To nobody’s surprise, all of the surface datasets showed 2016 to be the warmest year on record.
Barely more surprising is that all of the tropospheric satellite datasets and radiosonde data also have 2016 as the warmest year.
Coming as this does after the record warm 2015, and (slightly less definitively) record warm 2014, the three records in row might get you to sit up and pay attention.
There a few more technical issues that are worth mentioning here.
Impact of ENSO
The contribution of El Niño to recent years’ anomalies in the GISTEMP data set are ~0.05ºC (2015) and ~0.12ºC (2016), and that means the records would still have been set even with no ENSO variability.
I calculated these values using a regression of the interannual variability in the annual mean to the Feb-Mar MEI index. This has (just) the maximum correlation to the annual means (r=0.66). The impact of ENSO on other indices is similar, but does vary – the datasets that don’t interpolate to the Arctic, in recent years at least, have a slightly stronger ENSO signal, as do the satellite tropospheric records. Doing the same procedure with the HadCRUT4 data, does change the ordering – with 2015 staying as the record year, but using the Cowtan and Way extension, the results are the same as with GISTEMP. Which brings us to another key point…
Impact of the Arctic
It’s perhaps not obvious in the first figure, but the magnitude of the record in 2016 is much larger in GISTEMP and Cowtan&Way (and in the reanalyses), than it is in HadCRUT4, NCEI and JMA. This is in large part due to the treatment of the Arctic. The latter 3 records all ‘conservatively’ don’t include areas where there aren’t direct observations in their global means. This is equivalent to assuming that the missing areas are, on average, warming at the same rate as the global mean. However, this has not been a good assumption for a couple of decades. Arctic anomalies this year were close to 4ºC above the late 19th Century, over 3 times as big an anomaly as the global mean.
This divergence between the ‘global’ averages wouldn’t matter if all comparisons were done against masked model output, but this is often skipped over for simplicity. I personally think that both HadCRUT4 and NCEI should start producing a ‘filled’ dataset using the best of the techniques currently available so that we can move on from this particular issue.
Do I have to mention the ‘pause’?
Apparently yes. The last three years have demonstrated abundantly clearly that there is no change in the long term trends since 1998. A prediction from 1997 merely continuing the linear trends would significantly under-predict the last two years.
The difference isn’t yet sufficient to state that the trends are accelerating, but that might not be too far off. Does this mean that people can’t analyse interannual or interdecadal variations? Of course not, but it should serve as a reminder that short-term variations should not be conflated with long term trends. One is not predictive of the other.
Gavin and other responders (nos. 42, 34 and 26):
Thank you all for explaining the 1938-45 “bump” and for putting it into perspective. I will use the information you’ve so kindly and generously given to me as best as possible.
In my experience the people who find climate science uninteresting are not dumb. They have other priorities and interests: politics, world affairs, terrorism and similar fears, family happenings, the economics of getting by, sports and fitness, church involvement, etc. Science may barely be on the menu, but their plate is quite full. A cornucopia even.
Apparently my wife viewed the NASA video as part of a picture package she receives on Instagram. This suggests that public outreach is a good idea, doesn’t it?
When I look at the 1880-2016 graph I see that the period from 1940 to 1975, while intellectually interesting with its World War II bump and its post-war “flat period”, has little policy importance. It looks like statistical noise in a graph showing an enormously important and disturbing long-term trend. The trend needs to be a bigger part – a major part – of the national dialogue.
Thanks again!
anecdotalupdate – 2017 temps:
If Sydneysiders are subjected to one more day above 35C, the ninth this summer, it will equal the record set in 1896 120 years ago!.
The city has already set a new record for hot nights, with the mercury staying above 24C four times, two more than the summer of 2010.
Sydney is forecast to reach 38C on Tuesday, while the city’s west is expected to hit 40C in the afternoon.
