In The Weekend Australian I wrote that many false claims are made about the state of our environment on an almost daily basis but because most Australians are illiterate when it comes to science and maths, they are mostly just accepted. My first example was eastern Australian rainfall and the claim that the east coast of Australia has suffered declining rainfall, a claim first made by Sir Nicholas Stern in his influential report to the British Parliament.
I explained that observational data on rainfall for the entire east coast of Australia is available from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology with yearly averages for all the sites back to 1900. But, contrary to the Stern report, this chart does not show declining rainfall; rather, it indicates that rainfall was very low in the early 1900s, that there were some very wet years in the late ’50s and early ’70s, and overall the trend is one of a slight increase in rainfall during the past 107 years, Chart 1.
Chart 1.
While I received many emails, phone calls and The Australian published several letters supportive of my analysis, there have been criticisms including the following comment published in The Australian, “A number of scientifically indefensible ways of presenting data are used in the “Case of the warm and fuzzy”. In each case the errors support the author’s conclusions… In two of the six graphs shown the data is fitted to a straight line which is claimed to show an upward trend in rainfall. What would happen if a non-linear fit (eg, quadratic) were used instead of linear fit.. Dennis Matthews, Ironbark, SA.”
When I fit a simple quadratic equation to the data, it also shows an increase in rainfall over the 107 year period, Chart 2.
Chart 2.
But there is really no reason to assume that the rainfall data would be represented by any particular equation (linear or quadratic). These trend lines are unlikely to provide any insight into what is likely to happen next year because weather systems, like financial markets, are complex.
But interestingly, even fitting an 11 year moving average shows a trend of increasing, not decreasing, rainfall, Chart 3.
Chart 3.
My advice to those trying to interprete data presented graphically would be to use what Professor Harry Roberts, University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, has described as the world’s most powerful statistical analysis tools – your eyes. What can you see from the squiggly line, Chart 4?
Chart 4.
———–
Hat tip to MR for the Harry Robert’s advice.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Jen
What is amazing if how stuck you are on single statistic. Scientists normally look at an issue from many perspectives.
Eastern Australia is a big place. Are there any regional variations? spatially and temporally
Rainfall isn’t runoff – so are there any exceptional catchment runoff deficiencies.
Are there any mechanistic reasons for these patterns from a meteorological standpoint.
Might there hypothetically exist both anthropogenic causes and natural variability impacts?
And why have we spent $16 billion in drought support supposedly on a rational basis since the early 1990s.
So if rainfall is trending up why have we had 20 years of non-stop problems?
Most importantly (and put Kyoto and carbon taxes to one side) what should your Federal and State policy wallahs, catchment managers, agribusiness, or family farmers do in light of all this information and misinformation
retreat
invest
innovate
diversify
support
remove support
move north or to South America
Thought the IPA was interested in public policy development.
A single line graph is that response?
for some reason, you forgot to mention that temperature increased at the same time. “similarish” rainfall with higher temp might be some good explanation for the droughts?
or are you denying that there are some water problems?
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/05/30/drought-in-australia/
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/06/08/victoria-rainfall-fall-rain/
funny, Tamino, as so often, destoyed your argument, before you even made it….
Why start the graph at 1900? back into the 1800s?
so Jen if you like time series – try a regression through the Burdekin runoff reconstruction
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/coral/west_pacific/great_barrier/burdekin_2001.txt
So it is decreasing after all?
Looking for Steve Short now to come up with Lake George time series. 🙂
And yes if we were very slightly sophistamuckated we’d be thinking that water availability is a function of rainfall – minus evaporation – antecedent conditions. But that might get complicated 🙂
But lah de dah – without any mechanistic explanation that you can model you’re impoverished science-wise – perhaps there are many pathways to heaven and hell, pleasure and pain.
(would Popper have popped that – or is it all Socratically ferrous?)
“Lack of water causing reduced irrigation: ABS” on our ABC today.
“Moving Water at Sydney UNI” had a post up on the report earlier (17th) with lots of graphs –
http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/waterhydrosu/2008/08/the_use_and_abuse_of_statistic.html
This publication presents a range of statistics about the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) from 2000-01 to 2005-06, and draws on a variety of ABS and non-ABS sources. Care should be taken when comparing data from different sources and from the same sources over time because of differences in the types of collection activity undertaken and varying levels of reliability across these different sources
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4610.0.55.007Explanatory%20Notes12000-01%20to%202005-06?OpenDocument
See also “Rural Water”
adl.brs.gov.au/water2010/
Hot stuff hey
“Cotton sucking life out of Murray”
Marian Wilkinson, Environment Editor
August 16, 2008″
http://www.smh.com.au/news/water-issues/cotton-sucking-life-out-of-murray/2008/08/15/1218307227802.html
With apologies to Dennis Matthews from Ironbark all I could think of was the famous poem about the cutthroat barber including the lines,
“A joke!” he cried, “By George, that’s fine; a lively sort of lark;
I’d like to catch that murdering swine some night in Ironbark.”
That was writ in 1892 just before the extraordinary Federation drought so of course your graph trends up a little. Then I got serious and eyeballed the graphs. Could not see a trend in the moving average. What did I see. Some big La Nina events in the middle, wonder what happened to them?. Where have all the cyclones gone. And some serious El Nino droughts more recently. Next check the SOI. Yes, the 30 year mean SOI is at its lowest in a century or more.Wonder what is happening to the Walker Circulation.? So your graph has unintended consequences. It can actually lead to intellegent lines of inquiry. What next!
Steady now Bazza – let’s not undertake a thorough analysis !
Wow! The AGW crowd’s tree looks like it has been thoroughly shaken. Sod and Gavin make comments about possibilities, but I have yet to see the comment re: increased water use. Any correlation over the century plus in increased usage of the Murray’s resources?
Luke, don’t claim cherry picking then pick your own cherries. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
Why? I ask why, are we concentrating on any short term (centuries long) time frame? Climate must be studied for much longer periods to get a proper feel for its reality. Maybe that is why geologists don’t get excited. Louis, you’re up!
The article was about rainfall. “But we can keep it simple and just consider data from observations of the real world and from the most reputable institution since records began for the particular issue in which we are interested. It is important to not confuse real-world data (also known as observational data) with output from computer models because computer models generate scenarios that may or may not come true.”
The quote, if correct, was about rainfall. Don’t need to worry about Popper, if you are trying to figure out how many strawmen can dance on the head of a pin. We have seen it is (strawmen), at least, Luke who says “What is amazing if how stuck you are on single statistic. Scientists normally look at an issue from many perspectives.” Well that is not what was done. sod joins in with his straw “for some reason, you forgot to mention that temperature increased at the same time. “similarish” rainfall with higher temp might be some good explanation for the droughts?
or are you denying that there are some water problems?
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/05/30/drought-in-
”
And then Luke again with “Why start the graph at 1900? back into the 1800s?” As though 108 years is not enough when the “consensus” claim of IPCC is 30 years is suffiecient.Especially considering the claim of the IPCC that starting in about 1950 the antropogenic warming efffects started to occur. The analysis has about 50 years before and 50 years after. Rainfall this year and rainfall then are essentially the same.
Bazza – I think we are among intellectual giants. All helps with my earthquake theory of course.
Looks like we have some crater lakes unaffected by land use showing a decrease in the P to E ratio since the 1840s in Western Victoria.
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=1134695
I started in 1900 because that is as far back as the data, that can be downloaded from the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), goes back.
Lets see, global averages and anomalies from mean are OK but one for “eastern Australia” is not?
“Lets see, global averages and anomalies from mean are OK but one for “eastern Australia” is not?”
yes good point in some respects Rog but – you guys have been reminding us for some time that inner Antarctica has not warmed – and that the Arctic has warmed more. So there is a more complex story. The global number is a very broad metric. A statistic – not the only statistic.
Do we hear about global rainfall, global evaporation, global windiness, global humidity, global cloudiness? Nowhere near as much if at all.
Good science and good policy would have a fulsome discussion. Which is why BoM (ON THE SAME PAGE) produce spatial maps and well as regional time series.
And indeed it was Bob Carter’s argument to look at temperature (climate) over a variety of time scales for more context.
As always with these debates it’s what you leave out as much as what you add in. Duty of care is to add in detail and not paper over all the cracks.
But as always if you have no mechanistic understanding of what’s happening in the climate system you’re impoverished.
IMO and IMO only – I think there is a building but imperfect case that AGW aspects may be influencing Australian rainfall decline. As well as “natural variability” caused by various mechanisms.
And yep – there’s some odds that it ALL may be natural too.
But the real urgent risk management issue here is nor really about carbon taxes – it is whether on farms and regionally to
invest
retreat
adapt
stay
move
those involved (and me too if it’s taxation support for drought relief and MDB fixing) deserve a fully laid out case with pros and cons
instead of winner takes all style of debating – what’s wrong with that?
So there seems to be some fear that any acknowledgement of the sheer possibility of AGW mechanisms somehow means you’re instantly in a carbon taxing left wing communist state – that doesn’t follow unless you want it to.
And so when you line up all the little bits of synoptic investigation and climate modelling that teases apart things happening with the Antarctic circulation, Walker circulation, Indian Ocean, Steve Short’s cyanobacterial blooms, and evaporative demand you’d have to a least be a bit curious. And what is really happening with wind/stillness ?
It’s that sheer lack or curiosity about these things that has me puzzled.
I can bet none of you read my links overnight. Well here is another one straight off the Australian Government press.
”Irrigation water use down by over one-quarter”
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mediareleasesbyCatalogue/B5C4E55CD677E3EFCA2574B100816EEB?OpenDocument
Chew again hey
Jen – if you got onto David Jones I’m sure he could provide you with rainfall data in the 1800s (although the spatial coverage would be less).
