BP on climate change: "According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warming of the climate system is happening, and it is in large part the result of an increase in greenhouse gas emissions and their concentrations in the atmosphere."
"More aggressive, but still plausible, energy policy and technology deployment could lead to slower growth in CO2 emissions than expected, with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from energy use falling after 2020 – but probably not enough to limit warming to no more than 2°C. The International Energy Agency has acknowledged that its 450 scenario1, which would put the world on a lower-carbon trajectory, looks increasingly unlikely."
"The scale of the challenge is such that it can only be met through governments acting to provide a clear stable framework for the private sector to invest and for consumers to choose wisely." Source.
[This message has been edited by FlyinFieros (edited 02-20-2014).]
Report: Farmers’ Almanac more accurate than government climate scientists kinda funny a book allmost 200 years old is more right than the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center (CPC) . you would think with all the computer and billions spent they would be better and a book allmost 200 years old
http://dailycaller.com/2014...-climate-scientists/ This exceptionally cold and snowy winter has shown that government climate scientists were dead wrong when it came to predicting just how cold this winter would be, while the 197-year old Farmers’ Almanac predicted this winter would be “bitterly cold”.
Bloomberg Businessweek reports that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center (CPC) predicted temperatures would be “above normal from November through January across much of the lower 48 states.”
This, however, was dead wrong. As Bloomberg notes, the CPC underestimated the “mammoth December cold wave, which brought snow to Dallas and chilled partiers in Times Square on New Year’s Eve.”
CPC grades its prediction accuracy on a Heidke skill score, which ranges from 100 (perfect accuracy) to -50 (no better than playing pin the tail on the donkey while blindfolded).
CPC’s score for October’s weather predictions for November through January was -22 and the September weather prediction for October through December was at -23.
“Not one of our better forecasts,” Mike Halpert, the Climate Prediction Center’s acting director, told Bloomberg Businessweek.
What actually happened this winter? A “polar vortex” swept down and caused every state except Florida to experience snowfall and brought about 4,406 record low temperatures across the U.S. in January along with 1,073 record snowfalls.
The most recent winter storm that slammed into the eastern U.S. last week knocked out power for more than 1 million people in the Southeast and caused 21 deaths along the East Coast. More than 2,500 flights were delayed last Friday and 1,500 were canceled from East Coast airports.
Who could have predicted such a harsh winter? The Farmers Almanac did, according to a CBS News report from August 2013. The nearly 200-year old publication hit newsstands last summer and predicted that “a winter storm will hit the Northeast around the time the Super Bowl is played at MetLife Stadium in the Meadowlands in New Jersey,” and also predicted “a colder-than-normal winter for two-thirds of the country and heavy snowfall in the Midwest, Great Lakes and New England.”
“We’re using a very strong four-letter word to describe this winter, which is C-O-L-D. It’s going to be very cold,” Sandi Duncan, the almanac’s managing editor, told CBS News in August.
While there was thankfully no snow on Super Bowl Sunday, those sad Broncos fans trying to get back home from New Jersey had some trouble as snow started falling the day after the most important football game of the year.
The Midwest and Great Lakes regions also saw terribly cold weather and record levels of snowfall this winter. Major Midwest cities like Chicago, Cincinnati and Detroit have seen record levels of snowfall. Chicago alone saw 45.8 inches of snow by the end of January, and, as of Friday, the Great Lakes were 90 percent frozen over.
The Midwest and New England were hit with frigid weather and snow for long periods of time. So long, in fact, that there were propane shortages and natural gas prices spiked due to increased need for heating and supply bottlenecks.
The Farmers’ Almanac makes predictions based on planetary positions, sunspots and lunar cycles — a prediction system that has remained largely unchanged since its first publication in 1818. While modern scientists don’t put much stock in the almanac’s way of doing things, the book says it’s accurate about 80 percent of the time.
[This message has been edited by fierobrian (edited 02-20-2014).]
If nobody kept reading what FlyingFieros posts in this thread, would he still post? I know that's a stupid question. He still would post. Might as well change the title of this thread to FlyingFieros' daily extreme global warming preaching and quackery.
If nobody kept reading what FlyingFieros posts in this thread, would he still post? I know that's a stupid question. He still would post. Might as well change the title of this thread to FlyingFieros' daily extreme global warming preaching and quackery.[/QUOTE Although I don't know what the solution is at least I'm in agreement with the science that says there is a huge problem. I don't trust the government to do the right thing though. I trust the government to do whatever it is paid to do by lobbiests and special interests. I fully understand fossil fuel industries opposition. I don't understand the opposition that comes from here. I'm grateful to FlyingFieros for taking the time to post open minded facts to counter the misinformation I endure on this thread.
