You can forecast "hotter" and have about a 50-50 chance of being correct for any random period of time. How many models forecast these temperatures? It seem like the answer is most didn't come very close.
If you look at it since 1964 and require your random period to be at least 1 year long then you have a much better than 50-50 chance of your hotter forecast being correct and if you look at any period longer than 11 years your chances are 100%.
0.04 degrees was the difference between 2014 and the next hottest year. That's not greater than the margin of error so it's impossible to say unequivocally that 2014 was hottest. As far as normal, what is normal to you? If you take normal as the mid-20th century (1951-1980) the anomaly was about 0.65 degrees C (1.17F) and every year since 2001 has been at least 0.5C above the 51-80 mean. If you're young and you think normal is the average temperature in the 2000's then yes, 2014 isn't that great a jump but that's a pretty short term view of the issue.
Whether 2014 is the warmest in the instrument record or not is beside the point. The continued warming is unequivocal. The only reason that a "hiatus" can be claimed by some is because 1998 was such an extreme outlier year.
Tamino over at Open Mind did a graph of the linear temperature trend since 1970 against the year to year variability. 2014 is right on the linear temperature trend line which shows temperatures are increasing without evidence of the increases slowing down. It's just year to year variability that gives you an excuse to think it isn't.
Another way to look at it is to take 10 year slices rather than year to year. That's more of a climate centric view than a year to year weather centric view. Here is a bar graph of warming anomalies in decadal slices since the start of the instrument record. Below is a text table of the results for those who don't want to click the link:
GISTemp Decadal Global Surface Temperature
(Anomaly from 1950-1981 mean)
Decade_______Anomaly
1884-1893_____-0.26
1894-1903_____-0.25
1904-1913_____-0.40
1914-1923_____-0.28
1924-1933_____-0.17
1934-1943_____+0.00
1944-1953_____-0.03
1954-1963_____-0.02
1964-1973_____-0.02
1974-1983_____+0.10
1984-1993_____+0.24
1994-2003_____+0.46
2004-2014_____+0.59
It's easy to take a short period and make arguments about it but when you look at it in a way that filters out the short term noise like year to year variability the picture becomes much clearer.
Even if you do your seeding over the open ocean it's going to drift over the land sooner or later. The other problem with cooling the planet by increasing the albedo (which is what atmospheric seeding is doing) is that it does nothing about ocean acidification which ultimately may be a bigger problem than global warming.
The Environmentalist position: "We should immediately liquidate 95% of the population and the remainder should go back to living in mud huts, spare no expense!"
I think a more accurate statement of the environmentalist position (at least this environmentalist's) is that if we don't do something to make our civilization more sustainable then it could collapse leading to the death of over half of our population with many of the remaining living in mud huts. It's not a goal but a consequence of ignoring the looming problems.
Bu-bu-but think of the children.
Seriously, some people do care about the lives of their children and grandchildren.
Whether the globe is warming or not is not in question. The empirical evidence shows that it is warming. Maybe we can argue some about whether it is mainly due to anthropogenic influences or not but the warming in unequivocal.
There is no hypothesis or theory of global warming, just hypotheses and theory on climate. The finding of anthropogenic causes for global warming is an emergent property of current climate theory.
The reason for the amendment is not to convince anyone. It's to put people on record about the subject so it can be used in the future as ammunition against them.
There are hundreds (maybe thousands) of Public Utility Districts in the country that provide electricity and telephone service to their customers often with lower cost and higher quality of service than the for profit competitors. They have boards elected from the customer base and their only focus is providing the service to their customers. I see no reason that can't work for internet connections as well.
The question is why do you think they would be stupid enough to even consider doing that when they know we could turn their country into a parking lot in response? It's been centuries since Iran/Persia launched an offensive war.
And with regenerative braking even the brakes are likely to last much longer on electric vehicles.
As to temp records not being calced the same way every year, they are frequently averaged differently and from year to year they'll exclude or include different stations. I can get information to this effect if you really doubt it. But it is common practice and why I don't trust anything unless they start with raw PUBLISHED data and then explain their methodology for averaging and then show the results. Such that someone could take their input data, do the calculations as stated, and arrive at the same results. If that can't be done with published information then the derived result is suspect.
Berkeley Earth starts with raw data that they publish and they explain their methodology. It's all on their web site for you to use. Their results are not significantly different than the other major temperature records which increases my confidence in all of them.
Yes, I saw the BE quote. It doesn't really do anything to support or not support mainstream climate science. Again 2014 is just one year in the big picture.