Indeed not going into the 1890s misses the development of the Federation drought which is the gold comparison standard for the mother of all droughts – spatially and severity.
And some of your old local history in Brisbane would have added in those great flood stories – so really significant wet seasons missed
Significant floods have occurred several times since the European settlement of Brisbane. The most significant of these events was the 1974 Brisbane Flood. Notable instances of flooding include:
* 14 January 1841 (Highest flood level to date)
* March 1890
* February 1893, a sequence of flood peaks over some three weeks saw the highest recorded flood level in the Brisbane central business district.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brisbane_River
and in detail
http://www.bom.gov.au/hydro/flood/qld/fld_reports/brisbane_jan1974.pdf
A chart showing all the floods at the Brisbane Port Office since 1841 is presented
in Fig 2. ……. (Note two floods bigger than 1974 a fortnight apart and four peaks overall !!! WOW and Holy Cow !!! )
The earliest flood recorded was in 1841. Its exact height is uncertain but it was
said to be the highest flood known at that time………
Three floods occurred during February 1893. During the first (peak 9.51 m) the
ship Elamang and the gunboat Paluma were carried into and left aground in the
Brisbane Botanical Gardens, and the ship Natone was stranded on the Eagle
Farm flats. The Indooroopilly railway bridge and the north end of the old Victoria
Bridge were washed away. Nine days later a second minor flood was
experienced which attained a height of only 3.29 m. However, a week after that
there was another major flood (peak 9.24 m) which carried the stranded
Elamang, Paluma and Natone back into the Brisbane River!
Luke, Sod, and Gavin,
Here in the Leftard west coast of the USA we are having more water shortages every year. Some think that we are getting less rainfall. Of course, that is without checking any data of any kind.
I wonder what a full study of the issue might be. Let’s try to do a partial list of the issues.
Farming/type of irrigation/number of acres/ground water/piped in
Manufacturing/number of companies/amount of water used
Population/location/amount of water used
Rainfall/lake-reservoir levels/evaporation from open storage/water purchased from out of state/number of dams
Potable water recycling/irrigation and other non-potable water recycling
You will have to fill these blanks in for the period covered by the rainfall chart to get an actual hint as to what might be happening.
There are probably detailed information on all of these areas somehwere in the bureaucracy of this state and possibly in the Fed. Might even be scientific studies. Funny, none of them seem to be in ONE LOCATION easily available to the public!!
So tell me, ya think that water USE might have increased slightly there just like here in good ole Cali?? That all those good Politicians that pay lip service to sustainable growth just might not be following the same guidelines?? Oh yeah, there
weren’t sustainable guidelines over about 20 years ago so there were few thoughts to development that weren’t local and tended to be squashed by those who wanted to develop for money. Even now those same politicians talk out of one side of their mouths while agreeing to take money out of the other to allow continued growth.
Quit wasting your time chasing AGW and start concentrating on the REAL HUMAN PROBLEMS!!!!
Any serious student of climate and its impacts on Australian agriculture needs to at least glance at the background runoff maps provided by BRS 2008 – Geoscience Australia 2004 in Chapter 1 “Water and the Murray-Darling Basin A Statistical Profile 2000-01 to 2005-06”
IMO taking the average is a very complicated business. Rainfall anomalies maps, Bureau of Metrology 2008 on page 17 in the same chapter show big shifts year to year. However my place in the ACT remains, DRY, dry, dry, DRY and the garden continues to die.
For the curious try this
http://adl.brs.gov.au/water2010/mapserv/index.phtml?store_x=&store_y=&ROI=Australian+Capital+Territory&cmd=zoom_basin&mode=runoff_subcatch&ROI=&AOI=Basins&layer_select%5B1%5D=1&layer_select%5B4%5D=1&layer_select%5B5%5D=1&layer_select%5B6%5D=1&layer_select%5B7%5D=1&keymapxsize=120&keymapysize=120&MapSize=600%2C450&coordx=1531109.73&coordy=-3957230.66&minx=1485429.562500&miny=-4027003.750000&maxx=1601075.562500&maxy=-3940269.250000&zoom_rect_minx=&zoom_rect_miny=&zoom_rect_maxx=&zoom_rect_maxy=&zoom_x=&zoom_y=&move_x=&move_y=&cmapsize=&caoi=&initial=2&mainmap.x=235&mainmap.y=86
Perhaps I should add Canberra is situated in that almost dry gully half way up on the extreme RHS of the runoff map and we are caught in the political crossfire about who gets what in the Murrumbidgee River system.
Note: Terrain shading is turned off on my zoom in.
Luke,
I have deliberately used publicly available information, and I deliberately used the east coast of Australia. The important point is that there is information readily available (i.e. on the Bureau of Meteorology website) that contradicts official reports (i.e. Stern). The disconnect between what is being reported (i.e. declining rainfall) and what the official statistics tell us needs (i.e. above charts) to be resolved.
As usual, Jennifer acts all innocent, and is never to be heard of again. How many of those AGW papers have you read by now? Are you up to the second yet? Was the $1,000 paid. Do you tell people when you lecture them you don’t do in depth analysis, but just back of the envelope ones?
KuhnKat – really not a very bright analysis
“Quit wasting your time chasing AGW and start concentrating on the REAL HUMAN PROBLEMS!!!!”
sorry mate – when we have $16 billion )?) going our in farm and river support it is about real human problems.
I don’t discount the issues you list – we could list our own similar sets.
But a fundamental lack of rainfall, lack of flow and flow from a run of bad seasons is about climate.
You can tweak the efficiencies to a point but if the system is unsustainable – it’s unsustainable.
If allocation rules are to be changed – on what basis ? For whom? At what level of risk? WHo signs off at what duty of care?
You still need to make serious calculations.
In Australia new agriculture is moving north e.g. big peanut company investment in Katherine in the Northern Territory. Let me tell you water yield and risk calculations involving climate and climate change were done on the water resources by the Territory government and the agribusiness involved.
So all the decisions you have mentioned require calculations, engineering analysis of risk and expectations – on what – a whim and a prayer – your best hopes?
Indeed much of our current problems stems from a 1950s view of what “normal” is?
Wake up dude !
Jen – BoM only start at 1900 as it’s tidy (1888 sounds messy) and lines up with temperature story – as the pre-1900 non-standard enclosures are sus for tempeature accuracy. You can do better with rainfall records if you dig around a bit in ADAM.
I’m not sure what Stern did in analysis to substantiate his statement on eastern Australian rainfall – may have gone on anecdotes and news reports at the time – but I don’t think he would have just plucked it out of thin air either. Do we think he studied it in detail? Guess we’d have to ask him. But wouldn’t be that surprised if he had not.
People are very focussed on “gee we need a carbon tax coz we’re in drought”. Which is simplistic and loopy.
But the real action is on water resource planning for the bush and urban sensitive water design for cities – including all Motty’s gripes – so what should the new CEO of the new MDBA think of all this ? any advice?
http://www.irrigation.org.au/index.cfm?/publications/backwash-e-newsletter
So do we say ” ahhh look Rob – just bung in the rainfall records we’ve got – it’s all cycles mate – she’ll be right mate – or “maybe we should look at some of this fandangled AGW modelling stuff” – Steve Short would probably wack a paleo fluvial MDB story into us too)
Maybe Niche Modelling can tell us? 🙂 LOLZ
“What is far more amazing is that you can tell idiotic lies like this all the time and still consider yourself employable.”
Can this guy do a piece for the Oz? He’d fit right in. Perhaps instead of graphs they could use some of his “angry man” crayon drawings. Magic!
How dare Jen get published in the Australian.
How dare she use one and only one statistic, when talking about one and only one statistic. East coast rainfall measured by BOM.
How dare she do a linear and a quadratic and an 11 year running smoothing.
Mc Kellar said of drought and flooding rains and the usage hasn’t been timed to drought or flood would appear to be Australia’s east coast water issues. No dams is the mantra.
I can’t see why complainers can’t make their own blog choose their own timelines do their smoothings and make their comment and hypothesis.
I see absolutely nothing controversial except some raw meat thrown and trolls come out of their caves, truth in mischief.
Come in Spinner.
Luke 8.11 post, you make some very relevant points and they should not be scoffed at (IMO),
sadly however too much of what is “pushed” involves the scary scenarios, this is frequently done for political reasons and to get media attention. This does “science” no favours. Too many exagerations and ill thought of statements ( a la late night lives “climate wars”) gets the backs up of many who try to be open minded.
luke of old is back; confident enough to be flippant towards Dr Stockwell; maybe it was sod and his sodettes referring to the Tamino post on drought in the MDB, guest-starring our luke; anyway, I’m still in awe of your resource bank, especially since many of them seem to bite you on the backside; so, the Jones, McMahon and Bowlers effort; the say;
“Climate records back to 1859 were reconstructed; inhomogeneities from 1863 were removed creating a high quality instrumental record. (oh dear I thought, the Hansen approach to data is here, but things got better). A water balance model simulating the historical decline demonstrates important features. (1)Regional climate expressed as a lake precipitation/evaporation (P/E) ratio remains the over-riding influence on lake levels. (2)The lakes fell in response to a change in climate (oh dear, here it comes I thought, but no). (3)This climate change pre-dated instrumental records. (4)Land-use change did not contribute to declining water levels. The fall in water levels was initiated by a decrease in PIE ratio from a pre-1840 value of 0.94-0.96 to a historical value of 0.79. This change probably involved a decrease in rainfall, possibly associated with increases in solar radiation and decreases in cloud cover.”
So, there you have it; solar radiation and cloud cover; the paper also says “the likelihood of an altered temperature-evaporation relationship means that a quantified estimate (about temperature increase) is not possible.”
I say again luke; go and look at the historical rainfall and temperature figures for St George in the MDB QLD catchement area. Nothing new is happening; and if it is, it’s due to sun and clouds.
