Subject: Comments on "New Evidence Helps Reconcile Global Warming Discrepancies; Confirms That Earth's Surface Temperature Is Rising"
Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2000 12:27:32 -0800 (PST)
From: George Taylor <taylor@oce.orst.edu>
To: daly@vision.net.au

John -

"New Evidence Helps Reconcile Global Warming Discrepancies; Confirms That Earth's Surface Temperature Is Rising" describes how surface temperatures have warmed in the past 20 years, even though upper-atmosphere temperatures have remained stable. This "surface warming" is said to be due to "a combination of human activities and natural causes," and is reputed to be real evidence that the earth's temperature is rising.

While I agree with most of what appears in the press release, some additional comments are warranted. As a state climatologist, one whose job it is to examine data records for quality, I am very cautious about using data from individual stations to infer global trends. Local biases, particularly the "urban heat island" effect, can bias temperature measurements. Tom Karl, Director of the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), has the same concerns. For that reason, Karl initiated the Historical Climatology Network (HCN) program a number of years ago. NCDC selected reliable long-term stations, those thought to be free of local biases (neglecting, for example, stations in growing urban areas). When HCN temperature trends are plotted for the last 105 years, there is a very slight warming, but the warmest period of the century occurred in the late 1930s and early 1940s. See for yourself:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ol/documentlibrary/cvb.html

The December issues of Climate Variations Bulletin show the annual trends.

What this means is that the long-term trends in temperature in one of the largest countries in the world, using the finest available surface temperature data, do not show the warming that the global data sets indicate. Why not? As Tom Karl suggested in the March, 1989 Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, "all global temperature data sets are contaminated by a number of biases of varying magnitudesof which the most serious may be the global-warming bias." These statements, which were Karl's rationale for formulating the HCN, still ring true. My explanation for the difference between U.S. temperatures (which show almost no warming this century) and global data (which show a lot) is that the latter is of considerably lower quality, and much more biased, than the carefully-constructed HCN data set.

One of the best overviews on global climate changed I have seen was Pat Michaels' testimony before the Subcommittee on National Economic Growth, Natural Resources and Regulatory Affairs, of the U.S. House of Representatives in October, 1999. If you haven't seen it, it's worth a read (http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-pm100699.html).

Michaels listed several major conclusions, all of them based on peer-reviewed journal publications. Of most significance are:

* Observed surface warming is far below what the climate models have forecast. Even though the model predictions for future climate have steadily dropped as they become more sophisticated, their predictions have consistently exceeded actual observations.

* Most of the warming has been in winter, and confined to the very coldest airmasses. The warming outside of these airmasses is only 0.2C per century.

* Climate variation has declined significantly on a global basis while there is no change for precipitation.

* In the United States, streamflow records show that drought has decreased while flooding has not increased.

* Maximum winds in hurricanes that affect the United States have significantly declined, and there is no evidence for a global increase in mid-latitude storms.

* The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will have no discernable impact on global climate within any reasonable policy timeframe.

Ten years ago, I believed the modelers that global warming was a serious problem that needed attention and intervention. As I studied the issue year by year, I became less and less convinced that the "problem" was truly serious. My current bottom line: while human activities doubtless influence climate (on a local, regional, and even a global scale), the human-induced climate change from expected increases in greenhouse gases will be a rather small fraction of the natural variations. I don't foresee global warming causing big problems, and believe that even if we controlled every molecule of human emissions we would still see substantial climate change, just as we always have.

- George Taylor, State Climatologist -
- President, American Association of State Climatologists -
- Oregon Climate Service -
- 316 Strand Ag Hall -
- Oregon State University -
- Corvallis OR 97331-2209 -
- Internet email : taylor@oce.orst.edu -
- Web site: http://www.ocs.orst.edu -
- (541) 737-5705 voice 737-5710 fax

Subject: Why surface and satellite temperatures disagree
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 15:11:28 -0700
From: Chick Keller <cfk@lanl.gov>
To: "John L. Daly" <daly@vision.net.au>
CC: <large CC list>

John,

On your web site I note a contribution by David Wojick commenting on the NRC panel's position on surface vs satellite temperature measurements. His reaction, if I understand him, is that, having accepted the satellite temperatures as essentially correct, the NRC folks were stuck between saying the models are right and thus surface is wrong, or the surface is essentially right and thus the models are wrong. David finished by saying something derogatory about the surface data.

Two points may help here. First there is another position -- all three: satellite, surface temps and the models are essentially correct, and all of us are slow learners. This may indeed be the case. Recent model runs that look closely at this time period rather than just doing century-long generic runs, are getting close to reconciling the two data sets.

As to the essential agreement between satellite and surface records, It is very important to understand this, and so let me try to explain.

If one stops looking slavishly at a single number (temperature trend over the entire 21 year period), and instead carefully compares the two records (correctly plotted not shifted as on your web site), the conclusion is this -- if the surface record is wrong, then so is the satellite record because they agree most of the time!!

In fact careful comparison will show that for the first 13 years the satellite temperature anomalies were higher or equal to the surface record for all but two years (during strong La Niñas). Now, if there had been a significant contamination of the surface record by something like UHI (urban heat island) effect, how could the satellites be seeing even higher temperatures?

After Mt. Pinatubo the satellite shows more cooling than the surface until 1998 when it rises some 0.35°C more than the surface, (and we have proposed some physical reasons for this difference),

But regardless the fact that the satellites show consistently warmer temperatures for 13 years and during the 1998 El Niño makes it very hard for one to hold that the surface record is flawed by things like urban heat island effect. It is irksome to me to see many of you point to the time period 1992-1996 (which causes most of the difference in the warming trends) as showing the surface to be incorrect and go on to say it's due to UHI, and yet you never deal with the fact that your UHI conclusion is inconsistent with what the satellites were seeing for the first 13 years and in 1998.

You can't have it both ways. Either the surface is too warm due to UHI from 1979-1991, which means that the satellite record is also wrong because it is even warmer, or the satellite record shows the surface record to be essentially correct, which means that UHI is a minor complication. Which would you like?

Regards,

Charles. "Chick" F. Keller,
Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics/University of California
Mail Stop MS C-305
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos, New Mexico, 87545
cfk@lanl.gov
Phone: (505) 667-0920
FAX: (505) 665-3107
http://www.igpp.lanl.gov/climate.html

Subject: SV: Why surface and satellite temperatures disagree
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 04:30:10 +0100
From: "Onar Åm" <onar@netpower.no>
To: "John L. Daly" <daly@vision.net.au>, "Chick Keller" <cfk@lanl.gov>
CC: <large CC list>

(Chick Keller said, 27 Jan 00))

You can't have it both ways. Either the surface is too warm due to UHI from 1979-1991, which means that the satellite record is also wrong because it is even warmer, or the satellite record shows the surface record to be essentially correct, which means that UHI is a minor complication. Which would you like?

Hi, Chick.

You make a good point. It's pretty obvious that the divergence after Pinatubo has something to do with Pinatubo! I do want to quickly point out two things however.

1) the ground data shows more warming than the satellite data in the period 79-91 (but not more than the balloon data).
2) it's been almost a decade since Pinatubo and there is still a huge divergence between the satellite and the ground data, despite a brief moment convergence during the major 98/99 El Nino.

You can't draw any conclusions from these observations -- and that's the point. The jury is still out. 21 years of noisy climate data is not enough to pick up a small UHI creep. And it most definitely is not enough to make a trend assessment. I agree that we should not be blinded by the numbers, but to me the current divergence which is now almost a decade old, warrants at the very least caution from drawing any solid conclusions, whether it is about the UHI or a greenhouse signal.

Onar.

Subject: Re: Why surface and satellite temperatures disagree
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 20:20:09 +1100
From: "John L. Daly" <daly@vision.net.au>
To: Chick Keller <cfk@lanl.gov>

Dear Chick

you wrote:

On your web site I note a contribution by David Wojick commenting on the NRC panel's position on surface vs satellite temperature measurements. His reaction, if I understand him, is that, having accepted the satellite temperatures as essentially correct, the NRC folks were stuck between saying the models are right and thus surface is wrong, or the surface is essentially right and thus the models are wrong. David finished by saying something derogatory about the surface data.

He actually said "The surface data sucks". Not an expression I would use myself, but I like its directness, as it just about sums up my feelings about it too.

... there is another position -- all three: satellite, surface temps and the models are essentially correct,

Models are just models and so are incorrect by definition. It is simply a question of by how much. The real issue here is the difference between the surface and satellites. The surface record as presented by CRU and GISS suggests significant global warming. The satellite record only suggests climatic drift, with a decadal trend less than one twentieth of a degree. There have been plenty of warnings to the climate community not to take the surface record too seriously, but there seems to be an almost religious faith in it, even though when one looks at how the raw data is collected, it simply astounds me that anyone could calculate a credible global average from it and prefer it to temperatures measured accurately from satellites.

You may not have yet read Vincent Gray's latest paper on my site ( http://www.john-daly.com/graytemp/surftemp.htm ) as to why the discrepancy exists between surface network and the satellites (MSU). It's well worth reading as he identifies some `hot spots' in the world (eg. Russia) where the MSU and surface network are completely at odds. My item "The Russia House" on my main page uses one station's recent record to illustrate exactly what's wrong with the Russian surface network and Vincent Gray has shown that the problem covers a vast region, not just a few weather stations.

