I’ll be largely out of touch for the next week, so Anthony Watts and his traveling donkey show will have one less visitor. If I can figure out how to open comments for this post, I’ll do so.
Wott's Up With That?
A response to Climate Change disinformation at wattsupwiththat.com
Wott's Up With That? 
“Cold snap freezes South America – beaches whitened, some areas experience snow for the first time in living memory.” (WUWT,July20,2010)
“WARMPCPT”……….”Warmpcpt” is a new word, defined as the situation of increased precipitation (rain or snow) that results from increased evaporation from warmer oceans. Although sometimes associated with Anthropogenic Global Warming, it is actually just the inevitable consequence of any kind of ocean warming.
“Warmpcpt” is just a first-prototype. Need suggestions for a prounceable alternative.
MEEHL’s MESSAGE……….Meehl etal,2009 found that in the United States the ratio of record highs to record lows has increased from (pre GW) the expected 1-to-1 to the current 2-to-1. Although the proportion of cold temperature records is projected to continue to decline, it never goes to zero.
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2009/maxmin.jsp
So WUWT’s successors will always be able to find a cold temperature story, even though the record snowfall portion gets trivialized into the last paragraph.
Have a good holiday, you certainly deserve it.
Old mr denial himself, truly knows how to invent AGW science BS nonsense not grounded in any form of reality in the real world on a daily basis.
Worry not, Ben, Just inserted this into the Goddard input receptacle re: Satellites are missing.
Is this a like-for-like comparison? The GISTEMP plot seems to be the 5 year mean, so the last few years flat-line around 0.5.
Year/Annual/5yr Mean
2005 .62 .55
2006 .54 .53
2007 .57 .55
2008 .43 *
2009 .57 *
2010 * *
Whereas the average of the monthly GISTEMP readings so far for 2010 is 0.71, still below Scenario B, but rather closer than the c0.5C implied by the graph. (Baselines are also slightly different, but the effect is minor, about 0.06C). Also just zero-ing two noisy series in the same year could introduce a bias, better to look at trends, as the RC article did. The data is available…..
The model used 32 years ago did indeed overestimate climate sensitivity – it had a value of about 4C, a more up to date figure would be around 3C, this has a limited impact in the first few decades, but would cause the model to over-estimate after that – just what we are observing. Hansen said as much in 2005:
Close agreement of observed temperature change with simulations for the most realistic climate forcing (scenario B) is accidental, given the large unforced variability in both model and real world. Indeed, moderate overestimate of global warming is likely because the sensitivity of the model used (12), 4.2°C for doubled CO2, is larger than our current estimate for actual climate sensitivity, which is 3 1°C for doubledCO2, based mainly on paleoclimate data.
To see model projections for the lower sensitivity see the TAR. Since the 1990 baseline, the nearest scenario to actual emissions has been A1F1, the corresponding projection was for a rise in global temperatures of 0.32C or 0.16C/decade. The 1990-2010 linear trend in the UAH data was 0.164C.
The satellites are missing” (WUWT,July21,2010)
To Ben and Phil……….That Steve is low can also be read directly from the RC graph, and James Hansen’s 2006 graph. Their actual “Land-Ocean” temperature anomalies overlay the “C” curve in 2005.
“…the model had a climate sensitivity…around 4 deg C for a doubling of CO2. This is a little higher than what would be our best guess (~3 degC) based on observations, but is within the standard range (2 to 4.5 degC).” RC
The skeptics who now criticize these 1988 forecasts would have then been denying that global temperatures would be increasing. And would be continuing their denials for many more years.
It’s time for everyone to take a visit to WUWT and read the most recent post “Explaining misconceptions on ‘The Greenhouse Effect’” by Ben Herman and Roger A. Pielke Sr.
How many here would have ever thought that you would read the following posted with Anthony Watts’s approval:
“Our purpose here was to merely point out that the addition of absorbing gases into the atmosphere must result in warming, contrary to some research currently circulating that says to the contrary.”
Read that again: must result in warming. Too bad they don’t single out the “research currently circulating” that WUWT’s readers should now avoid. That would help set the record straight.
Reading the comments, there are many WUWT readers who get a failing grade in science. WUWT and its readers attacks posts at websites like RealClimate, but RealClimate’s comments don’t get fundamental science wrong the way the WUWT readers do.
So, if I were Herman or Pielke my next step would be to follow up this post with one that directly addresses those errors and sets those readers straight. I would expect that from a website that claims to be about “puzzling things in … science” and a post titled “Explaining misconceptions on ‘The Greenhouse Effect.’” But my money is on that their next post will ignore the errors and move on to something else.
Dennis, I don’t suppose you’re running a book on that. A nice intellectual recreation might be to consider how on earth you’d work out the odds to offer.
Mentioned in “Premature chill in the Arctic” (WUWT,July19,2010)
Re:……………WUWT’s SEA ICE PAGE
CRYOSPHERE TODAY……….WUWT continues to avoid showing CT’s current Arctic ‘sea ice concentration’ map. The large solo map is actually just an enlargement of the smaller comparison-tool ‘sea ice extent’ map shown below it.
Because of the different color code used, interior lower-concentration areas are not seen. Also, “sea ice concentrations less than 30% are not displayed in these images.”
For the real CT ‘sea ice concentration’ map in an Arctic multiple-graph-set, consider neven’s.
http://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/
DMI……….Also, per a comment, the WUWT-shown DMI Sea Surface Temperature map is much less informative than its alternative-selection, the DMI Sea Surface Temperature(anomalies) map.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/satellite/index.uk.php
“GISS Polar Interpolation” (WUWT, July 28, 2010)
This is the fourth (July 18, 25, 26 & 28) in Steve’s current series of mis-statements about GISS and Arctic temperatures. The first series (May 17, 18, 20 & 21; June 3 & 5) has already been discussed, individually, at Wottsupwiththat.
SECTION SEVEN for STUBBORN STEVE……….In the Hansen paper that Steve linked to, only Section 7 is relevant.
Section 7: “Comparison of GISS, NCDC and HadCRUT Analyses”
In “Current GISS Global Surface Temperature Analysis” (draft 0319)
Click to access gistemp2010_draft0319.pdf
In the updated version (“Global Surface Temperature,” draft 0601) Section 7 is essentially unchanged.
AGAIN……….The alternative to estimating Arctic temperature change is to EXCLUDE the Arctic region from global averages.
In HadCRUT, which does this, the Arctic region is in effect given the hemispheric average.
MORE JAMES HANSEN………. “(1) insight into why the GISS analysis yields 2005 as the warmest calendar year, while the HadCRUT analysis has 1998 as the warmest year. The main factor is our inclusion of estimated temperature change for the Arctic region. We note that SST change cannot be used as a measure of surface air temperature change in regions of sea ice, and that surface air temperature is the quantity of interest…”
“HadCrut Is Hotting-up-adjustments over a few months” (WUWT,July28,2010)
SECTION SEVEN SERIES no.11……….Relabeling. Instead of no.5 in the current series, we’ll call this no.11 in Steve’s Section Seven series.
The growing discrepancy between HadCrut and GISTEMP is to be expected. HadCrut is low largely because it EXCLUDES that part of the globe that is warming the most: the Arctic.
Don’t blame me for repeating myself. He started it!
UK MET OFFICE ACCEPTS CRITICISM……….ECMWF says it’s too low.
http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/25/met-office-re-examine-of-climate-data-temperature-record/