Cohenite – for heavens sake you love to pick the wost (best spot) to look at. Go and the read the bloody papers on STR and southern hemisphere climate change and stop being so mechanistically impoverished. With you it’s like trying get the can of coke out of the machine with a bent coin. Let it go through Coh-ers. Let it go through…
Backside nipping – well that’s all you’re doing mate. Was just an interesting tidbit to see if any southern Australian P/E things had changed of late. Not the meaning to life. And yea – cloud cover and perhaps more radiation from cleared days AND lower rainfall – err yes – isn’t climate such a diverse interlinked group of variables
The evap story is interesting – but last few years telling – go read my comments at Bravenewclimate on the temp/wind thing. The temperature/evap story if really big 2001-2006.
Had to smile
“I can’t see why complainers can’t make their own blog choose their own timelines do their smoothings and make their comment and hypothesis.”
So Jen needs to change “Post a comment” to
Post a comment “(but only supportive ones and no lefists pls)”
and “truth in mischief” – yea mate – but whose mischief – try enabling the critical thought module – wake up !
LOLZ
Now Birdy-woo – maaatttee – you told me the climate was easy. And here you are again needing help.
Well matey – what you do is go and get the BoM rainfall data from as far back as you can – all the long long way back before you were born/hatched/cloned – and use what we call “a graphing package” or instead of waving baskets why don’t you do it by hand. You go down to the newsagent and ask for a pencil, some paper and a ruler. And then ….
And if you’d like to attempt some “science” – a challenge for you I know. Try “graphing” – that’s and “x-y plot” doofus – the reconstructed Burdekin runoff.
So Birdy-munch – how about stopping hand waving and making with some analysis.
Jennifer, you need to construct a water balance. Go and see some hydrologists, they know how to make one. Just showing rainfall isn’t enough to draw any conclusions.
NT,
“Showing rainfall” allows me to draw the conclusion that there has been no decline in rainfall. That’s the one point I thought I might be able to get agreement on.
I have not said anything in the above post about drought, runoff or anthing else. These are separate but related issues.
I should have thought the really relevant graph is the MD basin, which is kindly provided by the BOM here:
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/timeseries.cgi?variable=rain®ion=mdb&season=0112
If the BOM is correct in it’s figures then the last few years have been ordinary (no surprise there), but not unusual historically. So, the claim that rainfall is declining seems hard to establish from these figures.
The BOM also show increased temps over that time.
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/timeseries.cgi?variable=tmean®ion=mdb&season=0112
So, all things being equal there must be increased evaporation. Therefore, there must be more substance to a claim about decreasing water availability, which was not the topic of the original post.
The last little while has also seen big changes in allocations and usage so the result on the ground will be confounded by additional factors.
And none of this is sufficient to analyse whether we need the proposed ETS or other measures because that requires a full cost benefit analysis. It might be cheaper/more effective to spend money covering the irrigation channels.
NT – strangely this may have been done
http://www.abare.gov.au/interactive/Outlook08/files/day_1/Craik_iAg.ppt see slides 4,5 and 6
“Deborah Kerr, manager of natural resources for the National Farmers Federation, said drought was the prime explanation for the slump in water use. Mrs Kerr said that in 06-07 many farmers with low security water entitlements only received a small proportion of their water allocation”
http://www.theage.com.au/national/water-use-falls-after-farm-cutbacks-20080828-44fh.html
“The number of irrigated Australian farms dropped by 13pc – to 35,000 farms, down 5,000 on the those of the year before.
Both sets of figures reflect the impact of drought in 2004-05 and escalating water costs.
While most pastures and crops experienced decreases, cotton went against the trend”
http://www.awa.asn.au/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Complimentary_Data&Template=/CM/HTMLDisplay.cfm&ContentID=5722
NT; excellent idea; here are some papers from one of Australia’s leading hydrologists;
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2004WR003845.shtml
http://www.cig.ensmp.fr/~iahs/hsj/460/hysj_46_05_0715.pdf
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2004/2004WR003234.shtml
I have suggested before that Stewart Franks be approached to do a post; it still seems a reasonable idea.
luke; you refer to Craik’s latest effort, and yet pooh-poohed me when I posted her 2005 effort, noting FIG’s 1,2 and 4;
http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/ho/20050323-craik.shtml
Ron Just, from the ABS, says most notable was an 81 per cent drop in water use for rice crops, followed by cotton at 50 per cent and pasture for grazing at 30 per cent.
A quote from the source
“I guess a look at the climate would suggest that we’ve had in a lot of places in Australia less rainfall so there would be less water available to irrigate which would be one of the driving factors.”
New South Wales reported the largest decrease: a 42 per cent drop in water use for irrigation.
http://australianetwork.com/news/stories_to/2348367.htm
Jennifer, yes you have shown that in Eastern Australia there isn’t necessarilly a decline in rainfall. But that doesn’t mean much. What are you boundaries? What is the extent?
If you were to plot the rainfall for the world, it may also show an increase, but it doesn’t mean much.
For example if the extra rainfall occurred mostly in the North and during the summer it would not correlate to more water or increased water availability as there would be more evaporation.
Yes Cohenite… Very nice… I had thought (although I can’t remember where I read it) that one of the model projections for Oz, was decreasing rainfall in the south and increasing rainfall in the north. And in the southwest more rainfall in the summer and less in the winter. Something about the southward movement of the high pressure cells that you see in the Bight… Is this what others understand?
“Do you in fact see a downward trend in rainfall? And if so why?” – Yes for the reasons I listed Birdy-woo – get your Mommy or budgie to help you with the big words.
Try thinking that 1900 could be a tad arbitrary.
Myself I would have picked 1970 as Louis has a 30 year period fixation.
And no Cohenite – we don’t want any more Newcastle denialists clogging up the system. He’s only going to bang on about the IPO anyway. SO tedious. Such lack of mechanistic understanding. Does it even exist?
Now keep the noise down will you or you’ll have Steve Short on here saying something too amazingly intelligent for us to understand. Shhhhh !
Oh BTW you might enjoy this (an aside) – http://www.coastalconference.com/2007/papers2007/Peter%20Helman.doc – (you might as well enjoy yourself while listening to Bird drone on about crap – although strangely the sentences do make sense even if though the content is wacked). Quite interesting really how the coastal storm periodicity and inland droughts are a mirror of each other – IPO and that stuff (if it really exists and isn’t just El Nino/La Nina debris)
What Jen needs is the inside on this
http://www.ansto.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/25821/rainfallconf_release.pdf or the answer now. Was gonna drop in there at the Caves the other day too.
Bet the trend is DOWNWARDS though.
Graeme, where is the data from?
In the headline it says “Eastern Australia” then in her text Jennifer says “For the entire east coast of Australia”. Eastern Australia in my thinking is Qld, NSW, Vic, and Tas. East coast is the coastal strip (to the mountains) down the Eastern edge of mainland Australia. But this is my interpretation. There is a lot of room for interpretation, no?
Also are Jennifer and the Stern report actually talking about the same area?
The trend she shows isn’t actually very big, but it looks very slightly up.
What I see as interesting is that up until 1950ish rainfall looks fairly uniform, then there are a lot of very wet years, in the 50s and 70s and 90s, amongst the dry.
Squawk, squawk!
I look at that chart and I see SFA to worry about regarding rainfall. It all looks pretty much like it’s always been. Random fluctuations around a mean.
Graeme, do you have some sort of emotional problem… You’re a very strange man.
If you read Luke’s post you would see that he sees a trend downwards from the 70’s. That is that the recent trend is downward.
If you look from any point after the 50’s the trend is downward.
I guess what Jennifer needs to do is work on the analysis. What is a significant period, and what is a significant trend. I doubt she will though, it’s always a Lite investigation with her.
coz the graph starts in 1900 – you could start it in 1974 too – why not?
and graph this doofus
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/coral/west_pacific/great_barrier/burdekin_2001.txt
or get your mommy to do it for you
NT – BoM’s area definitions are here – http://www.bom.gov.au/silo/products/cli_chg/rain_timeseries.shtml of course nothing south of the Qld border is relevant.
For some reason, Victorian doesn’t count.
“of course nothing south of the Qld border is relevant”
Luke could be stretching a friendship or two now Jen has moved about half way between us
OK Graeme, where is Jen’s data attributable to and where was Stern’s data from?
You have no idea mate… How can you compare?
OK Birdy – look you can’t use any data prior to 1966 when decimal currency was introduced coz part of going metric was to upgrade the raingauges to ISO-666 standard and fit bird mesh over the rain gauge so mammals and Birds didn’t drink the rainfall.
Look here’s a picture of a bird-proof one here http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/Evaporation_Pan.jpg/434px-Evaporation_Pan.jpg
Yes Graeme, you’ve hit on a couple of disingenuities in the AGW camp; firstly that, IF, CO2 increase did cause warming it would probably lead to wetter conditions; and secondly, why is a warmer, wetter climate worse?
Graeme and Cohenite.
Yes a warmer world does typically mean a wetter one, but this does not equal more water availability. You need to learn about water balances.
The prediction is for wetter in the north and drier in the south. That is why it is bad. Unless we can magically transport our cities and farms to the northern half of Australia.
“…disingenuities in the AGW camp…” What?
Graeme, you are a wonderfully stupid man. And Kudos for you for plunging ahead fullsteam with no actual knowledge…
Graeme, go and Google “Water Balance” and do some reading on Hydrology, that way you can figure out for yourself why water availability is not determined by precipitation.
Also consider that being wetter globally doesn’t mean that it is wetter everywhere.
Difficult concepts I know, but Graeme I have faith you can work it out.
And you never explained what part of Australia Jennifer’s graphs actually represented, nor whether that was the same as Stern…
You’re falling behind in your homework Graeme.
