Near-Arctic Temperatures (Part 2)
Posted by jennifer, November 27th, 2008 - under News, Opinion.
Tags: Climate & Climate Change
There are no roads to Churchill – a town in northern Canada on the shores of Hudson Bay. This remote outpost is known as the polar bear capital of the world. Polar bears have become something of an icon for those concerned that we have a climate crisis. Indeed Al Gore in his movie, An Inconvenient Truth, suggested polar bears are already suffering from global warming.
It is warming in Churchill. At least thermometer temperature data from both Environment Canada and NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) indicate that it has been warmer since 1998 – but the annual mean is still below zero!
[Click on the charts/graphs for a large/better view]
The Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) don’t collect any data as such rather they collate data from other sources. So, I’m curious that they haven’t included the last two years of data from Environment Canada.
I’m also curious to know why the GISS data for this site shows an annual average that is consistently warmer than the Environment Canada data. And why the data gaps? There is no GISS data for Churchill from 1994 to 1996 and also from 1911 to 1931? And why the step change in temperature since 1998 – I didn’t known the Arctic was influenced by El Nino events?
I have previously suggested that in the future, satellite data (as opposed to data compiled from thermometer-based weather stations), will be recognised as more reliable for understanding global temperature trends.
However, there will always be a need for quality data from specific sites.
Churchill appears to have the very earliest records for the near-Arctic and back to 1768. But again, why the discrepancy between GISS and Environment Canada data?
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The picture of the bear is from the US Fish and Wildlife Service with thanks.
The graph of Churchill Annual Mean Temperatures (1929-2007) based on Environment Canada data was drawn by Nichole Hoskin with data provided via Steve McIntyre – much thanks.
Click on the graphs/charts for a better view.
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UPDATE SATURDAY
Charts rescaled by John S.
“So q, which is not happening, is being caused by Ta which is also not happening. The usual mess.”
The mess is your inability to understand the science. No wonder you get confused.
SJT…”I have a pot of water on the stove. I turn on the stove. The temperature in the pot of water rises. There you go, a forcing”.
Show me anywhere in the field of physics where heat applied to a liquid, raising its temperature, is refered to as forcing. Google it and the only references you will find about forcing is in model-based climate science and mathematical models in general.
Forcing is a conceptual term used primarily to describe the effect of applying an abnormal signal to a mathematical equation. In electronics, an amplifier is defined with sine and cosine waves and those are an amplifier’s natural signals. Sometimes you want to force a response, so you inject a square wave, and the abrupt changes (impulses) in the square wave cause the system to oscillate. That’s an undesirable condition in an audio amplifier so steps have to be taken to dampen the oscillation. The same applies to spring-mass systems.
There is no natural phenomenon known as forcing, other than applying a force to a mass. Water boils because it’s kinetic energy is increased, not because it is forced. The water molecules become agitated due to the increased kinetic energy and the water boils. If you were going to model a pot of water boiling, you’d be correct to talk about forcing but you need to understand that the real world has no forcings.
The climate is not forced other than in a climate model. That’s where modelers have really messed up climate science, by imposing their mathematical jargon on it. Like it or not, climate science falls under the umbrella of physics and mathematicians have no business in that field. As G&T tried to explain, the greenhouse effect is not recognized in physics literature. It is a peculiarity of certain climate scientists, none of whom can explain it adequately without corrupting the laws of thermodynamics.
It’s about time the IPCC stopped making a fool of itself by dabbling in computer modeling and got back to directly observable data.
“Charts rescaled by John S. ”
So it take it we all agree the original story was a non event.
“There is no natural phenomenon known as forcing, other than applying a force to a mass. Water boils because it’s kinetic energy is increased, not because it is forced. The water molecules become agitated due to the increased kinetic energy and the water boils. If you were going to model a pot of water boiling, you’d be correct to talk about forcing but you need to understand that the real world has no forcings.”
I don’t get it. Mathematicians are allowed to use the term ‘forcing’, electronics engineers are allowed to, but you have decided climate scientists aren’t allowed to? Who appointed you judge and jury.
