Temperature Trend Analysis

It’s not Hotter, it’s Milder.

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Again this week I got an email from a friend linking to an alarmist website claiming (among other things) 2015 the Hottest Year Ever, August 2016 the Hottest Month Ever, 16 Hottest Months in a row, The Earth is Burning!

My reply:
Calm down and breathe through your nose. Be not afraid.
You have been misinformed, and I will tell you how and why.

1. “Hotter” does not describe a long period when daily highs are falling, not rising. That’s right, generally the temperature records are showing a decline over time in the maximums recorded at the weather stations.

For example look at results from USHCN (US Historical Climate Network) for the trend of daily maximums since 1930.

Source: Tony Heller, Real Climate Science

It is clear that measurements of actual afternoon highs are trending down in most places, and lower much more strongly than the few increases.  Below the same results displayed geographically.

 

 

2. Temperature averages over decades show great climate stability, not change. The calculated trends are in fractions of a degree Celsius, well within the error range of the instruments.

Alarmists favor the dataset from GISS, a part of NASA. They fabricate estimates of an hypothetical Global Mean Temperature not from satellites, but by taking weather station records and performing various statistical manipulations, including adjusting, deleting, infilling, gridding, weighting, homogenizing, and averaging.

Out of all that processing they produce estimates of annual GMTs, which can not be attributed to any actual observation. More importantly, the dataset is unstable–past history, for example the 1930s, appears in GISS graphs with different values this year than last, and different again from 5 and 10 years ago. As Dr. Ole Humlum commented: A temperature record which keeps on changing the past hardly can qualify as being correct.

Below is shown GISS estimates in the context of human experience of daily and seasonal temperature variability.

3. The planet has a vast array of climates, each of which has it’s own experience of changing weather and longer term patterns. That is evident in the first chart above. It is also the case that generally as daily highs have been falling, daily lows (minimums) have been rising more strongly, resulting in slightly increasing daily averages. That is the basis for claiming hottest years and months.

This phenomenon is widespread around the world, as demonstrated by studies reported here at this blog under the category Temperature Trend Analysis. For example, Analyzing Temperature Change using World Class Stations.

In addition, 70% of the GISS surface temperatures are from SSTs (sea surface temperatures), meaning that ocean cycles like El Nino dominate the results. Short-term variations recently derive from changes in the Pacific basin, the largest of the world’s oceans.

Because climates are local and plural, any general statement about warming or cooling does not necessarily apply to the place where you live.

Summary

The next time you read or are told the world is getting hotter, you should respond along these lines.

“You have been misinformed. It is not getting hotter, it has become milder. The temperature records show fewer extremes of highs and lows, milder Winters, earlier Springs and later Autumns. The longer growing seasons are producing bumper crops almost every year.

Instead of complaining about hotter weather, we should enjoy the bounty of harvests Nature is providing to us.”

 

The 2016 harvest is shaping up to be a whopper, according to Western Canada’s largest elevator companies.

The 2016 harvest is shaping up to be a whopper, according to Western Canada’s largest elevator companies.

Footnote:

Another post Arctic Warming Unalarming reports on in depth analysis of 118 weather stations around the Arctic Circle, where so-called “Arctic amplification” should be evident.  The conclusions:

The Arctic has warmed at the same rate as Europe over the past two centuries. . . The warming has not occurred at a steady rate. . .During the 1900s, all four (Arctic) regions experienced increasing temperatures until about 1940. Temperatures then decreased by about 1 °C over the next 50 years until rising in the 1990s.

For the period 1820–2014, the trends for the January, July and annual temperatures are 1.0, 0.0 and 0.7 °C per century, respectively. . . Much of the warming trends found during 1820 to 2014 occurred in the late 1990s, and the data show temperatures leveled off after 2000. (my bold).

So, consistent with statements above: No increase in July temperatures, some warming overall due mostly to January.

“Gotcha” Graph from GISS

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Lots of buzz over Brian Cox using the latest GISS land and ocean graph to put down Malcolm Roberts in a TV debate in Australia. Likely we will be seeing the image everywhere and alarmists crowing about “deniers” dismissed once and for all. For the record here is the graph showing no pause whatsoever:

This is accomplished by lowering the 1998 El Nino spike relative to 2015 El Nino. To see what is going on, here is a helpful chart from Dr. Ole Humlum at Climate4you

It shows that indeed, GISS is showing 1998 peak lower than several years since, especially 2002, 2010 and 2016. In contrast, the satellite record is dominated by 1998, and may still be in that position once La Nina takes hold later this year. The differences arise because satellites measure air temperature in the lower troposphere, while GISS combines records from land stations with sea surface temperatures (SSTs) to fabricate a global average anomaly, including adjusting, gridding and infilling to make the estimate of Global Mean Temperatures and compare to a 30-year average.

