Global Warming Trends

 

The anomaly in the Earth’s temperature based only on thermometers in meteorological stations and excluding the oceans which cover about 70% of the Earth’s surface. The Daily Mail only draw your attention to a small fraction of the data – and they include monthly fluctuations which disguise the clear warming trend.

Why do I ever even look at the Daily Mail website?

The other day I came across this pernicious article purporting to describe a plummeting of global temperatures above the land surfaces of the Earth. The article states:

Global average temperatures over land have plummeted by more than 1C since the middle of this year – their biggest and steepest fall on record. [P.S. by 1C they mean 1 °C not 1 coulomb]

The news comes amid mounting evidence that the recent run of world record high temperatures is about to end.

Some scientists, including Dr Gavin Schmidt, head of Nasa’s climate division, have claimed that the recent highs were mainly the result of long-term global warming.

Others have argued that the records were caused by El Nino, a complex natural phenomenon that takes place every few years, and has nothing to do with greenhouse gas emissions by humans. The new fall in temperatures suggests they were right.

It is accompanied by a misleading graphic:

Graphic from the Daily Mail website. Notice their graph only runs from 1997 and includes large fluctuations due to sub-annual changes. It describes only the changes in temperature above the land surfaces of the Earth.

The article is nonsense from start to finish, but I just thought I would show you how to get at the data for yourself so you can make up your own mind.

Decide for yourself

This excellent NASA web page allows you plot various graphs of temperature data, and change the degree of smoothing applied to the raw data. I invite you to try it out for yourself.

This NASA web page has excellent links and descriptions

You can choose to include land stations only, or combine land and ocean data. Remember that the land surface of the Earth represents less than 30% of our planet’s surface, and so the most relevant measure of global warming involves both land and ocean data.

As well as generating graphs, you can use the website to download data and then graph the data in Excel™ as I have done for the graph at the top of the page.

I don’t fully understand where the data in the Daily Mail graphic comes from. They appear to have picked only recent data and included monthly data rather than annual averages to increase the noise and de-emphasise the obvious trend in the data.

The background colouration in the Daily Mail graphic implies that the high temperatures are all associated with the El Nino conditions. This is not correct. As the graphic below (from skeptical science) shows, years with and without an El Nino are all showing a warming trend.

An animated file showing global surface temperatures in El Nino years, La Nina years, and neutral years.

For the technically-minded reader, this article from Victor Venema may help.

The Trend 

What struck me as shocking was what happened when I set the smoothing of the data to 20 years – so that the trend represented a trend in climate rather than annual or multi-annual fluctuations.

In the figure below I show the data for the land and ocean mean temperature anomaly and the red line shows the smoothing with a 20-year running average. Since 1980 – which was 36 years ago – the data is essentially a straight line.

The estimated change in the temperature of the air above the oceans and the land. The red line shows a smoothed version of the annual data with a 20-year window to reflect changes in climate rather than the internal fluctuations of the Earth’s complex weather systems. Notice that since 1980 , the smoothed line is essentially straight with a gradient of approximately 0.017 °C per year. Source: NASA-GISS: see article for details

What if…

Friends, just suppose that NASA had spotted not a global warming trend, but an asteroid headed straight for Earth. Suppose they calculated it would not destroy civilisation, but it would nonetheless be devastating: its tidal disturbance would cause widespread floods

Would we want to know? Well Yes!

Now suppose that the entire world got together in, say, Paris, and developed a plan to deflect the asteroid. The plan would be expensive and risky – costing about 1% of global GDP – but after about 100 years of effort we would be freed from the risk of a collision.

Would we follow the plan? Well Yes!

Friends, Global warming is equivalent in its impact to an asteroid headed to Earth, and the Paris Accord, while inadequate in itself, represents the start of a plan in which the disparate governments of Earth have agreed to slow development (that brings direct benefit to their citizens) in order to tackle this threat.

Please don’t let the Daily Mail deceive you into thinking global warming is not happening: it is. It is happening slowly – 0.017 °C per year  – and the odd year of inaction makes no difference.

But year upon year of inaction condemns us to a fate that is out of our control.

 

Hope

Map of the world showing regions that in June 2015 were warmer or cooler than they ‘normally’ are. Dark red shows record warm regions. Most of the Earth is warmer than it has been historically. Remember that June is the height of Southern Hemisphere winter. Source NCDC – see text for link. Click image for a larger version.

Sometimes it is difficult to stay hopeful.

And the NCDC ‘State of the Climate’ report for June 2015 is so shocking that I really should feel no hope at all.

What does it say to put me in such a mood? Well it is authoritative and detailed, but here’s a taster.

June 2015 also marks the fourth month this year that has broken its monthly temperature record, along with February, March, and May. The other months of 2015 were not far behind: January was second warmest for its respective month and April was third warmest. These six warm months combined with the previous six months (four of which were also record warm) to make the period July 2014–June 2015 the warmest 12-month period in the 136-year period of record, surpassing the previous record set just last month (June 2014–May 2015). … the 10 warmest 12-month periods have all been marked in the past 10 months.

In short, the surface temperature of the Earth is dramatically warm and it looks likely that the calendar year 2015 will be the hottest ever.

And yet I feel hopeful. Why?

Because this is how the Daily Mail reported this news (Link)

June warmest EVER recorded globally as forecasters warn 2015 set to be a record breaking year

That’s right, the Daily Mail reported this as a completely straight news story. It is not spun. It is not used to imply that Climate Scientists are corrupt or left-wing. No jokes are made about hiatuses or the growth of arctic sea ice.

