This map shows how temperature over the land and oceans during June through August varied from the 1960-1991 base period. There must be one of those lonely blue dots right over Marc Morano’s house. Otherwise, how to explain his insistence that the globe is cooling when it’s plastered with all those red dots?
Another email came in from Marc Morano’s Climate Depot today, replete with breathless Drudgesque headlines about how global warming is a fraud, and how the globe is cooling.
So I had a look at the latest report from NOAA’s Climatic Diagnostics Center, and here’s what it says:
For the year to date, the combined global land and ocean surface temperature of 14.5 °C (58.3 °F) tied with 2003 as the fifth-warmest January-August period on record. This value is 0.55°C (0.99°F) above the 20th century average.
Moreover, it looks like we’ve just been through the third warmest summer on record. And looking at August alone, the combined land and ocean global temperature was the second highest on record, after 1998.
Of course, whether it’s the fifth warmest, the third warmest or the first warmest, it doesn’t really matter much. Climate scientists say that to find a meaningful trend you must look over the course of several decades. And when you do that, the overall rising trend in temperatures is simply undeniable:
Climate skeptics may want to get out from under those blue dots and take a look at what’s really happening.
This thing has 14 Comments
Hi Tom,
Remember, weather is not climate!
You are looking at a very short time frame, are we down to months now? Skeptics are criticized for looking at last decade or so of global temps, but now you are promoting month to month?
Let’s keep it simple. Here is a very unbiased analysis by Chip Knappenberger on the last decades global temps. I think you and your readers would enjoy the analysis.
A Cherry-Picker’s Guide to Temperature Trends (down, flat–even up)
http://masterresource.org/?p=5240
By the way, my article from yesterday did not really deal with global cooling at all, it was a media analysis of how even the mainstream media is now bailing on the “science is settled” claims. See: Losing Their Religion: 2009 officially declared year the media lost their faith in man-made global warming fears - Http://www.climatedepot.com/a/3310/Losing-Their-Religion-2009-officially-declared-year-the-media-lost-their-faith-in-manmade-global-warming-fears
I am optimistic that the media has finally come around on this issue and will have vastly improved coverage.
Sincrely,
Marc
Marc: Thanks for the Knappenberger link. It is quite interesting. But all of this is just a distraction from what I said toward the end of my post: “Of course, whether it’s the fifth warmest, the third warmest or the first warmest, it doesn’t really matter much. Climate scientists say that to find a meaningful trend you must look over the course of several decades. And when you do that, the overall rising trend in temperatures is simply undeniable.”
Do you accept the long-term trend and are you simply arguing that this is it — the time when the trend finally turned around? Or is that temperature anomaly plot I posted simply another manifestation of the conspiracy by evil climate scientists to bring down the New World Order on us? (Forgive me. I couldn’t resist. Maybe I’ve caught an hysteria infection from Phelim McAleer…)
I think you are trying to ignore physics to push a political agenda. Because you believe fervently in the free market, I suspect that you could never accept that human-induced global warming is real. If you did, you’d probably have to admit that coordinated international action was essential — and that would shake your political philosophy to the core.
As for me, I trust physics over my political leanings — and I would be the first to jump for joy if it turned out that we didn’t understand the physics as well as we thought and so you turned out to be right. (If you do, I’ll buy you a martini. But we’ll be old men, because we’ll have to wait awhile to be sure of the trend!)
Since the CRU doesn’t release its raw data or methodology for others to verify the claims in this article are completely meaningless.
A few more points — the Earth has a surface area of approx. 200 million sq. miles and an atmosphere several miles thick. The measurement of small changes in the heat content of the atmosphere is not trivial. The so-called “global surface temperatures” which are are often quoted and used as a proxy for changes in atmospheric heat content aren’t really very good — firstly, the data set used is ridiculously small — ca. from 1000 - 7000 surface weather stations and a few hundred? ocean readings. Furthermore, the data used for the temperature ‘determination’ are a convenience set and not a randomly selected set — so use of statistics to manipulate it are meaningless. One can go on further about the poor siting of weather stations, accuracy of readings, political influences in reported temperatures, urban heat island effects, …… The point is when someone makes statements such as this year was the 3rd warmest or 5th warmest or whatever in the last 150 years (based on CRU) they are full of balderdash.
