It is official, last year was the hottest on record in Australia. The following graph from the Bureau of Meterology shows 2005 was exceptionally warm and more than a degree warmer than the 1961-1990 average which is the standard reference period for calculating temperature anomalies.
Many of Australia’s warmest years, including 1988, 1998 and 2002, had temperatures boosted by significant El Nino events. However, 2005 was not an El Nino year, making the high temperatures even more remarkable.
According to the Bureau:
1. Australian temperatures have increased by approximately 0.9C since 1910, consistent with global warming trends.
2. Both daytime and night-time temperatures were high in 2005. The annual mean maximum temperature was 1.21C above average (equal highest), while the mean minimum temperature was 0.97C above average (2nd highest).
3.Temperature anomalies varied throughout the year but autumn 2005 was particularly warm. April had the largest Australian mean monthly temperature anomaly ever recorded, with a monthly anomaly of +2.58C breaking the previous record of +2.32C set in June 1996.
The Bureau noted in its assessment that:
Australian mean temperatures are calculated from a country-wide network of about 100 high-quality, mostly rural, observing stations. The Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre and National Climate Centre have undertaken extensive quality checking to ensure that the temperature records from these sites have not been compromised by changes in site location, exposure or instrumentation over time.
Hmmmm just read a paper by Hans von Storch http://w3g.gkss.de/G/Mitarbeiter/storch/
Paper http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/000343a_climate_of_staged_.html
Which expert do you believe?
How the article appeared in Der Spiegel
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,342376,00.html
Rog, are you suggesting that the article you linked to contradicts the figures presented by the Bureau?
rog – there is healthy debate on AGW in the scientific community. I have posted links to Jim Hansens work before as one. Hans Von Storch actually believes this:
http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/von_Storch/perspective.pdf
“we are not claiming that the present concept of global warming is flawed. We are convinced that greenhouse gases are accumulating in the air, and strongly believe that near-surface temperatures are rising in response”
So as far as 2005 being the hottest and that surface temperatures are rising you can believe Von Storch.
The question of what will happen from this warming is much more uncertain however people betting on there being no effects are having the rug slowly pulled from under their feet by facts such as these.
More interesting quotes from your article Ender;
“Today, as in the past, the claim that anthropogenic climate change is associated with a serious impact on human society is still a hypothesis, often based on simplistic methodology.”
“Many scientists realize that our knowledge of the climate system will always suffer from significant uncertainty because of its open, complex and heterogeneous character and the long timescales involved. Thus, studies of climate change are bound to be characterized by high uncertainty and high stakes, with public, antagonistic debates not only between scientists but also activists and other non-specialists. However, age-old concerns about extremes of climate are part of the cultural background, for scientists as well as the public. This subjectively genuine concern, nourished by the mass media, underlies the activist scientists, who wield the same apocalyptic scenario of drought, delugial floods and devastating storms as their historical counterparts.”
Am I reading the same article as you?
rog – no I agree with you. It is not certain what the effects of AGW will be as nobody can predict this with any certainty. However there are some pretty good informed guesses and most are not good for humanity.
However in the context of anthropogenic greenhouse gases and human land use changes etc causing warming of the atmosphere there is general agreement that this is happening and is consistant with the physical measured facts.
Rog – what desperate wallowing – von Storch is irrelevant to this “hot off the press” Bureau analysis. The Bureau has made a very good analysis with very good data. I suggest it’s definitive. Are you suggesting they made it up – cherry picked the stations, biased the data – come on – these are very serious guys who argue with their peers every day on validity of scientific this and that. There is no good reason to take their analysis at anything other than face value.
So if you add this to the global measurements, satellite measurements, glacial melt, Artic melt, change in top storm speeds, ocean temperatures, sea level rise and changes in species flowering and behaviour – we certainly have a lot going on globally and locally. You can pick a few exceptions but the main direction is only one way.
And if the reason is not solar output, not orbital, not volcanic – what else is there as a mechanism?