Might as well change the title of this thread to FlyingFieros' daily extreme global warming preaching and quackery.
You are certainly one to talk of posting "quackery"! Do you have any evidence to offer to dispute the sources he has posted, or do you just not like that he has posted them? I might even say, if you don't like it just click the "Back" button.
IMO, FlyinFieros' contributions are more in the realm of, "Reason rears its ugly head." And he usually cites original or authoritative, often scientific, sources rather than political opinion sites or denier blogs funded by anonymous benefactors ... funding sources which often turn out to be closely associated with the fossil fuel industry.
[This message has been edited by Marvin McInnis (edited 02-21-2014).]
"Knight points out that the Farmers' Almanac words its predictions imprecisely, making it difficult to assess their accuracy."
"They say from November 5 thru 10, for that whole period: sunny/cool. If one day is sunny and cool, does that count? Does every day have to be sunny and cool? If you held them to every single word for the entire area and every word for the entire period, then I say they might not even be right one third of the time. In fact, they might be right 10 percent of the time." Acknowledges Knight, "I don't think they're holding themselves to that degree of accuracy, and I don't think other people are either."
"Perhaps the strongest long-term predictor when it comes to weather is climate history, the way the weather "normally" behaves in a given region. But awareness of the past record, Knight points out, requires little to no scientific skill."
"I could say things like October 8 to 15 in this area: generally dry, very cool weather expected; first frost and freezes in the valleys. And I would be right probably eight out of 10 years," says Knight. "I could say February 12 to 19: heavy snow along parts of the eastern seaboard. I'm going to be right seven out of 10 years. There is some relative frequency to these things, but to say that this is of great scientific accuracy would be a real misnomer." Source.
An interesting facet to these weather predictions was the 2013 hurricane season.
NOAA predicted an active hurricane season in 2013. Source.
As did the Colorado State University forecast. Source.
The active 2013 hurricane season ended up being a 'no call no show'. NOAA pointed the finger at an unpredictable weather pattern with persistent unfavorable conditions for hurricane formation. Source.
The 'climate skeptics' pounced on the issue, using the issue to cast doubt on NOAA in general due to the politics of climate change.
There were even calls for NOAA to get out of the business of hurricane forecasting from a conservative think tank. Source.
These calls for NOAA to stop hurricane forecasting were echoed by Arn here on the forum. Source.
The fun bit? The Farmers' Alamanac also predicted an active hurricane season with "unusually early threats". Source.
They sided with NOAA and CSU. Yet FA also predicted it wrong. Where's the outrage at Farmers' Alamanc? Where's the calls for Farmers' Alamanc to stop predicting hurricane activity?
Originally posted by avengador1: Might as well change the title of this thread to FlyingFieros' daily extreme global warming preaching and quackery.
"If you don't like my threads, or what I post, this is your last chance to hit the back button. Anyone not adding to the discussion will be ridiculed for being a troll, spammer and hypocrite. Why cause yourself heartache and anger? You have been warned!" - avengador1
Originally posted by avengador1: Which previously banned member are you?
Familiarity with your "trolling, spamming, and hypocrisy" is not indicative of a previous ban. This does however reflect your strong desire for a convenient excuse to add nothing to this discussion.
[This message has been edited by FlyinFieros (edited 02-21-2014).]
Familiarity with a single obscure post I made, way before you joined, points to a different conclusion, that or you spent countless hours looking for something in particular I posted to quote here. I could think of better ways to spend my time. Dig deeper, you will find better gems than this last one you posted, but you mustn't have too much of a life to go through over 30,000 posts I have made over the 13 years of my being here. When are you going to man up about who your really were on here? You knowledge of this forum, it's members and it's ins and outs, would take many years to accumulate, unless you spent every waking hour of your life on here. Your posting average is about 1.2 posts per day, so I don't think this is the case. You are still a very green newbie on this forum by this standard, this is what make me think that something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
[This message has been edited by avengador1 (edited 02-21-2014).]
Here is a 1 hour debate between two scientists on opposite side of the issue. Both men were given equal time and equal questions were given to each side. Both came prepared with their data and slides.
"Global average temperature since the last ice age (20,000 BC) up to the not-too distant future (2100) under a middle-of-the-road emission scenario."
