WHILE it is generally agreed that there has been an increase in global temperatures over the last 150 years there is much debate as to how continuous or sporadic this warming has been. I have suggested that understanding could be aided by focusing on one or a few reference stations – particularly given trends in global average temperature is potentially an artefact of how data from stations across the world is combined and then adjusted.
A technical paper, Secular temperature changes in Hawai‘i, published just last year in Geophysical Research Letters indicates there has been recent warming on the island of Hawaii and this has been most evident at high elevations. While the text in the paper emphasis this warming and suggests a potential negative impact, the charts in the same paper suggest that despite the increase in temperatures over the last 30 years, Hawaii is no warmer now than it was in the 1930s.
The paper’s summary reads:
WHILE the upward trend in global mean temperature has been intensively studied, some regional temperature trends are less well known. We document secular temperature changes in the Hawaiian Islands for the past 85 years based on an index of 21 stations. Results show a relatively rapid rise in surface temperature in the last 30 years, with stronger warming at the higher elevations.
The bulk of the increase in mean temperature is related to a much larger increase in minimum temperatures compared to the maximum—a net warming about 3 times as large—resulting in a reduction of the diurnal range. For much of the period of record analyzed here, surface temperature in Hawai‘i has varied coherently with changes in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). However, in recent decades, the secular warming has begun to predominate, such that despite the recent cooling associated with the PDO, surface temperatures in Hawai‘i have remained elevated. The greater warming trend at the higher elevations may have significant ecological impacts.
****************
Notes and Links
Citation: Giambelluca, T. W., H. F. Diaz, and M. S. A. Luke (2008), Secular temperature changes in Hawai‘i, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L12702, doi:10.1029/2008GL034377.
The figure from the paper shows: Average surface temperature anomalies in Hawaii. Time series calculated from monthly station data after removing the calendar month means and averaging into calendar years. Smoothed curve is the annual data filtered with a 7-yr running mean. Linear trends computed for two periods, 1919–2006 and 1975–2006. The latter period emphasizes the enhanced level of global warming documented by IPCC [2007]. (top) All stations (N = 21), with area weightings of 0.575 and 0.425 for low- and high-elevation stations, respectively. Middle panel: Time series plot from observing stations located at the lower elevations (<800 meters). (bottom) Time series plot from observing stations located at the higher elevations (> 800 meters). Error bars show +0.5 standard deviation. Thick lines show 7-yr running means. Asterisks indicate slopes significant at p = 0.05.
Paper via Luke Walker. And thanks.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Jen, I prefer the text – it clearly trumps your lazy eyeballing of an anomaly graph which excludes the PDO. You cant just appeal to the PDO when it suits your argument!
“Temperature variation in Hawai‘i appears to have been tightly coupled to the PDO,
perhaps through regional SST variation. However, in recent
decades Hawai‘i’s air temperature trend has diverged from
PDO and local SST trends, perhaps signaling increasing
influence of global warming.”
Have they done linear trends for the period 1919-1940; if those trends are equal or more than the 1975-2006 trends than that ends that little foray into alarmism. And why 7 year running means?
The hottest year on these graphs appears to be 1940 – just before Pearl Harbour. Warm weather seems to do something to people…
Looks like we definately had global warming from 1920 to 1940 – much, much more than now. In fact, it doesn’t look like there is any now!
Is there a link to the full paper anywhere? If these graphs are based on mean temperature with a stipulated decrease in DRT than the maximum temperatures in the 1919-1940 period must have been much higher than the modern ones.
Geeze that would be good for the tourist industry. Think of all those increasing carbon footprints, as everyone flocks to the islands for a bit more warmth. A few more puffs from Mauna Loa as she welcomes the Haole. And, maybe a bit more CO2 out-gassing from the Mid Pacific Ridge, as it joins the Hawaiian mantle plume in its welcome to the new Pacific arrivals.
Seriously, what are these statistics telling us, other than it might be a bit warmer of late. Hannibal crossed the alps, during a period of glacial retreat, when the world was warmer than today (the roman warm period). And he used elephants not the Hummers of today.
Following in the Cohenite vein of massaging the analysis to find relief from alarmist interpretations, take comfort that the average Hawaiin, out and about mainly during the day at sea level , will be subject to a much reduced trend than his mate loose in the hills after dark.
And as for “Why 7 year running means” it is about smoothing inherently noisy data, not smooching it through rose tinted glasses. A seven year moving average takes out short term ENSO noise for example but makes other trends and cycles ( even random ones) more apparent.
There are lots of analyses in the original and none would give comfort to anyone other than the none-so blind. ( Rick?)
There’s a lot to be amused about with bazza’s contribution; the first is that ENSO is just noise; I suppose it is if you subscibe to the fanciful notion that ENSO is a zero energy dance; that is problematic;
http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1828
With the average El Nino and La Nina over with in 6-12 months 7 year smoothing should have no ENSO noise; but hang on there appears to be a classical PDO shape to the smoothed data; could that be because PDO is just an ENSO residual; that is the +ve and -ve phases of PDO reflect whether there has been more El Nino or La Nina in the 20-30 year period;
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/gilbert.p.compo/Newmanetal2003.pdf
Of equal interest and mirth is the claim that Diurnal Temperature Range is decreasing; this would be expected in an El Nino dominated +ve PDO because more evaporation would see a moderation of temperature at either extreme and since tropical day temperatures are already near their maximum only the minimum can increase; and as I have linked to before DTR decrease is no indice of AGW;
http://www.warwickhughes.com/hoyt/dtr.htm
So, what evidence is there for AGW in this hilarity? The 1975-2006 trend is just dopey without a comparison with the 1919-40 period and its greater slope than the whole period is just evidence of the opposite trend during the period from 1940-1975. Since AGW is driven by CO2 increase and backradiation a la Philipona there should be consistent annual increases with volcanic and ENSO removed; the 7 year smoothing won’t show that and autocorrelation would need a shorter linear trend to show AGW. Another AGW masterpiece brought to us by that impressario, luke.
particularly given trends in global average temperature is potentially an artefact of how data from stations across the world is combined and then adjusted.
Potentially, anything is possible.
“Potentially, anything is possible”; it certainly is little will, when you base your study on temperature increase on a base period of 1944-1980; smack bang in the middle of the -ve PDO, you use different and arbitary weightings for high and low elevations and the Santer method of detecting autocorrelation. This is funny.
WHILE it is generally agreed that there has been an increase in global temperatures over the last 150 years there is much debate as to how continuous or sporadic this warming has been. I have suggested that understanding could be aided by focusing on one or a few reference stations – particularly given trends in global average temperature is potentially an artefact of how data from stations across the world is combined and then adjusted.
i still don t get this. what do you think does a single station tell you about global weather?
let us look at temperature in Australia today:
Latest Weather
°C Rain since 9 am
Sydney 17° 0.0 mm
Melbourne 14° 0.0 mm
Brisbane 24° 0.0 mm
Perth 18° 0.2 mm
Adelaide 14° 0.0 mm
Hobart 10° 0.2 mm
Canberra 10° 0.2 mm
Darwin 31° 0.0 mm
http://www.bom.gov.au/
most people would say, that Australia was pretty cool. but perhaps that is just an artifact? so i will look only at a single station: Darwin. surprise! Australia actually was hot!
Sod, If the concern is that temperatures are rising then it is interesting to consider the nature and magnitude of this change for individual localities including Darwin and Melbourne – and Hawaii. As a biologist I have always been aware that in averaging some of a pattern can be lost.
Linear trends depend on the chosen points of origin.
Without the trend lines, the series would look unremarkable for discerning any trend, let alone any display of AGW.
One of the longest, if not the longest, non-urban, Hansen-meddled free, temperature records belongs to Armagh Observatory and a rational person would be struggling to identify any significant anthropogenic signal there also.
http://junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Armagh1796-2002.html
Sod,
Herein is the problem – global weather – it’s an abstraction actually – the physical system itself is a chaotic non linear one and inherently unpredictable.
So we are trying to convert an abstraction into meaningful numbers? That’s numerology.
Sod, If the concern is that temperatures are rising then it is interesting to consider the nature and magnitude of this change for individual localities including Darwin and Melbourne – and Hawaii. As a biologist I have always been aware that in averaging some of a pattern can be lost.
scientists are aware of this factor. they are actually concerned with the regional effect on the arctic, that shows stronger warming than the rest of the world. (as predicted by them, by the way)
they use regional stations to measure the regional effect. they develop theories for the regional effects of global warming and test them with data.
what you and Tim Curtin do, is something completely different. you are using a single station, to look at global temperature. that is simply insane.
Tim Curtin brought up the idea. he chose hawaii, because the results fit his bias. do you think we would be discussing temperature at hawaii, if that station was showing some recent warming? we would not, because he would have chosen a different station.
Linear trends depend on the chosen points of origin.
Without the trend lines, the series would look unremarkable for discerning any trend, let alone any display of AGW.
i am not sure what you are trying to say. of course linear trends depend on the data!
Sod, thanks fame for me at last when you say “what [Jen] and Tim Curtin do, is something completely different. you are using a single station, to look at global temperature. that is simply insane”.
Of course, that is why Jen and I do not do that.
More fame, when sod adds “Tim Curtin brought up the idea. he chose hawaii, because the results fit his bias. do you think we would be discussing temperature at hawaii, if that station was showing some recent warming? we would not, because he would have chosen a different station.”
Sod, what is your retainer from Han-Joachim’s Schellnhuber’s Potsdam Centre? For only that gentleman’s outfit could offer such deceit (as it does regularly in Nature, see next month’s E&E for an example). I never “chose Hawaii”; I did choose Mauna Loa Observatory for that is where the main CO2 data are logged, and therefore it should provide pristine confimation of the AGW speculation. It does not, so end of that form of AGW, if it exists it has nothing to do with atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa or anywhere else.
