GKSS scientists refute argument of climate skeptics (?)

Posted on January 12, 2009

A strange “refutation”. Nobody denies that there was a small warming recorded for the Northern hemisphere in the second half of the 20th century. The question is what caused that recorded warming. The sun, heat-island effects, other cyclic factors or random factors? Although they are by definition unlikely, “runs” in random sequences are not at all unknown. Such runs are one of the main reasons why gamblers stay hooked. And the big question is the reliability of the aggregated ground-based thermometer measurements. I append below two emailed comments on that from Lord Monckton and Vincent Gray

Between 1880 and 2006 the average global annual temperature was about 15øC. However, in the years after 1990 the frequency of years when this average value was exceeded increased. The GKSS Research Centre asks: is it an accident that the warmest 13 years were observed after 1990, or does this increased frequency indicate an external influence?

With the help of the so called ,Monte-Carlo-Simulation” the coastal researchers Dr. Eduardo Zorita and Professor Hans von Storch at the GKSS-Research Centre together with Professor Thomas Stocker from the University of Bern estimated that it is extremely unlikely that the frequency of warm record years after 1990 could be an accident and concluded that it is rather influenced by a external driver.

The fact that the 13 warmest years since 1880 could have occurred by accident after 1990 corresponds to a likelihood of no more than 1:10 000. These likelihood can be illustrated by using the game of chance “heads or tails”: the likelihood is the same as 14 heads in a row.

,In order to understand and statistically analyse the climate system and its interaction between the ocean, land, atmosphere and human activity, the comparison with a game of chance is no longer sufficient. The natural sequence of warm and cold years no longer functions according to the simple principle of ,zero or one”, explains the GKSS scientist Dr. Eduardo Zorita about the challenges of his calculations, because the climate system possesses some inertia.

An example: After a warm year milder years tend to follow, since the oceans have stored some heat. This natural inertia must also be included in the calculations. “Our study is pure statistical nature and can not attribute the increase of warm years to individual factors, but is in full agreement with the results of the IPCC that the increased emission of green house gases is mainly responsible for the most recent global warming”, says Zorita in summary.

Source

Monckton:

As Joe d’Aleo has pointed out, 1990 was the year when the former Soviet Union fell apart, taking very large numbers of rural stations out of the temperature datasets. Given the way the data are averaged to produce a single global anomaly each month or year, the effect of removing large numbers of rural stations with small temperature increases was to cause a sudden and startling jump in temperatures in 1990. Anthony Watts’ work on temperature stations has shown what a nonsense they are, and Ross McKitrick has shown that all of the datasets, even the satellite ones, are showing temperature increase patterns that correlate in a statistically significant way with economic development patterns [Evidence of heat output direct from human activities, not of a greenhouse effect]. So what is really being measured is the direct output of heat by the exothermic activities of humankind, rather than the probably-negligible radiative forcing from greenhouse-gas enrichment.

My purpose in reviewing all this is to ask whether anyone knows enough about the compilation of the temperature records to say whether the heat-island effects are subtracted, in an attempt to restore the readings that might have occurred if the region around the station had not become urbanized, or redistributed, so as to reflect the fact that all that direct heat output – amplified by net-positive temperature feedbacks just as radiatively-forced temperature increases would be – is actually going into the atmosphere. I did an energy budget calculation based on this exothermic activity once, and got quite a surprise: it accounted for 0.1-0.2 C of the increase in global temperatures since 1980 – not too far out of line with McKitrick’s finding. If I’m right about this, then the world is addressing the wrong problem, and all those windmills will actually be adding to “global warming”, as well as killing off millions of rare birds.

Gray

I have made a particular study of this subject but am not able to give a complete answer. I deal with some of it in my “Global Scam” paper where I show that the main papers quoted by the IPCC justifying a belief that the urban effect is negligible are fraudulent. I deduce from this that they either make no adjustment at present or a very small one. On the other hand in the Brohan et al paper, which is the last comprehensive one, they claim to apply the “homogenization” technique of the US GHCN who have a whole set of corrections, most of which could not possibly apply anywhere else but the USA, and which Peterson fraudulently claimed did not include an urbanization correction. The largest correction he found was the “Time of Observation Bias” which arises because they measure the maximum and minimum once a day at a different time in different places, and sometimes in the same place, referring to a different 24 hours for each.

On the other hand there have been places that measure temperatures several times a day for some years,. Canada for one, and there are now many which measure continuously by an automatic system, If they want to be compatible with the past they must surely forget everything except the maximum and minimum, but do they?

There has been no warming in New Zealand since 1950 and if you believe Christchurch, the hottest year was 1917. The “corrected” temperature for the USA shows that the maximum was 1934.

Many fairly reliable local records show no overall warming. The record I was given from China, claimed to have been “homogenized” and also shows no overall warming. The puzzling feature of their graph is that it includes a subset from Hadley that agrees with theirs. So the “warming” of Hadley may result exclusively from the unreliable records from the major part of the world which cannot have the benefits of “homogenization”; including of course, the Russians where they closed down urban stations,and stopped the wages of the operatives so they were reluctant to get up and make the readings on a cold day.

The publicity that Roger Pielke Sr and his meteorologists and Antony Watts and his Google Earth ground level, about the inadequacy of siting of met instruments have put them on their mettle. They now actually let us see photographs of their sites. This may be one reason why the global temperature records from the surface and from the satellites seem to be mysteriously merging to give the same answers. Stauffer et al are merely carrying out a last ditch stand before everybody wakes up to what has been going on.

Trying to find out the exact circumstances under which meteorological measurements were carried out in obscure parts of the world over the past 100 years is likely to be a bit futile. All we know is they seem to have got their act together.

Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. For a daily survey of Australian politics, see AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me (John Ray) here

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post