December 10, 2009

• Has the Earth been cooling DRAMATICALLY over the last decade?

  A popular line amongst climate change skeptics has been that the Earth has been cooling over the last decade. They imply minimally when they say this that 1) global warming might not be really happening and 2) climate scientists don’t know what they are talking about.  And lying beneath this is the general assumption that maybe it’s all a big conspiracy. The Government is lying and manipulating us again!

  They don’t get this stuff from nowhere of course. Irresponsible Articles and Headlines like these lead them on:
  What Global Warming?
  Has global warming stopped?
  What ever happened to global warming?
  2008 will be the coolest year of the decade

  Now there are several competing claims here. Generally they say something like the years 2007 and 2008 have been inordinately cold, or colder than predicted, following a leveling off of the temperature since 1998. From that they conclude that global warming has come to an end. Others extrapolate further and say something like in my subject line that the Earth has cooled DRAMATICALLY over the last decade.

  It would be totally reasonable here for me to go into an explanation of how the years 2007 and 2008 are just two data points and mean almost nothing in terms of the overall analysis of whether global warming is happening. Just like you don’t look at the temperature between January 15 and January 16 in Alaska to conclude whether or not Global Warming is happening, neither can you use a single year, two years, or even a decade in isolation to conclusively prove whether or not global warming is happening. That might be part of an a analysis that shows global warming has slowed or stopped but it alone is far from conclusive.

  I could talk about how what matters is not the reading, but the trends. If the trend is upward overall a few dips here and there don’t change your overall results. Others have explained this quite well. I could even go into a detailed explanation of why we see those dips and how it’s a multivariate system and how we should even expect to see dips in temperature over time as we analyze the temperature record. I could even explain that any dip in temperature around 2007 and 2008 can well be understood in the context of the La Nina event that occurred and that the inordinately high temperature in 1998 is likewise explained by the el Nino event of that time period.

  I could make all those arguments, but in this case I don’t have to. The statements being made about the cooling of the Earth over the last decade are simply blatantly false.

  This is what the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies’ data shows as global temperature variations:

  Year               Annual Mean C

  1998       .56

  2008       .43        

  WOW it dropped a whole 0.13!!  That’s how the Climate skeptics are looking at the data.

  Now let’s look at the ACTUAL data:

  Year              Annual_Mean     5_Year Mean

   1980       .18       .12
   1981       .26       .17
   1982       .05       .17
   1983       .26       .14
   1984       .09       .11
   1985       .05       .16
   1986       .13       .17
   1987       .26       .19
   1988       .31       .25
   1989       .20       .30
   1990       .38       .27
   1991       .35       .24
   1992       .13       .25
   1993       .14       .25
   1994       .24       .23
   1995       .38       .29
   1996       .29       .37
   1997       .40       .39
   1998       .56       .38
   1999       .32       .42
   2000       .33       .45
   2001       .48       .45
   2002       .56       .48
   2003       .55       .54
   2004       .48       .55
   2005       .63       .55
   2006       .54       .53
   2007       .57       .54
   2008       .43         *
  

  Does 2008 seem THAT far out of place now? It’s higher than the temperature in 1997, in 1999, and in 2000. Indeed justl look at this data it’s higher than EVERY year between 1980 and 2000 EXCEPT for 1998. Gee I wonder why Climate Skeptics choose to use 1998 as their comparison point?

  In fact it’s much worse than that. Take a look at all the years in the decade beginning in 2000 and compare them to all the years in the decade beginning in 1990 and all the years in the decade beginning in 1980. Just eyeballing it you should be able to see that they are significantly higher. And if you look at the five year averages columns you can pretty much see them steadily increasing with only small variations.

  And just doing the obvious math. The average from 1980-1989 is 0.18. The average from 1990-1999 is 0.32. And the average from 2000-2008 is 0.51.   2009 would have to be a REALLY cold year to make much of a difference in the average temperature for the current decade. But according again to Goddard 2009 for the 10 month average so far is already showing a 0.56 suggesting it probably won’t substantially deviate from the rest of the data this decade.  What this seems to show is, exactly as has been being said by scientists for the last two decades a steady warming trend overall.

  In fact I only included the data from 1980 but what I’ve shown holds for the entire recorded temperature record. The years 2000-2009 will almost certainly be the hottest decade on record. How different a statement is that from dramatically cooling!?!?