So, Herr Sod, kindly retract and apologies please. BTW, as noted above, ML completely refutes the more warming in Hawaii at higher altitude claim in Lukey’s article. Temperatures at Mauna Loa are wholly consistent with Cohenite’s thesis on the PDO, down before 1978/9, up since by a single step rise in that year.
Over to you mein Herren sod, SJT, and Luke Walther (it seems the Potsdam Centre was once a Stasi training college, the more things change the more they stay the same!).
sod wrote:
“i still don t get this. what do you think does a single station tell you about global weather?”
On this one specific point, I agree with sod. What’s so scientific about throwing away information? We may get more transparency if we’re lucky. It may be easier for John Q Public to obtain *raw* temperature data, as well as the correction factor algorithm, for the one-and-only temperature station.
On the other hand, we’d also get a lot more random error (due to the unitary sample size), and a brand new method error that stems from the latitudinal asymmetry of multi-decade trends in global temperature change. For example, high latitudes–like the Southern part of Sweden–were affected more strongly than low latitudes during the latest round of global warming that ended in 1998. And that would not show up at a temperature station in Hawaii.
A reasonable compromise would be to get rid of all the garbage-data-generating temperature stations in parking lots, near barbeque pits, etc.
Here’s where sod and I we may differ. The elephant in the room is the institutionalized data-diddling at GISS and elsewhere. Instead of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, perhaps we should make some popcorn, and watch the scientific prostitutes in the multi-billion-dollar climate fraud industry dig a very deep hole for themselves. The truth will probably come out during their lifetimes, and then they’ll reap all of the contempt that they deserve. And we’ll all gain some insight into the insidious political machinations in the world of Big Science.
Can someone send me somewhere that shows good warming i.e. what station would Sod choose? I am keen to post the data –
cohenite September 9th, 2009 at 2:23 pm:
“Have they done linear trends for the period 1919-1940; if those trends are equal or more than the 1975-2006 trends than that ends that little foray into alarmism. And why 7 year running means?”
Below is a graph representing HADCRU3 data for the last 100 years, divided in two periods. This demostrates indeed that from 1909 to 1946 the rate of temperature increase was greater than in the period thereafter. It appears that there was a sudden drop in global temperatures around 1946. This 37 year increase in global temperature was presumably of natural origin. It is beyond me that the lower rate of the second half of the century is attributed largely to humans. That the natural forces of the earlier period have ceased to affect climate should at least be explained before we could possibly accept an anthropogenic cause for the period following. It is as simple as that.
http://alturl.com/z3gk
Timmy – surely you’re not suggesting that your little charade is comparable to a full multi-station analysis in a published journal. Your comment about the PDO is not backed up by the paper’s own analysis.
You’ve misled the blog severely.
So apologise formally to the blog members for not acting in the full interests of science, evidence and disclosure.
Jennifer, why stop at one;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/28/nasa-giss-adjustments-galore-rewriting-climate-history/#more-8991
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/11/14/the-evolution-of-the-giss-temperature-product/#more-4143
But if you want just one;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/08/how-not-to-measure-temperature-part-79-would-you-could-you-with-a-boat/#more-4455
Well Larry Fields – take another climate analysis and see if it really matters. It does not.
All previous discussions about UHI effects on Hawaii have been ill-informed.
“To consider the possible impact of urbanization on
the 5 stations with the highest population in our station
network, we calculated the linear trends as above with and
without those stations.We found that the differences in mean
temperature trends, if anything, were in the opposite direction—
that is, the non-urban sites exhibited slightly higher
temperature increases than with the urban stations included
(Table S2). However, trends in Tmax and Tmin were higher
the and lower, respectively, when urban stations were excluded
(Table S2), suggesting that urbanization has countered
daytime warming and enhanced nighttime warming.”
Indeed we should probably thank Timmy – his pretentious try-on has unearthed what is an excellent case study of AGW –
good correlation with CO2 going up
PDO effect corrected – temperature effects still divergent
effects at altitude and surface
UHI effect shown to be bogus
and endangered ecosystems at risk from temperature rise.
Come in spinner and thanks for playing. You dope !
Cohers – how many free kicks is that? Surely you don’t have this bloke in your political party do you? He’ll have to march down the back on demos now.
I see a truly alarming cooling trend from 1925 to 1955.
Were I in Hawaii in 1955, after 30 years of cooling, I’d be terrified by the coming ice age.
Can someone send me somewhere that shows good warming i.e. what station would Sod choose? I am keen to post the data –
i would not choose a single station, to represent global temperature.
imagine you are rolling ten dice multiple times. on the first roll, you add 1 to the number rolled by each dice. on the second 2, and so on.
the average will give you a very good impression of what is going on.
picking single dic, on the other hand, is dangerous. and it doesn t matter whether the single series you chose goes 4;5;6 or 7;6;5. while the first one is about right, that is pure chance.
Jennifer,
I agree with all who have advised against picking individual stations. The argument is that for every one that shows what you want, there are others that don’t. But it’s easier to cherry-pick if the average is on your side.
OK, the Arctic has been in the blogs. Here’s a site with lots of info. Here’s a list of Canada trends. They are in order of decreasing trend – I’ll list the top one’s, being aware of internet traditions:
CHANGE IN AVERAGE TEMPERATURE
FROM 1959 TO 2008 (UNIT °C)
Trend computation : Linear regression
STATION CHANGE(°C) YEARS METER ASL
INUVIK (N. : 3.89 (1959 – 2008) 68
FORT_SMITH : 2.87 (1959 – 2008) 203
FORT SIMPS : 2.59 (1959 – 2008) 169
YELLOW_KNI : 2.53 (1959 – 2008) 205
NORMAN_WEL : 2.21 (1959 – 2008) 67
DAWSON (YU : 2.19 (1959 – 2008) 370
TORONTO-LE : 2.09 (1959 – 2008) 173
CAMBRIDGE_ : 2.04 (1959 – 2008) 27
Or Norway:
NORWAY
CHANGE IN AVERAGE TEMPERATURE
FROM 1959 TO 2008 (UNIT °C)
Trend computation : Linear regression
SELECTION : ALL STATIONS
COUNTRY/REGION MEAN VALUE : 1.45°C
STATION CHANGE(°C) YEARS METER ASL
LONGYEARBY : 3.36 (1959 – 2008) 27
HOPEN -NOR : 3.34 (1959 – 2008) 6
BJØRNØYA – : 2.35 (1959 – 2008) 16
NESBYEN – : 2.25 (1959 – 2008) 164
GARDERMOEN : 2.23 (1959 – 2008) 208
LILLEHAMME : 2.12 (1959 – 2008) 242
JAN-MAYEN : 2.11 (1959 – 2008) 10
KISE – Rin : 2.07 (1959 – 2008) 122
GREENLAND
CHANGE IN AVERAGE TEMPERATURE
FROM 1979 TO 2008 (UNIT °C)
Trend computation :
SELECTION : ALL STATIONS
COUNTRY/REGION MEAN VALUE : 2.17°C
STATION CHANGE(°C) YEARS METER ASL
EGEDSMINDE : 3.0 (1979 – 2008) 41
ITTOQQORTO : 2.66 (1979 – 2008) 65
UPERNAVIK : 2.62 (1979 – 2008) 122
TASIILAQ : 2.39 (1979 – 2008) 0
ANGMASSALIK : 2.15 (1979 – 2008) 52
ILLULISAT : 2.14 (1979 – 2008) 0
DANMARKS-HAVN : 1.96 (1979 – 2008) 12
NUUK : 1.95 (1979 – 2008) 70
It’s interesting that the minimum temperatures have warmed and remained so even in a cool PDO. The whole Pacific is unusually warm.
This is obviously not unique, but unless we find a natural cycle the warmists will say “I told you so, minimum temperatures will rise with a greenhouse effect.”
Nick; NUUK and other Greenland stations; I don’t think so;
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2007/10/16/greenland-climate-now-vs-then-part-i-temperatures/
luke; “We found that the differences in mean
temperature trends, if anything, were in the opposite direction—
that is, the non-urban sites exhibited slightly higher
temperature increases than with the urban stations included
(Table S2). However, trends in Tmax and Tmin were higher
the and lower, respectively, when urban stations were excluded
(Table S2), suggesting that urbanization has countered
daytime warming and enhanced nighttime warming”
I’ve appeared before Magistrates who would’ve imprisoned the authors of this mangle for contempt; I guess they are saying that the UHI effect cools days and warms nights but that the UHI increases Tmax and decreases Tmin; which is great if Tmin is during the day and Tmax at night; previously they say;
“The amplification of warming trends with elevation implies a change in the vertical temperature lapse rate in the islands during the past few decades”; that is, a warming effect with elevation would lower the lapse rate; but as I said, that would mean a THS; there is none.
Nick; NUUK and other Greenland stations; I don’t think so;
http:www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2007/10/16/greenland-climate-now-vs-then-part-i-temperatures/ [// excluded]
luke; “We found that the differences in mean
temperature trends, if anything, were in the opposite direction—
that is, the non-urban sites exhibited slightly higher
temperature increases than with the urban stations included
(Table S2). However, trends in Tmax and Tmin were higher
the and lower, respectively, when urban stations were excluded
(Table S2), suggesting that urbanization has countered
daytime warming and enhanced nighttime warming”
I’ve appeared before Magistrates who would’ve imprisoned the authors of this mangle for contempt; I guess they are saying that the UHI effect cools days and warms nights but that the UHI increases Tmax and decreases Tmin; which is great if Tmin is during the day and Tmax at night; previously they say;
“The amplification of warming trends with elevation implies a change in the vertical temperature lapse rate in the islands during the past few decades”; that is, a warming effect with elevation would lower the lapse rate; but as I said, that would mean a THS; there is none.
