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New Paper Finds pre-1950's Temperature Record "Meaningless", "Artificially Flattened"

LowDown

LowDown

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New Paper Finds pre-1950's Temperature Record "Meaningless", "Artificially Flattened"

A correspondence published today in Nature Climate Change is a damning indictment of
the updated HADCRUT global temperature database, which is used as the basis of all of the other land-based temperature databases including GISS and BEST.

The correspondence demolishes the claim of Ji et al that "the global climate has been experiencing significant warming at an unprecedented pace in the past century" as well as the reliability of the HADCRU database to determine global temperature trends of the past 164 years. According to the authors, conclusions about global temperature change cannot be reliably determined prior to the 1950's due to the poor spatiotemporal coverage prior to the 1950's and trends determined from the early HADCRU data are "meaningless and "artificially flattened."

Likewise, all climate model "tuning" based on the "meaningless" global temperature trends prior to the 1950's are therefore "meaningless" garbage-in-garbage-out as well.
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Analytic methods used to construct the global temperature record from surface stations have to deal with the fact that surface stations only cover 26% of the earth's surface. The rest of the surface record is estimated and extrapolated. Every single study that has examined the accuracy of these estimations has found them to be off by a significant margin. The surface records, HADCRUT, GISS, etc., are therefore garbage. But climate scientists cling to them because they can be manipulated to support a pre-established idea of what the temperatures are doing.

But the situation is even worse before the 1950s because coverage of the earth was even lower then. For the record prior to the 1950s they are just making **** up, basically. For example, they extrapolated the data from a single station to determine temperatures for the entire Southern hemisphere! This leads to ample opportunity for climate shenanigans. For example, according the above authors, they artificially flattened the trend prior to 1950 to give the impression of accelerated warming after that.
 
LowDown said:
Analytic methods used to construct the global temperature record from surface stations have to deal with the fact that surface stations only cover 26% of the earth's surface. The rest of the surface record is estimated and extrapolated. Every single study that has examined the accuracy of these estimations has found them to be off by a significant margin. The surface records, HADCRUT, GISS, etc., are therefore garbage. But climate scientists cling to them because they can be manipulated to support a pre-established idea of what the temperatures are doing.

But the situation is even worse before the 1950s because coverage of the earth was even lower then. For the record prior to the 1950s they are just making **** up, basically. For example, they extrapolated the data from a single station to determine temperatures for the entire Southern hemisphere! This leads to ample opportunity for climate shenanigans. For example, according the above authors, they artificially flattened the trend prior to 1950 to give the impression of accelerated warming after that.
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As usual, your link goes to a blogger determined to dispute every scientific organization on Earth by posting on the internet. Within that blog, there is a link to the actual article, however we can't read beyond the first few lines without an expensive subscription.

Here's the link to the article

and this is all we're allowed to read:

Ji et al.1 present a methodology to analyse global (excluding Antarctica) spatiotemporal patterns of temperature change, using mean monthly temperatures obtained from the updated Climate Research Unit (CRU) high-resolution gridded climate database2, 3. Their analysis fails to take into account several key characteristics of the CR database, s…
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I suspect the blogger didn't read/understand the paper, but I'm not about to pay to find out for sure. Are you?
 
Dittohead not! said:
As usual, your link goes to a blogger determined to dispute every scientific organization on Earth by posting on the internet. Within that blog, there is a link to the actual article, however we can't read beyond the first few lines without an expensive subscription.

Here's the link to the article

and this is all we're allowed to read:



I suspect the blogger didn't read/understand the paper, but I'm not about to pay to find out for sure. Are you?
Click to expand...

Looks to me like pretty persuasive excerpts.

Ji et al present a methodology to analyse global (excluding Antarctica) spatiotemporal patterns of temperature change, using mean monthly temperatures obtained from the updated Climate Research Unit (CRU) high-resolution gridded climate database. Their analysis fails to take into account several key characteristics of the CRU database, seriously compromising the conclusions regarding the spatiotemporal patterns of global warming during the twentieth century.
Consequently, the temporal auto-correlation of such time series is artificially high, and the climatic variability they portray for the early decades of the record is meaningless.
"...strongly suggests the absence of a trend over the first half of the 20th century in many tropical and Arctic regions can be attributed to the lack of climatic information and the corresponding flattened time series..."
"...we suggest that it is very likely that the spatiotemporal temperature patterns described in Ji et al are strongly contaminated by the spatial and temporal heterogeneities of the CRU database."
"...this problem affects the whole analysis."
"artificially flattened trends in the early 20th century will reflect slower warming trends than observed trends in the latter 20th century." [i.e. imply false acceleration]
"If the aim is global coverage, the optimal period should not start before the 1950's, although this would compromise the authors' aim to capture long-term trends."
 
Dittohead not! said:
As usual, your link goes to a blogger determined to dispute every scientific organization on Earth by posting on the internet. Within that blog, there is a link to the actual article, however we can't read beyond the first few lines without an expensive subscription.

