The truth about global temperature data

[aoibhghaire]

Thorough, not thoroughly fabricated: The truth about global temperature data.

This particular article doesn't address long-term historical data, but
focuses on the adjustments needed for the changing instruments &
measurement techniques over the last 200 years.

This is a 3-page article.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/...rature-data/1/

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by aoibhghaire (here)
Thorough, not thoroughly fabricated: The truth about global temperature data.

This particular article doesn't address long-term historical data, but
focuses on the adjustments needed for the changing instruments &
measurement techniques over the last 200 years.

This is a 3-page article.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/...rature-data/1/

That's a good article, thanks. And yes, thorough, for sure.

This one graph doesn't do justice to the very detailed (and readable) article at all, but it kind of shows in one glance what's really happening.

Note that these are the TEMPERATURES. The article is not about the CAUSE.



(Personal note: as a mountaineer, this has always been obvious. I saw with my own eyes (and feet) throughout the late 90s and early 2000s that the snow was steadily disappearing in Scotland in winter. Several ski resorts had to close — there was no snow! — and the ice climbing conditions on the high mountains were far warmer. In the Alps, glaciers have been visibly receding. There really is something happening that's both fast and alarming.)

[wnlight]

Global Warming??? With my scientific bent, I had to look at this contentious discussion over the years. True, the article in this thread has no error bars nor statistical analysis yet it is supported by many studies in the scientific community that DO have valid analysis. I have come to accept that the reported world-wide warming in recent years is true. However, ...

We are in error to connect this warming trend with anthropomorphic cause. There are very convincing studies that show that historically significant cold spells were preceded by short spells of warming. There is much data supporting this concept in regard to the mini ice age of the last millennia. Personally, I have had mixed feelings about the global warming perception because ...

If we humans would clean up our act in the use of petroleum and coal as a fuel, we could live in a cleaner, safer, and happier environment. Such a social change in how we obtain our energy would not make much difference in the temperature of the Earth. So what? Yet it still bugs me to see the propagation of these global warming lies.

[Hervé]

This guy has some very valid objections regarding the validity of these "averages"":

Nobel Laureate Smashes Global Warming Hoax – Video

September 13, 2015 Robert

How do you get an average global temperature when there are only eight thermometers in Antarctica?

This is an extremely important video.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=TCy_UOjEir0

When the American Physical Society, of which he was a long-time member, announced that the evidence for global warming was “incontrovertible,” Nobel Laureate Ivar Giaever resigned.

“The only answer to that,” says Giaever, was that 'I resigned.'

“Global warming has really become a new religion, because you can’t discuss it, ” says Giaever “It’s like the Catholic Church. There are a lot of incontrovertible truths in the Catholic Church, I’m sure.”

How do you get an average temperature when there are only eight thermometers at the South Pole?

Look at where the temperatures are measured, says Giaever. The United States is practically covered. But there are only eight thermometers at the South Pole according to NASA.

“That’s all they have!…. Eight thermometers! …. And it has never been as cold at the South Pole as it is now. There’s more ice than there ever has been.”

Only eight thermometers in Antarctica, a continent more than twice the size of the entire contiguous United States!

And we’re supposed to believe the global warming lies?

[13th Warrior]

 “That’s all they have!…. Eight thermometers! …. And it has never been as cold at the South Pole as it is now. There’s more ice than there everhas been.”

Interesting quote; how can he be sure it's colder with more ice...since there are so few thermometers there?

[Ellisa]

I was interested to read of Bill Ryan's personal experience as a mountaineer. I am no mountaineer (!) but I have a personal experience of Climate Change that is somewhat similar. When I was 18 (1958- that'a a long time ago) I walked through a tunnel in the Rhone Glacier in Switzerland. It was wonderful, quite long and a frosty blue shiny light coming through the ice- truly unforgettable. There is now no tunnel, no lovely frosty light and , I think, no proper Rhone Glacier. It's melted! Anyone who walks in the bush, sails, farms or is outdoors a bit (even gardeners) can tell anecdotally that the local conditions are changing. Surely we can admit warming is real- it's the cause that is controversial. By the time we are finished arguing it will probably be obvious!