El Gordo
But this assumes the benchmark effect is wrong – but the maxima have not increased?
This tells me that we don’t understand what causes the observed temperature changes.
On this we wish to inflict the ETS or the Waxman-Markey legislation?
The only way to measure the Earth’s temperature is by a satellite designed for that purpose.
The scientific method involves a separation of the object (The Earth) and the observer, (Satellite) to allow a scientific measurement.
Roy Spencer’s (and John Christy’s) data fit this definition.
Mann et al, using proxies, are simply converting to numbers, misinterpreted. derived from self administered thermometer measurements.
Like an octopus, each tentacle armed with a thermometer, the octopus gets 8 readings and wonders which one is the correct one.
None.
That is the AGW problem.
Whoops, 4th para, “Mann et al, using proxies, are simply converting to numbers, DATA misinterpreted AND derived from self administered thermometer measurements.
Oh pullease Louis – a highly advanced radiometer drifting in calibration on a drifting platform. Yes a good method but don’t think the digital data received are stable quantities through the life of these systems. There’s whole books on the subject. And analogously – what pixel on the scannerline is the right one?
Luke,
Thanks, proves my point that we while we can calculate an average, it reduces to an average of what – my contention is of the thermometers and not the Earth.
El Gordo – or as the Pacific drifts towards a warmer El Nino like mean state under AGW, or perhaps a warmer non El Nino like mean state.
http://www.greenhouse2009.com/downloads/InternationalENSO_090326_1500_Vecchi.pdf
Coho – you’ll enjoy slide 17 – your future?
Luke,
A radiometer is a child’s toy – like your comments – child-like – but apart from that, you don’t know your subject, do you. Hence the bluster and ad homs.
Nick; NUUK and other Greenland stations; I don’t think so;
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2007/10/16/greenland-climate-now-vs-then-part-i-temperatures/ [// excluded]
luke; “We found that the differences in mean
temperature trends, if anything, were in the opposite direction—
that is, the non-urban sites exhibited slightly higher
temperature increases than with the urban stations included
(Table S2). However, trends in Tmax and Tmin were higher
the and lower, respectively, when urban stations were excluded
(Table S2), suggesting that urbanization has countered
daytime warming and enhanced nighttime warming”
I’ve appeared before Magistrates who would’ve imprisoned the authors of this mangle for contempt; I guess they are saying that the UHI effect cools days and warms nights but that the UHI increases Tmax and decreases Tmin; which is great if Tmin is during the day and Tmax at night; previously they say;
“The amplification of warming trends with elevation implies a change in the vertical temperature lapse rate in the islands during the past few decades”; that is, a warming effect with elevation would lower the lapse rate; but as I said, that would mean a THS; there is none.
Comment from cohenite September 9th, 2009 at 2:23 pm:
“Have they done linear trends for the period 1919-1940; if those trends are equal or more than the 1975-2006 trends than that ends that little foray into alarmism. And why 7 year running means?”
Below is a graph representing HADCRU3 data for the last 100 years, divided in two periods. This demostrates indeed that from 1909 to 1946 the rate of temperature increase was greater than in the period thereafter. It appears that there was a sudden drop in global temperatures around 1946. This 37 year increase in global temperature was presumably of natural origin. It is beyond me that the lower rate of the second half of the century is attributed largely to humans. That the natural forces of the earlier period have ceased to affect climate should at least be explained before we could possibly accept an anthropogenic cause for the period following. It is as simple as that. http://alturl.com/z3gk
“To consider the possible impact of urbanization on
the 5 stations with the highest population in our station
network,”
I would ask: do the authors state how they obtained figures for urbanization? If I were doing this sort of paper and considering urban effects, I would not waste my time on this issue unless I had visited each individual site and documented the current urbanization/rural state of each site in detail. Otherwise how would you know what you were reporting on?
Nick; NUUK and other Greenland stations; I don’t think they are all consistent with temperature increases;
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2007/10/16/greenland-climate-now-vs-then-part-i-temperatures/
luke; “We found that the differences in mean
temperature trends, if anything, were in the opposite direction—
that is, the non-urban sites exhibited slightly higher
temperature increases than with the urban stations included
(Table S2). However, trends in Tmax and Tmin were higher
the and lower, respectively, when urban stations were excluded
(Table S2), suggesting that urbanization has countered
daytime warming and enhanced nighttime warming”
I’ve appeared before Magistrates who would’ve imprisoned the authors of this mangle for contempt; I guess they are saying that the UHI effect cools days and warms nights but that the UHI increases Tmax and decreases Tmin; which is great if Tmin is during the day and Tmax at night; previously they say;
“The amplification of warming trends with elevation implies a change in the vertical temperature lapse rate in the islands during the past few decades”; that is, a warming effect with elevation would lower the lapse rate; but as I said, that would mean a THS; there is none.
So Comrade Luke claims Mauna Loa Obervatory data show
1.”good correlation with CO2 going up” Not true; R2 for changes in Temps v changes in CO2 at Mauna Loa since 1958 is in effect 0.0 (doing changes removes the auto-correlation from the absolute numbers, ever heard of Durbin-Watson?)
2. “PDO effect corrected” – temperature effects still divergent. Minor downward trend in T from 1958 to PDO in 1978/9, minor upward since, net effect NIL.
3. “effects at altitude and surface” – compare the nil zero zilch rising temperature trends at all of Mauna Loa, Pt Barrow and Cape Grim despite the spiralling CO2 at all those locations.
4. “UHI effect shown to be bogus” – actually the UHI + AHI* effect is the SOLE cause of all “rising” global temperatures.
5. “and endangered ecosystems at risk from temperature rise”. Back to Darwin & Huxley, Comrade, our own ecosystem has never exhibited greater worldwide prosperity for the majority of our 6.8 billion people than now.
BTW, Comrade Luke, congrats on channeling Australian taxpayers’ money to the fraudulent CDM and REDD schemes in PNG run by your best mates (see today’s SMH).
* AHI = Airport Heat Islands (eg Honolulu, Canberra, and Nairobi et al et al that dominate the Gistemp Hadley and BoM records).
Errata: ‘current urbanization/rural state of each site” above should read, ‘current and historical urbanization/rural state of each site’
Slide 17 luke; maybe, but I note slides 6 and 20 about the modeled weakening of the Walker; for what is actually happening;
http://landshape.org/enm/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/articletxt.pdf
In respect of Nick’s list of individual stations showing warming; the Greenland ones are problematic;
http:/www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2007/10/16/greenland-climate-now-vs-then-part-i-temperatures/
And luke’s Hawaiian paper; “We found that the differences in mean
temperature trends, if anything, were in the opposite direction—
that is, the non-urban sites exhibited slightly higher
temperature increases than with the urban stations included
(Table S2). However, trends in Tmax and Tmin were higher
the and lower, respectively, when urban stations were excluded
(Table S2), suggesting that urbanization has countered
daytime warming and enhanced nighttime warming.”
That is terrible; I’ve appeared before Magistrates who would have jailed you for contempt for mangling the language like that. I guess they are saying that the UHI effect cools days and warms nights but they also say the UHI increases Tmax and decreases Tmin, which is fine if Tmin is during the day and Tmax at night.
Previously they say: “The amplification of warming trends with elevation implies a change in the vertical temperature lapse rate in the islands during the past few decades”; that is, a warming effect with elevation would lower the lapse rate; but as I said, that would mean a THS; there is none.
And luke’s Hawaiian paper; “We found that the differences in mean
temperature trends, if anything, were in the opposite direction—
that is, the non-urban sites exhibited slightly higher
temperature increases than with the urban stations included
(Table S2). However, trends in Tmax and Tmin were higher
the and lower, respectively, when urban stations were excluded
(Table S2), suggesting that urbanization has countered
daytime warming and enhanced nighttime warming.”
That is terrible; I’ve appeared before Magistrates who would have jailed you for contempt for mangling the language like that. I guess they are saying that the UHI effect cools days and warms nights but they also say the UHI increases Tmax and decreases Tmin, which is fine if Tmin is during the day and Tmax at night.
Previously they say: “The amplification of warming trends with elevation implies a change in the vertical temperature lapse rate in the islands during the past few decades”; that is, a warming effect with elevation would lower the lapse rate; but as I said, that would mean a THS; there is none.
And Nick; your list of stations with increasing temperatures; NUUK is not increasing;
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/03/goddard_polar_ice/print.html
And there is a world climate report on all the Greenland stations but it will not post but Im sure you can google it.
Coho, OK, I did the regression for NUUK. I had trouble because 2008 was listed as unavailable. But I got a rise of 1,85C from 1979-2007.
The plot is here.
No longer listening – Timmy – you lied to me. You’ve blown your reputation at Deltoid and now here. Fancy withholding all that from us.
Louis – radiometer – NOAA series satellites – AVHRR – Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer
Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) is a multi-channel microwave radiometer
You’re such uninformed codger – time for beddy byes gramps !
Sorry Coho – your url isn’t a published reference. Smith and Power differs and Dr David has warned you ! Stockwell won’t get it published.
OK. My spam filter has been picking on Cohenite and Chris Schoneveld. Apologies. I’ve just found and released a few posts following this note…
Hi Jennifer,
I tried a few times to post the following comment on your “Warming in Hawaii” thread but each time the post is not appearing. It may be my computer (using Safari as a browser)
Chris
cohenite September 9th, 2009 at 2:23 pm:
“Have they done linear trends for the period 1919-1940; if those trends are equal or more than the 1975-2006 trends than that ends that little foray into alarmism. And why 7 year running means?”
