tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18489171597324876652024-03-17T23:02:54.623-04:00Seeing the environmental forestFocusing on ecology and environmental science, with sidetracks into other topics.Jim Milkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02513589560600319701noreply@blogger.comBlogger121125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848917159732487665.post-68909333363056598972022-09-28T11:54:00.004-04:002022-09-28T11:54:52.423-04:00New blog home!<p> As you already know, I use <a href="https://www.r-project.org/" target="_blank">R</a> and <a href="https://www.rstudio.com/" target="_blank">RStudio</a> for all of my data analyses. While Blogger is perfectly adequate for most needs, I've personally found it to be cumbersome when trying to publish anything with graphs from R. I've always had to export graphs from RStudio and then reimport them to this blog. And don't get me started on formatting R code for publication. I cringe when I see how my code was mangled by Blogger.</p><p>Accordingly, I'm moving my blog to <a href="https://jrmilks.quarto.pub/seeing-the-environmental-forest/" target="_blank">Quarto Pub</a>. <a href="https://quarto.org/" target="_blank">Quarto</a> is a newly released version of RMarkdown, both were originally created for R and RStudio. Quarto allows me to merge R code and output with text to create blogs, reports, presentations, and even entire websites, all from RStudio on my laptop. Anyone can now access my code, reproduce my results, and improve upon my analysis, right from my blog post. No need for separate posts or blog sections on code.</p><p>Hope to see all of you over at my new site (URL: <a href="https://jrmilks.quarto.pub/seeing-the-environmental-forest/">https://jrmilks.quarto.pub/seeing-the-environmental-forest/</a>) as we continue to try to see the forest for the trees.</p>Jim Milkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02513589560600319701noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848917159732487665.post-8636513977501055452021-07-13T14:59:00.001-04:002021-07-13T15:14:03.964-04:00Global temperature widget<p> I've created a web-based app that calculates linear regression trends on the Cowtan-Way global temperature <a href="https://www-users.york.ac.uk/~kdc3/papers/coverage2013/had4_krig_annual_v2_0_0.txt">data set</a> using annual mean temperature. The reason I picked that particular data set is simply that it's one of the easiest of the surface temperature data sets to download to R. I chose annual data because red noise is insignificant at that scale so we can go with linear regression without worrying about autoregression. The app was made using the Shiny app in R Studio.</p><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfbhfCCSunfjEZRFfQKv4CrJCeZsrI6P9_1oQvuzU-zwYQrLU4hu-6JIfYb2qTbMIF9z1SojYvwwXG4St5fWhRAWW5q5rf3nDdmYJKnZYUZi6k8W2bg3Fridf2vM_0_wYJt4Rq2aA0M70/s1175/temperature+app.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="676" data-original-width="1175" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfbhfCCSunfjEZRFfQKv4CrJCeZsrI6P9_1oQvuzU-zwYQrLU4hu-6JIfYb2qTbMIF9z1SojYvwwXG4St5fWhRAWW5q5rf3nDdmYJKnZYUZi6k8W2bg3Fridf2vM_0_wYJt4Rq2aA0M70/w516-h296/temperature+app.png" width="516" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgloupi7BDIFiN3_N1qCa2g4LE6FY6IADkIdk2Xu7yUgKh-iwXL42589XvbaNkxWE-exSeJfDi7DIjw6ab-drZUOTNicB5nDRjnEI26jUi30ZfOFr72wB73ULZ0qU8zkdqHIXsG1P-QqFw/s805/Screen+Shot+2021-07-13+at+2.11.06+PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="402" data-original-width="805" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgloupi7BDIFiN3_N1qCa2g4LE6FY6IADkIdk2Xu7yUgKh-iwXL42589XvbaNkxWE-exSeJfDi7DIjw6ab-drZUOTNicB5nDRjnEI26jUi30ZfOFr72wB73ULZ0qU8zkdqHIXsG1P-QqFw/w514-h257/Screen+Shot+2021-07-13+at+2.11.06+PM.png" width="514" /></a></div><div><br /></div><p>When you open the app, you're greeted by a single page with two input boxes on the left-hand side. You enter the start year in the top box and end year in the bottom box and the Shiny app does the rest. The output includes the linear temperature trend per 100 years, the 95% confidence interval for that trend, a graph of the data and trend, complete with 95% confidence interval lines, and at the bottom the actual R output listing the model and fit statistics like the R<sup>2</sup> statistic. </p><p>I've demonstrated the output of the app for the 1970-2020 time period. As you can see, global mean temperatures have increased by an average rate of 1.86ºC per century with a 95% confidence interval of 1.68 to 2.04ºC. That's statistically significant since the confidence interval does not bracket zero, which agrees with a p-value less than 2 x 10<sup>-16</sup>. The linear model is a great fit for the data, with an adjusted R<sup>2</sup> value of 0.895, meaning the linear trend explains 89.5% of the variation in the 1970-2020 data.</p><p>You can use any year since 1850 as your start year and any year up to the most recently completed year as your endpoint. The only restriction is that your start year must be less than your end year. The calculations and graph will automatically update.</p><p>One other feature: If you hover your mouse pointer over the graph, it will display the actual temperature anomaly for each year as you move the pointer around, thanks to the ggplotly package.</p><p>If you want to check it out yourself, you can find it <a href="https://jrmilks.shinyapps.io/global_temperature_trend/">here</a> on shinyapps.io or I've linked to it on the <a href="https://www.blogger.com/u/2/blog/page/edit/1848917159732487665/8686825928053926932?hl=en">Climate Data Sources</a> page on this blog. Happy computing.</p>Jim Milkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02513589560600319701noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848917159732487665.post-28651767298178111642021-04-09T16:51:00.001-04:002021-04-09T16:51:26.347-04:00Shifting Bell Curves revisited<p><span style="font-family: times;"> It's been a few years (close to four) since I last wrote a post. Yes, I'm still alive. Life just...got complicated for a bit.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">While much has been happening, it seems that outright climate change denial is finally dying, probably because we're already seeing it happen before our very eyes. In this post, I'm revisiting the Shifting Bell Curves I first wrote about in 2013. Here we go.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">One of the tenants of climate change is that it changes the frequency and probability of climate-related events. Here I use <a href="https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/global/time-series/globe/land_ocean/all/1/1880-2021">NCDC data</a> broken into decades to show how the frequency of monthly global mean temperatures changed over time.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">We're all familiar with time series plots of temperature data such as the one below showing that global mean temperatures have risen by an average of 0.179ºC per decade (95% confidence interval: 0.171 to 0.188ºC) since 1970.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIhj0YD3Kx6cA7Z9iNwsTZz3m4WexFbqovNEt-NrsHX9BMgxRKT9YSCUMmkT1Pl_mxk4RcVAslZcPluFeEv9Nm2Xht2FtPmTApg4ZVkPDfRSbscXiEM-UkAglw8QILvFTYEmKJLPDtaf4/s616/temp+time+series.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: times;"><img border="0" data-original-height="428" data-original-width="616" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIhj0YD3Kx6cA7Z9iNwsTZz3m4WexFbqovNEt-NrsHX9BMgxRKT9YSCUMmkT1Pl_mxk4RcVAslZcPluFeEv9Nm2Xht2FtPmTApg4ZVkPDfRSbscXiEM-UkAglw8QILvFTYEmKJLPDtaf4/s320/temp+time+series.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-family: times;">However, this way, while still informative, doesn't allow the reader to really grasp just how much the distribution of monthly mean temperatures shifted over time. For that, I turn to density graphs of monthly mean temperatures by decade. Here's one example:</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKBQdwMyszqgz2rrLt0k5fj6be5L9mv-XhDWD9gIu11g_leaOm2fSI_AYnlAMBHwHBql0hZJjRx2hMeAOJ2K0c0QbMIorIYXfRbGOn2ZXMH37MKEFP9NMkL_8JxHarg-fqWKHXO5OwI50/s616/bell+curves.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: times;"><img border="0" data-original-height="428" data-original-width="616" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKBQdwMyszqgz2rrLt0k5fj6be5L9mv-XhDWD9gIu11g_leaOm2fSI_AYnlAMBHwHBql0hZJjRx2hMeAOJ2K0c0QbMIorIYXfRbGOn2ZXMH37MKEFP9NMkL_8JxHarg-fqWKHXO5OwI50/w364-h222/bell+curves.jpeg" width="364" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-family: times;">These graphs should look familiar—they're essentially real-life bell curves. You can easily see how the distribution of monthly mean temperatures steadily shifted to the right since 1970. The coldest months of the 2010s would have been the warmest months in the 1970s. It's not just that the distribution has changed. So has the probability of temperatures. Let's do an example.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">The mean temperature of the 2010s was <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">0.79725ºC. Back in the 1970s, the probability of getting a global mean temperature that high was </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">0.0019895%. But by the 2010s, that temperature was the mean, with a probability of 50%. That's an increase of </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">2,513,131% in probability in just 40 years. What would have been unheard-of heat in the 1970s is now the norm.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">That, honestly, is the actual signature of climate change. Changing global temperatures change the distribution of temperatures, making some temperatures more likely and others less likely. Unfortunately, it takes place slowly, over decades. By the time we see it with our own eyes, we're dealing with climate <i>changed</i>, not just the potential of climate change. Even then, we're likely to downplay our perception of how much our world has already changed thanks to the phenomenon of shifting baselines (</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">Klein and Thurstan 2016).</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">If you're interested in the R code I used, you can find it on my <a href="https://rpubs.com/jrmilks74/751980">RPubs page</a> where I wrote a draft of this post with R code embedded within.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><b>Literature Cited</b></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">Klein and Thurstan, 2016. Acknowledging Long-Term Ecological Change: The Problem of Shifting Baselines. pp 11-29 in Máñez and Poulsen, editors. </span><em style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">Perspectives on Oceans Past: A Handbook of Marine Environmental History</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">. Springer, London, UK URL: </span><a class="uri" href="http://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/77671/1/Kathleen%20Schwerdtner%20M%C3%A1%C3%B1ez.pdf#page=24" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; text-decoration-line: none;">http://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/77671/1/Kathleen%20Schwerdtner%20M%C3%A1%C3%B1ez.pdf#page=24</a></p>Jim Milkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02513589560600319701noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848917159732487665.post-84086389005217656302017-05-12T04:50:00.004-04:002017-05-12T04:50:50.733-04:00Christopher Booker doesn't understand trendsChristopher Booker, a journalist for <i>The Telegraph</i> in England, has a long history of disputing scientific facts. Not only does he dispute climate change, he also disputes the link between <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/christopher-booker">smoking and cancer </a>(hey, he fits right in with Heartland Institute) and the negative effects of asbestos. On May 6, 2017, he published yet another column on climate change proclaiming that all is well.<br />
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Titled "<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/06/another-arctic-ice-panic-world-temperatures-plummet/">Another Arctic ice panic is over as world temperatures plummet</a>", it has been quickly picked up by the usual science denial websites. As usual. Never mind that it's chock full of misinformation and outright ignorance. Let's get started.<br />
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First up, the selected facts present in the following paragraph in his article:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"But last week we were brought back to earth by the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI), as charted by our friend Paul Homewood on his blog Notalotofpeopleknowthat, with the news that ever since December temperatures in the Arctic have consistently been lower than minus 20 C. In April the extent of Arctic sea ice was back to where it was in April 13 years ago. Furthermore, whereas in 2008 most of the ice was extremely thin, this year most has been at least two metres thick. The Greenland ice cap last winter increased in volume faster than at any time in years.</blockquote>
All right, something to work with. Let's start with his first factual statement "...ever since December temperatures in the Arctic have consistently been lower than minus 20 C." That comes almost word-for-word from his source, <a href="https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/05/04/arctic-defies-fake-news-stories/">Paul Homewood</a>. Both Homewood and Booker nicely ignores that it's normally that cold. And they completely ignore the overall trend in the data. You know, the little warming trend that clocks in at 0.351ºC per decade over the past three decades. Yeah, that one.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwRPvHHt3nxlqqBUbFlO75DhuVSgCDh6fXTYhCdhYXgtsEQqMSuGmBODoCqX2vvnGv2jjoiZINvKrrVtO_kfcIH-r5ssr__cYe5O09R54M80y2mNdIeA3xNYy272VfQRTgqX1agSVACp4/s1600/RSSarctic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwRPvHHt3nxlqqBUbFlO75DhuVSgCDh6fXTYhCdhYXgtsEQqMSuGmBODoCqX2vvnGv2jjoiZINvKrrVtO_kfcIH-r5ssr__cYe5O09R54M80y2mNdIeA3xNYy272VfQRTgqX1agSVACp4/s320/RSSarctic.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
The real howlers, though, is Booker's claim about Arctic sea ice extent and thickness this past April. You see, this past April tied for the lowest April sea ice extent on record at 13.83 million square kilometers (data courtesy of the <a href="http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/archives.html">National Snow and Ice Data Center</a>). That's 370000 square kilometers lower than April 2004 (14.20 million square kilometers). That's far from stable as Paul Homewood claims on his blog. Even Homewood's own graph shows Arctic sea ice extent in April declining by an average of 42000 square kilometers per year, surprisingly higher than the -38000 km<sup>2</sup> per year decline I calculate. However, whether the decline is -42000 km<sup>2</sup> or -38000 km<sup>2</sup> per year, April ice extent has been far from stable, regardless of how much Homewood manipulates his y-axis to hide the decline. Even better? Homewood's graphs don't go to April 2017. Apparently, Booker missed that bit of information printed on Homewood's graphs.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixeSu1hj3dTcr7cAkJk1fjOsPjv3Tw47NMjlFU8pm9Z0O1JlTql50h0tFqdTszLaCdQaenO6zRbb7zHVF0znW3M5WHeFCBK45n79w1_eh1A_kNWqd7lS7UeOm8hsW5BTE8YkzhcD7QUlU/s1600/Arcticice.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixeSu1hj3dTcr7cAkJk1fjOsPjv3Tw47NMjlFU8pm9Z0O1JlTql50h0tFqdTszLaCdQaenO6zRbb7zHVF0znW3M5WHeFCBK45n79w1_eh1A_kNWqd7lS7UeOm8hsW5BTE8YkzhcD7QUlU/s320/Arcticice.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
And Arctic sea ice thickness is likewise at record lows for this time of year, about 1.6 m thick rather than the 2 m claimed.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgroeGXHweSXv1xB03QDuvbbz85s0EvLQMv_0sQHEZHjlewqRdk0b7ezyel9ib0BDb-xdY7OHjUmUkolMuS4Yk5l9e36jjaewBdRoujWEhoJdGJC0qKo7JI7Up48Ug8gF1le-dwlVyQUNc/s1600/Arcticthickness.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgroeGXHweSXv1xB03QDuvbbz85s0EvLQMv_0sQHEZHjlewqRdk0b7ezyel9ib0BDb-xdY7OHjUmUkolMuS4Yk5l9e36jjaewBdRoujWEhoJdGJC0qKo7JI7Up48Ug8gF1le-dwlVyQUNc/s320/Arcticthickness.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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Lastly, his claim of Greenland ice volume: Surface mass balance (the graph Homewood displays) is not volume. Even Homewood does not make that mistake. Simply put, a lot of fresh snow has on Greenland — <a href="http://www.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet-surface-mass-budget/">snow that is already melting</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMU75xzAab-irlnbGeNDYcAIt0wZlx3PDi0jXahQc7VCDqc13fdKupXBjUxE5pSpGz2nYUQ-u3MiUF7HisSXY1MxQ2OX9lNaFgRnq4ZRrQpMRxjHHrfvQ1xgJGux8_-3nsqlgUVPTjxms/s1600/Melt_combine.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="138" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMU75xzAab-irlnbGeNDYcAIt0wZlx3PDi0jXahQc7VCDqc13fdKupXBjUxE5pSpGz2nYUQ-u3MiUF7HisSXY1MxQ2OX9lNaFgRnq4ZRrQpMRxjHHrfvQ1xgJGux8_-3nsqlgUVPTjxms/s320/Melt_combine.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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Second? The "logic" he used in the following paragraph:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"As for those record temperatures brought in 2016 by an exceptionally strong El Niño, the satellites now show that in recent months global temperatures have plummeted by more that [<i>sic</i>] 0.6 degrees: just as happened 17 years ago after a similarly strong El Niño had also made 1998 the "hottest year on record".</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
This means the global temperature trend has now shown no further warming for 19 years."</blockquote>
In essence, he claims that because global temperatures have fallen 0.6ºC from their recent El Niño-fueled peak and the same drop occurred in 1998 after that El Niño peaked, then temperatures have not risen during the intervening 19 years. The logical fallacy is that Booker ignores changes in the baseline. in the intervening 19 years. Let's do a simple illustration.<br />
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Let's say that I have a data set of fictional temperature anomalies. The beginning point starts at 1ºC, then falls to 0.4ºC before slowly rising over 19 years before peaking at 3ºC, then falling to 2.4ºC. Using Booker's logic, because temperature fell 0.6ºC at both the beginning and the end, there was no change in temperature during those 19 years. However, you can clearly see that there was a rise of 2ºC in the baseline. Just because temperatures fell by roughly the same amount from an El Niño-fueled peak does not mean that there was no change in the underlying baseline — in other words, a trend — in the data.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJshG7wOK0UdQnxvnPHQDa3ZQJgkGe5jOX938gsyXMnC15TsAe08tECUkfSxFKhPDr8nE2K8K0lDH2ujIci7MuLRk_nicLg_YpdN2rS45hAjzsyg-0YB9Fuh6ZO9yPs7tXZrNdAxUKIak/s1600/Simpleillustration.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJshG7wOK0UdQnxvnPHQDa3ZQJgkGe5jOX938gsyXMnC15TsAe08tECUkfSxFKhPDr8nE2K8K0lDH2ujIci7MuLRk_nicLg_YpdN2rS45hAjzsyg-0YB9Fuh6ZO9yPs7tXZrNdAxUKIak/s320/Simpleillustration.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Switching to actual satellite data (RSS Total Troposheric Temperature provided by <a href="http://www.remss.com/measurements/upper-air-temperature">Remote Sensing Systems</a>), we find the same pattern: El Niño-fueled peaks in 1998 and 2016, followed by a decline of ~0.6ºC. Unfortunately for Booker's argument, however, there is a change in the baseline between the 1997-1998 and 2016 El Niño, despite the fact that temperatures fell almost the same amount after the respective El Niño ended, changing at the rate of 0.169ºC per decade (p-value = 0.0063).<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpH9YePXjYSp23JRvG53wgSnJxCXU2mBf8CEBqhcNe8gpVaDiWbaNLBGAV1l8fzA-7XFbisVGb9GFWISn5EsB4u87fcaJrWHx727fi8YBQtCdqsL33uUsgHthDTvZ3gO8rQILpOZZPafw/s1600/RSS.TTT.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpH9YePXjYSp23JRvG53wgSnJxCXU2mBf8CEBqhcNe8gpVaDiWbaNLBGAV1l8fzA-7XFbisVGb9GFWISn5EsB4u87fcaJrWHx727fi8YBQtCdqsL33uUsgHthDTvZ3gO8rQILpOZZPafw/s320/RSS.TTT.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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In fact, there's a shift of just over 0.32ºC in the baseline between the 1997-1998 El Niño and the 2016 El Niño. That's why the peak in global temperatures from the 2016 event was higher than the peak of the 1997-1998 event, despite the 1997-1998 event being the stronger El Niño.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxoZCrOsVIfaxeACT1tIxPRFJMuLhBtAH6eycbEylAHsHgogb_neQKHx348vGWGnO7NJ9IzISec5s1ILzJKdiFZZV59RCnGJxydrsFqqUfEkLDzdkcMea6cAWRIe5hKTpuAtqVP_ERUKY/s1600/MEI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxoZCrOsVIfaxeACT1tIxPRFJMuLhBtAH6eycbEylAHsHgogb_neQKHx348vGWGnO7NJ9IzISec5s1ILzJKdiFZZV59RCnGJxydrsFqqUfEkLDzdkcMea6cAWRIe5hKTpuAtqVP_ERUKY/s320/MEI.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
In short, Booker's assertion that there is no change in temperatures just because global temperatures have now come off recent El Niño-caused peak is pure bull.<br />
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Frankly, Booker has been hoodwinked. He has no academic background or experience in analyzing or interpreting data and cannot even read graphs correctly, not even the printed end points. He depends on whatever Homewood includes — or doesn't — on his blog. Take his writings with a large grain of salt.Jim Milkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02513589560600319701noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848917159732487665.post-73297776363376735762017-05-05T10:10:00.000-04:002017-05-05T10:23:31.236-04:00Meltdown: An early prediction of September 2017 Actic sea ice extentYes, I'm a bit late but the Arctic is in full meltdown this year. I crunched the numbers for April ice extent and found that this past April saw the second-lowest Arctic sea ice extent on record. Since 1979, average sea ice extent in April has declined by 1,403,600 square kilometers, an area nearly the size of Alaska and over twice the size of Texas. (Alaska has an area of 1,717,854 square kilometers and Texas comes in at 696,241 square kilometers. You can find a list of all 50 states at <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/list-of-us-states-by-area-1435813">ThoughtCo.com </a>in case you're curious).<br />
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Even more worrisome is the record low average extent in the first four months of this year. Average monthly January to April extent has fallen by 1,626,860 square kilometers since 1979.<br />
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This record low comes in spite of neutral ENSO conditions, indicating
that something has changed in the Arctic and not for the better. Sea ice volume makes the point even more clear. So far, sea ice volume is setting new record lows, meaning there is a lot of thin ice in the Arctic as the summer melt season begins.<br />
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How low will the ice go? Using a regression model with the average of the first four months as a predictor, I estimate that sea ice extent in September will be 4.38 million square kilometers (95% confidence interval: 2.97 to 5.79 million square kilometers) based on this year's January - April average. That's about 810,000 square kilometers above the record low of September 2012. With a lower boundary of 2.97 million square kilometers, however, there is a decent chance that this year will break the 2012 record.<br />
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<br />Jim Milkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02513589560600319701noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848917159732487665.post-57990291979531174042017-05-02T12:06:00.000-04:002017-05-05T10:31:03.145-04:00R code for Shifting Bell CurvesA commentator named Jonathan asked for the code by which I produced my <a href="http://environmentalforest.blogspot.com/2013/07/shifting-bell-curves.html">bell curve graph</a> way back in 2013. Here it is. <b>Note</b>: I'm using the Cowtan and Way 2.0 temperature reconstruction in this example rather than NASA GISS as in the original post as the Cowtan and Way data is more accessible for use in R. <br />
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>Cowtan<-read.table("http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~kdc3/papers/coverage2013/had4_krig_v2_0_0.txt", header=F)<br />
> names(Cowtan)<-c("Year", "Temperature", "Uncertainty1", "Uncertainty2", "Uncertainty3") #Name the columns<br />
> summary(Cowtan) #Check to see if the column names look right and the data imported correctly<br />
> S1850s<-subset(Cowtan, Year<1860) #Get subsets of each decade<br />
> S1950s<-subset(Cowtan, Year>=1950 & Year<1960)<br />
> S2007<-subset(Cowtan, Year>=2007 & Year<2017)<br />
> D1850s=density(S1850s$Temperature) #Get the density kernals<br />
> D1950s<-density(S1950s$Temperature)<br />
> D2007<-density(S2007$Temperature)<br />
> plot(D1850s, main="Bell curve of global temperatures during selected decades", xlab="Temperature anomalies (ºC)",xlim=c(-1.1,1.3), ylim=c(0,3), lwd=1.5)<br />
> points(D2007, type="l",col="red", lwd=1.5)<br />
> points(D1950s, type="l",col="blue", lwd=1.5)<br />
> legend("topleft", legend=c("1850s", "1950s", "2007-2016"), col=c("black", "blue", "red"), lwd=2) <br />
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<br />Jim Milkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02513589560600319701noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848917159732487665.post-34314118022990471862017-05-02T10:58:00.000-04:002017-05-02T16:17:24.024-04:00Mt. Etna vs HumansYes, I'm still around. I've just been fairly busy the past few months. The long-debunked myth that Mt. Etna emits more carbon dioxide in one little eruption than human activities have for our entire history as a species has recently reappeared on my social media feed, courtesy of a right-wing cousin of mine.<br />
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I just thought I'd do a quick comparison showing just how wrong that myth is. Using data from tables 2 and 3 in <a href="http://www.minsocam.org/msa/rim/RiMG075/RiMG075_Ch11.pdf">Burton, Sawyer, and Granieri (2013)</a> for volcanic emissions and <a href="http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_glob_2014.html">Boden, Marland, and Andres (2017)</a> for human-related carbon dioxide emissions, I get the following comparison between an entire year's worth of Mt. Etna CO<sub>2</sub> emissions and just one year's worth of human-caused CO<sub>2</sub> emissions.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFSBNziFzKD4Bug9rnTi_kLB52kPmjexo7uL4WJBDxxLn42PWNbm_OMhUYh5wh6FJO-AD9Y9zzNPYL2xh67LcrK74ROnDBjkiS3qZD2pnVH8NOlZhVM8zJzycy1BzRy2QuIVfUV-jyhR4/s1600/etnavshumans.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFSBNziFzKD4Bug9rnTi_kLB52kPmjexo7uL4WJBDxxLn42PWNbm_OMhUYh5wh6FJO-AD9Y9zzNPYL2xh67LcrK74ROnDBjkiS3qZD2pnVH8NOlZhVM8zJzycy1BzRy2QuIVfUV-jyhR4/s320/etnavshumans.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Mt. Etna produces an average of 7.22 million metric tons of CO<sub>2</sub> per year. That's TOTAL per year, not just "one little burp." In contrast, humans caused 36.14 BILLION metric tons of CO<sub>2</sub> emissions in 2014 alone. Mt. Etna emissions aren't even a rounding error compared to human-caused emissions for just one year. Ah, but that meme specifically compared Mt. Etna emissions from "one little burp" to human-caused emissions for our entire history. Now we don't have data for our entire history as a species, but we do have data since 1751, thanks to <a href="http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_glob_2014.html">Boden, Marland, and Andres</a>.<br />
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Adding the annual emissions up since 1751, we get the following:<br /><br />
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As before, Mt. Etna produces an average of 7.22 million metric tons of CO<sub>2</sub> per year (not per burp). In contrast, anthropogenic CO2 emissions since 1751 total 1.47 quadrillion metric tons of CO<sub>2</sub>. That's 204,208,172 times greater than Mt. Etna's YEARLY output (again, not per burp).<br />
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As one of my favorite cable shows would say, that myth is busted.Jim Milkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02513589560600319701noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848917159732487665.post-39913731204588120772016-11-14T20:26:00.000-05:002016-11-16T09:17:40.199-05:00Climate of 2016 to dateNo, I'm not talking about the recently concluded US election that saw a scientific illiterate ascend to the presidency. Given the lack of details about Donald Trump's intended policies, it's impossible to say what, exactly, his election means for science in the US although I have doubts that it means anything good given his stated antithesis toward science, particularly climate science. I will instead focus on some significant events that have been eclipsed in the media frenzy around the presidential campaign.<br />
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First up, global temperature. Has it been hot enough for you? Here are January through September temperatures for every year in the GISS record.<br />
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So far, 2016 has obliterated the previous record for January - September global temperature anomaly set in 2015, 1.03ºC to 0.80ºC. Not only is the average for the first nine months hotter but eight of those months are the hottest respective months on record, with only June 2016 (in third place) the lone non-record-setter. That streak of hot months won't continue, however. The last quarter of 2015 was extremely hot thanks to El Niño. We're now in neutral conditions, so the last quarter of 2016 is unlikely to be hotter than the last quarter of 2015.<br />
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Now the president-elect of the US may not believe that the world is getting hotter but science is true regardless of personal opinion.<br />
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What are the chances that 2015 will retain its crown as hottest year in the GISS record? Short answer: Slim to none. The annual temperature anomaly in 2015 was 0.87ºC above the baseline. So far, 2016 has an eye-popping anomaly of 1.03ºC. For 2016 to miss being the hottest year on record, the last quarter of the year would have to have an average temperature anomaly of 0.39ºC.<br />
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Simply put, that's not going to happen. The probability of the three month average dropping that low in 2016 is 0.26%. There's a chance that 2015 will retain its crown, yes, but there's no way I'd bet against the 99.74% chance 2016 takes the crown away.<br />
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Also obscured by the hyperventilation over the US presidential election? The monthly atmospheric carbon dioxide crossed the 400 ppmv barrier in November 2015—and has not dropped back below that level as of September 2016. It's unlikely to do so since September usually sees the lowest CO<sub>2</sub> levels of the year. Welcome to a world where CO<sub>2</sub> is permanently above 400 ppmv, a world last seen in the Pliocene. Oh, in case you're wondering, the 12-month centered moving average has been above 400 ppmv since March 2015, now standing at 403.3 ppmv.<br />
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Finally, Arctic sea ice slipped to its third-lowest September extent on record, with a monthly average of just 4.51 million square kilometers of permanent sea ice in the Arctic Ocean this past September. The only years in which there was less permanent sea ice? The record lows of 2012 and 2007.<br />
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In short, global warming has continued in 2016 thanks to the continuous rise in CO<sub>2</sub>. As it has for the last century, as it will for the foreseeable future regardless of political opinion. Jim Milkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02513589560600319701noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848917159732487665.post-87846327696816917842016-05-30T07:40:00.000-04:002016-05-30T07:40:39.535-04:001996 versus 2016 in a Facebook memeRecently, a right-wing cousin of mine shared a meme claiming that
global temperatures were unchanged between 1996 and 2016, specifically
that global temperatures were 14.83ºC (58.7ºF) in both 1996 and 2016.<br />
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<br />
I call BS and here's why.<br />
<br />
First
and most obviously, 2016 isn't even half over. Stating that the mean
temperature in 2016 was 14.83ºC (58.7ºF) is a bit premature.<br />
<br />
Second,
whoever came up with that meme has extreme difficulty with basic
statistical terms. Here's a hint: "Average mean temperature" is
nonsense. As used in everyday speech, it's essentially the same as
saying "average average temperature" or "mean mean temperature." Now,
for those who understand statistics, I know that the mean is technically
a specific method for calculating the average but in general usage,
mean and average are interchangeable—and whoever came up with that meme
was abjectly ignorant of that fact.<br />
<br />
Third, the meme
author had even more difficulty with facts and mathematics. For one,
the mean global temperature in 1996 was not 14.83ºC (58.7ºF). According
to NASA GISS, the average global temperature was 14.34ºC (57.8ºF). For
another, the year-to-date mean global temperature for 2016 is not
14.83ºC—it's 15.25ºC (59.45ºF). So the anonymous author has both their
start point and their end point wrong. Really wrong.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKaMOZPlfysSZyYHIpFY2S_VmXMohC6ZO3TR9G9RARd6y09puAB2u4NgKp9UTQTnOt90ruympYlkfIQKOZ0IjvEHVEzxAr9A6HGFr7JVB1WEW-9gC5PBonNSmhzVsL0t88gX2Q-u4zajA/s1600/Rplot.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKaMOZPlfysSZyYHIpFY2S_VmXMohC6ZO3TR9G9RARd6y09puAB2u4NgKp9UTQTnOt90ruympYlkfIQKOZ0IjvEHVEzxAr9A6HGFr7JVB1WEW-9gC5PBonNSmhzVsL0t88gX2Q-u4zajA/s320/Rplot.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
It's not just NASA that shows that 1996 is cooler than 2016. The satellite temperature records show the same.<br />
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So,
if both surface and satellite temperature records agree that 2016 is
far warmer than 1996, where is that meme author getting the lie that
1996 and 2016 have the same mean temperature?<br />
<br />
Fourth,
that meme displays a gross ignorance in what makes up a trend by
implying that if the start and end points are the same, there cannot be a
trend. In reality, it wouldn't matter even if 1996 and 2016 did, in
fact, have the same mean temperature. A trend is far more than just its
start and end points. Even if you altered the end point, there would
still be a warming trend. It may not be as large but the trend would
still exist. Here's an example using the NASA GISS data I displayed
above. I just altered the end point of the second graph so that it
would have the same value as 1996 before I calculated the trend.<br />
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<br />
As
you can see, the warming trend still exists in the lower graph despite
altering the end point. It's not as large ("only" 0.102ºC/decade versus
0.221ºC for the original data) but it is still statistically
significant (p = 0.0257).<br />
<br />
So in summary, whoever
made up that meme 1) lied about their numbers, 2) is ignorant of the
actual temperature data, and 3) abjectly ignorant of basic statistical
concepts. And then they had the balls to call Al Gore and progressives
liars. How quaint.Jim Milkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02513589560600319701noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848917159732487665.post-38724085197493531792016-05-16T09:36:00.000-04:002016-05-17T11:00:00.436-04:00Hottest start to a calendar year on recordNASA updated their global temperature data for April and it's hot. Really hot. As in the last time it was this hot may well be the Holocene Climatic Optimum. April 2014 shattered April 2010's record by a full 0.24ºC, coming in at 1.11ºC above the 1951-1980 baseline. That is, simply put, jaw-dropping.<br />
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This now makes seven straight months of record-breaking global temperatures and marks the hottest 12-month period on record (previous record set in March 2016) and the hottest four-month start to a calendar year on record.<br />
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It's not even close. 2016 is obliterating all previous records and doing so by record margins. The first four months of 2016 came in at 1.215ºC above the baseline. The previous record-holders were 2010 and 2015, which tied at 0.8275ºC. The first four months of 2016 were so warm that even at this early date, we can all but call the race for hottest year on record, as there is a 93.7% chance 2016 will dethrone 2015.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT5X23wdzhuHIY_wMnhFNPfzZjoISmal1M-YUsgMDBibysH6NVu-7Hdw0ZTp1Mhyphenhyphensblp37h65izs3znAll9lzaiw44QLspfWAfecOiEjTqEQiy7kiBv7Tw9_O62ypTeit0rJ-O3OzcROY/s1600/Rplot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT5X23wdzhuHIY_wMnhFNPfzZjoISmal1M-YUsgMDBibysH6NVu-7Hdw0ZTp1Mhyphenhyphensblp37h65izs3znAll9lzaiw44QLspfWAfecOiEjTqEQiy7kiBv7Tw9_O62ypTeit0rJ-O3OzcROY/s320/Rplot.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Average yearly temperature versus the average temperature for the first four months of each year. The red dot is 2016 and the error bars represent 2 standard deviations around that point.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
To get that percentage, I regressed the yearly average temperature against the temperature for the first four months. As you can see, it's a pretty good fit (R<sup>2</sup> = 0.9495). I then found the standard deviation of the residuals and calculated the z-score between the predicted yearly average for 2016 (0.996ºC) and the actual average for 2015 (0.8275ºC). So congrats, 2016. May you reign long as the new starting point for deniers' claim of "No warming since _____!" Jim Milkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02513589560600319701noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848917159732487665.post-59447406720387637232016-05-14T07:14:00.000-04:002016-05-16T10:17:55.839-04:00Climategate—Seriously??It's hard to believe that anyone at this point takes the so-called Climategate seriously. Yet I have encountered several individuals recently who appear to sincerely believe that Climategate was a real scandal that somehow disproves all the scientific evidence for climate change/global warming accumulated over the past 150+ years.<br />
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<br />
Climategate started in 2009 when an unknown hacker broke into computer servers at the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in the UK. Out-of-context quotes and carefully selected e-mails (some heavily edited to change the meaning) were then leaked in an attempt to discredit prominent climate scientists and the entire field of climate research, and to disrupt the Copenhagen climate conference. Media attention, mostly from right-wing news sources, trumpeted the "scandal" at the time and drove multiple investigations into the matter in the UK and the USA.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, the results of all those investigations has been, shall we say, less well covered. After all, exonerations are boring. And that is just how every single last investigation ended: With an exoneration.<br />
<ul>
<li>UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee: <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/387/38702.htm"><i>The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia</i></a><i> </i></li>
<ul>
<li><i> "</i>136. Conclusion 1 <span style="font-family: inherit;"> The focus on Professor Jones and CRU has been largely misplaced. On the accusations relating to Professor Jones's refusal to share raw data and computer codes, we consider that his actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community. We have suggested that the community consider becoming more transparent by publishing raw data and detailed methodologies. On accusations relating to Freedom of Information, we consider that much of the responsibility should lie with UEA, not CRU."</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">"</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">137. Conclusion 2 In addition, insofar as we have been able to consider accusations of dishonesty—for example, Professor Jones's alleged attempt to "hide the decline"—we consider that there is no case to answer. Within our limited inquiry and the evidence we took, the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact. We have found no reason in this unfortunate episode to challenge the scientific consensus as expressed by Professor Beddington, that "global warming is happening [and] that it is induced by human activity"." </span></li>
</ul>
<li><a href="http://www.uea.ac.uk/documents/3154295/7847337/SAP.pdf/a6f591fc-fc6e-4a70-9648-8b943d84782b">Report of the Science Assessment Panel</a> (University of East Anglia)</li>
<ul>
<li>"We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe it is likely that we would have detected it."</li>
</ul>
<li><a href="http://www.cce-review.org/pdf/FINAL%20REPORT.pdf">The Independent Climate Change Emails Review</a></li>
<ul>
<li>"On the specific allegations made against the behaviour of CRU scientists, we find that their rigour and honesty as scientists are not in doubt."</li>
<li> "In particular, we did not find any evidence of behaviour that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessments."</li>
<li>"On the allegations of withholding temperature data, we find that CRU was not in a position to withhold access to such data or tamper with it."</li>
</ul>
<li><a href="http://www.research.psu.edu/orp/documents/Findings_Mann_Inquiry.pdf">Pennsylvania State University Inquiry Committee</a></li>
<ul>
<li> "<span style="font-family: inherit;">After careful consideration of all the evidence and relevant materials, the inquiry committee finding is that there exists no credible evidence that Dr. Mann had or has ever engaged in, or participated in, directly or indirectly, any actions with an intent to suppress or falsify data."</span></li>
</ul>
<li><a href="http://www.psu.edu/ur/2014/fromlive/Final_Investigation_Report.pdf">Pennsylvania State University Final Inquiry Report</a></li>
<ul>
<li>"The Investigatory Committee, after careful review of all available evidence, determined that there is no substance to the allegation against Dr. Michael E. Mann, Professor, Department of Meteorology, The Pennsylvania State University." </li>
</ul>
<li><a href="https://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/d0cf6618525a9efb85257359003fb69d/56eb0d86757cb7568525776f0063d82f!OpenDocument">US Environmental Protection Agency</a></li>
<ul>
<li>"EPA reviewed every e-mail and found this was simply a candid discussion of scientists working through issues that arise in compiling and presenting large complex data sets." </li>
</ul>
<li><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20110330133202/http://www.oig.doc.gov/OIGPublications/2011.02.18_IG_to_Inhofe.pdf">US Department of Commerce Inspector General</a></li>
<ul>
<li>"In the course of our inquiry, we examined all of the 1,073 CRU emails that were posted on the internet (spanning 13 years, from 1996 to 2009), primarily focusing on the 289 emails that involved NOAA."</li>
<li>"In our review of the CRU emails, we did not find any evidence that NOAA inappropriately manipulated data comprising the GHCN-M dataset or failed to adhere to appropriate peer review procedures."</li>
</ul>
<li><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/NSF-Mann-Closeout.pdf">US National Science Foundation Office of Inspector General</a> report into Dr. Mann's research</li>
<ul>
<li>"We next considered the University's second Allegation, related to the emails. We reviewed the emails and concluded that nothing contained in them evidenced research misconduct within the definition in the NSF Research Misconduct Regulation."</li>
<li>"There is no specific evidence that the Subject falsified or fabricated any data and no evidence that his actions amounted to research misconduct."</li>
</ul>
</ul>
Quite frankly, if so-called "Climategate" is all the evidence you have that global warming is fake, then you need help as you're living in a fantasy world.Jim Milkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02513589560600319701noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848917159732487665.post-72952058811798507922016-05-12T18:37:00.000-04:002016-05-16T10:18:09.157-04:00A taste of 2049Long time, no see. Sorry for the lengthy time between entries. Real life has gotten quite complicated of late. So, let's hit one major topic that has been in the news of late: The absolutely sizzling start to 2016. Just how sizzling has it been? Take a look:<br />
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Wow. That spike at the end of 2015 and into 2016 is so large, I went back to the GISS website just to make sure I had entered the data correctly. The peak in February 2016 is a full 1.34ºC above the 1951-1980 baseline. Astounding.<br />
<br />
Zooming in to the current warming trend (which I define as since 1970), we get this:<br />
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I calculated the trend until the end of 2014, then calculated the standard deviation of the residuals around that trend. I've added lines denoting +/- 1 standard deviation and +/- 2 standard deviations from the trend. As you can see, we're currently experiencing the most extreme deviation from the trend ever recorded. For example, with a standard deviation of 0.1372, February 2016 was 4.206 standard deviations above the trend. In contrast, the hottest month of the 1997-1998 El Niño (ironically, February—again—in 1998) was "only" 3.109 standard deviations above the trend.<br />
<br />
Looking at just January through March, the first quarter for 2016 was extremely hot, with an average anomaly of 1.25ºC. That is by far the warmest first quarter start to a calendar year in recorded history.<br />
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There are only two good things about the anomalous heat baking the globe. First, it won't last. There's a little principle in statistics call "reversion to the mean." El Niño is going to fade into La Niña, the oceans will start absorbing heat from the atmosphere again and temperatures are going to drop. However, this little taste of 2049 (when the linear trend is currently scheduled to hit 1.34ºC above the baseline) may spur policymakers into action. Note the "may." I'm not holding my breath on most of the Republican politicians in the US.<br />
<br />
The bad news? First, deniers will have a new start point to their "It hasn't warmed since _____!" claims. Second, regardless for how much global temperatures bounce around the trend, the trend itself continues. With CO<sub>2</sub> levels currently above 400 ppmv and rising, that trend will with us for the foreseeable future, as we're currently locked into 1.54ºC of total warming, with more to come unless drastic action is taken.<br />
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Jim Milkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02513589560600319701noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848917159732487665.post-43283526208566946322015-08-30T20:49:00.002-04:002015-08-30T22:14:42.512-04:00What are the odds that 2015 will not be the hottest year on record?Let me be upfront with you: I think it's a foregone conclusion that 2015 will beat out 2014 as the hottest year on record. However, I decided to test that idea, just to be certain.<br />
<br />
The way I did it was simple: I first calculated the year-to-date average (January - July) and then calculated what the August — December average would have to be to keep the 2015 average temperature at or below that of 2014. I then calculated the August — December average for each year since 1970, fitted a trend, and calculated the standard deviation of the residuals. Last, I calculated the expected August - December average for 2015 given the trend and the difference between the expected August - December average and what that average would have to be to keep 2015 from setting a new record. I then used z-scores to calculate the probability that the remainder of 2015 would fall to that level or below.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt6lAKd2Zo9RFZ2suo3xKe-vwKxy1A7vLgY6gEj6IX2TBeKfu1T9KdpW62V5Z0nUrsVbE269wxKJi5LWfPM8fu44lhA8pU8dKj_O8BgfpS_rzOYMjSEdusMmfqTgeweBEGbQcPxaERs3Q/s1600/Rplot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt6lAKd2Zo9RFZ2suo3xKe-vwKxy1A7vLgY6gEj6IX2TBeKfu1T9KdpW62V5Z0nUrsVbE269wxKJi5LWfPM8fu44lhA8pU8dKj_O8BgfpS_rzOYMjSEdusMmfqTgeweBEGbQcPxaERs3Q/s320/Rplot.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Annual global temperature according to NASA GISS since 1970</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Year to date, 2015 sits at +0.82ºC above the 1951-1980 baseline. The average for 2014 was "only" +0.75ºC above the baseline. Keeping 2015 at or below the standard set by 2014 would require an average temperature of at most 0.652ºC for the remainder of the year. So, how likely is that average temperature for the August - December period?<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih6uWISfKi0PPG6hfoAK2pc3t8liIJ1zyPY5jZW4PtoE5RZg7KdLkOfcjSvAxoyQ5z_l0R6qxHbLFSh5vUytqz2W6Tn7RoRUJ-eZG0Kh1tTpVcQ5wCPx6jvk6V9b8Ks7S2QaA_N_6JwvA/s1600/Rplot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih6uWISfKi0PPG6hfoAK2pc3t8liIJ1zyPY5jZW4PtoE5RZg7KdLkOfcjSvAxoyQ5z_l0R6qxHbLFSh5vUytqz2W6Tn7RoRUJ-eZG0Kh1tTpVcQ5wCPx6jvk6V9b8Ks7S2QaA_N_6JwvA/s320/Rplot.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Average August - December temperatures since 1970.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The predicted average for August - December 2015 based on the trend would be 0.772ºC, more than enough to make 2015 the hottest year on record. With a standard deviation of 0.0981ºC, there is only an 11.05% chance that the August - December 2015 average would be at 0.652ºC or below. This means that right now, 2015 has at least an 88.95% chance of breaking 2014's record. Pretty good odds but not quite a foregone conclusion.<br />
<br />
There is one important caveat that means that I overstate the chance that 2015 will not break the record: I did not account for El Niño years. That was done deliberately. I wanted to be conservative with my estimate. With a strong and strengthening El Niño event in the Pacific that might rival the 1983 and 1998 El Niños, I personally believe that 2015 has a nearly 100% chance of smashing 2014's record baring a major volcanic eruption.Jim Milkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02513589560600319701noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848917159732487665.post-57867563016720418182015-08-08T21:24:00.002-04:002015-08-11T21:18:36.820-04:00Global warming, The Wall Street Journal, and John Gordon<a href="http://www.johnsteelegordon.com/bio.html">John Steele Gordon</a> published a <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-unsettling-anti-science-certitude-on-global-warming-1438300982">commentary</a>
in The Wall Street Journal on July 30 that, on its face, sounds
reasonable. Gordon makes the case that we should be cautious about
calling climate science settled as science is always changing. No real
quibbles there, as science has shown that nothing is ever truly
"settled" science. Unfortunately, that's as close to reality as Gordon
comes. The rest of the commentary simply shows off Gordon's simplistic
view of history, science, and, especially, the current state of climate
science.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Quote</b>:
"The Greek philosopher Aristarchus suggested a heliocentric model of
the solar system as early as the third century B.C. But it was
Ptolemy’s geocentric model from the second century A.D. that
predominated. It took until the mid-19th century to solve the puzzle
definitively." </blockquote>
Gordon's first illustration nicely
displays his simplistic view of science and history. He is correct that
Aristarchus proposed a heliocentric model in the third century B.C.
