More "the seas got hotter because they got hotter" from Bob Tisdale at WUWT

Greenhouse effect denier, Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale, has written another article claiming that the seas got hotter because they got hotter (archived here). He's tried this non-argument before and didn't get hammered for it - except for here:)  Here's an image of some of the seas that got hotter this year, courtesy NOAA:

Unusually warm temperatures dominate three areas of the North Pacific: the Bering Sea, Gulf of Alaska and an area off Southern California. The darker the red, the further above average the sea surface temperature. NOAA researchers are tracking the temperatures and their implications for marine life. Source: NOAA

There's not a lot you can say about a long and tedious Tisdale article that explains that the sea surface got hotter because the sea surface got hotter. That is, the sea surface in the North Pacific got hotter - plus the sea surface over the equatorial Pacific got hotter. We already know that warming in both areas took place. In any case, it's not just the Pacific that's anomalously warm. Here is a snapshot of sea surface temperature anomalies for October, from the UK Met Office Hadley Centre.

Source: UK Met Office Hadley Centre

So, for something different let's take this paragraph from today's WUWT article and break it down. Bob wrote:

If the manmade greenhouse gas-forced climate models used by the IPCC cannot explain the 24-year absence of warming of the surface in the North Pacific, it can’t be claimed that the weather-related warming there in 2013 and 2014 were caused by manmade greenhouse gases. That little bit of common sense eludes alarmists.

A reality check of temperature for Wondering Willis Eschenbach

Update 2 - see below for another Reality Check with GISTemp

Update - see below for Reality Check 5

Addendum - see below for Reality Checks 3 and 4

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Wondering Willis Eschenbach has an article at WUWT today (archived here, latest here). It's a lazy article. One of those silly articles claiming that the global surface temperature datasets aren't as reliable as the tropospheric temperature sets. Willis thanks the UAH duo for providing a reality check. He finished his article with this acknowledgement:

Finally, acknowledgement is due to the originators of the method of satellite temperature measurements, Drs. Roy Spencer and John Christie. It is thanks to them that we have a satellite-based atmospheric temperature record to act as a reality check for the oft-adjusted surface temperature record. Very well done, gentlemen.

This article is to provide Willis with not one but two reality checks.

Willis penned his article to feed Anthony Watts' readers some much needed doubt. The reason they need that doubt muchly at the moment is because this year is shaping up to be another hot one. Whether it'll turn out to be the hottest on record so far or not remains to be seen.

Watching the weather for 84 years and the petty peeves of Anthony Watts

Anthony Watts has an article about Richard G. Hendrickson, who is being honoured by the NOAA for watching the weather for 84 years. That's a very long time. Richard Hendrickson is now 101 years of age. He's been reporting weather at Bridgehampton, New York for the USA COOP network since he was just a lad of 18.

Congratulations, Richard. That's a long time of continuous service.

Richard Hendrickson is aware of global warming

The reason I'm writing this, apart from congratulating Richard Hendrickson, is because WUWT readers might be interested in the fact that he is concerned about global warming. He (or the journalist) might confuse the stratosphere with the troposphere, but he did say in a 2008 interview with the local paper:

We have polluted the stratosphere and because of that we have had warmer weather in the summer and milder weather in the winter and the potential of having heavy precipitation in the summer time increases– if not more rains, maybe they will be a little heavier than they have been in the past – you’ll notice your basement floods a little easier, your roof might leak a bit.

We are in a period in the cycle of global warming. We have polluted our stratosphere with our big factories and it will happen.

Adjusting data for time of observation

Anthony is determined to spoil Richard's celebration by complaining about how the weather station is not ideally sited and blames NOAA. Then he complains about data being adjusted. His headline (archived here, latest update here) was:

I wonder how this dedicated weather observer feels about having his readings adjusted by NCDC?

Anthony leaves that question for readers to wonder. He doesn't say that whether or not the readings have in fact been adjusted.  Apparently it's sufficient to ask the question.

Anyway, I checked some of the records from NOAA. For the Bridgehampton weather station, the time of observation wasn't recorded until the late 1940s. Then up until May 2008, the observations were taken at 8:00 pm. From then till now they were taken at 8:00 am. So I think that Richard Hendrickson would be quite comfortable with the data being adjusted to allow for the change in time of observation, if nothing else.

Anthony Watts' petty peeve

One more thing. Anthony is most irate that the Director of NASA's GISS, Dr Gavin Schmidt, doesn't spend all his days and nights sitting at a computer terminal entering data for individual US weather stations in the NOAA's COOP network. I wonder does he know the scope of NASA's work? Does he know, for example, that NASA gets data from NOAA? If he is concerned about the GHCNV3 data, why does he complain about NASA and not about NOAA?

…NASA GISS run by Gavin Schmidt, can’t seem to find the time to get their data set current for Bridgehampton, as seen here, only going to 2012. You’d think Gavin could tear himself away from Twitter long enough to at least get the data updated, especially since this man is so dedicated to the task.

This is from the NASA web page:

Q. Does GISS deal directly with raw (observed) data?

A. No. GISS has neither the personnel nor the funding to visit weather stations or deal directly with data observations from weather stations. GISS relies on data collected by other organizations, specifically, NOAA/NCDC's Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) v3 adjusted monthly mean data as augmented by Antarctic data collated by UK Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) and also NOAA/NCDC's Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature (ERSST) v3b data. 

Does Anthony Watts, weather station watcher extraordinaire, not know that little fact? Apparently not. Anthony Watts isn't just a spoilsport and wet blanket, he is an ignorant spoilsport and wet blanket. He doesn't hold a candle to Richard G. Hendrickson or Gavin Schmidt.