Below is a graph representing HADCRU3 data for the last 100 years, divided in two periods. This demostrates indeed that from 1909 to 1946 the rate of temperature increase was greater than in the period thereafter. It appears that there was a sudden drop in global temperatures around 1946. This 37 year increase in global temperature was presumably of natural origin. It is beyond me that the lower rate of the second half of the century is attributed largely to humans. That the natural forces of the earlier period have ceased to affect climate should at least be explained before we could possibly accept an anthropogenic cause for the period following. It is as simple as that.
http://alturl.com/z3gk
Comrade Luke had only this to offer to my last “No longer listening…”
You are guilty as charged for fraudulent conduct. Lack of response to detailed allegations amounts to a plea of Guilty. Accepted.
Don’t bother hand waving Curtin – I’m not even bothering to read your (laugh) allegations. Allegations !! – who do you think you are? Want to refute Giambelluca et al – go duke it out in the literature.
You wantonly misled the blog with childish little Mauna Loa diversion ignoring a recent detailed review. Failed in your duty of care. You can’t be trusted to represent anything after this. Apologise formally to the blog and get off !
Questions:
If extrapolating world temperatures from a single location is bad, why is extrapolating world CO2 atmospheric percentages from a single location good?
Why not show the data on minimum temperature readings and maximum temperature readings separately? Is this important, or not?
I was also wondering why earlier data was not included, assuming it exists.
Luke drivelled,
“Oh pullease Louis – a highly advanced radiometer drifting in calibration on a drifting platform.”
You REEEEALY need to move your instrumentation into the 21st century!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Nick; it is no surprise that you get an increase from 1980; but the point is, is that increase unusual as luke’s paper asserts? The Nuuk stations clearly show not;
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=431042500000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=222206740006&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
Globally this is the point;
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b370/gatemaster99/warmtwice.png
That is the rate of increase at the beginning of the 20thC is equal to the rate of increase at the end; so how are things getting worse? And is it really getting worse at the Hawaiian stations or indeed any station?
And luke, what do you mean Dr David [Jones I presume] has warned me? Are you implying that the peer review process is fixed?
WillMc – “why is extrapolating world CO2 atmospheric percentages from a single location good”
– well they don’t – ding ding !
and isn’t it funny that a whole global network tells about the same story
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/sio-keel.html
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/csiro/csiro_gaslab.html
“For the 88-yr (1919–
2006) study period, length of record averages 52 years for
the selected stations. The number of stations with data in
any given year varies between 6 and 20, with the greatest
number of stations available during 1944–1980.”
“Are you implying that the peer review process is fixed?” hahahahahaha
Typical denialist knee-jerk.
Is that why we all have problems. Perhaps it might be also that things may also be wrong, inane, or crap. Get published and prove him wrong.
Anyway Cohers – all very tedious and boring – in the interests of a free kick and helping the denialist scum attempt some debate here – try http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0442/16/17/pdf/i1520-0442-16-17-2859.pdf what a dreadful place to measure temperature.
Speaking of the state of Hawaii, here’s a great temperature proxy for the island of Kauai: the number of nudist hikers on the Kalalau Trail on a given day. 😛
As far as I am aware the modelmakers use data laundered globalised sulphate aerosol mumbo-jumbo to fit up their average temperature curve to the mid-century cool period. Hawaii is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and should not have any aerosol cooling effect at all as far as I can see. The only reason I can think of for sulphate aerosols to be in the area would local factories etc which is stretching it a bit in my opinion.
Looking at the GISS graph for the Mauna Loa Observatory (via Watts site) you can see that there is a massive drop in temperature centered around 1949. If not an artifact, what would cause this? I haven’t a clue.
Lukey: “Are you implying that the peer review process is fixed?” hahahahahaha
Typical denialist knee-jerk.”
Of course the peer review process is fixed, but not fixed in the repaired sense if thats what you mean. Whatever gave you the impression it wasn’t?
Luke – thanks for link to Folland paper. Do you have a link to Giambelluca, T. W., H. F. Diaz, and M. S. A. Luke (2008), Secular temperature changes in Hawai‘i, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L12702, doi:10.1029/2008GL034377?
In exchange here is link to the full Mauna Loa data set.
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/cliMAIN.pl?hi6198
Use the scroll bar on the left and scroll down about half way, find the header Temperature (or Precipitation). Under that, find
Monthly Temperature (Precipitation) Listing and click on “monthly totals”. This will give you a table of monthly and annual values for that station’s entire period of record.
I look forward to your smoothing splicing and dicing to get an upward trend complete with 7 year rolling averages and all tiresome years expunged.
Im surprised UK climatologists and the like of flannery are not suggesting nuclear as a solution to the “catastrophe” we are facing. …
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Sudden+chill:+even+a+limited+nuclear+exchange+could+trigger+a+climate+…-a0159538732
Dribble, the following suggests a number of possible reasons for the temp change, the first being a move in the site..although it doesn t seem to actually say where it was moved to or from, other than it being at pearl harbour.
http://www.oceanclimate.de/Archiv/juli_09.html They also go onto to say that the site was moved in 1947, which occurred in the middle of the 1945-49 decline.
When you scroll down it is interesting to see a graph from the IPCC 2007 AR4 fig 3.4 showing temp anomolies in the northern hemisphere that clearly shows the temp change from 1910-1940 was greater than 1975-2000.
So why do we keep hearing this crap about unprecedent speed of change…hows that exchange with Luke going?!
Well toby, someone should tell the anti-nuke people that the new nuclear power-plants have no weapon grade waste;
http://bravenewclimate.com/2008/12/13/integral-fast-reactor-ifr-nuclear-power-q-and-a/
Tim, I’ll send you a copy.
Cohenite, if we really had a problem, nuclear would be pushed much more ardently. It is intersting that Barry Brooks and a few others have recently come out in favour of nuclear, but whilst our politicians keep denying its benefits, I think its safe to say they do not believe their own hype on AGW. I think we should have tshirts with the slogan
NO NUCLEAR QED NO CLIMATE PROBLEM.
The crackpot ideas coming out of the UK Royal society recently was my prompt for the nuclear link above, because a nuclear war would cause climate cooling!…so i am surpised someone hasnt suggested detonating a few small devices in the atmosphere!
Dribble dribbled (sorry – couldn’t resist):
Yes, of course it’s “fixed” – if by that you mean that it’s mostly papers that support the current consensus that get past peer review. And there’s not much to complain about in that either – for sure, such a consensus does not “prove” that it’s the correct view, merely that the majority think it probably is at that time. And neither does it mean that it’s biased – by keeping the “noise” down somewhat, science gets to ignore some of the more odd-ball theories and focus on what appears to be the best paradigm.
Alas, this also means that it sometimes takes a generational change to undo the “damage” from popular, yet incorrect, proposals. The history of science is filled with such episodes. AGW may be one, or it may not, but one thing is certain – if you check back in 100 years or so, you’ll wonder what the fuss was about because the answer is obvious in retrospect. And that’s true regardless of the whether AGW/CO2 “survives”, and whether or not it’s “correct”. Hey – that’s science, and part of it’s “self-correcting” nature.
All of which doesn’t help us in what to do right now. Not because we can’t examine history and say “OK, we need to wait for more and better data and for various predictions to prove true or false to help us decide on what hypothesis best reflects reality” – which would be the logical thing to do. The reason we can’t take this path, despite it seemingly being the most prudent course, is because we have people saying that we cannot wait, that such a delay would be fatal. Of course, they don’t seem to have a handle on the law of unintended consequences – that we might make decisions now based on incomplete data that make things worse instead of better. And thanks to some very slick political and public relations people, those who want to “do something” currently have the upper hand. So in some respects, I kinda hope they’re right – because if they’re not, and we start playing around with geo-engineering before we really know what’s going on, we could be in some very deep do-do indeed!
Tim: “In exchange here is link to the full Mauna Loa data set. http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/cliMAIN.pl?hi6198”
Tim thanks for that. Is this a different observatory to the one discussed by Watts? I’m confused. Are there two observatories? The one I referred to previously is called Honolulu Obs Oahu with data set ended in 1980. This one is called Mauna Loa Slope Obs, Hawaii (516198). Apologies if I have garbled the issue.
From Nick Stokes post, the temperature change at Inuvik is 3.89C
INUVIK (N. : 3.89 (1959 – 2008) 68
The last time I looked at this line in Nick Stokes’s post, I could have sworn that the number 3.89 was 4 point something or other. I distinctly remember this since I was going to write a comment on it. Is Nick Stokes subtly adjusting his posts without telling us, instead of being forced to send in an errata comment? How is this possible?
Regardless of the above, I would consider a temperature rise of approx 4C to be impossible to be due to AGW. Why would an AGW effect concentrate on one town in the Arctic, when others in his list are in the order of 2C, and global average rise approx 0.4C.
I would suggest that this massive increase at Inuvik must be due to either some sort of artifact or local effects such as UHI. According to Wikipedia:
“A distinct feature of Inuvik is the use of “utilidors” – above-ground utility conduits carrying water and sewer – which are covered by corrugated steel. They run throughout town connecting most buildings, and as a result there are many small bridges and underpasses. The utilidors are necessary because of the permafrost underlying the town.”
It does not say whether or not these utilidors are heated in order to keep the poo flowing. The weather at the town seems to spend much of its time below freezing, so are these utilidors heated in any way or just insulated?
In my opinion if an UHI effect (if that is what it is) can be this major, it is clear that the whole question of UHI must be subjected to serious research of the massive variety. Otherwise what is going on?
