Temperature adjustments: simmering science scandal ?

Weather station [image credit: Peter West/National Science Foundation]

Long-time critic of climate alarmism Christopher Booker has no doubt what the answer should be in his latest piece at the Telegraph:

When future generations look back on the global-warming scare of the past 30 years, nothing will shock them more than the extent to which the official temperature records – on which the entire panic ultimately rested – were systematically “adjusted” to show the Earth as having warmed much more than the actual data justified.

Two weeks ago, under the headline “How we are being tricked by flawed data on global warming”, I wrote about Paul Homewood, who, on his Notalotofpeopleknowthat blog, had checked the published temperature graphs for three weather stations in Paraguay against the temperatures that had originally been recorded. In each instance, the actual trend of 60 years of data had been dramatically reversed, so that a cooling trend was changed to one that showed a marked warming.

NASA: Being COY With OCO CO2 Data

Recntly, NASA released data from the OCO satellite borne instument measuring CO2 emissions across the globe. The December data with a map of the Earth’s rainforests in the image below clearly shows where most CO2 is being emitted.

But looking at NASA’s ‘Earth Now’ page for CO2, you wouldn’t recognise the true situation.

Celestial light and earthshine

This paper is about adding a further layer of correction to earthshine measurements and therefore albedo determination by terrestrial based observations.

Influence of celestial light on lunar surface brightness determinations: Application to earthshine studies
P. Thejll, H. Gleisner, C. Flynn
A&A 573 A131 (2015)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201424824
(open access with registration)

ABSTRACT

Aims. We consider the influence of celestial-sphere brightness on determinations of terrestrial albedo from earthshine intensity
measurements. In particular, the contributions from zodiacal light and starlight are considered.

…

Results. We find that celestial-sphere surface brightness can be so large that a considerable and unacceptable error level would have
an impact on half of typical earthshine-based albedo-determinations if left unaccounted for. Considering the empirical uncertainty on
ZL, we show that almost all our earthshine data can be used if a sky correction is made. In real observations we find up to a 1% effect
on albedo results of correcting for the celestial brightness.
…

Dodwell’s surprising study of the obliquity of the ecliptic

Earth’s Axial Tilt, or Obliquity [Credit: Wikipedia]

This Atlantipedia report (reproduced below) from 2010 concerns research by English-born George Dodwell, who held the post of Government Astronomer for South Australia for 43 years (1909 – 1952) until his retirement. He came across a study by a Professor Drayson who cited ancient astronomical observations and put forward a revision to standard Earth precession theory which Dodwell found ‘untenable’, but he became interested in the data.

Dodwell: ‘it seemed to me worthwhile to trace out more clearly just how much, and why, the ancient and mediaeval observations of the obliquity of the ecliptic, on which Professor Drayson based his conclusions, differed from Newcomb’s internationally accepted formula for the secular, or age-long, variation of the obliquity. These observations went back to values given by Strabo, Proclus, Ptolemy, and Pappus in the early centuries of the Christian era. They indicated a consistent and increasing divergence in past ages from the values calculated by means of Newcomb’s formula.’ [bold added]

A nice result on sunshine computation

I am both pleased and perplexed by a result which raises more questions.

There are 4 traces on this plot.

This is the Chilbolton data shown a few days ago but now I have worked out more of the insolation computation. If you look at the type CNR4 pyranometer specification this is within accuracy. Water vapour value from a specialist instrument is shown as a guide to humidity change, not used in the computation.

Insolation, Koorin expedition and computing for clear air

A new facility here for creating clear air insolation data, without the more involved absorption effects or cloud, etc. needed some testing and so…

This plot appeared during July 2012[1] after Dr. Hans Jelbring made available hourly data from the Koorin Expedition to Daly Waters, Australia during the astral winter of 1974[2]. A new plot trace has been added, computed by a new dynamic language[3] library, a wrapper around an unaltered version of NREL SOLPOS[4]. This produces an output value for one point in time, the plots here were created by a program feeding in different parameters, producing a time series, all very simple.

This result is similar to a result with data from Chilbolton Observatory, England from a Kip & Zonnen CNR4 net pyranometer / pyrgeometer[5]. Around 22% of inward solar radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere in excess of that computed by SOLPOS.

Global temperature and missing heat whereabouts update

The plot below needs little explanation. The globally average surface temperature hasn’t warmed in over 18 years according to the RSS satellite dataset.

 

Now, Some say the surface hasn’t warmed because the ‘missing heat’ has gone into the oceans instead of warming the surface.However, if we look at ARGO; the best data we have for ocean heat content (OHC) (before it got reworked in 2010 by dropping buoys showing cooling from the dataset) – we see that Ocean Heat Content actually fell from 2003 to 2008:

Where else could the heat have ‘hidden’? Well, the warmists claim it went deeper than the bulk of the ARGO system measures – below 700m, where uncertainty rises dramatically. However, they offer no plausible explanation of how energy is transferred through a 700m deep COOLING layer, in defiance of the second law of thermodynamics.