Think again. Not only do you need to convert the raw data into temperatures you also have to make adjustments for orbital drift and decay, sensor decay, changes in instruments, time of observations, the effects of clouds, precipitation, ice, and high elevations. It's not some simple formula you plug the data in. You may well be able to do that all yourself but it's going to be complicated and time consuming.
As to your article... you're citing a Psychology professor... do you know that?
Yes, I know Lewandowsky is a psychology professor but the lead author on the paper is a climate scientist, James Risbey. Attacking Lewandowsky for being a psych professor is just an ad hominem attack. Say something about the science in the paper. Say something about the fact that when they selected individual model runs that happened by coincidence to match up well with real world ENSO observations the temperature output of the models matched up well with real world observations.
I have a hard time trusting historical temperature records because they are not calculated every year in the same way. Furthermore, every single weather station is not audited to make sure that it is has the same conditions over time. For example, some stations have been moved without attribution.
I'm sorry but you're going to have to provide some evidence that temperature records are not calculated the same every year. As I know it they are calculated the same and if there is a change in methodology they go back and recalculate all of the previous years so they have a consistent record. Anything else wouldn't make sense scientifically.
There are 5 major surface temperature records that are independent of each other. HADCRUT, NASA, NOAA, JMA and Berkeley Earth. While the first 4 are selective of the temperature stations they use Berkeley Earth uses every single station they can. All 5 records are in substantial agreement.
Go read up on the Berkeley Earth group. They are independent of government, industry or philanthropic ventures. They post all of their raw data and analysis code online. They use 5 times more data than other groups. Yet their results are still in agreement with the other major temperature records. After you investigate them come back and tell me what you think they're doing wrong.
The only thing that is worrying about the sats is the way they're calibrated which also sometimes changes on a year to year basis which is again questionable. I'd rather look at a raw output of the system over time without modification and then see their suggested calibration. Absent that... I'm a little too paranoid about the whole thing to just take it on faith that everything was done properly.
As I said the raw output of the satellites is measurements of microwave emissions of O2. I have no doubt the raw data is available but it takes knowledge to be able to use it. It takes a lot of processing to convert that raw data into temperatures.
I've read that piece by Judith Curry before. I'm not particularly impressed. She spins things from her POV. I have some respect for Dr. Curry as she has the training to understand climate science. She stands out as a contrarian to mainstream climate science and it's good to have people like her (and Roy Spencer to name another) to make it more likely to catch egregious errors. Yet the contrarians haven't been able to make much headway against the mainstream.
As I said in the previous response 2014 is just another year in the data that makes up climate. Human nature primes us to take note of record events even if they're not particularly meaningful by themselves. I'm guilty of that myself from time to time.
You're still ignoring the Shaping Tomorrows World article.
As to 2014 being the warmest year on record, apparently that is in direct opposition to what the satellites say about it.
Yes, 2014 won't be the warmest in the satellites records but it's hyperbole to say it's in direct opposition to the surface records. The two are complimentary. They are two different approaches to Earthly temperatures. But satellites don't measure surface temperatures like thermometers do so they're not quite the same thing. Satellites measure temperatures in different zones of the atmosphere. The lower troposphere channel measures the atmosphere up to 4-5 km.
You shouldn't think satellite measurements are some pristine thing. Like the surface temperature measurements they have their issues that have to be dealt with. Satellites actually measure a proxy for temperature, the microwave emissions of oxygen molecules. Those are processed to produce a temperature with adjustments for sensor deterioration, orbital drift and decay, and every 10 years or so a new satellite replacing the old ones. A couple of those satellite replacements had little temporal overlap making inter-calibration difficult. Also, clouds and precipitation affect the satellite measurements.
In a blog on "The Recent Slowing in the Rise of Global Temperatures", Carl Mears of the RSS team said " A similar, but stronger case can be made using surface temperature datasets, which I consider to be more reliable than satellite datasets (they certainly agree with each other better than the various satellite datasets do!)."
A final thought on comparing satellite and surface temperature measurements, since they are all within the uncertainty ranges of each other I don't think it's scientifically possible to say they disagree with each other. Maybe RSS is outside of that range but it's also the obvious outlier among all of them. What's more likely, RSS is right or all of the others are right?
As to how any climate model is supposed to account for the data... you're just giving an argument for not being able to model the climate which means you can't make predictions.
That's why they call the model output projections instead of predictions. The projections are what would happen if the real world followed what the model had. That Shaping Tomorrows World article that you are apparently ignoring shows what happens when you cherry pick model runs that just happened to match the real world more closely. The output matches the real world better.
2014 is just another year in the long run picture but it is also a way to tweak people who's short term thinking leads them to thing the "pause" is significant.
As to the constant warming, I think there was a long pause in the 70s and the 80s didn't go up much. The big jump was in the 90s and without that your numbers don't look as good.
Here is the graph of Global Land-Ocean Temperature Index from 1880 to 2013. 1964 was the coldest year since 1933 (although 1950 and 1556 came close). The only year after that that even comes close is 1976. Since then there have been occasional pauses but the long term trend is warming. In the 1980's there was a drop in temperatures after the eruption of El Chichon in 1982 and in the 1990's a drop after the eruption of Pinatubo in 1991 and the models do rather well in modeling that drop in temperature after a major eruption. I think it's a reasonable statement to say it's been warming since the 1960s.
Keep in mind, they're trying to boil temperature differences of a tenth to a hundred of a degree over the whole surface of the planet over at least a year. That is a LOT of averaging. And they don't average the numbers together the same way every year.
Whenever someone brings precision up I point out baseball batting averages. The measurements are either a hit (1) or an out (0) yet they commonly express batting averages to the thousandths. The do average the global temperatures the same way every year and if they make a change in their methodology they go back and redo all the older ones.
The probability for math to get biased is huge. Especially since getting your hands on raw data is almost impossible. I've tried repeatedly and every time I get something other then raw data if I get data at all.
I agree with you, it frustrating to track down the raw data. But the Berkeley Earth group managed to use mostly raw data and their findings are substantially the same as the other temperature records. This page at Berkeley Earth is mostly raw data I believe. They talk about the data seat and there adjustments here.
All told, the sat data is probably the best way to go with it because it is one source of data. The problem from that again is that raw data from the satellite is literally impossible to get so far as I've found. If you have the raw measurements from space that would be something to look at.. I've read a few articles about how they've recalibrated the the data a few times. Effectively changing past records retroactively. Say what you will, you can see how that is troubling if you're trying to audit the data.
Of course the raw data from the satellites is measurements of microwave emissions of O2. You'd have to convert that to temperatures taking into account all of the issues I mentioned above. As far as recalibrating doesn't it make sense if you discover an error to correct it in all of the records the error affects?
As to what is reasonable and climate variability, I think you have to use the same time scale standards when you talk about what supports your case as well as what threatens your case
Humans naturally tend to think short term and pay attention to the current big story. I'm guilty of that myself at times but I think I'm getting better. Of course warming since 1964 is 50 years of warming now.
So you're saying the pause would have to last for 30 years for you to take note?
Pretty much. Now that 2014 has been declared the warmest year on record by 3 of the major temperature records it's difficult to call it a pause. The slope of warming may be lower than in the 1980's and 1990's but it has continued warming.
There has been a lot of research into reasons for the change in slope of warming that has come up with a number of hypotheses. It appears to me that it's a combination of a number of those.
More aerosols in the atmosphere from industrialization, particularly in SE Asia and from a number of moderately large volcanic eruptions.
ENSO being dominated by La Nina's that cause more heat to be aborbed by the oceans. The 2011/2012 La Nina was particularly strong but it was still the warmest La Nina year ever recorded. The PDO going into a cool phase.
And the lowest solar cycle in over 100 years had a slight effect. Put all of that together and you have a slower warming trend for a while.
Now I ask you, how is any climate model supposed to model any of that ahead of time?
The issue is that the warming happens often in 10 year cycles followed by ten years of cooling or flat temperatures.
Where did you get that? I don't think the temperature record supports that hypothesis very well. There has been constant warming since the 1960's (not all of it due to global warming).
Previously climate models treated the ocean as a sink for water only.
GCM's (General Circulation Models or Global Climate Models) have been atmosphere/ocean coupled models since the early 1990's. Coupled models take into account the heat exchange between atmosphere and ocean.
And I feel like that is very easy to do in climate science because of the disorganized way they manage data.
I think climate data is pretty well organized. But it's organized for scientific use, not the general public.
Your climate models have to be tweaked every time they're used BY the people making them.
They are not tweaked to match temperatures. If there is a significant discrepancy between model output and observations that may point to areas where they need to improve the physics of the model but it also may just be a case of natural variability temporarily overwhelming the warming signal. As is obvious climate models are not perfect. Don't you think it's reasonable to make improvements in them as your information about the processes that make up the climate improve?
As I pointed out above there are a number of factors that climate modelers can't know ahead of time so it's unreasonable to expect them to be able to take them into account when they produce their projections. Yet they can have major effects over the short term.
You either didn't read or didn't understand my reference to the Risby, et. al. paper or the article by one of the authors about it. Here it is again. "Well-estimated global warming by climate models"
Any program which runs right is obsolete.