An insight into the adjustments is displayed below.

As we have seen before, the past is cooled, and the present warmed to ensure evidence of global warming. Presently it is claimed that July 2016 is the hottest month ever. But stay tuned for future adjustments necessary to keep the warming going.

Dr. Humlum demonstrates that GISS is an unstable temperature record.

Dr. Humlum:

Based on the above it is not possible to conclude which of the above five databases represents the best estimate on global temperature variations. The answer to this question remains elusive. All five databases are the result of much painstaking work, and they all represent admirable attempts towards establishing an estimate of recent global temperature changes. At the same time it should however be noted, that a temperature record which keeps on changing the past hardly can qualify as being correct. With this in mind, it is interesting that none of the global temperature records shown above are characterised by high temporal stability. Presumably this illustrates how difficult it is to calculate a meaningful global average temperature. A re-read of Essex et al. 2006 might be worthwhile. In addition to this, surface air temperature remains a poor indicator of global climate heat changes, as air has relatively little mass associated with it. Ocean heat changes are the dominant factor for global heat changes. (my bold)

Too much trickery going on. I prefer to see actual temperatures, and this graph presents clearly the GISS record without the distortions:

giss-annual-temps4

Or, if you prefer Celsius degrees (range represents human sensory experience of daily and seasonal temperature variability)

giss-annual-tempsincrev

Conclusion 

Brian Cox defended the GISS graph by saying it was from NASA who put men on the moon.  He forgot to mention that several of those men and many scientists who put them there find NASA increasingly unscientific and untrustworthy on climate matters.

It could also be said about the recent GISS graph:  You show us a graph where the past history is different today than GISS reported it a year ago, and different again from 5 and 10 years ago.  Why should we believe this one any more than the other ones?  And why does GISS contradict temperatures recorded directly by NASA satellites?

He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.
George Orwell 1984

Footnote

Same point as Orwell, but with a dash of humour:

A soviet university professor addresses his students: “There’s good news and bad news about this year’s History final exam.  The good news is all the questions are exactly the same as last year’s exam.  The bad news: Many of the answers have changed.”

Nunavut is Melting, Or not

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

From Yale Climate Connections we heard last week about Nunavut melting and a theatrical production to spread news and concerns about this dangerous development.

“I come from a place of rugged mountains, imperial glaciers and tender-covered permafrost. But Nunavut, our land, is only as rich as it is cold, and today most of it is melting.”That’s Chantal Bilodeau, reading a passage from “Sila,” a play about the effects of climate change in the Arctic.

The characters in her play include polar bears, an Inuit goddess, scientists, and coast guard officers – all working together to save their land.

No doubt her personal experience and feelings for her Nunavut are sincere and profound. (Originally I thought it was her homeland, but in fact she is a New York playwright and translator, born in Montreal.) And there will be a large audience receptive to her concerns about global warming. (Bilodeau has writen six plays about the Arctic and founded the international network Artists And Climate Change.) But I wonder if scientific measurements support her belief that Nunavut is melting.

After all, we have learned from medical research that individual life experiences (anecdotes) may not be true more generally. That is why drugs are tested on population samples with double-blind studies: neither the patient nor the doctor knows who gets the medicine and who gets the placebo.

So I went looking for weather station records to see what is the warming trend in that region. As curiosity does so often, it led me on a journey of discovery, learning some new things, and relearning old ones with fresh implications.

Where are temperatures measured in Nunavut?

It is by far the Northernmost territory of Canada, just off the coast of Northern Greenland.

According to Environment Canada, weather is reported at 29 places in Nunavut. So I went to look at the record at Iqaluit, the capital of the territory. You get monthly normals for the period 1981 to 2010. Historical data (daily averages) can be accessed only 1 individual month/year at a time, the menu stops at 2004. Even then, some months are filled with “M” for missing. Historical data from which trends can be analyzed is hard to come by.

Disappearing Weather Records

It turns out that Nunavut also suffered from the great purging of weather station records that was noticed by skeptics years ago.

Ave. T vs. No. Stations

Graph showing the correlation between Global Mean Temperature (Average T) and the number of stations included in the global database. Source: Ross McKitrick, U of Guelph

I was aware of this because of a recent study looking at trends at stations around the Arctic circle. Arctic Warming Unalarming.  That study included graphs that showed the dramatic removal of station records in the North.  Though the depletion was not limited to the far North, many Canadian and Russian records disappeared from the global database.

arctic-europe-paper-2015_fig6annual

Fig. 6 Temperature change for annual Arctic averages relative to the temperature during 1961 to 1990 for stations in Europe having more than 150 years of observations. The red curve is the moving 5-year average while the blue curve shows the number of stations reporting in each year. 118 stations contributed to the study. W. A. van Wijngaarden, Theoretical & Applied Climatology (2015)

Eureka, Nunavut, Canada “Last Station above latitude 65N”

Eureka got considerable attention in 2010 due to its surviving the dying out of weather stations. The phrase in quotes above reflects an observation that GISS uses Eureka data to infill across the whole Arctic Circle. That single station record is hugely magnified in its global impact in that temperature reconstruction product. Somewhat like the influence of a single tree in Yamal upon the infamous hockey stick graph.

The first High Arctic Weather Station in history, Eureka was established in April 1947 at 80-degrees north latitude in the vicinity of two rivers, which provided fresh water to the six-man United States Army Air Force team that parachuted in. They erected Jamesway huts to shelter themselves and their equipment until August, when an icebreaker reached Eureka – as it has every year since – and brought permanent buildings and supplies. For decades after that, small, all-male crews would hunker down for entire winters, going a little stir-crazy from the isolation. WUWT 2010

GHCN Records for Nunavut

It turns out that in addition to Eureka, GCHN has data for Alert and Clyde (River), but the latter two histories end in 2004 and 2010, respectively. The adjusted files have a few differences in details, but little change from the unadjusted files. The chart below shows the temperatures measured at Eureka, Nunavut, Canada 79° 98’ N, 85° 93’ W.  The other two stations tell the same story as Eureka, though temperatures at Clyde are warmer in absolute terms due to its more Southerly location.

Eureka temps4

The chart shows Annual, July and January averages along with the lifetime averages of Eureka station from 1948 through 2015.  There is slight variability, and a few years higher than average, but nothing alarming or even enough for people to sense any change.  Note also that annual averages are well below freezing, because only 3 months are above 0° C.  I suppose that someone could play with anomalies and generate a chart that looked scary, but the numbers in the record do not support fears of global warming and melting in Nunavut.

Conclusion

Once again we see media announcements that confuse subjective beliefs with empirical observations of objective reality.  And unfortunately, those observations are less and less available to counter the herd instincts of fearing the future and blaming someone.

Footnote

The map at the top shows how crucial is Nunavut to the Polar Ocean Challenge.  If the Northabout  successfuly negotiates the Northern Sea Route (the Russian side), they then must pass from Beaufort Sea through the Parry Channel (or alternative passages) to get to Baffin Bay.  Laptev is the first hurdle, and Nunavut is the last one.

The Coming Climate July 4 Update

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Update July 4 below

When you see a graph like that below, it is obvious that an unusually strong El Nino just happened in our climate system. It resulted in higher global temperatures the last two years and so far in 2016. But that event is over now, and naturally we wonder what to expect in the months and years ahead.

cdas_v2_hemisphere_2016june2
For example some comments from a recent thread at WUWT (here) were intriguing:

It will be interesting to see what comes next. The major difference between the 1998 el nino and this one is that in 1998 the sun was increasing in solar activity, while this one solar activity is decreasing. (rishrac)

Nino3,4 and UAH LT dC Anomalies, and UAH LT Scaled *3 and Lagged 4 Months h/t Allan MacRae

And richard takes the long view of the situation:

While we all stare at the short-term ups and downs of the global temperatures, pay a little thought to the fact that the Earth’s orbit around the Sun causes snow in the winter and warmth during the summer, so it may be important?

Perihelion presently occurs around January 3, (Northern hemisphere winter, Southern summer) while aphelion is around July 4. Therefore, the southern hemisphere receives more solar radiation and is therefore warmer in summer and colder in winter (aphelion). The Northern hemisphere has cooler summers and milder winter (solar radiation-wise).

Also the northern hemispheres autumn and winter are slightly shorter than spring and summer, because the Earth is moving faster around the Sun in winter slower in summer.

This alone could account for “Global Warming” attributed to CO2, (which no doubt plays some part in it).

Over the next 10,000 years, northern hemisphere winters will become gradually longer and summers will become shorter, due to the change in the Earth’s Orbital Eccentricity.

Couple this with changes in the Earth’s tilt, which varies from 22.1 degrees to 24.5 degrees, (currently at 23.4 degrees). More tilt means more solar radiation gets to the poles (global warming) and less tilt means less radiation gets to the poles (global cooling). The last maximum tilt occurred in 8700 BC (Holocene maximum) and the next minimum tilt will happen in 11,800 AD (the advance of the ice sheets), precisely at the time of longer northern winters and shorter summers.