Solar diameter measurement, new French facility, cycle 24

The size of the sun is of critical importance to solar studies yet this is poorly known, let alone if and how the size varies over time. Paper published this week in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Fig.1. Left: solar radius measurements (red symbols) made since the seventeenth century (Rozelot & Damiani 2012). The mean value of all these measurements is close to 960 arcsec. Right: focus on solar radius measurements made since 1970. …

Fig.2. Evolution of the solar radius variations over time for ground instruments (Solar Astrolabe, DORAYSOL and SODISMII monthly mean at 782.2 nm), balloon experiment (SDS), and space instrument (MDI) vs. daily sunspot number time-series. For each series, the mean has been
taken as reference value.

 

Ground-based measurements of the solar diameter during the rising phase of solar cycle 24
M. Meftah, T. Corbard, A. Irbah, R. Ikhlef, F. Morand, C. Renaud, A. Hauchecorne, P. Assus, J. Borgnino, B. Chauvineau, M. Crepel, F. Dalaudier, L. Damé, D. Djafer, M. Fodil, P. Lesueur, G. Poiet, M. Rouzé, A. Sarkissian, A.Ziad, and F. Laclare

Paper access is available with registration.

Solar hockey stick found by ‘The Hockeyschtick’

[credit: BBC]

‘What correlates with what’ may well be one of the key questions in climate matters.
Let’s see if any of this can shed light on any mysteries…

‘Solar physicist Dr. Leif Svalgaard has revised his reconstruction of sunspot observations over the past 400 years from 1611-2013.’

Unsettled science: Uncertainty around the continuum absorption of water vapour

H/T to ‘intrepid Wanders‘ for this repost from the Uni of Reading meteorology section. No settled science here, and lab model derived from far IR wavebands used in climate models and energy budget diagrams rests on a bunch of assumptions. Who knew? Obviously not Trenberth, who has no error bounds on his energy budget. So along with cloud microphysics getting the predicted absorption of energy by clouds wrong by a large margin, we have big uncertainty in the spectral absorption lines of water vapour. Ho hum. Business-as-usual in climate science land.

Water vapour continuum

  In addition to the spectral lines, it has long been recognized that water vapour possesses a continuum absorption which varies relatively slowly with wavelength and pervades the entire IR and microwave spectral region. This has a marked impact on the Earth’s radiation balance with consequences for understanding present day weather and climate and predicting climate change. It is also important for remote sensing of the Earth and its atmosphere.

  Discovered by Hettner (1918) as a low-frequency component of water vapour absorption in atmospheric transparency window 8-14 mcr, this phenomenon remained unexplained for 20 years, until Elsasser (1938) suggested that the continuum is an accumulated far-wingcontribution of strong water vapour spectral lines from neighbour bands. This hypothesis was generally accepted until the end of 70th years when the strong quadratic pressure dependence of the continuum absorption (which could not be explained by Lorentz (1906) line profile) as well as the strong negative temperature dependence have been detected (Bignell et al.,1963;Penner and Varanasi,1967). In this connection Penner and Varanasi (1967) and Varanasi et al. (1968) suggested that the main contribution to the self-continuum could be caused not by far wings of water monomer lines but rather by water dimers. Similar assumption was made also by Viktorova and Zhevakin (1967) for microwave spectral region.

Extreme UV recorded in Bolivia 2003 , index 43

Record solar UV irradiance in the tropical Andes
Nathalie A. Cabrol, Uwe Feister, Donat-Peter Häder, Helmut Piazena, Edmond A. Grin and Andreas Klein

High elevation, thin ozone layer, and clear sky produce intense ultraviolet (UV) radiation in the tropical Andes. Recent models suggest that tropical stratospheric ozone will slightly decrease in the coming decades, potentially resulting in more UV anomalies. Data collected between 4300 and 5916 m above sea level (asl) in Bolivia show how this trend could dramatically impact surface solar irradiance. During 61 days, two Eldonet dosimeters recorded extreme UV-B irradiance equivalent to a UV index (UVI) of 43.3, which is the highest ground value ever reported. If they become more common, events of this magnitude may have societal and ecological implications, which make understanding the process leading to their generation critical. Our data show that this event and other major UV spikes were consistent with rising UV-B/UV-A ratios in the days to hours preceding the spikes, trajectories of negative ozone anomalies (NOAs), and radiative transfer modeling.

Front. Environ. Sci., 08 July 2014 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2014.00019

OCO finally makes orbit.

OCO2, NASA’s co2 measuring platform is in orbit. Third time lucky. Bits of the original ended up in the southern ocean. The replacement’s launch was aborted several times due to technical hitches. This from El Reg:

Artists rendition of OCO2 – Image Credit: NASA

NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2 (OCO-2) not only managed to lift off today, it also achieved successful separation from its booster stack and got into orbit.

The satellite – which will study the absorption of sunlight by carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere – is the third attempt to get a CO2-measuring craft into space by the American space agency. The OCO-1 in 2009 and follow-up Glory in 2011 both failed when they weren’t able to complete their first stage separation.