Other than that, there is much that he leaves out as it ruins his
narrative. For example, he doesn't consider why Ptolemy's geocentric
model (proposed in AD 150, by the way) won out: The Catholic Church
adopted Ptolemy's geocentric model because their leaders interpreted
certain Bible verses to mean that the Earth had to be stationary. This
lead to religious persecution of anyone who didn't toe the Church's
line. Even after Copernicus published his heliocentric model, the
Church hounded its proponents, burning <a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OrbitsHistory/">Italian scientist Giordano Bruno at the stake and imprisoning Galileo Galilie for life</a>. Gordon also ignores how no serious scientist supported a geocentric model after Newton published his <cite>Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica</cite> in AD 1687 to the point where even the Catholic Church grudgingly accepted it in <a href="http://www.astronomyfactbook.com/timelines/heliocentrism.htm">AD 1757</a>,
a century before Gordon claims the puzzle was definitively solved.
It's much simpler to ignore all that messy history of religious
opposition to a scientific idea and pretend that it took 2,100 years
because of scientific uncertainty as Gordon did. The reality is that
Copernicus published his model in AD 1543. It only took 144 years after
that before the scientific debate over the geocentric and heliocentric
models was over. That isn't too bad considering the opposition.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Quote</b>:
"Assuming that “the science is settled” can only impede science. For
example, there has never been so settled a branch of science as
Newtonian physics. But in the 1840s, as telescopes improved, it was
noticed that Mercury’s orbit stubbornly failed to behave as Newtonian
equations said that it should....When Mercury’s orbit was calculated
using Einstein’s equations rather than Newton’s, the planet turned out
to be exactly where Einstein said it would be, one of the early proofs
of general relativity."</blockquote>
Gordon implies that someone
would have come up with the general theory of relativity far sooner than
Einstein if only scientists had discarded Newton's ideas at the first
sign of difficulty. That simply ignores reality. Scientists never
discard well-tested ideas at the first sign of difficulty—they seek out
the simplest explanation for the difficulty and then figure out if the
observations are wrong (see, for example, those CERN <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/16/faster-than-light-neutrinos-cern_n_1353973.html">"faster-than-light" neutrino observations</a>
that turned out to be the result of a loose cable), existing theory
needs tweaking, or if a new theory is necessary. In this case, Newton's
principles had just been used to predict the existence of a new planet
(Neptune). So what would be simpler when a <a href="http://io9.com/the-200-year-old-mystery-of-mercurys-orbit-solved-1458642219">similar situation arose with Mercury's orbit</a>?
To discard a theory that had just made a successful prediction of a new
planet and come up with general relativity? Or to assume that
astronomers had missed something and use that up-to-now successful
theory to predict the existence of a new, as-yet-undiscovered planet?
Gordon basically claims that they should have discarded Newtonian
physics immediately and created general relativity, thereby showing that
he has a very simplistic, unrealistic understanding of how science
works.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
<b>Quote</b>: "Climate
science today is a veritable cornucopia of unanswered questions. Why
did the warming trend between 1978 and 1998 cease, although computer
climate models predict steady warming?" </blockquote>
First off, there is zero evidence that the warming trend ceased after 1998, as <a href="http://environmentalforest.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-non-existant-pause-in-global.html">I detailed in an earlier post</a>.
All I would add to that earlier post is this: Calculate the trend from
1978 to 1998, then extend it to 2014. Here is the result of that
exercise using GISS data:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiYERmWNMRV875DjItke9E99ZBZTOkeS-_roVizj8YDyBxj7owe6O6afo3ku3bf-dPu9WI0JQ8ipEpv70_AU5YzqpwfG65XrA9UIn781b1LsY-jJj1QZNaaVVMpTX5HcSvwL5KkEpKywk/s1600/Rplot.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiYERmWNMRV875DjItke9E99ZBZTOkeS-_roVizj8YDyBxj7owe6O6afo3ku3bf-dPu9WI0JQ8ipEpv70_AU5YzqpwfG65XrA9UIn781b1LsY-jJj1QZNaaVVMpTX5HcSvwL5KkEpKywk/s320/Rplot.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1978-1998
trend extended to 2014, along with 1 standard deviation (dotted lines)
and 2 standard deviations (dotted and dashed lines) around that trend.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I added lines denoting 1 and 2 standard deviations
around the trend. Temperatures since 1998 track the trend very well,
staying within one standard deviation of that trend since 1998. As I
showed in that earlier post, the entire "pause" is a statistical
artifact caused by using 1998 as a start point. See that outlier point
on the graph above that is nearly 2 standard deviations above the
trend? That's 1998. Starting there artificially flattens the trend,
wrongly making it appear that the trend has "stopped" when in reality
the trend remains unchanged.<br />
<br />
Second, the discrepancy
between climate models and temperature observations has been largely
explained as a combination of random model inputs (especially El
Niño/Southern Oscillation values), incomplete data, and a cool bias in
observed global temperature records (<a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022/fulltext/">Foster and Rahmstorf 2011</a>, <a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/4/044035/article">Rahmstorf et al. 2012</a>, <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12534.html">Kosaka and Xie 2013</a>, <a href="http://static.berkeleyearth.org/papers/Results-Paper-Berkeley-Earth.pdf">Rohde et al. 2013</a>, <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.2297/epdf">Cowtan and Way 2014</a>, <a href="http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2310.html">Risbey et al. 2014</a>, <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL064888/full">Cowtan et al. 2015</a>).
Observed global temperatures are a mix of air temperature over land and
sea surface (water) temperature over the oceans whereas climate models
predict only air temperatures. That difference accounts for 40% of the
discrepancy between modeled and actual temperatures. The remaining
discrepancy is due to model inputs (ENSO, aerosols, volcanic eruptions,
etc) that are nearly impossible to predict and incomplete data.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Quote</b>: "How sensitive is the climate to increased carbon-dioxide levels?"</blockquote>
Finally,
a genuine question that remains a point of actual debate in the
scientific community. That doesn't mean that we don't have a good idea
of what that value is, however. We have good estimates from multiple
lines of evidence if one is willing to read the scientific literature.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibmXE6bOhBBSJx2cps-ikzYnvYdvuUeHfuEvutPZpQXv3IoPN9qVFCIJibwRQB_7DAdytPp20Dl3536aSZa8IPKX3-_nwPBm0xhOS6LOg7ZKRQv6WRuEr7tKSA55gMKasdaZ7b7j3l56o/s1600/KH08.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibmXE6bOhBBSJx2cps-ikzYnvYdvuUeHfuEvutPZpQXv3IoPN9qVFCIJibwRQB_7DAdytPp20Dl3536aSZa8IPKX3-_nwPBm0xhOS6LOg7ZKRQv6WRuEr7tKSA55gMKasdaZ7b7j3l56o/s400/KH08.jpg" width="142" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Climate sensitivity estimated from various lines of evidence. From <a href="http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/knutti08natgeo.pdf">Knutti and Hegerl 2008</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
However, there are two crucial points that get
overlooked, at least in the public debate. First, if climate
sensitivity is low (~1.5ºC per doubling of carbon dioxide), then so too
is the calculated temperature difference between the last ice age and
today. If climate sensitivity is high (~6ºC per doubling), then so too
is the calculated difference between today and the last ice age. In
other words, if climate sensitivity is low, the actual climate of the
planet becomes <b>more</b> sensitive to changes in global temperature.
After all, which is more sensitive? A 3.5ºC drop in global average
temperature causing a 2 km-thick ice sheet to cover most of North
America or a 2ºC drop causing the same thing? If the low climate
sensitivity crowd is right, we can expect even greater changes than <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-point-of-no-return-climate-change-nightmares-are-already-here-20150805">we've already observed</a>,
even if actual temperatures do not rise much more than the roughly
0.8ºC we've already measured. That, to me, is not good news.<br />
<br />
The
second point? Climate sensitivity is not unique to just carbon
dioxide. Climate is not magically more sensitive to one factor (solar,
volcanic, etc) than another. If climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide
is low, then climate sensitivity to <b>all</b> factors is similarly low.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Quote</b>: "What feedback mechanisms are there that would increase or decrease that sensitivity?" </blockquote>
All Gordon had to do to answer this one was peruse an IPCC report. <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch8s8-6.html">Section 8.6 </a>of the 2007 report presents a good summary of the various known climate sensitivity feedback mechanisms. <a href="http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter08_FINAL.pdf">Chapter 8</a>
of the 2013 report presents the various influences on radiative
forcing. Then there are various sources such as Skeptical Science which
provide <a href="http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-sensitivity-advanced.htm">a good summary of the scientific literature </a>on the subject. Or, if one prefers, there is the scientific literature itself.<br />
<br />
The
main question isn't what feedback mechanisms influence climate
sensitivity. The main question is when various feedback mechanisms kick
in. At what point will the tundra release enough methane and carbon
dioxide to drive global warming and how rapidly will that release
occur? At what point will methane clathrates on the sea floor
destabilize? At what point will the ice sheets on Greenland and
Antarctica destabilize and how quickly will sea levels rise because of
it (the subject of the recent <a href="http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/15/20059/2015/acpd-15-20059-2015.html">Hansen et al. (2015)</a> paper)?<br />
<br />
Gordon
simply asked the wrong question here. We already know the feedback
mechanisms. What is still up for question is when and how fast those
mechanisms will occur.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Quote</b>:
"Why did episodes of high carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere
earlier in Earth’s history have temperature levels both above and below
the average?"</blockquote>
Here, Gordon really should have
either done some reading or asked someone who had done some reading.
This question was answered nearly a decade ago. Dr. Dana Royer <a href="http://droyer.web.wesleyan.edu/PhanCO2%28GCA%29.pdf">published a paper in 2006</a>
that explicitly examined this very question. He found that solar
output answered much of the conundrum. The sun was weaker in the past,
putting out far less energy than it does now. The higher carbon dioxide
levels in the past balanced out the cooler sun.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPQtvlA6Fj5lY1-115jAaGpdfLc84Cfruur3WdwatTu7r_p2CbbiC1Kyk63OKBH3qCEVqHbDKJLd0IR5Fy8s8qikdl5K39IcJgHuM-V-3RpS2mMWWwmc_puDELAwsWPTz43pl89Y-aXVk/s1600/Royerfig2.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPQtvlA6Fj5lY1-115jAaGpdfLc84Cfruur3WdwatTu7r_p2CbbiC1Kyk63OKBH3qCEVqHbDKJLd0IR5Fy8s8qikdl5K39IcJgHuM-V-3RpS2mMWWwmc_puDELAwsWPTz43pl89Y-aXVk/s320/Royerfig2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 2 from
Royer 2006 combining solar output and carbon dioxide levels. Vertical
gray bars indicate major ice ages. The zero line on the y-axis
represents the pre-industrial raidiative forcing value.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Comparing Royer's Figure 2 with his Figure 1 shows that major ice ages occurred whenever carbon dioxide levels dropped.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjII-ly1r7N9E6BfWXMJA2On6Q0rQpdQS9HQeiQO4KPcBHvZShLa-iM0IqDJS3bpyUqDs1iUYRE1rLf7N67ems9va51lqoT0gXQFJnY1urCJ1ZBc6l4c_WONLxOuKPdsqBsD3m-nE9VtVQ/s1600/Fig1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjII-ly1r7N9E6BfWXMJA2On6Q0rQpdQS9HQeiQO4KPcBHvZShLa-iM0IqDJS3bpyUqDs1iUYRE1rLf7N67ems9va51lqoT0gXQFJnY1urCJ1ZBc6l4c_WONLxOuKPdsqBsD3m-nE9VtVQ/s320/Fig1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 1 from Royer (2006) showing estimate carbon dioxide levels over time.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Quote</b>: "With so many
questions still unanswered, why are many climate scientists,
politicians—and the left generally—so anxious to lock down the science
of climatology and engage in protracted name-calling? Well, one
powerful explanation for the politicians is obvious: self-interest."</blockquote>
Ironic,
isn't it? Three out of Gordon's four questions were answered years ago
and the fourth, while not definitively answered, isn't exactly
unanswered either. Yet he claims that all are unanswered questions and
castigates his political opponents on the basis of his own ignorance of
climate science. Here's something Gordon might want to learn: Just
because he himself is ignorant in certain areas doesn't mean that
everyone is. All he's done here is the logical fallacy of projection.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Quote</b>:
'Moreover, the release of thousands of emails from the University of
East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit in 2009 showed climate scientists
concerned with the lack of recent warming and how to “hide the decline.”