Orbital Climate Factors: E for eccentricity, T for tilt, and P for precession

Predicting the Future is Tough

Chiefio (E.M. Smith) has a good post (here) reminding us that statistical projections do not help us much in this case. Temperature series produced by our climate system have special qualities. The patterns are auto-correlated, meaning that tomorrow’s weather will be similar to today’s; the occurrence is not totally independent, like the flip of coin. IOW there is momentum in the climate characteristics, which can and do fluctuate over seasons, decades, centuries and more. Our attempts to use linear regressions to forecast are thwarted by temperature time series that do not follow a normal gaussian distribution, and are semi-chaotic and non-stationary.

Four Possibilities Forward From Today

From past experience, the next few years could logically follow one of four temperature scenarios:
1. The Plateau since 1998 continues.
2. The Warming prior to 1998 resumes.
3. A new Plateau begins with 2016 at a higher (step up) level.
4. A Cooling begins comparable to the years after 1940.

All of these have analogues in our recent climate observations. If this now finished El Nino triggers a regime change comparable to the 1998 event, then a step-up plateau can result. If warmists are right, and there is a release of pent-up heat in the system, then a warming trend would resume.

If this El Nino is not strong enough to shift the regime, then the Plateau could continue at the same level. Finally, it could be that several factors align to reverse the warming since the 1970’s, and bring a return to cooler 1950’s weather.

Those who see a quasi-60 year cycle in weather patterns note that it is about time for the PDO in the Pacific and the AMO in the Atlantic to be in cooler phases, along with a quiet sun, which went spotless last week. There are also those attending to orbital climate patterns, which gave us the Modern Warming Period and will eventually take it away.

 

Changes in climate due to earth’s orbit around the sun

Update July 4

In the previous thread is a chart from J. Martin displaying the effects of the changing tilt of earth’s axis.  As shown, the long term pattern is toward cooling.

J. Martin: Tilt (obliquity) has a 41k yr cycle and prior to the arrival of 100,000 year glaciations, the 41k year world dominated with short sharp glaciations every 41 thousand years. The 41k influence us still there. Javier has done a graph which overlays the obliquity cycle on top of a graph of the holocene which produces a perfect match. So it would seem that interstitial temperatures are largely governed by obliquity, but glaciation temperatures are governed by eccentricity with occasional disturbances from precession .

In addition, ren provides interesting links to studies showing SA (Sunspot numbers) correlating to Middle Ages Warm period and LIA, and a 2012 study forecasting the next 2 cycles.

shepherd etalfig1

Figure 1. Bottom plot: the summary component of the two PCs (solid curve) and the decaying component (dashed curves) for the “historical” data (cycles 21–23) and predicted data (cycles 24–26). The cycle lengths (about 11 yr) are marked with different colors.

Abstract: We can conclude with a sufficient degree of confidence that the solar activity in cycles 24–26 will be systematically decreasing because of the increasing phase shift between the two magnetic waves of the poloidal field leading to their full separation into opposite hemispheres in cycles 25 and 26. This separation is expected to result in the lack of their subsequent interaction in any of the hemispheres, possibly leading to a lackof noticeable sunspot activity on the solar surface lasting for a decade or two, similar to those recorded in the medieval period.

Again, to the extent that SSNs are a proxy for changes in heat content within the earth’s climate system, the graph is also indicating future cooling.

For an approach to quantifying climate effects from Solar Activity, as well as oceanic cycles, see:
Quantifying Natural Climate Change

Quantifying Natural Climate Change

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

Natural climate change

Recent posts have stressed the complexity of climates and their component variables. However, global warming was invented on the back of a single metric: rising global mean temperatures the last decades of last century. That was de-emphasized during the “pause” but re-emerged lately with the El-Nino-induced warming. So this post is focusing on that narrow aspect of climate change.

There are several papers on this blog referring to a quasi-60 year oscillation of surface temperatures due to oceanic circulations. I have also noted the attempts by many to make the link between solar activity (SA) and earth climate patterns.

Dan Pangburn is a professional engineer who has synthesized the solar and oceanic factors into a mathematical model that correlates with Average Global Temperature (AGT). On his blog is posted a monograph (here) Cause of Global Climate Change explaining clearly his thinking and the maths.  I am providing some excerpts and graphs as a synopsis of his analysis, in hopes others will also access and appreciate his work on this issue.

Introduction

The basis for assessment of AGT is the first law of thermodynamics, conservation of energy, applied to the entire planet as a single entity. Much of the available data are forcings or proxies for forcings which must be integrated (mathematically as in calculus, i.e. accumulated over time) to compute energy change. Energy change divided by effective thermal capacitance is temperature change. Temperature change is expressed as anomalies which are the differences between annual averages of measured temperatures and some baseline reference temperature; usually the average over a previous multiple year time period. (Monthly anomalies, which are not used here, are referenced to previous average for the same month to account for seasonal norms.)