[13th Warrior]

I believe he's talking about satellite date of the antarctic sea ice increasing.

This is what i was eluding to...

The same weather satellites used to monitor the ice pack can also monitor regional temperature fluctuations....how many ground based thermometers are needed?

And in other news, the march towards global tyranny continues as the laser focus of the Avalon community was momentarily distracted by the debate on global temperature...

Agreed!

[Hervé]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
[...]
(Personal note: as a mountaineer, this has always been obvious. I saw with my own eyes (and feet) throughout the late 90s and early 2000s that the snow was steadily disappearing in Scotland in winter. Several ski resorts had to close — there was no snow! — and the ice climbing conditions on the high mountains were far warmer. In the Alps, glaciers have been visibly receding. There really is something happening that's both fast and alarming.)[/I]

Like any weather... that's changing too:

Posted by Hervé (here)
Scottish snow
A blog for the chionophiles of Britain
@theiaincameron

#12 - August snow survey 2015

At long last I have the complete figures in from the August 2015 snow survey that was conducted on the 21st and 22nd of that month. There were a couple of discrepancies up until recently, but I have now ironed these out.

The total number of patches counted across Scotland was 678 (see table below). This is way more than double the amount for 2014, and hundreds more than any year since the survey was started in 2008.

Totals since 2008

2008 - 34
2009 - 35
2010 - 34
2011 - 36
2012 - 72
2013 - 81
2014 - 281
2015 - 678

We caution that this total, though very impressive, is likely to be too low. Given the amount of snow that was present all over the hills it’s almost certain that some were missed. However, the patches listed here are confirmed ones, and that’s what we have to go with.

Thanks are due to a lot of people who assisted in this. Everyone who went out did so at their own expense of time and cost. Without these folk the survey would have been impossible.

A small percentage of these patches will survive until winter (typically about 8% of the August total survives). Whether 8% of the August total will survive (~54 patches) is debatable. We will have to keep watching.

A cold summer in Scotland has led to this incredible natural phenomena with remaining ice and snow forming a network of icy tunnels and caves clinging to the edge of mountains

[Hervé]

As for Antarctica:

Antarctica, is it melting or not? Man-made global warming can't explain this climate paradox

Aeneas Georg
Sott.net, Thu, 15 May 2014 08:34 CDT

In the last week or so a number of articles have surfaced concerning scientific observations made in Antarctica. When comparing these articles, it's hard to not be a little puzzled as to what is going on. One even gets the impression that climate scientists don't talk much to each other but rather stay within their own specific field of research. Before we examine these articles, let's take a quick look at Antarctica. According to Wikipedia:

At 14.0 million km2 (5.4 million sq mi), it is the fifth-largest continent in area after Asia, Africa, North America, and South America. For comparison, Antarctica is nearly twice the size of Australia.

About 98% of Antarctica is covered by the Antarctic ice sheet, a sheet of ice averaging at least 1.6 km (1.0 mi) thick. The continent has about 90% of the world's ice (and thereby about 70% of the world's fresh water).

Furthermore the Antarctic ice sheet is divided into the West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS) and the East Antarctic ice sheet (EAIS), something which is often missed in the mainstream media, where promoting the man-made global warming idea is all-important. Here is an image of Antarctica:

© Wikipedia

I couldn't find the exact percentage but as we can see, the WAIS is by far the smaller of the two ice sheets, accounting for no more than 20%. There are important differences between the two ice sheets. From Wikipedia again:

In East Antarctica, the ice sheet rests on a major land mass, but in West Antarctica the bed can extend to more than 2,500 meters below sea level. Much of the land in this area would be seabed if the ice sheet were not there.

Earlier this week a report claimed: Antarctica's ice melt is unstoppable:

Massive regions of the ice sheet that makes up West Antarctica have begun collapsing in a process that scientists have worried about for decades and fear is likely unstoppable, two separate teams of scientists said on Monday.

A Guardian headline specified that Western Antarctic ice sheet collapse has already begun, scientists warn, with the subheading, "Two separate studies confirm loss of ice sheet is inevitable, and will cause up to 4 meters of additional sea-level rise."

The collapse of the Western Antarctica ice sheet is already under way and is unstoppable, two separate teams of scientists said on Monday.

The glaciers' retreat is being driven by climate change and is already causing sea-level rise at a much faster rate than scientists had anticipated.

The loss of the entire western Antarctica ice sheet could eventually cause up to 4 metres (13ft) of sea-level rise, devastating low-lying and coastal areas around the world. But the researchers said that even though such a rise could not be stopped, it is still several centuries off, and potentially up to 1,000 years away.

Making predictions and statements about something being "unstoppable", and sea level rises hundreds of years - if not thousand of years - into the future, is seems to be a little unscientific and more akin to saying what elicits the most institutional grants wishful crystal-gazing, especially given the fact that the current events are little understood.

WAIS may be melting, but the Guardian goes on to report that the larger EAIS is growing at a rate of about 60 gigatons per year:

A more recent estimate published in November 2012 and based on the GRACE data, as well as on an improved glacial isostatic adjustment model, indicates that the East Antarctica actually gained mass from 2002 to 2010 at a rate of 60 ± 13 Gt/y.

A separate report in the news a few days ago concerned record sea ice around Antarctica. So these are two different phenomena different teams of scientists are monitoring: ice levels on Antarctica (East vs West), and sea ice extent around Antarctica.

The two are most likely connected, something which the scientists appear reluctant to discuss because man-made global warming dictates that we see just melting ice.

According to this May 12th article in The Australian:

Antarctic sea ice has expanded to record levels for April, increasing by more than 110,000sq km a day last month to nine million square kilometres.

© National Snow and Ice Data Center

The National Snow and Ice Data Centre said the rapid expansion had continued into May and the seasonal cover was now bigger than the record "by a significant margin''.

"This exceeds the past record for the satellite era by about 320,000sq km, which was set in April 2008,'' the centre said. 

In other words, Antarctic sea ice is growing and has been above the long term average for some time. Have a look at today's status:

© University of Illinois

Antarctic sea ice has now been significantly above the satellite average level for 16 consecutive months.

What's clear is that there are no signs that Antarctica is 'melting' as a whole. That doesn't mean the studies cited above regarding melting of West Antarctica's ice sheets are bogus; just perhaps that too much effort has gone into 'fitting the facts around the policy'... When one only has a hammer, everything looks like a nail, as the saying goes.

So what can explain this paradox between observations in East and West Antarctica?

As mentioned earlier, with respect to WAIS, " the bed can extend to more than 2,500 m below sea level". As such it would also be vulnerable to what goes on in the depths. Wikipedia again:

In contrast to the melting of the Arctic sea ice, sea ice around Antarctica has expanded in recent years. The reasons for this are not fully understood, but suggestions include the climatic effects on ocean and atmospheric circulation of the ozone hole, and/or cooler ocean surface temperatures as the warming deep waters melt the ice shelves.

Now this last bit is interesting. It has been observed that deeper layers of the oceans have been warming in recent years. The IPCC has explained away the 'pause in global warming' with the idea that all the heat in the atmosphere that 'should' have warmed our little planet has 'pulled a fast one' by hiding in the deep oceans. Not only that, but in the course of doing that, this 'model-predicted atmospheric heat' cooled the top layers of the oceans on its way down. No mean feat!

An announcement made a few days ago is, I think, key to explaining what's really going on here. Yet another team of Antarctic researchers warned that an active volcano is threatening to erupt underneath the ice in West Antarctica:

Scientists had intended to use the seismograph machines to help in their efforts to weigh the ice sheet - only to find that a volcano was in fact forming underneath the ice.

Although an eruption would be unlikely to breach the ice - the accompanying heat could have an effect on the landscape

Volcanic activity was discovered around 30 miles from Antarctica's highest volcano, Mount Sidley, and although an eruption would be unlikely to breach the ice - the accompanying heat could have an effect on the landscape.

