pjc
February 13th, 2008, 07:59
Found on the 'net and based on data from the National Climatic Data Center
Over the past year, a remarkable cooling trend has brought ocean surface temperatures down to temperatures reached in the 1940s. Now, land temperatures have followed. Planet-wide land temperatures were actually significantly *below* the 20th-century average. This is not a refutation of global warming by an attempt to debate how sound the alarmists' dataset is. This is based on the same data sets used by Al Gore, Dr. Hansen, and the IPCC: Global Warming is, for now, history.
Global temperatures are about the coolest measured since 1994, about the same as the phenomenally large "La Nina" of 2000. By 1994, climatologists were warning of global warming, but there was a frank rebuttal: the earth was no warmer, yet, than it had been in the 1940s. There had been warming from about 1900 to 1944, but this was before significant amounts of green house gases were released. From the 1940s through the 1970s, the globe actually cooled slightly. And from around 1980 to the early 1990s, there had been some slight warming, according to problematic earth-bound sensors anyway, back to the peaks reached in 1944.
Then it happened: The mid 90s were progressively warmer (we're talking hundredths of degrees, mind you.) But 1998 saw a massive warming event called "El Nino." The following year, "La Nina" brought temperatures back to where they had been a few years earlier, but at the start of the new millennium, temperatures rose to near the heights of El Nino... and stayed there.
Finally, the predictions of global warming seemed to be coming true. Plus, even though the warming had been only a quarter of a degree since 1944, they had statistical grounds for asserting the warming was accelerating, and were soon predicting that the next century could see temperatures soar as much as ten degrees.
When the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changed issued their report in early 2007, they had noted that 2006 was the second warmest year in history. The hockey stick presentation the IPCC had used to assert that the current temperatures were warmer than the Medieval Warm period of a millennium ago was quickly shown to be completely fraudulent; A statistical model had been conconcted which made it impossible to demonstrate historic warm periods, no matter what the data entered was.
But even before that, I had said to myself, "But still... there's an El Nino again now, and the Earth is still no warmer than it was a decade ago. How is that consistent with an accelerating warm trend?"
The statistics available were ambiguous. On the one hand, the Earth was no warmer than it had been a decade earlier. On the other hand, what had been a phenomenal aberration in 1998 had become commonplace in the new millennium. So I started to watch the new data emerge, using ocean surface temperatures because these generated less statistical noise and showed clearer trends.
A La Nina event (which causes cool temperatures in the Pacific) developed, as was no surprise. (I'd almost say these could be thought of as rebounding events after a La Nina, except earth scientists of all stripes would clobber me with ways in which this analogy was misleading... it's not actually known why La Nina events follow El Nino events.)
The La Nina event of 2007 brought statistical balance to the El Nino event of 2006. Although I may have grabbed some attention with vanity headlines declaring the oceans were cooling, my reports to presented this data as merely demonstrating that there had been no accelerating of global warming.
This was certainly big news: If no acceleration takes place, global warming is harmless. And additional degree Celsius over the next century would probably be a good thing, and the increased carbon dioxide which caused it would have beneficial effects to agriculture which would far exceed what few negative effects might occur.
But now something far more startling has happened: The El Nino has dissipated, but global ocean waters have still continued to cool. By this, I mean that the sea surface temperatures, globally averaged and adjusted for seasonal variations, have declined. What's more, land temperatures, which had shown a greater warming trend over the past few decades, plummeted, from a near-record high last February (according to some data sets, it was a record high), to temperatures considerably below the 20th century average this past January.