Update: From the WUWT comments

Anthony has pledged "More on all this in a later post." Will this be another broken promise? A couple of people pointed out to Anthony Watts that GISS uses NOAA data.

I also see that in addition to the change in time of observation, there has been a station move. Nick Stokes says, quoting Jim:

July 23, 2014 at 9:17 pm
jim says: July 23, 2014 at 9:08 pm “Absent any location or observer specific reasons for the GHCN adjustment of the recorded data from this observation site, the GHCN adjustments are just destruction of observation data.”

Why not try to find out, then?

The first thing you’ll find is that data is undestroyed. In fact, it is graphed in the page you refer to, which shows what is on the unadjusted file. And as the head post indicates, you can get the original docs on line.

But in fact if you look at the adjustment history, there is just one sustained change in the early 1980′s. And sure enough, the metadata tells you there was a station move around that time.

Added by Sou at around 3:30 pm AEST 24 July 14


Latest WUWT archive here, in which HW is quoted (paraphrased) :) 10:42 pm AEST 24 July 14

Incompetent or deceitful? Anthony Watts is lost for words so substitutes pictures...

Update - see below. Judith Curry has decided to join forces with the loony camp. [Sou: 5:30 pm 2 July 14 AESDT]


This is a follow-up to Anthony Watts idiocy with regard to the US temperature record. You can read about his lead up tantrums here and here.

After all his mistakes of the past few days, topped off by this latest gaffe, Anthony Watts' reputation as far as the US temperature records go should be in tatters. Except he has no reputation with anyone who counts for anything. He's just another denialist blogger.

Lost for words

Today Anthony Watts is lost for words. So lost that when he found out that NCDC/NOAA had responded to a query from Politifact, he just posted the response "without comment" (archived here). The response from NCDC was, unsurprisingly, that their algorithms are working as intended.  You can read it in full in the archived WUWT article. It is just as Nick Stokes and others wrote.

Anthony peevishly wrote "The NCDC has not responded to me personally, I only got this by asking around." Yeah, you'd think that after Anthony's lunatic rantings at all and sundry and misrepresenting the NCDC they'd at least have paid him the courtesy of writing to him, the "bigger than Ben Hur" denier blogger, "personally"!

He stomped about for at least three hours trying to figure out how to get back at the NCDC/NOAA for ignoring him and his anti-science blog. "How could they do that?" He fumed. "I just put in a huge amount of effort telling my readers how bad and unscrupulous and wrong and positively evil the NOAA is and they ignore me."

The fact that it was Anthony who was so dreadfully wrong in almost everything he wrote about the US temperature record would have been beside the point. He wanted to stir up a hornets' nest, but the hornets flew off over his head. He wasn't worth even a little sting.

Anthony Watts takes a swipe at his engineering buddies

After three hours Anthony was still lost for words, but he came up with a sneaky way around this. He decided to say it with pictures. So he put up lots of big photos (archived here). Most of them were of engineering disasters. Given a huge (dis)proportion of Anthony's denier fans are engineers this may not go over well.

Anthony took particular aim at his fellow deniers, the Gang of 49 who are retired space engineers and astronauts. This motley lot pride themselves on rejecting climate science, though they can't do simple arithmetic and know nothing about climate. Anthony doesn't care if he shoots them down. He's prepared to drop a few allies in his quest to prove that all climate science is wrong. Here's a list of his pictures that PROVE the US temperature record is wrong.

• some early NASA rockets - would these have been NASA rockets designed by some of the Gang of 49 who Anthony promotes from time to time?
• the Mariner - that surely would have involved some of the Gang of 49 deniers
• the Mars Climate Orbiter - again, were any of those dismissed engineers close to the Gang of 49?
• the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse - which wouldn't endear him to his engineering buddies, 
• the de Havilland Comet, that's a bit risky. Some of Anthony's engineering fans would be old enough to have played a part in that one.
• the Titanic - that's probably safe enough. The people who designed the Titanic wouldn't be around any more. And I don't know that he has any admirers from the ship-building industry.

Anthony Watts - incompetent or deceitful?

Having listed a few engineering disasters that were not remotely connected to NOAA or NCDC, Anthony finally gets down to brass tacks. He's dug up the fact that on the "Climate at a Glance" website, the record displayed for the month of May for Dallas Texas, between 1970 and 2000, doesn't show a difference between the maximum and minimum temperature and average monthly temperature. Anthony reckons that's a travesty!  Anthony wrote:

While being told that “all is well” and and that “our algorithm is working as designed”, it is easy to discover that if one tries to plot the temperature data for any city in the United States like Dallas Texas for example you get plots for high temperature, low temperature, and average temperature that are identical:

Max/Min data to come at NCDC

So let's look into that, shall we? This is what NCDC had to say about version 1 of the US Climate Division Dataset (my emphasis):

Weaknesses of the U.S. Climate Division Dataset: The U.S. Climate Division Dataset does not contain monthly maximum or minimum temperature or any variables/indices derivable from daily data. Temperature data is adjusted for time of observation bias, however no other adjustments are made for inhomogeneities. These inhomogeneities include changes in instrumentation, observer, and observation practices, station and instrumentation moves, and changes in station composition resulting from stations closing and opening over time within a division.

Does the above apply to what Anthony found? I don't know, perhaps not directly anyway, because Version 1 has been superseded. However it does provide a clue.  A much bigger clue can be found right up the top of the webpage that Anthony himself linked to, where the NCDC has written (my emphasis):

NCDC transitioned to the nClimDiv dataset on Thursday, March 13, 2014. This was coincident with the release of the February 2014 monthly monitoring report. For details on this transition, please visit our public FTP site and our U.S. Climate Divisional Database site.