Oh, 38C = 100.4 F
Thomas says: “If Sydneysiders are subjected to one more day above 35C, the ninth this summer, it will equal the record set in 1896 120 years ago!.”
The raw data before 1910 likely has a large warm bias, especially during heat waves, when it is sunny, the ground is dry and the winds are low.
Removing such problems is very difficult, especially in early data where we do not have much neighboring stations to compare with. Thus if your data source is not super high quality, I would take that similar 1896 heatwave with a grain of salt.
S.B. Ripman, welcome to help. If there is some subtle way to ask your wife, I would be really curious why she thought the WWII bump to be important. Could make our public outreach more effective.
Donald Trump was sharply criticised by Native Americans and climate change activists on Tuesday after he signed executive orders to allow construction of the Dakota Access and Keystone XL oil pipelines.
I’m honestly LOL now but I do get a kick out of black humour like that.
The question now is, wtf is anyone in the USA who supports AGW/CC science and logical action to hold temps at below 2C going to do about that?
Go marching and hold up a placard? :-)
Ode To American Exceptionalism
Hail Hillary,
Full of Grace,
Please come and save us,
From our own complacency
Our gullibility and
For losing face.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention abruptly and quietly canceled a scientific conference on climate change and health, according to E&E News. The conference was originally scheduled for February.
The conference had been in the works for months, and it was intended to bring experts and stakeholders together to discuss the latest evidence of and solutions to health risks posed by climate change. But according to E&E, the CDC suddenly canceled the summit shortly after Donald Trump’s election. The agency notified speakers and participants in a terse email, which gave no explanation. The email noted that the summit may be rescheduled for later in the year.
Former CDC officials and conference speakers were quick to draw political connections. They noted that President Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and has vowed to dismantle “harmful and unnecessary” climate change policies.
Right now we are in a holding pattern. The new EPA administration has asked that all contract and grant awards be temporarily suspended, effective immediately. Until we receive further clarification, this includes task orders and work assignments.
The actions are being described as extraordinary, according to senior officials contacted by ProPublica:
One EPA employee aware of the freeze said he had never seen anything like it in nearly a decade with the agency. Hiring freezes happened, he said, but freezes on grants and contracts seemed extraordinary. The employee said the freeze appeared to be nationwide, and as of Monday night it was not clear for how long it would be in place.
The substance of the email exchange was confirmed by one senior EPA employee with over 20 years at the agency. An EPA lawyer also said that earlier communications had described such a freeze.
Is all your data backed up and moved to European Servers and personal files?
I smell some books burning.
53 Victor Venema, I didn’t include a ref as it’s merely a copy paste of a news report. Their source is the BOM and the BOMs source is their own collected data.
There is no getting around the issues of past data collections. I sure have no power to influence anything, and so these kinds of reports will keep coming and people have other choice but to accept them at face value IF they respect the BOM.
Only crazy conspiracy CC deniers like Marohasy and her stupid followers do not. So a massive majority of people in australia (and in all other advanced nations) have no choice than to assume a 1896 heat wave was a heat wave and set a record then.
No choice. And no option to check, review or correct any errors IF they exists. No option. I thought it worth clarifying and emphasizing this point about the reality in public perceptions – because only they can vote, not the scientific data – be it wrong or right or half-right.
Anecdotal report 2017 temps
Over the course of a year, the temperature typically varies from 3°C to 29°C and is rarely below -2°C or above 32°C.
https://weatherspark.com/averages/33525/Santiago-Santiago-Metropolitan-Region-Chile
The human, environmental and economic toll is expected to rise as the dry spell – temperatures that have reached 40C(104F) – and strong winds create the perfect conditions for fires to spread.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/25/chile-fire-firefighting-international-help
Dan Salkovitz says:
20 Jan 2017 at 11:07 AM
re: 19 and 20.
“Why are you posting about short-term *weather* events when the issue at hand is long-term *climate*? Wow, what scientific arrogance. And on a climate blog run by peer-reviewed climate scientists yet.”