Laying the Points Out

tallbloke:

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Brandon’s take on the temperature record debacle

Originally posted on Izuru:

There has been a lot of hoopla about supposed problems in the surface temperature record recently. Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t seem to understand what the hoopla is actually about. I think the problem is people have focused too much on rhetoric and too little on actual information. I’d like to try to reverse that.

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The madness of the US War on Carbon Dioxide

[image credit: grist.org]

James Delingpole highlights the absurdity of US ‘climate policy’ – $4 trillion for what?

In a week when confidence in sea surface temperatures as a measure of ‘climate change’ seems to have gone out of the window, the eye-watering cost of trying to influence the planet’s weather systems beggars belief.

“climate models violate the ‘basic physics’ of the 2nd law of thermodynamics”

Reblog from The Hockey Schtick, new paper in Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society. Pesky radiosonde data again. Maybe the balloon has gone up on models Climate Sim World.

New paper finds climate models violate the ‘basic physics’ of the 2nd law of thermodynamics
A paper published today in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society finds climate models violate the ‘basic physics’ of the Second Law of Thermodynamics with respect to simulating conventional turbulent heat flow, one of the most important mechanisms of heat transfer in the atmosphere.

According to the authors,
“Numerical models of the atmosphere should fulfil fundamental physical laws. The Second Law of thermodynamics is associated with positive local entropy production and dissipation of available energy.”
i.e. entropy always increases and energy always dissipates per the second law of thermodynamics. …

Link to THE HOCKEY SCHTICK and paywalled paper.

Part 1, Central England Temperature timeseries and Manley papers

tallbloke:

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Repost from Tim Channon’s blog.

Originally posted on Deadal Earth:

This large article was composed some time ago, last edit Oct 2013 it seems but left unpublished, one of dozens.

There is a disturbing story behind the current CET dataset as will be revealed in Part 2. The above plot sets the scene, a straight illustration of the whole dataset with timeline.

This blog article is intended as a backgrounder covering a variety of information including links to official copies of the two historic Manley papers which are the basis of the CET dataset. In my opinion CET is misrepresented as more instrument based than it is in reality. More reasonably it is an expert opinion on weather.

---

The Met Office CET web page[1] mentions the whole data then plays pea and thimble silently showing a plot of the later subset. Reason to be revealed in part 2.

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Surface thermal balance, Central Southern England

This is first art from access to the Chilbolton Observatory datasets.

Note: autoscaling has been allowed.

Data source Chilbolton Observatory and BADC archive [Ref1]

Zombie Science: Gergis et al disinterred for remake

My thanks to Tony Thomas for giving the talkshop the exclusive of his take on this breaking news item:

Gergis findings re-surface – the Hockey Stick lives!

By Tony Thomas 31-03-2014

Hello again Hockey Stick, goodbye global Medieval Warming Period.

These are the conclusions of a multi-proxy 1000-year climate reconstruction published today (March 31) in Nature Climate Change, by Dr Raphael Neukom of the Oeschger Centre at the University of Bern, and Dr Joelle Gergis of the University of Melbourne.

Dr  Neukom   summed up for a University of Melbourne press release:

The study showed the ‘Medieval Warm Period’, as identified in some European chronicles, was a regional phenomenon. 

During the same period, temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere were only average. Our study revealed it was not a common climate event that many people have previously assumed.

The paper claims that in 99.7 percent of the results, the warmest decade of the millennium occurred after 1970.

The press release says,“And surprisingly, only twice over the entire past millennium have both hemispheres simultaneously shown extreme temperatures.

One of these occasions was a global cold period in the 17th century; the other was the current warming phase”.”[1]

The playing field has a natural tilt climate modelers won’t see

Twitter climate debate warrior ‘Ima Disbelievin‘ sent me this short article which is worth a post. It’s a followup to the Tony Thomas article a week or so back which covered the story about the American Physical Society APS reworking their position statement on climate change and global warming.

In the American Physical Science’s transcript of discussions relating to their upcoming revision of their position statement on Anthropogenic Climate Change, Dr. Collins states:

So, we build climate models. We assume when we construct those models that the net energy balance of the planet was identically zero or effectively zero at the start of industrialization.

Tony Thomas: Finally, Some Real Climate Science

Guest Post emailed to me  by Tony Thomas, originally published at Quadrant online:

Finally, Some Real Climate Science
Tony Thomas 18-3-2014

The American Physical Society has been amongst the loudest alarmist organisations whipping up hysteria about CO2, but a review of its position that has placed three sceptics on the six-member investigatory panel strongly suggests the tide has turned.

The 50,000-strong American body of physicists, the American Physical Society (APS), seems to be turning significantly sceptical on climate alarmism.

The same APS put out a formal statement in 2007 adding its voice to the alarmist hue and cry. That statement caused resignations of some of its top physicists (including 1973 Nobel Prize winner Ivar Giaever and Hal Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara).[1] The APS was forced by 2010 to add some humiliating clarifications but retained the original statement that the evidence for global warming was ‘incontrovertible’.[2]

By its statutes, the APS must review such policy statements each half-decade and that scheduled review is now under way, overseen by the APS President Malcolm Beasley.

The review, run by the society’s Panel on Public Affairs, includes four powerful shocks for the alarmist science establishment.[3]