No sh1t - you just figure that part out that we are still coming out of an ice age???
I assume you do know, that temperatures dropped before the ice age as well and from a higher temperature than we are at now (not to mention higher CO2 levels)??? I know, lets just ignore history...
I am not sure about your reference to past CO2 levels higher than where we're at today (392 ppm).
Can you provide a source?
I think that you would have to go a very long way back in earth's history to find a period where the paleoclimatologists have evidence for atmospheric CO2 that exceeded our current level.
I actually posted on this exact point before, but right now, I don't want to go looking for what I posted or looking with Google.
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 02-23-2014).]
Originally posted by avengador1: ...but you mustn't have too much of a life to go through over 30,000 posts I have made over the 13 years of my being here. When are you going to man up about who your really were on here? You knowledge of this forum, it's members and it's ins and outs, would take many years to accumulate, unless you spent every waking hour of your life on here. Your posting average is about 1.2 posts per day, so I don't think this is the case. You are still a very green newbie on this forum by this standard, this is what make me think that something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
Leave it to A1 to contribute nothing, throw a couple of personal jabs, and to stir the pot.
Preliminary measurements from CryoSat show that the volume of Arctic sea ice in autumn 2013 was about 50% higher than in the autumn of 2012. In October 2013, CryoSat measured approximately 9,000 cubic kilometers (approximately 2,200 cubic miles) of sea ice compared to 6,000 cubic kilometers (approximately 1,400 cubic miles) in October 2012. About 90% of the increase in volume between the two years is due to the retention of thick, multiyear ice around Northern Greenland and the Canadian Archipelago.
It should be noted that the Arctic ice field is still in recovery and not yet up to its previous levels, but rapidly growing in depth of permanent ice.
quote
Antarctic sea ice extent continues to track very high in January, reaching the second-highest monthly extent in the 36-year satellite monitoring record.
Again it should be noted it is summer in the Antarctic, and there is only a 3 year window in terms of satellite monitoring as context.
Is this indicative of Global Warming? Not really. Is it indicative of warming caused by CO2 emissions? Not in the slightest.
Originally posted by Doug85GT: Here is a 1 hour debate between two scientists on opposite side of the issue. Both men were given equal time and equal questions were given to each side. Both came prepared with their data and slides.
That was pretty good. Thanks for sharing that.
I appreciated the roots of Scott Denning's argument a lot more than Spencer's. Denning stuck to simple and hard proven science that is sadly still debated by some, like CO2 causing warming. Spencer mentioned Al Gore several times and focused on uncertainty.
I found some feedback from Denning about the debate. The comments are interesting.
quote
Originally posted by Mickey_Moose: No sh1t
It's against the forum rules to circumvent the censor system.
quote
Originally posted by Arns85GT: Arctic ice field is still in recovery
We've already addressed your ridiculous idea of 'recovery' in the Arctic.
Your heavily discredited posts should come with a disclaimer in your signature, like so: "All opinions expressed are not substantiated by evidence nor expert interpretation and are the sole expression of Arn's wishful thinking coupled with political views from an arbitrary fantasy world"
[This message has been edited by FlyinFieros (edited 02-25-2014).]
Ok, the Olympics are over, time to get back to dispelling flyinfieros arm-waving...
Before I get back to Levitus 2012, a few things came up. First, I guess anything goes if you are a liberal, including MURDERING those with whom you disagree
I am not sure about your reference to past CO2 levels higher than where we're at today (392 ppm). Can you provide a source? I think that you would have to go a very long way back in earth's history to find a period where the paleoclimatologists have evidence for atmospheric CO2 that exceeded the current level. . . .
Experts are more certain than ever that human activity is changing the global climate, even though they don't fully understand every detail of the climate system, according to a new report released Wednesday by two of the world's leading scientific bodies.
The document from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the United Kingdom's Royal Society aims to move the climate change debate beyond humans' role in global warming to a discussion of how to limit the impacts on society.
"Climate change is happening. We see it in temperature, we see it in the melting ice, and we see it in sea-level rise," Inez Fung, an atmospheric scientist at the University of California at Berkeley and a co-lead author of the report, told NBC News. The changes are due to rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide with a chemical signature from the burning of fossil fuels, she added.
The report, "Climate Change: Evidence and Causes," is written in simple language and filled with pictures and graphs to illustrate why scientists are certain human activity is causing the climate to change.
Concentrations of carbon dioxide, the document notes, increased by 40 percent between 1880 and 2012 and are now higher than at any time in at least 800,000 years. As a result, global temperatures are 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than in 1900, Arctic sea ice is shrinking, sea levels are 8 inches higher, ocean acidity is on the rise, and the geographical ranges of many plants and animals are shifting. . . .
The many jaundiced assessments of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on the fifth anniversary of its enactment were understandable, given that the sluggish recovery, now drowsing through the second half of its fifth year, is historically anemic. Still, bleak judgments about the stimulus spending miss the main point of it, which was to funnel a substantial share of its money to unionized, dues-paying, Democratic-voting government employees. Hence the stimulus succeeded. So there.
This illustrates why it is so sublime to be a liberal nowadays. Viewed through the proper prism, most liberal policies succeed because they can hardly fail. Each achieves one or both of two objectives — making liberals feel good about themselves and being good to liberal candidates.
Consider Barack Obama’s renewed anxiety about global warming, increasingly called “climate change” during the approximately 15 years warming has become annoyingly difficult to detect. Secretary of State John Kerry, our knight of the mournful countenance, was especially apocalyptic recently when warning that climate change is a “weapon of mass destruction.” Like Iraq’s?
Blogger Steven Hayward noted that Kerry, he of the multiple mansions and luxury yacht, issued this warning in Indonesia, where the average annual income ($3,420) suggests little latitude for people to reduce their carbon footprints. Never mind. Obama says “the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact.” When a politician says, concerning an issue involving science, that the debate is over, you may be sure the debate is rolling on and not going swimmingly for his side. Obama is, howeverhttp://, quite right that climate change is a fact. The climate is always changing: It is not what it was during the Medieval Warm Period (ninth to 13th centuries) or the Little Ice Age (about 1500-1850).
In Indonesia, Kerry embraced Obama’s “Shut up, he explained” approach to climate discussion: “The science of climate change is leaping out at us like a scene from a 3-D movie.” Leaping scenes? The “absolutely certain” science is “something that we understand with absolute assurance of the veracity of that science.” And “kids at the earliest age can understand.” No wonder “97 percent” — who did the poll? — of climate scientists agree. When a Nazi publishing company produced “100 Authors Against Einstein,” the target of this argument-by-cumulation replied: “Were I wrong, one professor would have been quite enough.”
Climate alarmism validates the progressive impulse to micromanage others’ lives — their light bulbs, shower heads, toilets, appliances, automobiles, etc. Although this is a nuisance, it distracts liberals from more serious mischief. And conservatives incensed about Obama’s proposed $1 billion “climate resilience fund” — enough for nearly two Solyndra-scale crony-capitalism debacles — should welcome an Obama brainstorm that costs only a single billion. Besides, the “resilience” fund will succeed. It will enhance liberals’ self-esteem — planet-saving heroism is not chopped liver — and will energize the climate-alarmist portion of the Democratic base for November’s elections.
Concerning that portion, there will now be a somewhat awkward pause in the chorus of liberal lamentations about there being “too much money” in politics because of wealthy conservatives. During this intermission, the chorus will segue into hosannas of praise for liberal billionaire Tom Steyer. The New York Times says he plans to solicit $50 million from similarly situated liberals, and to match this with $50 million of his own, and to spend the pile to “pressure federal and state officials to enact climate change measures through a hard-edge campaign of attack ads against governors and lawmakers.” The Times says Steyer’s organization, NextGen Climate Action, is “among the largest outside groups in the country, similar in scale to the conservative political network overseen by Charles and David Koch.”
Conservatives should be serene about people exercising their constitutional right to spend their own money to disseminate political speech, including the speech of people who associate in corporate forms for political advocacy. The Supreme Court’s excellent 2010 Citizens United ruling, the mention of which sends liberals to their fainting couches, affirmed this right.
Still, there is a semantic puzzle: What are such “outside groups” outside of? Not the political process — unless the process is the private preserve of the political parties. Liberal campaign finance scolds seem to think so. Applying their mantra that “money is not speech,” they have written laws restricting contributions to parties, with the predicted effect of driving money into “outside groups.” This is redundant evidence of why the Law of Unintended Consequences might better be called the Law of Unending Liberal Regrets.
Liberals heads will be exploding, excuses will fly, then they throw Mr. Moore under the liberal bus
Greenpeace Co-Founder Tells U.S. Senate: Earth’s Geologic History ‘fundamentally contradicts’ CO2 Climate Fears: ‘We had both higher temps and an ice age at a time when CO2 emissions were 10 times higher than they are today’
flyinfieros needs to admit that he is not a climate scientist, and has no qualifications whatever, or he would post them for all to see.
His chart of the decline of Arctic ice is completely consistent with post ice age decline, and does not reflect CO2 causal effect.
Much rhetoric does not change the fact that this winter in the Northern Hemisphere was unpredicted, and is the heaviest winter in 24 years.
The current ice levels are well inside the natural variability as demonstrated by nsidc.org. Rhetoric and political positioning aside, the data does not support Anthropogenic Global Warming which is the issue under discussion. Climate continues to change, no question at all.
That is not the discussion. Climate Change was not on the table in 2008 when the discussion started. Climate change is not the issue at all.
The issue is the fatuous claims of catastrophic global warming made by various people at the turn of the decade.
These claims include catastrophic sea rising up to 10 inches by 2025, 2 feet on the California cost by 2040, up to 4 feet by 2040, while the actual documented rise is about 3mm per year or about 1 inch per decade.
They predicted millions of climate refugees due to drought.
thousands of dead polar bears (there are 25000 living ones).
The claims of the IPCC now are expressed in a range of possible scenarios. They have backed off predicting catastrophic rise.
In short, the argument for anthropogenically caused global warming is lost entirely.
All the arguing, manipulating, and rhetorical screaming does not change the facts.
flyinfieros needs to admit that he is not a climate scientist, and has no qualifications whatever, or he would post them for all to see.
I don't see the point of this. Are you saying if your not a climate scientist, you shouldn't be contributing to this thread? Well then, what are your qualifications? FF provides sources for everything he posts.
quote
His chart of the decline of Arctic ice is completely consistent with post ice age decline, and does not reflect CO2 causal effect.
Red herring. Decline of the ice designates a warming climate. Now you argue that its just us coming out of an ice age. Too bad that's not the case; it should be getting colder, not warmer.
quote
Much rhetoric does not change the fact that this winter in the Northern Hemisphere was unpredicted, and is the heaviest winter in 24 years.
Convoluting climate and weather. Talking about one year on a subject that looks at trends of many years. Also, why do you guys insist on disqualifying large sections of the planet (half by your statement) on a subject that talks about global temperatures. Is it because while we were having colder than normal temperatures here, Australia was crushing records in their heat wave?
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The current ice levels are well inside the natural variability as demonstrated by nsidc.org.
Really? Straight off their website: Last several years hare almost two standard deviations off of the running normal.
quote
Rhetoric and political positioning aside,
Try it. Last page is pretty much smothered with articles on your side dealing with politics; you guys seem to be the ones hell bent on injecting politics into the science.
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the data does not support Anthropogenic Global Warming which is the issue under discussion.
Says you.
quote
Climate continues to change, no question at all.
So you admit the climate changes, but you attribute it to because 'it just does'. Reminds me of a quote "How does the posi-trac on the rear end of a plymouth work?! It just does!"
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That is not the discussion. Climate Change was not on the table in 2008 when the discussion started. Climate change is not the issue at all.
Wait. . .what?
quote
The issue is the fatuous claims of catastrophic global warming made by various people at the turn of the decade.
Oh, so the issue isn't discussing modern science, its taking a select group of people over things said over a decade ago, and applying that to a modern understanding and science to discredit it.
Using that logic: Harold Camping called for the apocalypse three years ago. Unfortunately that date proceeded without flaming chariots and the death of civilization. . . therefore all religion is crap. Right?
quote
These claims include catastrophic sea rising up to 10 inches by 2025, 2 feet on the California cost by 2040, up to 4 feet by 2040, while the actual documented rise is about 3mm per year or about 1 inch per decade.
Where are these claims? I'm curious.
quote
They predicted millions of climate refugees due to drought.
thousands of dead polar bears (there are 25000 living ones).
There are more polar bears now than 1950 because of hunting bans implemented. That stated, their population is back on the decline due to pressure from climate change. This argument is also stupid. "Cancer doesn't exists because there are billions of humans alive!"
quote
The claims of the IPCC now are expressed in a range of possible scenarios. They have backed off predicting catastrophic rise.
IPCC considers all possible scenarios, the view of a scientific skeptic, and that should be used against them? What? I take it you're SO skeptical that you KNOW AGW doesn't exist.
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In short, the argument for anthropogenically caused global warming is lost entirely.
How? By stating something about polar bears and the IPCC considering multiple outcomes of AGW (not stating AGW isn't happening mind you).
quote
All the arguing, manipulating, and rhetorical screaming does not change the facts. Arn
flyinfieros posts a graph, ad nauseum, that purports to show the missing heat in the atmosphere has been discovered in the deep oceans (based on Levitus et al 2012). While the warmists have been playing their "hide the warming shell game", more objective folks cut through the arm waving and find the problems with the latest pet theory.
Levitus, S., et al. (2012), World ocean heat content and thermosteric sea level change (0-2000), 1955-2010, Geophys. Res. Lett.,doi:10.1029/2012GL051106, in press
which I have posted on several times; e.g. see
Comment On Ocean Heat Content “World Ocean Heat Content And Thermosteric Sea Level Change (0-2000), 1955-2010″ By Levitus Et Al 2012
the level of uncertainty in the ocean data has not been emphasized. This post is to highlight this issue with respect to modeled uncertainty of ocean heat content changes.
As shown in the figure below from Levitus et al 2012, they claim that the uncertainty range of the observations (the vertical lines on the red line) narrows to very small levels in recent years.
However, with respect to the uncertainty of the multi-decadal global model predictions, when run in a hindcast mode, the paper
provides valuable insight into this issue. I posted on this paper in
My Comments On A New Paper “Climate Drift In The CMIP3 Models” By Sen Gupta Et Al 2012
With respect to the ocean heat data specifically, Sen Gupta et al write that [highlight added]
Even in the absence of external forcing, climate models often exhibit long-term trends that cannot be attributed to natural variability. This so called ‘climate drift’ arises for various reasons including: perturbations to the climate system on coupling component models together and deficiencies in model physics and numerics…….To illustrate this we have focussed on simulated trends over the second half of the 20th century……Below depths of 1000 to 2000m, drift dominates over any forced trend in most regions. As such steric sea-level is strongly affected and for some models and regions the sea-level trend direction is reversed….”
Clearly, even if the observed uncertainty was as small as concluded by Levitus et al 2012 [which given the areal coverage they report at 2000m is unrealistically small] any attempt to use the multi-decadal climate model predictions to provide an explantion for this warming at depth (even if real) is not robust scientifically.
Previously, we discussed the errors in Levitus et al here in An Ocean of Overconfidence
Unfortunately, the supplemental information for the new Levitus et al. paper has not been published. Fortunately, WUWT regular P. Solar has located a version of the preprint containing their error estimate, located here. This is how they describe the start of the procedure they describe which results in their estimates:
From every observed one-degree mean temperature value at every standard depth level we subtract off a climatological value. For this purpose we use the monthly climatological fields of temperature from Locarnini et a. [2010].
Now, the “climatology” means the long-term average (mean) of the variable. In this case, it is the long-term average for each 1° X 1° gridcell, at each depth. Being a skeptical type of fellow, I though “how much data do they actually have”? It is important because if they don’t have much data, the long-term mean will have a large error component. If we don’t have much data, it increases the size of the expected error in the mean, which is called the “standard error of the mean”.
Regarding the climatology, they say that it is from the World Ocean Atlas 2009 (WOA09), viz: ” … statistics at all standard levels and various climatological averaging periods are available at http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/WOA09F/pr_woa09f.html “
So I went there to see what kind of numbers they have for the monthly climatology at 2000 metres depth … and I got this answer:
The temperature monthly climatologies deeper than 1500 meters have not been calculated.
Well, that sux. How do the authors deal with that? I don’t have a clue. Frustrated at 2000 metres, I figured I’d get the data for the standard error of the mean (SEM) for some month, say January, at 1500 metres. Figure 1 shows their map of the January SEM at 1500 metres depth:
IKES! In 55 years, only 5% of the 1° X 1° gridcells have three observations or more for January at 1500 metre … and they are calculating averages?
Now, statistically cautious folks like myself would look at that and say “Well … with only 5% coverage, there’s not much hope of getting an accurate average”. But that’s why we’re not AGW supporters. The authors, on the other hand, forge on.
Not having climatological data for 95% of the ocean at 1500 metres, what they do is take an average of the surrounding region, and then use that value. However, with only 5% of the gridcells having 3 observations or more, that procedure seems … well, wildly optimistic. It might be useful for infilling if we were missing say 5% of the observations … but when we are missing 95% of the ocean, that just seems goofy.
So how about at the other end of the depth scale? Things are better at the surface, but not great. Here’s that map:
As you can see, there are still lots and lots of areas without enough January observations to calculate a standard error of the mean … and in addition, for those that do have enough data, the SEM is often greater than half a degree. When you take a very accurate temperature measurement, and you subtract from it a climatology with a ± half a degree error, you are greatly reducing the precision of the results.
w.