Jennifer’s article starts with: “When Nicholas Stern released his influential British government report on the economics of climate change in October 2006, it said that the east coast of Australia had suffered declining rainfall.”
I assume she relies on the statement by Stern is Box 5.2 Summary of regional impacts of climate change on page 129 that states:
“Over the last 30 years stronger tropical typhoons have brought higher storm damage, but increased rainfall, to a wide swathe of North West Australia.
At the same time the east coast – home to over 70% of the population and location for most major cities and crop farming – has suffered longer droughts and declining rainfall.”
But the Sahara is very warm but not so wet? And El Nino events are very warm but we get drier? How can this be?
Luke ducks and weaves by pulling antarctic analogies out of his very flimsy straw hat.
Lets hear it one more time for the “global average”
“In eastern Australia, the general pattern has been one of a relatively dry first half of the 20th century, followed by a wet period from the late-1940s through to the early-1990s (the 1950s and 1970s were especially wet decades, particularly in New South Wales and Queensland). Since the early-1990s rainfall has dropped, in most places, to levels more characteristic of the first half of the century, resulting in trends which are strongly negative if taken from 1950 but weak if taken from 1900. Two notable exceptions are southern Victoria and south-eastern Queensland, both of which have seen rainfall averages since the late-1990s which are lower than anything experienced for a comparably long period at any time in the 20th century. In the Melbourne area the 1997-2006 mean rainfall was about 10% lower than the driest 10-year period recorded at any time prior to 1996.http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/1301.0Feature%20Article1012008?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=1301.0&issue=2008&num=&view=”
This quote from the ABS would seem to suggest to me that we are moving back towards what was potentially the “norm”. It seems a bit of a stretch to me to suggest that since the 1950-90’s were a relatively wetter period, that now that we are in a drier period it is because of AGW….it doesnt stop the ABS making that point though.
Proxy data is not something i believe to be particularly reliable, but scientists have studied mud samples in crater lakes and suggest that Australia has been getting drier for 5000 years. http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1848641.htm..
Now of course IF AGW is significant this will add to the problems, but it also seems apparent that what we are experiencing may just be a move back to more “normal” conditions.
I sure hope so Graeme, and i am increasingly believing that they are.
I sure hope so Graeme, and i am increasingly believing that they are.
GraemeBird, Jennifer’s article is based upon a statemnt made by the Stern report, I was attempting to identify where that statemet was made, not whether it was accurate. For that we need to look further into his report, and we find that he was assisted in preparing the Summary for Australia by a former adviser to Tony Blair on Climate Change, however there is no indication what evidence was used to make this statement.
I sure hope so Graeme, and i am increasingly believing that they are.
oops sorry, when it gave me the massage that I had just posted and was holding the post, i thought it wanted me to post it again…sorry everybody!
If you want answers to your sceptical questions aboute AGW and CC I suggest you go a new blog http://www.bravenewclimate.com by Professor Barry Brook of the University of Adelaide. Not only does he have many interesting posts about the science but you can also download podcasts (and Power Point presentations) of the first two of his planned 6 part seminars on the topic. First one was “Is the Earth really warming?” and the second “Is the warming anthropogenic”. He also answers any of your questions, politely and concisely. First class website!
“Great tits cope well with warming”
Guess who needs to read up on this headline?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7390109.stm
I think Graeme has blown his mind…
Graeme, did you work out if Jennifers data was from the same area as Stern’s yet?
Why doesn’t Jennifer release the source of her data. Sheesh she’s worse than NASA or that devil Mann.
Luke wrote: > So there seems to be some fear that any acknowledgement [sic] of the sheer possibility of AGW mechanisms somehow means you’re instantly in a carbon taxing left wing communist state [sic] – that doesn’t follow unless you want it to.
Luke, with all due respect, I think you mean “mere” possibility; but more confounding yet is your choice of the term “instantly.” On the contrary, it’s a sickeningly protracted process. And the reason it happens is that once you concede the principle, as you have, that the legitimate functions of government extend, to any degree, beyond protection against aggression or the initiation of force, you now no longer have any grounds upon which to fight the encroachment of statism, precisely because you’ve conceded the principle. Do you see? In fact, though, the grim joke is on you, because no government and no governmental bureaucracy in the history of the world has ever proven itself more capable of running the individual’s life than the individual herself — and this is to say nothing of complex economies. (That latter thing was rather persuasively illustrated by a fellow named Leonard Read; you can read all about it here: http://www.the-thinking-man.com/i-pencil.html)
Just incidentally, “left-wing communist” is a pleonasm, for obvious reasons.
All of which I mention only because I think you would do well to hold your cards a little closer to the vest sometimes.
“All of which I mention only because I think you would do well to hold your cards a little closer to the vest sometimes. ”
It’s all a conspiracy. Can someone show me the graph that shows that?
Jennifer…here’s a link to several articles on drought by Pat Michaels et al. Since his specialty in climate science is agriculture, I would think drought is right up his alley. There is some information in the articles that may explain why rainfall can increase during drought conditions. One thing I didn’t realize before, for example, is that increased CO2 can affect the way plants process water.
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/category/precipitation/droughts/
Jennifer…here’s a link to several articles on drought by Pat Michaels et al. Since his specialty in climate science is agriculture, I would think drought is right up his alley. There is some information in the articles that may explain why rainfall can increase during drought conditions. One thing I didn’t realize before, for example, is that increased CO2 can affect the way plants process water.
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/category/precipitation/droughts/
Ray – sorry no idea what you’re on about.
“why rainfall can increase during drought conditions” probably explains why it’s a drought hey – WTF
Hey Birdy I gave you my answer above at 02:00 PM – what’s wrong with it?
Well Birdy-woo I’ve given you your answer – prove that it’s upwards.
Graeme, you need to read my post again.
I didn’t say this: “less rain means greater water availability”
I said more rain doesn’t necessarilly imply greater availability.
Did you do well at English Comprehension in school?
Plover, there’s no way in hell I’m reading a website that starts with a talk about “carbocide”. Its so idiotic it doesn’t deserve a response.
As far as rainfall goes, it increased up to the 50’s and then decreased to the present. Up and down trend. Interesting that rainfall in Australia has a weak assciation with global temperature.
So when will the inland flood again? Will it get going when the global temperature cools (like the 50’s)?
Maybe the answer to global warming is in the famous poem by Dorothea Mackellar?
Have to agree. You won’t find any original thought at B Brook. What a mediocrity: Typical of the new breed of ‘climate scientist’; the intellect of a high school geography teacher and the politics of a sociologist. Funny, since the advent of this new mongrel science (and dumbed down undergraduate courses in ‘Environmental Science’) the Arts faculties are empty and you can’t find a geography teacher for love or (sub Big Green) money.
Apologies to any honest Geography teachers out there.
What’s this “trend” business? There is no trend!
Well…I guess more or less random fluctuations around a mean is a “trend”, of sorts.
“What’s this “trend” business? There is no trend!”
Yes it’s up and down all over the place isn’t it!
But if you had find a pattern of sorts…
These data suggest the 50’s were wet, if the 40’s were wet, Jennifer’s trend would be down.
Yes, David, but that’s the entire point. You don’t always have to try and find trends. Sometimes the best, most logical answer is that there is nothing there, really.
“I see it as more of a post-warming trend. You get the warming. Then you get the break in the warming. And in the break comes the rain…”
Like the Elnino recharge /discharge theory,
the Pacific Decadal Oscillation may have a similar way of things….but on a larger scale ofcourse.
I really can’t see any evidence of marked change anywhere in Australia in respect of rainfall. especially the MDB;
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/timeseries.cgi?variable=rranom®ion=mdb&season=0112
The most pronounced ‘divergence’ is between the WA and SW Australian anomalies; so AGW is punishing SW Australia and rewarding NW Australia; this is gibberish; can’t we talk about something relevant, like whether it’ll be Hansen or Gore who first grows a beard and comes out carrying the 10 commandments of AGW?
To TheWord,
True, you are right. However, there is other information in the data. Data suggest high level of variability.
Australia has such a shit climate, climate change will probably be good. Heh
Luke: I think Ray is some sort of US born n bred backwoodsie preacher
Toby.
I lost your post in Graeme Bird’s foaming lather of potty-mouthing, but nevertheless I have already said elsewhere that I don’t agree with everything on the LNL interview. But that was not my point for referring to it – rather, I was pointing out that many apparently conservative or ‘right-wing’ bodies take AGW seriously if they have vested interests that are vulnerable to any such climate change. It is not merely a ‘leftie’ conspiracy, and thus the underlying imperatives for the proponents are more complex than simple fraud or academic fund-chasing.
It was this that I sought a considered response to.
As to what I disagree with, I am a biologist and not a climatologist, so I would not presume to pin the relationship between x amount of warming and y amount of sea level rise beyond the best published estimates of the current science. And that’s out there for any and all to respond to.
One thing that does disturb me though is that with any increment of warming that might occur over the coming century, the public fixation is with how much the sea level will increase by, say, 2050, or 2100. Quite frankly, beyond two or three degrees average global increase in warming the ‘alarmist’ increases in sea level are probably set in stone – it’s just a matter of whether it takes 50 or 100 or 500 years to happen. In the end warming above this few degrees increase will simply decrease the time to eventual equilibrium in rise, although other climatic parameters may certainly be more seriously affected.
I think the issue isn’t really how much warming will give how much sea level rise – only a blithering fool would argue on the absence of such a connection. The debate is more about whether warming is actually occurring, or not: in this context contemporary sea level rise is (for me) for the moment more important as a proxy of warming that is in train, than what the eventual rise might be down the track, dependent upon final temperature equilibrium.
In the future SLR impacts will certainly increase in importance (if they aren’t already now), but by the time it’s reached the stage that even denialists can’t avoid the truth the question of the warming/sea level rise will be moot.
