Bishop Hill Jones live blog
May 10, 2011 No more questions
2nd Monckton - asking about 60yr perioddicity and PDO. Can we detect AGW. PJ says yes.
1st question Tony Kelly of GWPF. Sea temps fundamentally different to land. Should measure marine air temp. Says sst doesn't agree to land. PJ says SST correlated to marine air temp
Questions next
And that's it
Satellites - same results as surface
SST - bucket adjustment is the most important. Also shift to buoys
Discussion of CRU subsampling studies - still get same result
BEST 2% series shown. We are getting the message that all the series show roughly the same thing.
homgeneity/urbanisation adjusts have small effect
CRUTEM4 will include a full release of station data
adjustments to stations makes little difference at large scales
"Population growth is not a great metric for urbanisation trends"
Urbanisation. Little difference in urban/rural
Biases in order of importance form Jones and Wigley. 1 SST bucket 2. Thermometer ecposure, 3. Urbanisation
Some discussion of Menne et al 2009 - bimodal distribution of adjusts
PJ discussing homogenity issues
We've been told we will be evicted if we mention climategate
Lovely Georgian theatre here.
Reader Comments (147)
Ask them about the Holocaust then?
Nail him on the insignificance of the warming.
Ask him about 'swifthack' then.
Please ask about McKitrick and Michaels, and the more recent McKitrick paper in a stats journal.
Could you please ask him about what he meant when he said that "the Chinese have lost the data, so I cant be bothered about Jones et al 1990". Could you also ask him what he thinks the place of Jones et al 1990 is, and which paper he sees as replacing its place in the pantheon, so to speak.
Shades of Fawlty Towers then.
Philboy said that despite his name being on 200+ papers, no 'pal-reviewer' had ever asked to see his actual data.
Be the first!
Any justification why 'Climategate' can't be mentioned?
A sort of Mad Aunt in the Attic? Or hoping that nobody will notice that The Emperor is naked?
Interesting paper at http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/05/new-paper-increased-solar-activity.html
I know it's been oft-said but can you ask whether progressively colder winters is a sign of global warming or cooling?
Any comment on shipping lane heat island effect?
No more questions! What luck for PJ.
"No more questions! What luck for PJ."
Well, delegates were asked not to mention Climategate.
So, as per Phil Jones, the marine air temperature is correlated and affected by the sea surface temperature, but the air temperature over land is not affected much by the land surface temperature?
I'm just asking but only two questions?
At the point where they 'joked' about not mentioning Climategate I would have told the where they could put their stupid, incestuous gathering and walked out.
Why did you stay, Bish?
Shub
Not sure, but are you conflating SST and air temperature immediately above the sea surface with land surface temperature and TLT?
Also, what evidence do we have for a 'shipping lane heat island effect'?
................ but they are not supposed to be same (equivalence).
If the AGW hyposthesis is the correct understanding of climate then satellites should be showing increased warming compared to surface temps: 1.5+ times warmer in the tropics, 1.2+ times globally.
As things stand the troposphere is warming less than the surface - the complete opposite to what is predicted.
Mac
The difference in trend between the global land-ocean surface anomaly and satellite derived global TLT anomaly is too slight to make a big fuss about (eg RSS/UAH vs HADCRUT eg 0.14C/decade vs 0.15C/decade).
The apparent absence of the tropical tropospheric hot spot is a tricky topic. The satellite MSUs do not provide enough vertical resolution for a reliable measurement at the relevant height (~10km) and the 'satellite record' generally used is actually from much lower down - the TLT at 14,000ft. So it would not show the amplification (if present).
What we are left with is a spread of trends (surface/TLT global anomaly) with a mean of 0.15C/decade. One has to be careful not to over-interpret.
BBD,
I am not conflating the two things (sst/marine air temp with land surface/tlt). What I am conflating is:
sst/marine air temp with land surface temp/land thermometer measures.
I think the above two are the logical equivalents. What do you think?
I found this nice looking graph at the Air Vent. (search for phrase " The below map shows R-squared varies by location." on this page: http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/02/13/7686/). Poor correlation between GHCN and TLT. :)
I could not find at what exact height the satellites measure TLT.
As far as the shipping lane heat island effect is concerned, it is just blog talk at the moment. Too many measurements carried out in the same churning sea lanes by one vessel after another... (I remember someone else mentioning it, can't remember who)
BBD
Radiosonde analysis shows clearly there is no Hot-Spot - hence no cause, no effect.