So don’t worry about rhetorical speeches – let’s look at what real data we have and what it says !
What to do about it, whether to anything about it, and consequences of various actions can only etc are political questions.
More work is obviously required in terms of attribution and likely scenarios and this will come.
This isn’t a left/right/green thing – it’s just science.
Time to accept reality and move on .. ..
Read the article on being a real sceptic as opposed to a ragger.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=210#more-210
And a quote from the comments section of the above:
[Response: I’m a first-time participant as a lead author in the IPCC process. I’ve been to three author meetings so far, and I’ve found that there is a culture of very open and critical discussion of the science, with no top-down interference whatsoever. We write what we agree on after thorough discussion. I asked around the room amongst the authors of our chapter who has been a lead author before, and it turns out that it’s the first time for all of us. None of us feels any need to stick to some “party line” or defend what the IPCC (i.e. a different group of people) wrote in the last report. The idea promoted by some sceptics that the IPCC is some kind of closed-shop organisation is completely wrong. The IPCC is simply a process where a large bunch of scientists, chosen for their demonstrated expertise based on their publication record, get together to assess the published scientific literature as best as they can. (And that without pay in their free time, i.e. sacrificing a lot of nights and weekends.) -Stefan]
What is the situation globally? Was 2005 the warmest on record globally?
Oh, OK, von Storch is irrelevant.
Mind if I get an expert opinion?
Lets face it Phil, your link to Betrand Russell does require a mass of expert opinion.
For me to accept your view I must first be assured of your credentials.
What are your qualifications?
Storch is irrelevant to this discussion of the Bureau results not globally irrelevant..
Jen – I don’t think it was the warmest globally. But I understand there is some “tea-club” debate about it. Doesn’t really matter all that much – more bragging rights and teasing contrarians more than anything. It certainly was very close to the highest and given not an El Nino year it would be the warmest “Pacific anomaly adjusted” an issue the Bureau remarks on.
Realclimates take on 2005 is fairly sober:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=231
Says:
Due to a historical quirk (of unknown origin), the World Meterological Organisation releases its summary for each year based on the Dec to Nov ‘meteorlogical year’ means (rather than the more usual calendar year). Anyway, the WMO summary is now available, as is the NASA GISS analysis and the CRU summary. The point upon which all the analyses agree is that 2005 was exceptionally warm and that it continues the long term mean warming trend. All show record warmth in the Northern Hemisphere since 1860, while GISS gives 2005 as the warmest year globally as well (CRU/WMO have it second after 1998). As the summaries indicate, the differences in ranking are on the order of a few hundredths of a degree (smaller than the accuracy of the analysis) and so a definitive ranking is not possible. Differences in how the separate analyses deal with missing data are responsible for most of the apparent variations. Note too that the convention for the base periods for the anomalies differ between the analyses (1961-1990 for CRU/WMO, 1951-1980 for GISS), but this does not affect the rankings.
One the comments in the RC 2005 thread is very interesting and “a warning”.
Given what we have been hearing about global warming evidence over recent years, these results seem surprising. We regularly hear that climate change is now ‘happening more quickly than predicted’, that the dramatic impacts (more hurricanes, shrinking Arctic ice cap, more flooding events, etc)are all ocurring quicker and more often than expected – and yet the temperature is simply following the same steady trend as it has for 30 years. There is not even a hint of accelerating change (unless of course you choose to take the worst case result out of three – Nasa – which perhaps indicates a very slight hint).
[Response: The comment represents a fairly deep misunderstanding of what changes are actually predicted in response to anthropogenic forcing. Under most scenarios of late 20th century and future anthropogenic radiative forcing, a steady, rather than accelerating, rise in global and hemispheric mean temperature is predicted over timescales of decades. The observations seem to support that quite strongly over the past several decades. The models and observations both also indicate that the amplitude of interannual variability about these longer-term trends is quite large, making it foolhardy, at best, to try to estimate the slope of anthropogenic warming from a few years of data (as you seem to advocate). Lets try to keep the discussion here at a more serious level. -mike.]