Some excellent references dealing with the problems inherent in the surface network -

Ellsaesser, MacCracken, Walton, & Grotch (1986) - "Global Climate Trends Revealed by the Recorded Data", Reviews of Geophysics, v24, no.4, pp745-792

McConnell, (1992), "Assessing the Value of Historical Temperature Measurements", Endeavour, new series, v16, no.2, pp80-84

Hughes & Balling, (1996) "Urban Influences on South African Temperature Trends", Int'l Journal of Clim. v.16, pp935-940

Plus, numerous relevant material on my website from guest authors.

Taking all the multitude of real and potential errors inherent in surface measurement, I really cannot improve on David Wojick's rather blunt final conclusion.

If one stops looking slavishly at a single number (temperature trend over the entire 21 year period), and instead carefully compares the two records (correctly plotted not shifted as on your web site), the conclusion is this--if the surface record is wrong, then so is the satellite record because they agree most of the time!!

The NRC panel itself convened specifically to resolve the issue that they had already recognised, namely that the respective trends had diverged markedly over the 21 years. In addition, the leading advocates of human-induced global warming, Jones, Wigley and Santer, published a paper in Journal of Geophys. Res. (v.102, d.25, pp.30.135-30.145, Dec 1997) in which they stated quite unequivocally in their abstract -

"The comparisons reveal differences in the course of temperature trends over the 1979-1996 period in the two sets of time series. The surface data warms relative to MSU2R by 0.19°C per decade over this period, with much of the change occurring as a jump in the difference series, particularly during 1991 but also in 1981. The differences either reflect problems in one or both of the surface or MSU2R records or, if both records are correct, a significant change in lapse rates in the lower part of the atmosphere on a global scale particularly since mid-1991."

There has been little subsequent change in the situation they observed in 1996

As to how to plot the different series, there is only one way to plot the comparison - the way shown on my main page. Any other way simply blurs and fudges the issue. And why? The surface and MSU (and the sondes) measure different things, and measure them in different ways. The lower troposphere (the territory of the sondes and MSU) ranges between 1 and 8 km in altitude, and so the measured temperatures will be around 20°C lower than the equivalent surface temperature. So they cannot be compared in an absolute sense, and it is thus incorrect to say that one is "higher" or "lower" than the other (or vice versa).

We can of course use a long-term average of a chosen time span within each of the respective records, to act as the zero point for determining anomalies. However, even here, we cannot simply merge the respective zero lines together into one single zero line and pretend that the individual anomalies in one series are `higher' or `lower' than the other. The merging of three independent zero lines into one composite zero line is very misleading. Instead, if we are primarily interested in comparing the overall trend between the three series over the full period of the record (21 years), we can legitimately compare like with like only by referencing all three data streams to the one single start point from which the three streams can then either travel in lock-step (as the MSU and sondes seem to do most of the time), or diverge as the surface does from the MSU and sondes. This is the only way to compare their long-term trends without fudging the issue. I really don't see any sound reason to alter that view, or why it can be interpreted as misleading.

As to Jones & MacCracken's idea that both records might be right and that it might be a global change in lapse rate (temperature with altitude) which is the culprit, is contradicted by the findings of Vincent Gray in his paper, namely that the discrepancy between the surface and MSU is not global at all, but restricted to a few large `hot spots' such as Russia. It takes no leap of the imagination to conclude that Occam's Razor should apply here - "the simplest solution to any puzzle is usually the right one" - is also the one found by Gray, and the one I also subscribe to - that the surface data is faulty and that the MSU and sondes are correct, with no real or imagined changes in lapse rate to let the surface data off the hook.

but regardless the fact that the satellites show consistently warmer temperatures for 13 years and during the 1998 El Niño makes it very hard for one to hold that the surface record is flawed by things like urban heat island effect.

As you will see from the references I have provided, the urban effect is only the first of a long train of errors inherent in surface measurement. With hard work, the urban effect can be removed from western records, as has been done for the USA - and with what result? In those areas where urbanisation effects have been successfully compensated for (eg. USA), the surface trends and satellite trends show greater agreement. In places like Russia where we have little information on the accuracy of the station data, it should be no surprise that the surface and the MSU diverge markedly.

You can't have it both ways. Either the surface is too warm due to UHI from 1979-1991, which means that the satellite record is also wrong because it is even warmer, or the satellite record shows the surface record to be essentially correct, which means that UHI is a minor complication. Which would you like?

Since the MSU results were first published years ago, the one chorus I have constantly heard when making the comparison with the surface network was that the time period of satellite observation was "too short" to draw conclusions from. I could'nt really complain at that as 30 years was the accepted norm for recognition of any climatic trend and the MSU was well inside that time period. As the record got longer and longer (now reaching 21 years), that "too short a time" mantra has been sounding increasingly hollow even though it is still used from time to time. Now I find you asking me to sub-divide the record, (itself still technically "too short") into time periods of only a few years to dissect transient events like Pinatubo and ENSO. It's not appropriate to pick and choose this few years or that few years in such records to draw conclusions about how or why they might be different. Only by taking the full 21 years into account (itself still "too short a time"), can we see any inherent divergence between them.

But taking the surface record as it existed in January 1979 (when it was joined by the MSU), the surface was already exhibiting UHI and other errors. From that point on (point zero on the graph), it was only the changes in the UHI which would be noticed via the divergence in the trends, not the actual presence or absence of UHI effects. The impact of UHI could only emerge over a long time period as cities grew between 1979 and 1999. UHI would not change significantly over a short period. It certainly cannot be determined from comparing single point measurements.

In the 21 years since January 1979 when the satellites begun, the climate system has endured two volcanoes, two big El Ninoes, one big La Nina, and a couple of moderate La Ninas and El Ninoes. In other words, we have had a sufficient number of self-cancelling transient events to allow a genuine long-term trend to emerge in both records. In the case of the satellites it is a decadal trend of +0.043°C, while the surface network shows a decadal trend of +0.19°C (Jones et al in 1996 and still about the same today). It's a big difference, recognised by the NRC and Jones et al., so it is very real and not the product of creative graphing.

Regards John Daly

-- John L. Daly
"Still Waiting For Greenhouse"
http://www.www.john-daly.com

Subject: Surface v. Satellites
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 11:53:40 +0200
From: "Jarl Ahlbeck" <jarl.ahlbeck@abo.fi>
To: <daly@vision.net.au>

Don't forget the theory for random variables !

The different temperature records from the recent 20 years are samplings from random variables with considerable standard deviations. Although there are som indications that the radiosonde and MSU records may be better measures of the surface temperature than the surface record (correlation with CO2 variations due to degassing/absorption is better), the time period is still too short for saying anything about trends. All we could say, is that the records do not seem to be in any agreement at all with the GCM models that predict a much higher warming trend in the lower troposphere than on the surface. But if we want to stay scientifical, we cannot say even that with any level of significance.

As the correlation between these records despite different trends is quite good (r =0.7 between surface and satellite/balloon), and nobody can believe that the surface will go on warming and the troposphere not, we will certainly see the same trend or lack of trend in all records in the future. We must be still waiting for Greenhouse. When/if the satellite/balloon record start to show significant warming, we can start to díscuss how to adapt to the warming and to analyze the possible risks/benefits with GW.

The fascinating thing with the greenhouse discussion is that short-time variations due to the stochastic behaviour of the climate system so easily can be explained to be a detectable part of an "anthropogenic" log-time trend.

regards, Jarl

Subject: Why surface and satellite temperatures disagree--Sand in the air?
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 09:57:16 -0700
From: Chick Keller <cfk@lanl.gov>
To: daly@vision.net.au

John,

All well and good--an impressive blizzard of information. But all of it discusses trends, and in my note I specifically challanged you and others to set aside that discussion for the moment to consider just this simple question:

Can one invoke the urban heat island effect to explain the difference between satellite and surface temperature records?

Given the comparison 1979-1991, where the satellite consistently sees higher anomalies, I submit one cannot logically attribute subsequent disagreements to UHI. I did not take on the larger problem of why the warming trends differ. All I said was, it is illogical to attribute whatever differences there are to UHI.

Your response, though admirably comprehensive, does not address my question.

In the one section where you comment on the time period1979-1991 you bring up the contentious point of how long a record does one need to learn something from it. You take me to task for subdividing the record. But still, yet, once again you are stuck in your trend paradigm. If one is looking for trends, the record which has many short term, large amplitude changes must be long--perhaps 30 years. But, if as I am doing, you are comparing absolute values of temperature, then even a few years are sufficient. The atmosphere is showing us that it responds very quickly to warming and cooling events such as volcanoes, and ENSO. Thus I submit that a 13 year period is plenty long to determine if the satellites are showing consistently warmer temperatures than the surface.

You also defend your web site's arbitrary shift of satellite data downards in temperature to make it match the surface value at 1979. Once more this is at least defensible (if you make clear to your readers what you have done) if you are looking at trends. But, just as seeing trends may be difficult without the shift, so seeing anything else is made difficult by doing so. In fact when no shift is made it becomes clear that the difference in the trends ain't all that much.

(In a future note I would like to discuss with you all a more detailed consideration of these comparisons.)

