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« Mann of Independent means | Main | A difference of opinion »
Monday
Jan162012

Who would have guessed it?

James Annan has posted some details of the new HADCRUT4 temperature series at his blog. He has had these via a third party. The new series will soon replace the legendary HADCRUT3, and apparently has much more robust values for the Arctic than its illustrious predecessor.

And guess what? 2010 is now warmer than 1998!

You could have knocked me down with a feather.

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Reader Comments (33)

Possibly more significant in the longer term is a para at theend of an earlier post on Annan's blog
covering the "Whitehouse Bet" (on BBC Radio 4)
http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2012/01/whitehouse-bet.html

Is he suggesting a lower CO2 response? After saying he expects the 1998 record to be broken regularly Annan goes on:

"That said, there is little sign of the acceleration in warming that most models had predicted, and it increasingly seems that the Smith et al forecast (for example) was a bit excessive. This new paper also suggests that the transient response of a modern model (albeit a particularly sensitive one) has to be significantly downscaled to match observations. Mind you, that paper also has a worrying discrepancy between the results obtained with 1900-2000, versus 1850-2010 data. Normally one would expect the latter to be broadly a subset of the former - more data means closer convergence to the true value - but the two sets of results are virtually disjoint, which suggests something a bit strange may be going on in the analysis (cf Schmitter et al with the land-only versus land+ocean results). But just a glance at the first figure shows a striking divergence between model and data over the first decade of the 21st century (compared to the close agreement prior to then). Something isn't quite right there. "

Jan 16, 2012 at 7:37 AM | Unregistered CommenterAndyL

More evidence of GISS fiddling temperature records: http://www.real-science.com/new-giss-data-set-heating-arctic

'Hansen seems to have adopted a general strategy of warming the present by cooling the 1930s and 1940s.'

This is getting all so obvious now that 1000s of pairs of eyes are watching the fraudsters. The reality is that the Arctic is freezing hard now the biofeedback is stalling and the energy entering the region is falling.

Jan 16, 2012 at 7:38 AM | Unregistered Commentermydogsgotnonose

Has there ever been an updated land-based dataset that has not shown increased modern warming compared to the previous dataset?

The first law of climate "science": Fudge factors are positive.

Jan 16, 2012 at 7:53 AM | Unregistered CommenterPhillip Bratby

Phillip

Indeed, as confirmed by Bob Watson, no less.

Jan 16, 2012 at 8:03 AM | Registered CommenterBishop Hill

'Harry' must have been busy......

Jan 16, 2012 at 8:22 AM | Unregistered CommenterBarry Woods

A few threads back I posted a link to this document that has a bit more information about HADCRUT4 on page 4. It says that
"The inclusion of new land station data at high latitudes and in Russia has resulted in a warming of years in the late 20th century/early 21st century."
As any climate scientist knows, when the the data and the models don't agree, the correct thing to do is to go back and adjust the data.

HADCRUT4 has been timed carefully so that the new 'improved' results can be included in IPCC AR5.

Jan 16, 2012 at 9:08 AM | Unregistered CommenterPaul Matthews

A peach in the article cited by the Bish:

"Professor Watson has held discussions with Al Gore, the former US Vice-President, about creating a new climate research group to supplement the work of the IPCC and to help restore the credibility of climate science."

Using Al Gore's credibility to restore what the IPCC destroyed?

Yep, that'll work nicely - bring it on...

Good to see we have such wisdom on the public payroll, no?

Jan 16, 2012 at 9:21 AM | Unregistered CommenterSayNoToFearmongers

James Annan tries, but narrowly fails to be a gracious loser, claiming that he would have won had the bet been about a different dataset, or indeed HADCRUT4 as referred to here. Our friends at SkS make less of an effort to be gracious... It is worth pointing out that 1998 was warmer than 2010 according to satellite measurements also. In truth, it was pretty much a tie, anyway.

Jan 16, 2012 at 9:26 AM | Unregistered CommenterJeremy Harvey

SayNoToFearmongers - the bit that jumped out at me was the aim of the scheme was

"...to create what he called a “Wikipedia for climate change”
.

Jan 16, 2012 at 9:28 AM | Unregistered CommenterJeremy Harvey

Having Al Gore on board to bolster the credibility of climate science is like having Bernie Madoff on board to bolster your investment strategies.

Al is a rapidly depreciating 'asset'. If that's the best they can do, bring it on.

As for the adjustments, it is looking more and more like a fading Hollywood star getting 'work' done on the face and body. At some point, it just descends into parody.

Jan 16, 2012 at 9:34 AM | Unregistered Commenterjohanna

Bob Watson should consider a career change, after all, comic lines and gags seem to be his speciality. Mind you, @ DEFRA - comic routine is de rigueur - EU apparats an' all.

Jan 16, 2012 at 9:39 AM | Unregistered CommenterAthelstan.