Here's the link to the article

and this is all we're allowed to read:



I suspect the blogger didn't read/understand the paper, but I'm not about to pay to find out for sure. Are you?
Click to expand...

Appeals to the authority of IPCC climate scientists are sounding especially pathetic these days. It's like appealing to the authority of Lysenkoist agronomists -- effective for a time until the failures of Lysenkoism became fully manifest.

As you can see for yourself the blogger quotes or reproduces almost the entire paper. His analysis appears to be correct. I mean to say, if there was only one weather station in the Southern hemisphere prior to 1950, or they have data from only one station, it's not a leap to say that extrapolations from that one station to the rest of the Southern hemisphere are invalid. It is therefore impossible to say anything about global temperatures prior to 1950 using station data.
 
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LowDown said:
Appeals to the authority of IPCC climate scientists are sounding especially pathetic these days. It's like appealing to the authority of Lysenkoist agronomists -- effective for a time until the failures of Lysenkoism became fully manifest.

As you can see for yourself the blogger quotes or reproduces almost the entire paper. His analysis appears to be correct. I mean to say, if there was only one weather station in the Southern hemisphere prior to 1950, or they have data from only one station, it's not a leap to say that extrapolations from that one station to the rest of the Southern hemisphere are invalid. It is therefore impossible to say anything about global temperatures prior to 1950 using station data.
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It seems unlikely that there were no weather stations in Australia prior to 1950.
 
Tim the plumber said:
It seems unlikely that there were no weather stations in Australia prior to 1950.
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Even less likely that there have been no ice cores or other indications of temperatures going back further than that.

But, you have to give the bloggers some leeway. It's difficult, after all, to try to dispute a scientific theory by wishful thinking. The Young Earthers aren't having any easier time trying to deny evolution.
 
Oh look, a blog has debunked AGW... for the 18,283th time! :lamo
 
Dittohead not! said:
Even less likely that there have been no ice cores or other indications of temperatures going back further than that.

But, you have to give the bloggers some leeway. It's difficult, after all, to try to dispute a scientific theory by wishful thinking. The Young Earthers aren't having any easier time trying to deny evolution.
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The journal Nature Climate Change​ should pass anyone's credibility test.
 
Dittohead not! said:
Particularly when they use unbiased language like "the hockey schtick."
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It's a specialist subsidiary publication of the journal Nature. Perhaps you've heard of it? The blog that brought it to our attention is irrelevant to the substance of the matter. Your focus on that betrays your eagerness to avoid the data. A number of excerpts are in #3.
 
Tim the plumber said:
It seems unlikely that there were no weather stations in Australia prior to 1950.
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My bad. The authors were referring to a single station in Tasmania at the beginning of the CRU data set that was extrapolated out to the entire Southern hemisphere (with precision to a thousandth of a degree!) After that there are gradually more stations in the Southern hemisphere but not enough there or in the Arctic prior to 1950 for accurate estimations of global temperatures. Even to this day there are not enough stations in Africa, the Amazon, the Arctic or Antarctica for the kind of precision they claim. It is all estimates and extrapolations, or, in other words, fudging. Even satellites are not completely comprehensive, measuring temperatures between (if memory serves) 85 degrees N and 85 degrees S.
 
Jack Hays said:
Actually, it's the journal Nature Climate Change.
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The link is to a blog and as has been said the actual paper is behind a pay wall. One of the most common tactics deniers use is to lie about what a paper actually says. I have little reason to believe this is any different.
 
Verax said:
The link is to a blog and as has been said the actual paper is behind a pay wall. One of the most common tactics deniers use is to lie about what a paper actually says. I have little reason to believe this is any different.
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Really? When have you seen this allegedly common tactic? Do you dispute the accuracy of the excerpts in #3?
 
Tim the plumber said:
It seems unlikely that there were no weather stations in Australia prior to 1950.
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NOAA provides maps of the historical coverage of the Global Historical Climatology Network, but only of stations with at least 10 years of continuous coverage.

As you may recall, someone calling themselves 'goirish' on the ClimateAudit blog once posted maps of the alleged station coverage in different years, which Code posted here and you blindly cheered. As it turned out, the anonymous blogger was not a very reliable source and was grossly understating the actual, provable station numbers.
Posts #68 and 69

So it's reasonable to assume that the actual station coverage at the turn of the century was somewhat more extensive than this:
sc1905.gif




Edit: Here is a map (in Google maps) in which the gridboxes for the CRUTEM land temperature record are shown. Clicking on each gridbox will give an idea of how far back the station data goes (stopping in 1850).
 
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Mithrae said:
NOAA provides maps of the historical coverage of the Global Historical Climatology Network, but only of stations with at least 10 years of continuous coverage.