Another unanswered question Phil, what are your credentials?
Otherwise its just another “tea-club” debate.
Ian Pilmer ends his article by saying;
“Only a strong economy can produce the well fed who have the luxury of espousing with religious fervour their uncosted, impractical, impoverishing policies. By such policies, Greenpeace continues to exacerbate grinding poverty in the Third World. The planet’s best friend is human resourcefulness with a supportive, strong economy and reduced release of toxins. The greenhouse gases – nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide and methane – have been recycled for billions of years without the intervention of human politics.”
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17729019%255E7583,00.html
Are his qualifications insufficient?
Nope – pretty dumb comment. Delete religious fervour and Greenpeace. We haven’t cycled with 6 billion people and a modern economy before. And in some of that recycling things may not have been that pleasant. Amazingly silly argument. Leave the greens out – this is just a political red herring – if the whole issue is so dumb what’s the alternative Asia Pacific Pact about ?
And in the end the atmosphere doesn’t give stuff about our economy and what we’d like or not. It will just do what its physics determine.
And it really is utter bumkum to sugggest that Greenpeace has any significant impact on the 3rd world. Substantially how?
Reports from Europe suggest that GHG targets will not be met. Is this a case of “do as I say not as I do?”
http://www.channel4.com/news/content/news-storypage.jsp?id=1677643
Forbes are not impressed by the lack of commitment by Kyoto proponents – “eyes wide shut”. Cutting emissions entails cutting growth and no country is willing to cut growth.
http://www.forbes.com/global/2006/0109/032A.html
Well Plimer would be happy then – no harm done. No loss of growth. So what’s he on about if nothing has happened. All this bleating of ruination but no losses at all.
Well here we are with a bright new year under way and all the rubbishy logic in the world being propogated by people with nothing better to do. Of course Plimer is happy, because so far that idiotic solution to a poorly defined problem, namely the Kyoto protocol, has not had the chance to ruin some economies..yet. Seems eminently sensible to me.
In the meantime the intellectaul geniusses in the Labor Party are calling for special privileges for the Pacific Islanders to counter the supposed rise in sea levels, that has not happened, when the real problem has been created by sinking land mass and their own poor management, not AGW. Some things never change and climate variabilty is but one of them.
So the world’s scientific literature that brings all the other benefits of civilisation of technology is now “rubbishy logic”.
The Kyoto Protocol isn’t the problem – it’s climate change. And why worry if it hasn’t been broadly implemented – can’t of cost anything then. Despite all the right wing diatribe and disinformation – the international effort continues – and regardless of Greenpeace or anyone beating on drums at Montreal.
And nobody has said sea level rises would affecting them YET. But very fast cyclones Nancy and Zoe sure have.
As usual the idiotic right wing anti-intellectual campaign with more spin for sauce continues for 2006. Seems we also have too many cranky old geologists on day leave.
rog – actually Phil was pretty restrained in his summation of Ian Pilner article – I found it to be one of the biggest loads of BS that I have ever read. Even the right wingers on Tim Blairs blog would choke at that load.
As usual,diving off on any old tangents just to fill the air waves.
I didnt say that Kyoto was the problem at all.It would be obvious to anyone with Grade 1 Logic under their belt that the “idiotic solution” is the Kyoto Protocol, and the poorly defined problem is AGW.
Rubbishy logic still reigns
No – not at all – it’s the continual linkage of the two Kyoto and climate change by raggers such as yourself that’s the issue. Kyoto hasn’t worked – and the apocalyptic destruction of the world’s economy for even thinking the word hasn’t happened either. So this is just all right wing fog and b/s.
So I surmise that you guys would suggest that our hosting of the Asia Pacific Pact on alternative energy next week is a waste of time too – why bother if you’re all utterly utterly syre there’s no problem. So ring us John and tell him to send them home.
Strange that there’s so