Neil: “– by keeping the “noise” down somewhat, science gets to ignore some of the more odd-ball theories and focus on what appears to be the best paradigm”
I agree. By erecting a barrier to the study of crackpot theories Big Science is throwing away the gems amongst the dross. I have always thought it might be a good idea for some MS science journals to include a wacko section at the back where the author of a crackpot theory gets to lay it all out. Readers with an interest could look at the issues, carefully discuss why this or that is incorrect etc etc, or admit themselves stumped if they cannot explain something. The process would have to be adjudicated to ensure that it does not just sink to the usual level of debunking. It would certainly make a welcome change from the staggeringly dull and lifeless variety of science journal that is the current standard.
.Cohenite, if we really had a problem, nuclear would be pushed much more ardently. It is intersting that Barry Brooks and a few others have recently come out in favour of nuclear, but whilst our politicians keep denying its benefits, I think its safe to say they do not believe their own hype on AGW. I think we should have tshirts with the slogan
NO NUCLEAR QED NO CLIMATE PROBLEM.
Look at all the furore already over climate change and attempts to deal with. It’s going to be a brave politician to put his hand up for a nuclear reactor in his electorate. That’s nothing to do with AGW or science, that’s the realm of the political.
Dribble wrote:
It will likely disappoint you to know that most scientists (well, the ones I have spoken to anyway – and that’s more than a few!) are not particularly brilliant – or at least, where they are, they are likely to be more like idiot savants rather than the typical “genius” – that is, more like the “absent-minded professor” than the “intellectual giant”, if you will (with apologies to scientists in general – not a slur, just a general observation). Shouldn’t really surprise anyone I suppose as that’s an accurate reflection of society in general, methinks. Anyway, the true “greats” are, IMO, the ones that can not only focus on the details, but can also, seemingly effortlessly, integrate that detail into a coherent whole. Rare birds indeed, those. Which explains the dry, “staggeringly dull and lifeless” papers that, as you rightly point out, seem to dominate the literature – I’m afraid that’s about all most of ’em can handle.
dribble [?]; 3.89 change is not the highest in the Arctic listed at Nick’s site;
ITTOQQORTOORMIIT(GREENL.EAST)(HOMOG.) : 3.92 (1959 – 2008)
That is a mighty increase and quite frankly something smells fishy.
Rare birds indeed, those. Which explains the dry, “staggeringly dull and lifeless” papers that, as you rightly point out, seem to dominate the literature – I’m afraid that’s about all most of ‘em can handle.
Can’t win, alarmist one minute, dull and lifeless the next.
cohenite wrote:
“Well toby, someone should tell the anti-nuke people that the new nuclear power-plants have no weapon grade waste;”
My definition of weapons-grade waste includes plutonium in the waste. It also includes a low Pu-240/Pu-239 ratio. Why?
Both isotopes have more than one mode of decay, including spontaneous fission. However the RATE of spontaneous, sub-critical-mass fission for Pu-240 is much greater than that of Pu-239.
If you try to construct an A-bomb using plutonium extracted from the waste of a commercial nuclear reactor, you’ll get premature detonation and a much-lower-than-normal yield. This may be what happened in North Korea’s first nuclear test. Typical yields from preliminary Nuclear Club fireworks are on the order of 10 kilotons. The first North Korea test had a much smaller yield.
If you want to make a plutonium-based A-bomb, you’ll need to do reprocessing of the enriched uranium fuel well before it’s considered ‘spent’ by commercial-nuclear-power-plant standards. The old Rocky Flats facility in Colorado was dedicated to reprocessing.
The upshot: You cannot make an *efficient* plutonium-based A-bomb using waste from a commercial reactor. In that sense, even the old first-generation nuclear power plants generated no appreciable weapons-grade waste. Of course, it’s always possible for a terrorist to make a ‘dirty bomb’ powered by conventional explosives from such waste.
cohenite’s statement is correct, but it has more generality than he suggests.
Dribble, Neil Fisher, (sigh) SJT,
If you want a giggle, have a look at:
Sand-Jensen, K. (2007) How to write consistently boring scientific literature. Oikos 116(5):723-727.
Best paper I’ve seen for a while, at least in the ecological literature.
toby wrote:
“The crackpot ideas coming out of the UK Royal society recently was my prompt for the nuclear link above, because a nuclear war would cause climate cooling!…so i am surpised someone hasnt suggested detonating a few small devices in the atmosphere!”
Someone please correct me if I’m mistaken about this. My understanding is that the old Nuclear Winter scenario from the 1980s, which few people talk about anymore, assumed that the atmosphere would receive massive quantities of particulates from huge wildfires in Eurasia and North America, stemming from the nuclear ‘exchange’. Detonating a few 2-megaton devices in the atmosphere directly over the Simpson Desert would piss off a lot of people, but it probably wouldn’t have much of an effect on world climate.
Larry; alarmists will continue to object to nuclear because the issue for them is not the science of AGW but the lifestyle of western capitalism;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/16/nuclearpower-nuclear-waste
In respect of 4th generation reactors I thought partitioning stripped the plutonium from the waste and reused it in an effective one-stage process where the enrichment was concurrent with the use; of course thorium reactors are even better from a waste viewpoint but there are some economic issues;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/16/nuclearpower-nuclear-waste
Instead of diverting billions into subsidisation of solar, wind and the other Mickey Mouse ‘rebubbles’ the government should be assisting thorium technology since Australia has the largest thorium deposits; but that, of course, would require intelligence, foresight and courage to kick the feral greens out of the way.
Sorry, that 2nd link should be;
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2005/07/68045
Cohenite
You should get a copy of “The nuclear reactor accident at Chernobyl, USSR by Bernard L. Cohen, University of Pittsburgh, in Am. J. Phys. 55 (12), December 1987. It contrasts the difference between LWR types and Russian types – the LWR’s used in civilian power generation cannot produce plutonium. Reactors that use graphite as a moderator are specifically designed to do so. I can copy this paper if you want and email it to you if you cannot easily get it.
Coho: “3.89 change is not the highest in the Arctic listed at Nick’s site;
ITTOQQORTOORMIIT(GREENL.EAST)(HOMOG.) : 3.92 (1959 – 2008)
That is a mighty increase and quite frankly something smells fishy.”
Well this reading disproves Raupach’s ‘scientific’ claim that the Greenland Ice Sheet is going to melt if the temperature goes up a few degrees. It should have destroyed civilization already.
Louis; I’ve got some pressing business which is keeping me busy right now but I am definitely interested in the nuclear option and history; aren’t the 4th generation, the Fast Integral Reactors, sodium cooled where, as you say, the VHTR reactors are helium cooled?
dribble; absolutely right; if these temperature increases are correct we should already be under-water!
toby:” http://www.oceanclimate.de/Archiv/juli_09.html They also go onto to say that the site was moved in 1947, which occurred in the middle of the 1945-49 decline.”
Yes from the information you have provided it looks as if the station move had a lot to do with the huge downspike in temperature for that side. The move would probably invalidate any trend comparison between the early and later parts of the century for this site without some sort of laundering procedure.
“hows that exchange with Luke going?!”
Luke has chickened out and decided that discretion is the better part of valor. Can’t say I blame him. He has not provided any explanation in relation to the Raupach lie allegation issue so far. Perhaps he is waiting for guidance from the management.
Cohenite
VHTR’s produce plutonium, and the other type? LWR’s don’t but if you want a weapon, then LWR’s are not the way to go.
You have also confused me with someone else – so you are indeed under some pressing business.
Oh and Benny Peiser has just discovered Abiotic oil theory – which I comment on elsewhere.
Those who know the details will recognise Kutcherov as also being an author of the papers reproduced on http://www.gasresources.net site.
Cohie,
Over at Deltoid the nuclear debate began on an open thread, then Tim picked it up and ran with it. Interesting debate, but no place for the faint hearted. I showed them the Guardian link that you have above, nevertheless the camp minder (anti-troll Mark Byrne) will probably continue his relentless attack to protect his patch.
dribble: “Yes from the information you have provided it looks as if the station move had a lot to do with the huge downspike in temperature for that side.”
No thats completely wrong. I should have read the article more thoroughly before gabbling on. FMD The author states that the station, which is situated at Pearl Harbour, was not moved during this period. He claims that war related activities in the area might be responsible for the odd values. Without a detailed history of the military activities at the site we will never know. (although of course this sort of detailed history would be in the archives or written up somewhere)
Sorry for the confusion, but FMD is not the author. This is a euphemism put in a confusing spot. I give up.
Louis,
“Benny Peiser has just discovered Abiotic oil theory”
The more I read about the abiotic oil theory the more plausible it becomes.
Would you know the depths of the deepest coal and oil deposits?
Or the knowledge is limited by current technology?
The reason I’m asking is, that for the plant and animal matter to go this deep to form oil and coal
must mean, firstly a very abundant flora and fauna at some stage followed by an unimaginable upheaval.
And this must have been repeated many times over across the world.
Like a giant plow burying all that stuff.
It makes you think really?
Louis; I tried to send you an e-mail but it looks as though you’ve changed your address; drop me a line when you get a chance
The Deltoid thread on nuclear shows that even the crusted on greens are starting to appreciate that their AGW baby is going to turn out the lights if all that is on offer are the renewbubbles; still, as condescending JC comments, the same green psychology regrets the life-styles which make the necessity for nuclear as an alternative to coal.
“Luke has chickened out ” not really. Excuse did you think your hysterical rants were – a – a – debate? Gawd.
Cohers – time to spare us the green stereotyping – Barry Brooks and many of us concerned about unrestrained carbon growth are quite willing to consider new nuclear. I’m sorry you’re stuck with Louis circa 1954.