Maybe the weather balloons are wrong, as has been argued, but the satellite data and the oceanic heat content data show clearly no effect either.
When a doctrine is subject to criticism and fails its continued acceptance means it has become dogma.
AGW is more theology than science.
Further proof of dogma lies in this statement from Kevin Trenberth, "The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t."
It would appear that even the gods have deserted climate science.
Shub
I remember that post at TAV.
A couple of things.
From the conclusion:
Also see Carrick in comments #39:
None of which goes very far to explain this:
HadSST2 and UAH. Common 1981 - 2010 baseline; trend.
HadSST2 and UAH. Common 1981 - 2010 baseline; 12 month running mean; trend.
Mac
You say. That doesn't make it a fact. This is an example of an area where measurement uncertainty makes confrontational argument pointless. Not that that will stop you, I'm sure.
1/. I have explained the situation with the satellite observations above. Please have another look.
2/. I've talked about OHC in comments here before (eg see comments here). There's no doubt that ARGO isn't showing much trend 2005 - present for the 700m layer. But your statement goes much further than that and is incorrect.
See here for NODC OHC.
Now while I do not think any of the current OHC reconstructions are entirely plausible, I'd have to say that OHC has most certainly increased over the last several decades. The question is: by how much exactly?
BTW, interesting although the context of Trenberth's remark is, remember that he was complaining about a lack of measurements - from TOA to the deep ocean. He would argue that the energy is 'missing' because we cannot track it within the climate system. You and I might argue that it's because the climate system is adjusting under CO2 forcing and radiating heat out to space more efficiently than anticipated.
But only you would say:
"SST - bucket adjustment is the most important. Also shift to buoys"
I am always surprised by this comment relating to bucket adjustment since my understanding is that since diesel powered shipping, sea temperatures taken by ships and recorded in the data produced by them is the temperature of the water used to cool the engine. The engines are fitted with a water inlet manifold temperature guage and it is this temperature recorded by this guage that is entered in the log and reported weather routing agencies that monitor shipping.
Whilst every ship is different, typically with a ballasted ship, the water intake is drawn from between 8 and 14 metres below sea level. Thus typically ships are recording sea temperatures taken from sea sourced at a depth of 10 meteres below the surface and therefore if anything ships data under-estimates the SST and thus the adjustment should be in the opposite direction to that proposed by the cAGW crowd. No surprise there then!!!
"Satellites - same results as surface"
? could someone link all the satellite stuff? i just look at spencers uah and i know that^ isn't the case with that data.
Jo
HADCRUT3, GISTEMP, UAH, RSS. 1979 – present; trend.
HADCRUT, GISTEMP, UAH, RSS. 1979 – present; common 1981 – 2010 baseline; trend.
HADCRUT, GISTEMP, UAH, RSS. 1979 – present; annual mean.
HADCRUT, GISTEMP, UAH, RSS. 1979 – present, 1981 – 2010 common baseline; annual mean.
HADCRUT, GISTEMP, UAH, RSS. 1979 – present; common 1981 – 2010 baseline; annual mean; trend.
Decadal trend (degrees C):
GISTEMP 0.16
HADCRUT 0.15
UAH 0.14
RSS 0.14
BBD,
That was a weak 'defence'. The fact is, the graph I linked to, and the one above it in the Nic L post show very poor correlation between 'uncorrected' land temperatures and satellite (TLT) measurements.
Look at the R^2 graph just above. An enormous number of values below 0.6. What about the earlier satellite period - R^2 values close to 0.3, some even close to 0.0 (!). On top of that, Nic L says "Encouragingly, these correlations were generally good, with a mean adjusted R-squared of 0.52, as shown in the below scatter plot". Amazing!
I had simply taken these land/satellite measurements on faith, but this is completely bollocks! The land and satellite measures are derived from daily averages right? Any small wiggles and missteps should all get smoothed out anyway, and there ought to be good correlation, to begin with (0.52, even if you could take a 'mean' of a R^2, is not 'good' enough).
Secondly, all the poorly correlated points are over land - India, Africa, South America, Australia.
Thirdly, we don't have to go by what Nic L says in his conclusion! His objective was different, his perspective was different.
Shub
You are cherry (and nit) picking:
I have neither the time nor the inclination to go through another great waffling circumlocution with you on this topic.
Formatting screw-up above. Too much bold in final paragraph of quote above, but never mind.