The concept is simple enough. If you have a system in balance, and you perturb it, you get a change. I can force the temperature higher in a pot of water, I can turn up the sun and make the earth hotter, I can turn it down and make the earth colder.
This bears repeating, over and over again…
“G&T also pointed out that no laboratory evidence existed to assume that CO2 has the ability to warm the atmosphere via greenhouse theory to the claimed 10 to 25%, depending on who you ask in the AGW community (Lindzen claims 3% max, including other GHG gases). They pointed out the obvious, that the gas is far too rare to accomplish that, but even if it could warm the atmosphere that much, it would be a new super-insulator.”
Ya’d think a 30-year old hypothesis based on some pretty fundamental assumptions about physics and chemistry would have reams of laboratory experimental evidence to back it up? Especially since it’s a matter of life or apocalypse.
Luke’s only reply is to diss the authors. That’s pretty much all he and Sjt seem to offer to these debates nowadays. The Kill-the-Messenger Fallacy.
I wonder if that is a convincing argument to those of us watching and reading from the side lines?
““G&T also pointed out that no laboratory evidence existed to assume that CO2 has the ability to warm the atmosphere via greenhouse theory to the claimed 10 to 25%, depending on who you ask in the AGW community (Lindzen claims 3% max, including other GHG gases). They pointed out the obvious, that the gas is far too rare to accomplish that, but even if it could warm the atmosphere that much, it would be a new super-insulator.””
It’s a load of ******. 10 to 25% of what? The claim by itself is nonsense.
SJT “Mathematicians are allowed to use the term ‘forcing’, electronics engineers are allowed to, but you have decided climate scientists aren’t allowed to? Who appointed you judge and jury”.
SJT…it’s not that complicated. It’s not about being allowed to use it or not being allowed to use it, it’s about basing climate science entirely on computer models that are immature and not yet accurate. That’s what the IPCC has done to the exclusion of other data that suggests otherwise and it’s what you seem to do. You leave no room for alternative explanations about what is going on in the atmosphere.
I have no issue with using the term ‘forcing’ as long as it’s not offered as basic, proved, physics. I don’t like it personally because models are only of passing interest to me. It would be nice if they become accurate one day but right now I get a bit niggled when people insist on basing climate science on them. I wish sometimes you’d step back and try to observe the atmosphere from more than one angle.
It’s not going to do either of us any harm if in the long run either of us is proved to have been completely wrong. It would be nice to see you get away from the party line over at RC and operate on your own. I realize that likely wont happen.
You might notice that I never claim it is cooling. I don’t know that, nor do I know whether warming will pick up again. All I know, based on UAH satellite data, is that no net warming has taken place for over 10 years. I’m very curious as to what’s going to happen. If you get hung up on model theory, however, you have to take it on faith that warming ‘must’ resume. There lives depend on that over at RC, many of them work in that field.
SJT “It’s a load of ******. 10 to 25% of what? The claim by itself is nonsense”.
Funny enough, the 25% figure came from Gavin Schmidt. He was ridiculing Lindzen’s 3%. Schmidt even separated clouds from water vapour. The 10 to 25% is an estimation of how much CO2 has contributed to raising the Earth’s temperature due to the Greenhouse Effect.
Wes George “Ya’d think a 30-year old hypothesis based on some pretty fundamental assumptions about physics and chemistry would have reams of laboratory experimental evidence to back it up”?
It seems like a simple experiment, doesn’t it? Create an environment, fill it with well mixed gases in the ratio they are found in the atmosphere, irrdiate them with broad spectrum radiation and see what kind of heat they emit and in what IR bands.
Do they do that…nooooo. They use equations from ideal gas experiments and plug them into a computer program as part of a generalized differential equation.
G&T are theoretical physicists and they have not only never heard of CO2 behaving in the manner ascribed to it by AGW theory, they have never heard of many of the other theories used in climate science. It’s amazing how the Stefan-Boltzman constant, which was intended for measuring blackbody radiation in a laboratory environment, has been arbitrarily applied to an atmosphere and surface that is nowhere near a blackbody.