Because he’s Weaktor the Troll. It’s what he does. Normally he can be found in the Borehole. He must have escaped.
On comment #6 do any of you understand combining the different forms of energy to make Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion more efficient?
T Marvell #25
Not sure where you get your information. Global CO2 emissions are not continuing exponentially – they have been stable over the last couple of years due to emissions reductions by USA and China among others (in both cases via reduction of coal use).
http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/news_docs/jrc-2016-trends-in-global-co2-emissions-2016-report-103425.pdf
Decarbonisation in electricity is happening as generation is moved from coal to gas and wind and solar. Solar is now the cheapest form of electricity generation in the world. Figures vary between articles as there are different stats being used. The next big challenges are transport and heating. Most countries do not have fossil fuel resources and have to import their energy, therefore have zero incentive to use coal electricity as it is now more expensive than solar and also poisonous when burnt. The Paris Agreement is a framework setting the direction of travel, not the end result.
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/solar-accounted-for-64-of-new-electric-generating-capacity-in-the-us-in-q1
https://cleantechnica.com/2016/08/27/renewables-43-new-electricity-capacity-usa-h1-2016-cleantechnica-electricity-report/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/25/renewables-made-up-half-of-net-electricity-capacity-added-last-year
https://cleantechnica.com/2016/08/18/new-low-solar-price-record-set-chile-2-91%C2%A2-per-kwh/
http://fortune.com/2016/09/19/world-record-solar-price-abu-dhabi/
Regarding people ‘not doing enough’, I am a member of an active climate science group and based on what I know, I live half way up a hill, in a home powered by PV, solar hot water and a log burner, and get to work via a battery-powered car charged from PV at home and work. My day job (I do the academic stuff in my spare time) is installing integrated renewable-powered heating and hot water systems, and my colleagues install integrated PV and battery systems. My nearest climate scientist neighbour (lives about 4 miles away), also lives half-way up a hill, in a home powered by PV, solar hot water and log burners, and drives an electric car. We do act on our own advice!!!!
25: “They acknowledge the problem, but do extremely little to deal with it. CO2 exponential growth has not abated.
In other words, the non-deniers should get off their high horse.”
As a non-denier, aside from cutting down on heating in winter, using the most energy efficient appliances I can find, purchasing more eco-friendly goods, signing up to a green energy tarrif, growing my own food, cutting right down on meat consumption, using a bicycle and trains for transport where practical, avoiding flying, contributing to the local Transition group, and joining the Green party, what exactly do you suggest I do to further address the problem? Commit suicide? I can only control my own lifestyle, not other peoples. There is a very limited amount of power that I have as an individual, and it is impossible for me alone to make any significant difference with my lifestyle choices.
#17, S.B. Ripman
There is a large change from bucket to engine room measurements in this time which leads to a bias that have to be corrected for. The ERSST may have not the best correction at this time. See here for HadSST3
https://skepticalscience.com/hadsst3_a_detailed_look.html
For attributing temperature changes from about 1900 to 1970, see my comment here:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2017/01/the-nasa-data-conspiracy-theory-and-the-cold-sun/#comment-668529
Adam Lea:
Lobby your elected representatives for a carbon tax. I like James Hansen’s carbon fee (i.e. tax) and dividend proposal myself, but other designs may also work. See Citizen’s Climate Lobby for more info.
Adam Lea #60:
“and joining the Green party”
Really, I couldn’t have made this up if I tried.
I wonder what the latest executive orders from POTUS would be like if, instead of riding bicycles, people would have given up their immature self-righteous posturing and worked to help elect someone who could…you know…actually get something done on mitigation, like President Obama did?
The only thing more disheartening than the effectiveness of the right-wing phony propaganda is when they actually get something right.