I am no fan of historic nuclear technologies, but I am open-minded to the possibility of future feasible nuclear technologies. Nor am I a fan of sulphur dioxide therapy. This comment on the interview had my eyebrows rising. But frankly, if it gets to the point where we need to consider sulphur dioxide, we’re in the poo no matter what. Even a denialist would have to admit that.
“What if” scenarios are fraught with error, but one thing the denialists often forget is that the error can occur in either direction, and the unexpected often bites harder than the predicted. This is an areas where I again try to stick with the best that (real) science has to offer. That temperature clines will shift with any warming is indisputable. The same can be said of rainfall, Marohasy’s current analysis notwithstanding. These two climatic factors alone have profound impacts on the bioclimatic envelopes and phenology of much of the biosphere, and however much some of the frothing wingnuts here might delude themselves otherwise, humans are beholden to a functioning global biosphere for their continued existence and prosperity.
So, is it warming, or is it not?
Many of the regulars here are adamant in their denial of warming trends, but the credibly assessed evidence that supports such a stance is very thin on the ground. And many of the regulars here come up with numbers that they say blows to smithereens a world-wide consensus of scientific endeavour, but any attempt to lure then to the global table to settle the matter simply result in avoidance and dissembling.
Graeme honks loudly that RealClimate, Rabbet Run, Deltoid, Tamino, and other such scientific sites are fraudulent, that peer-reviewed science is a conspiracy of government tit-sucking, and basically that anyone he disagrees with is a liar and a moron and a stupid jerk and should just kill themselves, and that is why he and his compadres should not sully themselves with engagement. It seems that the only people he will speak with are on this blog or similar, but if he and others here truly believe that they have the correct numbers, here is the last place that they should be. They should be taking it to the world, and educating the folk that they disagree with, not indulging in their mutual stroking in their Secret Seven clubhouse at the bottom of the garden.
To Barry Moore’s credit he has stated that he intends to put is numbers to RealClimate. I hope that he does, and that he and any who disagree with him let the numbers speak, and not their ideologies. Others could usefully follow his example.
The trouble is, though, that in the cases of many (or most) of these ‘others’ Messrs Dunning and Kruger are rampantly overworked, and in such cases there is a circularity of self-delusion that is perpetual.
In spite of these folk I will continue to try to elicit a serious external engagement with the expert who matter, by any here who believe that they have the philosopher’s stone of the climate sceptic cause. I am not a climate expert – I am not trained in this area, just as neither Jennifer nor just about anyone else here is – but I can smell dodgey ideas, and when I do, I try to get the idea-holders to confront those whom they dispute. And if the ideas are not dodgey, then they should definitely be tested in the only arena that matters – the real world.
And finally, Graeme – your ranting
“If you are at work remember it only takes a few minutes to commit hari kari on account of your stupidity. All it takes is a tie and the womens toilet not long after work. The fellas will never even notice that you’ve slipped out”
shows a level of prurience that few could hope to match. There is surely a psychologist somewhere who could put an intriguing name to your condition. Do you really feel that you are fit to run for a public office and thence to suck on the public tit that you so despise?
Cohenite,
why do you pretend to understand rainfall trends?
Ah, the memories of humans are so fleeting…..but (thankfully) it all turns to shit in the end.
How the west was once: vegetation change in south-west Queensland from 1930 to 1995
Witt, GB, Luly, J, Fairfax, RJ; The University of Queensland
2006; journal article
Environmental Sciences (300800)
Description
Conflicting perceptions of past and present rangeland condition and limited historical data have led to debate regarding the management of vegetation in pastoral landscapes both internationally and in Australia. In light of this controversy we have sought to provide empirical evidence to determine the trajectory of vegetational change in a semi-arid rangeland for a significant portion of the 20th century using a suite of proxy measures. Ambathala Station, approximately 780 km west of Brisbane, in the semi-arid rangelands of south-western Queensland, Australia. We excavated stratified deposits of sheep manure which had accumulated beneath a shearing shed between the years 1930 and 1995. Multi-proxy data, including pollen and leaf cuticle analyses and analysis of historical aerial photography were coupled with a fine resolution radiocarbon chronology to generate a near annual history of vegetation on the property and local area. Aerial photography indicates that minor (< 5%) increases in the density of woody vegetation took place between 1951 and 1994 in two thirds of the study area not subjected to clearing. Areas that were selectively or entirely cleared prior to the 1950s (approximately 16% of the study area) had recovered to almost 60% of their original cover by the 1994 photo period. This slight thickening is only partially evident from pollen and leaf cuticle analyses of sheep faeces. Very little change in vegetation is revealed over the nearly 65 years based on the relative abundances of pollen taxonomic groups. Microhistological examination of sheep faeces provides evidence of dramatic changes in sheep diet. The majority of dietary changes are associated with climatic events of sustained above-average rainfall or persistent drought. Most notable in the dietary analysis is the absence of grass during the first two decades of the record. In contrast to prevailing perceptions and limited research into long-term vegetation change in the semi-arid areas of eastern Australia, the record of vegetation change at the Ambathala shearing shed indicates only a minor increase in woody vegetation cover and no decrease in grass cover on the property over the 65 years of pastoral activity covered by the study. However, there are marked changes in the abundance of grass cuticles in sheep faeces. The appearance and persistence of grass in sheep diets from the late 1940s can be attributed to the effects of periods of high rainfall and possibly some clearing and thinning of vegetation. Lower stock numbers may have allowed grass to persist through later drought years. The relative abundances of major groups of plant pollen have not changed significantly over the past 65 years.
Stick-nest rat middens and a late-Holocene record of White Range, central Australia
Webeck, K., Pearson, Stuart Graham. University of Newcastle; The University of Newcastle
2005; journal article
Description
Stick-nest rat middens are preserved piles of macrofossils that record changes in plants and animals during the late Holocene at White Range. The builders, Lesser Stick-nest Rats (Leporillus apicalis), after at least 2500 years in the area, became extinct during the Modern radiocarbon period. The rats’ collection of plant and animal material provides an ecological survey of the site during this period. The species composition of the vegetation has apparently responded to increased Aboriginal populations, fire incidence or rainfall in the last 2500 years. A dramatic increase in tree and shrub material between 2510&PLUSMN; 40 BP and 835&PLUSMN; 62 BP at the expense of herbs is possibly related to increasing moisture availability. The middens record a collapse of trees and shrubs by 606&PLUSMN; 136 BP then a strong recovery. Grasses have generally decreased in importance throughout the record. Bones of the Central Rock Rat (Zyzomys pedunculatus), which is currently restricted to the western MacDonnell Ranges, were found in middens dated at 433&PLUSMN; 60 BP. Information about long-term changes in Australia’s and areas is accessible using the middens of stick-nest rats and provides a useful long-term perspective for environmental management.
“I don’t see how any self-respecting supporter of any proposition at all can be like Berhard and show up post after post after post with the steely discipline NOT to lend any evidence or argument to the proposition he is spruiking.”
Comedy gold, birdbrain. Especially since your MO is to essentially just make stuff up with a constant outpouring of intellectual, scientific, and verbal sewage.
Speleothem master chronologies: combined Holocene O-18 and C-13 records from the North Island of New Zealand and their palaeoenvironmental interpretation
Williams, PW, King, DNT, Zhao, JX, Collerson, KD; The University of Queensland
2004; journal article
The stable isotope records of four stalagmites dated by 19 TIMS uranium series ages are combined to produce master chronologies for delta(18)O and delta(13)C The delta(18)O records display good overall coherence, but considerable variation in detail. Variability in the delta(13)C records is greater, but general trends can still be discerned. This implies that too fine an interpretation of the structure of individual isotopic records can be unreliable. Speleothem delta(18)O values are demonstrated to show a positive relationship with temperature by comparing trends with other proxy records, but also to respond negatively to rainfall amount. Speleothem delta(13)C is considered to be most influenced by rainfall. The postglacial thermal optimum occur-red around 10.8 ka BP, which is similar in timing to Antarctica but up to 2000 years earlier than most Northern Hemisphere sites. Increasingly negative delta(18)O values after 7.5 ka BP indicate that temperatures declined to a late mid-Holocene minimum centred around 3 ka BP, but more positive values followed to mark a warm peak about 750 years ago which coincided with the ‘Mediaeval Warm Period’ of Europe. Low 5110 values at 325 years BP suggest cooling coincident with the ‘Little Ice Age’. A marked feature of the delta(13)C record is an asymmetric periodicity averaging c. 2250 years and amplitude of c. 1.9parts per thousand. It is concluded that this is mainly driven by waterbalance variations with negative swings representing particularly wet intervals. The 5110 record shows a higher-frequency cyclicity with a period of c. 500 years and an amplitude of c. 0.25 parts per thousand. This is most likely to be temperature-driven, but some swings may have been amplified by precipitation.
That’s alright bird-droppings. We all know you reckon you’ve knocked-off Einstein. Really, you should go on Australia’s Funniest Home Videos.
Or perhaps the New Inventors, with that … er … thing you actually haven’t invented yet.
“so AGW is punishing SW Australia and rewarding NW Australia; this is gibberish;” – you are kidding?
You have you admit that with Bird on full derange mode talking utter shit at will – that it has given the blog a sort of surreal halo effect.
NT; I believe you have ad homed me; I expected more; was it good for you?
luke; I’m only joking in respect of 50% of that statement; can you guess which half?
Now, if you 2 have had your catharsis, can we move on? Luke I suggested St. George because it is smack in the middle of the northern part of the MDB catchement;
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/index.shtml
In the period 1881-1910 the Max mean rainfall was in January and was 76.4mm; the min was in August and was 28.2.
In the period 1971-2000, the Max mean rainfall was in January and was 90mm; the min was in September and was 22.9.
Seems marginally wetter to me NT, or are you going to suggest I can’t count as well?