If you click on the "our public FTP site" link you'll find this, in black and white (my emphasis):

May 13, 2014

NCDC is planning to provide access to nClimDiv maximum and minimum temperature data coincident with the release of the May 2014 climate summary in mid-June.  

These data will be accessible from several of NCDC's products, including Climate at a Glance, and will also reside on our CIRS ftp site:

This isn't clear if it refers to monthly data or annual. On the NCDC charting web page annual data definitely has monthly max and min as well as average. So it may be that monthly data still is not available - or it's two weeks late. In any case, is it worth all the aggro that Anthony dished out? Does Anthony even know that it's ClimDiv data that he's looking at? What's he planning to do with monthly max and min data for Dallas between 1970 and 2000 - which is the chart he got all hot and bothered over? I'd say he could probably use USHCN data if he wanted to. [Para amended slightly a few minutes after posting.]

Shall we put Anthony's flap down to incompetence or is he deliberately leading his readers astray?

I'd say if you want any specialist advice on the US temperature record, avoid WUWT and Anthony Watts!

From the WUWT comments

Rhoda R doesn't know anything about US surface temperature but wants to join in the chorus and says:

July 1, 2014 at 8:19 pm
Did anyone ask what the design goal was that these algorithms were designed to meet?

editstet has nothing to add but adds it anyway and says:

July 1, 2014 at 8:19 pm
Ah, well, that certainly simplifies things.

editstet follows it up with another meaningless one-liner says:

July 1, 2014 at 8:23 pm
Or maybe NOAA scientists took the song Night and Day too literally.

pokerguy has nothing to say but says it anyway:

July 1, 2014 at 8:28 pm
“…working as designed.”
Well that’s a relief.

Rud Istvan is a fake sceptic who says:

July 1, 2014 at 9:08 pm
Anthony, call them on the max min avg mistake. They might respond since obviously and embarassingly wrong.

You just called them on much bigger climate temp issues, and were ‘blown off’. Time to escalate. And not just here. “algorithm does what we intended” is going to be one of those salient moments all round. What a lovely intent statement in any court of law able to convict.

davidmhoffer mistakenly thinks the NCDC has something to do with the Hubble telescope. Either that or he wants Anthony to stick the boot into the Gang of 49 some more, and says:

July 1, 2014 at 9:30 pm
Aw, you left out the Hubble Telescope. I think it a most appropriate example for no other reason that every single component and sub-assembly worked exactly as designed. It was only the fully assembled device that failed to work properly.

i sense the same mind numbing denial of the obvious in this case. The algorithm no doubt did work exactly as designed. That by no means proves that the design achieved an output commensurate with actual results, and, as the trends above show, it is quite possible to have an algorithm that works as designed yet, as part of a larger system, like the Hubble Telescope, produces incorrect information that is wildly and completely obviously wrong. Sadly, a quick look at the original photo from Hubble was enough to convince a rank layman that something was wrong. I don’t think a quick look by the MSM will have the same effect.

Update: Curried potatoes anyone?

Judith Curry has decided to pitch her tent alongside the unsavoury "Steve Goddard" and ignorant Anthony Watts (archived here). As every year passes (and as she herself admits), she shifts further and further into loony land. She's trying to portray absolutely nothing as a "political hot potato", based solely on the ignorant ravings of petulant, thwarted deniers.

NOAA and temperature data - it must be a conspiracy.

Update: Nick Stokes of Moyhu has written two articles that demonstrate what would happen if Anthony Watts had his way and stations with no data were ignored completely. See here and here. Anthony Watts might change his tune if he read them.

Sou 3:22 pm 1 July 2014 AEST

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This article is about the kerfuffle that erupted between a bunch of science deniers. It all started when Steve Goddard accused NOAA and NASA of "fabricating data" (archived here).  The lie was spread all over the right wing media. Politifact and Climate Crocks among others pointed out he was wrong. Steve didn't explain how the two agencies did this. All he did was put up an animated chart that he claimed showed that the US temperature was warmer in the 1930s than at any time since. He wrote:

Prior to the year 2000, NASA showed US temperatures cooling since the 1930′s, and 1934 much warmer than 1998....Right after the year 2000, NASA and NOAA dramatically altered US climate history, making the past much colder and the present much warmer. The animation below shows how NASA cooled 1934 and warmed 1998, to make 1998 the hottest year in US history instead of 1934. This alteration turned a long term cooling trend since 1930 into a warming trend.

Steve doesn't say what data was "fabricated". Why should he? He's not a fact checker. Quite the opposite. He's in the denial business of making up stuff to stop any action to mitigate global warming.

This article is another one that's too long :( Click read more if you're on the home page.

Around the traps: GWPF and global warming, BEST daily temperatures and an El Niño watch

Some blog articles worth reading.

Ed Hawkins (and others) on a GWPF article on climate sensitivity

First Ed Hawkins has written about some article Nic Lewis and Marcel Crok wrote for the GWPF.  Actually it was two articles reports, a short version with 44 pages cover to cover and a long version with 72 pages cover to cover.  Ed makes the point that not before time is the GWPF acknowledging that we are heading to dangerous warming of more than two degrees by the end of the century if we keep burning fossil fuels at the rate we are.  The other points he makes are about why Nic Lewis is probably erring on the low side in his estimate of climate sensitivity.

Greg Laden has also written a good article on the topic of the Lewis and Crok article, which you can read here.  Bob Ward took down Nic Lewis' recent testimony to a UK parliamentary committee (along with that of other deniers).