At this point, it appears reasonable to consider two temperature anomaly data sets extending through 2015.  These are co-plotted on Figure 8.

Slide8lrg

1) The set used previously [12] through 2012 with extension 2013-2015 set at the average 2002-2012 (when the trend was flat) at 0.4864 K above the reference temperature. 2) Current (5/27/16) HadCRUT4 data set [13] through 2012 with 2013-2015 set at the average 2002-2012 at 0.4863 K above the reference temperature.

Accuracy of the model is determined using the Coefficient of Determination, R 2, to compare calculated AGT with measured AGT.

Oceanic Climate Impacts

Approximation of the sea surface temperature anomaly oscillation can be described as varying linearly from –A/2 K in 1909 to approximately +A/2 K in 1941 and linearly back to the 1909 value in 1973. This cycle repeats before and after with a period of 64 years.

Slide1

Figure 1: Ocean surface temperature oscillations (α-trend) do not significantly affect the bulk energy of the planet.

Comparison with PDO, ENSO and AMO

Ocean cycles are perceived to contribute to AGT in two ways: The first is the direct measurement of sea surface temperature (SST). The second is warmer SST increases atmospheric water vapor which acts as a forcing and therefore has a time-integral effect on temperature. The approximation, (A,y), accounts for both ways.

Successful accounting for oscillations is achieved for PDO and ENSO when considering these as forcings (with appropriate proxy factors) instead of direct measurements. As forcings, their influence accumulates with time. The proxy factors must be determined separately for each forcing.

Slide2

Figure 2: Comparison of idealized approximation of ocean cycle effect and the calculated effect from PDO and ENSO.

The AMO index [9] is formed from area-weighted and de-trended SST data. It is shown with two different amounts of smoothing in Figure 3 along with the saw-tooth approximation for the entire planet per Equation (2) with A = 0.36.

Slide3

The high coefficients of determination in Table 1 and the comparisons in Figures 2 and 3 corroborate the assumption that the saw-tooth profile with a period of 64 years provides adequate approximation of the net effect of all named and unnamed ocean cycles in the calculated AGT anomalies.

Solar-Climate Connection

An assessment of this is that sunspots are somehow related to the net energy retained by the planet, as indicated by changes to average global temperature. Fewer sunspots are associated with cooling, and more sunspots are associated with warming. Thus the hypothesis is made that SSN are proxies for the rate at which the planet accumulates (or loses) radiant energy over time. Therefore the time-integral of the SSN anomalies is a proxy for the amount of energy retained by the planet above or below breakeven.

Also, a lower solar cycle over a longer period might result in the same increase in energy retained by the planet as a higher solar cycle over a shorter period. Both magnitude and time are accounted for by taking the time-integral of the SSN anomalies, which is simply the sum of annual mean SSN (each minus Savg) over the period of study.

The values for Savg are subject to two constraints. Initially they are determined as that which results in derived coefficients and maximum R2. However, calculated values must also result in rational values for calculated AGT at the depths of the Little Ice Age. The necessity to calculate a rational LIA AGT is a somewhat more sensitive constraint. The selected values for Savg result in calculated LIA AGT of approximately 1 K less than the recent trend which appears rational and is consistent with most LIA AGT assessments.

The sunspot number anomaly time-integral is a proxy for a primary driver of the temperature anomaly β-trend. By definition, energy change divided by effective thermal capacitance is temperature change.

Slide10

Figure 10: 5-year running average of measured temperatures with calculated prior and future trends (Data Set 1) using 34 as the average daily sunspot number and with V1 SSN. R2 = 0.978887

Projections until 2020 use the expected sunspot number trend for the remainder of solar cycle 24 as provided [6] by NASA. After 2020 the ‘limiting cases’ are either assuming sunspots like from 1924 to 1940 or for the case of no sunspots which is similar to the Maunder Minimum.

Some noteworthy volcanoes and the year they occurred are also shown on Figure 9. No consistent AGT response is observed to be associated with these. Any global temperature perturbation that might have been caused by volcanoes of this size is lost in the natural fluctuation of measured temperatures.

Although the connection between AGT and the sunspot number anomaly time-integral is demonstrated, the mechanism by which this takes place remains somewhat speculative.

Various papers have been written that indicate how the solar magnetic field associated with sunspots can influence climate on earth. These papers posit that decreased sunspots are associated with decreased solar magnetic field which decreases the deflection of and therefore increases the flow of galactic cosmic rays on earth.

