Hot Rumor: BEST Analysis Next Week to Report - Globe's Temperature Up 1.5 Degrees Celsius

Stress - this is a rumor. However, the rumor says that next week Richard Muller will release the latest Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature analysis of surface temperature data going back as far as the 18th century. Muller, once skeptical of the temperature records that showed considerable global warming in recent decades, set up BEST to reanalyze that data. In 2011, BEST's preliminary analysis of land temperature data found:

….a warming trend that is shown in the figure [below]. It is very similar to that reported by the prior groups: a rise of about 0.7 degrees C since 1957. (Please keep in mind that the Berkeley Earth curve, in black, does not include adjustments designed to eliminate systematic bias.)

The Berkeley Earth agreement with the prior analysis surprised us, since our preliminary results don't yet address many of the known biases. When they do, it is possible that the corrections could bring our current agreement into disagreement.

The rumors say that new BEST reanalysis will show that global average temperature has increased by 1.5 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times and will suggest that most of the warming since the 1950s is the result of increased greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

I will report back if and when these rumors are confirmed.

Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

Back in the 19th Century they knew not to put their temperature sensors next to their air conditioning exhausts.

[Russell Seitz]

Since station siting, galactic cosmic rays and the Iron Sun havien't made the grade, Watts will move on to blaming global warming on bad lapse rate data from barometers in skyscrapers.

This is known as the Urban Height Island effect.

[robc]

Is that above or below the 1 AD temperature?

[robc]

Acronyms that spell words make google hard.

[Episiarch]

Holy fuck this cult shit never ends.

[o3]

u mean the weather channel?

[WTF]

Once again orrin steps up with some major league derp.

[Mr. FIFY]

StOOOpid inadvertently made a point - in order to keep your job safe at the Weather Channel, you have to go along with the man-caused global warming theme.

[jnol44]

yes they won't employ anyone disconnected from reality

[Apparently a 'statist']

" in order to keep your job safe at the Weather Channel, you have to go along with the man-caused global warming theme."

Has anyone ever been fired for saying something that goes against the AGW theory/concept and also happens to be scientifically true or more probable to be true? As in, has that ever happened?

Because, I think you are just being a dumb cunt.

[R C Dean]

Since I'm supposed to be worried that (as the famous fallacy puts it) "this time its different", I am far less interested in temperature variations since the 1800s than I am in how those variations compare with past climate cycles.

[R C Dean]

Related example:

This time its different: OMG! The Greenland ice cap is melting!

Past cycles: Like it does every 150 years, SUVs or no.

[Paul.]

*golf clap*

I find myself not caring... almost at all... about the fact that the "earth" has warmed 1.5 celcius since a randomly chosen prior date.

[BarryD]

"Randomly chosen"?

You assume too much.

[Mad Scientist]

REPENT! THE END IS NEAR!

[MSimon]

I never pented in the first place.

[BarryD]

Isn't it pretty well accepted that 1880 was right about when the Little Ice Age ended for good, and temperatures had started rising steadily?

That doesn't refute AGW. It does, however, suggest cherry-picking the start date to maximize the appearance of a temperature rise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.....arison.png

[Juice]

The hockey stick graph is so much bullshit. The tree rings and other proxies don't correlate with instrumental measurements today. The only way you can get an absolute temperature from a tree ring is to calibrate tree rings using a more accurate thermometer. If they don't correlate, you can't calibrate it. The tree rings might give you some qualitative information about climate conditions at some point in the past, but to think you can get an absolute temperature from them with any accuracy is ludicrous.

[BarryD]

The hockey stick graph is bullshit. However, there really was a Medieval Warm Period, and a Little Ice Age. We know roughly when they happened, and some of the manifestations (like changes in where temperate-zone crops could be grown).

We know that the Little Ice Age ended for good, around the mid-to-late 1800s. So even if one assumes that temperature data are accurate, picking 1880 as a start date smacks of intentional alarmist bullshit.

Data suggest that the temperature might be up about 0.2 C since 2000 years ago and about even with 1000 years ago. But it's up a great deal since the temperature trough of the Little Ice Age (which is a damn good thing).

Again, it just smacks of bullshit.

[Juice]

The Central England Temperature Record doesn't show any sign of a Little Ice Age.

http://junksciencearchive.com/.....ET_an.html

But the second oldest instrumental record, the Prague Temperature Record seems to show a large dip in the middle of the 19th century.

http://motls.blogspot.com/2010.....tinum.html

[Bam!]