I can't really add anything to what these people have written, except to say that Judith Curry wrote a foreword to Nic and Marcel's articles, with effusive praise for Nic and Marcel and slightly more muted "appreciation" for the GWPF.  Plus maybe a hint that they asked her to find a publisher, which she couldn't manage to do.

While writing this Foreword, I considered the very few options available for publishing a report such as this paper by Lewis and Crok. I am appreciative of the GWPF for publishing and publicizing this report. Public accountability of governmental and intergovernmental climate science and policy analysis is enhanced by independent assessments of their conclusions and arguments.

Victor Venema on the daily temperature dataset from BEST

The other article I'll point you to is by Victor Venema.  He's saying "Be careful with the new daily temperature dataset from Berkeley".  And continues:

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project now also provides daily temperature data. On the one hand this is an important improvement, that we now have a global dataset with homogenized daily data. On the other hand, there was a reason that climatologists did not publish a global daily dataset yet. Homogenization of daily data is difficult and the data provided by Berkeley is likely better than analyzing raw data, but still insufficient for robust conclusions about changes in extreme weather and weather variability.

It's worth a read - Victor is a specialist in climate temperature data.

RealClimate has an article by Zeke Hausfather and Robert Rohde, two of the BEST team members behind the new data set.

Jeff Masters on El Niño watch

You read it here at HotWhopper first of course :)  Then NOAA announced it.  Jeff Masters has now written about it too. There may be an El Niño on its way later this year.

Jeff points to this earlier article by Michael Ventrice at wunderground.com that is worth reading. (I wrote something about ENSO here some weeks ago, which has more links to the subject,)

Update: Webb Roberts ‏(@webbr) pointed me to another article about this from Kim Cobb's Lab at Georgia Tech, suggesting it could provide a rare opportunity for scientific study and learning more about ENSO, if resources can be put together in time.

It's hotting up all over the world (but what about that cold spell?)

From the NOAA - last year was the fourth hottest on record, tying with 2003. And in another ENSO neutral year.

The year 2013 tied with 2003 as the fourth warmest year globally since records began in 1880. The annually-averaged temperature across global land and ocean surfaces was 0.62°C (1.12°F) above the 20th century average and marks the 37th consecutive year (since 1976) that the annual temperature was above the long-term average. Currently, the warmest year on record is 2010, which was 0.66°C (1.19°F) above average.

To date, including 2013, 9 of the 10 warmest years on record have occured during the 21st century. Only one year during the 20th century—1998—was warmer than 2013. The global annual temperature has increased at an average rate of 0.06°C (0.11°F) per decade since 1880 and at an average rate of 0.16°C (0.28°F) per decade since 1970.

Here's a map.  It doesn't show the Arctic or Antarctica - which we know to be getting warmer.

Source: NOAA

From WUWT

Sorry - this doesn't rate a mention at WUWT (except in a few comments)!  They are too busy discussing the current cold spell in eastern USA in an article Anthony has made "sticky" to keep it at the top (archived here). To compare and contrast (my bold italics):

From WUWT and Joe D'Aleo - hasn't seen anything like it since 1918 ...the most severe run thus far

A new forecast shows the cold blast in the eastern half of the USA extending well past Groundhog Day, Feb 2nd, according to their models. WeatherBell has had an excellent track record this winter so far. He says he hasn’t seen anything like it since 1918 when the big flu pandemic hit the USA. ...D’Aleo writes in a follow up email...It covers the coldest period of the winter season climatologically in most areas. The other global models agree through at least 10 days. This is the most severe run thus far. We have been alerting clients to it for weeks. 

From Jeff Masters at Wunderground.com - not as impressive... (but) ...a respectable cold blast

It's "The Return of the Polar Vortex" over the much of the eastern half of the U.S. this week, as another round of bitterly cold Arctic air plunges southwards out of Canada. Like many sequels, "The Return of the Polar Vortex" will not be as impressive as the original, with temperatures averaging about ten degrees warmer than during the original Polar Vortex episode earlier this January. Still, with temperatures 15 - 25° colder than average expected over much of the eastern half of the U.S. Tuesday through Thursday, this week's sequel is a respectable cold blast. The cold air is centered over the Upper Midwest, and low temperatures in portions of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan dropped below -20° early Tuesday morning. Crane Lake, Minnesota bottomed out at a bone-chilling -32°F this morning, and Pellston, Michigan hit -25°. 

Commenters at WUWT are busy debating whether or not the cold weather in the USA in 1918 caused the (global) influenza pandemic.  With an occasional comment from a hot Californian.

Jenn Oates says:

January 21, 2014 at 1:44 pm
And here in Northern CA we’re wearing shorts with so little precip that Folsom Lake looks like the river it was before the dam.

snow says:

January 21, 2014 at 1:53 pm
With this pattern is there any chance of moister for the west coast? No rainy season at all for the west coast so far. They could sure use the rain and mountain snow.

Jim Cripwell says:

January 21, 2014 at 2:17 pm
I live in Ottawa, Canada, and I quietly chuckle to myself. We are having a very normal winter. My house is warm, my driveway clear of snow. My car starts with no problem. There is lots of snow for the skiers, and ice on the canal for the skaters. Life goes on with nothing extraordinary happening at all. We are looking forward to Winterlude at the end of January, beginning of February. Ho hum.

Todd says:

January 21, 2014 at 12:16 pm
I don’t remember 1993/94 but I sure do remember Jan/Feb 1996, which did break or tie state records in my neck of the woods. Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin.
Are we talking that level of cold, yet, anywhere?

