Global Warming in the Satellite Data Era

[Sunsettommy]

Here is a neat chart showing how irrelevant AGW really is,a possible way to bother deluded alarmists,is to hurt their eyes with such heretical data from Satellites.From Global Warming Science:



EXCERPT:

From 1979 to 1997 there was no warming trend. The major El Nino then resulted in a residual warming of about 0.3 degrees. Since the 1998 end of the El Nino there has also been no warming trend – all of the warming in the last 30 years occurred in a single year. And yet this is the era that the IPCC says the warming is caused by CO2 – and alarmists are still saying that it’s getting worse. And the US government wants to take strong measures to curb the warming.

http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/US_CO2.htm

[Itscoldinhere]

SST-I'm in the middle of working on an analysis of the Satellite data trying to sort out the effects of solar, ENSO, and volcanoes. There is probably a slight AGW trend but not very big. Douglass and Christy did an interesting analysis here:
http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~douglass/p...-color.pdf

[Mike Davis]

There is a step change analysis that shows when the change in monitoring devises took place. I recall seeing it but do not recall where.

[Sunsettommy]

[quote author=Mike Davis link=topic=229.msg1539#msg1539 date=1252070895]
There is a step change analysis that shows when the change in monitoring devises took place. I recall seeing it but do not recall where.
[/quote]

They have already dealt with most of the problems they discovered a few years ago,the error range is now very small,and even the alarmists are hardly fussing about it anymore.

[Sunsettommy]

Here is additional information that shows how minimal CO2 is as a "greenhouse" gas,from this link is this neat chart:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/24/at...uilibrium/

Quote:Figure 4: Temperature and Carbon Dioxide since 9,000 BCE.

T and CO2 appear to have been in equilibrium until about 3,000 BCE. Over the 5,000 years since then, CO2 has risen increasingly above its natural equilibrium. By 1,800 CE, CO2 had risen to a level comparable to the highest in the Vostok record. During this time, T declined at a rate of 0.1 °C per thousand years, indicating again that CO2 has no apparent effect on T. The trends of this 5,000-year interval of excess CO2 are consistent with the equilibrium model, in
which T is independent of CO2.

==============================================

There are more charts and details in the link worth reading.

Update at bottom of this link:

http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B39Q...ZDkx&hl=en

[Itscoldinhere]

Mike, SST-yes the satellites have made great progress to dealing with all the potential sources of error. But there is something of interest in the slight differences between the two datasets. RSS seems to spuriously jump upwards in about 1992. This results in exaggerating the warming in that dataset. UAH, which has been supported by comparison to radiosonde data, does not show the same warm bias.

It's actually not a huge difference but the implications may be a little important.

Of course, if there were evidence of a cool bias, warmers would be all over it. Instead they go on with their tribalistic attitude: RSS must be right and UAH must be wrong. Why? Well, because it would agree better with the models! In spite of actual evidence to the exact opposite conclusion.

For instance:

http://climatesci.org/2009/06/08/comment...mccracken/

Quote:4. Mike’s comment: “As specific illustrations of his assertion, Pielke showed the trends in satellite-derived observations of tropospheric and stratospheric temperatures (interestingly, and sensibly, using the RSS data set), indicating that while the former showed warming over the last four decades and the latter showed cooling over this period, the results for the last 10 years did not show the expected trends.”

I presented the RSS data since their figures were easier to extract from their webpage than the corresponding analysis of the UAH group. Both analyses show a lack of lower tropospheric warming in recent years. However, from your comment, it appears you have concluded the RSS analyses are superior. This issue was addressed, however, in an independent assessment and reported in the peer reviewed literature;

Randall R. M., B. M. Herman (2008), Using limited time period trends as a means to determine attribution of discrepancies in microwave sounding unit–derived tropospheric temperature time series, J. Geophys. Res., 113, D05105, doi:10.1029/2007JD008864.

I reported on this paper on my weblog (see), where I concluded that

“While both UAH and RSS are outstanding research groups, with respect to the assessment of multi-decadal tropospheric temperature trends, the independent comparison reported in Randall and Herman indicates that the trend values of the UAH group are more accurate.”