Wasn't the Little Ice Age linked to Krakatoa exploding?

[jnol44]

"picking 1880 as a start date smacks of intentional alarmist bullshit."

it's obviously not a choice. It's when sufficient records of measured temperature began. god you deniers will try and smear from any angle you can imagine won't you?

[John]

You sound so hopeful Ron. You really want this shit to be true don't you?

[Ron Bailey]

J: Nope. But it would suggest that any Climategateer number jiggering was not too significant. Stay tuned.

[John]

Just kidding Ron.

[Juice]

What are the differences between Muller's methods and the others? Is he using the same methods to analyze the same "carefully chosen" datasets?

[Ron Bailey]

Ju: No - take a look at the BEST site for details.

[Juice]

From the site.

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study has created a preliminary merged data set by combining 1.6 billion temperature reports from 16 preexisting data archives.

What are these archives? When, how, and by whom were they compiled?

Bad values filter: We flagged and excluded from further study values that had pre-existing indicators of data quality problems associated with instrumental error, in-filling of missing data, and/or post-hoc manipulations.

Pre-existing indicators? Such as?

Local outlier filter: We tested for and flagged values that exceeded a locally determined empirical 99.9% threshold for normal climate variation in each record.

Damn, a place isn't allowed to have freak weather?

Site reduction: Though a majority of all station repetitions are identified by the presence of duplicated data, in a significant number of cases the presence of pre-existing data manipulations inhibited our tests for data duplication.

Damn. I wonder if when the discovered pre-existing data manipulation (counted as raw data, I assume) they would just throw out that station entirely. I think I would.

[JW]

This stood out to me. Hmmm, rejecting stricter guidelines for data?

After eliminating duplicate records, the current archive contains 39,390 unique stations. This is more than five times the 7,280 stations found in the Global Historical Climatology Network Monthly data set (GHCN-M) that has served as the focus of many climate studies. The GHCN-M is limited by strict requirements for record length, completeness, and the need for nearly complete reference intervals used to define baselines. We have developed new algorithms that reduce the need to impose these requirements (see methodology), and as such we have intentionally created a more expansive data set.

Still, they seem to be taking a much better approach, if what they say about the transparency is true. THAT is the way science is supposed to be conducted, not like preventing corporate espionage.

[R C Dean]

We flagged and excluded from further study values that had pre-existing indicators of data quality problems associated with instrumental error, in-filling of missing data, and/or post-hoc manipulations.

Be wary of any list that includes the semantically radioactive modifier "and/or".

I'm hoping (but because of the and/or, really have no idea) that this means they excluded the fraudulent data from East Anglia.

[jnol44]

the data from East Anglia matches up with data from elsewhere.

Thus either the "fraud" was pointless. Or you are bullsh1tting

[MSimon]

The jiggering is not in the numbers it is in the starting point - the LIA. I have been watching you on this subject for quite a while and my take is you want to be a mark. Take comfort my friend a lot of people want to be marks. You are in a lot of bad company.

[Russell Seitz]

Ron, FYI your earlier post on Greenland being the same old same old went over the top- Revkin ran this corrigendum, noting the difference between the ~ 150 year frequency of thaws at Summit - one point on the map , and icecap wide melt sheets like the one in progress:

From Dot Earth: 2:10 p.m. | Updated |
"Lora Koenig of NASA just sent this note providing the reference underlying her comment about past summer melting episodes at the summit (the spot on the giant ice sheet least vulnerable to melting):

The study I am citing is Alley and Anandakrishnan, 1995, "Variations in melt-layer frequency in the GISP2 ice core: implications for Holocene summer temperatures in central Greenland" published in the Annals of Glaciology for establishing the long-term frequency of melt events at Summit , Greenland. And Clausen et al., 1988 Glaciological Investigations in the Crete area, Central Greenland: ...Keegan and her advisor Mary Albert at Dartmouth University have more recent research on this event and please contact them for additional specific information.

My comment shows that melt events have occurred at Summit in the past and I have quoted the longest-term average frequency of ~150 years (exactly 153 from the paper) over the past 10,000. Since this is an ice core record that frequency is for the location of Summit only. The frequency ranges from ~80 to 250 years over different sections of the GISP2 ice core, please see the paper for specifics."

[Enough About Palin]

"Hot Rumor: BEST Analysis Next Week to Report - Globe's Temperature Up 1.5 Degrees Celsius"

This just in: So what?

[BarryD]

So the Little Ice Age is finally, really, officially over!

We should have a party.

[Richard]

Some time ago someone posted a link to a web site with a series of temperature charts going back into time logarithmically. They alternated from "OMG were all going to bake!" to "OMG we're all going to freeze!" until it became obvious that the temperature fluctuations for the last 1000 years are just noise. Does anyone have that link?

[BarryD]

Not the same graphs, but similar idea. See my post above, where it's linked.

[Mike M.]

The 18th century? You have seriously got to be fucking kidding me with this bullshit.

[BarryD]

Late 19th, actually.

[Mike M.]

Ah, I see. 18th, 19th, what's the difference, right?

[BarryD]

You'd have a very bad time showing up to a saloon wearing a wig, makeup, stockings and high-heeled shoes, in the 19th Century.

[Mike M.]

Ah, I see. 18th, 19th, what's the difference, right?

[Ken Shultz]

Ultimately, the question is what we should do about it, if anything at all, rather than whether it's a problem.

Again, if the only solution we offer is denying the problem exists, then we're gonna end up looking like a bunch of creationists--if there really is a problem.

[BarryD]

"Whether it's a problem" and "whether it's happening" are two different questions, though.

While some other men I know are bald, my hair keeps growing, and I need to have it cut pretty often to avoid looking like Chewbacca.

It's happening. But is my lack of male-pattern baldness a problem?

[mad libertarian guy]

One can't possibly figure "what we should do about it" before we determine if there is a problem, and the origins of the problem.

The key is to advocate that even if the world is warming, the solution is to help localities adapt to whatever negative effects they experience (if any). If one place is dealing with floods, help them deal with said flood via dykes or canals. If they are dealing with drought, help them acquire modifications which enable crop plants to be drought resistant.

Even entertaining the idea that we can stop climate change, or deal with it on a global scale is folly.

[Apparently a 'statist']

"If one place is dealing with floods, help them deal with said flood via dykes or canals."

As if you libertarians want to pay for that.

[Old Mexican]

Muller, once skeptical of the temperature records that showed considerable global warming in recent decades,

In the same way paranormal investigators fancy themselves being "skeptics."

[ant1sthenes]

And still, no one wants to comment on temperature variance. Average this, average that. Climate isn't going to hurt us; weather might.

[Old Mexican]

The rumors say that new BEST reanalysis will show that global average temperature has increased by 1.5 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times and will suggest that most of the warming since the 1950s is the result of increased greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

The rumors suggest that the science is so good that the conclusions just jump out of the paper and rape your very eyes.

[Old Mexican]

[the results] will suggest that most of the warming since the 1950s is the result of increased greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

Because temperature readings are tagged with their greenhouse gas of origin, like any other product. That's how they know.

[joshua corning]

Muller, once skeptical of the temperature records that showed considerable global warming in recent decades, set up BEST to reanalyze that data.

I am pretty sure Muller still thinks the hockey stick proxy studies are bullshit. The Best studies do not seem to examine the proxy record and seem to focus solely on the instrument record.

[Juice]

Because the proxy studies are a special kind of voodoo science. They require someone that's been trained for years to extract absolute temperatures in celsius from tree rings, stalagmites, diatoms, and ice cores. When they attack the problem of instrumental records, they're just doing statistical data analysis on much more accurate measurements.

[joshua corning]

They require someone that's been trained for years to extract absolute temperatures in celsius from tree rings, stalagmites, diatoms, and ice cores.

Actually that is not true. That work is done prior to putting them in multi-proxy studies. In fact looking at Mann's work prior to inventing the hockey stick you will find none. He went from being a graduate to being the top multi-proxy wizard in the world with no intermittent work on proxies.

Even more amusing is that the work of making a multi-proxy study is that it is all statistical work...again a subject that Mann has no prior experience in.

[MSimon]

The temperature studies are not so hot either. Stevenson shelters at standard heights above ground level did not come into being until well after RL Stevenson was born. And then there is the problem of location. Moving a shelter can bias a site. And then there is the urban bias. Which is generally underestimated IMO making the temperature rise in part a function of the growth of cities. I could go on. But you can't wise up people who clamor to be marks.

[35N4P2BYY]

To my lay eyes a 1.5C increase over ~150 years does not seem as apocalyptic as the true believers would have us think. What does a one and a half degree mean? Is that tiny or small increase?

But, as R C posted above what I really want to know is if and how this deviates from historical climate cycles.

[35N4P2BYY]

...tiny or huge, rather.

[R C Dean]

No, I think you got it the first time.

[joshua corning]

If 1.5C increase over 150 is huge....

...then were are all the dead bodies? Where are the wastelands of former farms? Where are the flooded coastal cities?

I think that answers your question as to the how huge or tiny it is.

[joshua corning]

In other news Climate Skeptic and popular blogger Anthony Watts is a gigantic dandy drama queen:

WUWT publishing suspended ? major announcement coming
Posted on July 27, 2012 by Anthony Watts

Something's happened. From now until Sunday July 29th, around Noon PST, WUWT will be suspending publishing. At that time, there will be a major announcement that I'm sure will attract a broad global interest due to its controversial and unprecedented nature.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/201.....nt-coming/

This could have something to do with the upcoming BEST study results.

I read the WUWT blog all the time...but sometimes the breathless drama they pull over there is exhausting.

[Joshua]

At least it's not climategate 3.0.

But yeah, I think his time in local network news warped his sense of drama.

[SKR]

As unprecedented as a melt event that happens every 150 years?

[joshua corning]

Hot Rumor: BEST Analysis Next Week to Report - Globe's Temperature Up 1.5 Degrees Celsius

So what you are saying Ron is that the report will have nearly identical results as the preliminary results did a year ago...

How is that hot or even a rumor?

Wouldn't it simply be a best (no pun) guess?

[R C Dean]

For accuracy, wouldn't you want to say "Globe's Temperature Up 1.5 Degrees Celsius Since Cyclical Low"?

[Joshua]

Why is this in any way interesting? The graph displayed already indicates approximately 1.5 C increase since 1880.

Also, what everybody else said about a) um this has been since an abnormally cold period and b) show your work regarding how this foretells disaster.

[Space]

Does anybody wonder how it could be that all four temperature records in the chart above show a .8 degreeC rise in surface temperature since 1979 when satellites only show a .45 degreeC temperature increase in the Troposphere for the same period? How is that possible?

[joshua corning]

What is odd is satellites do not take full temperature images of the entire earth...they take bits and pieces then are all moshed together mathematically to get a full temperature record.

Why don't they just use those bits and pieces to compare to different instrumental ground records and see what ground records are good and which are bad?

Anyway excellent point Space.

[Space]

joshua - I was speaking in terms of radiation physics.

'Reconciliation with climate models'

"Globally, the troposphere is predicted by models to warm about 1.2 times more than the surface; in the tropics, the troposphere should warm about 1.5 times more than the surface".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.....asurements

If the very theory of AGW warming is based on the Troposphere warming more than the planet surface, how can the surface be warming faster than the troposphere by almost 200% according to surface thermometers?

[jnol44]

"Does anybody wonder how it could be that all four temperature records in the chart above show a .8 degreeC rise in surface temperature since 1979 when satellites only show a .45 degreeC temperature increase in the Troposphere for the same period? How is that possible?"

The graph is land only. Land warms faster than the oceans.

[Cephalopod]

Celsius or Fahrenheit?

[Cephalopod]

So here we have apparent confirmation of what has been known for some time.
In what way is this news?

[Apparently a 'statist']

Well, we are still not allowed to do anything meaningful to reduce emissions because that would make baby Nozick cry.

[dan bloom]

Andy revkin wrote on DOT EARTH .......Muller, who has combined P.T. Barnum
showmanship and science throughout his three-year project, ******chose to
break the news in a NYT OpEd article. DAN BLOOM SAYS....***But Andy,
you should know,
Muller was ASKED to write that piece for the NYT oped page by its
assignment editor, he did not submit it cold, as you know. All opeds
are assigned first and commissioned. The oped team asked him to write
that oped. There is a difference, no? Even Roger Pielke Jr made the
same mistake, tweeting that [The bigger issue is how NYT let itself
be conned into running Muller's op-ed']. But in fact, RP is wrong,
the Times oped page was not conned. The oped page assigned the article
to Muller. Ask him. Ask the editors. I know this for a fact. No opeds
ever come in unassigned, Period. Marc Morano is wrong, Watts is wrong,
RP is wrong, and Andy you are wrong here to assert that he chose to
break the news in an oped in the Times. The Times asked him to explain
himself as an assigned commissioned piece and Muller got paid over
$1000 for it too. FACT CHECKING DEPARTMENT!