Denier weirdness: Russian steam pipes are causing global warming, sez Anthony Watts @wattsupwiththat

Shades of "Airport UHI Disease".

Today Anthony Watts muses whether one reason this November was the hottest in the instrumental record is because of Russian steam pipes!

Here's the global temperature anomaly according to NASA GISTemp:

Data source: NASA

Here's a chart of the global temperature anomaly for November 2013:

Source: NOAA

In an article protesting the record warm November, Anthony wrote (archived here):

Addendum: I have been wondering about that Russian red spot for 5 years. I’ve seen this red spot come and go in Russia, and I don’t know what the reason is.

I do know this: neither I nor NOAA has a good handle on the siting characteristics of Russian weather stations. I do know one thing though, the central heating schemes for many Russian cities puts a lot of waste heat into the air from un-insulated steam pipes

...and he proceeded to post a lot of photos of steam pipes in Russian cities.

I guess the Russians only turn on their steam pipes in hot Novembers, not cooler Novembers like last year?

Source: NOAA Nov 2013 and Nov 2012

It looks as if they turn on the steam pipes in outback Australia when it's a cold November worldwide.  This year Alaska (and south west USA) turned on the steam pipes but last November they neglected to turn them on in Alaska.  They didn't turn them on in north east North America this year, either - I bet they were wishing they were in northern Russia last month, where they could warm themselves up with the steam pipes!

Here's more PROOF that the steam pipes are only turned on in hot Novembers:

Source: NOAA Nov 2011 and Nov 2010

Once again, when it's a colder November worldwide, they turn on the steam pipes in Australia - but in different parts of the country.  In northern Canada they are quite inconsistent about turning on the steam pipes.

Here's an animation with a map of world population distribution together with the global surface temperature anomaly for November this year.  Those Russians are dreadfully inefficient piping all the steam into unpopulated areas of the country, aren't they.

Sources: NOAA and Maps.com

Kenji, the scientific dog, is probably feeling rather embarrassed again.







Remember when Anthony decided that China was getting hotter because of UHI disease?  Trouble was that the warm anomalies were greatest in parts where almost no-one lived!

From the WUWT comments

Comments are archived here with the WUWT article.

Justin Hoffer thinks there shouldn't be any anomalous anomalies and decides it must be the Russian military equipment messing with the data says:

December 19, 2013 at 1:11 pm
I should clarify that I mean it could be caused by someone messing with the satellite data in some way, or Russian military equipment possible messing with the satellite data. As is, the very existence of an anomaly like that seems rather odd to me.

vukcevic says b..b..but it was cooler in central England this November:

December 19, 2013 at 3:24 pm
Most of ordinary people are concerned about and judge global warming by events in their area; in Central England both maximum and minimum daily temperatures this November were lower than in 2012

jmorpuss is an ordinary nutter and says:

December 19, 2013 at 3:55 pm
Google giant Tesla coils found in Russia . Once found you will ask what the ****? What are they used for? I don’t think their water slides lol.

mike g is a climate conspiracy nutter and says:

December 19, 2013 at 4:19 pm
If the conspicuous and suspicious temperature anomaly over Russia was a cold anomaly, mainstream science would have corrected it. There is enough information in this post and others on here over the years for any reasonable individual to see the data is suspect and has been for years. Yet, it is accepted without question by warmists.

Six Grand Challenges - 12 Extreme Weather Events in 2012

While Anthony Watts is scurrying around trying to think up an angle to "prove" that the world's top climate scientists "don't no nuffin'", he's drawn attention to a new analysis by 78 scientists from around the world.  The analysis is of several extreme events last year (2012) and has been published as a special supplement to the latest issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS).

The paper is called "Explaining Extreme Events of 2012 from a Climate Perspective".  There is a news release from NOAA here.  It states in part:

The report shows that the effects of natural weather and climate fluctuations played a key role in the intensity and evolution of many of the 2012 extreme events. However, in several events, the analyses revealed compelling evidence that human-caused climate change was a secondary factor contributing to the extreme event. “This report adds to a growing ability of climate science to untangle the complexities of understanding natural and human-induced factors contributing to specific extreme weather and climate events,” said Thomas R. Karl, LHD, director of NCDC. “Nonetheless, determining the causes of extreme events remains challenging.”

In addition to investigating the causes of these extreme events, the multiple analyses of four of the events—the warm temperatures in the United States, the record-low levels of Arctic sea ice, and the heavy rain in both northern Europe and eastern Australia—allowed the scientists to compare and contrast the strengths and weaknesses of their various methods of analysis. Despite their different strategies, there was considerable agreement between the assessments of the same events.

The second paragraph is interesting.

Six Grand Challenges

I have only started reading the report myself and really like the style of the introduction.   Here are the opening paragraphs:

One of us distinctly remembers in graduate school when a professor put the first ever satellite image of a tropical cyclone on the screen and explained various features of the storm. Then he proceeded to editorialize by pointing out that someone wrote his entire PhD dissertation based on this one image and how we started graduate school too late because all the easy projects have been done. Now with decades of definitely not easy scientific analyses under our collective belts, we can look back and realize how wrong the professor was. The “easy” science of decades ago only looks easy now because its results seem obvious. Their work was difficult then and our work is difficult now.

However, among the difficult work we have before us, a few grand challenges arise. These are challenges (i) that have specific barriers preventing progress, (ii) where targeted research efforts would have the likelihood of significant progress over the next 5–10 years, (iii) that have measurable performance metrics, (iv) that can be transformative, (v) that are capable of capturing the public’s imagination, and (vi) that can offer compelling storylines (WCRP 2013). The World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) has identified six grand challenges that meet these criteria. Prediction and attribution of extreme events is one of them. It is gratifying to see that scientists from across the world are taking on this grand challenge. This includes the scientists that contributed to this collection of analyses, which assess the causes for 12 specific extreme events that took place around the world in 2012 (Fig. 1.1).

