted numbers on greenhouse insulation for heat retention. Sure, it's been bandied about a lot and a lot of grant money's changed hands, but there's still no clear accepted number --I mean nothing like what we got what we've got for say, the mass of the earth (5.972x10^24kg). --and the list goes on w/ ten other 'confirmations' which hang on temp change + sea ice + sea levels, all of which imho range from merely unsubstantiated to the wildly ridiculous. . But let's just talk biosphere temp. Maybe we could agree on what the average biotemp is today but we still aren't saying what we mean when we say it's "changing". Are we saying it's increased in the past what --100 years?-- at a faster rate than it's increase ever in the past what --100 thousand years? The actual temp measurements are at https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/paleoclimatology-data/datasets --and there's no raw temp measurements that support the hypothetical unprecedented increase. Unless you can help me out here. I'd really be grateful for more light than heat on this topic.
I forgot to mention that in my list. The oceans were predicted to warm. And they are. The atmosphere, oceans, and land are all warming. They've all been confirmed by actual observations spanning 60 years. They aren't wildly ridiculous because they've already happened. The global atmospheric mean temperature is the defining metric of global warming. That's what's changing. It has been increasing for the past 100 years, but the first 40 years of that increase is likely due mostly to natural variability. It's the last 60 years or so (starting around 1960) in which most of that warming can only be explained by the the net anthroprogenic influence. The temperature increase is about 0.20C/decade globally and over 0.40C/decade in the higher northern latitudes. It's not unprecedented. But, you do have to go back thousands of years to find an equivalent increase and that's IF you believe the ice core data has more signal than noise. In other words, does the raw ice core data really represent reality such that temperatures were highly variable in Earth's past or is it inherently noisy? All raw surface station data is available from that same website. There are various datasets available. Let me briefly describe them. Raw surface station - This includes unadjusted/raw data from ships, buoys, and land stations. It is publicly available via the NCEI (formerly NCDC) website Adjusted surface station - This includes the raw surface station data above, but adjusts for time-of-day and station-relocation problems. Global conventional - This includes raw surface station data to compute a global mean temperature. It makes adjustments for time-of-day, station relocations, urban heat island, known instrument biases, etc. It then homogenizes the unequally spaced inputs into equally spaced regions. Examples are NASA GISS, NOAAGlobalTemp, HadCRUT, and Berkeley Land/Ocean. Global satellite - This includes data from polar orbiting microwave sounders. The compute a global mean temperature from the bottom layer of the troposphere (plus other layers). The datasets are RSS and UAH. Global reanalysis - This includes data from surface stations (land, ship, buoy), microwave sounders, infrared sounders, aircraft, weather balloon, doppler radar, wind profilers, and much more. The quantities of data are massive. It can be upwards of 100 million observations per day. These datasets construct a full 3D representation of the atmosphere, ocean, and land at a specific moment in time using an equally space grid mesh. There are left in raw form. They are not adjusted. Examples include CFSR, ERA, JRA, etc. The interesting thing is that between the conventional, satellite, and reanalysis datasets they all come up with the same thing. It's a testament to our confidence in the global mean temperature warming trend. That is the dozens of datasets that use wildly different methodologies and subsets of available data all come up with the same answer within a reasonable margin of error.
Global warming, climate change, global cooling - it does not matter what is actually happening, the "progressives" will declare it is a disaster and all power must be given to the prog run govt. Its a scam, and the naïve will fall for it.
Before you said it's only the biosphere heating up; are you now saying the entire solid mass of the earth is heating or do you mean just the surface responding to changes in air temp? Likewise w/ the ocean are you saying that the entire ocean's depth is warming uniformly or are you talking about just the ocean's mass above the thermocline? The reason I'm asking is that we get lots of alarmist stories from politicians and their press that are horribly lacking in scientific substance. The sea level change is a typical 'fer instance'. The IPCC says we've got 3.2 mm per year rising as measured by tide cages. In the first place, the 3.2mm per tide gauge is like measuring a 4-ft wide sidewalk w/ a car odometer --they're just not that accurate. In addition, a tide gauge can't tell you if it's the sea rising or the shore sinking. What we do know is that mountains are rising (iirc Mt.Everest rises about a foot per year) and the ocean beds are sinking (which is how atolls are created).
It's just the top layer (a couple of feet at most) of land that's warming. In regards to the oceans that chart I posed is for a depth of 2000m so yes, mostly above the thermocline. There are other difficulties as well. For example geoids render any notion of an absolute sea level as mostly meaningless. Before you can even measure a difference in sea level you first have to figure out what the zero baseline even is. Even in the complete absence of waves or variability sea level in one region won't be the same in another because of the geoid problem. Then you have to consider winds. Persistent on-shore winds will tend to pile water up on shores and vice-versa. Measuring sea level is heavily dependent on signal processing techniques. So it's probably wise to be skeptical of measurements on the order of millimeters. I'm somewhat skeptical myself. However, calculations show that thermal expansion should yield a certain amount of volume increase. Then when you add on glacial ice melt and subtract of sea ice melt (remember H2O is unusual in that the liquid phase has less volume than the solid volume) it agrees with observations within a reasonable margin of error. It's certainly far from perfect, but things do add up for the most part.
Britanica.com has-- Thermocline, oceanic water layer in which water temperature decreases rapidly with increasing depth. A widespread permanent thermocline exists beneath the relatively warm, well-mixed surface layer, from depths of about 200 m (660 feet) to about 1,000 m (3,000 feet), in which interval temperatures diminish steadily. Thermocline | oceanography | Britannica.com My concern w/ the climate change issue is that it can very easily result in my tax bill increasing by an amount due with an accuracy to one part in 10,000. I'm hoping you can sense my displeasure at the prospect that this possible tax increase would be based on a scientific inquiry w/ an accuracy that can be off by a factor of two.