Marcus – pullease – we’ve been over abiotic oil a number of times here over the years here. What a crock.
Oh, yes, abiotic oil is a crock; but just to be sure perhaps luke, Barry and many of the CO2 fetishques can do a fact-finding trip to here;
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/02/14/2162556.htm
It’ll be a good opportunity to test the solar powered all terrain gum-boots.
LUKE, so abiotic oil is a crock then, well perhaps you could supply the experimental data and papers published that show how biomass is spontaneously converted to kerogen under diagenetic conditions. We know it produces methane spontaneously when buried but subjecting methane to 20 kbars pressure and 1000 degrees Celsius only produces ethane, propane and butane – gases – and no heavier hydrocarbons. So how do you produce kerogen from shallow burial? You can’t despite all the geochemical evidence which actually are arguments of the consequent, and hence logical fallacies. It is thermodynamically not possible – like AGW it does seem in your imaginary virtual reality world.
You are simply enthralled by Lyell’s legacy, where scientific truths are deemed correct by argument and not experiment. Same goes for AGW – deemed true by verballing us.
To make matters worse for you NASA has just reported a new source of solar energy reaching the earth – go read it at Anthony Watt’s site.
So it looks like the empiricists might be getting the upper hand at last.
Marcus
Contrary to popular belief, coal oil and gas are not formed from burial of biomass. The deposition of biomass is essentially a geological catastrophic event which is forbidden in mainstream geology but the physical evidence is there in abundance.
Coal seams appear to have formed from the compression of vegetation but it’s actually formed by precipitation of carbon from methane that emanates from the mantle that is the mechanism.
Others have pointed out that given the production of oil over time, not enough biomass could have ever existed and buried to form those deposits.
Biotic oil theory is another anachronism associated with Lyell’s legacy – the principal argument being that because petroleum is an excellent organic solvent, and hence contains organic material, then it must be also organically produced. This is the logical fallacy by observing that my cat has four legs, as does my dog, so therefore my cat must be a dog.
There remains the problem of explaining the vast deposits of tar sands and oil shales – in un-metamorphosed sediments I might add, but no one has demonstrated that burying any sort of biomass to shallow depths (before metamorphism occurs) causes spontaneous formation of kerogen. It’s a process that is simply not observed anywhere on the Earth’s surface. Biomass to methane? Certainly, because methane is stable at surface T and P.
And where are the existing masses of biomass accumulating to form tomorrow’s biotic oil deposits? Not in the oceans, lakes or water bodies – because the biosphere is continually recycling itself, hence there are no accumulations of fossils occurring anywhere on the surface of the earth.
Biotic Oil theory was initially a logical fallacy but true to their approach, the Lyellians, relying on argument to prove scientific truths, made it into a dogma. Just as AGW is accepted as a dogma.
http://www.gasresources.net has the peer reviewed scientific papers on this – and Tommy Gold’s Deep Hot Biosphere is also recommended reading.
Marcus,
one additional point – the coal seams do contain vegetation remains, but that vegetation has been replaced by carbon, and not produced carbon by compression.
Marcus,
the website oil is mastery has an excellent source of material on abiotic oil and the statistics you search. If my ideas of the oceanic areas being excavated by the electrical method, then I would suspect drilling in the deeper basins, having most of the overlying rock removed, could make it easier to get at the abiotic oil. This is a rather radical idea, but then the totally lunatic idea that emitting CO2 warming the earth up and causing earthquakes, volcanoes and other geological catastrophic events isn’t radical? Mine would seem pedestrian by comparison.
Louis, thank for the post.
“And where are the existing masses of biomass accumulating”
Not being a geologist, I could not be sure, but this fact caught my attention also.
We have been extracting oil and coal for a long time now and even at 50% conversion rate of the biomass,
(quite impossible as far as I can see) there must have been enormous amounts of biomass available in the past.
If we look around today, one must ask, could the past flora and fauna really been that much different from today?
I don’t think so.
Yes it is a very interesting article at Anthony Watt’s site.
I like the comment:
:a stream of ionized particles translated into laymen’s common sense language = AN ELECTRICAL CURRENT.:
Seems, it was mentioned here a few times only to be ignored by the resident trolls.
Geologists seem to have had an awful lot of success looking for oil in place where it shouldn’t be.
Geologists trace the source of the carbon in hydrocarbons through analysis of its isotopic balance. Natural carbon is nearly all isotope 12, with 1.11 percent being isotope 13. Organic material, however, usually contains less C-13, because photosynthesis in plants preferentially selects C-12 over C-13. Oil and natural gas typically show a C-12 to C-13 ratio similar to that of the biological materials from which they are assumed to have originated. The C-12 to C-13 ratio is a generally observed property of petroleum and is predicted by the biotic theory; it is not merely an occasional aberration.
In addition, oil typically contains biomarkers – porphyrins, isoprenoids, pristane, phytane, cholestane, terpines, and clorins – which are related to biochemicals such as chlorophyll and hemoglobin. The chemical fingerprint of oil assumed to have been formed from, for example, algae is different from that of oil formed from plankton. Thus geochemists can (and routinely do) use biomarkers to trace oil samples to specific source rocks.
Abiotic theorists hypothesize that oil picks up its chemical biomarkers through contamination from bacteria living deep in the Earth’s crust (Gold’s “deep, hot biosphere”) or from other buried bio-remnants. However, the observed correspondences between biomarkers and source materials are not haphazard, but instead systematic and predictable on the basis of the biotic theory. For example, biomarkers in source rock can be linked with the depositional environment; that is, source rocks with biomarkers characteristic of land plants are found only in terrestrial and shallow marine sediments, while petroleum biomarkers associated with marine organisms are found only in marine sediments.
Louis,
The vast majority of western geochemists support organic sourcing for no reason other than that it fits the evidence better than any alternative. A primary measure in the oil and gas industry is one of utility: does a theory aid exploration success? All prolific hydrocarbon basins have one or several identifiable source rocks, and discoveries in the basin can be reliably chemically tagged to this/these source rock(s). And while the reaction kinetics for biomass conversion are not fully understood, a number of empirical tools have been developed which allow one to predict – with reasonable confidence – hydrocarbon maturation as a function of the pressure-temperature history of the basin and the estimated organic content of the source rock. One can also use the theory to place upper bounds on the volume of hydrocarbons “yet to be found” in a basin as a function of total organic content and volume of the source rock. On the other hand, evidential support for abiotic generation is very sparse, notwithstanding the beauty of the thermodynamic argument. One would expect to find numerous examples of sedimentary basins which have hydrocarbon accumulations, but no source rock, but the fact is that there are very, very few examples, and they are all questionable. Equally, one might expect to find numerous reservoirs which refilled as oil production continued, but I recall only two such reservoirs, and in both cases, there exists the likelihood that oil is migrating from a source rock via a complex fracture system. None of this suggests that abiotic generation cannot exist, but it does strongly suggest that most of the hydrocarbons discovered to date come from organic thermogenic or biogenic source – even if we can’t explain the thermodynamics!
You know luke, it’s times like your last post that I begin to think the chatter about you being an ensemble is correct; your post assumes that oil only can have biomarkers from land or marine plants and organisms; are there deposits of oil which don’t fall into either of those 2 categories in respect of their markers;
http://www.gasresources.net/
And if so how does biogenic oil theory explain those?
BTW, Brook does not believe that nuclear is an option for Australia.
Lukey: “Luke has chickened out ” not really. Excuse did you think your hysterical rants were – a – a – debate? Gawd.”
Since you are unable to provide a rebuttal, I would consider that the debate has not started as yet. But no matter, there more important things to consider in this world than Raupach’s self-humiliation.
“BTW, Brook does not believe that nuclear is an option for Australia.”
Is that Brook the climate spiv who looks like Frankenstein without the carriage bolt through his neck? I thought I recognised him from a movie.
Barry Brook was swayed by the nuclear power industry when he discovered that renewables (wind, solar etc) couldn’t carry the base load.
“My research has convinced me that nuclear power is by far the best prospect that we, as South Australians and as a global community, have of drastically cutting carbon emissions.”
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,25877218-5013696,00.html
His clones, or should I say clowns, infiltrated Deltoid and now they have also embraced nuclear power.
Cohenite, I heard brooks on counter point a few months ago saying we needed to have a debate on nuclear now because it would take at least 10 years to get started and it was the only current way to reduce emissions. He may have since changed his mind…but judging by El gordo’s link he was still thinking this way 5 weeks ago.
Lets face it if we really do want to cut co2 it is the only current energy source that will allow us to maintain a similar lifestyle.
I have to say I think its quite refreshing hearing barry discuss the virtues of nuclear and the problems with solar and wind. If we really do have a problem its about time people created some responses that actually have a chance of success in reducing co2.
The hype around wind and solar and the poor science, is doing nobody any favours.
could you imagine if a 1kg ball of uranium could provide all a humans energy needs in a life time!
Yes, I may have done Brookie a disservice;
http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/01/16/put-all-energy-cards-on-the-table-to-fix-climate-change-fully/#more-953
He does think nuclear should be the non-coal back-up to the renewbubbles in Australia; which would mean, as now, with coal, that 99.9% of base-load would have to come from the non-renewbubble back-up, nuclear.
Its interesting Cohenite, just a quick look through brooks post that u linked to above says that co2 stays in the atmosphere 1000 years, even the ipcc and gore only say 50-200 years, a quick look through google shows a number of sites saying only 5 years, and ive read many times the same thing.
it goes to show just how much people just do not know and understand about what causes our weather/ climate. But hey lets introduce an ETS anyway!
