3GW/CC
Blog – Global Temperature Data on Images
June, 2012
This blog has some supplemental information on global
temperatures.
Temperatures get measured at various places around the
world, some land based, some ocean water temperatures. These measurements,
certainly historical data, tend to be more numerous in developed countries.
Some of the land-based measurement points are in or near big cities. Cities
tend to create heat islands, resulting in false-high temperatures; scientists
make adjustments to back this local warming out. Nonetheless, I think an
ocean temperature is relatively simple and realistic. There are several buoys
deployed in the oceans to measure water temperature, at various depths. The
oceans cover more than 70% of the world’s surface.
A Skeptical Science
site includes a figure with red dots on a map of the world, showing land
temperature stations with at least one month of data in the Global Historical
Climatology Network (GHCN-M). The figure is from Rennie et al 2014. It shows
7280 stations which were used during the period 1991 to 2013 in the global
surface temperature data bank. There is an extremely high concentration of
stations in the USA, on the south eastern side of Australia, and in Japan, then
lesser concentrations in Central Europe, lesser in Western Australia, Central
Africa, then places like Canada, South America, most of Africa. There are only
a few stations in Antarctica and Greenland. This figure is well worth a good
look.
The graph below
illustrates the results from several temperature data sets for the period of
instrumental temperature measurements. This graph also has a line for raw data, without adjustments; prior to
1945, the raw temperatures are lower than the scientifically adjusted
temperatures. Adjustments make
little difference to the impression of global warming and the inherent
conclusions.
The Berkeley data set
has an interesting story. They started out thinking the other data sets were
wrong, so they prepared their own, using their own methods. In the end, their
results are very much on top of the results from the other organizations. I wonder if these folks are still skeptical.
Temperatures started to climb about 1970, as my life activities began to ramp up.
In the period 1998 to 2012, there is an apparent pause, hiatus, in global warming. Followed by a sharp rise in the subsequent eight years. However, if you look at the attached graph for ocean water temperatures / heat, you will see that heat kept going into the oceans throughout the apparent pause period.
More than 90% of the warming that has happened on earth over the last 50 years has occurred in the ocean. Recent studies estimate that warming in the upper oceans accounts for 63% of the total increase in the amount of stored heat in the climate system between 1971 and 2010, and warming from 700 metres down to the ocean floor adds another 30%. The movement of the ocean waters and their great thermal inertia have a big influence on average climate patterns around the globe, and climate variability on many time scales. The heat memory of the oceans is slowing down the rate of warming of the earth’s atmosphere, delaying some global warming.
Next is a graph of
the estimated temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere for the last 2000 years.
You can look at
maps of the world which show temperature anomalies at various places in
the world.
I like the NOAA site, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. The site can be used interactively to generate various displays of global temperature anomalies, including by year and by month.
This is a good time
to point out that the USA has been a great provider of climate data. Give them
credit for good on-going work.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/global-maps/
The map shows grey for much of the polar regions because of the limited number of temperature monitoring stations in these regions. Nonetheless, what stations do exist indicate higher temperature anomalies in the Arctic region, compared to the rest of the world; we will discuss this in another blog. Temperature anomalies in Antarctica are similar to most of the world. Temperature anomalies are higher in the Northern Hemisphere than the Southern Hemisphere. We will discuss the reasons another time.
The eleven warmest years on record are: 2020 and 2016
tied for the highest, then 2015, 2017, 2018, 2014, 2010, 2013, 2005, 2009 and
1998.
From these graphs, you might get some sense that climate
change is becoming a big industry. The industry covers a broad spectrum: from
the scientists, to politicians, to commercial advertising. And, of course, the
media, including arguments by skeptics.
Ken Elmore commented
on this blog. He has a chemistry background and follows / engages climate
change stuff. For many of the years that I worked as a consulting engineer,
Ken was my Vice President. He managed by
walking around. From time to time, he came into my office, asked me what I
was working on, made a couple insightful comments and asked a pertinent
question or two. Then he stood up and left me to ponder, no prompting, no
directing, no suggesting. Like me, Ken
is a wonderer. Sometimes when I went into his office, Ken would be sitting
with his finger-tips together, looking out the window, thinking intently. I
value my time with Ken. I admire his
thinking ability.
In response to my blogs on temperature, Ken wrote:
“I agree with you that the ocean temperature measurements are
meaningful, but land measurements from thousands of stations of variable
quality and variable density around the world, subject to the chaos
(mathematical sense) of weather patterns should be left to weather forecasters
who struggle with predictions beyond a few days. I understand climate data
requires a base of at least 30 years to qualify and I think we would be much
better off measuring a few places in the world by measuring the temperature of
stations with large thermal inertia, thereby eliminating all the noise
associated with what is being done now. Define that as the world temperature,
much as is done with the world carbon dioxide data from Mauna Loa.“
Blackie Manana
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