The communications showed that whatever the emailers were engaged in,
it was not the disinterested pursuit of science.<br />
<br />
Another
batch of 5,000 emails written by top climate scientists came out in
2011, discussing, among other public-relations matters, how to deal
with skeptical editors and how to suppress unfavorable data. It is a
measure of the intellectual corruption of the mainstream media that
this wasn’t the scandal of the century. But then again I forget, “the
science is settled.”</blockquote>
Ah, yes, Climategate. His
ultimate "evidence." Yet there's no mention of the multiple separate
investigations into the illegal hacking into university computers and
dumping of cherry-picked and, in some instances, edited private
e-mails. Why wasn't Climategate the "scandal of the century" as Gordon
wishes it had been? Could it be because <b>all</b> of the investigations—every single one—cleared the scientists of wrongdoing? Don't believe me? Here are the reports from:<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.cce-review.org/">The Independent Climate Change Email Review</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/387/387i.pdf">The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.uea.ac.uk/documents/3154295/7847337/SAP.pdf/a6f591fc-fc6e-4a70-9648-8b943d84782b">University of East Anglia</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.psu.edu/ur/2014/fromlive/Final_Investigation_Report.pdf">Pennsylvania State University</a></li>
<li><a href="http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/d0cf6618525a9efb85257359003fb69d/56eb0d86757cb7568525776f0063d82f%21OpenDocument">The Environmental Protection Agency</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.oig.doc.gov/oigpublications/2011.02.18-ig-to-inhofe.pdf">US Department of Commerce Inspector Genera </a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.nsf.gov/oig/case-closeout/A09120086.pdf">National Science Foundation</a></li>
</ul>
Happy reading.<br />
<br />
In
short, Gordon's argument is based on a cartoon version of how science
works, his personal ignorance of climate science, and the long-debunked
Climategate conspiracy theory. What's missing are actual facts and
science.Jim Milkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02513589560600319701noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848917159732487665.post-58759972654787253962015-08-01T21:47:00.002-04:002015-08-01T21:49:46.607-04:00Hottest first six months on recordI know, I know, I'm behind a bit. Most of the stories on the first six months of this year came nearly a month ago. Better late than never. By now, we all know that the world is headed toward its hottest year ever, breaking the record set just last year. In this post, I'm going to analyze just how abnormal normal the first half of the year has been.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>Here is a plot of annual temperatures since 1880:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip2e-Z8UiLEosSyuMtH0vwsLtkCKO_G_J1sh1sk2UzbpTWkW_SMJ7p1heRaZfSrVO1hinjchIRiyt8LivjjGEL8TNT-UJ-gAD9J1kmIHANsGy0XmjGUJfYiCPttVtzwYmkxvIVyoHZp5w/s1600/Rplot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip2e-Z8UiLEosSyuMtH0vwsLtkCKO_G_J1sh1sk2UzbpTWkW_SMJ7p1heRaZfSrVO1hinjchIRiyt8LivjjGEL8TNT-UJ-gAD9J1kmIHANsGy0XmjGUJfYiCPttVtzwYmkxvIVyoHZp5w/s400/Rplot.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
I've added the 1970-2014 linear trend and then extrapolated that
trend out to 2020. I then calculated the standard deviation of the
residuals from that trend. The lines on either side of that trend are 1
and 2 standard deviations away from the trend. One standard deviation
came in at 0.0907ºC. As warm as 2015 has been so far, the average
global temperature of the first six months (0.82ºC) isn't even 1
standard deviation away from the predicted temperature for the entire
year based on the trend (predicted temperature: 0.76ºC). The
probability that we would see a 0.06ºC difference from the predicted
temperature? 74.6%. While this year has been quite warm to date, it is
not exceptionally warm given the overall warming trend since 1970
(+0.173ºC/decade).<br />
<br />
What would an exceptionally warm
2015 look like? That depends on your definition of "exceptional." I
defined it as close to 2 standard deviations from the trend, which came
to a global average of 0.94ºC or greater. The only years that have
even come near that standard since 1970 are 1983 and 1998, both years
which saw monster El Niño events. Should the current El Niño approach
the magnitude of either of those events, I would not rule out either
2015 or 2016 challenging the 2 standard deviation line. So while 2015
already looks to shatter 2014's record hot global temperature, it could
get even hotter. Stay tuned.Jim Milkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02513589560600319701noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848917159732487665.post-27994855226746090992015-07-30T00:19:00.004-04:002015-08-01T21:50:19.118-04:00James Taylor gets polar ice wrong—as usualJames Taylor of the Heartland Institute had a piece on Forbes back in May that escaped my attention when it first came out. Titled "<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2015/05/19/updated-nasa-data-polar-ice-not-receding-after-all/">Updated NASA Data: Global Warming Not Causing Any Polar Ice Retreat</a>", it focused on the single premise that since 2012, total polar sea ice was above the average since 1979. Taylor then jumped to the erroneous conclusions that a) polar sea ice was not retreating and b) global warming will be entirely beneficial to humans. His arguments are familiar, as <a href="http://environmentalforest.blogspot.com/2014/07/newsmax-ambler-and-bs-about-antarctic.html">I dealt with them before when a Newsmax article featured them back in 2014</a>. He's recycling old talking points, so this post is going to echo the one I wrote a year ago.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>As you would expect from a lawyer trying to make a case, Taylor isn't telling the full story, especially those inconvenient bits that refute his central premise. First, he's combining Arctic and Antarctic sea ice. This is important because the two polar regions have very different dynamics. The Arctic is an ocean surrounded by continents, the Antarctic is a continent surrounded by ocean. Sea ice is all the ice the Arctic has. Up until the 1970s, most of that sea ice was multi-year ice. The Antarctic, in contrast, has around 30 million cubic kilometers of land ice to go with a mostly temporary coating of sea ice.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi41A7oSO_I4dCV8ITLQD64H64QswLAthC5t7nnKYo7KSFX5Ejgh4VLTpTV8N0UD2uqQNe6jTOmhSWRJbT4zperg8iSlSgnybp1xrdn1XwxJQ8cxGbiw1lOncYhmQasFq_Co29wsqujwIY/s1600/Rplot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi41A7oSO_I4dCV8ITLQD64H64QswLAthC5t7nnKYo7KSFX5Ejgh4VLTpTV8N0UD2uqQNe6jTOmhSWRJbT4zperg8iSlSgnybp1xrdn1XwxJQ8cxGbiw1lOncYhmQasFq_Co29wsqujwIY/s320/Rplot.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Each system of sea ice has a pronounced seasonal cycle, peaking in the polar winter and bottoming out in the polar summer. If anyone remembers geography, they also remember that the seasons at the poles are reversed. When the North Pole is experiencing summer, the South Pole is in the grip of winter and vice versa. This is one reason why merely adding just Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extent is wrong. Doing so basically pretends that temporary Antarctic sea ice formed in the dead of a polar winter (read: little to no sunlight) which melts in the Antarctic spring is the equivalent to multiyear Arctic sea ice in the middle of an Arctic summer (land of the midnight sun, anyone?). As far as the energy balance of the planet, there is no way the two are the same. Yet that is precisely what Taylor pretends they are.<br />
<br />
If Taylor were being completely honest, he would at least attempt to
align the seasons between the poles before adding them together.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlwDVTeBn-8QryuHiUKD4F4ZvqORGeHWLNh084BnNhAi3SX4FEYc4m0TjdeQTr7qKaONipjeQOpkNgFKn-GH-35lEVppcYmKZA_TiKqhJCBk7ilh7_6_7uekFyXgVTh4l2Csw18GkrhuQ/s1600/Rplot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlwDVTeBn-8QryuHiUKD4F4ZvqORGeHWLNh084BnNhAi3SX4FEYc4m0TjdeQTr7qKaONipjeQOpkNgFKn-GH-35lEVppcYmKZA_TiKqhJCBk7ilh7_6_7uekFyXgVTh4l2Csw18GkrhuQ/s320/Rplot.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Of course, admitting that overall sea ice has declined, with a trend that, despite an increase since 2012, is still below its starting point won't fit Taylor's narrative. And he most definitely won't show what is happening with multiyear sea ice (the ice that survives each yearly melt cycle).<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcIO1B2aX5bsF5doOzBe7-YULcU6zRJFGH61-OTrZ-hOgzKXKPmPzd28EDP-E13vHhaJ19qqHu5X1cLKRVC1RzbDXkRFrnk6uZVG0huqKSctpy83jlzn7ZzCFwqfWiyZGUPf5cnkm0NQA/s1600/Rplot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcIO1B2aX5bsF5doOzBe7-YULcU6zRJFGH61-OTrZ-hOgzKXKPmPzd28EDP-E13vHhaJ19qqHu5X1cLKRVC1RzbDXkRFrnk6uZVG0huqKSctpy83jlzn7ZzCFwqfWiyZGUPf5cnkm0NQA/s320/Rplot.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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The other reason merely adding Arctic and Antarctic sea ice is wrong? The two regions have opposite trends.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpW-mj63D21jPIUYBcNin6FKrnFDVZtR818UMQZniaaMu2lBdkOx3W8H5YttGCh9ZGl2zJraJwB1x8Bd2d-sPahGb6zBA3HdFHMtS6BjMoiXu3zYN8A9Q-9Sfbqiz8wlPLw4cylsvliEM/s1600/Rplot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpW-mj63D21jPIUYBcNin6FKrnFDVZtR818UMQZniaaMu2lBdkOx3W8H5YttGCh9ZGl2zJraJwB1x8Bd2d-sPahGb6zBA3HdFHMtS6BjMoiXu3zYN8A9Q-9Sfbqiz8wlPLw4cylsvliEM/s320/Rplot.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
As you can clearly see, Arctic sea ice has declined since 1979 whereas Antarctic sea ice has increased. Taylor's little trick of adding Arctic and Antarctic hides the decline in the Arctic. If you're curious as to why Antarctic sea ice has increased, part of the answer is meltwater from the 159 billion metric tons per year of land ice lost from the Antarctic continent is making the surface of the ocean less salty (<a href="http://www.knmi.nl/cms/mmbase/attachments/112945/ngeo1767.pdf">Bintanja et al. 2013</a>, <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL060111/abstract">McMillan et al. 2014</a>). That meltwater is also leading to thermal stratification of the ocean around Antarctica, which insulates any sea ice from warm currents below the ice (<a href="http://psc.apl.washington.edu/zhang/Pubs/Zhang_Antarctic_20-11-2515.pdf">Zhang 2007</a>). A third piece of the puzzle appears to be stronger circumpolar winds which have opened up more gaps in the floating sea ice (i.e. <a href="http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~eps5/writing_assignment/SEA_ICE/TurnerGRL2009.pdf">Turner et al. 2009</a>). But you won't hear any of that from Taylor. All he cares about are those facts he can spin to make his argument.<br />
<br />
Beyond the tired arguments made by omitting most of the facts, there is little else to Taylor's piece—and nothing that is truly new. It's the real "hide the decline" trick with a different author's byline under the title. (Ambler last year, Taylor this year—second verse, same as the first). As with Ambler, it's a nice try—but he won't fool anyone who has a modicum of knowledge about the polar regions and statistics.Jim Milkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02513589560600319701noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848917159732487665.post-33693026088255493522015-07-22T13:13:00.001-04:002015-07-29T05:32:15.504-04:00The Ice Age Cometh?Recent media reports have claimed that a drop in solar activity will lead to a mini-Ice Age within the next 15 years. Unfortunately, even press reports from science-related media such as <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150709092955.htm">Science Daily</a>, have been riddled with errors.<br />
<br />
Let's get the biggest one out of the way first. Zharkova et al. (<a href="https://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/2680-irregular-heartbeat-of-the-sun-driven-by-double-dynamo">2015</a>) did not predict a new Little Ice Age (LIA). What they did was use principle component analysis to detect and model magnetic waves within the sun. They found that there were two such waves, each with an 11-year cycle, that either interfered with each other when sunspot activity was low or magnified each other when sunspot activity was high. They then ran their statistical model ahead to make a prediction for the next solar cycle and found that their model predicts that the waves should cancel each other out, resulting in their subsequent prediction that solar activity should drop to levels not seen since the Maunder Minimum. That bit about the Maunder Minimum is what set off the media, as the Maunder Minimum coincided with the coldest time period of the Little Ice Age.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately for the journalists and editors who made that connection and then made the claim that a new Little Ice Age would begin within 15 years, they are dead wrong. First, multiple research papers have found that a new Maunder Minimum would shave a maximum of 0.3ºC off the expected rise in global temperatures by AD 2100 (<a href="http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Journals/feulner_rahmstorf_2010.pdf">Feulner and Rahmstorf 2010</a>, <a href="http://www.leif.org/EOS/2011JD017013.pdf">Jones et al. 2012</a>, <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50806/abstract">Anet et al. 2013</a>, <a href="http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/jma/meehl_grand_solar_2013.pdf">Meehl et al. 2013</a>). So the world would warm by "only" 3.7ºC rather than 4ºC. Furthermore, the impacts would be largely regional, not global, and temporary. Ineson et al. (<a href="http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150623/ncomms8535/abs/ncomms8535.html">2015</a>) found that the greatest cooling would fall on Europe and the eastern US during winter but that global temperature as a whole could be largely unchanged. Once the new minimum ended, regional temperatures would warm back up.<br />
<br />
Second, <a href="http://environmentalforest.blogspot.com/2013/09/solar-influence-on-climate-change.html">solar activity decoupled from global temperature in the 1970s</a>. Solar activity peaked in the late 1950s and then again around 1980 and has declined sharply since whereas global temperatures rose. In short, global temperatures are controlled by something other than solar activity now.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-OMKAnH6WCT03oqlFLiUzM1i881MFSr0uLJOfu2JY1aLWGF5FuhEfxFU3zRc817sLLhgYyOrYO5ZB0XUBjJ5uBdJp_wESNi-jXr2CGfqlxYHkRIc270UxzNrZkgVzUx5G5FsKhNkIz5o/s1600/Rplot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-OMKAnH6WCT03oqlFLiUzM1i881MFSr0uLJOfu2JY1aLWGF5FuhEfxFU3zRc817sLLhgYyOrYO5ZB0XUBjJ5uBdJp_wESNi-jXr2CGfqlxYHkRIc270UxzNrZkgVzUx5G5FsKhNkIz5o/s320/Rplot.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Third, research shows that the Little Ice Age began and was sustained by volcanic eruptions, not solar activity (<a href="http://www.theconsensusproject.com/pics/Miller_2012_LIA.pdf">Miller et al. 2012</a>). And contrary to the Science Daily article, the LIA began in AD 1300, not AD 1645 as that article wrongly claimed. The timing of the Maunder Minimum, coinciding with the coldest part of the LIA, gave the false appearance of a link between the two.<br />