These papers [14,15] associated the increased low-altitude clouds with increased albedo leading to lower temperatures. Increased low altitude clouds would also result in lower average cloud altitude and therefore higher average cloud temperature. Although clouds are commonly acknowledged to increase albedo, they also radiate energy to space so increasing their temperature increases S-B radiation to space which would cause the planet to cool. Increased albedo reduces the energy received by the planet and increased radiation to space reduces the energy of the planet. Thus the two effects work together to change the AGT of the planet.

Summary

Simple analyses [17] indicate that either an increase of approximately 186 meters in average cloud altitude or a decrease of average albedo from 0.3 to the very slightly reduced value of 0.2928 would account for all of the 20th century increase in AGT of 0.74 K. Because the cloud effects work together and part of the temperature change is due to ocean oscillation (low in 1901, 0.2114 higher in 2000), substantially less cloud change would suffice.

All of this leaves little warming left to attribute to rising CO2. Pangburn estimates CO2 forcing could be at most 18.6% or 0.23C added since 1895. Given uncertainties in proxies from the past, the estimate could be as low as 0.05C, and the correlation with natural factors would still be .97 R2.

However, all is not lost for CO2. It is still an important player in the atmosphere, despite its impotence as a warming agent.

 

The Coming Climate

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Update July 4 below

When you see a graph like that below, it is obvious that an unusually strong El Nino just happened in our climate system. It resulted in higher global temperatures the last two years and so far in 2016. But that event is over now, and naturally we wonder what to expect in the months and years ahead.

cdas_v2_hemisphere_2016june2
For example some comments from a recent thread at WUWT (here) were intriguing:

It will be interesting to see what comes next. The major difference between the 1998 el nino and this one is that in 1998 the sun was increasing in solar activity, while this one solar activity is decreasing. (rishrac)

Nino3,4 and UAH LT dC Anomalies, and UAH LT Scaled *3 and Lagged 4 Months h/t Allan MacRae

And richard takes the long view of the situation:

While we all stare at the short-term ups and downs of the global temperatures, pay a little thought to the fact that the Earth’s orbit around the Sun causes snow in the winter and warmth during the summer, so it may be important?

Perihelion presently occurs around January 3, (Northern hemisphere winter, Southern summer) while aphelion is around July 4. Therefore, the southern hemisphere receives more solar radiation and is therefore warmer in summer and colder in winter (aphelion). The Northern hemisphere has cooler summers and milder winter (solar radiation-wise).

Also the northern hemispheres autumn and winter are slightly shorter than spring and summer, because the Earth is moving faster around the Sun in winter slower in summer.

This alone could account for “Global Warming” attributed to CO2, (which no doubt plays some part in it).

Over the next 10,000 years, northern hemisphere winters will become gradually longer and summers will become shorter, due to the change in the Earth’s Orbital Eccentricity.

Couple this with changes in the Earth’s tilt, which varies from 22.1 degrees to 24.5 degrees, (currently at 23.4 degrees). More tilt means more solar radiation gets to the poles (global warming) and less tilt means less radiation gets to the poles (global cooling). The last maximum tilt occurred in 8700 BC (Holocene maximum) and the next minimum tilt will happen in 11,800 AD (the advance of the ice sheets), precisely at the time of longer northern winters and shorter summers.

Orbital Climate Factors: E for eccentricity, T for tilt, and P for precession

Predicting the Future is Tough

Chiefio (E.M. Smith) has a good post (here) reminding us that statistical projections do not help us much in this case. Temperature series produced by our climate system have special qualities. The patterns are auto-correlated, meaning that tomorrow’s weather will be similar to today’s; the occurrence is not totally independent, like the flip of coin. IOW there is momentum in the climate characteristics, which can and do fluctuate over seasons, decades, centuries and more. Our attempts to use linear regressions to forecast are thwarted by temperature time series that do not follow a normal gaussian distribution, and are semi-chaotic and non-stationary.

Four Possibilities Forward From Today

From past experience, the next few years could logically follow one of four temperature scenarios:
1. The Plateau since 1998 continues.
2. The Warming prior to 1998 resumes.
3. A new Plateau begins with 2016 at a higher (step up) level.
4. A Cooling begins comparable to the years after 1940.

All of these have analogues in our recent climate observations. If this now finished El Nino triggers a regime change comparable to the 1998 event, then a step-up plateau can result. If warmists are right, and there is a release of pent-up heat in the system, then a warming trend would resume.

If this El Nino is not strong enough to shift the regime, then the Plateau could continue at the same level. Finally, it could be that several factors align to reverse the warming since the 1970’s, and bring a return to cooler 1950’s weather.