You can download a copy of the report here.

Does Anthony Watts not believe global warming can influence weather?

What Anthony Watts writes says all you need to know about him (archived here).  First his headline, where he describes NOAA as "alarmist" for reporting what the scientists have found:

NOAA goes full alarmist with new publication, seeing AGW in extreme weather events. 

In other words, he thinks the 78 scientists are exaggerating.  Why does he think that?  He hasn't figured out an angle yet but he does make a promise:

I’ll comment in detail later, but for now I’ll simply provide the report

What's the bet he'll renege on his promise to "comment in detail later"?  He often says he'll do that without anything appearing "later".  Mostly I think he just says that in the hope that someone will offer in the comments something he can use - or maybe get one of his "guest authors" to write an article for him.  He's not that good at dreaming up angles that he can sell to anyone but the most dismissive of the 8% dismissives.

So it would appear that Anthony Watts doesn't think global warming can influence weather.  You'd not think two people in the world could be so dumb, but it's so.  There is at least one other person, Cheshirered who says:

September 5, 2013 at 1:27 pm
Weather is not climate.
It takes 30 years, apparently.
So how does climate change become weather?
Confirmation bias, writ large.
And a large cheque, writ.

How does climate change become weather, Cheshirered asks.  Does Cheshirered know that climate is just a description of expected weather and when climate changes then - well, you can guess the rest (I hope).

Global warming means more energy in the earth system.  It affects all weather.

There is a nice Q&A on climate change and attribution with NOAA's Thomas Peterson here.


Peterson, T. C., M. P. Hoerling, P. A. Stott and S. Herring, Eds., 2013: Explaining Extreme Events of 2012 from a Climate Perspective. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 94 (9), S1–S74.

State of the Climate in 2012 - with some WUWT spin

2012 was among the coolest years this century ...and among the hottest 10 years on record

Not since 2011 could deniers claim this.  That 2012 was among the coolest years this century!  That's how Anthony Watts portrays it on his WUWT blog today.

According to GISTemp, it was the fifth coolest year this century - or the sixth coolest if you include 2000!  We're heading for an ice age any day now.

Data Source: NASA

State of the Climate 2012

The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society has released State of the Climate in 2012 as a supplement to the August 2013 issue.  You can download it here.

Here are some highlights from the NOAA:

The report used dozens of climate indicators to track and identify changes and overall trends to the global climate system. These indicators include greenhouse gas concentrations, temperature of the lower and upper atmosphere, cloud cover, sea surface temperature, sea-level rise, ocean salinity, sea ice extent and snow cover. Each indicator includes thousands of measurements from multiple independent datasets.

Warm temperature trends continue near Earth’s surface: Four major independent datasets show 2012 was among the 10 warmest years on record, ranking either 8th or 9th, depending upon the dataset used. The United States and Argentina had their warmest year on record.

La Niña dissipates into neutral conditions:  A weak La Niña dissipated during spring 2012 and, for the first time in several years, neither El Niño nor La Niña, which can dominate regional weather and climate conditions around the globe, prevailed for the majority of the year.

The Arctic continues to warm; sea ice extent reaches record low: The Arctic continued to warm at about twice the rate compared with lower latitudes. Minimum Arctic sea ice extent in September and Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent in June each reached new record lows. Arctic sea ice minimum extent (1.32 million square miles, September 16) was the lowest of the satellite era. This is 18 percent lower than the previous record low extent of 1.61 million square miles that occurred in 2007 and 54 percent lower than the record high minimum ice extent of 2.90 million square miles that occurred in 1980.

The temperature of permafrost, or permanently frozen land, reached record-high values in northernmost Alaska. A new melt extent record occurred July 11–12 on the Greenland ice sheet when 97 percent of the ice sheet showed some form of melt, four times greater than the average melt this time of year.

Antarctica sea ice extent reaches record high: The Antarctic maximum sea ice extent reached a record high of 7.51 million square miles on September 26. This is 0.5 percent higher than the previous record high extent of 7.47 million square miles that occurred in 2006 and seven percent higher than the record low maximum sea ice extent of 6.96 million square miles that occurred in 1986.

Sea surface temperatures increase: Four independent datasets indicate that the globally averaged sea surface temperature for 2012 was among the 11 warmest on record.  After a 30-year period from 1970 to 1999 of rising global sea surface temperatures, the period 2000–2012 exhibited little trend. Part of this difference is linked to the prevalence of La Niña-like conditions during the 21st century, which typically lead to lower global sea surface temperatures.

Ocean heat content remains near record levels: Heat content in the upper 2,300 feet, or a little less than one-half mile, of the ocean remained near record high levels in 2012. Overall increases from 2011 to 2012 occurred between depths of 2,300 to 6,600 feet and even in the deep ocean.

Sea level reaches record high: Following sharp decreases in global sea level in the first half of 2011 that were linked to the effects of La Niña, sea levels rebounded to reach record highs in 2012. Globally, sea level has been increasing at an average rate of 3.2 ± 0.4 mm per year over the past two decades.

Ocean salinity trends continue: Continuing a trend that began in 2004, oceans were saltier than average in areas of high evaporation, including the central tropical North Pacific, and fresher than average in areas of high precipitation, including the north central Indian Ocean, suggesting that precipitation is increasing in already rainy areas and evaporation is intensifying in drier locations.