Ignoring the fact that the adjustments always appear to be one way, the VERY first thought I would have is simple...

You told us there was no doubt in what you are doing. The science is settled.

Yet here you show those statements were false.

If they were wrong then but claimed to be right, why should we have confidence in this?

Jan 16, 2012 at 10:31 AM | Unregistered CommenterJiminy Cricket

But the bottom line is that David Whitehouse still won, and that's what they can't stand. James Annan's 'science' lost so Whitehouse must have been 'lucky.'

But he still won.

Jan 16, 2012 at 10:33 AM | Unregistered CommenterZX

Possibly more significant in the longer term is a para at theend of an earlier post on Annan's blog
covering the "Whitehouse Bet" (on BBC Radio 4)
http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2012/01/whitehouse-bet.html

Is he suggesting a lower CO2 response? After saying he expects the 1998 record to be broken regularly Annan goes on:

"That said, there is little sign of the acceleration in warming that most models had predicted, and it increasingly seems that the Smith et al forecast (for example) was a bit excessive. This new paper also suggests that the transient response of a modern model (albeit a particularly sensitive one) has to be significantly downscaled to match observations. Mind you, that paper also has a worrying discrepancy between the results obtained with 1900-2000, versus 1850-2010 data. Normally one would expect the latter to be broadly a subset of the former - more data means closer convergence to the true value - but the two sets of results are virtually disjoint, which suggests something a bit strange may be going on in the analysis (cf Schmitter et al with the land-only versus land+ocean results). But just a glance at the first figure shows a striking divergence between model and data over the first decade of the 21st century (compared to the close agreement prior to then). Something isn't quite right there. "


In other words...Whitehouse was right.

Jan 16, 2012 at 10:49 AM | Unregistered CommenterZX

I bet Notmygoose is correct.

What's the money on Crutem4 reducing historical temperatures (again) to make the "warming" appear greater?

Jan 16, 2012 at 12:11 PM | Unregistered CommenterDon Keiller

Does anyone know what the purpose of HADCRUT4 is? Why can't we just use satellite data? There are plenty of top climate "scientists" who could splice satellite data from 1979 onwards onto the old HADCRUT data and politicians would be none the wiser. You don't even have to know how to use a spreadsheet to do it. It would save a lot of money.

Jan 16, 2012 at 12:15 PM | Unregistered CommenterPhillip Bratby

Al Gore's contribution will be to stay home (one of them) and keep quiet.

Jan 16, 2012 at 12:17 PM | Unregistered Commenterj ferguson

For a guy who supposedly had an 87.5% chance of winning the bet to be drawing these zoomed in lines on smoothed graphs...

poor loser.

Jan 16, 2012 at 12:18 PM | Unregistered CommenterShub

I wonder if the HADCRUT technique is to wait until there is a report of a local heatwave and then rush to get more thermometers installed there - presumably now they have enhanced the coverage in Russia, they will also enhance the covgerage in France where there was that heatwave in 2003 (?) from memory, so we can get even more warming into the last decade.

Jan 16, 2012 at 12:23 PM | Unregistered Commenterdiogenes

....... as ever with the CGAW bandwagon, the past becomes cooler, the present warmer and the future hotter.

Lets all respond with a double positive, "Yeah, right"

Thanks to CG1 and CG2 no one now believes is such errant nonsense.

Jan 16, 2012 at 12:55 PM | Unregistered CommenterMac

Do I understand correctly that if the average of a series of numbers p is x and you add more numbers the average becomes y but still refers to p and not to q? Annan would appear to be arguing that that is so.

Jan 16, 2012 at 1:48 PM | Unregistered Commentersimpleseekeraftertruth

Sorry if already posted, some insight into HadCRUT4 and other MO things:-

MOSAC-16
9-11 November 2011
PAPER 16.4
Climate Science
Chris Gordon

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/9/s/MOSAC_16.4.pdf

Climate Science
Head of Met Office Hadley Centre
MOSAC 2011

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/1/e/PresentationMOSAC_16.4_Gordon.pdf

Jan 16, 2012 at 2:11 PM | Unregistered CommenterGreen Sand

Watson's concern was rather different -- in what is supposed to be a survey of the latest scientific papers, the IPCC has a source selection bias, preferentially selecting those predict larger climate changes / effects. And in some cases, advocacy literature rather than scientific papers. While Watson is correct that superficial errors and mis-citation and can be easily though laboriously addressed -- it was rather easily detected! -- I don't think that his recommendation gets to the source selection bias.

On the other hand, HadCrut4 is attempting to address a known deficiency: it has long been recognised that HadCrut3 has less Arctic coverage than e.g. NASA's GISS dataset. [If you're comparing maps, use GISS's version with 250-km smoothing rather than the 1200-km version.] 1998 was unusually warm in the tropics; 2010 more so in the Arctic (see this). It's not surprising then, that a near-tie between them in HadCrut3 (with a slight edge to 1998) becomes a near-tie in HadCrut4 (with a slight edge to 2010).

