Deniers are Angered by More Angry Summers to Come

There are a number of fake skeptics trying to find evidence to refute the fact that Australia had a very, very hot summer in 2012-13.  The reason they are revisiting this is because of a new paper by Lewis et al, which can be found here (subs req'd).  From the press release:

Lead author, Dr Sophie Lewis from the University of Melbourne and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Systems Science said the study showed it was possible to say with more than 90 per cent confidence, that human influences on the atmosphere dramatically increased the likelihood of the extreme summer of 2013.

“Our research has shown that due to greenhouse gas emissions, these types of extreme summers will become even more frequent and more severe in the future,” she said.

I figured that with all that the fake skeptics are doing, I'd join in the fun and compare the UAH satellite data for the lower troposphere with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology land surface data (mean temperature).

I've only looked at January, which in 2013 was the month when that amazing heat wave lingered.  I've plotted the temperatures as well as the 5 year moving averages.  I don't know how UAH selects their data for Australia.  It's got a ragged coastline so I don't expect it's that easy.  Anyway, here is the result as an animated gif. Click the chart to enlarge it:

Data sources: UAH and BoM

The temperatures seem to be tracking each other more or less, with the land surface hotter than the air above it for some stretches.

Getting back to the Lewis paper that warns there are more angry summers to come, here is what the fake skeptic Anthony Watts wrote on WUWT. (In case you're wondering, Anthony recognised co-author David Karoly's name and he figured that would get the mob's blood pressure to rise):

June 28, 2013 at 4:44 am   Thanks Bob. My point in publishing the “angry” Australian claim by Karoly was that given the broad reach of WUWT, somebody would see what a load of codswallop it was and write a rebuttal, and I was right.

UPDATE: I see Nick is here working on an angle to defend the Karoly and Lewis govsci effort, so I’m even more sure it’s codswallop.

Anthony isn't up to writing a "rebuttal".  He wouldn't know where to start.  Bob doesn't mind having a shot but of course he does nothing remotely resembling the detailed analysis of the real scientists.  Thing is, Bob Tisdale started out without using Australia's land surface data.  He used reanalysis data - that dreadful modeled stuff that all the fake skeptics hate so much.

Finally he put up some charts with land surface data from BoM.  I'm not quite sure what he was trying to achieve, but I don't think he achieved it.

I may look at the paper (and what deniers say about it) over the weekend and write some more about it.