As you may recall, someone calling themselves 'goirish' on the ClimateAudit blog once posted maps of the alleged station coverage in different years, which Code posted here and you blindly cheered. As it turned out, the anonymous blogger was not a very reliable source and was grossly understating the actual, provable station numbers.
Posts #68 and 69

So it's reasonable to assume that the actual station coverage at the turn of the century was somewhat more extensive than this:
sc1905.gif
Click to expand...

Regardless, the paper cited in the OP raises serious questions.
 
Jack Hays said:
Regardless, the paper cited in the OP raises serious questions.
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As Dittohead and Verax have pointed out, you must first ask serious questions about the anonymous blogger you are relying on. We've already got a pretty terrible example from this very month in which this HockeySchtick person (later blindly parrotted by Anthony Watts) managed to convey precisely the opposite meaning than is found in the study s/he was supposedly informing his/her readers about!
Ref

Mithrae said:
For starters, the 0.67 degree figure does not come from this paper at all, but from an earlier study whose results Bakker and Renssen are examining: . . . .


But more importantly, and more fundamentally, Bakker and Renssen are not saying that the models are wrong: On the contrary, they are explicitly highlighting and examining the questionable assumption (necessarily) used in widespread proxy comparisons from so long ago, that the Eemian thermal maximum temperatures occurred at the same time in all the regions represented:
. . . .

We use the results of transient LIG climate simulations performed by nine different climate models to (i) assess the magnitude and robustness of the possible overestimation of the LIG thermal maximum caused by the assumption of synchronicity in space and time, and....​

Their study suggests that the model-data mismatch can be partially explained with reference to that assumption of synchronicity, and a possible bias towards summer temperatures of the reconstructions. Hence the title of the paper - Last interglacial model–data mismatch of thermal maximum temperatures partially explained - which Watts apparently missed. . . .
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Mithrae said:
As Dittohead and Verax have pointed out, you must first ask serious questions about the anonymous blogger you are relying on. We've already got a pretty terrible example from this very month in which this HockeySchtick person (later blindly parrotted by Anthony Watts) managed to convey precisely the opposite meaning than is found in the study s/he was supposedly informing his/her readers about!
Ref
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I'll stand by the excerpts I presented in #3.
 
Jack Hays said:
I'll stand by the excerpts I presented in #3.
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C'mon buddy, we all know that's not true. If and when your blind parrotting of anonymous bloggers is shown to be full of holes, as is usually the case, you'll just crawl back into the woodwork back down saying that we should take it up with the author :lol:
 
Mithrae said:
C'mon buddy, we all know that's not true. If and when your blind parrotting of anonymous bloggers is shown to be full of holes, as is usually the case, you'll just crawl back into the woodwork back down saying that we should take it up with the author :lol:
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Let's just wait and see. I'm not sure you had the previous episode right, but that doesn't matter.
 
LowDown said:
My bad. The authors were referring to a single station in Tasmania at the beginning of the CRU data set that was extrapolated out to the entire Southern hemisphere (with precision to a thousandth of a degree!) After that there are gradually more stations in the Southern hemisphere but not enough there or in the Arctic prior to 1950 for accurate estimations of global temperatures. Even to this day there are not enough stations in Africa, the Amazon, the Arctic or Antarctica for the kind of precision they claim. It is all estimates and extrapolations, or, in other words, fudging. Even satellites are not completely comprehensive, measuring temperatures between (if memory serves) 85 degrees N and 85 degrees S.
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I agree that the whole idea of measuring temperature to thousandths of a degree or sea level to the millimeter is silly.

I think the writing of scientific papers is also done in a very stylized way which makes them unclear. Why not say "It's utterly wrong!" when that's what you mean?
 
Jack Hays said:
The journal Nature Climate Change​ should pass anyone's credibility test.
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Except no one has produced the article in the journal. It's paywalled, and all you are doing is taking a bloggers (not a climate scientist) opinion of it.

I'll read it tomorrow at work. But my opinion is no better than a blogger. I'll wait til credible scientists review it.
 
Threegoofs said:
Except no one has produced the article in the journal. It's paywalled, and all you are doing is taking a bloggers (not a climate scientist) opinion of it.

I'll read it tomorrow at work. But my opinion is no better than a blogger. I'll wait til credible scientists review it.
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The excerpts in #3 are persuasive. Please report back on your review of the paper.
 
Jack Hays said:
I'll stand by the excerpts I presented in #3.
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I'm sure you will. You will also stand by the "global warming ended 15 years ago" idea, despite such as this:

we continue a consistent departure from average for the rest of 2014, we will edge out 2010 as the warmest year on record,” said Jake Crouch, a climatologist with NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, during a press briefing Thursday
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Dittohead not! said:
I'm sure you will. You will also stand by the "global warming ended 15 years ago" idea, despite such as this:
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The most unusual thing about the temperatures in 2014 is the divergence of the data sets.
Up until 2013 the GISS , UAH, and RSS, all tracked raise to raise, fall to fall.
Starting in the 2014 the GISS went the opposite direction from the UAH and the RSS.
Wood for Trees: Interactive Graphs
 
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