It was apparently without even consulting James Hansen, or others at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), that Washington Post journalist Juliet Eilperin ran the prediction on October 13th, that 2005 would be the warmest year on record, click here for more detail.
It was Hansen’s prediction much earlier in the year, that 2005 would be very warm, click here to download a file with notes from Hanson in response to the article.
Luckily for Eilperin, Hanson stands by his February prediction, that 2005 will be very warm.
He wrote on 3rd November with reference to the data and graphs in the attached file:
“For the first nine months of the year, 2005 is 0.02C cooler than 1998 in our land-ocean temperature index, and is tied with 2002 as the second warmest year in the period of instrumental data. The graph in the lower right shows that 1998 and 2002 were relatively cool in the last three months of the year, by more than the typical variation of the global temperature anomaly (Figure 3).
Therefore, there is a better than 50% chance that 2005 will move up in the rankings by the end of the year.
Considering also the continuing effect of the current planetary energy imbalance, we conclude that there is no reason to change the statements that we made in February and April (see above). It is now clear that 2005 surely will have been an abnormally warm year, comparable to the warmest year on record (1998), despite not being pushed, as in 1998, by a large El Nino. It is noteworthy that September 2005 was the warmest September in the 125 years of data.
Of course, it will be interesting to see how 2005 ranks compared to 1998 at the end of the year. However, for scientific purposes, the important result (already clear) will be that the trend of global temperatures toward global warming is now so steep that in just seven years the global warming trend has taken temperatures to approximately the level of the abnormally warm year of 1998. The steep global warming trend that began in the late 1970s (Figure 1) is continuing.”
It is good luck, if not good science, when the February prediction is still good in November!
All of this does ‘throw a spanner in the works’ for John McLean and some others who have claimed it is not getting warmer – because recent years have been cooler than 1998.
……..
Thanks to David Jones for sending me the Hanson notes in response to the Washington Post article.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Warmest year where? It has been unusually cold and wet this spring in south-western Australia.
Hi Davey,
That’s no surprise. The bigger Australian picture is …
The southern summer was cool but the northern warm. Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia all recorded summer temperatures above normal but far less than 12 months earlier while Victorian and South Australian temperatures were below normal. Autumn was warm across most of the country but Western Australia was very warm while Tasmania and Victoria were only slightly above normal. Winter temperatures were well above average in most states but only a small increase was recorded in Western Australia.
This year Victoria had a very cool February and a very warm July, the fifth coolest and the fourth warmest respectively. Warm northerly and north-westerly winds were well below average in February, as were cold south westerly and southerly winds in July. Those southerlies certainly returned in August and brought rare snowfalls to the parts of the state.
Victoria’s variable weather this year seems to be linked to wind and I have a suspicion that the wet and cold period in SW Western Australia is due to the return of substantial SW winds (which declined in the late 1960’s).
As for the bigger picture around Australia and around the world I’d first look at ocean currents dispersing the heating of 2002 – (it does take a few years to reach the higher latitudes) – and look at winds such as jetstreams and the usual oscillations.
Funny how this coming winter in the UK (and western Europe generally) is tipped to be a cold one due to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NOA). I wonder if the cold weather will arrive in December and spoil James Hansen’s party.
cheers
Not wanting to be overly picky but if one is invoking the NAO we could also look at 1998 being an El Nino.
And so all these forcings need to be detrended !
Even if 2005 is the record in absolute temperature terms we should look at the longer term not cherry pick a small handful of years.
Whatever 2005 comes in as in the final analysis -dare we say the trend appears to be …. ahem …”upwards”! (in line with satellites, glaciers etc etc)
Now that most farmers in NSW are having the best spring for years – commodity prices are down (except for lamb)
Too much food.
Detrend that forcing!
Being very pikky but the warming graphed is less than 0.5 degrees Celsius.
We cannot physically discern that temperature difference.
It may be mathematically correct but physically irrelevant.
Nice try Louis … we degreed types call it “a mean …of many values”
And pity the troposphere is warming too say the satellites and many many glaciers melting and warming oceans and ….. – oh dear…
Ahem.
I understand that roughly (exactly depends upon where you choose your starting point, and which of the alternative datasets you prefer to use) the temperature increase since the late 1970s has occurred at a rate between 0.1 and 0.2 degrees Celsius/decade.
Can someone explain to me exactly why this is seen to be a problem?
0.1-0.2 degrees/decade is precisely the same as the common rates of millenial climate change that the planet experienced throughout the Holocene, both warmings and coolings. It is also an order of magnitude less than rates of change during the dramatic natural climate jumps which are characteristic of glacial times, but which do also occur in some previous interglacials.
I must be missing something.
Cathy
Cathy – a point from the Jen’s Antarctica thread still on the front page here…
“The second point is calling 1.7C “very small”. When added to the just less than 1C already experienced this means we will accumulate nearly 3C of warming since industrialisation commenced (200 years). This is about 50% of the warming experienced at the end of the last glacial maximum, and which occured over 10,000 years. To suggest that a warming this large occuring at a rate of 20-50 times faster than the fastest rate nature can throw at us is… brave. ”
The other issue is why is the atmosphere warming on a worldwide scale. What mechanisms do we have – orbital – solar – other – what ? these don’t work as hypotheses … what’s a reasonable alternative hypothesis ?
Changes may have happened before but with good reason. It may be when we process all the deep ice core data we will find that atmospheric CO2 is a high as it has been in 650,000 years (limit of the data).
And the world may have had different climates in the past – but not with 6 billion humans on-board. Every time the world’s weather goes sour these days people get hurt – USA – hurricanes, Europe – heatwaves, Africa & Australia droughts, Bangladesh and China – floods. If we increase climate extremes above the current background more chaos will ensue.
Past geological climates had different orbital forcings on the planet and even maybe even different continental positions and configurations.
Phil,
This is the second instance in which you refer to yourself as a degreed type. Strangely I have couple myself.
I am quite aware that it is an average of averages, but when the variation of the averages is less than the resolution of the instrumentation, it becomes a specious variation. Numerically accurate but pratically meaningless.
And in any case as it is the result of the simplistic averaging of intensive variables, and hence doubly specious.
Louis – (a) annoying isn’t it – I learned it from the Master (you) (b) just seeing if you read anything I write or just disagree on instinct without reading.
The precision of a single instrument cannot be compared to the average of a whole population of instruments. Back to your old uni stats lecturer I’m afraid.
There’s a precision/accuracy argument in there somewhere.
Speaking of stats – when are you geo-dudes going to update your stats techniques and move away from kriging to something substantial like thin-plate Laplacian splines.
P.S. And don’t class me as a greenie/leftie/socialist/liberal nor inherently pro-Kyoto either – simply an independent thinker and swinging voter. Each issue on its merits. You degree announcing right wing types tend to run all this together into a blancmange (looks tasty but is really yukky) …
P.P.S. How’s the CO2 physics review coming along?
Phil,
if from your statistical analysis you predict that a value in 2 weeks time at a location is going to be, say, 12.3 Deg C, but my thermometer only reads to 0.5 degrees C, one cannot verify the prediction apart from that it is 12.x whatever.
Kriging? Oh we use geostatistics – Kriging is was its predecessor.
You last sentence indentifies you unfortunately.
But we’re not predicting “a” thermometer. We’re measuring a whole population of them. Off to uni stats 101 with you. In any case a error can be calculated. As usual dear Louis, arguing from the specific to the general.
So what’s replaced kriging?
Predicting a whole population of thermometers- oh that is what you are predicting, I thought it was the temperature of the earth’s atmosphere.
Don’t you know that Kriging is geostatistics – I thought you would have rubbed my nose into it by now.
I didn’t say predicting did I ? I said measuring.
And yes I know it kriging is an example of geostatistics – you were implying you have something newer…
Do any real statisticians (not just Stats 101)work in the area of climate? If so, what do they say about climate trends, past or present?
Measuring a whole population of thermometers – don’t you mean reading them ? and re geostats, no I was fishing but you failed to bite.
So did they call you the “Flying Dutchman” at the speedway? And what was your vehicle of choice?
And no measuring is correct as the thermometers increase in size in a globally warmed high CO2 environment. This is the whole point.
A souped up blue printed 186 engine in a HQ holden. Totally within spec but, ahem, revved rather well.
No, Flying Dutchman was not the name – we scored a few gallons of “pink” paint and all three hotrods were painted in this horrible livery – so we called ourselves the Pink Team, and adopted the Pink Panther as our mascot.
As for the distinction between measuring and reading, er measuring ? if increased temp causes expansion, then so also the measuring stick as it too expands for the same temp increase. Hence no change should be noted if the expansion rates are the same.
Oh, geostats – I am not too enamoured with it – works ok with things that are chemicaly spatial, and seems ok in diamond pipe deposits but fails badly in marine or alluvial diamond situations.
Apart from studying it at Uni decades ago, when I returned from post-grad study at WMC’s Kambalda operations, one task was to figure out whether our existing polygonal ore-reserve system would be improved by Kriging. We had Blaise and Carlier’s paper, and of course Matheron’s but found the graphing of the variogram a bit inpenetrable, a rising start which then plateaued out.
So I wrote a fortran program to calculate the variogram and fed it various simple 2D models. It did not take us long to work out what was going on.
What concerns me is that Kriging is now a standard processing procedure in applied stats packages. I often use Surfer and wonder why it defaults to Kriging as the initial gridding routine.
But here is not the place to waffle on about the vagaries of Kriging – though I do have to admit I am a serious student of Koch and Link’s approach to stats applied to geology. Oh yes, Fritz Acheterberg’s Geomathematics is another well used reference.
Funny – my senioe mine geologist boss once remarked why Dutch geologists tend to be statistically oriented – he showed me an outcrop map of the Netherlands – basically none apart from the east adjoining Germany.
Whoops, Clouseau is also here affecting my spelling.
Good SD am I not? Always blaming someone else for my failings.
I was pulling your leg on thermometers – reading is right !
You may be OK after all if you like Fortran.
🙂
Thanks
You’re that old ?
Fortran is what serious modellers still use. And Fortran is still the stuff of supercomputers. Understanding what makes biophysical systems work is the name of the game. Let’s say I went to uni in the 70s.
“Fortran is what serious modellers still use.”
You said ‘serious’ Phil. Don’t you just mean ‘old’?
🙂
Louis says:
‘but my thermometer only reads to 0.5 degrees C’
but the bom gives readings to 0.1C as does the thermometers in my lab and my thermometer at home – may you should buy a better thermometer!!
Steve – Climate models are written in Fortran – what else runs as fast ? 🙂
Apologies to all C and C++ users, Stella users etc out there.. and anyone aspiring to be use better tools.
BTW the BOM is also saying this about Australia
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200511/s1505655.htm
“The Bureau of Meteorology will tell a conference on climate change in Melbourne today that temperatures so far this year have averaged a degree above the 30-year mean.
If the conditions continue, 2005 will be the warmest year since official records began 100 years ago.
National Climate Centre head Michael Coughlan says man-made factors could be fuelling climate changes.
“Generally consensus among scientists is that there is a component of man’s influence in there,” he said.
“There is probably also in there some natural variability and separating out what’s natural and what’s man’s influence is difficult, but it’s very hard to explain this fairly steady and what’s is actually very rapid rise – if you go back into temperatures of the past, to explain that by just purely by natural variability.””
In the BOM p/r Coughlan said; “Work has only just begun to attribute causes to the observed climate changes in Australia.”
Will the ABC be contributing input?
We also had the coldest winter daily maximum for 100 years in this, supposedly warmest year.
Actually that would have to be the “supposedly” coldest winter daily maximum – same thermometers
Rog – Sure they will about as much as Channel 7.
With all this talk here about computers did anyone actually bother to look at the temperature DATA on the BoM website?
Warmest month was April at 2.58C above 1961-90 average; next highest was May at 1.29C above. In other words April was a temperature spike. Take out April (and leave May in despite any flow-on effect) and the average over the remaining 9 months is +0.85C (cf. +1.029C when April is included). That’s still high but 1998 averaged +0.959C.
What happened in April? Maybe people with good memories can tell us. Anyone???
From what I can see from BoM data, temperatures were higher across almost all the continent and skies were unusually clear (giving a high diurnal temp range). From an online archive of jetstream winds I see an almost total absence of southerly winds which would normally bring cloud to the southern half of Australia.
If my memory is correct, the El Nino was almost at an end in the north and the monthly data for Australia suggests that El Nino’s often have a final temperature kick before disappearing. (If I had time I’d really like to investigate that!)
We know that south-west WA was quite cool but can anyone in other parts of the country recall anything about April conditions?
The Bureau has said in press release:
Australia has experienced its warmest start to a year on record (since 1950), with the January-to-October temperature averaging 1.03 degrees Celsius above the 30-year average (1961-1990). As the year nears an end, a record-breaking year is looking likely – another indicator of climate change.
“Annual mean temperatures have generally increased throughout Australia since 1910, particularly since the 1950s,” says Mike Coughlan, head of the National Climate Centre within the Bureau of Meteorology. As the average temperature has risen, we have also seen an increase in the incidence of hot days and hot nights, and a reduction in the number of cold days and nights. This warming is mirrored in the oceans around Australia.
Warming is not the only sign of change we are observing in Australia’s climate. Other changes include a marked decline in rainfall in the south-west and parts of south-east Australia, and recent reductions in rainfall through the eastern states. At the same time, rainfall in the arid interior and north-west has increased dramatically, in some places nearly doubling during the past 50 years.
The Age reported the Bureau as saying:
THIS year may not have seemed like a scorcher, but it is firming as the hottest year since records began.
The past decade had unusually hot years, but 2005 is the one climatologists are watching closely. The record year, 1998, had the “El Nino of the century”, significantly raising temperatures. This year could exceed that benchmark without an El Nino, a warming of the Pacific Ocean that affects Australia’s climate.
In a statement to be released today, the Bureau of Meteorology says the first 10 months of 2005 were the warmest equivalent period since monthly records began in 1950, and it probably would be the hottest year since annual records began in 1910. Climate scientists are picking up a similar trend globally.
The record-breaking temperatures were, the bureau said, an indicator of climate change.
“This really emphasises how pervasive global warming actually is,” said David Jones, head of climate analysis at the bureau’s National Climate Centre.
The Bureau of Meteorology figures show that from January to October, temperatures were 1.03 degrees above the 30-year average. That may sound slight, but small jumps in average temperatures have big impacts.
This year did not feature major heatwaves, rather the warmth crept up almost without people noticing, said the bureau’s Dr Jones. This year there were:
■A record warm winter in southern Australia.
■Below-average snow falls.
■The warmest September for 125 years, globally.
■A hotter-than-usual start to spring.
■Changes in timing of seasonal activities in plants and animals.
■A “remarkable” run of warm nights, with many records set.
John – anomaly maps on BoM’s site
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/tempmaps.cgi
FOr April:
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/tempmaps.cgi?page=oldmap&variable=tmaxanom&period=month&area=aus&steps=6
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/tempmaps.cgi?page=oldmap&variable=tminanom&period=month&area=aus&steps=6
WARM !!! and no El Nino this year.
Posting the following for John. He has got my “Your comment was denied for questionable content” comment. It sometimes happen if you put too many fullstops in a row. I can only apologize but my provider seems unable to fix the problem.
—————-
Thanks Phil,
You are doing what you’ve done in the past – ignored the issue and quoted
something without even investigating whether it is correct!
“Other changes include a marked decline in rainfall in the south-west and
parts of south-east Australia, and recent reductions in rainfall through
the eastern states.” – no, distortion and distortion.
Perth’s had more than their average annual rainfall already and after a dry
summer the south-west of WA had their highest autumn rain on record and not
bad winter rainfall either.
“Marked decline” in south-east (read Victoria) – hmm, wet summer, dry
autumn, 4th highest winter rain in last 10 years and it still rains 1 or 2
days a week.
Reduction in rainfall in eastern states? NSW winter rain 2nd highest since
1955, autumn dry and summer about average.
Why is autumn rain less? Probably for the reasons I listed – lack of
southerly winds.
By the way, the data shows that average rainfall for the last 10 years in
the eastern states is still above the average for the *50* years from 1900
to 1949. Compared to that 50 years the last 10 years have been an increase!
Record warm winter in southern Australia? Not so at all. BoM website says
7th warmest. Warmest autumn though (as previously discussed) so maybe
David Jones can’t tell autumn from winter. By the way, the southern summer
was just 0.21 above the 1961-90 average, coolest since 2001 when it was
-1.19 (and before that +1.48, -0.55, +0.77 .. all over the place as usual.)
Do the anomaly maps show the temperature in relation to the average for the
last 10 years? Without that we don’t actually know if we are still above
1961-90 average but cooling down, do we?
Now, are you going to address the points that I made or are you going to
just keep avoiding any direct response?
Oh Mr Cherry Picker 1998 is back. Pity 2005 will blow you stats trend into the weeds. Crow for din dins again. And John quoting trends on one datum point again. Tsk tsk. Last time you at least had 3 points.
And argue with BoM it’s their press release. As I’ve quoted in the text above. I’m sure they didn’t check anything and have it all wrong. Send David an email and tell him where he’s wrong.
And I didn’t didn’t think you were asking a question actually – just talking about the weather. The anomaly maps were simply provided to your question did anyone remember what April was like. If you don’t find them helpful go dig yourself.
If anyone quotes average state or national data without looking spatially I’m gonna scream!
Several points:
The first totally obvious but apparently needs explaining. Phil, this thread is about 2005 possibly being the warmest year on record. According to your definition that ordering would seem to be “cherry picking”.
No Phil, I don’t have to argue with the BoM. You need to be smart enough to ask whether the claims match the data.
You can scream all you like because I did look at each state to see what April was like (although Vic and Tas are pretty insignificant when it comes to Australian averages.)
Yes Phil, April was warmer. I said that. The anomaly maps said that. I was asking “why was it warmer?” and you are saying because it was hotter.
Anyone with a few more brains may be interested to learn that the Southern Oscillation Index in February was a huge -29.1 (cf. Jan +1.8 and Mar +0.2). We have to look back to 1983 to find a lower SOI and then it was in a long period of El Nino conditions. Previous time it was lower was in 1896 (when it got as low as -42.6) but again in an El Nino period.
The SOI and monthly temp data suggests that very abrupt negative changes in monthly SOI tends to cause the next month or the one after that to be very warm. That looks like what happened in April but it’s hard to be sure because I can’t see a 30.9 drop in monthly SOI occuring at any other time.
I’m not screaming – I’m laughing – Well John -you would know as the consummate 3 point cherry picker of all time. I’m just using your approved logic in reverse – finding it “inconvenient” are we? I’ve said before that one year is not that much. However the old trend is up up up overall and records keep falling.
And no John – you won’t argue with BoM as you know you’ll come off second best with your loopy maths .. that’s why you won’t step up to the plate – you’re essentially saying their press release is incorrect. That’s brave .. hope you can back it up.
You didn’t ask originally why it was warmer. If you don’t like my attempt simply to present some data – well buzz off and don’t ask – sort it yourself in future.
So you’re on the attack – give us your considered dissertation – don’t just do a quickie raid and disappear – floor us.
“suggests” ??? that’s very definitive. A pers biased com perhaps? I suggest it wasn’t an El Nino year – put your SOI/temp analysis up. Don’t just fox around.