Ed Sears @59
The problem is that it is not enough for emissions to stabilize. What counts, as Mike continually likes to point out, is that the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide has to fall, something it seems stubbornly disinclined to do. On the contrary, the damn rate of increase seems to be accelerating. Emissions would have to fall drastically to get the curve to start bending downwards. There was a discussion about this very topic last year on Unforced Variations.
60 Adam Lea “it is impossible for me alone to make any significant difference with my lifestyle choices.”
The same goes for everyone Adam. It’s the systemic causes that must change first. Given the present reality across the globe, the chances of that occurring in the next 10-20 years is about 0.1% above zero.
67: I have no clue what you mean by “immature self-righteous posturing”, if you are referring to me then how you can justify that statement when you have never met me and know nothing about me is ridiculous. Again, there is very little I can do to get someone appropriate elected. My vote in an election is one amongst millions, and those millions seem hardwired into voting in right wing governments.
#19:
And that was during the hottest global January–March ever on record up to that time.
You’re right Victor, we should remember the extremes that are happening with global warming, usually extreme heat of course but occasionally extreme cold in some lucky lucky places.
(extra for Adam Lea fwiw) imo Vendicar Decarian is speaking to the big picture issue/barrier and not to you nor your friends ‘personally’.
Little Known Knowledge that applies to Climate Scientists and mostly everyone else. George Lakoff – How Systemic Causation Affects Sustainability
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzGgIDEAAG0
The opposite to systemic causation is systemic solution. (It’s philosophical and scientific logic, yeah?)
Despair is still not adaptive… and least of all when it looks like realism.
Adam Lea #70,
“I have no clue…”
By definition, Adam, someone who thinks “joining the Green Party” is a way to accomplish anything is posturing.
Either you really don’t have a clue, or you are trying what you think is some super-subtle troll strategy….”oh, there’s nothing to be done, let’s just give up”.
Victor Venema #54:
Science as we know it had very little to do with the inquiry about the World War II “bump.”
As an artist and churchgoer she imagined that 1939-45 must have been a time of hatred and sinfulness (on top of the death and destruction described in history books) and looked for some sort of correlation in the temperature record.
But understanding this sort of reverse thinking could be useful for future outreach efforts. Maybe scientists, in order to get their vastly non-scientific audience interested in the facts, could ask the sort of questions that would engage their interest. Like:
Does the temperature go up when Democrats control the national government and go down when Republicans are in control?
Is human procreation on the increase due to warmer nights?
What will former snow skiers do for recreation when ski resorts have no snow? What will happen to the Winter Olympics?
Will global warming lead to Russia having a nicer climate than the U.S.?
When will the Middle East become so hot that it’s uninhabitable, and will this bring an end to extremist terrorism? Will it bring an end to Islam itself?
Has Las Vegas started taking bets on when New Orleans finally goes under?
You get the gist. These sorts of questions – especially if thrown out in press releases – can lead to grab headlines. Maybe only in tabloids, but nevertheless headlines. In the recent election we saw that drawing attention can be much more important than actually making sense.
Hopefully other climate scientists would recognize the need for outreach and refrain from heaping scorn on the one asking such questions.
Hope this helps. Just trying to think outside the box. Like my better half.
74: Lending support to a political party that advocates environmental responsibility is doing something, not much on its own, but it is something. If no-one supported them they would cease to exist. It is you that doesn’t have a clue, but then I suspect you are just another right wing minion trying to demonise those who are actually making an effort take some responsibility, because you feel a little embarassed that you can’t be bothered, it’s easy to attack others than do something yourself. The primative flaws of the human cognitive state again. This is why I believe we’ll achieve nothing as a species and what will happen, will happen with our collective will.
S.B. Ripman (#17)
Regarding the somewhat puzzling behavior of mid-20th century temperatures, here’s what I used to tell my students: The surface temperature is just that — it gives conditions at the earth’s SURFACE, and as such does not reflect conditions in the deep ocean (the region below the thermocline, to be technical). Give the huge heat capacity of the deep ocean, an imperceptible change in its heat content can have a measurable effect on the sea surface temperature. I suggest that the variation in the deep ocean heat content, e.g., via the El Niño cycle, is the root cause of much of the apparent inconsistency in the global surface temperature record.
Adam Lea (#70)
You are right that your vote is only one of millions, but it is still important that you vote.
It sounds like you are doing all the right things in your personal life, but spreading the view that an individual vote doesn’t matter is highly counter-productive. Only about 26% of Americans voted for Trump. If the silent majority had not ignored the importance of their vote, the world would be a safer place. (I’m not accusing you of not voting — just of suggesting that an individual vote doesn’t matter.)
Adam Lea (#76)
By all means join the Greens, but with America’s first-past-the-post voting, you shouldn’t vote for them. You vote is best spent on someone who has a credible chance of winning. The only thing that could have stopped Trump was votes for Hillary (or convincing people not to vote for Trump) — even though her policies were probably worse than those of the Greens.
One thing you could do is to lobby for preferential voting (like we have in Australia), in which you can vote “1” for your real choice, but if they aren’t in the final two, then your next choice gets used. It is the only system under which voting for a minor party is sensible.
79 Lachlan; Hi Lachlan. Good luck mate! :-)
76 Adam Lea said: …. it’s easy to attack others than do something yourself. The primitive flaws of the human cognitive state again.
Now ain;t that the truth! However, recommending Realism to those living in a fantasy world doesn’t work either Adam. :-)
Prof George Lakoff: “You can only understand what your brain allows you to. That facts that come in that do not fit what’s in your brain will largely be either ignored, ridiculed, or just dismissed.”
alt: “People, even really intelligent academics and scientists, can only understand what their brain allows them to understand.”
“There’s a phenomenon in cognitive science called Hypocognition. The lack of Ideas you need. And there’s a lot of ideas we need but don’t yet have.”
see
https://youtu.be/KzGgIDEAAG0?t=10m6s
from the beginning https://youtu.be/KzGgIDEAAG0
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocognition
Lachlan,
Whatever the merits of preferential voting, the question is whether “policies” proposed by a minor party are themselves relevant if the party can show no success at any level.
The US national system is terribly flawed because it is structurally unrepresentative, and grounded in our original sin of slavery. (I know, you guys have some original sin of your own to deal with, but anyway…)
Hillary won the popular vote. In fact, Democrats have lost the popular vote only once since Bill Clinton. We have our Electoral College, we have our House of Representatives that hasn’t expanded since what– 1910?– despite the increase of the population, and we have our One-Cow-One-Vote Senate.
Lots of stuff to fix before we start worrying about preferential, although maybe it would help at the State level.
And HRC policies were not “worse” than the policies of the Green Party, or the Bernie Party– the they were ones that might have a chance of being implemented. It isn’t “lesser of two evils” when one choice is moving forward and the other is moving backwards.
82 zebra says: “the question is….”
The wrong question.
Lachlan raised a number of top of mind examples. A wiser man would have taken a moment to first query what it was Lachlan was perhaps seeing that they had either not considered or did not know anything about. That wiser man may also have taken a few months out to research the broader and systemic implications of what was being suggested.
It’s an egregious assumption that a choice of only two is a valid choice to begin with.
While 8-10% of polling repeatedly suggests a favorable job is being done by Congress across decades, the facts are that every single member of Congress standing for re-election in 2016 were re-elected into office. A 100% success rate that is incongruous to at least 3 orders of magnitude. :-)
I note you’re an American zebra. So is KIA. The similarities are great, and the prevailing attitude can be found in KIA’s nym.
Whilst every human has degrees of bias and cultural myopia, I believe that the term “living in a fish bowl” more perfectly illustrates the core faults of the American CULTure of today. A collective of KIAs. :-)
To add to Lachlan wise advice to look beyond the obvious, may I say that a nation whose elite politicians are the only ones who get to decide if, when and how the nation’s Constitution gets to be altered is on the road to perdition.
When those elite politicians only come from two choices available to the voter, then it’s on the road to hell in a hand basket.
When the elected Representatives of a nations highest body of Law and Policy makers, be it a Constitutional Republic or a Constitutional Monarchy operating under the ideal of Representative Democracy, do not in fact reflect the true Body Politic of all The People as a whole, but probably less than only half of them, then that system is doomed to fail and not in fact serve the needs of the people of that nation nor it’s core National Interests.
But hey, that’s only my humble opinion based on a lifetime of paying attention to global history and current affairs and human beings. Plus I am not a KIA, so feel free to assume I must be wrong and don;t bother even thinking about it, let alone doing some objective factual research on the matter as I have done.
It’s 2017 and Opinions Rule the Day. Some call that grandiose ‘liberty and freedom’ in action but I do not. Because Hobbs was right about Locke. The historical, factual and scientific evidence is now everywhere today.
And it doesn’t bother me at all because I know it isn’t my problem nor responsibility to fix any of it. :-)
Th 83: Because Hobbs was right about Locke.
BPL: Hobbes. And I wouldn’t trust anyone who was for totalitarian government. But I guess it works for you, eh? Locke’s emphasis on liberty was sheerest moonshine, but Leviathan could get things done.
just a layman here. can anyone explain this?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ … -data.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/1136 … rming.html
Tom Rawls:
Let’s see. The Daily Fail and the Teletubby? Sure, I can dismiss that without even looking at them. If you are going to quote the conservative press, at least quote the less pathetic of them.
TR 85: can anyone explain this?
BPL: Yes… it’s another anti-science piece of garbage by the right-wing Daily Mail which dupes all over the web are falling for. Apparently you’re one of them.
Ray Ladbury and Barton Paul Levenson–
I asked a question. I cited a link to a story. I did not quote anything. You jumnp to a false conclusion and respond with an insult.
Elsewhere here I saw a useful response, so I needn’t rely on unhelpful people like you two.
TR 88,
Suck it up, buttercup. You come in here quoting obviously worthless denialist propaganda and get upset because we assume you’re a denialist? No scientist in his right mind would base his opinions on the Daily Mail, or even a story in a decent newspaper. The fact that you took it seriously means you were duped; thus my earlier comment.
Tom Rawls,
Pray, where in my little note did you perceive an insult. I merely noted that the Daily Fail and the Teletubby were not credible sources on…well, anything, really, but on climate science in particular. That you perceive an insult in that says a lot more about you than it does about me.
FWIW, there are more credible sources of news with a Conservative bent–e.g. The Economist, although they often get it wrong on science, Fiscal Times. I don’t recommend the Wall Street Urinal…for anything anymore. Of course, you won’t find breasts on Page 3, but that seems a small price for not being exposed to David Rose or Delingpole.
88 Tom Rawls: You jump to a false conclusion (aka assumption) and respond with an insult.
Hi Tom, Par for the course here for some people. Not all. Suggest to switch across to the unforced variations thread, several comments refs are there on this subject.
This may be useful too: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/feb/05/mail-on-sunday-launches-the-first-salvo-in-the-latest-war-against-climate-scientists
btw a good (improving) source for such things is http://climatefeedback.org/feedbacks/
Though they do take several weeks to address new media reports, the quality of their scientific feedback is excellent imo.
Free book download:
How To Win Friends And Influence People By Dale Carnegie (1937)
http://erudition.mohit.tripod.com/_Influence_People.pdf
Ray Ladbury,
Fair point. I shouldn’t have lumped you with the other guy.
Not being a student of the British press, I had missed the breasts on page 3.
Thomas,
thanx for the link to climate feedback.
I’ll take a pass on Dale Carnegie. As a hermit, I have no need for it.