Two other points-- for those of you enamored of trends (now don't beat me up for citing an 8 year period to determine a trend), I noted, and John Christy volunteered, that from 1992 till the present, the surface and satellite trends agree rather well!!--not a very strong showing for the UHI...

Finally, I noted in the Vincent Gray article cited below that the "hotspots" are largely not in urban areas. Thus, while Gray's article is extremely interesting and I plan to study it closely (so far I've just looked scanned it, so I might have missed something), I don't think UHI is in it. The rather complete literature on UHI he summarizes gives equivocal results. Thus, I go back to the satellites to get the final answer. That answer, for most of its 20 year record, is that UHI effect is small.

Finally, I am not so much defending warming or this or that record. I am asking people to consider that the mechanisms for warming and cooling the troposphere are clearly varied (deep convection, stratospheric influence, cloud changes, etc) and I find it both instructive and refreshing to accept the two records within their limitations and to use those to search out what's going on.

Regards and thanks for the extensive citations that I will look at,

Chick Keller

Subject: Re: Why surface and satellite temperatures disagree
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 11:11:33 -0800 (PST)
From: Fred Decker <deckerf@ucs.orst.edu>
To: "John L. Daly" <daly@vision.net.au>

Did you notice the explanation for not forecasting the heavy snow in Washington, DC, until it was practically at hand was "flawed models" and limits of the computer, which is being superseded by a super-computer? Even the corrected forecast issued from the new computer readout wasn't taken seriously by officials empowered to tell govt workers not to commute to work until the rush-hour had begun battling the heavy snow! There's a warning about computer models, predictions, and decision-makers!

Fred Decker, OSU

Subject: SV: Why surface and satellite temperatures disagree--Sand in the air?
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2000 02:40:56 +0100
From: "Onar Åm" <onar@netpower.no>
To: <daly@vision.net.au>, "Chick Keller" <cfk@lanl.gov>

Chick,

I am not familiar with the specifics of the surface record, but it would be very interesting to see how the surface data minus the former soviet union has warmed since 1979. As I understand it most of the warming is confined to precisely this region. It is interesting to note that the Mt. Pinatubo eruption and the disintegration of the Soviet Union are quite close in time. John has quite convincingly showed that the measurements from the former Soviet Union countries are next to garbage. (and it is even more suspect that the surface and the MSU diverge most in this region) Thus, maybe the answer to your question is that it is not primarily the UHI that is the cause of the divergence but rather the political upheaval in the former USSR.

Don't get me wrong: I do think that the divergence is largely real (due to Pinatubo), but there can be little doubt that the former USSR post-1990 measurements are unsuitable for climatological purposes.

Onar.

Subject: Re: SV: Why surface and satellite temperatures disagree--Sand in the air?
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 19:39:51 -0800 (PST)
From: Fred Decker <deckerf@ucs.orst.edu>
To: Onar Åm <onar@netpower.no> CC: daly@vision.net.au

The "political upheaval" as a cause of divergent temperatures in former USSR? On the surface of it, that's indeed anthropogenic! What political process exactly should we blame?

Cheers!    Fred Decker

Subject: Why surface and satellite temperatures disagree--Sand inthe air?
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2000 04:51:07 +0100
From: "Onar Åm" <onar@netpower.no>
To: "Fred Decker" <deckerf@ucs.orst.edu> CC: <daly@vision.net.au>

The "political upheaval" as a cause of divergent temperatures in former USSR? On the surface of it, that's indeed anthropogenic! What political process exactly should we blame?

The Soviet Union collapsed because it was broke. Nay, it had been broke for decades and a collapse was long overdue. As a result almost every governmental program suffered badly. The army was reduced by millions, nuclear warheads and submarines rusted in unguarded facilities, the life time expectancy has dropped dramatically, social programs were erradicated and, as John has demonstrated, climatological data measurement quality has eroded beyond any scientific value.

The political process to blame here is no doubt the communistic system which through decades of economic deprivation eventually lead to the inevitable and dramatic collapse of the Soviet Union. The erosion that has occured in the 90s is merely a consequence of that near century long dictatorship.

Onar.

Subject: (Surface v. Satellites?)
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2000 18:05:50 GMT
From: richard@courtney01.cix.co.uk (COURTNEY)
To: Chick Keller <cfk@lanl.gov>

Dear Chick:

In an email to John Daly yesterday you asked:

"But all of it discusses trends, and in my note I specifically challenged you and others to set aside that discussion for the moment to consider just this simple question:

Can one invoke the urban heat island effect to explain the difference between satellite and surface temperature records?"

Your " simple question" contains two assumptions, viz.

1) If there is a discrepancy then the UHI is responsible, and
2) The satellite and surface temperature records should both be believed.

I think the answer to your question is "No" because neither assumption is valid.

I argue that the two records agree perfectly within their accuracies. The satellite (MSU) data is accurate to +/-0.01K but the surface temperature data is only accurate to +/-0.5K. Indeed, the surface data can not be considered to be more accurate than this because it is derived from individual measurements that are in many cases only obtained to an accuracy of +/-0.5K. The true accuracy may be much less accurate than +/-0.5K because much of the necessary data for a global average is not available (e.g from overage major oceans and polar regions) and the gaps are filled using assumptions whose validity is not known.

The satellite and surface temperature records do not diverge by more than O.5K and, therefore, they agree perfectly.

All the best

Richard

Subject: Surface v. Satellites?
Date: 30 January 2000
To: Chick Keller
From: John Daly

Dear Chick

you wrote:

Can one invoke the urban heat island effect to explain the difference between satellite and surface temperature records?

Given the comparison 1979-1991, where the satellite consistently sees higher anomalies, I submit one cannot logically attribute subsequent disagreements to UHI. I did not take on the larger problem of why the warming trends differ. All I said was, it is illogical to attribute whatever differences there are to UHI.

The reason I gave you the Ellsaesser/MacCracken reference is that while it was an old paper (1988), it did deal very comprehensively with all the error-inducing factors with surface measurement. Urban Heat Islands (UHI) is only one of them and the most often quoted. In many cases however, UHI is not the most significant error, such as the error I reported here in Tasmania at Low Head Lighthouse. where growing bushes near the box screened it from the prevailing northwesterly wind from the sea, resulting in a mini sun trap. The daytime temperature rose steadily (+1.5°C over 30 years) as the bushes grew larger, a temperature growth not seen at nearby stations.

Some of the measurement errors in the surface network include -

1) The good old urban heat island (not just related to population growth, but also to traffic and brick & concrete growth)
2) Doug Hoyt's `shrinking skyline' effect (ie. trees, buildings, bushes etc. growing up near and around the box)
3) Screen boxes which are allowed to become dirty and louvres clogged (this happens a lot at the remoter stations)
4) Poor maintenance of the instruments, especially in poorer countries
5) Poor recording by indifferent personnel (eg. on ships, remote locations)
6) Changes during the early 20th century from fixed time recordings to max-min recording
7) Data falsification (eg. data falsification was a way of life by every official in the old USSR)
8) Missing chunks of data (this is very bad in Russia since 1991)
9) Changes in site locations, instruments, and personnel
10) Social & political upheavals (often shows up in the records either as breaks or as obviously anomalous data)
11) The change from manual reading to automatic reading (no longer necessary to open the box - ergo, warming)
12) The warming/cooling effect of slipstream and salt deposits on ship instruments causing erratic data.

There's a tidy little `dirty dozen' to think about. Taken together, one would be quite justified in disregarding the surface network so far as climate determination is concerned. Of course I have not mentioned the added problems of geographic spread, the northern hemisphere bias etc., just the station temperatures themselves. Most of the errors listed above result in `warming creep' in the measured temperature, such as in 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, and 11. The remainder can result in either warming or cooling errors. In other words, taken in total, the combined effect of all these would be to impose a warming creep on any large-scale average such as the hemispheric or global temperature estimates.

Then to crown it all, the IPCC chooses to accord this aggreggate surface record greater credibility than they give to the satellites or sondes. The reason for choice this cannot possibly be scientific, but rather political. Indeed, I have never heard a sound scientific reason for anyone preferring the surface over the satellites. The reasons given are merely authoritative reather than evidence-based - (eg. "we have corrected it for urbanisation effects" - we are the experts, don't argue with our judgement). I never accept that kind of spurious appeal to authority as being the final word on anything. I want to see the evidence, and so far I've seen none that supports the contention that the surface record is in any way a true reflection of past climate.

But, back to the UHI for a moment, GISS and CRU claim they have adequately corrected affected data and that these corrections eliminate the problem. I have looked at some of the GISS stations from their website where they provide both raw and urban-adjusted data for urban stations. What I have found inspires no confidence at all in their capacity or competence to do such a critical adjustment. Firstly, they give population figures for each of the cities they use, but reference to encyclopaedias indicates they understate the populations. For example, for Alice Springs, central Australia, they quote 18,000 people, whereas the correct figure is 25,000. For Ankara, Turkey, they quote 1.7 million, whereas the 1985 census there puts it at 2.25 million. By understating the population, does this allow them to under-correct the data? In the case of Alice Springs, they made no urban correction at all - presumably they regard their (incorrect) 18,000 as an insufficient number to warrant urban adjustment. This contradicts lots of studies which show that even very small communities exhibit heat islands of a few tenths at least. Even Hobart (120,000 people) here in Tasmania has a documented heat island of several degrees at night-time as measured by an American scientist (Dr Manuel Nunez) back in the 1970s.