I will publish another report when the February data is complete. So far, it appears that most of the Indian ocean, the second largest ocean in the world, has suddenly cooled. And the rest of the world's oceans don't seem to rebounding in temperature any. So I'm expecting I'll have still further cooling to report. -----------------
Global land temperatures (land station monitoring): ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/monthly.land.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat
Global ocean temperatures (sea surface): ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/monthly.ocean.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat
Total Global temperatures (weighted average of the above tables):
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/monthly.land_and_ocean.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat
Over the past year, a remarkable cooling trend has brought ocean surface temperatures down to temperatures reached in the 1940s. Now, land temperatures have followed. Planet-wide land temperatures were actually significantly *below* the 20th-century average. This is not a refutation of global warming by an attempt to debate how sound the alarmists' dataset is. This is based on the same data sets used by Al Gore, Dr. Hansen, and the IPCC: Global Warming is, for now, history.
Global temperatures are about the coolest measured since 1994, about the same as the phenomenally large "La Nina" of 2000. By 1994, climatologists were warning of global warming, but there was a frank rebuttal: the earth was no warmer, yet, than it had been in the 1940s. There had been warming from about 1900 to 1944, but this was before significant amounts of green house gases were released. From the 1940s through the 1970s, the globe actually cooled slightly. And from around 1980 to the early 1990s, there had been some slight warming, according to problematic earth-bound sensors anyway, back to the peaks reached in 1944.
Then it happened: The mid 90s were progressively warmer (we're talking hundredths of degrees, mind you.) But 1998 saw a massive warming event called "El Nino." The following year, "La Nina" brought temperatures back to where they had been a few years earlier, but at the start of the new millennium, temperatures rose to near the heights of El Nino... and stayed there.
Finally, the predictions of global warming seemed to be coming true. Plus, even though the warming had been only a quarter of a degree since 1944, they had statistical grounds for asserting the warming was accelerating, and were soon predicting that the next century could see temperatures soar as much as ten degrees.
When the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changed issued their report in early 2007, they had noted that 2006 was the second warmest year in history. The hockey stick presentation the IPCC had used to assert that the current temperatures were warmer than the Medieval Warm period of a millennium ago was quickly shown to be completely fraudulent; A statistical model had been conconcted which made it impossible to demonstrate historic warm periods, no matter what the data entered was.
But even before that, I had said to myself, "But still... there's an El Nino again now, and the Earth is still no warmer than it was a decade ago. How is that consistent with an accelerating warm trend?"
The statistics available were ambiguous. On the one hand, the Earth was no warmer than it had been a decade earlier. On the other hand, what had been a phenomenal aberration in 1998 had become commonplace in the new millennium. So I started to watch the new data emerge, using ocean surface temperatures because these generated less statistical noise and showed clearer trends.
A La Nina event (which causes cool temperatures in the Pacific) developed, as was no surprise. (I'd almost say these could be thought of as rebounding events after a La Nina, except earth scientists of all stripes would clobber me with ways in which this analogy was misleading... it's not actually known why La Nina events follow El Nino events.)
The La Nina event of 2007 brought statistical balance to the El Nino event of 2006. Although I may have grabbed some attention with vanity headlines declaring the oceans were cooling, my reports to presented this data as merely demonstrating that there had been no accelerating of global warming.
This was certainly big news: If no acceleration takes place, global warming is harmless. And additional degree Celsius over the next century would probably be a good thing, and the increased carbon dioxide which caused it would have beneficial effects to agriculture which would far exceed what few negative effects might occur.
But now something far more startling has happened: The El Nino has dissipated, but global ocean waters have still continued to cool. By this, I mean that the sea surface temperatures, globally averaged and adjusted for seasonal variations, have declined. What's more, land temperatures, which had shown a greater warming trend over the past few decades, plummeted, from a near-record high last February (according to some data sets, it was a record high), to temperatures considerably below the 20th century average this past January.
I will publish another report when the February data is complete. So far, it appears that most of the Indian ocean, the second largest ocean in the world, has suddenly cooled. And the rest of the world's oceans don't seem to rebounding in temperature any. So I'm expecting I'll have still further cooling to report. -----------------
Global land temperatures (land station monitoring): ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/monthly.land.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat
Global ocean temperatures (sea surface): ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/monthly.ocean.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat
Total Global temperatures (weighted average of the above tables):
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/monthly.land_and_ocean.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat