el Niño and Satellite Data

Having compensated surface temperature data for el Niño, volcanic aerosols, and solar fluctuations, it’s appropriate I should do the same for satellite temperature data. After all, upper atmosphere temperature (what the satellites estimate) responds to these factors much more strongly than the surface temperature, so it can be argued that it’s more important to compensate satellite data than surface data. Not doing so can cause some very misleading conclusions about temperature trends.

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Correcting for more than just el Niño

I recently showed a version of “el Niño-Corrected” temperature from Gavin Schmidt at NASA. My own calculation suggested that el Niño caused about the same contribution to 2015’s heat as Gavin’s estimate. However, there are some pronounced differences between our calculations.

Global Warming Basics: Carbon

Most atoms love to get together with other atoms. They don’t just want to get next to each other, they yearn to bond with other atoms. Not all of them do; there’s a class of elements called noble gases which are nature’s loners, their desire is to remain aloof. But there are only six of those [seven if you include Ununoctium, which doesn’t occur naturally but we’ve synthesized with nuclear reactions]; most elements really want to bond with others.

el Niño and the 2015 Record-Breaking Heat

Now that 2015 has blown away previous record-hot years, the global warming deniers are scrambling to blame it on anything but global warming. Their favorite candidate is something that does in fact make Earth’s surface get hotter, something that really did contribute to 2015’s record heat: el Niño.

But how much? A post at Carbon Brief addresses just that question. Their conclusion is that el Niño contributed only about 10% of the record.

Global Warming Basics: What It’s NOT

In every province, the chief occupations, in order of importance, are lovemaking, malicious gossip, and talking nonsense.
— Voltaire, Candide

Whether we refer to the subject as “climate change” or “global warming,” it’s a good idea to know what it is we’re talking about. Yet true to Voltaire’s form, we indulge in a great deal of talking nonsense about it. Therefore let me say a few things about what it is not.

Two Blogs in One

My readers are pretty savvy about global warming. Most of you tend to be scientifically knowledgeable and quite current. In fact, there are a fair number of actual scientists who read this blog. I’m glad!

But there’s another audience I’d like to reach more of: the lay public who are puzzled about some of the issues involved. So, I’m going to try an experiment. I’ll still post my usual high-level (sometimes quite mathematical) stuff, but I’m also going to do posts which are at a much more basic level. I’ll start with the next post.

I’ll try to put the word “basic” or “basics” in the title of each. But I may well slip up. That’s the nature of the beast.

And for those who want the hard science, fear not — there’s plenty more to come. Including the post after the next one.

Weather and Climate

They call themselves the “Global Warming Policy Forum” and their goal is to deny global warming. True to form, they’re trying to explain away the record-shattering heat of 2015 as being due to anything but global warming. It’s a desperate attempt to cling to what they’ve claimed for quite a while, in spite of being wrong about it all along because it simply never happened: a “pause” in global warming.

The latest, courtesy David Whitehouse in a blog post repeated at WUWT, is to insist that it’s all due to weather. In a stunning display of hypocrisy, he accuses climate scientists of not knowing the difference between “weather” and “climate.”

Extreme Trends — Detection is Hard

Not long ago I posted a graph, from NOAA, of the number of billion-dollar weather/climate disasters in the U.S. since 1980.

Changes

Change is the essential property of the universe.

— Spock

Global climate is changing, as is global temperature. But is the change itself changing? With 2015’s temperature so much higher than any previously recorded, talk of the “hiatus” or “pause” has, in some quarters, been replaced with talk of a “surge.” It was a mistake to talk about a slowdown of global warming when real evidence of it was lacking. But lately the question has changed to whether or not we’re seeing the beginning of an acceleration of global warming.

Deniers’ Worst Enemy?

Who is most effective at showing how empty, how misleading, how utterly nonsensical are the arguments from global warming deniers? Perhaps — of course this is just my opinion — the answer to the question “Who is the deniers’ worst enemy?” is one of their own: Christopher Monckton.

Why? Because he’s still writing stuff like this blog post at WUWT (where else?). A recent video demolished the claim that “there’s been no warming for 18 years” because “the satellite data are the best,” and did such an effective job of it that Monckton just had to respond.