But it gets worse. Not only does GISS underestimate the population, the final corrections it applies are woefully inadequate for what we now know about cities and their inflated temperatures. Here is Ankara, Turkey, an inland growing city of 2.25 million, a prime candidate for a big heat island if ever there was one. You can see both the raw and corrected data.

This is a pathetic excuse for `urban adjustment'. When the original data is examined, the greatest difference between the raw and adjusted data is only 0.2°C

A city of 2.25 million only warms 0.2°C due to urbanisation??   That's not only unbelieveable - it's ridiculous. But it is upon thousands of bricks like this one that we have the claim of `global warming' of +0.7°C. Then everyone expresses surprise when the satellites, unaffected by the above listed errors, find little change in temperature over the last 21 years.

In the last decade or so, we now have the added problem of closure of many rural stations, the only ones unaffected by urbanisation, so that the station mix is now getting more heavily urban than previously. This makes the alarmist conclusions about the 1990s `warmth' unsupportable.

In a nutshell, I do not accept the surface record as a true record of 20th century climate. It is fraught with too many errors, the urbanisation is insufficiently adjusted for (regardless what GISS or CRU claim), and now politics has introduced a new dimension into the issue where its value is much over-stated.

...once again you are stuck in your trend paradigm. If one is looking for trends, the record which has many short term, large amplitude changes must be long--perhaps 30 years. But, if as I am doing, you are comparing absolute values of temperature, then even a few years are sufficient.

I agree about the 30 years. I always have. I just wish the people who invoke that concept so readily when faced with contradictory data, would also apply it before they rush off to the media with `results' based on purely transient events.

Again, I do not understand what you mean by "comparing absolute values of temperature. You can't do that here. The three sets of data measure different things, in different ways, in different parts of the atmosphere. There are no comparable `absolute values'. You can only determine + or - trends in each, and it is that which is creating the problem which the NRC panel met to address (and failed to resolve). This is why my graph setting a common zero point for all three data series was not only a valid way to compare trends, it is the only way to compare them.

The atmosphere is showing us that it responds very quickly to warming and cooling events such as volcanoes, and ENSO. Thus I submit that a 13 year period is plenty long to determine if the satellites are showing consistently warmer temperatures than the surface.

Several years ago, it was claimed that the reason why global temperature (even as measured at the surface) did not rise as fast as the models were predicting was because of `thermal inertia' in the oceans. It became a mantra, a catch-all excuse to explain away the lack of sufficient warming. Now we know the atmosphere responds quickly to changes in forcing. Pinatubo teaches us that much. Now, I never hear of `thermal inertia', even though it was a scientific article of faith at the time. Which is why I prefer actual physical evidence, not deference to anyone's supposed academic or scientific authority.

Regards     John Daly

Subject: Re: Surface v. Satellites?
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2000 07:44:29 -0500
From: Jack Barrett <100436.3604@compuserve.com>
To: "John Daly" daly@vision.net.au" <daly@vision.net.au>

Dear John,

Great stuff about accuracy! I think the published accuracy/inaccuracy of the surface record is +/- 1.2 K derived by randomly discounting 10% of the readings many times over. It makes nonsense of any discussions of trends in that record.

Keep up the good work

Best wishes     Jack

Subject: NRC Report, "Reconciling Observations of Global Temperature Change"
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2000 17:05:16 -0500
From: "Douglas V Hoyt" <dhoyt1@erols.com>
To: <daly@vision.net.au>

Quotes from and comments on the NRC Report, "Reconciling Observations of Global Temperature Change" (National Research Council, 2000).

The case for recent global warming is not nearly as strong as one might think from reading the Executive Summary.

Douglas V. Hoyt
http://users.erols.com/dhoyt1

Subject: Surface Temperature/MSU Differences
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 12:41:51 +1300
From: "VINCENT GRAY" <vinmary.gray@paradise.net.nz>
To: "John Daly" <daly@vision.net.au>

Dear John

Your debate on this subject has not yet hotted up. Perhaps I can provide some further stimulation.

The contention of my Report is that the recent surface temperature rise was largely in a few regional hot spots, and that these are not detected by the MSU units, despite the fact that the MSU detects all other climate events that are also evident on the surface record.

I recently went through a few specimen months on the MSU website,

http://wwwghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/temperature

which gives a map of temperature variation across the globe for each month of its operation. The warmer and cooler regions fluctuate from month to month in a manner which presumably corresponds to ocean and atmosphere behaviour. The range of temperature change is only a few tenths of a degree. The last map, for October 1999 shows a cool region in Siberia and a warm region in Northern Europe. A map for the whole period has been published by the National Research Council at http://books.nap.edu/books/0309068916/html but not in colour; but you can deduce that from 1979-1999 it shows a warmong of up to 0.5°C over Central and East Siberia (but not the North), and over the North Atlantic (but not Northern Europe).The National Research Council Committee did not notice these differences and wrongly concluded that the MSU and surface regional pattern were similar.

The MSU pattern is completely different from the surface pattern. The MSU pattern fluctuates from month to month. The surface pattern (as shown in my Figures 2 and 3, and in the IPCC maps) shows the warming always in the same places.

These surface temperature hot spots need to be investigated. John Christy claims he is looking into the strange behaviour of Siberia. But what about the other hot spots.

John, you are right in the middle of the SE Australia hot spot. Do you know anybody in the Met Service who could investigate what happens at Australian met stations. What about Brian Tucker or A.H. Gordon? I have downloaded some stations from the region from the GISS site http://www.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/update/gistemp/show-station.py and I have found several surprises.

First, there are hardly any records past the year 1992. Have they shut most of them down?

Then, very few of the long records show evidence of a rise in temperature from 1910 to 1945, as enshrined in the global surface record, even for the Southern Hemisphere. Is this rise a consequence only of disruption and re-establishment of weather stations after the two world wars; Ijsford Radio with its rise of 7.63°C being the supreme example?

Most of the longer records I have found show a fall in temperature from 1900 to 1960, and a rise after that. These include

Benella (36.5S, 146.0E)
Sydney (33.9S, 151.2E)
Newcastle (32.9S, 151.8E)
Jerrys Plains (32.5S, 150.9E)
Omeo (37.1S, 147.5E) shows a fall from 1880 to 1950, but has a level temperature after that (to 1992) Katoomba (33.7S, 150.3E) does show a rise from 1900 to 1945, but a fall after that (to 1992)
Sydney Airport (34.0S, 151.2E) and Wagga Airport (35.1S, 147.4E) show what I take to be typical airport behaviour. The both start in the 1930s and show a fall to begin with, but a rise after 1970. Increased traffic and buildings?

Somebody needs to look over the whole lot and find the reason for the supposedly exceptional temperature rise in SE Australia.

Regards Vincent Gray
Climate Consultant
75 Silverstream Road
Crofton Downs Wellington 6004 New Zealand
Phone/Fax 064 4 4795939       Email vinmary.gray@paradise.net.nz      vincegray@xtra.co.nz

Subject: Surface v. Satellites?
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2000 22:29:27 -0700
From: Chick Keller <cfk@lanl.gov>
To: "John L. Daly" <daly@microtech.com.au>

Dear John,

Thanks once more for a fairly comprehensive set of reasons to suspect the surface data. I'll run them by some of my friends at NOAA's NCDC for comment.

All of these sources of error ought to make anyone suspect the surface as giving too warm a record.

Yet can you explain to me why this is not the case for most of the satellite record? Despite all these reasons, until Mt. Pinatubo, the satellite was telling us that the surface record was too cool, or perhaps just right!!!

Thus, you can worry about all this stuff, but, when an independent source such as the satellites give you a warmer--not cooler atmosphere, you are forced to conclude that they don't seem to be affecting the surface record very much.

I just can't get around that first 13 years (and 1998 for that matter). Instead what I see is an ENSO dance between surface and middle troposphere--surface warmer during La Niñas and mid trop warmer during El Niños. Then I look back to 1950 and see the same thing. Of course we only have ballons to corroborate that, but then it's the balloons that were used to validate the satellites!

Regards,    Chick Keller

Subject: Your e-letters to John Daly
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 03:32:58 -0600
From: "Stephen M. St. Onge" <saintonge@hotmail.com>
To: Chick Keller <cfk@lanl.gov>
CC: "John Daly, Global Warming" <daly@vision.net.au>

Dear Dr. Keller:

I have been reading your letters on John Daly's web site, and there a few things you write that confuse me. I am hoping you can clear them up.

Your argument about the "first thirteen years of the satellite record" appears to be that from 1979-1992, the temperature trend in among all three methods of measuring global temperature was essentially the same, although the satellites and radio-sondes showed somewhat greater variability. After 1992, the satellite and sonde data diverge, which you attribute to the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo. Is this a correct understanding of your statement? Or have I misread you?

You also seem to be criticizing Mr. Daly for looking at temperature trends, rather than something else, such as absolute temperatures. This I find completely incomprehensible, and think I must be missing your point completely. The entire controversy about global warming is after all about an alleged trend, that the average temperature worldwide is rising. How could we study whether a trend is taking place, and if so to what degree, except precisely by concentrating on trends? I am sure I must be misunderstanding you here.