Jan 16, 2012 at 2:16 PM | Unregistered CommenterHaroldW

Preparation in the run up to the 5AR doomsday report.

Jan 16, 2012 at 3:38 PM | Unregistered CommenterP Gosselin

I find this depressingly apt:

"About this time there occurred a strange incident which hardly anyone was able to understand. One night at about twelve o'clock there was a loud crash in the yard, and the animals rushed out of their stalls. It was a moonlit night. At the foot of the end wall of the big barn, where the Seven Commandments were written, there lay a ladder broken in two pieces. Squealer, temporarily stunned, was sprawling beside it, and near at hand there lay a lantern, a paint-brush, and an overturned pot of white paint. The dogs immediately made a ring round Squealer, and escorted him back to the farmhouse as soon as he was able to walk. None of the animals could form any idea as to what this meant, except old Benjamin, who nodded his muzzle with a knowing air, and seemed to understand, but would say nothing.

But a few days later Muriel, reading over the Seven Commandments to herself, noticed that there was yet another of them which the animals had remembered wrong. They had thought the Fifth Commandment was "No animal shall drink alcohol," but there were two words that they had forgotten. Actually the Commandment read: "No animal shall drink alcohol to excess.""

-- from Animal Farm (last two paragraphs of Chapter VIII)
by George Orwell, 1946

Jan 16, 2012 at 5:23 PM | Unregistered CommenterCrusty the Clown

We need to compare the national records to the GISTemp records. If Iceland etc. do no share the same view of their history, then we have multiple national orgainizations at odds with Hansen. Publication of competing profiles would skewer the idea that there is a consensus, that adjustments are not the cause of the "crisis".

If the national records are not different from GISTemp, then as skeptics we must wonder why. New Zealand and Australia appear to be holding firm to the postures of the CP (Climate Profiteers). Are they the only ones? I understood Russia hasn't agreed to all the GISTemp positions, nor Norway. Who else?

Jan 16, 2012 at 5:50 PM | Unregistered CommenterDoug Proctor

Adding new data from more stations would seem likely to shift the trend a little either up or down. I presume that the objection here is not in trying to use more data - or is it thought that the new data used is more biased or contaminated than the rest (that is a genuine question)?

It seems to have tweaked it a little in the direction of other existing analyses. That might be due to conscious or unconscious bias in the data sets, either independent or through peer pressure, or it might be a reflection of an underlying reality in the temperature.

There were a number of comments here and elsewhere when the BEST analysis was put out that it was addressing a straw man.

But if there is a feeling that the HADCRUT revision is in some sense not a fair effort then regardless of whether BEST was better or worse or just as good or just as bad as the other analyses then wasn't it at least justified to say that BEST was addressing some skeptic concerns? Isn't it fair to say that IF an analysis such as BEST was done well then that would provide some reassurance that incorporating more more available data to extend the coverage of HADCRUT has not simply resulted in confirmation bias?

Jan 16, 2012 at 9:22 PM | Unregistered CommenterJK

Does this mean that the folks at NASA Earth Observatory will be able to stop hiding the HADCRUT 2010 temperature anomaly?

http://manicbeancounter.com/2011/04/05/nasa-excludes-an-inconvenient-figure-on-2010-temperatures/
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=48574

Jan 16, 2012 at 10:20 PM | Unregistered CommenterManicBeancounter

JK

There are many parts of the landmass that are undersampled - South America, central Asia, most of Africa fall into those categories. And of course, there is the problem of all that water. So adding readings in areas where it is known that were hot spells during the first decade of the century rather than in those other areas of scant coverage might be an interesting point to consider. For example, was there a heatwave in Paraguay?

Jan 16, 2012 at 10:24 PM | Unregistered Commenterdiogenes

This was hinted it was going to happen in 2010 by Vicky Pope (?) at Met O. It is based on Hansen's Arctic values.

Can anyone take Hansen's "adjustments" seriously? It's a complete joke.
http://www.real-science.com/smoking-gun-hansens-arctic-data

Jan 17, 2012 at 1:54 AM | Unregistered Commenterslimething

"2010 is now warmer than 1998!"

I'm not much good with grammar. What's the correct tense to use when referring to a past temperature that is changing in the present? Is it the pluperfect? I get confused. Perhaps we need a new climate tense.

Jan 17, 2012 at 8:37 AM | Unregistered CommenterJames Evans

I think I've got it.

"The temperature in 1929 is now going to have been..."

What tense is that?

Jan 17, 2012 at 8:46 AM | Unregistered CommenterJames Evans

That would be a "pre-tense"!

Jan 17, 2012 at 9:33 AM | Unregistered CommenterJack Savage

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