APPENDIX 1: the data for this analysis was downloaded as an NCDF file from here (WARNING-570 Mb FILE!). It is divided into 1° gridcells and has 24 depth levels, with a maximum depth of 1500 metres. It shows that some 42% of the gridcell/depth/month combinations have no data. Another 17% have only one observation for the given gridcell and depth, and 9% have two observations. In other words, the median number of observations for a given month, depth, and gridcell is 1 …
APPENDIX 2: the code used to analyze the data (in the computer language “R”) is:
1-under3data/totaldata APPENDIX 3: A statistical oddity. In the course of doing this, I got to wondering about how accurate the calculation of the standard error of the mean (SEM) might be when the sample size is small. It’s important since so many of the gridcell/depth/month combinations have only a few observations. The normal calculation of the SEM is the standard deviation divided by the square root of N, sample size.
I did an analysis of the question, and I found out that as the number of samples N decreases, the normal calculation of the SEM progressively underestimates the SEM more and more. At a maximum, if there are only three data points in the sample, which is the case for much of the WOA09 monthly climatology, the SEM calculation underestimates the actual standard error of the mean by about 12%. This doesn’t sound like a lot, but it means that instead of 95% of the data being within the 95% confidence interval of 1.96 * SEM of the true value, only about 80% of the data is in the 95% confidence interval.
Further analysis shows that the standard calculation of the SEM needs to be multiplied by
0.43 N -1.2
to be approximately correct, where N is the sample size.
I also tried using [standard deviation divided by sqrt (N-1)] to calculate the SEM, but that consistently overestimated the SEM at small sample sizes
In a number of posts, we’ve discussed and illustrated the difficulties with ocean heat content data. (There are links to those earlier posts at the end of this one.) The data presented in this post is supported by the 2012 Levitus et al paper World ocean heat content and thermosteric sea level change (0–2000 m), 1955–2010 [8.1 MB].
One topic discussed but not illustrated (until now in Figure 1) was that the annual variations in temperatures at depths between 700 and 2000 meters were in terms of hundredths if not thousandths of a deg C and that it was unrealistic to think we could measure the temperatures of the oceans at depth with that type of accuracy. It turns out that the annual variations are typically in thousandths of a deg C. The total scale of the temperature anomalies of the graph in Figure 1 is two one-hundredths of a deg C.
Additional figures and info at original article. Too much to reproduce here.
The IPCC, in the AR4 working group one, stated what could be called the central claim of global warming, the estimate of the net radiative forcing.
“The understanding of anthropogenic warming and cooling influences on climate has improved since the TAR, leading to very high confidence that the effect of human activities since 1750 has been a net positive forcing of +1.6 [+0.6 to +2.4] W m–2.”
Remember a forcing is an imbalance that causes heating, like a hot plate heating a saucepan of water. While the forcing continues, the temperature of the water will continue to rise. Global warming is the theory that increases in anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere are producing a radiative imbalance, or forcing, causing the earth to warm dangerously.
The IPCC level of forcing equates to the stated estimates for doubling of CO2 from around 1.5 to 6C per doubling, and the central estimates of warming to the end of the century from increasing CO2 of about 3C.
The paper by Levitus et al. uses the array of ARGO floats, and other historic ocean measurements, to determine the change in the heat content of the ocean from 0 to 2000m, and so derive the actual net radiative forcing that has caused it to warm over the last 50 years.
“The heat content of the world ocean for the 0-2000 m layer increased by 24.0×1022 J corresponding to a rate of 0.39 Wm-2 (per unit area of the world ocean) and a volume mean warming of 0.09ºC. This warming rate corresponds to a rate of 0.27 Wm-2 per unit area of earth’s surface.”
To compare these figures, say the continuous top-of-atmosphere forcing is 1Wm-2, a figure given by Meehl and Hansen and consistent with the IPCC estimates. The forcing of the ocean from a TOA forcing of 1Wm-2 is a lower 0.6m-2 due to losses, estimated by Hansen.
The best, recent measurements of the forcing 0f 0.3Wm-2 are half these IPCC estimates. The anthropogenic component of the forcing is even less, as a large part of the 0.3Wm-2 in the last 60 years is due to increased solar insolation during the Grand Solar Maximum.
This mild forcing is right in the ballpark that skeptic scientists such as Lindzen, Spencer, Loehle and Idso (and myself) have been consistently saying is all that is justified by the evidence. It appears that Levitus et al. confirms the skeptics, and the IPCC has been falsified.
What commentary on Levitus do we hear from the alarmists? Skeptical Science ignores that the IPCC has been exaggerating the net forcing, and attempts to save face:
“Levitus et al. Find Global Warming Continues to Heat the Oceans”
Skeptical Science “Put this amount of heat into perspective”, in a vain attempt to sound an alarm by quoting a scenario that is almost insane, having a infinitesimally small probability of happening.
“We have estimated an increase of 24×1022 J representing a volume mean warming of 0.09°C of the 0-2000m layer of the World Ocean. If this heat were instantly transferred to the lower 10 km of the global atmosphere it would result in a volume mean warming of this atmospheric layer by approximately 36°C (65°F).”
To do this, heat would have to defy all known physics and move backwards, from the boiling water to the hot plate.
The ocean is a big place. The best evidence is that its heating very slowly, much slower than the IPCC projected, and just as the skeptics predicted. The ARGO floats are arguably the most important experiment in climate science. It is all about good science: directly measuring the phenomenon of interest with sufficient accuracy to resolve the questions.
UPDATE: data1981 explains.
It’s definitely a confusing issue. What we’re talking about here is basically the amount of unrealized warming, whereas the radiative forcing tells you the total net energy imbalance since your choice of start date (the IPCC uses 1750). So they’re not directly comparable figures.
The unrealized warming has been fairly constant over the past ~50 years whereas the radiative forcing increases the further back in time you choose your initial point. So if you look at the unrealized warming starting at any date from 1950 to 2010, it will be a fairly constant number. But the radiative forcing from 1950 to 2010 is larger than the forcing from 1990 to 2010, for example.
From the referenced article, Watts uses this image:
Its pretty obvious, from that image, that we have plenty of data to get a good estimate for ocean surface temperatures. Keep in mind that the figure shows standard deviations, not temperatures, and is only showing measurement accuracy.
Watts tries to say that because there are spaces with no data, the data is useless. Give me a break. The ocean isn't going to have such localized hot and cold spots that it wouldn't be captured on the data points on the image. On the contrary, it looks like Levitus has plenty of data to draw scientifically sound conclusions.
From the referenced article, Watts uses this image:
Its pretty obvious, from that image, that we have plenty of data to get a good estimate for ocean surface temperatures. Keep in mind that the figure shows standard deviations, not temperatures, and is only showing measurement accuracy.
Watts tries to say that because there are spaces with no data, the data is useless. Give me a break. The ocean isn't going to have such localized hot and cold spots that it wouldn't be captured on the data points on the image. On the contrary, it looks like Levitus has plenty of data to draw scientifically sound conclusions.
Dude, you are commenting on a PICTURE. Two posts up, there is a statistical analysis of the lack of coverage, and the absurd amount of extrapolation going on. But if you want to talk about pictures, let's go with that. The picture you show is SURFACE temperatures. The paper we are discussing is about DEEP ocean temperatures. You must have missed the relevant picture which shows the lack of coverage at the depths this paper is talking about, in this case the 1500 meter depth.
I'm on my iPad, so I can't post the picture now. But here is the link:
Abstract Based on daily temperature data from an urban station and four rural stations of Shijiazhuang area in Hebei Province, North China, we analyzed the trends of extreme temperature indices series of the urban station (Shijiazhuang station) and rural stations during 1962–2011 and the urbanization effect on the extreme temperature indices of the urban station. The results showed that the trends of annual extreme temperature indices of the urban station and the rural stations are significantly different in the recent 50 years. Urbanization effect on the long-term trends of hot days, cold days, frost days, diurnal temperature range (DTR), extreme maximum temperature, and extreme minimum temperature at the urban station were all statistically significant, reaching 1.10 days/10 years, −2.30 days/10 years, −2.55 days/10 years, −0.20 °C/10 years, 0.16 °C/10 years, and 0.70 °C/10 years, respectively, with the urbanization contributions to the overall trends reaching 100, 38.0, 42.2, 40.0, 94.1, and 47.0 %, respectively. The urbanization effect on trend of ice days was also significant, reaching −0.47 days/10 years. However, no significant urbanization effect on trends of minimum values of maximum temperature and maximum values of minimum temperature had been detected. The urbanization effects in the DTR and extreme minimum temperature series of Shijiazhuang station in wintertime were highly significant.