Best wishes,    Stephen M. St. Onge
3941 3rd Ave.
S. Minneapolis, MN 55409
(612) 823-6704
saintonge@hotmail.com

Subject: Surface v. Satellites? a small response
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2000 14:29:28 -0700
From: Chick Keller <cfk@lanl.gov>
To: "John L. Daly" <daly@microtech.com.au>

Dear John,

I need to comment on some of your statements below. But first I'd like to give an impression I'm getting from these interchanges. What I hear is an amount anger that masks the science. People have become alienated from the system and upset that they're not being listened to. This is of course not how we'd like things to happen. But this is where we are. For example you keep attributing motives, the most common one being that people are ignoring the obvious because of politics (I'm not sure why espousing global warming is a popular political ploy--what politics are you thinking about?). You write below: "The reason for choice this cannot possibly be scientific, but rather political." I accept your hyperbole of "cannot possibly" as rhetoric, but I cannot accept it as fact. You might have written, something like "The reason for choice seems strongly colored by some non-scientific bias... but "cannot possibly be scientific" is the kind of phrase used by people who are angry and in danger of becoming biased themselves. Just an impression, but I fear it could cause you to depart from the purely scientific. I hope not.

You comment on three of my statements.

The first is a long statement about what can and has been a problem for deriving global temperatures from the surface record. My response is that, while all these must be kept in mind and weeded out, the fact is that the satellites, by recording temperature anomalies in excess of those at the surface, seem to be telling us that despite these problems the record is an accurate one (more about this below under absolute temperatures).

Second

I wrote:

...once again you are stuck in your trend paradigm. If one is looking for trends, the record which has many short term, large amplitude changes must be long--perhaps 30 years. But, if as I am doing, you are comparing absolute values of temperature, then even a few years are sufficient.

You wrote:

Again, I do not understand what you mean by "comparing absolute values of temperature". You can't do that here. The three sets of data measure different things, in different ways, in different parts of the atmosphere. There are no comparable `absolute values'. You can only determine + or - trends in each, and it is that which is creating the problem which the NRC panel met to address (and failed to resolve). This is why my graph setting a common zero point for all three data series was not only a valid way to compare trends, it is the only way to compare them.

My response:

I may be mistaken and someone like John Christy can correct me if I'm wrong, but I do indeed think we're dealing with the same temperatures (albeit integrated over different space). For example, one of the strongest points in support of the satellite temperatures is that they are rather closely corroborated by radio sonde measurements, which of course can be compared with those at the surface. So, if the satellite records a yearly global temperature anomaly higher than the surface, I think we can feel secure in making the comparison. The reason for looking more closely at the year-to-year details of the record is that we might find out why a simple trend line through all the data is misleading.

Third--

I wrote:

The atmosphere is showing us that it responds very quickly to warming and cooling events such as volcanoes, and ENSO. Thus I submit that a 13 year period is plenty long to determine if the satellites are showing consistently warmer temperatures than the surface.

Your wrote:

Several years ago, it was claimed that the reason why global temperature (even as measured at the surface) did not rise as fast as the models were predicting was because of `thermal inertia' in the oceans. It became a mantra, a catch-all excuse to explain away the lack of sufficient warming. Now we know the atmosphere responds quickly to changes in forcing. Pinatubo teaches us that much. Now, I never hear of `thermal inertia', even though it was a scientific article of faith at the time. Which is why I prefer actual physical evidence, not deference to anyone's supposed academic or scientific authority.

My response:

The subject of inertia is fraught with misunderstandings. One must decide on thermal inertia based on what's going on. Clearly the tropospheric response to Pinatubo showed little lag. This is why many wonder that the solar cycle of 10-12 years is not more evident in the records. The lag due to GHG forcing is thought to be largely due to thermal enertia of the oceans which shows up increasingly as the rate of warming slows. Thus for rapid heating/cooling, the thermal processes of the ocean in taking up or losing heat are too slow and there is not much lag, but where the warming is very slow as in GHG forcing, the ocean's thermal processes can and do produce an inertial lag. As examples: recall the GISS simulation of Pinatubo and of GHGs -- thermal inertia works in both cases - but differently. And with El Nino, the SST change occurs rapidly due to redistributions of warm water --so again, has means of overcoming inertia.

Also I keep wincing at phrases like "scientific article of faith"....

However, these interchanges are enormously helpful to me since I had no idea of some of the positions held by others at this web site, and it's important for me to find out more precisely what's bothering people and what their reasoning is. Thanks for taking the time.

Regards,

Charles. "Chick" F. Keller,
Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics/University of California
Mail Stop MS C-305
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos, New Mexico, 87545
cfk@lanl.gov
Phone: (505) 667-0920 FAX: (505) 665-3107
http://www.igpp.lanl.gov/climate.html

Subject: Re: Surface v. Satellites? a small response
Date: Wed, 02 Feb 2000 16:53:15 -0800
From: Hugh Ellsaesser <hughel@home.com>
To: Chick Keller <cfk@lanl.gov>
CC: "John L. Daly" daly@vision.net.au, <et al>

Dear Chick,

Hope you will pardon me for butting in again, but here I go.

There are several strong inducements for GHW advocates to continue to advocate:

The first and foremost ones were the modellers, I've never seen anyone defend their work like atmospheric modelers.

The US climate research budget has been around $2 billion since Bush, that's a lot of incentive to avoid saying that GHW is not a problem-not including the inhouse and peer pressures in a research organization which owes it's life to government support.

The UN has been looking for issues that can be used to advance its progress toward becoming a true world government with its own taxes and army, the Ozone Hole and Greenhousw warming are made to order since each has invisioned an enormous transfer of funds and technnology from the developed to developing world. IPCC is UN created and directed.

Nearly all the media, including Scientific journals is interested in bigger central govenment and bigger budgets.

Perhaps I've rave enough for now.

Regards,     Hugh.

Subject: Re: Surface v. Satellites? a small response
Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2000 15:37:42 +1100
From: "John L. Daly" daly@vision.net.au
To: Chick Keller <cfk@lanl.gov>

Dear Chick

You wrote:

What I hear is an amount anger that masks the science. People have become alienated from the system and upset that they're not being listened to. This is of course not how we'd like things to happen. But this is where we are.

It is fairly self-evident that when people become alienated from any system, it is generally the system which is at fault. The solution, if there is one, lies with the system itself, not with those alienated from it.

For example you keep attributing motives, the most common one being that people are ignoring the obvious because of politics

Of course, none of us can ever know the inner motives of someone else. We can only infer them based upon the behaviour of those other people. Looking only at the outward behaviour of the IPCC (and the greenhouse industry in general), we find -

1) Selective discrimination between available published evidence (inc. peer reviewed). The past treatment of the satellites and the solar-climate link attests to this.
2) Demands for scientific rectitude on the part of skeptics, not matched by those who most loudly demand it. Example - satellite record is `not long enough', but it's ok to invoke warming on very transient events. Skeptics notice that duality very keenly.
3) Overt linkage and co-operation between climate science institutions and green organisations (eg. Wigley's monograph with the Pew Centre, writing on behalf of NCAR).
3) Use of peer review to prevent publication of papers critical of the global warming scenario. Since peer review is itself a secretive process, it cannot be presumed to be benign when its actions impact directly upon a crucial public issue. Numerous allegations of this.
4) The ease with which pro-warming papers seem to pass peer review and get published in top journals in spite of obvious fatal flaws in many of them. See http://www.www.john-daly.com/shame.htm for examples, especially the `moby dick' item.
5) The publication of papers timed to coincide with key conferences (usually poorly argued proxy studies), with `media releases' giving a more alarming spin to the findings than justified by the paper's contents. The recent NRC report is a good example.
6) The tendency for some researchers to convene press conferences upon publication of papers which promote warming.
7) The frequent use of alarmist cliches in media releases such as "accelerating rate...", "much worse than previously thought...", and that awful double negative - "... not inconsistent with anthropogenic greenhouse warming".
8) Failure, refusal or sidestepping the answering of key questions put by skeptics. Explaining away, instead of explaining, and using institutional authority to win arguments instead of evidence ("2,500 eminent scientists" etc.).

I could go on, but these are the behaviours observed by skeptics. When pointed out, the GH industry pleads innocence and presents a `victim' image that such suspicions should even be expressed. We are asked to trust the motives of the institutions concerned, even though there is nothing in their behaviour to inspire such trust. Trust must be earned, not presumed in advance.

When it comes to motive, we can only infer motive from those behaviours whose effect is political or ideological. If the IPCC and associated institutions behave in a political or ideological manner as listed above, it is reasonable to infer motive accordingly. If the inference is unjust, the institutions can always explain their actions properly. In the case of the chapter 8 affair, for example, this was not done.

(I'm not sure why espousing global warming is a popular > political ploy--what politics are you thinking about?).

Two. One is radical environmentalism, of which global warming is a key pillar, assisted quite publicly by many scientific institutions and government departments. The other is the enormous institutional vested interest ($2 bn per year in the US) which now exists to underpin the global warming scenario. Were it not for the public hysteria (created in large part by scientists), the funding levels for climate research would only be a small fraction of that presently committed by governments. That is a powerful reason for all participants to deny any weakness in the theory or the models, and to talk up global warming.