I agree that this year would be a great year to have vastly improved climate coverage. Environmental journalists have been far too kind to climate disruption skeptics, providing Singer, Avery, et al far more airplay than their thoroughly discredited science deserves. I don’t expect profit-motivated media owners to change their demands for a false sense of balance in their employee’s reporting, however.
Old Chemist, there was a paper a while back that analyzed the urban heat island effect and found that it wasn’t anywhere near as much of a problem as previously thought. Here’s the link: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/36231/title/Dont_blame_the_cities
Excuse me, wrong (but related) link. This is the actual one: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008JD009916.shtml
When warming started, it did not skyrocket. Therefore I would assume when it starts to cool, it doesn’t fall off the cliff. But continue to sell hard, you’re losing clients.
Keith: With all due respect, I don’t “sell,” and I don’t have “clients.” I do my best to report on the science and write about it for non-scientists, both here in the blog (where I can take certain liberties with tone), and in various forms of conventional journalism. It’s fine if you don’t care for what I report. But I would simply ask that you do not imply venal motives to what I do.
Full disclosure Tom, I had to go to Merriam-Webster, for Venal. Good word though, I’m going to use it in my next Scrabble match. While I was there, I looked up “sell”, 5b:to persuade or influence to a course of action or to the acceptance of something,(that fits). Also I checked out client, 2a: a person who engages the professional advice or services of another (that fits). So I wasn’t implying venal motives after all. It is entertaining reading your reporting bro.
Hi Tom
Welcome back.
Try this link for an informative analysis which also features your second graphic:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/10/09/how-long-is-a-long-temperature-history/
Further down the page there are also some good data on Australia which contrasts with the information presented in your first graphic.
G
That Knappenberger cherry-picker’s guide isn’t terribly helpful; and I daresay, it gets cherry picking wrong. Here’s my post on the cherry picking fallacy.
http://cruelmistress.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/cherry-ping-pon/
Before you decide we are in a warming trend based on the last 100 years of data and your graphic, take a look at:
http://www.smhi.se/content/1/c6/02/50/31/attatchments/upps_www.pdf
and
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/Epica-vostok-grip-40kyr.png
WIth a little longer baseline the “accidental cherry pick” of mid 1800s evaporates into a very slow cooling trend with a ripple in it of about 60 years duration. “30 year climate” is an oxymoron.
E.M.Smith of “chiefio.wordpress.com” as in the above comment.
Hi E.M.: Thank you for sharing these links and participating in the discussion.
One question: Do you think that a temperature record from a single station in Sweden somehow upsets a conclusion — based on many, many temperature stations and satellite observations around the entire globe — that the Earth is warming?
Concerning the GRIP, EPICA and Vostok ice core records, I believe the point you may be implying is that during the Holocene, temperatures have been cooling ever so slightly for thousands of years, indicating that we are actually sliding into a new ice age. For sure, my paleoclimatologist friends tell me that one positive outcome of our current experiment with the climate system is that we might just avoid the next ice age. (Mile-thick ice sheets covering lots of the Northern Hemisphere would not be too pleasant…) But the problem is that we are essentially driving the car with blindfolds on, so we have no idea whether we will drive off the road and crash. Actually, I take that back. I think any reasonable person would conclude that if you drive a car at high speed with blinders on the likelihood of driving off the road and crashing is pretty high.
Perhaps more to your specific point, the problem with the ice core graph is that the resolution is so coarse that any warming trend from the onset of industrialization cannot be clearly discerned (although the Greenland core seems to show an ever-so-slight uptick right near the present time).
And if one of the points you wanted to make with that graph is that Earth has produced dramatic swings in climate that have had profound impacts on life on Earth, you are absolutely correct. In fact, one of the most sudden and dramatic episodes of global warming in the geologic record occurred 55 million years ago — obviously with no intervention from Homo sapiens. (I’m referring to the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.) It led to mass extinctions, but also set the stage for the evolution of modern primates, one line of which spawned a species that is occasionally capable of intelligent and civil discourse about these issues (particularly in a blog called CEJournal). But just because the climate has swung dramatically from warm to cold and back again all by itself does not mean that humans have not caused the Earth’s average temperature to rise. Neither of the graphs that you have provided is evidence against that conclusion.
Hi Tom
“One question: Do you think that a temperature record from a single station in Sweden somehow upsets a conclusion — based on many, many temperature stations and satellite observations around the entire globe — that the Earth is warming?”
So is each one of those dots in your graphic a representation of a set of thermometer readings? If not, where does it come from?
G