On January 16, 2008, Dr. James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Sciences (GISS) released the summation of temperature data for 2007 with apparently very little fanfare. Given the data collected by Dr. Hansen, the lack of fanfare itself might well be notable. But regardless, the data itself bears more public attention that it’s had.
2007 is now tied with 1998 as the second hottest year for global temperature in a century.
According to the the GISS 2007 summation press release online, all eight of the hottest years for global temperature have been since 1998, and 14 of the hottest years have been since 1990. The global temperature map (shown in image above - larger version available), the Arctic and Siberia had the greatest temperature increase, between 3 and 4 degrees Celsius. This heating was responsible for, or a direct result of, the smallest Arctic ice cap since records have been kept.
If you look closely at the eastern Pacific ocean in that map, though, you’ll notice a horizontal strip of blue right about the equator, indicating a strip of cooling. The 1998 temperature spike was caused by one of the hotter and bigger El Niños recorded - 2007 was as hot even though the Pacific Ocean had a La Niña cooling event instead. Not only that, but in 1998, total solar output was on its way up toward its solar maximum (a result of the solar sunspot cycle) instead of being pretty much at minimum solar irradiance (for this solar cycle) in 2007.
In other words, we had the second hottest year in the last century even though the sun’s output was low and the Pacific had a cooling La Niña event. Any bets what will happen in the next 5 years or so as the solar irradiance goes up, we have our next El Niño, and while greenhouse gas concentrations continue increasing?
Global heating skeptics said last year that the earth had already started cooling down - the data doesn’t support this conclusion. Skeptics have also said this year that the unusually cool January put the lie into global heating - given that 2007 was so hot even though there were cooling events, the data suggests that a cooler 2008 is entirely reasonable and even expected. And it’s not like a single year, or even two or 5 years of below average temperatures negate the fact that, as the image above shows, there has been a 30-year heating trend globally.
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I wish I hadn’t read this now…
Time to invest in air conditioning futures….
Just make sure they’re powered by residential geothermal.
You actually believe this crap? Haven’t you heard that the data was skewed? Google NASA global warming data flaw.
Brainiac - actually, not only have I blogged about that very data error myself here (Changes in U.S. climate data do nothing to debunk global heating), but the link above discusses the corrected error itself. Allow me to quote it for you:
In other words, the error affected only the contiguous 48 U.S. states, not the entire globe, and the error had no impact on the global temperature data.
Feel free to look at this pair of graphs, where the data before the correction is graphed at the same time as the data after the correction. Please note that you can’t tell the difference between the before/after correction graphs on the global data.
But. But. There’s a marginal error, so how can we trust the whole thing???!!! [/sarcasm]
The lack of logic of some deniers - Denialists even, considering the almost religious conviction inherent - bothers me to no end. What really is so difficult about assuming there’s truth to it and doing something, even a small part, to offset it?
What the wingnuts are doing is conflating weather with climate, that is, deliberately confusing relatively local/limited weather phenomenon with global climate measurements. The wingnuts are cherrypicking weather snapshots and trying to pass these off as representing the entire global climate picture.
For instance, a global warming skeptic, who listens to Rush Limbaugh and watches Faux News, told me in the Fall of 2006 that the Atlantic Ocean waters were cooler than normal, so this disproved global warming.
I, however, had read the actual article which reported in the several sentences following this information about the Atlantic being cooler than normal that the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea waters were warmer than normal.
My prediction, therefore, for last years 2007 hurricane season: tropical depressions that formed out in the Atlantic would be hard-pressed to develop into monster hurricanes, while anything forming or making it into the Gulf of Mexico or Caribbean further to the South, due to the warmer-than-normal waters, would probably form into Category 4 or 5 hurricanes.
Sure enough, the Atlantic tropical storm systems were relatively weak, while two tropical systems that entered the Caribbean became Category 5 hurricanes that hit Mexico. In the case of one of these 2007 Category 5 hurricanes, the Republican governor of Texas mobilized emergency measures in South Texas, just in case the tropical storm veered to the north.
If this trend of cooler temperatures in the Atlantic (due to the melt-off of the freshwater ice up near the Arctic, I believe, with the Gulf Stream finally transporting this cooler water further south) and the warmer temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean continue, then this year’s hurricane season will probably look much like last year’s, but the Gulf Coast states may not dodge the bullet like they did last year. I expect some more Category 5 hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean this upcoming hurricane season, possibly impacting the Gulf Coast like Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita did.
Hansen is a proven liar, data manipulator, and ideologue. How to do you square his claims with what really happened in 2007:
Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling
January 2008 - 4 sources say ‘globally cooler’ in the past 12 months
ent- unless you can provide me proof when Hansen lied and fudged his data (which is the most serious charge you can ever lay at a scientist), you’re just engaging in an ad hominem attack.
The January 2008 GISS data set mentioned at your second link is the on I’m talking about, but the image shown is January only. The other datasets show the other months, but the GISS data at Wattsupwiththat is a snapshot, and thus cannot be compared, as was done, accurately with the other datasets shown. And I’ve just pointed that out to Anthony Watts at his site.