You write below: "The reason for choice this cannot possibly be scientific, but rather political." I accept your hyperbole of "cannot possibly" as rhetoric, but I cannot accept it as fact. You might have written, something like "The reason for choice seems strongly colored by some non-scientific bias...", but "cannot possibly be scientific" is the kind of phrase used by people who are angry and in danger of becoming biased themselves.

In case you were under a mistaken impression, I am not qualified in climate science at all, being entirely self-taught. As such, I choose my own form of self-expression. The prevalent habit of obliging scientists to express themselves in a crippled caricature of the Queen's English does not contribute to more exact meaning but rather contributes to non-communication.

My style of writing does sometimes contain what other people may regard as hyperbole, but any intelligent person can recognise that when they see it and make due allowance when assessing the worth of what is said. Better that than to cripple the writer by forcing them to write in a fashion which may be quite alien to them.

Besides, many people with a valuable contribution to make to the debate may not speak the Queen's English as a first language (eg. Americans) - <sorry, just more hyperbole>. It would thus be unreasonable to shut such people out of such debate just because their form of self-expression does not match the tortured linguistic norms of `Nature' or `Science'.

The subject of inertia is fraught with misunderstandings. One must decide on thermal inertia based on what's going on. Clearly the tropospheric response to Pinatubo showed little lag. This is why many wonder that the solar cycle of 10-12 years is not more evident in the records.

I presume you are now familiar with the paper by Theodor Landscheidt on my website, other papers in journals, and the website review comments on the solar influence. These all show that it is not the 11-year solar cycle which is critical, but the other activities on the sun, namely the flare activity, variations in the solar wind, and the solar motions. The 11-year cycle only affects radiation and results in transient climate change of only about ±0.15°C. I did a study of Sydney temperatures (somewhere on my website) using a Fourier filter and found the cycle was certainly there, but only of that magnitude. I would expect a similar result for other stations. It shows up less obviously in the global surface record, but that does not particularly surprise me.

The lag due to GHG forcing is thought to be largely due to thermal enertia of the oceans which shows up increasingly as the rate of warming slows. Thus for rapid heating/cooling, the thermal processes of the ocean in taking up or losing heat are too slow and there is not much lag, but where the warming is very slow as in GHG forcing, the ocean's thermal processes can and do produce an inertial lag.

This would only be possible at the poles where very cold surface water sinks. Anywhere else, the surface water is increasingly decoupled from the deeps the warmer the surface gets. The surface region of the oceans has insufficient mass to provide the kind of decades-long inertia previously claimed for the ocean. The seasonal response of ocean temperature is perhaps a better guide to assess inertia.

As examples: recall the GISS simulation of Pinatubo and of GHGs --thermal inertia works in both cases-but differently.

This implies that the simulations somehow carry some kind of authority. They don't. The whole point in the GH debate is the dispute about how believeable the simulations are. On key questions like this, the effectiveness of ocean thermal inertia acting over long periods of time, needs to be established and/or explained by means other than simulations.

Also I keep wincing at phrases like "scientific article of faith"....

Science abounds with `articles of faith'. Black holes, the expanding universe, the big bang, the materialist view of living things, the superiority of science over all other kinds of knowledge (ie. `scientism'), peer review even. All these are `articles of faith' as they are all believed in and yet open to broader dispute on some very solid grounds. One of the blind spots of scientists is their failure to recognise the ideological nature of some of their own key paradigms.

I too wince at the tortured language permeating scientific papers, language designed not for clarity or to provide technical shorthand, but as an exercise in non-communication. It's a bad, bad habit picked up from psychology (the creators of `psychobabble'), where the rule of thumb is "why use two words when ten will do?". This is a fairly recent phenomenon. Try comparing Darwin with a modern scientist writing on the same topic today to see what I mean. Try Sir George Simpson's paper in Nature (1938) on the cause of ice ages, with similar climate papers today, and you will see that modern scientific language is verbose, uses a tortured style of language, and what's worse - demands this of all new entrants to the field. I'll stick with my own style, even if occasionally tabloid - at least it can be read and comprehended by anyone. Language style should never be confused with content.

... it's important for me to find out more precisely what's bothering people and what their reasoning is.

What's bothering people is the sense of exclusion from crucial decision-making taking place over their heads, whether it be exclusion from lobby politics, exclusion from scientific discourse (thanks to anonymous peer review and closed journals), and yet the decisions being made may profoundly affect the economic welfare of these same people. Look at the IPCC - calling for massive changes in energy usage, yet it excludes input from the very people most affected by such decisions (remember their `experts only' review call only a month or so ago?). Even if the IPCC case was rock solid, their efforts would still fail at the public level because of their exclusivity and refusal to engage in public debate and dialogue.

The hostile attitude of the US Senate to Kyoto is more the IPCCs fault than it is the senators.

Regards John Daly

Subject: Re: sensitivity history
Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 12:37:50 -0800
From: "Vincent Gray" <vinmary.gray@paradise.net.nz>
To: "Steve Hemphill" <steve@hemphill.net>

Dear Folks

You do not answer my objections

Let us start again.

The uncertainties imposed on model outputs by the large error levels in the parameters dealing with water vapour, clouds and aerosols are so great that it is futile to bother with sensitivity studies on minor and unimportant parameters, since they have little influence on the result. Most of you, anyhow, behave as if these huge uncertainty levels did not exist.

Few of you have appreciated the truth of the statement I quoted from Chapter 5 of the draft IPCC Third Assessment Report, to the effect that there is a good chance that there has been no net radiative forcing, and a fair chance that it has been negative. Chick even thinks the statement is "extraordinary". Can anybody deny it?

Onar Am expressed the opinion that "global models can reproduce most of the gross features of the climate, and the most recent runs with the latest improvements are looking very promising" Where is the evidence for such a statement? There are no figures for the degree of correlation of any model with any feature of the climate, gross or otherwise; unless you include the studies on Mount Pinatubo, and even these are vague about the uncertainties. I am afraid his opinions, and that of so many others listed in the TAR report are purely subjective, based on little more than wishful thinking.

I do not have access to the data, the resources, or the skills to carry out professional style statistical correlation exercises. I merely pointed out that the National Research Council, given the task of considering whether MSU and surface temperature measurements correlate, failed even to try to find out. My opinions on what they would have discovered if they had tried are my opinions, and some of you have yours. But why are you so scared of actually doing it?

Whatever your opinions on the matter there is no doubt that both the surface and MSU records reacted strongly to the 1998 El Nino , and both the NRC and the IPCC have used this to try and argue that the MSU record really increases after all, and that the two can be reconciled (again, without any mathematical support). That this presumption is incorrect is shown by the fact that the MSU record has gone right back down where it belongs - at zero.

As for your insulation theory, Steve, I don't exactly understand it, but do you have any factual, statistically based evidence for it, outside anecdotes and sheer subjective opinion?

The use of terns like "urban heat islands" has diverted attention from the influence of increased population, fuel usage and economic activity on all surface measurements, whether "urban" or "rural". This influence has been underestimated and under investigated, and may be entirely responsible for the rise in the surface record.

I find the remarks of Jarl Ahlbeck   "I have got the impression that the main difference of trend between the surface and the MSU/balloon originates from the oceans." baffling.

My study at    http://www.microtech.com.au.daly/graytemp/surftemp.htm

reaches the opposite conclusion. I downloaded the MSU records for the high temperature regions in the surface temperature map and found that the MSU did not recognise them. On the other hand, there are two ocean regions on the surface map (S Indian and S Atlantic oceans) which show a cooling, where the MSU records also show a cooling. So I conclude that the MSU does correlate with the real climate, but not with localised human artifacts

I would like to see Jarl's evidence.

Enough for now

Regards      Vincent Gray

Subject: Re: Surface v. Satellites? a small response
Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2000 09:04:06 +1100
From: "John L. Daly" <daly@vision.net.au>
To: Chick Keller <cfk@lanl.gov>

Dear Chick

As we all know, the sondes and satellite temperature records are mutually consistent, and I attach a plot of the two. We can regard the sondes pre-1979 as a reasonable proxy for the satellites, given their agreement post-1979.

Unfortunately, the sondes peter out once we reach back beyond 1958 and it is tantalising to wonder `what if' we had sonde data going back earlier. However, one thing has been established as far as the surface is concerned. The USA has the best surface record of any country, and Karl's work on it has been much admired by everyone. Its long-term trend is also consistent with the satellite/sonde record, something the rest of the world is not.

I also attach the USA aggregate record, and we can see that when it is compared with the global sonde/satellites, they show a very similar pattern post-1958. But pre-1958 we find the USA record goes back into the warmest decade of its recorded history - the 1930s. It is largely for this reason that while it is clear there was a global warming early this century, most likely solar-induced, we only have the global surface aggregate compiled by GISS and CRU to suggest there was any overall warming between the 1930s and now.

Since the long-term global trend of the last 21 years of those aggreggates do not match either the sondes or the MSU, while they do match the USA, it is a perfectly reasonable inference to make that the surface aggreggate is faulty, and subject to a `warming creep' from numerous error factors to do with the stations themselves, and the statistical treatment being applied. I listed many such errors in a previous message, most of them `warming creep' errors.

Don't forget, the surface `record' is not a record at all. Only station data can be called `records' as these show the measured temperatures at those locations. What GISS and CRU do is to gather all these stations, thousands of them, select the ones they think are relevant, reject others, and then perform their statistical operations (gridding etc.) to produce a final global average. However, that average contains within it all the errors from the stations themselves, the lack of geographic spread, the lack of station data from the southern hemisphere etc. Compared with the solid result for the USA, the global average would be a very poor cousin indeed.

Because of the USA record, and its match to the sonde/satellite record, it is reasonable to infer there has been little or no late 20th century global warming at all. What we can say is that there has been a warm spell during the 1930s, a cold spell during the 1960s/early 1970s, followed by another warm spell in the 1980s/90s similar to, but not greater than, that of the 1930s.

I also notice that some proxy studies use the 1960s as their baseline for comparison with the present. That fulfils the 30-year `rule' certainly, but we also know that the 1960s/early 1970s was a cold spell in the climate cycle, and it is interesting to note that recent publicity about Arctic sea ice thickness relate to studies comparing the 1960s with the 1990s. It's a pity the same studies could not compare ice thickness from the 1930s to the present instead of taking the cold 1960s as their base point for comparison. Many proxy studies and associated media releases adopt this practice of using low points in the climate cycle (eg. 1960s, 1880s, Little Ice Age etc.) as their base point for comparison with the present. When such studies do this, and pass review, it again calls into question the issue of behaviour as an indicator of motive.

Regards     John Daly

--
John L. Daly
"Still Waiting For Greenhouse"
http://www.www.john-daly.com

Subject: SV: Surface v. Satellites? a small response
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2000 05:45:01 +0100
From: "Onar Åm" <onar@netpower.no>
To: John Daly <daly@vision.net.au>, "Chick Keller" <cfk@lanl.gov>

Well, the January data are in and they show that it was the fourth coldest month down under in the last 21 years, and this time the NH seems to have crept below the mean too. Globally January 2000 was the 6th coldest month in the MSU record, only beaten by the months immediately following Pinatubo. It'll be very exciting to see what happens in the months to come. Will the NH stay below the mean or will it bounce back? A few more months of La Niña and the SH will have experienced the coldest 12-month period in 21 years.

Onar.

Subject: surface & satellite
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 00:12:23 +0100
From: "jsereno" <sereno@zeelandnet.nl>
To: <daly@vision.net.au>

Onar,

Your China CO2 emissions-prediciton seems to be a reality already. Last week I read New scientist (or Scientific American). China's Co2 emissions are already down, if I remember everything properly.In 1998 the economy rose with 7,2% and CO2 emissions dropped by as much as 3,7%! This, because the smog levels in the 80s and 90s got totally out of control causing related diseases. They felt they had to do something about it, so they did! I am very anxious to see what happens with Methane levels the next decade. According to J. Hansen, about 20% of the projected global warming will be caused by methane. He also noted the decrease in emissions-rise in methane btw.

Best regards,    Jorge

Subject: sensitivity history: MSU vs surface records
Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 17:34:46 -0700
From: Chick Keller <cfk@lanl.gov>
To: Vincent Gray <vinmary.gray@paradise.net.nz>

Vincent,

Comparing MSU data with surface data is complicated in the extreme. For example one might expect good communication between a tropical ocean and the upper troposphere because of deep convective events which couple the two. On the other hand, where such events are rare such as over Siberia, one might not be too surprised to find that the two regions are only loosely coupled or not at all.

As to comparing MSU and surface and reasons for that coupling, I'd like to invite your comments on my paper (given at the recent AGU meeting) that appears at my Institute's web site (see signature section below for address). In it we show a clear dependence on relative warming and cooling with altitude on ENSO events in which the mid and upper troposphere warm more than the surface during El Niño and cool more during La Nina. This, record now has been extended for some 50 years of NCEP data. Thus, it's not surprising at all that during the 1998 El Niño the satellites saw more warming than the surface, and with the enduring La Niña of 1999 we're seeing it cooling more. This has been going on for at least 50 years. The paper also shows however that this dependence is largely destroyed during the 5 years following the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo suggesting a different mechanism has come into play. We think it's dramatic stratospheric cooling affecting the upper troposphere. And if this is correct, then it's not valid to compare temperature trends between the surface and MSU records that include that time piece.

To me the MSU data shows us pretty much what the balloons and other data that went into NCEP are showing--the altitude dependence on ENSO, the different regime following the Pinatubo eruption, and finally, that since until Pinatubo the satellites showed temperatures nearly always warmer than the surface, there is little infection of things like urban heat island effects (we all worried that these might be significant, but apparantly the satellites are telling us they aren't).

Regards,     Chick

Subject: MSU vs surface records
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 10:56:42 +1300
From: "VINCENT GRAY" <vinmary.gray@paradise.net.nz>
To: "Chick Keller" <cfk@lanl.gov>

Chick

<side remarks omitted>

Bronowski taught me one thing. He was a professional statistician, and whenever we submitted a report he sent it back with an insistence that the data be treated properly by approved statistical methods.

It is a feature of all computer models, and of the Chapters of the IPCC Reports dealing with them, that they will have no truck with statistics. No models come with estimates of the uncertainties. Models are "consistent:" with the data, but you never learn by how much. As a result, my comments on the TAR are peppered with requests for proper statistical treatment, sometimes on every line. They seem to know nothing about the mathematics of correlation. The same comment applies to the recent National Research Council Report which signally failed to apply appropriate mathematical techniques to discover the possible relationaship between the surface and MSU readings.I might remark that the supposed statistical treatments involved in "pattern" and "fingerprint" studies are equally flawed as they assume that model results are single valued functions, instead of probability distributions.

The modellists, and the IPCC lead authors, also do not understand statistical probability. Confidence limts on individual measurements or model predictions should always be stated, and they should, at the very least, be 95% confidence limits, i.e. two standard deviations, not one. Even with 95% limits there is a one in twenty chance that they will be exceeded.

Thanks for your article on "Global Warming: An Update" with its lovely pictures such as you do not get from a library photocopy. It is fairly orthodox, and you do not even question the deliberate ambiguity of the notorious "discernible human influence" statement.

We always used to be told to ignore the MSU readings because the record was too short. Now we have divided the surface record up into four periods (before 1910, 1910-1945, 1946-1975 and 1976-1999), only the last of which can possibly be associated with the greenhouse effect. So MSU and surface are on level pegging. But this does not stop the IPCC TAR Draft from claiming that 1976-1999 is a "trend", even if it is too short for the purpose.

The map (Fig 9) in your paper which purports to display the regional temperature trends in the last century is completely different from the map claiming to show the same trends (1901-1996) given in the IPCC "Regional Impacts of Climate Change", Figure A2, page 414, emanating from Tom Karl and the similar map in the IPCC TAR. How can that be? I downloaded the data used for Karl's map and I confirmed that the map shows them correctly. I even downloaded some surface records and found that they were correctly represented.. Surely there cannot be a completely different set of data. Where did you get yours?.

A feature of Karl's map is the very large temperature rise over the former Russian Empire/USSR, between 1901 and 1996, accounting for a large proportion of the total rise. It is missing from your map.

The map showing regional temperature change 1976-1998 quoted in my paper on Daly's site shows that the predominant rise over that period was over Northern Siberia. If you take winter months (given in IPCC TAR) it is even more marked.Again, it accounts for a large proportion of the total rise.

You talk vaguely about the absence of MSU recognition of this large temperature rise, as due to "loose coupling". Jim Hansen, who I also asked about this, says it is due to "temperature inversion". Yet my paper shows that the inability of the MSU to detect the hotspots shown in the regional map applies to all of them, Northern Europe, SE Africa, SE Australia, SW USA and East Africa. Are all these places afflicted by "loose coupling" or "temperature inversion". Yet the MSU does detect a fall in temperature over the S Atlantic and the S Indian Oceans, shown on the surface record. Why are these not "loosely coupled"?

Best Regards    Vincent Gray

Subject: Surface vs. Satellites
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 18:40:56 -0600
From: "James N. Daniel, III" <daniel@jump.net>
To: daly@vision.net.au

Chick Keller wrote:

Comparing MSU data with surface data is complicated in the extreme. For example one might expect good communication between a tropical ocean and the upper troposphere because of deep convective events which couple the two. On the other hand, where such events are rare such as over Siberia, one might not be too surprised to find that the two regions are only loosely coupled or not at all.

I find this reasoning, standing alone, to be quite valid: that there is not necessarily reason to expect coupling. However, this is a very weak and "safe" statement, scientifically speaking, meaning that we don't know how it really works.

The implication that this somehow invalidates or contradicts Vincent Gray's analysis is just as weak. We see a strong agreement between surface and satellite measurements in general on a region by region basis, but not in Siberia.

Possibilities include:

1) Coupling is valid in most areas except for those such as Siberia
1a) Siberia is independently warming.
1b) Siberia may or may not be independently warming, but contains junk data so we can't tell.

2) Coupling is not a valid assumption
2a) Using satellites to measure global temperature is a fruitless effort that agrees with surface measurements only by extraordinary coincidence.

3) Coupling is a valid assumption for all regions
3a) Siberian surface measurements contain errors biased towards warming.