Bernard, I have many issues with your post and not much time for it tonight, but just to take one, for the moment:-
“Many of the regulars here are adamant in their denial of warming trends, but the credibly assessed evidence that supports such a stance is very thin on the ground. And many of the regulars here come up with numbers that they say blows to smithereens a world-wide consensus of scientific endeavour, but any attempt to lure then to the global table to settle the matter simply result in avoidance and dissembling.”
It…is…not…warming. What was 1998? A figment of the imagination? What was the first half of this year? Make-believe-cool-weather? What were all of the AGW’ers predicting back in 2003 and earlier, would happen in the current year? Do you think they considered the possibility that the satellite record would show global temperatures dropping to decadal lows (1999 equivalent, per UAH)? Don’t think so.
An approx 1 degree C temperature rise since the end of the Little Ice Age 150 years ago is a cause for rejoicing, not alarm, BTW. It was damn cold back then (and agriculturally unproductive, if the historical record is anything to go by).
Here are a few facts:-
* CO2 and temperatures don’t move in lockstep.
* Over the short-term (periods of less than 100 years), CO2 and temperature appear to have very little correlation.
* Malthusians have been popular many times in the past…but they have yet to be right!
TheWord.
The use of 1998, the hottest year recorded so far, as a reference point for describing subsequent temperature trends is cherry-picking. 1998 was anomalously hot because of an ENSO event, so its record temperature is noise in the signal.
Consider
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Did-global-warming-stop-in-1998.html
I’m at a loss as to how the term “drought” is defined.
I go to a site called weatherzone.com.au which is a Fairfax site. On this site you can see the local weather for all the major towns and cities.
For example here is Wagga Wagga in the heart of the wheat belt.
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/nsw/riverina/wagga-wagga
It clearly shows that Wagga is currently around 50mm short of it’s average rainfall.
Try Bourke in the upper western
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/nsw/upper-western/bourke
well above the average rainfall.
Try Cabramurra in the Snowy
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/nsw/southwest-slopes/cabramurra
also above average rainfall.
Even in the west it doesn’t compute. Here’s Merredin in the western wheat belt
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/wa/central-wheatbelt/merredin
yes it’s down but not dramatically.
the term Drought is bandied around in the press but I find it hard to figure how they define the term.
Niche Modeling also have a problem with drought definition.
http://landshape.org/enm/comparison-of-models-and-observations-in-csiro-decr/#more-680
Lordy me ! You’d do well on the Exceptional Circumstances task force.
Drought can have any definition around dryness you’d like – but would be commonly attributed to a severe climatic event involving a lack of soil moisture or water supplies over a protracted period.
There are really two types : agricultural drought which causes low crop yields, crop failures, or inability to plant, lack of pasture growth, death of domestic stock, protracted hand feeding of domestic stock, or the need to relocate domestic stock.
And hydrological drought – a lack of water supplies typically in streams or rivers for irrigation, domestic or industrial water supply.
You can have possibly have hydrological drought without agricultural drought and vice versa.
Rainfall is most important, but the distribution of that rainfall in the year, evaporation, and antecedent conditions (how dry the catchment is and whether any rain will produce runoff) are all factors.
The USA uses a metric called the Palmer Index which takes more than rainfall into account. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Drought_Index
But Australia uses the good old rainfall deciles or percentiles made famous by Gibb and Maher 1967. (BoM).
Although State governments might have lesser definition here various subsidies kick in (like decile 1 (percentile 10) annual rainfall) the important Commonwealth Exceptional Circumstances definitions are: –
EC are rare and severe events outside those a farmer could normally be expected to manage using responsible farm management strategies.
The event
* must be rare, that is it must not have occurred more than once on average in every 20 to 25 years
* must result in a rare and severe downturn in farm income over a prolonged period of time (eg. greater than 12 months)
* cannot be planned for or managed as part of farmers’ normal risk management strategies, and
* must be a discrete event that is not part of long-term structural adjustment processes or of normal fluctuations in commodity prices.
http://www.daff.gov.au/agriculture-food/drought/ec/background
So the concept of 1 in 20 or percentile 5 rainfall comes in. The notion is that 2-3 times per century farmers may need some assistance in managing multi-year drought events.
That’s a few times per century – not every time it gets a bit dry or an El Nino occurs – as we know Australia’s rainfall is quite variable.
Janama – the bit you don’t know is the history of these places over the last few years.
And here is the trick – once you’re in drought – at what point to you revoke it’s drought status? Good overnight rainfall does not equal instant crops or cows. Takes some time to recover.
An that is called the revocation rule or decision. Coz if you “declare” drought you need to be able logically to “undeclare” or “revoke” the state of droughtedness.
When should that be – median rainfall, percentile 3 ?
BoM go into all this here http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/glossary/drought.shtml
However with multi-agency advisory committees involved in EC declarations – ongoing economic conditions on the ground can become a factor.
ANYWAY – the trick is that if you declare drought on a percentile 5 rule you might think that you’d be in “drought” 5 years in 100. WRONG. Because of the revocation issue it will be much longer than that.
So Janama current rainfall is not the best guide. Look back over the recent few years and then move forward. Like here http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/rain_maps.cgi?map=contours&variable=deciles&area=aus&period=24month®ion=aus&time=latest
So playing around with some numbers in Queensland on revocation.
For 1964-2003 (the period state drought declaration data decisions were available), and declaring drought on percentile 5 annual rainfall – revoking at percentile 30 rainfall – works out 8.2% area of the state of Queensland on average drought declared by those rules; revoke at percentile 50 (median) rainfall 13.3% on average would be declared
for simulated pasture instead of rainfall the percentages were 12.4% 17.8% respectively.
from: National Drought Forum 2003: Science for Drought: Brisbane Australia pp 141-151 Day et al. Simulating historical droughts: some lessons for drought policy
…. AND the fun starts when Treasury notices that some areas may have had the next 200 years of support in the 15 years? What’s that mean?
Plotting the 30 year moving averages of area of exceptionally low rainfall shows that droughts show a decreasing trend, while the models selected for the Drought Exceptional Circumstances report show an incresing trend in over the period 1950-2007.
http://landshape.org/enm/comparison-of-models-and-observations-in-csiro-decr/
This is more evidence to supports the belief in a trend towards a slight increase in rainfall shown in the Marohasy article in the Australian (and the false bias of the climate models).
“Janama – the bit you don’t know is the history of these places over the last few years.”
Luke – if you’d checked the links I gave you would have noticed that the previous year’s rainfall is also listed along with the average.
Cabramurra for example had higher than average rainfall by this time LAST year yet it is in a drought declared region this year.
I concede it is a little off topic but noting:
(1) it has not been produced by weird science fruit loops; and
(2) generally, cold = dry,
this little paper is a bit of a worry as well:
http://www.astroengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/livingston-penn_sunspots2.pdf
Janama – sorry I did look but not hard. As they declare on regions I can suggest you consider the wider area. But check when the declaration is due to expire. They could go 12 months after the drought stops.
Steve – hmmmm … I had rice bubbles for brekky. Why don’t you amend your thesis to warmer SSTs = wetter – as the Sahara is pretty warm but dry?
Interesting how deserts in southern Africa, South America and Western Australia are next to cooler SSTs?
Gee Graeme – I wonder where duh water comes from? A miracle ! Piss off.
Bernard, thankyou for your reply. I agree it is certainly not just leftie groups pushing the AGW barrow. You only have to listen to our business leaders to realise they either believe the science or are now to scared to incur the wrath or the media/ politicians/ some scientist and damage their public relations ( personally with business I think much of it is the latter).
The very fact AGW is being taken as fact by so many politicians would make it very prudent for the military to be considering possible actions by countries that either believe they are in danger, or would like to use it as an excuse to be procactive.
Also, there does not appear to be much doubt that temperatures have warmed over the last century and that climate is changing as it always does. It would be poor management for the military not to be considering the possible implications of this.
That does not however stop me from being sceptical about the cause of the warming or the potential future increases in temperature. ….or decreases as I pointed out above and also Steve just provided an excellent link to the likely cooling we will be seeing over the next decade or two.
You say you are concerned about sea level rises and a 2-3 degree increase ( c or f?) will melt the ice caps in 50-100 or 500 years. Most of the year temps are well below zero, so the warming in many parts will have no effect.
There is some interesting in on this site ( the first one i ran about Greenland temps http://polarmet.mps.ohio-state.edu/jbox/pubs/Box_2002_Greenland_Temperature_Analysis.pdfdomly selected from google)
About half way down you will see that mean temps are below zero for most of the year ( some only marginally and a temp rise will switch them to a small above zero number), but the annual mean is below zero in all but two sites. IT is also important to note that these sites are all coastal, inland will be cooler.
Antarctica is even colder still! Bernard it seem s to me that a 2-3 degree change ( even c) will not cause a rapid melting…or even a melting over a 1000 or more years? Ian Mott made a telling case for all of this last year …well worth a read, especially some of the debate between Ian and Luke. ( maybe my bias but Ian’s point was the one that rang most true)
Sea levels have been rising since the end of the LIA , and since we have warmed up some more in the last 30 years it is hardly surprising that sea levels are rising marginally faster. Tide marks like the isle of the dead in Tassie certainly do not indicate much of a change……
So I remain sceptical…. whilst i do agree only a blithering fool would think that a globally warmer world would not lead to rising sea levels.
I’m not sure I agree the debate is about whether warming is occurring or not ( although i note there are reasons to be sceptical about the degree of that warming). The debate should really be about if the warming is being caused by humans….clearly debatable since at least half of the warming seem s to have been acknowledged as natural, and if it is being caused by humans, is there anything that can be done?
To me currently there is nothing that can be done given the needs of teh developing world, without finding alternatives to fossil fuels. I am all for investing in this type of technology…as i suspect are all or most on this blog.