I honestly never thought I would live to see the day that the Daily Mail reported serious climate change news as serious climate change news. And yet here it is.

If newspapers such as the Daily Mail can really break their links with climate change deniers then the fear, uncertainty and doubt that they spread will begin to dissipate. And then we can all get busy actually solving problems rather than arguing.

It’s one reason to be hopeful. And for now, that’ll do.

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The Figure is from NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, State of the Climate: Global Analysis for June 2015, published online July 2015, retrieved on July 20, 2015 from http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201506.

Is this the worst journalism in the world?

Graph showing the extent of Arctic sea ice in the month of September from 1980 to 2013. The Daily Mail reported the rise in September Sea Ice extent from last years minimum as evidence for ‘global cooling’. Data is from the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre.

Arctic Sea Ice Extent is an interesting climate variable because it is relatively simple to measure.

Each year sea-ice retreats in the Arctic summer, reaching a  minimum in the middle of September, and then grows back through the Arctic winter.

The data for September sea-ice extent are plotted in the graph at the head of the page. They clearly show a ‘melting’ trend: currently there are around 2.5 million square kilometres less sea ice in September than in the 1980s and 1990s.

Last year (2012) September sea-Ice extent reached a new minimum of 3.63 million square kilometres. This can be understood as partly resulting from the melting trend, and partly from year-to variability of around ±0.5 million square kilometres.

This year (2013) September sea ice extent ‘recovered’ to 5.35 million square kilometres, so 1.72 million square kilometres of sea ice was frozen this September that was unfrozen last September.

Looking at the data above, could anyone seriously conclude that this ‘recovery’ was evidence that the melting trend had halted and that we were embarked on a new phase of Global Cooling? Only an idiot would think so.

Well the Daily Mail thinks this so, and covers this story with the headline:

And now it’s global COOLING! Return of Arctic ice cap as it grows by 29% in a year

The article is pernicious: lacking in any understanding of the science, and full of attacks on the BBC and IPCC. It mocks any rational concern over Climate Change. Presumably the author is aware of how stupid the article makes him appear, but he just doesn’t seem to care.

I have written this article, but frankly, I am now lost for words and actually reduced to tears. I think this is actually the worst and most depressing piece of journalism I have ever read.

Data

The data I have plotted comes from the Data Archives of the Arctic Sea Ice Section of the National Snow and Ice Data Centre in the USA. If you intend to re-plot some of these graphs then you need to be careful with the data – it comes in many forms and some files and folders are extremely large. But understanding the formats will help you to understand how the data is acquired and recorded.

Is the cheapest the best?

A Power Station

As news of rises in the price of electricity have appeared, there have been a number of stories in the right-wing press lamenting the folly of subsidising generation of electricity by renewable means:

• Here the Daily Mail publicises the views of Lord Turnbull – friend of Global Warming denier Nigel Lawson – who laments these ‘Green stealth taxes’.
• Here The Register’s idiosyncratic right-winger Lewis Page makes the same point.

And my question to you is this. Do you always choose the cheapest alternative? Personally, I don’t. For example

• Our family car is a Vauxhall Zafira, now 11 years old, chosen for its utility for family life.
• I chose a Macintosh computer over a Windows PC, because its just better.
• We choose Free Range eggs so that hens are treated better.
• The carpet we recently chose was not the cheapest – which just felt nasty – but far from the most expensive either.
• While the apartheid regime was in place in South Africa I never bought South African fruit.

My purchasing choices are based on a range of criteria which reflect my income, and my understanding of the consequences of my purchasing decisions for me and the wider world. I expect everyone makes similar decisions. Often it is not clear what the cheapest option really is: buying a cheap sofa now may result in it falling to bits in a year or two. A more expensive initial purchase may have saved money in the long run. In general, I only choose the cheapest option when I can see no downside to that choice. And perhaps the Daily Mail and The Register consider that there is no downside to non-renewable electricity. I disagree.

If we want the cheapest electricity possible, then we should forget about wind, solar and nuclear and simply burn coal or gas, whichever happens to be cheaper. Our carbon dioxide emissions will soar. While we are at it, we should take the scrubbers off the emission stacks of the power stations which reduces efficiency. Sulphur dioxide emissions will soar and acid rain will increase, but the electricity will be cheaper. If price is the only thing that matters then people should be clear about the consequences of the choice they are making.

Deciding the correct generating mix is a complex decision in which economics plays a part, and science & engineering play a part, but the final decisions are political. And in the democracies the decisions reflect our will:

• In Germany the Government has voted to close all nuclear power stations by 2023
• In Italy, a referendum on Monday will probably choose not to build any nuclear power stations at all. The previous referendum on this issue was just after Chernobyl and the timing of the current  referendum so close to Fukushima more or less ensures rejection. I think the next time Italy decides to have a referendum on this issue all the nuclear power stations in the world should be put on high alert!
• In France, the public are not given any choice in the matter
• In the UK, the government seeks to avoid decisions on such matters by devolving decisions to ‘the market’.

The generating mix in a country is a choice. If the Daily Mail and The Register think we should just emit carbon dioxide and damn the consequences, then they should say so. Personally, I think it would a disastrous choice: politically, strategically, environmentally and ultimately, economically. The future begins now, and although the shape of future is always uncertain, it seems to me that sustainable energy is bound to play a part. It is better that we face up to this reality now – and that means we need to pay the cost of that choice. Or to mis-quote Lao Tzu

The journey of 60 GW, begins with a single kWh