I'm not attempting to make fun of anyone's point of view by (2a), but just attempting to cover all bases.

Note that none of these possibilities contradict Gray's primary conclusion, which is that the data cannot be explained by a theory of uniform warming. Possibility (1a) is as strong as Keller's implication gets, and in fact happens to be the position of the more moderate of anti-alarmists such as Pat Michaels.

Keller appears to have a more serious disagreement with Gray's secondary conclusion that the Siberian error is due to local heating effects. If this is the main source of disagreement, does this mean that there is a consensus that the Siberian data is the primary source of any measured warming, that measured "global warming" is not really global?

I don't think so, but I like it as a rhetorical question.

James Daniel

Subject: Surface v. Satellites
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 00:05:22 +0100
From: 091335371-0001@t-online.de (P. Dietze)
To: daly@vision.net.au

When I recently determinded HITRAN transmission residuals for CO2 doubling I found that most of the absorptive forcing is within the first 1500 m above ground. In the upper atmosphere the remaining forcing is very small and we have an enforced cooling by CO2 emission, half of which goes to space. The troposphere may be not as well mixed as the modellers assume and so I suppose the satellites thus observe the near-zero balance of warming and cooling whereas near ground we measure only warming - and not that bit of CO2 alone, but that of increased solar activity as well.

Moreover around urban areas many trees and bushes are cut, former grassland becomes covered by roads and buildings which both dispose precipitation into the gullies - that formerly was evaporated by plants. This missing cooling effect is considerably more than the distributed urban warming by energy consumption and to my knowledge this has not been coped for. As this effect is not contained in the satellite measurements as well, their discrepancy to ground measurements is even increased.

Regards, Peter Dietze

Subject: Surface v. Satellites
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 16:32:32 -0700
From: Chick Keller <cfk@lanl.gov>
To: 091335371-0001@t-online.de (P. Dietze), daly@vision.net.au

Peter,

concerning your point about cooling in the upper troposphere, our look at both MSU2LT and NCEP reanalyusis data shows that during El Niños the reverse happens--the troposphere warms more than the surface and this warming is amplified with altitude. Could this be because of increased deep convective events resulting in moistening (increased water vapor, a GHG) of the upper layers of the troposphere? Wentz and Schabel in their recent Nature article ("Precise climate monitoring using complementary satellite data sets, vol. 403, 27 January 2000, pp 414-416) seem to show this as have others.

Your mechanism might indeed work when such moistening isn't happening--during La Niñas--times when you can see the troposphere cooling wrt the surface (also a function of altitude).

Regards,

Charles. "Chick" F. Keller,

Subject: Surface versus satellite record debate
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 11:01:33 +0930
From: "legalnet" <kparish@legalnet.net.au>
To: John Daly <daly@vision.net.au>

Dear John,

I have been reading with interest the satellite versus surface record debate/open review on your website. As you know, I am a lawyer not a scientist, however I was especially interested in the following passage in Chick Keller's latest contribution (9 February):

"As to comparing MSU and surface and reasons for that coupling, I'd like to invite your comments on my paper (given at the recent AGU meeting) that appears at my Institute's web site (see signature section below for address). In it we show a clear dependence on relative warming and cooling with altitude on ENSO events in which the mid and upper troposphere warm more than the surface during El Niño and cool more during La Nina. This, record now has been extended for some 50 years of NCEP data. Thus, it's not surprising at all that during the 1998 El Niño the satellites saw more warming than the surface, and with the enduring La Niña of 1999 we're seeing it cooling more. This has been going on for at least 50 years. The paper also shows however that this dependence is largely destroyed during the 5 years following the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo suggesting a different mechanism has come into play. We think it's dramatic stratospheric cooling affecting the upper troposphere. And if this is correct, then it's not valid to compare temperature trends between the surface and MSU records that include that time piece."

It seems that the Greenhouse lobby has decided to change tactics in its response to the satellite record. Instead of trying to discredit it, they now seek to enlist the satellite record in support of the human-induced greenhouse warming hypothesis. Chick Keller appears to be making the following claims:

1.The surface and satellite records correspond fairly closely from 1979 up to the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in June 1991.
2.The satellite record shows more warming (of the troposphere) than the surface record during El Nino events, and more cooling during La Nina phases.
3.However, this alleged correspondence breaks down during the 5 years following the Mt. Pinatubo eruption (i.e. 1991-96), with the satellite record showing a cooling trend during those years while the surface record showed a slight warming trend.
4.Keller suggests that this is because of "dramatic stratospheric cooling affecting the upper troposphere" over this 5 year period, because of the Pinatubo eruption.
5.Thus, Keller says, we should ignore the satellite record for the period 1991-96. The clear inference is that, if we do this, the satellite and surface records support each other (and therefore, that both show a global warming trend).

But is Chick Keller's assertion a tenable one? I had a look at his article referred to in the above quote but did not find it especially useful in spotting comparative trends over time. He splits the satellite data between upper and lower troposphere (to demonstrate a progressive reduction in the Pinatubo effect with decreasing altitude), and segments the graphs in a way I found somewhat confusing. Accordingly, I prefer to rely on the World Climate Report chart on the John Daly website main page. It shows comparative annual temperature departures between 1979 and 1999 as between surface, satellite and radiosonde. I am assuming that it depicts the comparative trends reasonably accurately over this period (albeit that the curves are transposed to commence at a common baseline, in order to allow effective comparison). If the graph was significantly inaccurate in any relevant sense I would have expected one of the warming lobby representatives like Chick Keller or Mike McCracken (who may be insulted to be so described) to have pointed this out before now. In examining this graph, I identify the following features:

1.From 1979 to 1988 the surface and satellite records do indeed correspond to a large extent i.e. both records rise and fall roughly "in sync", and in both cases they return to approximately the original 1979 baseline temperature at each La Nina.
2.Moreover, as Keller observes, the satellite record exhibits both greater warming (during El Nino) and greater cooling (during La Nina) than does the surface record.
3.During the period 1979-1988 there is no detectable warming trend in either the satellite or the surface record (although I note that this is too short a time span to talk meaningfully of "trends").
4.However, starting in 1989 something very strange begins to happen. The satellite record continues to behave in general in the same way that it did for the first 10 years of records i.e. it continues to return to (or below) the original 1979 baseline at each La Nina, and it continues to exhibit a greater amplitude of curve than the surface record. But the surface record begins to behave quite differently. Unlike the satellite record, it doesn't fall to the original baseline in 1989. It only falls to around 1 degree above the original baseline, and the next El Nino phase kicks in from that point.
5.From that point on, the surface record continues to exhibit a net warming trend right through to 1999. By comparison, the satellite record apparently continues to behave pretty much as it had for its first 10 years. It may be possible to detect a slight cooling influence in the 5 years after 1991, although that is not really evident from the Daly site graph (except that the 1995 El Nino peak is slightly lower than previous peaks in the satellite record - but this may just a reflect a less severe El Nino event).
6.The behaviour of the 2 records during the 1998-99 ENSO cycle is particularly instructive. This cycle occurs after any Pinatubo effect should have well and truly ceased. And yet the satellite record again continues to behave as before i.e. it exhibits greater amplitude than the surface record curve, and again falls back to just below the 1979 baseline at La Nina at the beginning of 1999. That is, there is no identifiable warming trend. But the surface record curve, on the other hand, clearly does exhibit a warming trend. The averaged temperature according to the surface record remains at around 2.5 degrees (or perhaps I should say units, because the graph does not identify exactly what units of measurement are being employed on its vertical axis) above the original 1979 baseline.

Thus, it seems to me that the overall comparative trends do not bear out Chick Keller's assertion that the surface and satellite records corroborate each other but for an anomalous period of 5 years after the Pinatubo eruption. Instead, what they show is a high degree of concordance up to 1989, and an ongoing discrepancy from that time onwards i.e. from 1989 onwards the surface record shows a warming trend, while the satellite record does not. That applies even if you ignore completely the 5 year period after Pinatubo. From 1989 to 1991 (before Pinatubo), the surface record shows apparent warming while the satellite record doesn't, and the same applies to the period subsequent to 1996. It seems to me that both the "Pinatubo effect" and the greater amplitude of the satellite record curve are red herrings (even if a more detailed analysis of the the sort Keller attempts in his article does in fact show depressed stratospheric temperatures in the 5 years after the eruption). What is important is the comparative trends between the two record sets. Even if you ignore the 5 years after Pinatubo, the surface record shows a warming trend from 1989 onwards, while the satellite record doesn't. If anything, this sort of comparative analysis tends to suggest that there is some non-natural factor coming into play in the surface record from 1989 onwards.

When 2 differently compiled records broadly agree with one another for 10 years, and then one of them begins to behave in a totally different manner while the other goes on pretty much as before, the most likely inference is that there is some error in the record whose behaviour has changed. The most obvious candidate is the much-discussed (at least on the Daly website) effect on surface record measurements of the fall of Soviet-style communism in both the former Soviet Union and the rest of Eastern Europe. Of course, in making that suggestion I am engaging in speculation that is perhaps more political than scientific. But Chick Keller also seems to be behaving as a politician rather than a scientist in attempting to enlist satellite data to support his position, when it appears in fact not to do so.

Regards     Ken Parish