temperature record
illconsidered | April 15, 2014So, the bad news is that it is looking increasingly likely that the world will experience a very strong El Nino event this 2014-2015 winter (winter in the N. hemisphere, summer down under). There is even talk of a super-El Nino, one to rival 1998's phenomenal event. Lots of good information on that here at P3. Some forecasters are now putting the odds at 70%.
Model ensemble predictions showing a coming El Nino
The repercussions for global and regional weather are very large, there will be winners and losers, though as with climate change impacts in general, the wins are no match for the…
illconsidered | August 2, 2013Watch the video below and see if you can see where the warming stops:
(seen at the wonderful APOD site)
illconsidered | August 2, 2013A commenter on the most recent edition of het's AWOGWN asks an interesting set of questions:
How would temperature data have been seen during the last 10,000 years prior to the peak of each of the previous Milankovich cycles? What caused the temperature to reverse course in those cycles and why would we not expect it to occur again this time?
First, here are the quick answers to those three questions, then some discussion. 1. It is not currently possible to resolve the temperature record that long ago to anything close to what we have today. 2. The cause of the temperature reversal is not…
illconsidered | May 1, 2012Real Climate has done two posts recently that I thought would be served well by their juxtaposition. The first one highlights an early projection of global mean temperatures made by Jim Hansen in 1981.
The abstract for that paper contains this choice quote:
It is shown that the anthropogenic carbon dioxide warming should emerge from the noise level of natural climate variability by the end of the century, and there is a high probability of warming in the 1980's.
These are both things that have in fact happened. I think it is safe to call this a very successful early prediction of…
illconsidered | October 30, 2011The fallout from the BEST project results continues, with the denialosphere frantically trying to disown and defame Richard Muller. Marc Morano is at his shrillest pitch ever, and believe me that is as shrill as shrill gets! I guess it works at some level, because he did make me look at his website. That high pitched squeaking broke down all my intellectual safeguards and I followed a link from his almost daily inbox spamming.
Today's (approving) hysteria was about an article in the DailyMail which gives you the general flavour of the treatment Muller is receiving. Given his own rather…
illconsidered | November 27, 2010Oh boy, get out the tinfoil. Here's one the conspiracy nuts will howl over.
The temperature record that has been showing the lowest anomaly in the recent decades, HadCRU, the dataset managed by the UK's Met Office and the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU), is about to be revised upwards.
Met Office scientists have reviewed the whole sea surface temperature data set between 1850 and 2006 to take account of this bias. A paper has been submitted to the Journal of Geophysical Research which looks in more detail at all the biases in sea-surface temperature measurements from…
illconsidered | November 24, 2010As fate would have it, no sooner does a disengenous commenter here point out the unusual cold and snow falling on my hometown of Vancouver, Canada than I come accross this amusing comic from Jen Sorenson:
illconsidered | November 10, 2010A great and substantive post up at Skeptical Science on La Nina and what we should expect (and not expect) in terms of its impact on global temperatures.
Read it all!
(image borrowed from Skeptical Science)
La Ninas typically redistribute the global heat budget in such a way as average surface temperatures are depressed from where they might otherwise have been, and we are several months into a strong one now.
(image borrowed from Skeptical Science)
Be on the lookout for lots more "global warming stopped!" bull.
illconsidered | July 23, 2010"I don't think that anyone disagrees with the fact that we actually are in a cold period that started about nine years ago."
Um...okay. I guess that's true if your definition of "anyone" excludes every single scientific agency that concerns itself with climate indicators and those of us who actually look at them. A good dose of boring old real reality from the Union of Concerned Scientists follows:
In response to a question during an ABC News / Washington Post interview today about recent heat waves and record temperatures, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said, "I don't think that anyone…
illconsidered | May 4, 2010A regular here recently offered us this PDF from Willie Soon and Lord Monkton's Science and Public Policy Institute and asks what is wrong with the graph in there.
As it happens, Michael Tobis has already taken a look at another very similar construction and identified three deceptions (he kindly called "bugs") in what is technically correct data.
different smoothing is used on the two types of data. Temperature is presented in monthly mean whereas CO2 looks to have had the seasonal rise and fall removed. This gives the impression of a steady rise in CO2 in stark contrast to the jitters…
illconsidered | July 28, 2009I have tried to make it quite clear a few times that regardless of no new record, there is no evidence that the underlying rising trend in global surface temperatures has reversed or stopped. But absent a short term rising trend the inattentive public is very vulnerable to disengenouous denialists claiming warming is over (did they ever admit it was happening??). So I am afraid that that talking point will not go away until 1998's record status does so as well.
So when will that happen? I'm not talking about statistically insignificant 0.05oC win by a nose in one record but not another, I…
illconsidered | July 15, 2009Changes? Well hardly. Apparently the shocking "dog bites man" story of minuscule changes in GISS global anomaly data is making the rounds on denier sites.
A poster here embedded the copy/pasted accusation in an off topic thread, it goes thus:
Looks like Hansen/GISS is up to their old tricks;
Here are the June global temperature anomaly comparisons:
GISS .63C
RSS .075
UAH .001
GISS is way above the other two, but it does not end there apparently 2007 has now replaced 1998 as the second hottest year on record this was achieved not by rigorous scientific study and evaluation but by sleight of…
illconsidered | November 18, 2008This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic.
Objection:
In October, 2008, Al Gore's science advisor, James Hansen announced yet another "hottest" month on record. After all the alarmist banner headlines sank in, yet another "correction" quietly contradicted this, and October was not particularily warm after all. This is yet another example of why the temperature record can not be trusted.
Answer:
Wow. Where to begin with this one? There are many versions of this myth around already at the time…
illconsidered | September 8, 2008This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic.
Objection:
Temperatures plummeted over the last year (2007-2008). If you look at this data from the Met Office Hadley Centre you can clearly see that in one year alone global temperatures dropped .6oC, an amount equal to the entire warming over the 20th century claimed by the IPCC.
(click graph for a larger image in a new window)
Answer:
This argument represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between weather and climate. Climate…