CO2 residency is an interesting area; Fig 7.3 on p 515 of AR4 shows that ACO2 is 3.67% of the ~ 1.5% of atmospheric CO2 increase PA; DOE data puts that residual at 2.9%; if we use the AR4 statistic than a molecule of ACO2 has 1 chance in 1811.594 of being left in the atmosphere after a year [calculated thus: 1.5/100 x 3.67/100 = 0.000552]; the odds of that same ACO2 molecule being in the atmosphere after 2 years are 1 in 120772.9469. I’m giving Brooksie a pass on nuclear but nothing else because at heart he is still an AGW clown.
cohenite – well said. However unless I am the one who is mistaken, the IPCC at ref is a litttle shonky. According to NOAA official data on [CO2] at Mauna Loa, from June 1959 to June 2009 the annual growth rate was 0.38% p.a. (calculated by the semi log linear method) (i.e. from 318.16 ppm to 389.42 ppm).
Luke,
“Abiotic theorists hypothesize that oil picks up its chemical biomarkers through contamination from bacteria living deep in the Earth’s crust (Gold’s “deep, hot biosphere”) or from other buried bio-remnants. However, the observed correspondences between biomarkers and source materials are not haphazard, but instead systematic and predictable on the basis of the biotic theory. For example, biomarkers in source rock can be linked with the depositional environment; that is, source rocks with biomarkers characteristic of land plants are found only in terrestrial and shallow marine sediments, while petroleum biomarkers associated with marine organisms are found only in marine sediments.”
If mantle oil moves upwards into a sedimentary basin then it will, as an excellent organic solvent, incorporate all the biological debris present in that sedimentary basin. Hence it the sediments are marine in will absorb those biomarkers. If it is a fluvial basin, then the biomarkers absorbed by the oil will be diagnostic of that particular basin.
Hence the presence of oil in a sedimentary basin containing dissolved biomarkers could be derived from either the Biotic model which is the current paradigm, or the Abiotic model. Both oil deposits on the basis of biomarkers would then be indistinguishable, and the logical fallacy made by the Biotic model is that of arguing the consequent.
So abiotic theorists do not hypothesise contamination by deep bacteria deep in the Earth’s crust, but contamination by the biodebris in the very sedimentary basin oil invades.
I will discuss this further on the new thread Jennifer just posted.
Paul, I think my reply to Luke would have answered your point as well. Anything on this topic will be put on the new thread.
Cheers
Louis
Marcus
The treatment of the solar wind as a physical wind and computing energies as if it were some mechanical flow of particles will produce extremely low values I suspect.
If we treat it as an electric current then the equations of Maxwell and Lorentz apply and the energies might be a little more significant than TSI – but I’ll let Watt’s up with that dwell on this for a while.
All Brooks needs to complete the picture is stainless steel teeth.
Well Tim, at 0.38% PA increase just multiply the residency odds by 3.94.
Tim, I have followed your link to the Mauna Loa Observatory data and cannot seem to make sense of it.
I have gone down to the web page to Temperature, Monthly Temperature, under which you get
Average
Average Maximum
Average Minimum
The tables provide annual averages all which seem to show a trend of about 3C or more. For example:
Average:
1955 42.75C
1992 47.19 (increase of approx 4C)
Average Maximum:
1955 52.34
1992 55.30 (increase of approx 3C)
Average Minimum
1955 33.18
1992 39.09 (increase of approx 6C)
Am I doing this right? These increases seem extremely large. Is there any easy way to get data without scraping it off the web page?
Just to be sure the webpage is correct, this is the link
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/cliMAIN.pl?hi6198
No, wrong again. The temperatures provided on the website seem to be in Fahrenheit. Since the Mauna Loa Observatory is at a height of 11,135 ft, it must be cold up there. Here are the figures converted to Celsius:
Average:
1955 5.97
1992 8.40 (increase 2.43)
Average Maximum
1955 11.30
1992 12.94 (increase 1.64)
Average Minimum
1955 0.65
1992 3.94 (increase 3.29)
These are still very steep temperature rises up to 1992. Does this make sense? Don’t ask me.
Is the hot spot heating up?
If you look at the tables they don’t calculate the annual averages from 1993-2008, with the exception of 2003. The reason given (from the letters i,j,k etc) is that 9 or 10 etc days readings are missing for each month. Why would their temperature measurement system be that dodgy for that many years? Unless I am barking up the completely wrong tree, it looks like they are trying to cover up the temperature rise for the last 15 years.
Louis: “If mantle oil moves upwards into a sedimentary basin then it will, as an excellent organic solvent, incorporate all the biological debris present in that sedimentary basin. Hence it the sediments are marine in will absorb those biomarkers. If it is a fluvial basin, then the biomarkers absorbed by the oil will be diagnostic of that particular basin.”
Louis, this doesn’t work when stacked reservoirs have oils from different kitchens with different source rocks that are separated by sealing strata. Secondary migration paths can often be mapped and the oils correlated with their (assumed) source rock provinces. Also the degree of maturity can often be correlated with the depths of the source rocks in question. With abiotic oils this wouldn’t be the case.
Dribble: you picked one of the coldest years (1955) and one of the hottest (1992). The overall trend of the average annual temperature at Mauna Loa is not statistically significant, and changes in the annual averages from 1959 to 1992 or 2008 have no correlation at all with changes in the level of atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa over those periods. Recall that the theory of AGW is that it is INCREASES in [CO2] that lead to INCREASES in temperature.
Thus the incredible truth is that changes in the temperature at Mauna Loa bear no relationship to changes in the level of [CO2], as I show in my Excel file using the Mauna Loa monthly temperature data (Jen has this and could forward it to you). The same is true of changes in temperatures at both the other main [CO2] measuring stations, Cape Grim in Tasmania, and Point Barrow in Alaska. Ray Evans noticed the lack of rising temperature at Cape Grim as long ago as 2000.
The gross incompetence and total lack of integrity of all the self-appointed climate scientists who wrote the latest Assessment Report (AR4) of the IPCC (2007) consists in this, that although purveying the theory that climate change is preponderantly due to the about 40 per cent of cumulative anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide that equate to the measured rise in [CO2] at Mauna Loa (since 1958), not one of them thought to research the temperature record at Mauna Loa itself.
Medical science claimed until about 1890 that malaria was caused by atmospheric vapours. Modern climate science has not even reached that level of sophistication. For it claims that the “fever” suffered by global climate change need not be measured where [CO2] is measured. Not only that, the colossal resources of the US Government that pay for the NOAA data at Mauna Loa have since 1992 been insufficient to allow for daily temperature readings, even though it is about to enact ETS legislation based on total fabrication of global temperature data by James Hansen.
For example, the good folk at Mauna Loa Slope Observatory presumably have to rely on manual readings from their thermometers bought back in 1955, so it was too cold on as many as 12 days in January this year for any of them to venture out to make the readings. (The monthly data for January have the index “L” next to that column, meaning too cold to get out on 12 days!!!- but Jan 2008 was worse, at 4.26 oC over 18 days, with m=13) Ah, if only it was warmer up there, our IPCC scientists could have some real data to work on – but then not one has the slightest interest in the real temperature data where their [CO2] is measured, and least of all the IPCC’s Review editor for Chap 9 in AR4, David Karoly, despite his huge ARC grant to “study” climate change .
However I am prepared to join you Dribble in paying for NOAA to install an electronic thermometer at Mauna Loa – and likewise for Australia’s BoM, which has equal difficulty in maintaining temperature records at Cape Grim, and probably elsewhere.
These measurements are caused by whales. When whales spout, they blast water vapour into the air. Water is a greenhouse gas. The Japanese whale meat industry is our best chance to save the world.
Tim: “Dribble: you picked one of the coldest years (1955) and one of the hottest (1992). The overall trend of the average annual temperature at Mauna Loa is not statistically significant, ”
I can’t see why 1992 should be ‘the hottest’ since everywhere else it kept warming until about 2002. I calculated averages for the dodgy years 1993-2008 and these are in general less or equivalent to 1992.
1993 46.20
1994 46.39
1995 47.53
1996 46.23
1997 45.81
1998 47.31
1999 45.50
2000 45.86
2001 46.09
2002 46.81
2003 47.22
2004 45.60
2005 46.22
2006 45.85
2007 46.00
2008 44.47
The figures for these years are very dodgy because there is a very large amount of missing data. The data are marked with indicators showing that there were approx 10 days missing readings from each month. Why would the observatory have this many days missing per month, to the extent that they then do not calculate the average? According to the information at the top of the webpage, the maximum allowable days of missing data for each month is 5 days. Why would this go on for 15 years? Why not just shut down the observatory?
It looks to me that somebody crapped their daks in 1992 over the amount of warming at the site and just decided to bodge the readings with too much missing data after that. I cannot remember exactly but 1992 was approximately the era in which it was suggested by Hoagland that Mauna Loa was a hyperdimensional heat outlet. Did the MIBs pay a visit to the observatory and put the frighteners on the staff?
“The monthly data for January have the index “L” next to that column, meaning too cold to get out on 12 days!!!- but Jan 2008 was worse, at 4.26 oC over 18 days, with m=13)”
These alphabetical letters mean the number of missing days, certainly, but surely it has nothing to with being too cold to go out. Why would it suddenly get too cold to go out after 1992 for approx 10 days/month for almost every month thereafter. Weather guys go out in the Antarctica for much lower temperatures, thats their job. Surely a weather guy cannot say, ‘Sorry but its too cold to go outside and measure the temperature today’, he’d get sacked. Besides which you would expect that the weather station at a high tech observatory like Mauna Loa would already have a MMTS sensor or something like it.