Those who see a quasi-60 year cycle in weather patterns note that it is about time for the PDO in the Pacific and the AMO in the Atlantic to be in cooler phases, along with a quiet sun, which went spotless last week. There are also those attending to orbital climate patterns, which gave us the Modern Warming Period and will eventually take it away.

 

Changes in climate due to earth’s orbit around the sun

Update July 4

In the thread below is a chart from J Martin displaying the effects of the changing tilt of earth’s axis.  As shown, the long term pattern is toward cooling.

In addition, ren provides interesting links to studies showing SA (Sunspot numbers) correlating to Middle Ages Warm period and LIA, and a 2012 study forecasting the next 2 cycles.

Figure 1. Bottom plot: the summary component of the two PCs (solid curve) and the decaying component (dashed curves) for the “historical” data (cycles 21–23) and predicted data (cycles 24–26). The cycle lengths (about 11 yr) are marked with different colors.
shepherd etalfig1

Again, to the extent that SSNs are a proxy for changes in heat content within the earth’s climate system, the graph is also indicating future cooling.

For quantification of climate effects from Solar Activity, see:
Quantifying Natural Climate Change

Rise and Fall of El Nino (illustrated)

Posted on by Ron Clutz

cdas_v2_hemisphere_2016june2Here is a great view of how the 2015-16 El Nino caused higher surface temperatures last year and this, displayed in 2-meter temp anomalies (weather station height). The satellites’ data show the uptick began in earnest October 2015 and returned to neutral in May 2016. SSTs are now firmly in neutral.
h/t Joe Bastardi

Summary

The temperature variations portrayed above were 100% Natural, no additives were involved.   Keep your popcorn handy as we await temperature measurements for the second half of 2016.

Source: Weatherbell

Arctic Warming Unalarming

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Locations of arctic stations examined in this study

Locations of arctic stations examined in this study

An recent extensive analysis of Northern surface temperature records gives no support for Arctic “amplification” fears.

The Arctic has warmed at the same rate as Europe over the past two centuries. Heretofore, it has been supposed that any global warming would be amplified in the Arctic. This may still be true if urban heat island effects are responsible for part of the observed temperature increase at European stations. However, European and Arctic temperatures have remained closely synchronized for over 200 years during the rapid growth of urban centres.

And the warming pattern in Europe and the Arctic is familiar and unalarming.

Arctic temperatures have increased during the period 1820– 2014. The warming has been larger in January than in July. Siberia, Alaska and Western Canada appear to have warmed slightly more than Eastern Canada, Greenland, Iceland and Northern Europe. The warming has not occurred at a steady rate. Much of the warming trends found during 1820 to 2014 occurred in the late 1990s, and the data show temperatures levelled off after 2000. The July temperature trend is even slightly negative for the period 1820–1990. The time series exhibit multidecadal temperature fluctuations which have also been found by other temperature reconstructions.

The paper is:

Arctic temperature trends from the early nineteenth century to the present W. A. van Wijngaarden, Theoretical & Applied Climatology (2015) here

Temperatures were examined at 118 stations located in the Arctic and compared to observations at 50 European stations whose records averaged 200 years and in a few cases extend to the early 1700s.

Fig. 3 Temperature change for a January, b July and c annual relative to the temperature during 1961 to 1990 for Arctic stations. The red curve is the moving 5-year average while the blue curve is the number of stations

Fig. 3 Temperature change for a January, b July and c annual relative to the temperature during 1961 to 1990 for Arctic stations. The red curve is the moving 5-year average while the blue curve is the number of stations

Summary

The data and results for all stations are provided in detail, and the findings are inescapable.

The Arctic has warmed at the same rate as Europe over the past two centuries. . . The warming has not occurred at a steady rate. . .During the 1900s, all four (Arctic) regions experienced increasing temperatures until about 1940. Temperatures then decreased by about 1 °C over the next 50 years until rising in the 1990s.

For the period 1820–2014, the trends for the January, July and annual temperatures are 1.0, 0.0 and 0.7 °C per century, respectively. . . Much of the warming trends found during 1820 to 2014 occurred in the late 1990s, and the data show temperatures levelled off after 2000.

Once again conclusions based on observations are ignored while projections from models are broadcast and circulated like gossip. The only amplification going on is the promotion of global warming alarms.

megaphone

Footnote: I did a study last year of 25 World Class surface temperature records (all European) and found the same patterns (here).

Revisiting “Pause Deniers Busted”

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

The original post and updates were done in October 2015.  Now Radford Neal has done a complete deconstruction of the published paper in his post (here): Critique of ‘Debunking the climate hiatus’, by Rajaratnam, Romano, Tsiang, and Diffenbaugh .  Neal says:

Climatic Change appears to be a reputable refereed journal, which is published by Springer, and which is cited in the latest IPCC report. The paper was touted in popular accounts as showing that the whole hiatus thing was mistaken — for instance, by Stanford University itself.