  Need more? How about the fact that the year 2008 was the 10th hottest year on record? How about the fact that, EIGHT of the ten hottest years on record between 1999 and 2008. Obviously only 1999 and 2000 don’t make the cut.

  Actually take a good look at 1999 and 2000. They were really low weren’t they? Compared to 1998 before it they were inordinately low compared to 1997 and 1998 and even 1995. What if people had said back in 2000 that yup that’s it Global Warming is DONE. Not happening. Myth.

  They’d have CLEARLY been wrong right? Anybody can see that. Likewise judging all of climate science by 2008 is idiotic.

  I can tell you’re still not convinced. I know what you’re thinking. That’s NASA GISS Data! NASA never does ANYTHING right! They can’t even get a space ship up in the air and besides the moon landing was obviously a cynical fraud! A conspiracy to get us to spend money on special toothpastes and support Democrats and all that crap.

  But oh wait a minute. Let’s look at the other temperature records. As the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media explains here,  all FIVE records show the same warming trend.

  In addition to Goddard surface temperature records are also done by the Uninted Kingdom’s Hadley Center.  1999-2008. Hadley’s records show slightly cooler than Goddard’s because they use different assumptions. Namely the fact that there are no climate temperature monitoring stations in the Arctic Ocean can be handled in two ways. You can either simply ignore that part of the globe or you can try to extrapolate from nearby stations what the temperature there is likely to be.  The understanding of Climate Science suggests that the Arctic Ocean will experience some of the greatest warming of anywhere on the planet so Goddard chose to extrapolate. Hadley chose to do a more conservative estimate and leave that data out.

  In SPITE of this difference, the UK comes up with pretty much the exact same conclusions. 8 of the 10 hottest years on record occur from 1999 to 2008.  The NCDC also does temperature records and they  found the exact same thing.

  The Satellite Record is only slightly off. There are two major satellite measures, University of Alabama, Huntsville, (UAH) and Remote Sensing Systems (RSS).  Both of these show SEVEN of the ten hottest years on record occurring from 1999 to 2008.  The one that falls off is 2008 which just barely made the top ten in the Goddard and Hadley estimates.

  So there you have it. All resources agree yes 2008 was somewhat cooler than 2001-2007 but still overall the entire decade was extremely hot compared to historical averages.  Could 2008 be the start of some kind of a new cooling trend? Sure. It’s possible. It’d be a surprise that we don’t see it in the first ten months of 2009, but it’s still possible. IT’s even possible that we’ll see some cooling in 2010 or 2011. Whether or not that data meshes with the models would then have to be honestly analyzed.

  My point, however, is this. The fact that the year 2008 alone is being publicized as definitive proof that you should be doubtful about Global Warming is as clear a case of deception as is possible to illustrate.  At the very minimum you would be honest enough to mention the rest of the warming trend and wait until you have some more definitive data over several years before over reacting.

  And the fact that people are using JUST 2008′s data to suggest that the ENTIRE decade is not just leveling off but cooling and not just cooling but cooling DRAMATICALLY is a grotesquely unconscionable distortion of the data. It’s clear then that those doing it either have no familiarity with the data whatsoever and have no intention of finding out what the data says, or are clearly deliberately and knowingly distorting the data to serve their own ends.

  And I bet you thought it was the scientists who were the ones lying to you….

  For more resources consider the following:
  http://climateprogress.org/2008/12/07/very-warm-2008-makes-this-hottest-decade-in-recorded-history-by-far/
  http://climateprogress.org/2008/09/03/sorry-deniers-hockey-stick-gets-longer-stronger-earth-hotter-now-than-in-past-2000-years/
  http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-cooling-january-2007-to-january-2008.htm
  http://climateprogress.org/2007/12/11/nasa-hansen-2007-second-warmest-year-ever-warmest-year-likely-by-2010/
  http://climateprogress.org/2008/08/21/debunking-the-myth-global-warming-stopped-in-1998/
  http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
  http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/01/uncertainty-noise-and-the-art-of-model-data-comparison/
  http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/a-warming-pause/
  http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/12/2008-temperature-summaries-and-spin/
  http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/mind-the-gap/
  http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/04/model-data-comparison-lesson-2/
  http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2009/08/warmest-by-fair-margin/
  http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global

  • 8:02 pm
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