<br />
Fourth, there is a lot more CO<sub>2</sub> and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere now than there was during the Maunder Minimum. The 12-month moving average for CO<sub>2</sub> is now 399.34 ppmv. Pre-industrial CO<sub>2</sub> levels were around 280 ppmv, which means that there is now 1.89 W/m<sup>2</sup> of extra energy being trapped by Earth's atmosphere that wasn't there during the Maunder Minimum. That translates into a temperature rise of 1.53ºC, greater than the drop the Earth experienced during the Maunder Minimum.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw3I2F_mCqh4mzEFeEH43Gc1BmbGa0uAOpPxIvcT5HUZTgKQExyAjxHQSFaP8jbEEHO4fhMzE3PKwz2OonjnmnBaCDjODA7Dh_HtAB-YStjsdiYP3zBRywgQMn8p8XpfFN6wq-g9lcUP4/s1600/Rplot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw3I2F_mCqh4mzEFeEH43Gc1BmbGa0uAOpPxIvcT5HUZTgKQExyAjxHQSFaP8jbEEHO4fhMzE3PKwz2OonjnmnBaCDjODA7Dh_HtAB-YStjsdiYP3zBRywgQMn8p8XpfFN6wq-g9lcUP4/s320/Rplot.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Last, the Little Ice Age was just that—little on the global scale. Using the global data from Marcott et al. (<a href="http://content.csbs.utah.edu/~mli/Economics%207004/Marcott_Global%20Temperature%20Reconstructed.pdf">2013</a>), the Little Ice Age was a mere blip compared to how temperatures have risen since.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyLi5ToIZucEAuhmb6AGbO3vgxOzbjBm5PD-KX3mvLJmvPOHemGZ9qT0NoXfCpCtfexF9IZMSwmLJH16_ioATSiCnAc8cMC2OHFQOR8EWRCvPtlqRXJVq2mKNHdN2mg-8uwWBpPVHNXCw/s1600/Rplot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyLi5ToIZucEAuhmb6AGbO3vgxOzbjBm5PD-KX3mvLJmvPOHemGZ9qT0NoXfCpCtfexF9IZMSwmLJH16_ioATSiCnAc8cMC2OHFQOR8EWRCvPtlqRXJVq2mKNHdN2mg-8uwWBpPVHNXCw/s320/Rplot.jpg" width="320" /> </a></div>
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Global temperatures over the LIA declined by about 0.2ºC over 550 years. Temperatures have risen by 0.8ºC in the 160 years since the LIA ended. Even if we did have another LIA, then all it would do is return global temperatures to about where they were around 1980, which is a far cry from where they were during the Maunder Minimum.</div>
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To sum all of this up, there is no new ice age coming, even if the sun does repeat the Maunder Minimum. Instead, we can expect temperatures to continue rising as CO<sub>2</sub> levels increase due to the 30+ billion metric tons of CO<sub>2</sub> we spew into the atmosphere each year. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9zYIOCGqWkyvirIV7ehHVsu5Kw17IPWSVtnPwCgQQ5cHk3c6-kSOwksQBv5f-wRCu7XqeA7kA0iG-YtsuQ9Atat691jYhgzJEmYk2xZoJQ6GBX7RNkoLiUK0aoT_MGlOg-3VpZVKvC04/s1600/Rplot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9zYIOCGqWkyvirIV7ehHVsu5Kw17IPWSVtnPwCgQQ5cHk3c6-kSOwksQBv5f-wRCu7XqeA7kA0iG-YtsuQ9Atat691jYhgzJEmYk2xZoJQ6GBX7RNkoLiUK0aoT_MGlOg-3VpZVKvC04/s320/Rplot.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Likely global temperature rise in the near future. The thick dashed line represents the continuation of the trend. The thinner dashed lines mark one standard deviation and two standard deviations from the trend, respectively.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Abraham Lincoln once quipped that his opponents "had their facts absolutely right but were drawing the wrong conclusion." Those journalists who wrote that another mini-Ice Age was coming not only drew the wrong conclusion—they also got their facts absolutely wrong.</div>
Jim Milkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02513589560600319701noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848917159732487665.post-57040023997698596342015-07-21T21:40:00.000-04:002015-07-21T21:40:04.326-04:00US versus global temperaturesOne of the talking points I see (and hear) time and again here is the question "If the world's getting hotter, why is it cold here?", "here" usually referring to the eastern United States. Another variation goes "Global warming can't be happening because US temperatures haven't risen in _____ years." Yes, it's the good old "It's cold in my backyard so the planet can't be warming up" argument. Here's why it's dead wrong.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />
The continental United States is small in relation to the size of the entire planet. The continental US has a surface area of 8,081,000 km<sup>2</sup>. The entire planet? A surface area of 510,000,000 km<sup>2</sup>. That means that the continental US is only makes up around 1.6% of the planet. Just because 1.6% of the planet is cold (and it's usually just the eastern half of the US that is cold while the western half is warm) does not mean that the other 98.4% of the planet is also cold. Here's an example from this past February.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ7fbJ4fgeajBn7wozMFu99r4_fX-9P4-Yaq3VQK-qYDwymToVqpbfzUL2VdWyfyeGuLYaGiiDKwiW62AUCzIy06Vy3TQCvhPGraxWv7BD7AjKlghk3yPoCBHpzwbcr9h-ysmZ3ToZdfo/s1600/CFSR_WORLD-CED_T2_anom_2015-02-18.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ7fbJ4fgeajBn7wozMFu99r4_fX-9P4-Yaq3VQK-qYDwymToVqpbfzUL2VdWyfyeGuLYaGiiDKwiW62AUCzIy06Vy3TQCvhPGraxWv7BD7AjKlghk3yPoCBHpzwbcr9h-ysmZ3ToZdfo/s400/CFSR_WORLD-CED_T2_anom_2015-02-18.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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I chose this image deliberately. Why? First, it comes from the coldest stretch of weather in the eastern US this past winter. Second, it shows that although the eastern US was very cold compared to the 1979-2000 average, that chill did not extend to the rest of the planet—or even to the rest of North America. The west coast of North America, for instance, were unusually warm even as the area east of the Rockies was in a deep freeze. While the eastern US and Canada froze, the average for the entire Northern Hemisphere was +0.61ºC above average.<br />
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Second, there is no reason to expect that the temperature trend over 1.6% of the planet will mirror the trend over the entire planet, just like you can't expect the test scores from any random student to mirror the class average. Examining annual average temperatures for both the continental US and global temperatures shows that continental US average temperatures are more variable than are global average temperatures.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFdbMw4Yek7S_20Ss9e4cbPoS0VmVKNwpkpPO5sDaeTYuaqBRhcRl16nxf9qOcWHiMAwgBngofiQHpzKBFrxifuSQEnktGEDzz-1EGmlVn_DEMnbejL4G8BOeJpBwmqzL0jWm0O1zSqzg/s1600/Rplot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFdbMw4Yek7S_20Ss9e4cbPoS0VmVKNwpkpPO5sDaeTYuaqBRhcRl16nxf9qOcWHiMAwgBngofiQHpzKBFrxifuSQEnktGEDzz-1EGmlVn_DEMnbejL4G8BOeJpBwmqzL0jWm0O1zSqzg/s320/Rplot.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
That makes sense as the global average includes all of the Earth's surface rather than just 1.6% of it. Furthermore, variability is important because it directly affects how significant trends are. The more variable the data, the less likely any linear trend will be statistically significant.<br />
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We can measure that difference in variability by comparing the standard error surrounding a regression trend of both data sets. Here is the trend ± standard error for both data sets since 1895.<br />
<ul>
<li>GISS: 0.0792 ± 0.0035ºC/decade</li>
<li>USA: 0.0716 ± 0.0117ºC/decade</li>
</ul>
While the overall trends are similar, there is 3.3x more variation in the US data than in the global data set.<br />
<br />
How does that difference in variability affect the significance of any trends? Taking the trends since 1895, the global data set was significant at the p < 2.2 x 10<sup>-16</sup> level. In contrast, the US data was "only" significant at the p = 1.288 x 10<sup>-8</sup> level, a difference of roughly 8 orders of magnitude.<br />
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That difference is relatively minor using long time frames. I mean—both trends were far beyond the p = 0.05 demarcation line. However, it becomes very problematic if you use short time frames such as those favored by most climate deniers. Here are the trends for both GISS and US data for the last 15, 20, and 30 years with standard errors and p-values (bold = statistically significant):<br />
<br />
<center>
<table border="2"><tbody>
<tr><th>Start Year</th><th>Data set</th><th>Trend (ºC/decade)</th><th>Standard Error</th><th>P-value</th></tr>
<tr><th rowspan="2">1985</th><td>GISS</td> <td>0.170</td><td>0.018</td><td><b>1.71 x 10<sup>-10</sup></b></td></tr>
<tr><td>USA</td><td>0.174</td><td>0.098</td><td>0.0884</td></tr>
<tr><th rowspan="2">1995</th><td>GISS</td><td>0.124</td><td>0.028</td><td><b>0.000269</b></td></tr>
<tr><td>USA</td><td>0.073</td><td>0.183</td><td>0.696</td></tr>
<tr><th rowspan="2">2000</th><td>GISS</td><td>0.103</td><td>0.038</td><td><b>0.0176</b></td></tr>
<tr><td>USA</td><td>-0.148</td><td>0.265</td><td>0.588</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</center>
<br />
For those who are more visual, here are the graphs of those trends along with the loess trend since 1895:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsFhZSRE889wGYQKJijz_0rRF6pPFVB7TXQMsfsoRgb1ade5AC5rkBHv7iTPgASQmd0oyMg0xWGWYYaOPajzLFl54XkcVi_eqgTY4HwxGNV850rj73G3luT2x_ZeskaxuSinCHubuzLbE/s1600/Rplot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsFhZSRE889wGYQKJijz_0rRF6pPFVB7TXQMsfsoRgb1ade5AC5rkBHv7iTPgASQmd0oyMg0xWGWYYaOPajzLFl54XkcVi_eqgTY4HwxGNV850rj73G3luT2x_ZeskaxuSinCHubuzLbE/s400/Rplot.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Temperature trends over different time periods. Blue = US, Red = GISS.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Simply cherry-picking your time period can give you any results you want, especially with a noisy data set. Here, for example, the linear US trend is negative since 2000, the exact opposite of the overall trend in the data set. So, does that mean that the US is cooling? Short answer: No. That cooling trend is a false trend. First, it is not statistically significant (p = 0.588). Second, it goes against the result of the loess analysis for the entire data set, which shows that US warming has accelerated since the 1960s. The trend since 2000 is simply the result of using a short time period and noisy data. It is not a true trend. In contrast, the lower-variation global data is consistent: Statistically significant warming in all time frames consistent with the results of the loess regression of the entire data set.<br />
<br />In short, the planet is still warming up even when the US experiences a cold snap. But to see it, Americans must do what they are not generally able to do: Look beyond their own backyards.Jim Milkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02513589560600319701noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848917159732487665.post-15420600811515481212015-06-05T08:37:00.000-04:002015-06-05T08:37:31.991-04:00The "hiatus" doesn't exist.That is the conclusion of a <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2015/06/03/science.aaa5632.full">new study published in Science</a> yesterday. Tom Karl and his co-authors used a newly available database of weather station data that combined the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) used by NOAA and NASA with over 40 other historical data sources, effectively doubling the size of the available land temperature data set. They applied the same corrections for changes in location, urban heat island effect, etc as with the GHCN-only data set and used the same algorithms to calculate the global average over land. To get a global average, they used the Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature dataset version 4 (ERSST4), which better integrates ship-based temperature data and buoy-based temperature data, and merged it with their new land data. Karl et al. then created a third global temperature average that also fills in the gaps between weather stations in the polar regions.<br />
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Their new data set shows much higher trends than the GHCN-only data, especially since 1998. Their analysis shows >2x the warming since 1998 (0.086ºC/decade) as the GHCN-only data (0.039ºC/decade).<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2015/06/03/science.aaa5632/F1.large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2015/06/03/science.aaa5632/F1.large.jpg" height="183" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 1 from Karl et al. 2015 showing the trends over selected time periods as calculated using GHCN-only data (circles), their new data (squares), and their new data combined with polar interpolation (triangles).</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
This is mostly due to a much higher sea surface average (0.075ºC/decade versus 0.014ºC/decade) since 1998. The upshot is that there is no statistically difference between the 1951-2014 warming rate and the 1998-2014 warming rate, meaning that the so-called "hiatus" does not exist.<br />
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The main conclusions from Karl et al. is that the appearance of a pause was due to a) a short time period (changing the period by just two years had a significant impact on the calculated trend) and b) a cherry-picked start year (1998, the warmest El Niño currently on record), and c) artifacts due to incomplete data. This matches the main thrust of other research into global temperature data (i.e. <a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022/fulltext/">Foster and Rahmstorf 2011</a>, <a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/4/044035/article">Rahmstorf et al. 2012</a>, <a href="http://static.berkeleyearth.org/papers/Results-Paper-Berkeley-Earth.pdf">Rohde et al. 2013</a>, <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.2297/epdf">Cowtan and Way 2014</a>, the various Berkeley Earth papers) and various blog posts (i.e. <a href="https://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/12/04/a-pause-or-not-a-pause-that-is-the-question/">Tamino</a> and <a href="http://environmentalforest.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-non-existant-pause-in-global.html">my own writings</a>).<br />
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The "pause since 1998" is dead. Long live the "pause since ______" that deniers come up with next.Jim Milkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02513589560600319701noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848917159732487665.post-85335484577241584012015-05-17T18:25:00.001-04:002015-05-19T07:05:25.002-04:00Doom and gloom or realism?Humanity is in trouble with climate change. A <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/5/15/8612113/truth-climate-change">recent article in Vox</a> by David Roberts came to that conclusion. It begins with<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"There has always been an odd tenor to discussions among climate scientists, policy wonks, and politicians, a passive-aggressive quality, and I think it can be traced to the fact that everyone involved has to dance around the obvious truth, at risk of losing their status and influence. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The obvious truth about <a href="http://www.vox.com/cards/global-warming/what-is-global-warming" target="_blank">global warming</a> is this: barring miracles, humanity is in for some awful shit."</blockquote>
The basis for that conclusion? Total carbon emissions to date, which are closely following the RCP 8.5 curve from the IPCC.<br />
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<a href="https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/o-3o3ZJ-bbzLXQLaIKrXE25-g0g=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3698752/ar5-scenarios.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="218" src="https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/o-3o3ZJ-bbzLXQLaIKrXE25-g0g=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3698752/ar5-scenarios.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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That black curve is emissions to date. We as a civilization are on track to take carbon dioxide levels to around 1000 ppm by 2100 AD. The 12-month moving average of atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> levels shows that we're already at 398.83 and still accelerating upward.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDIoe7uRF3DnnC4CRH26by2mALEAGzawy_AiOUg5sBiOISYhn5eU-tNRKFa87oKAoCAjQ7OD2SlNzuurYdkTEraQXrcTffHae04LTbBpWZEM4B-RT9DchXSL_b5JBCbnBTiVwxViJeR2s/s1600/Rplot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDIoe7uRF3DnnC4CRH26by2mALEAGzawy_AiOUg5sBiOISYhn5eU-tNRKFa87oKAoCAjQ7OD2SlNzuurYdkTEraQXrcTffHae04LTbBpWZEM4B-RT9DchXSL_b5JBCbnBTiVwxViJeR2s/s320/Rplot.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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That locks us into at least 1.53ºC of total warming as of now, assuming that the current situation wherein other anthropogenic effects (methane, aerosols, etc) continue to largely cancel each other out as has been the case for the last several decades. At the current rate of increase, we'll blow past 444 ppmv in 2034, just 19 years from now, and be locked into at least 2ºC of warming.<br />
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The main reason Roberts is so pessimistic is that all the scenarios in which we avoided the worst of climate change assume that civilization will suddenly switch to wind power, solar energy, and other forms of energy and deploy technologies—especially carbon capture—to deal with the carbon dioxide that is already in the atmosphere. The models also assume that humans will end the use of fossil fuels just as quickly. Beyond those possibly overoptimistic assumptions, the sheer rate at which emissions would have to decline at this point to avoid blowing past 2ºC of total warming is 4 to 6% per year, far beyond any rate ever achieved before. In other words, it won't be easy but, as Joe Romm wrote, <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/01/29/3616382/solving-climate-change-cheap/">it will be much cheaper and easier than trying to live in a 4ºC world.</a><br />
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While I share Roberts' concern and some of his pessimism, we haven't hit the point of no return yet. I'm still hopeful that humanity can turn itself around before reaching the 444 ppmv level. It may be hope without reason but as long as we haven't hit 444 ppmv, there's still a reason to agitate for changes in governmental policy to keep us below that level. And yes, to the dismay of many American conservatives, it's going to take governmental action along the lines of WWII to pull this off. We've dilly-dallied too long and allowed too much carbon dioxide to build up for individual actions to suffice. Sorry.<br />
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Of course, as Winston Churchill quipped, "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else." Another way to look at it: Americans won't take climate change seriously until it affects them personally. Here's hoping that America—and by extension the world—gets its wake-up call(s) in time.<br />
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So, what's your take on our chances? Jim Milkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02513589560600319701noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848917159732487665.post-84978578458094072632015-05-10T16:13:00.000-04:002015-05-10T16:13:28.765-04:00First look: UAH 6.0 vs UAH 5.6 vs RSSSpencer and Christy recently released a new version (version 6.0) of the <a href="http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6.0beta1.txt">UAH satellite temperature data</a>. To see how their data has changed, I've compared the 6.0 version to the earlier <a href="http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc_lt_5.6.txt">5.6 version</a> and compared both to RSS, similar to what I did <a href="http://environmentalforest.blogspot.com/2014/12/what-is-deal-with-rss.html">before</a>. All calculations were made using annual data.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf7rX4vdFXlUH_cesp64OxO_yZ4EBw3l3HY4vEK03Gwf88rtuZfwMhmIAiQimkATiWq2TSju1BNmb7tzhGEd5GLnAsZzjC-dx86xCz6EKv8Rs3Vnv_xLGjzAiVU_gZZdXFbB-IwfvHxwM/s1600/Rplot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf7rX4vdFXlUH_cesp64OxO_yZ4EBw3l3HY4vEK03Gwf88rtuZfwMhmIAiQimkATiWq2TSju1BNmb7tzhGEd5GLnAsZzjC-dx86xCz6EKv8Rs3Vnv_xLGjzAiVU_gZZdXFbB-IwfvHxwM/s1600/Rplot.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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The difference between UAH 5.6 and UAH 6.0 is quite dramatic, especially since 2000, and the difference has grown over time. <br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlVmAHfGZ0NzxAb_It_-UdqhDlLNuQm6st0mrn9_LXIYU8lVl_NuBkd23sVxxfY9RPaxbjVGcJB2jaYGATBZuEnaSOgnWWrZ2S7H5UTuc4wozv45Eke1GcZx-zrERGENYtBroc6ZtYyfk/s1600/Rplot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlVmAHfGZ0NzxAb_It_-UdqhDlLNuQm6st0mrn9_LXIYU8lVl_NuBkd23sVxxfY9RPaxbjVGcJB2jaYGATBZuEnaSOgnWWrZ2S7H5UTuc4wozv45Eke1GcZx-zrERGENYtBroc6ZtYyfk/s320/Rplot.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Difference calculated by subtracting annual version 6.0 values from the respective 5.6 values.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Comparing both UAH versions to RSS shows that while version 5.6 was consistently warmer than RSS since 2003, version 6.0 has a tendency to run cooler than RSS since 1998.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLtFJazw-XjRVV359j8saodz4vjSSainzVCmfqJtUouQUWRaichGMoSn8ZBGP0TM4VQJP2PN2rEyJl-aF7SewL5wKt2Kwo6SFtKhX0e7Ph1QOenjktVYrUSWq_Ioc4EKC0-eaFYKKzjBo/s1600/Rplot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLtFJazw-XjRVV359j8saodz4vjSSainzVCmfqJtUouQUWRaichGMoSn8ZBGP0TM4VQJP2PN2rEyJl-aF7SewL5wKt2Kwo6SFtKhX0e7Ph1QOenjktVYrUSWq_Ioc4EKC0-eaFYKKzjBo/s320/Rplot.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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The effect all the changes from 5.6 to 6.0 had on the calculated trend was drastic. Since 1990, the average version 6.0 trend is 0.0094ºC/year lower than the same trend in version 5.6. For version 5.6, only the trends since 1997, 1998, and 2000 were not statistically significant. For version 6, every trend since 1993 has not been significant.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvFPdYdUdbnL_iLnhI-l8jK5g_MREcfb2cYVkr4Fco-43SuN14GJHg8bZIy-PdgY2k9A4fgWC1xZr0c_3UhqlpYu8xii_f11Vywc-YD3I-zuY7WGFtGXrQXxwmufLfjfNHUlOtoYwsRvk/s1600/Rplot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvFPdYdUdbnL_iLnhI-l8jK5g_MREcfb2cYVkr4Fco-43SuN14GJHg8bZIy-PdgY2k9A4fgWC1xZr0c_3UhqlpYu8xii_f11Vywc-YD3I-zuY7WGFtGXrQXxwmufLfjfNHUlOtoYwsRvk/s320/Rplot.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Trend ± 95% confidence intervals for different start years.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Taking a closer look, land temperatures were nearly the same for both UAH versions.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFcNg4OCLcBG35gup4mzdyTJ08Mj3mdsijOWj-8UWiX5DWUmFvo308zY1vSVHGG6oPBeK2PEUc4O0ZQNTCaxjdvFwCOl3XS-cdCRzuSwy5_0d9H3ZPLjwLybTHJ3XB_YEpNG7nacSeTcU/s1600/Rplot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFcNg4OCLcBG35gup4mzdyTJ08Mj3mdsijOWj-8UWiX5DWUmFvo308zY1vSVHGG6oPBeK2PEUc4O0ZQNTCaxjdvFwCOl3XS-cdCRzuSwy5_0d9H3ZPLjwLybTHJ3XB_YEpNG7nacSeTcU/s320/Rplot.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Both versions have 2010 as the hottest year in the satellite record and show nearly the same linear trends. <b>Note</b>: Unless stated otherwise, all trends are given as trend ± standard error. For example, the two versions show nearly the same trend since 1979: 0.186 ± 0.028ºC/decade and 0.191 ± 0.028ºC/decade for versions 5.6 and 6.0 respectively. Yes, version 6.0 shows a faster overall rate of temperature rise over land than version 5.6. Where version 6.0 shows cooling relative to version 5.6 is over the oceans.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWkBndwVNvmT3BvLP2a6XWynS9l85kEgXcOeZTcsz_L-E9YCbYrFaRRmOzpXd2U_JVhwuEujnzsq9TKNIO7f3UYptZ0SGNDV9tw36eeejX-j9xRDyRlr9EQ505b2XhNMYwMw2CWDULz1w/s1600/Rplot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWkBndwVNvmT3BvLP2a6XWynS9l85kEgXcOeZTcsz_L-E9YCbYrFaRRmOzpXd2U_JVhwuEujnzsq9TKNIO7f3UYptZ0SGNDV9tw36eeejX-j9xRDyRlr9EQ505b2XhNMYwMw2CWDULz1w/s320/Rplot.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />Here, notice how version 6.0 generally shows warmer temperatures up to 1998 than the version 5.6 and cooler temperatures afterwards? That's the reason UAH 6.0 shows less overall warming than UAH 5.6. While UAH 5.6 shows a warming rate of 0.111 ± 0.021ºC/decade over the oceans since 1979, UAH 6.0 shows a warming rate of only 0.083 ± 0.022ºC/decade over the oceans. Given that the oceans make up 71% of the surface area of this planet, that is enough to drop the overall global warming rate since 1979 from 0.139 ± 0.022ºC/decade in UAH 5.6 down to 0.113 ± 0.023ºC/decade in UAH 6.0. <br />
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There are a few other areas of interest to compare before I wrap this post up. Arctic temperature trends show a major drop, from 0.441 ± 0.052ºC/ decade in UAH 5.6 down to 0.235 ± 0.042ºC/decade in UAH 6.0.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKJoMRnDt-XIRSjdeY9SbJ6oe6FwfIrIVMW_ImiVNWMC3VTOWtOgHWBo4XPXPt29l3j9wWV3IhzA15z6xCTl3f7x7dAzyZ8ZpjOEaAmuBWfmnSMEMmcB4IDzXcDPdD-IjQHCs1xzaSRv4/s1600/Rplot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKJoMRnDt-XIRSjdeY9SbJ6oe6FwfIrIVMW_ImiVNWMC3VTOWtOgHWBo4XPXPt29l3j9wWV3IhzA15z6xCTl3f7x7dAzyZ8ZpjOEaAmuBWfmnSMEMmcB4IDzXcDPdD-IjQHCs1xzaSRv4/s320/Rplot.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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The main reason for that drop is UAH 6.0 shows warmer temperatures in the early part of the satellite record relative to UAH 5.6 and cooler temperatures in the later portion. Finally, continental US temperatures trends declined in UAH 6.0 from 0.211 ± 0.052ºC/decade to 0.154 ± 0.045ºC/decade.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4bCUaQyIsR5kiNltBCk07z_r_BWUh9Xv_Kjy19Aai1C5Dbh0Ga7CdS0ZvAkxwbGML4dTPVjZbClAKDUVmFjtKUTDu0r133xa3ntiVIcF7odHzBaVPiD2Pynt_eMuUGQQpgS2ZtboHUYo/s1600/Rplot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4bCUaQyIsR5kiNltBCk07z_r_BWUh9Xv_Kjy19Aai1C5Dbh0Ga7CdS0ZvAkxwbGML4dTPVjZbClAKDUVmFjtKUTDu0r133xa3ntiVIcF7odHzBaVPiD2Pynt_eMuUGQQpgS2ZtboHUYo/s320/Rplot.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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The difference in trends is not statistically significant, unlike the difference in the Arctic and the differences between temperatures is relatively minor.<br />
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In closing, I would recommend that everyone read <a href="http://www.drroyspencer.com/2015/04/version-6-0-of-the-uah-temperature-dataset-released-new-lt-trend-0-11-cdecade/">Roy Spencer's summary of all the changes they made in UAH 6.0</a>. It's very informative of the challenges of accurately measuring global temperatures via satellite, including a good summary of why various adjustments to the data are necessary.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />"One might ask, Why do the satellite data have to be adjusted at all? If
we had satellite instruments that (1) had rock-stable calibration, (2)
lasted for many decades without any channel failures, and (3) were
carried on satellites whose orbits did not change over time, then the
satellite data could be processed without adjustment. But none of these
things are true. Since 1979 we have had 15 satellites that lasted
various lengths of time, having slightly different calibration
(requiring intercalibration between satellites), some of which drifted
in their calibration, slightly different channel frequencies (and thus
weighting functions), and generally on satellite platforms whose orbits
drift and thus observe at somewhat different local times of day in
different years. All data adjustments required to correct for these
changes involve decisions regarding methodology, and different
methodologies will lead to somewhat different results. This is the
unavoidable situation when dealing with less than perfect data."</blockquote>
Many of the same adjustment challenges apply to surface data, making this a useful reference for those who claim that various agencies are fudging the surface data with their adjustments.<br />
Jim Milkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02513589560600319701noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848917159732487665.post-61420213265445848732015-04-23T14:10:00.000-04:002015-04-23T14:10:03.094-04:00The view from Greenland's highest peakIt's amusing to me whenever a science denier cites the ice cores in Greenland as "proof" that global warming either a) isn't happening or b) isn't a big deal. It's a horrible argument for deniers to make. Here's why.<br />
<br />
First, we're talking about ice cores taken from one location in Greenland. Not only is it one single location, but it just happens to be Greenland's highest point (10,660 feet/3,249 meters above sea level) and near the center of the continental glacier that covers Greenland. Guess what? It's going to be cold up there, just from the elevation alone, to say nothing of how all that ice affects the local temperature. Location matters. It's amusing that the same deniers who claim urban heat island when trying to explain away any warming trends seem to forget that when faced with factors that would decrease the rate of local temperature change.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/crobots/pictures/greenland/greenland_summit_480x640.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/crobots/pictures/greenland/greenland_summit_480x640.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
Second, when we talk about global warming, we mean the entire planet, which is
far larger than one single spot in the center of Greenland. While
interesting and informative (hey, we need all the data we can get!), it
ultimately says little to nothing about whether or not the entire planet
is warming up and at what rate, just as <a href="http://environmentalforest.blogspot.com/2013/12/its-cold-in-my-backyard-does-that-mean.html">readings from a thermometer in your backyard says little the change in the global average</a>.<br />
<br />
Third and most amusing is this: The research that at least one denier (and <a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/10/new-study-shows-temperature-in-greenland-significantly-warmer-than-present-several-times-in-the-last-4000-years/">WUWT</a>) tried to cite as proof that modern temperatures have yet to exceed historical temperatures (<a href="http://www.leif.org/EOS/2011GL049444.pdf">Kobashi et al. 2011</a>) is...wait for it...a hockey stick paper! Take a look at Figure 1 from that paper:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiZs8vBrLYnr3CGL41siuaPoIchYGIppflMLlJcRHB3jIN_6ASUW7m3QgP43fNDrssQwhJhc_I2ruMY_sO8YADM_mqUpRQMm9i71v8mFQO3PthTxCvyRd4O7fr3ZtGvzpDNMuZzZjYO5w/s1600/Kobashi+et+al.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiZs8vBrLYnr3CGL41siuaPoIchYGIppflMLlJcRHB3jIN_6ASUW7m3QgP43fNDrssQwhJhc_I2ruMY_sO8YADM_mqUpRQMm9i71v8mFQO3PthTxCvyRd4O7fr3ZtGvzpDNMuZzZjYO5w/s1600/Kobashi+et+al.jpg" height="400" width="377" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 1 from Kobashi et al. 2011</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Now what does that show? Well, the top shows the past 170 years, the middle shows the last 1,110 years, and the bottom graph shows the last 4,010 years. What do you see? WUWT and other deniers focused on the fact that reconstructed temperatures were higher than the 2001-2010 average at multiple points in the past. But take a good look at the overall trend in the data, especially relative to the 2001-2010 average. What do you see? Yep. A gradual cooling trend, with a sudden reversal in the last 100 years. The same story found by <a href="http://environmentalforest.blogspot.com/2013/10/enough-hockey-sticks-for-team.html">Marcott et al., PAGES 2k, and other hockey stick papers</a>. Oops. I wonder if anyone at WUWT ever noticed that.<br />
<br />
In short, WUWT is correct—the reconstruction does show that one location at the top of Greenland was warmer in the past. But it's a matter of trying so hard to win the battle that they end up losing the war by ignoring that the same study corroborates the warming of the past century and show that same cooling-until-the-20th-century pattern as many other studies.Jim Milkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02513589560600319701noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848917159732487665.post-14119195072038895772015-04-21T18:11:00.001-04:002015-04-22T07:05:02.934-04:00Using NOAA's Climate-at-a-glance widget to fact-check James TaylorOkay, I'm back. Sorry for the lengthy gap between posts but work and losing my laptop intervened. Now to get back in the saddle.<br />
<br />
A reader by the pen name of cosmicomic asked several questions on my <a href="http://environmentalforest.blogspot.com/2015/02/james-taylor-has-no-idea-what-hes.html">last post</a> concerning James Taylor's claims about winter-time cooling in the US. Since NOAA's climate-at-a-glance widget didn't work properly for him, I thought I'd post a video of what one should see as well as expound on the bogus method Taylor used. Specifically, I'll examine Taylor claim that winters in the US have cooled, with the cooling trend dating back to 1930.<br />
<br />
First, a very brief tutorial by yours truly on using NOAA's widget and what you should see when you do:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dydWGsnQVKOkGBywl6MIm51Tcz2LCemxbaUUTNuo1eihi0ivxMmLrVj6M-IBcUOmssmWC_Ag4yTbY1kqO1Ybg' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br />
Now, Taylor's claim that US winters have cooled since 1930 is already in trouble. The simple linear regression model done by the widget shows that US winters have warmed by an average of +0.18ºF/decade since 1930. ARMA time series regression shows that the warming trend since 1930 is statistically significant (p = 0.03015). Dropping 2015 (since Taylor was writing about the 1930-2014 time period) only lowers the trend since 1930 to 0.17ºF/decade (p = 0.041), still a statistically significant increase.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSND3AK8xnkVcu2GwR9dwwqXZrTibpmue9rvTRo38-Obzm4xJsbbAo_QgSGLxyzSW2B-SOo5TobSx9p7FfbK8YICLT_MErOWWeJqY0Psqfye2nRpJ6P6jcjzawerXW_YUlUKQblr-z4Vc/s1600/Rplot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSND3AK8xnkVcu2GwR9dwwqXZrTibpmue9rvTRo38-Obzm4xJsbbAo_QgSGLxyzSW2B-SOo5TobSx9p7FfbK8YICLT_MErOWWeJqY0Psqfye2nRpJ6P6jcjzawerXW_YUlUKQblr-z4Vc/s1600/Rplot.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
So, what did Taylor do to come up with his "cooling since 1930" claim? Simple. He played "connect the dots." It's really easy to do (David Rose of the British tabloid The Daily Mail is a master of it). Just find a year that was warmer than the end year (in this case 2014), draw a line connecting that year to the end year, and claim "Cooling since _____!" In Taylor's case, just connect 1930 to 2014.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3ELam0X1EbX5dPAwmpMqFulcTQL_w46dNn_MNV93Wyze0gVpl_GuBfKCako8-PfxwLP5m-vVc2QFMPDa_3R1Je20ZhaDo4doli0om4IO-vrBbMMp-LubOy81ERn4-jvw9kK8ltKQG8f0/s1600/Rplot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3ELam0X1EbX5dPAwmpMqFulcTQL_w46dNn_MNV93Wyze0gVpl_GuBfKCako8-PfxwLP5m-vVc2QFMPDa_3R1Je20ZhaDo4doli0om4IO-vrBbMMp-LubOy81ERn4-jvw9kK8ltKQG8f0/s1600/Rplot.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
Voila! Instant cooling trend and you don't even have to bother with all that pesky time-series analysis, ARMA regression, and the like. All you need is what you learned in kindergarten. Of course that only works to climate deniers' favor if the end point is lower than the starting point. And if you ignore everything except the beginning and end points. And if you ignore pretty much everything a beginning stats student learns in the first semester. And...you get the idea.<br />
<br />
In short, Taylor's "method" is utterly bogus. But he won't let such a trifling detail stop him.Jim Milkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02513589560600319701noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848917159732487665.post-89809153749107808602015-02-27T10:05:00.001-05:002015-02-27T18:39:57.203-05:00James Taylor has no idea what he's talking aboutA couple days ago, James Taylor of the Heartland Institute published what is one of the <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2015/02/25/cold-and-snow-destroy-global-warming-claims/">most disingenuous, misleading, and ignorant articles</a> I have ever had the misfortune of reading. It's a wonder Forbes even saw fit to publish such obvious claptrap.<br />
<a name='more'></a>Taylor's theme centers around the mistaken premise that global warming somehow means it's not supposed to get cold or snow in the winter. More specifically, that it's not supposed to get cold or snow in the eastern US in the winter. He completely ignores the record warmth in the western US and Alaska, the record warmth in northern Europe, etc. Nope. The only part of the world that matters to Mr. Taylor is the eastern US. Too bad for him that the eastern US is <b>not</b> the entire planet.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM0n8r4G3-VCeGl-ySmYAObluyh-zR8GFP1QHc8_YC_yZLRTPWNGZe8hgP2tFHQV1Yn78POVKYDRLJLCPhcTJE4MaC1xhgeRLe3ILo86vO-XFi_r-53X-v_MUQUKufU2akHHQEShPMYYk/s1600/01.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM0n8r4G3-VCeGl-ySmYAObluyh-zR8GFP1QHc8_YC_yZLRTPWNGZe8hgP2tFHQV1Yn78POVKYDRLJLCPhcTJE4MaC1xhgeRLe3ILo86vO-XFi_r-53X-v_MUQUKufU2akHHQEShPMYYk/s1600/01.jpg" height="327" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Once we look at the entire planet, we see the reason Taylor is fixated with the eastern US: It's pretty much the ONLY part of the northern hemisphere that is really cold compared to the 1979-2000 average. If Taylor took his head out of the snowbanks in Chicago and looked at the entire planet, he'd see that far more of the Northern Hemisphere is experiencing a record WARM winter, with an hemisphere-wide average nearly 1ºC above the 1979-2000 average. The Arctic is averaging over 3ºC above normal temperatures. The world as a whole is 0.6ºC above the baseline. But none of that fits his narrative. No. He'll cling to the eastern US, thank you very much, and ignore the rest of the world.<br />
<br />
Don't even get me started on the fact that the 1979-2000 average includes quite a bit of global warming already. The temperature anomaly map would look quite different if we used a 1951-1980 baseline or a 1911-1940 baseline or even a 1881-1910 baseline.<br />
<br />
Taylor's piece is designed for a very specific audience: Those Americans who deny science and refuse to acknowledge the existence of any place outside their own backyard. In other words, the worst type of American: Ignorant and proud of it.Jim Milkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02513589560600319701noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1848917159732487665.post-48538683475235192032015-02-16T15:49:00.000-05:002015-02-18T09:04:29.466-05:00Nonsense from pjscirkus about natural cycles and asteroidsA reader with the pen name <a href="https://www.blogger.com/profile/09214279594771658029">pjscirkus</a> commented on my <a href="http://environmentalforest.blogspot.com/2014/11/tom-luongos-multiple-lies-about-climate.html">post debunking Tom Luongo's nonsense</a>. Rather than add anything useful, he/she proceeded to spew enough nonsense of his/her own that I thought it best to answer here rather than in the comment thread.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Claim</b>: <span id="bc_0_26b+seedSu1VD" kind="d">"Perhaps, your scientific majesty, you could comment on solar warming with regard to axial tilt, wobble and orbital precession?"</span></blockquote>
<b>Response</b>: I'll ignore his/her snark (for now). Axial tilt, wobble, and orbital precession are collectively known as the "Milankovitch cycles." Those orbital cycles were linked to the glacial/interglacial cycles of the Pleistocene back in 1976 (<a href="http://www.mantleplumes.org/WebDocuments/Hays1976.pdf">Hays et al. 1976</a>). Unfortunately for pjscirkus, we've known since 1980 that the current Milankovitch cycles are all in cooling phases. They entered those cooling phases around 6,000 years ago and have a further 23,000 years of cooling to go before they switch to warming phases (<a href="http://www.whoi.edu/cms/files/imbrie80sci_53864.pdf">Imbrie and Imbrie 1980</a>). In short, the Milankovitch cycles have nothing to do with the current warming trend.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Claim</b>: <span id="bc_0_26b+seedSu1VD" kind="d"> Is it not a fact that colder water absorbes [<i>sic</i>] more CO2, and therefore, when it is warmed, it is released into the atmosphere, and is not sunlight the greatest warming engine for our oceans? </span><span id="bc_0_26b+seedSu1VD" kind="d">How does that release correlate with your findings?"</span></blockquote>
<b>Response</b>: His first statement is largely true. Unfortunately, as Abraham Lincoln's old punchline went, he got the facts right exactly right but jumped to the entirely wrong conclusion. <b>If</b> the amount of CO<sub>2</sub> in the climate system stayed constant, <b>then</b> colder water would absorb CO<sub>2</sub> from the atmosphere whereas warmer water would release it back into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, the levels of CO<sub>2</sub> in the entire climate system is increasing. Why is CO<sub>2</sub> increasing? <a href="http://environmentalforest.blogspot.com/2013/06/how-we-know-extra-co2-comes-from.html">Multiple lines of evidence show that all of the extra CO<sub>2</sub> comes from fossil fuels. </a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://environmentalforest.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-carbon-cycle.html">In water, CO<sub>2</sub> combines with water to form carbonic acid.</a> If all the extra CO<sub>2</sub> came from the oceans, then we'd expect carbonic acid levels to decrease and ocean pH to rise. That is not what oceanographers have found. What they've found is that more CO<sub>2</sub> is dissolving into water, creating more carbonic acid and lowering the pH of the oceans. You may have heard of ocean acidification? This is happening despite the fact that the oceans are warming up due to a little bit of physics known as <a href="http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/Physical_Chemistry/Physical_Properties_of_Matter/Solutions_and_Mixtures/Ideal_Solutions/Dissolving_Gases_In_Liquids%2C_Henry%27s_Law">Henry's Law</a>. It would be well worth your while to read up on it.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Claim</b>: <span id="bc_0_26b+seedSu1VD" kind="d"> "Furthermore, has any thought ever been given to the influx of water brought to the planet by meteors? Mega tons [<i>sic</i>] of water enter the atmosphere daily from this source, but nowhere can I find any reference to this affecting our ocean levels."</span></blockquote>
<b>Response</b>: I notice you didn't cite your source for that little claim about how "[megatons] of water enter the atmosphere daily" from meteors. Let's do a little math, shall we?<br />
<br />
Ceplecha (<a href="http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1996A%26A...311..329C">1996</a>) estimated that the earth adds 150,000 metric tons of extraterrestrial materials per year. The surface area of the oceans is <a href="http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/154984/">335,258,000,000,000</a> m<sup>2</sup>. Assuming that ALL of those 150,000 metric tons of space debris is water, and ALL of that water finds its way to the oceans, that would be enough to raise ocean levels by a grand total of 4.47 x 10<sup>-7</sup> mm per year.<br />
<br />
(150,000 m<sup>3</sup> per year/335,258,000,000,000 m<sup>2</sup>) x 1000 mm/m = 0.000000447 mm per year<br />
<br />
In other words, not even close to the average increase of 3.2 mm per year. That's assuming that ALL of the accumulated mass is water. The highest percentage of water in meteors is Cl chondrites at 22%. This means that the actual rise in ocean levels due to accretion is at most 0.0000000984<sup> </sup>mm/year—and given the percentage of water in most meteorites, that rate is actually far lower.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Claim</b>: "<span id="bc_0_26b+seedDjfWD" kind="d"> Perhaps, your majesty, you can
comment on these things without first lopping of my head, but then,
you'd be out of character, wouldn't you?"</span></blockquote>
<b>Response</b>: Nice attempt at snark. Next time, though, please educate yourself a bit before commenting. Then no one would feel the need to lop your head off.Jim Milkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02513589560600319701noreply@blogger.com2