[Mike Davis]

ICIH:
I have about the difference in the data from the two groups. I was thinking about the step changes that were seen by someone at WUWT or CA although I do not recall when or who but the steps seemed obvious when the shift from one device to another was made. Over long periods this should not be an issue unless all the steps are warmer but with better equipment and understanding as time goes by the results will get better. All that said I still think the satellites are a better example of climate/ weather than anything we get from surface recording devices even if they do not measure the surface temperature but the near surface atmosphere using a proxy for temperature. Of course the movement of mercury, alcohol or what other substance is used as a proxy for temperatre is less reliable as the surface stations in the past were regarded as close if they were within 2c + or - and the new is within .5 I believe or someone claimed the accuracy was .1 but I think there are many other issues with surface data for it to be within 3C either way.

SST:
The CO2 issue is based on faulty data /methods of recording that element so I sort of ignore any reports of an average content because CO2 is NOT a well mixed gas. In homes and offices the concentration can get as high as 2,000 PPM but alas no one is dying of exposure to this so called "Pollutant" .
The Idsos have done research with pictures showing the effect on plants with additional CO2 introduced into the growing areea. There are farmers in my county that buy CO2 for their green houses to promote growth because it is cost effective.

[Sunsettommy]

Mike writes:

Quote:SST:
The CO2 issue is based on faulty data /methods of recording that element so I sort of ignore any reports of an average content because CO2 is NOT a well mixed gas. In homes and offices the concentration can get as high as 2,000 PPM but alas no one is dying of exposure to this so called "Pollutant" .
The Idsos have done research with pictures showing the effect on plants with additional CO2 introduced into the growing areea. There are farmers in my county that buy CO2 for their green houses to promote growth because it is cost effective.

I was referring to the lack of CO2 effect on temperature changes.

Yes CO2 in greater concentration,increases plant growth,since there are more available CO2 molecules to take it in through the plant's Stomata,per unit of time.

[Mike Davis]

SST:
The reason I tend to ignore CO2 is as you point out that it has little or no effect on temperatures. However temperatures do allow more Growth in the Biosphere which is accompanied by more CO2 in the atmosphere.

[Itscoldinhere]

Mike: I think that these are what you are referring to:

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6598
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6609

Note John Christy's comments:

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6598#comment-349675
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6609#comment-349980

I'll be honest with you I don't think much of the analyses. Note how the breaks of UAH relative to NOAA occur in association with real climate events, not just satellite transitions.

[Sunsettommy]

J.Christy comments:

Quote:10. Since 2003 UAH has used the AMSU on AQUA which has on-board propulsion, and thus rigorous station-keeping. As a result, no diurnal drifting occurs, so UAH needs no diurnal correction for that period - which gives evidence to our hypothesis that the RSS diurnal corrections are a bit too strong.

Then this where he talks about transitions between satellites,

Quote:To #6

In general there are two satellites operating at any given time, so for each day we have two values to average. When a replacement is launched for the older, the newer continues to operate as now the new older satellite. E.g. NOAA-10 (0730/1930 orbit crossing) and NOAA-11 (0130/1300 orbit crossing time) operated together with NOAA-10 the first to go up. When NOAA-12 was launched to replace NOAA-10, NOAA-11 was operating across both - hence we have a backbone to carry the data forward without a discontinuity. It's a bit more convoluted than that (which leads to the RSS shift in 1992) but that's the basic idea. If you look at the hot-target temperatures shown in Steve's post you will get an idea of how this worked.

John C.

NOAA temperature data of ground based or is it Satellite data,that you are referring to,Itscoldinhere ?

The Satellite data was never advertised as being perfect,since the calibration method and differing levels of the atmosphere being measured,can only be compared to Radio Sonde balloon data and little else.

[Itscoldinhere]

By NOAA I mean the National Climate Data Center's surface temperatures (which likely have biases).

And yes, the satellites aren't perfect, but the work to create climatological data has been very thorough. It looks to me like UAH has the most realistic, well supported product.

[Mike Davis]

ICIH:
I agree and that is what I was referring to although others have referred to the satellite issues and the radio sonde issues. Whatever issues that are being dealt with regarding satellites are minor compared to the issues surrounding surface data. So they are more reliable until something better comes along.