BUT I am very against an ETS and a carbon tax…they will accomplish nothing, that can not be done more efficiently and more equitably in other ways. An ETS is a recipe for “brokers and traders” to make money whilst achieving little to nothing…just look at Europe’s lack of success!
Lastly because this is getting too long, I will mention that in business there are theories about how to create change. The least effective are threat and manipulation. There is far too much of this from AGW believers and this is grounds to be sceptical on its own….its what started me questioning AGW, …….
“Interesting how deserts in southern Africa, South America and Western Australia are next to cooler SSTs?”
Yes, indeedy – and so getting back on my comfy hobby horse, I’d just like to slip in this:
http://www.biogeosciences-discuss.net/5/2923/2008/bgd-5-2923-2008-print.pdf
….conveniently cranking up coastal zone and oceanic albedo for us (I guess that one’s also for steven w. 😉
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/08/27/emissions-trading-and-rent-seeking-round-two/#comment-500069
“[Penny] Wong apparently does not connect the lack of water in the Murray Darling system with climate change”
Cohenite,
Not an ad hom, just tired of listening to speculators…
“I really can’t see any evidence of marked change anywhere in Australia in respect of rainfall. especially the MDB.”
This is because you don’t know what you are talking about, nor what the data means.
You have to consider a water budget. it is pointless just look at precipitation.
Steve; it is self-evident that you can present all the gold-plated evidence against AGW you like; nothing rational is going to stop this cult until it snows in the Sahara. I was looking at some AGW based reactions to Lomborg’s examples as to how warmth is better than cold; these come from a site run by loon Kare Fog, and you can check the Deltoid archives for the many hatchet jobs done on Lomborg; in this respect this site is interesting; it is the British Government site for Climate Change, and it is a comprehensive report about warming compared with cold; at section 6.2 on pp81-83 it is evident, that based on an optimum temperature determined by the least temperature caused deaths, that AGW will see not only a marked reduction in cold caused deaths, which far exceed heat deaths in England and Europe, but that deaths in the warmest parts of the year will decline as well; the reason is that the colder periods will be warming more, and the warmer periods will only be warming slightly;
http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_080702
Bernard J said…”I can smell dodgey ideas, and when I do, I try to get the idea-holders to confront those whom they dispute”.
I am not disputing RC, I am dismissing them. Why do I need to dispute a middleman who has no particular expertise on global warming other than computer model theory? I go directly to scientists who actually do the research, not computer modelers, geologists, mathematicians, etc. I have no interest in what RC has to say because I have seen people like Mann, Schmidt and Rahmstorf in debate with the likes of Lindzen, McIntyre, McKitrick, et all, and their arguements don’t hold up.
Schmidt et all are great on the other side of an internet line. Schmidt has his chance to go one on one with Lindzen in a debate, but when he got his few minutes to speak at the beginning of the debate, he said he had no intention of getting into the science and that people wishing to understand it could contact RC.
Now why do you suppose he bowed out of the confrontation, as did the other two panelists with him, Richard Sommerville, an ascerbic, pompous man, and Brenda Ekwurzel, who resorted to rhetoric to sell the IPCC instead of debating the science? Not one of them were there to debate, they came to advertise the IPCC. In the end, the audience sides with Lindzen et al.
Schmidt is not even close to being in the same class as Lindzen, who teaches atmospheric theory at MIT and has done 40 years research in the field. Schmidt probably doesn’t even have the academic credentials to get into MIT, a school with an incredibly high entrance requirement. Do you think MIT would hire a professor who was not in the elite of his profession? They certainly don’t want a situation in which the students are smarter than the prof.
Why should I go to RC and submit questions to a mathematician when I can submit them directly to Lindzen? I have done that on occasion and he as either graciously replied, or directed me to papers that have helped immensely. I don’t need RC to tell me what is right or wrong, I can use my own intelligence to find and interpret the research done by original scientists. If I don’t understand something, I contact the researcher directly.
I don’t care about being right and I shun gurus. If by some fluke, the CO2/warming theory turns out to be right, I’ll admit my mistake and move on. What I don’t understand is people like yourself who regard certain others as authority figures. People like Roy Spencer and John Christy freely admit they don’t have all the answers and they can laugh about assumptions they made that were wrong. IMHO…Schmidt et all don’t have that humility or capability. If direct evidence proves them wrong, they scurry about dreaming up implausible theories to account for the inadequacy of their theories.
BTW…it was Lindzen who got me interested in the lack of objectivity in the IPCC. When I saw the claim of the IPCC from the Summary for Policymakers in AR4, that it was 90% likely humans were responsible for global warming, I immediately smelled a rat. I had taken an advanced course in probability and statistics and that kind of confidence level did not seem appropriate with an opinion like that.
I Googled the IPCC claim for more information, and the first hit I got was a statement from Lindzen claiming that’s not what was implied in the scientific report. The committee working in that working group felt there was insufficient evidence at that point and needed to await developments. It was the 50 scientists who wrote the Summary who changed the consensus of the majority and expressed a minority opinion.
When I read what Jaworowski said about the IPCC, it all made sense. The IPCC puts out the Summary several months before the scientific report to give them time to amend the scientific report so it agrees with the Summary. Good grief. Why is the media not screaming about corruption?
Noted Steve. Thanks for gems among the road wreck.
Toby, I do appreciate your comment and I hope that you might contribute to forums other than this one. Gordon, even though we disagree I appreciate your civility and engagement too.
But Graeme Bird… if you have to hang on to 1998 like a green ant on a toe, you should also consider the last one hundred years:
Using your logic (?) the global cooling that you are so scared of stopped in 1907. And then it stopped again in 1917, 1929, 1933, 1950, 1956, 1964, 1976, 1982, 1985, 1992, 2000, 2004, and 2006 (with a few extra times in between, but I don’t want to be greedy in making this list).
And look at the anomalies for each respective year that ‘cooling’ stopped: -0.39, -0.40, -0.25, -0.17, -0.15, -0.17, -0.21, -0.16, 0.05, 0.05, 0.12, 0.33, 0.49, and 0.54.
Yeah, it’s cooling alright.
Not.
Bernard,
Now hang on a minute! Weren’t you criticizing Jennifer for here outrageously misleading graph presentations the other day, because she had the termerity to show them with a 5 degrees C range?
The entire AGW’ing fiasco is built upon about 0.5C per century! Yet now, you pooh-pooh -0.4C anomalies in a year.
Can you not see the irony (not even Socratic) of that?
Bernard,
Weren’t you criticizing Jennifer for the outrageous use of a graph with a 5C range the other day? Apparently all climate graphs should be drawn to emphasize trends of 0.5C per century.
However, when the temperature corrects by -0.4C in a year, that’s meaningless.
Hmmmm…..
TheWord.
I have actually appreciated some of your posts, so I am a little surprisesd that you came up with your last statement.
There is a world of difference between ‘hiding’ a statistically sigificant signal over many years by expanding a scale, and emphasising a non-statistically significant anomaly over as many months.
But let’s cut to the chase – present ALL the data on one scale, using scientific convention where the maximum and minimum y values of the data series determine the maximum and minimum y values of the axis, and then include the attendant statistical errors in y. It matters not whether we look at one year or a hundred then, as long as the appropriate statistics are employed.
Do you know what such an approach would yield?
The 98′ elnino was a good one……maybe the earth has had a hangover ever since..
Might take more than a couple of la nina’s to get things back on track…
Bernard,
Well, then you’d need to decide what the appropriate scale would be.
For example, is it really appropriate to present a graph of something like temperature, which fluctuates on a daily basis anywhere between 10C and 40C depending on where you are, on a scale of +/- 1C?
I’ve never thought there was any justification for that, except to maximize the scare.
So, if your “standard” scale is to be the little tiddler range used in most AGWing graphs, I would not support it.
However, if your “standard” puts some context into the subject which is being graphically represented – viz. temperature – by showing what kind of a range the Earth copes with daily, I’d agree.
Bernard, I have visited RC ( on lukes suggestion )and to be honest was out of my comfort zone, i found the attitudes rather superior and condescending, and many responses toooooo technical for me to be able to really get a feel for the arguments either way. Also what seemed like very valid points to me were either ignored or pooh poohed when they did not agree with “script”.
i will give deltoid a go if its worth it? but to be honest its too easy to get tied up in these blogs and forget about the real world. The thing I like about this blog is I know it is predominantly arguing the “other side” and that there are many believers who come here to argue…so it gives me both sides in some ways!? Some make very good points, others who i would rather not mention because i think it does nobody any good to be rude or “superior”, do so less frequently…..
To find articles, reports and opinions from the AGW side is very easy to do, they are every where. I may be wrong but there seem to be some very qualified and intelligent thinkers that come here and introduce material from elsewhere ( and some not so, but once again i d rather not name names, even they do come out with a different perspective and information that is worth consideration on occasions).
That said I did give up posting for about a year, because teh same old names kept cropping up, without ever giving an inch and the only things i could usually think of saying were derogatory. And as my favorite “bear from the “Yogi bear jambori”, Big Al used to say, “if you aint got nothin nice to say, don t say nothin at all”!! ( now i was only 10 and 14 when i saw them at disneyworld and disneyland and its 29 years since my last visit…so many of you probably don t know what i am talking about… but the point is still a good one!)
There are however a number of new names that have been posting in teh last few months, and i have started to enjoy being involved a bit again.
cheers T
To address your “statistically significant” point…well, I don’t think you’ve made it.
When AGWers talk about the mean temperature increasing by a degree in a century, they’re really talking about a combination of the minima and/or maxima being slightly higher.
Take a typical place, where the “average” for a year is supposed to average 11C minimum and 23C minimum . Wouldn’t it be far more useful for people to know that the average (of, say, 17C) has increased from 17C in 1900 to 17.5C today? Shouldn’t they be shown the graph in context with the daily range?
