Bishop Hill Climate cuttings 8
Sep 2, 2007 Climate: Cuttings This is the first Climate Cuttings since the end of July. During August, I've not spent much time on the web, what with moving house and getting settled in to the new home. The long-awaited improvement in the weather has been a factor too. So all in all, this is not as thorough a review of what's been going on as previous editions but here's what I've picked up on.
The big news was NASA's having to correct their US temperature figures when Steve McIntyre pointed out that they were using inconsistent data sets. The news hit the global media in a big way. Real Climate said that the effect on the global temperature record was small, the US accounting for only 2% of the earth's surface. Of course the error might have been spotted years ago if the climate community had adhered to basic scientific standards and made their data and code available. Mcintyre pointed out that the real importance of this cock-up is that it makes a nonsense of NASA GISS's claims that their error correcting procedures can fix bad data in the surface stations record. In fact they have been introducing errors themselves.
Surfacestations.org has now surveyed 25% of the US. Critics are still accusing him of cherry picking. Anthony Watts presented preliminary findings at a UCAR conference. Nobody threw rotten fruit at him. Eli Rabett started posting a "cool station of the day" showing sites where there were A/C units but a cooling trend. After posting two such stations he appears to have run out of examples.
A new study claimed that statistical analysis of temperature and greenhouse gas emissions confirmed the AGW hypothesis. Lies, damned lies, and statistical analysis I hear you cry? Freeman Dyson certainly thinks so - he reckons the whole thing is exaggerated.
A new paper by Stephen Schwartz of the Brookhaven National Laboratory says that the Earth is not as sensitive to carbon dioxide as had previously been thought.
Researchers at the University of Alabama-Huntsville have published evidence supporting Richard Lindzen's iris theory, which says that when the Earth's surface warms, cirrus clouds open up to let the heat out. They have analysed data on rainfall and cloud cover and the heat escaping to space. They find a strong negative feedbank, confirming Lindzen's theory and directly contradicting the alarmist case.
Commenters at a weather bulletin board noticed that the record of historic Arctic sea ice had mysteriously changed. There is, of course, no surprise about the direction of the change. Orwellian airbrushing of the past seems to be quite popular among AGW enthusiasts.
The Met Office issued the results of its new forecast model. It appears that temperatures will stabilise for a few years before rising again from 2009. The University of Colorado's Roger Pielke Snr calls it a misuse of science, as nobody has a model with any forecasting skill at these timescales. Cynics might wonder whether carbon dioxide emissions are expected to slow down for a couple of years. It might also occur to them that solar activity should increase from 2009.
And finally, the aforementioned Roger Pielke Snr has decided to call it a day at Climate Science. His insights will be much missed.
Reader Comments (4)
Wanna bet?
Of course, you still have not shown falsified trends in the surface station record which is the basic weakness of what Anthony Watt is doing. There is talk of air conditioners, but no indication of how they change the temperature readings beyond hand waving. Me, I'm just ear waving in the opposite direction. The net is that the distribution will be a bit wider, but that says nothing about the trend of the averages integrated over a number of stations.
As to the handwaving, it's probably a bit unfair to ask for a demonstration of the microsite issues affecting the trend when the research is still ongoing. All we can possibly get at the moment is handwaving. It's still lead to some interesting discussions and some interesting ear-waving from the other side. (I don't criticise you for this, you notice)
If, once the work is complete, Anthony demonstrates that the temperature trend is different in stations which meet the siting guidelines then we have learnt something useful.