You might therefore be surprised that, as I will discuss below, this paper is completely wrong. Nothing in it is correct. It fails in every imaginable respect.

Original post and updates October 3 and 30 below

With Paris COP drawing near, the lack of warming this century is inconvenient and undermines the cause.

As Dr. Judith Curry said, “I have been expecting to start seeing papers on the ‘hiatus is over.’ Instead I am seeing papers on ‘the hiatus never happened.’”

One that was trumpeted came out of my Alma Mater, Stanford.  They garnered the expected headlines from the usual places:

Global Warming “Hiatus” Never Happened: Eos

There never was any global warming “pause.”:  Washington Post

The text is here: Debunking the climate hiatus

http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/969/art%253A10.1007%252Fs10584-015-1495-y.pdf?originUrl=http%3A%2F%2Flink.springer.com%2Farticle%2F10.1007

The write up has statistical razzle-dazzle and lots of opaque sentences, but let’s not get lost in the weeds.

Let’s not talk about the multiple tamperings to the land records they chose to study.  Let’s even overlook their including the bogus upward adjustments to the SSTs by Karl et al.  Bob Tisdale dissected that here: https://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2015/06/04/noaancdcs-new-pause-buster-paper-a-laughable-attempt-to-create-warming-by-adjusting-past-data/

We don’t need to get into the technicalities of why they stopped with 2013 data, the suitability of the tests applied or their interpretations of the results.

Here’s what you need to know about this study:

They ignored the satellite records (RSS and UAH), the gold standard of temperature measurements, because the absence of warming there is undeniable.

For the land and ocean datasets they analyzed, they ignored the huge divergence between observations and the predictions (projections) from climate models.

Conclusion:

Natural variability in the climate system has neutralized any warming from increased CO2 this century, and also offset most, if not all of the secular rise in temperature since the Little Ice Age.  The models did not forecast this; they can only project warming, and do so at rates several times higher than observations.  The models fail for three reasons:  high sensitivity to CO2; positive feedback from water vapor; and lack of thermal inertia by the oceans.

For more on climate models and temperature projections:
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2015/03/24/temperatures-according-to-climate-models/

The Stanford football team was impressive beating highly-rated Southern Cal on their home field last Saturday.  The work of the research team, however, looks like pandering rather than science.  They need to up their game: No cookies.

Update October 3

I found the time to look into the details of this paper and the statistical trick comes to light.

They took as the null hypothesis: “Temperatures are not rising.”  After applying several statistical tests, they conclude that the statement is not supported by the data, so we cannot say with certainty temperatures are not rising.

And what about the other null hypothesis: “Temperatures are rising.”  Silence.

I suspect they didn’t want to admit that the same statistical tests would also disprove that statement.

A reasonable person concludes: When you can not say for sure that temperatures are not rising, or that they are rising, that would surely indicate a plateau in temperatures.

Update October 30–Another classic from Josh

The Climate Story (Illustrated)

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The captions and most comments below come from Mike van Biezen in his recent essay published at the Daily Wire (here). To illustrate his points, I added images collected from various internet addresses. Michael van Biezen teaches physics and earth sciences at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, and his many lectures are available on Youtube at his website (here).

Temperature records from around the world do not support the assumption that today’s temperatures are unusual.

giss-annual-temps4

Global Mean Temperature from land and ocean expressed in absolute degrees F.

Satellite temperature data do not support the assumption that temperatures are rising rapidly.

john-christy-climate-change-chart-0a201a1637955761

The world experienced a significant cooling trend between 1940 and 1980. CO2 levels do not correlate consistently with temperatures.

Urban heat island effect skews the temperature data of a significant number of weather stations.

There is a natural inverse relationship between global temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels.

Higher temperatures increase atmospheric CO2 levels and lower temperatures decrease atmospheric CO2 levels, not the other way around.

The CO2 cannot, from a scientific perspective, be the cause of significant global temperature changes

The H2O molecule which is much more prevalent in the Earth’s atmosphere, and which is a bend molecule, has many more vibrational modes, and absorbs many more frequencies emitted by the Earth, including to some extent the radiation absorbed by CO2. It turns out that between water vapor and CO2, nearly all of the radiation that can be absorbed by CO2 is already being absorbed.

Many periods during our recent history show that a warmer climate was prevalent long before the industrial revolution.

Glaciers have been melting for more than 150 years.

“Data adjustment” is used to continue the perception of global warming.

The Moral of The Climate Story:

Global warming alarm is not supported by temperature data.