Barring India, which is an odd result, the vast majority of the stations with lower correlations are coastal or on islands (including the UK).
The radiosonde analysis is factual - no additional heat is being trapped in the tropical troposhere, indeed this part of the atmosphere has experienced cooling - the opposite to what the AGW hypothesis predicts.
Could the radiosonde data be wrong? Maybe the Hot-Spot does exist, it could be that we humans have failed to find it.
Maybe we need a different approach. So can we detect the effects of the alleged Hot-Spot? Again we have the AGW predictions and certain tools at hand to determine this.
The results are in.
Satellite data shows that the atmosphere is NOT warming faster than the surface, indeed it can be argued that this backs up the radiosonde analysis showing slight cooling. Measurements of Oceanic Heat Content show that the rise in heat is a lot less than predicted.
Summary:
No Cause - No Effect - No Global AGW - Increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 are NOT responsible for increasing global temperatures.
So what has caused the increase/decrease/stasis in global temps over the past 150+ years of recorded data?
In my mind it is a combination of one-off natural events, short-term natural cycles and intrinsic-long-term randomness. If man has played a role it is so small on a global scale that it can be neglected. The climate does what the climate has always done.
No amount of tricks, advocacy and wishful thinking on the part CAGWists is going to change that.
References? Especially for your assertion that 'the tropical troposphere' (at what height? All of it?) has cooled.
It's 'radiosonde RE-analysis' BTW.
Reference?
Fine. Let's have some links to papers then.
BBD,
You are cherry-picking. It was your claim that the satellites agree well with the land record. It is up to you to explain discrepancies.
I, on the other hand, ignorantly, had high expectations from the land record. So I want a better correlation than what satisfied Nic L (and you apparently).
In fact, I just looked at the Peter Thorne Jan 2011 review paper. These issues are still alive.
Mac
While you are compiling your references, be sure to look at Titchner et al. 2009.
This paper examines uncertainty regarding biases in radiosonde data and concludes that the data are biased cold although the amount of bias is difficult to quantify.
PDF here.
From the abstract (emphasis added):
WRT the 'cooling tropical troposphere' I'm guessing that you have been mis-sold. Take a look at Randel & Wu 2006:
PDF here.
From the abstract (emphasis added):
So, radiosonde data are biased cold and cannot be used to support your claim that:
Shub
These issues are only alive in the minds of anyone not satisfied with the obvious and excellent agreement between global land-ocean surface temperature anomalies and satellite-derived global TLT anomalies.
The use of gridded, global anomaly data sets helps discern the signal from the noise. You appear to be doing everything you can to reverse the process.
HADCRUT, GISTEMP, UAH, RSS. 1979 – present; common 1981 – 2010 baseline; annual mean; trend.
Decadal trend (degrees C):
GISTEMP 0.16
HADCRUT 0.15
UAH 0.14
RSS 0.14
That's more than good enough for me (and NicL, who clearly knows what he is talking about). The relevant question here is: why is it not good enough for you?
BBD
I insisted, and rightly in my opinion, that one ought to look first at an uncorrected temperature record in order to do any kind of meaningful analysis vis a vis its comparision with the satellite data.
You have repeated, many times over, claims based on the corrected land records.
There is poor correlation between the uncorrected land record and the satellite TLT - your, or Nic L's, or anyone else's characterization of the same 0.52 as 'good' notwithstanding. 0.5 is not good enough.
Shub
The differences you are attempting to inflate to significance here are self-evidently trivial.
The agreement between inter-annual variability and trends in satellite and surface GATA is incontrovertible.
Why this mulish adherence to a non-argument? What is your motive here? To 'disprove AGW' by substituting UHI? Or what?
I'm mystified both by your reasoning (or apparent lack thereof) and motivation.
In the basket of global temperatures there are apples and pears. You have to compare what is comparable, for example :
UAH NH land : 0.22 °C/decade and
CRUTEM NH : 0.32 °C/decade.
(1979 - 2009)
BBD,
I do not wish to prove or disporve the GHG driven amplied warming, AGW etc. At the same time, what I am saying might sound akin to someone who wants to, I'll accept that.
My position is: I do not want to accept any of the logic/reasoning/argument/commentary presented by authors in their papers, to date ('clean break'). Secondly, I believe that the uncorrected record would not be horribly out of step with the 'true climate' the earth has experienced over its period. With this in mind, if I look at some of the papers (Thorne et al, 2011, for instance), what I see is a grand effort to 'produce a unified corrected picture' and 'the one true temperature record'. I have zero interest in this kind of activity. I accept the data presented but I don't agree with Thorne et al's conclusions or their direction of argument. I like keeping things separate, whereas Thorne et al (and Nic L and others) want to put things together and come to one conclusion.