Tropical cyclones near average: Global tropical cyclone activity during 2012 was near average, with a total of 84 storms, compared with the 1981–2010 average of 89. Similar to 2010 and 2011, the North Atlantic was the only hurricane basin that experienced above-normal activity.

Greenhouse gases climb: Major greenhouse gas concentrations, including carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, continued to rise during 2012. Following a slight decline in manmade emissions associated with the global economic downturn, global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production reached a record high in 2011 of 9.5 ± 0.5 petagrams (1,000,000,000,000,000 grams) of carbon, and a new record of 9.7 ± 0.5 petagrams of carbon is estimated for 2012. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations increased by 2.1 ppm in 2012, reaching a global average of 392.6 ppm for the year. In spring 2012, for the first time, the atmospheric CO2 concentration exceeded 400 ppm at several Arctic observational sites.

Cool temperature trends continue in Earth’s lower stratosphere: The average lower stratospheric temperature, about six to ten miles above the Earth’s surface, for 2012 was record to near-record cold, depending on the dataset. Increasing greenhouse gases and decline of stratospheric ozone tend to cool the stratosphere while warming the planet near-surface layers.

Confirmation bias and anomalous anomalies at WUWT

Anthony Watts is wondering if the NOAA latest monthly report is in error in regard to May being the third hottest month.  GISTemp is currently showing May as the 10th hottest May on record, although it's May data is asterisked, meaning provisional I assume.  Not that Anthony went that far in his "investigation".

What Anthony does is compare anomalies.  What he fails to do is adjust those anomalies to reflect the different baselines.  For example:

• NOAA - baseline is the average of the entire twentieth Century - at least as far as it's monthly reports go.
• GISTemp - baseline is the 1951 to 1980 mean
• UAH - baseline is 1981 - 2010
• Weatherbell / NCEP  - baseline is 1981-2010
• HadCRUT4 - baseline is 1961-1990

Anthony's confirmation bias

Anthony doesn't tell his readers that UAH and RSS don't correlate well on a monthly basis and he gets very cross with Zeke Hausfather for pointing out this fact.  (I wasn't aware either so it's good to know.) It does weaken his story a bit I suppose.

Zeke Hausfather says:
June 20, 2013 at 12:47 pm  UAH and RSS are not measuring land temperatures, and generally do not correlate that well with land temperatures on a monthly basis (though they correlate pretty well annually). The discrepancy with GISS is a bit more interesting, though there are some methodological differences that can lead to different values (e.g. NCDC doesn’t interpolate nearly as much as GISS); I’ll download the latest GHCN data from the NCDC web site and see how many stations have reported so far.

REPLY: Zeke no need to lecture me on what I already know (and routinely publish about) about UAH/RSS and the lower troposphere. I’m simply pointing out large discrepancies, usually not that large. BTW the 2meter reanalysis temp from WeatherBell has been right on in many occasions, so I tend to trust it as a parallel metric to NCDC. It shows near zero, like UAH/RSS. – Anthony

The thing is that Anthony takes Zeke's comment as a personal affront.  Zeke makes no accusation.  Does not use any coloured language.  All he is doing is making some straight up observations.  He even comments that it is "interesting", which Anthony could have taken as a compliment.

But no.  Anthony accuses Zeke of "lecturing". Anthony could have said nothing, or he could have replied: "Thank you, Zeke.  That extra information is useful for my readers" and maybe he could have added "who are generally extremely ignorant of all things climate."  

Instead he exhibits this.

Temperature series bias

Another cute thing is where he writes in his reply to Zeke above: "It shows near zero, like UAH/RSS", referring to the Weatherbell chart.

It's not the only spot - in the main article Anthony writes: "The RSS temperature anomaly dataset is also much lower than NCDC is reporting". Not only does he ignore the fact the baselines are different, he then shows the RSS data points for December 2012 through to May 2013, as if they have any bearing on May vs May records going back however many years.

There he's talking about anomalies from different baselines.  The "near zero" refers to how much UAH and Weatherbell (NCEP) are from their baselines of 1981 to 2010.  Whereas the NOAA is from the 20th century average.  So of course if NCEP shows "near zero" you'd expect UAH, which has the same baseline to also show "near zero".  But you wouldn't expect "near zero" if the baseline for the anomaly was different.  And the baseline for NOAA is different.

What Anthony should have done was compare ranking - ie 3rd hottest vs 10th hottest May or whatever, not comparing differences from different baselines.

But then Anthony Watts has always had trouble working with temperature anomalies.

Here is a comparison of UAH and GISTemp for the month of May from 1979 to May 2013.  I've set the x and y axis to the same scale.  I've then roughly aligned the two charts.  That's purely for illustrative purposes and is not something viewers should try at home!  Anyway, I think you should be able to see what a difference the different baselines make. (Click to enlarge.)

Correction: Oops! I inadvertently showed GISTemp for March instead of May.  I've replaced it with the corrected eyeballing :D

BBD posted a link to the charts with a properly aligned base year, which prompted me out of my laziness and so here it is.  My eyeballing wasn't too far off the mark, but it pays to do it properly.
 

Tamino does it better.  Although I think he got the Weatherbell observation wrong.  Anthony's chart does look like it's for the whole month of May, and is labelled as 1 May ---> 31 May.

PS I don't know why all the fuss and aggro over a monthly global weather report.  A month tells you nothing about climate.  A year doesn't tell you anything about climate either.  That is, unless the weather is pushing extremes and continues to do so.  It's the trend that counts, not May, June and July.