In fact, isn’t a “statistically significant” change to be measured in terms of standard deviations? Surely, it’s disingenuous to use your 0.5C concept of signficance, when the daily deviation from the mean is many orders of magnitude larger.
Sorry, of course I meant 11C minimum and 23C maximum.
TheWord.
“Well, then you’d need to decide what the appropriate scale would be.
For example, is it really appropriate to present a graph of something like temperature, which fluctuates on a daily basis anywhere between 10C and 40C depending on where you are, on a scale of +/- 1C?”
You are talking apples and oranges.
Mean global annual temperature is a different beast to a local difference between maximum and minimum temperature. They are separate parameters, pure and simple.
If you are plotting the former you plot the range covered by THAT parameter. In this case a range of several degress is absolutely appropriate. If you are investigating the temperature fluctuations of the latter, then you construct the y axis accordingly.
Look at Marohasy’s graph. Global mean temperature does not vary between 10 and 40C, so why would you use a scale appropriate to a completely separate temperature parameter to graphically describe GMT?
If one were to graph the increase in MEAN height of adult humans over the last 200 years would you use a scale of 90cm to 250cm, simply because that is the range that humans can exhibit as adults? No, you wouldn’t (if you had half a clue), and what is more you might even use different scales for the different genders or races.
Come on, really – this is highschool stuff.
Bernard – of course
there are 3 reasons you might graph the temperature trend with those axes.
(1) didn’t really think about it very much at all
(2) wanted to show the degree of change compared to common temperature ranges experienced by life on Earth – a perspective
(3) you’re trying the “teensy weensy” argument for ridicule
However, if you’re doing a duty of care type debate you would need to inform dear reader the implications of such a move – i.e. change in climatic regimes by hundreds of kms, that the Arctic may warm much more than the average, and that temperature anomalies in that range can change whole circulation systems.
It’s a simple metric describing long term trend.
“But Graeme Bird… if you have to hang on to 1998 like a green ant on a toe, you should also consider the last one hundred years:”
Why not the last 5000? Thats a cooling trend. Why not the last 55 million? Thats a cooling trend to. We live in a freezing world with short interglacials. And ignoring the ups and downs of solar activity we are a on a 5000 year cooling trend and will be for thousands of years.
But if we consider the dogma that industrial-CO2 warms we are not ethnically cleansing 1998. Because the suns activity caused it. And these forbush events that cause this sort of thing will become less frequent and powerful now that the suns activities are going into a weaker cycle.
Bernard,
Yes, dramatization via the use and abuse of scaling is certainly high school stuff.
As in using a mean line only, when the actual fluctuations from which the mean is derived are orders of magnitude greater than the amount by which your mean fluctuates. How to make the movements of the mean look dramatic in such a case? Why, simply remove the fluctuations and graph the mean alone. Still looks piddling, set against its original scale? No worries, just rescale a few orders of magnitude lower and voila! Planetary doom!
TheWord.
“As in using a mean line only, when the actual fluctuations from which the mean is derived are orders of magnitude greater than the amount by which your mean fluctuates.”
Out of morbid curiosity, could you please point us to the data that show ‘orders of magnitude greater’ fluctuations in, say, mean global temperature for any one day, compared with annual mean global temperature fluctuation?
Note, I am inviting you to pick any one DAY in the global mean temperature record, even though the discussion is about ANNUAL MEAN global temperatures.
In the latter case the dataset consists of 100 values per century of data, and any other time period considered is thus a different parameter, but I am allowing you to find ANY datapoint fluctuation in ~36 500 (daily) global mean temperature values that is ‘orders of magnitude greater’ than the several degrees of fluctuation show by the annual mean global temperature dataset.
I will be especially curious to see this, as ‘orders of magnitude greater’ by definition is at least 10^2 times greater, in which case one would be looking, at the least, at (0.6-(-0.4))*100 = 102C fluctuation!
Even being generous, and dividing this by one ‘order of magnitude’ – dividing by 10 – I am very eager to see any day in the last one hundred years where global mean temperature might have fluctuated by more than 10C above or below the 13.5-14.5C that has essentially been the (steadily increasing) range over the last century.
That should have been 0.62, obviously.
Bernard,
Perhaps you should consider how the global mean temperature is derived.
What are its basic constituents? Minima and maxima, perhaps?
How is it useful to consider a mean, without considering its context (in fact, purposely and studiously ignoring that context, to the point where the mean is substituted for the series)?
TheWord.
Perhaps you should really think about the apples and oranges metaphor, and consider how a parameter is defined and distinuished from another parameter, even if it shares a measurement unit with said other parameter.
You’re just getting silly now.
Oh dear. Bernard, please explain to me how you think worldwide mean temperatures are calculated? From an individual station basis (or satellite measurement), right up to the worldwide mean for a given day. Explanation in general terms would be fine. Particular attention as to how calculating a mean results in the insignficance of its constituent components would be appreciated.
Then, perhaps I will understand the mean number of apples required to make a litre of orange juice. Apparently you believe that individual oranges turn into apples, when statistical averaging techniques are applied. I’m curious as to whether the resulting transmogrified potion should be called apple juice, orange juice or apple-from-oranges juice.
[QUOTE]”Irrigation water use down by over one-quarter”[/QUOTE]
Because ther’s no water available for their irrigation licences?
[QUOTE]”Irrigation water use down by over one-quarter”[/QUOTE]
Because there’s no water available for their irrigation licences?
Bernard,
Let me ask you a question or two. Assuming that the mean of a variable moves either up or down, compared with its previous reading, what are the possible reasons for that move?
Is it a necessary implication of that move that there is a new, highest element of the range (a “sample record high”) or that the highest minimum record has been eclipsed?…Or, is it simply possible that the overall range has reduced, with no records being set and both elements of the range moving within a smaller range, with a slight bias to one side, or another.
There are many…almost but not quite infinite possibilities to consider, but I assume that you get the picture: a sequence of means, far from containing all of the information you need, actually contains way less information than you had before you cut out the series.
So, to my final query: Given what is predicted to happen, should we not “do something” about CO2 emissions, and given the focus on extreme upward shifts in temperature, why do we keep on seeing 14C to 14.5C graphs, rather than graphs with a proper estimated up and downside range on them?
Where’s your nearest high school, Bernard? I assume they will accept students either side of the mean?
When we interogate a dataset of annual global mean temperatures, which is, after all, a proxy for how warm or otherwise the planet has been over each annual increment, we are interested in the change to these annual means. The various maxima and minima are irrelevant to this interogation, especially as any change to the global annual means is going to come almost exclusively from values that fall between the maxima and minima anyway.
Can you not get it through your head that an instantaneous maximum LOCAL temperature or an instantaneous minimum LOCAL temperature has no direct comparable relationship with an annual GLOBAL mean temperature, and that the consideration of localised maximum or minimum is a DIFFERENT kettle of fish to the consideration of an ANNUAL GLOBAL trend?
They are different parameters. In considering mean annual global temperature trends the maxima and minima in any one year are irrelevant. They are relevant if one considers change in maximum temperature, or change in minimum temperature, and then you would construct separate graphs to display the trends in these separate paramters.
Tell me, if you were going to describe the variance in annual mean global temperature, what values would you use to do the computation? Or let me put it another way – if you were going to plot the variance in the average global anomaly, what data would you use? Do maxima and/or minima for a single location on a single day during any year come into it?
Taking your logic to its end the scale of the graph should be -90ºC to +60ºC.
And finally, you can change the scale to give you a nice flat-seeming line, but it won’t alter the results of appropriate statistical analyses. The scales that I and most of the rest of the scientific world use simply best reflect the statistical characteristics of the particular parameter being considered.
You are continuing to conflate DIFFERENT parameters.
Apologies for the misplacement of TheWord’s name to the authorship of the 12.07am post. My laptop’s display driver is dying and the screen superimposes different part of the page as I scroll, so the first line of the message text ended up in the name box.
That post should be attributed to me.
Bernard,
“You are continuing to conflate DIFFERENT parameters.”
Au contraire – I know exactly the games being played by the warming crowd. They argue that 0.5C per century is going to kill us all. I say, that’s garbage.
“Taking your logic to its end the scale of the graph should be -90ºC to +60ºC.”
Graphed on such a scale, it would be completely apparent to everyone that there was nothing to worry about and that global mean temperature is what it is: essentially, a flat line. Why do you think the warmers continue to plot the y axis, with no reference to the daily fluctuations the earth copes with admirably?
“When we interogate a dataset of annual global mean temperatures, which is, after all, a proxy for how warm or otherwise the planet has been over each annual increment, we are interested in the change to these annual means. The various maxima and minima are irrelevant to this interogation…”
As an abstract statistical exercise, maybe. Outside of that, in the real world, where real world temperature ranges occur every single day, in no way are minima and maxima irrelevant. In fact, as I noted in my post and you studiously ignored, a rising mean temperature tells us nothing about whether that derives from increased maxima, minima, or from a change in the skewness of the distribution.
And, here’s the secret, Bernard: as a committed warmer, you’ll never know the answer to this question, because actual temperature ranges repel you; you are only interested in focussing your electron microscope in on the mean.
Listen to the warmers and we only have linear trends, bell-shaped distributions and zero sampling error. Were that actually the case, you might have some (and only some) argument for shining such a bright light on the mean, alone. It is not and there is no justification for removing the real world context from graphs of the mean’s behaviour.
The most disturbing feature of this data is not the peaks and troughs, rather the length of time between the peaks and troughs. the waves are spreading out, which if these graphs represented like a heartbeat would cause someone to become lethargic and itchy due to oxygen deprivation. The earth needs water as it’s lifeblood… use your quadratic on this concept and one can plainly see the earth is suffocating.
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