Even a sub-glacial eruption would still be able to melt ice, creating huge amounts of water which could flow beneath the ice and towards the sea - hastening the flow of the overlying ice and potentially speeding up the rate of ice sheet loss.

Volcanic activity was discovered around 30 miles from Antarctica's highest volcano, Mount Sidley

"Numerous volcanoes exist in Marie Byrd Land, a highland region of West Antarctica," said Amanda Lough, of Washington University in St Louis in the team's paper on the subject, published in the Nature Geoscience journal.

And this isn't the only active volcanic region under West Antarctica: another research team discovered a different active volcano in 2004. The authors of the Mount Sidley report frame underwater volcanoes in terms of 'compounding the effect of global warming', but what if they are the only , or most significant, reason for melting ice in West Antarctica?

One other piece of data concerning Antarctica has been in the news in the last few days. This time it concerns the Southern Winds:

"The Southern Ocean winds are now stronger than at any other time in the past 1,000 years," said the study's lead researcher Nerilie Abram of an ocean notorious for having some of the fiercest winds and largest waves on the planet.

"The strengthening of these winds has been particularly prominent over the past 70 years, and by combining our observations with climate models we can clearly link this to rising greenhouse gas levels."

The new research, which was published in the Nature Climate Change journal, explains why Antarctica is not warming as much as other continents.

The westerly winds, which do not touch the eastern parts of Antarctica but circle in the ocean around it, were trapping more of the cold air over the area as they strengthened, with the world's southernmost continent "stealing more of Australia's rainfall", Abram said.

"This is why Antarctica has bucked the trend. Every other continent is warming, and the Arctic is warming fastest of anywhere on earth," she said.

It's not just Antarctica bucking the trend, but the whole globe. In the last 17 years there has been no 'global warming'. As IPCC lead author Kevin Trenberth said: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't."

Yes, it is a travesty! Climate models are only as good as the assumptions they're based on. The authors of climate papers are trained to frame everything in terms of one factor: a carbon dioxide increase they attribute to human activity, which obscures awareness of being part of a much larger system that surely has multiple influences acting on the planet's complex climate.

Take this recent discovery, for example. Scientists were 'spooked' to learn that apparently simultaneous weather effects take place at both poles, the result (they think) of upper atmosphere 'teleconnections'. Noctilucent cloud intensity at the poles, it seems, is a precursor to changes in global weather patterns.

© NASA AIM

NASA Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) satellite image of Antarctica, showing night-shining (noctilucent) developing earlier than usual in 2013.

This discovery, in turn, was founded on the discovery a couple of years ago that one of the principal ingredients for noctilucent clouds is 'meteor smoke' from meteors entering Earth's atmosphere. Knowing that both noctilucent clouds and meteor fireballs are increasing in intensity and frequency, the way is open for scientists to connect the 'planet-wide-climate-change-dots' between the weak current solar cycle, loading of the atmosphere with meteor smoke a.k.a. comet dust, volcanoes erupting all over the place, and more earthquakes than ever before.

Could human activity be responsible for all this? Perhaps, but if it is true that we collectively play a key role, then it is in a far more fundamental way than runaway greenhouse gas by-products of our modern lifestyles. An upcoming book by SOTT.net Editor Pierre Lescaudron - Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection - explores the strong correlation between periods of authoritarian oppression and catastrophic, cosmically-induced natural disasters, reconciling modern science with ancient understanding that the human mind and states of collective human experience can influence cosmic and earthly phenomena.

Comment: See also:

Volcanic eruptions, rising CO2, boiling oceans, and why man-made global warming is not even wrong

[sdv]

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/...rature-data/1/

I have noticed with a wry smile headlines saying 2015 Hottest Year Ever! (Ever is a long, long time!)

Yes, this article uses science to show that temperatures are increasing, but 140 years is not a long time when you consider the entire history of Earth (I am referring to the graph near the bottom of the article). Earth changes do happen, with or without humans. It would be useful to at least have an estimate of how long this warming period will last, how hot it is going to get, and what follows it (mild Utopian temperatures or a big freeze?). Then it would be even more useful if human beings could work together to adapt to these changes and thrive nevertheless!