The whole thing is very odd. In order to make a comparision of the temperature rise up to 1992 at least I need to compile a list of weather stations and their data for the whole of Hawaii. Certainly in this case the temperature rise cannot be a UHI effect since the site is not urbanised, although the weather station may have an air-conditioner etc next to it or whatever.
To get a rough comparison of the linear trend at Mauna Loa with other higher elevation stations at Hawaii:
Subtract 1975 temperature from 1992 temperature:
47.19 – 43.35 = 3.84
Divide by 1.8 decades
3.84 / 1.8 = trend of 2.13 degrees per decade.
Looking at the graph from Giambelluca et al they state the trend from 1975-2006 is 0.268 per decade. Eyeballing the graph the trend from 1975 – 1992 does not look much different.
Therefore the trend at Mauna Loa is about 2.13/0.268 or approx 8 times higher than other Hawaiian elevated sites. However Mauna Loa, at an elevation of about 2 miles, is very high in the air. Could this be evidence for the tropical hot spot rather than the hyperdimensional hot spot? If so, why aren’t they meticulously recording the temperatures?
Tim: “However I am prepared to join you Dribble in paying for NOAA to install an electronic thermometer at Mauna Loa – and likewise for Australia’s BoM, which has equal difficulty in maintaining temperature records at Cape Grim, and probably elsewhere.”
Uncle Sam can buy his own bleedin’ electronic thermometer thanks, he’s got astronomically vast amounts of more money than I have. Most of BOMs thermometers these days are electronic, I would expect the one at Cape Grim to be electronic as well.
The Fahrenheit has got me again. I’m comparing apples with oranges.
The station trend should be in C not F.
Thus, 8.44 – 6.30 = 2.14/1.8 = 1.18C trend per decade.
Difference with trend of 0.268C per decade is 4 times, not 8
After accessing the NCDC website it seems there are 278 weather stations in use or defunct for Hawaii County. This is the Big Island with the volcanoes on it. There are a number of stations called Mauna Loa:
Mauna Loa
Mauna Loa 5 NNE
Mauna Loa Air Sample Station
Mauna Loa Obsy
Mauna Loa Obsy
Mauna Loa Slope Obs 39
Mauna Loa Strip Road
Most of these do not produce data online. Apart from Mauna Loa Slope 39, the station under discussion, the only station that produces data is Mauna Loa 5 NNE. This is new CRN station started in 2005 with the latest in temperature measurement gadgets. The Mauna Loa Slope Obs 39 currently uses MMTS.
Every time I try to find temperature data for the stations I appear to be led around a merry go round. It will probably take me about 6 months to sort out how to work the NCDC website.
I’d like to know how much they have allowed for UHI effects.
It would also be interesting to see how well Hawaii’s temperature station sites rate on Anthony Watts surfacestation project’s Climate Reference Network Rating Guide, which is adopted from NCDC Climate Reference Network Handbook.
This is a link to that site and Watts’s work in determining the reliability of the actual stations that provide climate data.
http://www.surfacestations.org/
I have checked SurfaceStations.org and cannot find any of the Hawaiian stations listed. I looks as if weather station reform has not reached Hawaii as yet.
Since the price was affordable I purchased a copy of the Giambelluca paper to see what it had to say. They provide a list of 21 long term stations and elevations in metres which they used for the study:
Pahala 262
Mauna Loa Slope Observatory 3400
Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park HQ 1210
Kainaliu 457
Hilo 12
Hilo Airport 9
Mountain View 466
Kohala Mission 163
‘O‘okala 131
Kula Sanatorium 916
Haleakala Ranger Station 2143
Haleakala BES 640
Ka‘ili‘ili 768
Kailua 213
Lana‘i City 494
Honolulu WB Airport 3
Tantalus 427
Kane‘ohe Mauka 58
‘Opae‘ula 323
Lihu‘e 63
Lihu‘e Airport 30
They used 4 stations above 800m which they classified as elevated. These are Mauna Loa Slope Observatory, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park HQ, Kula Sanitorium and Haleakala Ranger Station. Of these, only Haleakala Ranger Station is not on the Hawaii Big Island. This site is on the island of Maui.
Fortunately data sheets for the above stations can be obtained as web pages from the Western Regional Climate Centre website. Being statistically challenged, I calculated rough trends for the 4 elevated sites by using a representative number from the beginning and ending of the historical period for each site as follows. I have used Fahrenheit numbers throughout except to calculate the trend in C as the last step.
Mauna Loa Slope Observatory (3400m)
1955 43.0
1992 46.0 trend = 3/3.7 = .81F = .45C per decade
Haleakala Ranger Station (2143m)
1950 53.3
2008 54.5 trend = .97/5.8 = .207F = .11C per decade
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park HQ (1210m)
1950 60.0
2008 62.0 trend = 2/5.8 = .34F = .19C per decade
Kula Sanitorium (916m)
1950 63.4
1980 64.0 trend = .6/3.0 = .2F = .11C per decade
As a comparison to the elevated sites, this site is at sea level:
Hilo WSO AP (Hilo Airport) (9m)
1950 73.0
2008 74.5 trend = 1.5/5.8 = .258F = .143C per decade.
Although the method I have used is very rough, there seems to be a marked contrast (4X) between Mauna Loa Slope Observatory and the best site for comparison purposes, Haleakala Ranger Station on the island of Maui. Hawaii Volcanoes National Park HQ, another site on the volcano, also appears to be trending high in comparison.
To obtain the data sheets for the Hawaiian sites from Western Regional Climate Centre, use the following link:
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/index.html
Then click on “Historical Climate Information’, then ‘Western U.S. Historical Summaries (individual stations)’, then scroll down and click on Hawaii.
I can also begin to see what Tim is sort of on about with the averaging business. There is definitely a double standard in relation to how CO2 and temperature is measured.
It was recognised that local contamination effects would seriously affect the measurement of CO2. Measure it near a city for example and you would get an anomalously high reading due to the amount of CO2 that is emitted locally. Therefore the intrepid CO2 measurers sought uncontaminated sites such as Mauna Loa and the Antarctica for their measuring instruments. They did not set up zillions of sites all over the world and then attempt to get an average.
The procedure for measurements of the temperature is however the complete opposite. Numerous sites from all over the world are all averaged together. Readings from supposedly rural sites are used to adjust supposedly UHI sites causing all sorts of cross-contamination issues. If these procedures were used for CO2 measurements all sorts of squawking would occur.
If the CO2 concentration index only needs to be measured at a few good quality sites, why is the same not done for temperature?
Dribble: I suggest you take your annual data for each site, derive the natural logs (in Excel eg = ln(a18)); do regression of this series against years (eg 1955-1992), then apply =exp(b18) to the resulting coefficient and you will find an apparent growth rate at ML 0.57% p.a. with close to zero statistical significance (p=0.00032), because there is no real trend. The line fit plot will show you that there were indeed 3 cool years at the beginning of that period (1955-1957) and three warm years at the end (1990-92). Weather can be and usually is localised, so there is no significance to your finding, nor those of Giambelluca et al, with just 4 stations above the 800 metre level that accounts for 42% of Hawaii’s land area, and with ML data (1955-1992) outside their base reference period for their anomalies. But if you have the data for the other places to hand, it would be great if you could forward them to me (tcurtin@bigblue.net.au), it would save a lot of time, and I would run the same tests for you (your begin/end year method is a bit too rough and ready!).
Thanks Tim, my statistical expertise is non-existent. I am currently typing up the data from the web pages for the 21 stations into an Excel spreadsheet. When I have finished I will send it to you. It will take a couple of days as there are 3 x 21 sheets.
I can see what you mean by lower and higher figures at the beginning and ends of the series giving the wrong trend impression for Mauna Loa Slope Obs. When I look more closely I can see that the temps in the middle are more homogenised. So much for my conspiracy theory although I still do not see why this station has gone haywire since 1992.
In fact I should not abandon the conspiracy theory too quickly since we do not know what the data is between 1993 and 2008 although the station is still ostensibly in operation. The single annual value that slipped through in 2002 was still as high as 1992, so it would appear that there might be more higher values at the end of the series than the available numbers indicate.
Currently I have abandoned the conspiracy theory as there are a number of Hawaiian stations that do the same thing, ie produce data with so many missing days that the annual value must be discarded.
A further error in my post was that Kula Sanitorium is not on the Big Island, but on Maui.
A quick look at the data for the 21 stations shows that some of them are very short term. One of them Kaliili, has no data at all, so I can’t figure that one out.
Most stations have reasonable observational periods, with the exception of:
Lihue 12 years
Tantalus 5 years
Haleakala BES (Experimental Station) 12 years
Kaliili 0 years
Hilo (not sure which Hilo this is. They describe it as 86.1 but there is only an 86a which has 10 years of data.
Dribble wrote:
Good – there is no need for such theories. People are too inclined to assign conspiracy as motive when greed, sloth and ignorance are usually sufficient – two of the three are usually enough, actually.
If you ever get to the “Big Island” and walk on and in the active volcanoes, it will give you some insight on scale. (Kilauea, the world’s only drive-in volcano)
Mauna Loa is an active volcano. Last time I looked, active volcanoes tend to vent copious quantities of gas, including a lot of CO2. We also have, in the vicinity: Mauna Kea – dormant, Lo’ihi – active under-sea mount, Kilauea – world’s most consistently active volcano, Hualalai – active, Kohala – dormant.
As to scale, Kiluaea is about 6km x 6 km measured to the outermost faults, and the main caldera is about 3km x 5 km x 165m deep, just a pot-hole, really.
So, has someone compared the CO2 data from Mauna Loa with data from, say, Oahu or Kaua’i?
Bruce, co2 is also measured in other locations such as Cape Grimm In Australia. The measurements are pretty consistent, so personally I think its safe to conclude that co2 levels have been rising.