Consequently, if there is poor correlation between the land and satellite, I just want to know why, that's all.
Independent of all this, I am arriving at another conclusion. The land record is wierd and very poor in 'quality', compared to my expectations. It has all kinds of stuff going on. How come we never hear about it in the mainstream press at all?
If there is a warm bias in the uncorrected land record (i.e., Klotzbach et al 2010) vis a vis the satellites, it deserves an explanation (and some curiousity).
BTW, the Watts paper is available now. I am reading it.
phi
Lost me there.
In order to investigate the degree of agreement between them, I compared the global land-sea surface temperature anomaly with the global TLT temperature anomaly. Why is this incorrect?
'Cause it has too many things mixed up in there.
Shub
Not how science works. You have to show why earlier work is in error if you wish to supplant it. Not only have you not done so, you seek to make a virtue out of the fact.
The land record is not 'weird and very poor in quality'. Were that the case, my original comparison with TLT would have shown marked differences.
Your insistence that this 'weirdness' is somehow masked by corrections is puzzling. The whole point of corrections is to deal with quality control issues in a logical and consistent fashion.
The degree of agreement between the surface and satellite anomalies is evidence that this has been achieved.
The agreement in the slope of the respective trends is strongly indicative of the underlying soundness of the surface land-ocean GATA data.
This is all basic stuff - I understand the essence of what you are arguing in terms of an 'uncontaminated' fresh start, but I cannot see how you can simply dismiss all previous approaches. How will you determine the validity of your results?
'Too many things mixed up in there'
As in 'global' and 'average'?
You are either being wilfully obtuse or you are pulling my leg. I hope it is the latter.
I was looking for the big (global) picture. As I stated right at the outset on the Discussion thread.
Also, and it's relevant, WfT doesn't provide hemispherical land and sea TLT data, and only NH and SH HADCRUT. So we now run into a limitation of the simple but open and shareable visualisation tool I chose for a simple examination to make a simple point.
BBD,
The global temperature comes from very different sources and potential biases that affect SST would obviously have no connection with others that could affect the stations. If one intends to ensure the good agreement of surface temperatures with TLT, it is important to study separately the terrestrial and oceanic components.
When we do this way, the first thing we see is that the good overall correlation is an artifact because the components are widely divergent.
phi
Really?
WfT doesn't provide many data sets, but how about this:
HadSST2 and UAH. Common 1981 - 2010 baseline; trend.
HadSST2 and UAH. Common 1981 - 2010 baseline; 12 month running mean; trend.
That's what I would call exceptionally close agreement in trend and interannual variation. Wouldn't you?
BBD,
Compare CRUTEM NH and UAH NH land. wft does not help you for that, maybe google?
Hey, I'm doing all the work here: why don't you do it and provide a link. Thanks.
Shub
Here's HADCRUT unadjustedglobal mean vs UAH on a common 1981 - 2010 baseline.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1979/offset:-0.26/plot/uah/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1979/offset:-0.26/trend/plot/uah/trend
Guess what? The decadal trends 1979 - present are exactly the same as per the adjusted comparison:
HADCRUT 0.15C
UAH 0.14C
Wow. Who'd have thought?
phi
And rather than barking at me, let's have your comments on the comparison between HadSST2 and UAH at 6:41pm above.
You didn't mention it.
BBD,
I do not master English well, perhaps unpleasant expressions escaped me, excuse me.
I already said what I thought of global comparisons, good correlation is an artifact.
phi
Never mind the English. No problem.
I'm showing graphs. You are not linking to anything. Can you help me by showing me something?
Thanks
phi
Sorry - I should also have repeated that I am using global anomalies precisely to smooth for the problem you point to. Such artefacts become far less significant this way. I know this is a simple approach, but this does not invalidate it.
And please look again at the match between HadSST2 and UAH TLT, which is all I can show using WfT. Lets remember that the sea is 70% of the global surface before making a strong claim that the divergence over land will distort a comparison of global average temperature anomalies.
How?
BBD,
Here is anything :
http://imageshack.us/m/10/9439/cguo.jpg
The divergence is 1 °C/century.
A significant feature of NH land : it is the component that shows the strongest warming.