Whither winter weather whether weather or climate

If you think that headline is dumb, how about this one?

Here's the article from which Watts mangled his weird meaningless headline.

(Has anyone else noticed that Watts' blog has gone from very bad to very very bad quality lately?  Seems to have got stuck somewhere between boring, irrelevant and painfully wrongheaded.)

Addendum: Anthony now seems to be saying that the record heat extremes in the USA recently were either or both UHI effect and new weather stations.  (As if one foot in mouth wasn't enough.)

Addendum 2: Below is a chart of USA temperature records from the EPA (data from NOAA), including surface and satellite records.

Anthony's rabble cry "what about the 1930s"? Indeed, the chart shows quite a difference between this century and the 1930s.  (I'll spell it out for people who can't read charts.  There are a lot more hot years since the mid 1980s in the USA.  In the 1930s the hot years were more rare and were interspersed with cooler years.)

Getting tied up in knots over UHI

Anthony is saying the records since the 1950s are wrong because of UHI and new thermometers.  He has to be complaining about the satellite 'thermometers' as well, since going by the chart below, the satellite records support the surface measurements.  A couple of 'lukewarmers' did an analysis demonstrating that the UHI effect is already factored into the adjusted temperature records.  (Needless to say, Anthony poo poos anything that contradicts his spin.)

Oh Watt a tangled web we weave...

In among the comments, Anthony also said you can't count last summer, so I guess he thinks that UHI and new thermometers weren't causing last summer's heat.  Why the difference?  He hasn't explained why he thinks new thermometers and UHI would distort temperature records post 1950s except those from last year.

Wonder if Anthony is deliberately lying or is he just stupid? No, I don't really wonder that.  The fact that he didn't put up a temperature chart to support his silliness suggest deceitful intentions.

PS Anthony's in-line comments are getting to the ludicrous stage.  According to Tony, 90% of new thermometers in the USA are put near 'heat sinks and sources' and can't measure cooler temperatures even relative to themselves ("you don't understand physics, that's not how heat sinks work", he says).  They just keep getting hotter and hotter presumably till they blow!

Bacci's "Delusional Dribble"

Talking "dribble" on climate models and tea leaves

This is (probably not) for people who listen to fake skeptics science mockers like bacci, who writes:

Source: HotCopper.com

Bacci starts off talking about modelling complex systems. He says the idea that 'we' can model the climate in 100 years is 'delusional'.  (I'd have to agree that any attempt by Bacci and mates to model complex systems would indicate delusion on their part, going by his posts.  Using his own imagery, bacci tends to dribble his drivel like a drip.)

He then shifts to weather forecasting, saying that in order to 'prove' a model of centennial trends in climate, one needs to model monthly weather.

Predicting monthly trends in weather

Actually, most people (Bacci excepted) don't need a model to broadly predict weather on the monthly scale.  Next month is the start of autumn down here and we know from experience that autumn brings milder temperatures (but it can still get a bit hot).  We can even predict with reasonable accuracy that in five months time (July) the average monthly temperature in southern Australia will be cooler than the average for this month (February) and there will likely be snow on the ranges, while in the northern hemisphere the ice in the Arctic will be melting.

Feel free to check back in July and tell me how wrong my prediction is!

One source for an indication of likely rainfall patterns in eastern and south-eastern Australia on a short term scale (weeks to months) is the Bureau of Meteorology's seasonal outlooks and also their ENSO wrap up.

Fake skeptic predictions

Fake skeptics have not done very well in their predictions. Some have even been so far off target with short term predictions that the 'delusional' descriptor may be appropriate.

John McLean's Delusional Drop

For example, bacci could have been talking about computer technician John McLean.  Back in March 2011, he 'predicted' that "2011 would be the coolest year since 1956, or even earlier".  He was forecasting a drop of 0.8 degrees Celsius in the average global surface temperature in a single year, from the record high of 2010. (The global average surface temperature has risen by about 0.8 degrees Celsius in the past century.  In 2010 it was 0.62 degrees above the twentieth century average.)

As it turned out, 2011 was the 11th warmest year on record and the warmest La Nina year on record.  So much for that fake skeptic's delusion.  2011 was 0.51 degrees Celsius above the twentieth century average, whereas the average temperature in 1956 was about 0.18 below the twentieth century average.  He was out by a whopping 0.69 degrees Celsius!

Click here to go to the NOAA source.

Other fake skeptics' tea leaves

Bacci says he might as well read tea leaves.  Maybe that's what fake skeptics do.  SkepticalScience.com has an animated gif comparing the predictions of 'skeptics' with IPCC temperature projections and actual observations.  Fake skeptics 'tea leaf' predictions don't stack up at all well, while the different years' IPCC projections have so far all been much closer to what was actually recorded.

The skepticalscience.com article goes into more detail and is worth a read.   It discusses some of the weaknesses of IPCC projections, such as the fact that sea levels may be rising faster and the fact that Arctic ice is definitely disappearing much faster than expected.

Realclimate.org does an annual comparison of models too, looking at global surface temperature, ocean heat content and summer Arctic sea ice cover as well as early projections from James Hansen.

To sum up, complex models based on physics and constructed by experts in climate science have been very good predictors of global trends and even of regional trends.  They are not perfect but as computing power increases along with knowledge of climate the models also improve.

Important factors that climate scientists have more difficulty in predicting in the medium to longer term are the amount of greenhouse gases and aerosols we choose to pour into the atmosphere.  (Also significant volcanic eruptions that might occur in the future.) That's why they use scenarios to model climate under different permutations of future pollution.

Isaac Held's blog is a really good place to peep under the hood of climate modelling.