In addition, the HadCrut data Watts uses is both correct and misleading - the yearly variation shown in the actual HadCrut data does show a little cooling, but only 0.02 degrees, NOT the -0.595 degrees Watts shows. It’s the difference between a January-January snapshot (Watt’s use of the data) and a yearly average.
The RSS data is missing 7% of the planet (it’s not as “global” as Watts says), and according to the yearly average temperature over the globe again, 2007’s average anomaly was actually GREATER than 2006, not less (2006 was .281 by my calculations, 2007 was .297 degrees C). Again, Watts is using January-January shapshots, NOT yearly averages.
And yet again, my calculations on the UAH data show that Watts is wrong. 2006 had a anomaly of 0.260 yearly average, 2007 shows 0.282 degrees C.
Fundamentally, Watts presents a difference from one year to the next that shows a trend toward cooler temperatures in 2008, but his data is based on January 2007 vs. January 2008 snapshots instead of yearly averages. And so his conclusions are biased.
And given that the “4 Sources say ‘globally cooler’” link is almost verbatim from Watts’ site, it’s just as biased as Watts’ own conclusions are.
Feel free to forward this on to Watts himself - I’d love to hear his explanation for why he’s right when three of the 4 datasets he uses contradict his conclusions.
Not sure I’m following you. True, one of the three graphs is based on two data points, but the other three are not and they all show a fairly steady decline throughout the year. It stands to reason that if the total temperature dropped by 6-7 tenths during that year, then the average temperature for the year would be roughly half that, or 3-3.5 tenths, still a whopping amount compared to the few hundredths a year that set the global warming alarmists atwitter.
As for the credibility of the GISS data and how it has changed over time, there is a lot of discussion on the Internet. Here’s a starting point:
Should NASA climate accountants adhere to GAAP?
Check out the rest of the website. Mr. McIntyre seems to really be on top of the issues. I would trust his conclusions far more than the politicians, entertainers, and obviously politically compromised scientists at the UN.
As for Hansen’s objectivity, there’s a lot of talk about that, too, for example:
Flawed NASA Global Warming data paid for by George Soros
I don’t know about the Soros claim; I haven’t seen convincing evidence, but how many objective nose-to-the-grindstone scientists do you know of who spend their time on the road giving 1400+ speeches and interviews? He would seem to have an axe to grind and partisan political forces funding him in the grinding.
Ent - You seem to be arguing tht If the temperature increases .5 degrees total over 11 months but then drops 1.5 degrees in December, the average temperature change for that year should be -0.5 degrees. In fact, it should be +0.33 degrees (334 days of +0.5 degrees plus 31 days of -1.5 degrees, divided into 365 days to get the average). The same is true of the datasets you’re misreading, although the changes aren’t as blatant as my intentionally extreme example. Three of the datasets show that the yearly average was higher than 2006, and the fourth shows 0.02 degrees of cooling.
What’s even more interesting is that the temperature drops shown in 2007 are actually smaller than the drops in 2006. and there most certainly wasn’t 12 months of cooling - there was 1 month of heating (J), 4 months of cooling (FMAM), followed by 3 months of heating (JJA), followed by 4 more months of cooling (SOND). And this pattern was nearly identical for all four datasets.
Temperatures were higher on average than 2006 until November and December, when the La Nina that started in July really took off. That is why the yearly average for 2007 contradicts Watts’ conclusions. And let’s not forget that January 2007 was one of the hottest Januarys on record, so Watts choose, perhaps unintentionally, the hottest month of 2007 from which to baseline his erroneous conclusion.
I’ve been around McIntyre’s site several times, and he’s generally got his ducks in a row like Watts generally has his. And I applaud their attention to details and how they help improve the state of climate science and correct data errors. But they can make errors, be misquoted, and misinterpret data just like the scientists they’re criticizing can.
This is, after all, why looking at multiple datasets, not just the GISS data, is so valuable. Each set of data has it’s own unique errors, biases, corrections, measurement techniques, etc.
Can anyone explain why there appears to be a roughly 40 year period (1940 - 1980) where the temperature is not increasing and may actually be decreasing?
Looking at these graphs it is tough to be convinced that there is any trend over the past 5 years. I guess we will have to see how the rest of 2008 plays out but unless there is a large bounce off the low in January 2008 then 2008 will be a cool year.
Wattsupwiththat link
Stillunconvinced - check out this link. It’s to the debunking I did last year where I discuss this very thing.
Also, I discussed that exact Wattsupwiththat link in comments 9 and 11 above. Remember, though, that most of the graphs use different techniques to window and average the monthly data. Some use Jan-Dec yearly averages, some use moving averages of the last 12 months, others use windowed averages of the 2.5 years before and after with trapezoidal weighting (I think this is what GISS does). So you have to take the data and look at it using the same methods to make heads or tails of it.
I’ll post some graphs using the base data myself in the next week or two and the put a link here in the comments to that post.
Have you discussed the issues with the GCMs?
I have discussed various aspects of global climate models multiple times, including pointing out where the models work, where they don’t, and where they either over- or under-estimate the effects of global heating: