Global Warming progressing far faster than previously thought

[Budget_Player_Cadet]

RealClimate: Global Warming Since 1997 Underestimated by Half

A new study by British and Canadian researchers shows that the global temperature rise of the past 15 years has been greatly underestimated. The reason is the data gaps in the weather station network, especially in the Arctic. If you fill these data gaps using satellite measurements, the warming trend is more than doubled in the widely used HadCRUT4 data, and the much-discussed “warming pause” has virtually disappeared.

Obtaining the globally averaged temperature from weather station data has a well-known problem: there are some gaps in the data, especially in the polar regions and in parts of Africa. As long as the regions not covered warm up like the rest of the world, that does not change the global temperature curve.

But errors in global temperature trends arise if these areas evolve differently from the global mean. That’s been the case over the last 15 years in the Arctic, which has warmed exceptionally fast, as shown by satellite and reanalysis data and by the massive sea ice loss there. This problem was analysed for the first time by Rasmus in 2008 at RealClimate, and it was later confirmed by other authors in the scientific literature.

So basically, even though the “no warming in 16 years” crowd was wrong before, now they’re really wrong - the data doesn’t even look like there’s been “no warming”. Hell, 1998 doesn’t even seem to be the hottest year on record any more. The article goes on to explain that the actual warming is 0.12C, which is far closer to the average of 0.16C than the 0.06C present in the hadcrut models.

Is this news? Did I miss the memo?

[Koxinga]

I’m sure there’s a true Scotsman in there somewhere!

[Farin]

@Budget_Player_Cadet

Is this news? Did I miss the memo?

It’s basically an adjustment of short term data based upon hedging the satellite data to the satellite-derived surface data.

It matches the warming as seen in previous decades and eliminates a pause in warming. It’s interesting that the north polar region (only, Antarctica hasn’t shown warming, yet) adds in such a significant amount of temperature data. It shows where we need to step up data collection.

The reality is, though, that this is within the margin of error on the HadCRUT4 data series, so it’s a fairly minor adjustment overall.

[ITR_champion]

@Budget_Player_Cadet

So basically, even though the “no warming in 16 years” crowd was wrong before, now they’re really wrong - the data doesn’t even look like there’s been “no warming”. Hell, 1998 doesn’t even seem to be the hottest year on record any more. The article goes on to explain that the actual warming is 0.12C, which is far closer to the average of 0.16C than the 0.06C present in the hadcrut models.

If the data and research in this article are correct and are being reported correctly, that is.

[GIGObuster]

Very easy to miss the memo with the current corporate media, specially if one relies on FOX, and surprisingly, CNN.

http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2012/05/competing-narratives-in-us-television-news/

The pattern of stories on Fox, shown in Figure 2, provides a stark contrast. In the early years of the decade, Fox had barely attended to climate change. In 2007, though, its coverage increased substantially, perhaps triggered by the IPCC report and the accolades showered on Gore. But its mix of stories was predominantly of the “Hoax” narrative, a story in which climate scientists (in cahoots with the UN, liberal elites, and Gore) were cast as the villains. And in 2009, unlike ABC (and also unlike CBS and NBC), Fox continued to shout “Hoax!” culminating in a frenzy around “Climategate,” the story about hacked e-mails among climate researchers that climate “skeptics” by and large interpreted as showing those scientists “cooking the books.”

CNN, the other major national source of television news, might be characterized as going for maximum conflict. As can be seen in Figure 3, in 2006-2007, CNN told both the “Climate Tragedy” story and the “Hoax” narrative (the conservative firebrand Glenn Beck was then on CNN). Again in 2009, when it offered extensive coverage before and during the Copenhagen summit, CNN’s favorite formula involved pitting the two narratives against each other. Leading up to the December summit, for example, it ran with four consecutive nights of “Climate Change: Trick or Truth?

[Farin]

@GIGObuster

surprisingly, CNN.

:dubious:

“Surprisingly” isn’t the word I’d use for CNN’s failure to do news.

[wolfpup]

Just a few quick comments. Given that total solar irradiation and consequent surface insolation has remained essentially constant over the past decades, but CO2 has been increasing, it’s clear from mean annual energy budget calculations that the earth’s thermal energy has been increasing. So the denialist “global warming has stopped” mantra has always been a ridiculous and meaningless canard. Of interest to science is where the energy has been going to account for a reduction in the gradient of planetary warming over the past decade and a half or so. Since on the order of around 95% of all thermal energy is absorbed by the oceans, even slight changes in this heat uptake would make major changes in observed land temperatures, and there is indeed now evidence for increased heat uptake in lower ocean layers below 700m. Exceptional warming of the Arctic, as per the OP, appears to be another component of this “missing” heat, which of course was never missing at all.

Regarding the Antarctic not warming, the Antarctic ice sheet is actually losing overall mass, although parts are gaining mass and seasonal sea ice volume has slightly increased possibly because of freshwater outflows from the melting land ice. But the Antarctic has indeed exhibited very different behavior from the Arctic and not warmed anywhere near as much, and that’s because its geography is drastically different (basically land surrounded by ocean vs. ocean bounded by land) and circulation systems have helped to insulate it from climate changes occurring on the planet overall.

[GIGObuster]

@Farin

:dubious:

“Surprisingly” isn’t the word I’d use for CNN’s failure to do news.

That say so was there because there is an ongoing “CNN is liberal” meme coming from many conservatives that are also most of the remaining contrarians. What fascinated me also about this subject is that I also was involved in many media biases discussions and researched a lot on this before, one important meta point I make is that in the case of Global Warming the issue shows how inadequate the framework many conservatives have when looking at the mainstream corporate news.

Of curse seeing how FOX is a miserable failure on this is not a surprise.

[Farin]

@wolfpup

Regarding the Antarctic not warming, the Antarctic ice sheet is actually losing overall mass, although parts are gaining mass and seasonal sea ice volume has slightly increased possibly because of freshwater outflows from the melting land ice. But the Antarctic has indeed exhibited very different behavior from the Arctic and not warmed anywhere near as much, and that’s because its geography is drastically different (basically land surrounded by ocean vs. ocean bounded by land) and circulation systems have helped to insulate it from climate changes occurring on the planet overall.

To clarify: The interior of Antarctica has cooled while the peninsula has warmed, likely from ocean currents. The loss of ice sheet is from the peninsula and the growing of ice mass is from the interior.

@GIGObuster

That say so was there because there is an ongoing “CNN is liberal” meme coming from many conservatives that are also most of the remaining contrarians. What fascinated me also about this subject is that I also was involved in many media biases discussions and researched a lot on this before, one important meta point I make is that in the case of Global Warming the issue shows how inadequate the framework many conservatives have when looking at the mainstream corporate news.

Of curse seeing how FOX is a miserable failure on this is not a surprise.

To be fair, CNN is liberal, just like FoxNews is conservative. They each only report what fits with their world view, and both do spin on articles. CNN does give it’s staff more flexibility in what the journalists puts out than FoxNews who uses a lot more editor power to close ranks.

But I would be hard pressed to call what either of them do as “news.”

[BrainGlutton]

@wolfpup

Just a few quick comments. Given that total solar irradiation and consequent surface insolation has remained essentially constant over the past decades, but CO2 has been increasing, it’s clear from mean annual energy budget calculations that the earth’s thermal energy has been increasing. So the denialist “global warming has stopped” mantra has always been a ridiculous and meaningless canard. Of interest to science is where the energy has been going to account for a reduction in the gradient of planetary warming over the past decade and a half or so. Since on the order of around 95% of all thermal energy is absorbed by the oceans, even slight changes in this heat uptake would make major changes in observed land temperatures, and there is indeed now evidence for increased heat uptake in lower ocean layers below 700m. Exceptional warming of the Arctic, as per the OP, appears to be another component of this “missing” heat, which of course was never missing at all.

Regarding the Antarctic not warming, the Antarctic ice sheet is actually losing overall mass, although parts are gaining mass and seasonal sea ice volume has slightly increased possibly because of freshwater outflows from the melting land ice. But the Antarctic has indeed exhibited very different behavior from the Arctic and not warmed anywhere near as much, and that’s because its geography is drastically different (basically land surrounded by ocean vs. ocean bounded by land) and circulation systems have helped to insulate it from climate changes occurring on the planet overall.

According to some scientists, that bodes ill.

“We as a species have never experienced 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” Guy McPherson, professor emeritus of evolutionary biology, natural resources, and ecology at the University of Arizona and a climate change expert of twenty-five years, told me. “We’ve never been on a planet with no Arctic ice, and we will hit the average of 400 ppm…within the next couple of years. At that time, we’ll also see the loss of Arctic ice in the summers.… This planet has not experienced an ice-free Arctic for at least the last three million years.”

For the uninitiated, in the simplest terms, here’s what an ice-free Arctic would mean when it comes to heating the planet: minus the reflective ice cover on Arctic waters, solar radiation would be absorbed, not reflected, by the Arctic Ocean. That would heat those waters, and hence the planet, further. This effect has the potential to change global weather patterns, vary the flow of winds, and even someday possibly alter the position of the jet stream. Polar jet streams are fast flowing rivers of wind positioned high in the earth’s atmosphere that push cold and warm air masses around, playing a critical role in determining the weather of our planet.

McPherson, who maintains the blog Nature Bats Last, added, “We’ve never been here as a species and the implications are truly dire and profound for our species and the rest of the living planet.”

While his perspective is more extreme than that of the mainstream scientific community, which sees true disaster many decades into our future, he’s far from the only scientist expressing such concerns. Professor Peter Wadhams, a leading Arctic expert at Cambridge University, has been measuring Arctic ice for forty years, and his findings underscore McPherson’s fears. “The fall-off in ice volume is so fast it is going to bring us to zero very quickly,” Wadhams told a reporter. According to current data, he estimates “with 95% confidence” that the Arctic will have completely ice-free summers by 2018. (US Navy researchers have predicted an ice-free Arctic even earlier—by 2016.)

British scientist John Nissen, chairman of the Arctic Methane Emergency Group (of which Wadhams is a member), suggests that if the summer sea ice loss passes “the point of no return,” and “catastrophic Arctic methane feedbacks” kick in, we’ll be in an “instant planetary emergency.”

McPherson, Wadham and Nissen represent just the tip of a melting iceberg of scientists who are now warning us about looming disaster, especially involving Arctic methane releases. In the atmosphere, methane is a greenhouse gas that, on a relatively short-term time scale, is far more destructive than carbon dioxide (CO2). It is twenty-three times as powerful as CO2 per molecule on a 100-year timescale, 105 times more potent when it comes to heating the planet on a twenty-year timescale—and the Arctic permafrost, onshore and off, is packed with the stuff. “The seabed,” says Wadham, “is offshore permafrost, but is now warming and melting. We are now seeing great plumes of methane bubbling up in the Siberian Sea…millions of square miles where methane cover is being released.”

According to a study just published in Nature Geoscience, twice as much methane as previously thought is being released from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, a two million square kilometer area off the coast of Northern Siberia. Its researchers found that at least 17 teragrams (one million tons) of methane are being released into the atmosphere each year, whereas a 2010 study had found only seven teragrams heading into the atmosphere.

[Aji_de_Gallina]

Somebody’d better tell that third-rate Nature.com thingy; they just published about the lull, and GASP, they mentioned PDO…OMG, Monkton and Watts have take over Nature!!!

[GIGObuster]

@Farin

To clarify: The interior of Antarctica has cooled while the peninsula has warmed, likely from ocean currents. The loss of ice sheet is from the peninsula and the growing of ice mass is from the interior.

To be fair, CNN is liberal, just like FoxNews is conservative. They each only report what fits with their world view, and both do spin on articles. CNN does give it’s staff more flexibility in what the journalists puts out than FoxNews who uses a lot more editor power to close ranks.

But I would be hard pressed to call what either of them do as “news.”

I agree with not calling them news. But the nit here is that you need to adjust your calibration, after many years of looking at the issue this is the only time when opinions are evidence, FOX news is generally recognized by conservatives as “their” news or that FOX is “fair and balances” by contrast most liberals I know and check do not agree that the same is the case with CNN in regards to them.

[Farin]

@GIGObuster

I agree with not calling them news. But the nit here is that you need to adjust your calibration, after many years of looking at the issue this is the only time when opinions are evidence, FOX news is generally recognized by conservatives as “their” news or that FOX is “fair and balances” by contrast most liberals I know and check do not agree that the same is the case with CNN in regards to them.

The conservatives that identify that deeply with Fox do it because they buy into the idea that the media exists to service liberal interests in some way and Fox is in some way an escape from that.

And you forget that CNN was a dominant news force for most of the 90s (further reinforcing the “fight the man” attitude of FoxNews proponents, btw). It’s only been in the last decade or so that CNN has come to be derided (not wholesale rejected) by a lot of left-of-center liberals. And they will still read CNN, they will just complain about it afterwards. But this change in viewership dynamic doesn’t mean that they somehow stopped doing what they are doing.

[FXMastermind]

@wolfpup

Just a few quick comments. Given that total solar irradiation and consequent surface insolation has remained essentially constant over the past decades,

I wish people would quit repeating that myth.

Only the internet experts say that sort of thing.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/solar.irradiance/

http://woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1990

Fight ignorance, don’t spread it.

[GIGObuster]

@Farin

The conservatives that identify that deeply with Fox do it because they buy into the idea that the media exists to service liberal interests in some way and Fox is in some way an escape from that.

And you forget that CNN was a dominant news force for most of the 90s (further reinforcing the “fight the man” attitude of FoxNews proponents, btw). It’s only been in the last decade or so that CNN has come to be derided (not wholesale rejected) by a lot of left-of-center liberals. And they will still read CNN, they will just complain about it afterwards. But this change in viewership dynamic doesn’t mean that they somehow stopped doing what they are doing.

Not quite, when I look at sites like Democratic underground (that I do not cite as it goes too much to the left for me) there are many threads and examples from them that show that for many years liberals are not getting any help from the mainstream media on many subjects that liberals see as important, it just so happens that thanks to the efforts of powerful interests this issue has become politicized and if the media was liberal it should had this issue in the forefront; as it is most of the sites I look for information on climate do point out on many occasions that the mainstream has been mostly ignoring the issue or not paying much importance or minimize it and go for false equivalencies.

Here & Now

And then the mainstream also typically gets the information wrong, something that it would be less likely if the left had indeed the control or the ears of the “liberal media”
(Yes, it is not the politics that in this case makes the proponents of climate change right, I think most of the left left is correct thanks to a coincidence of history, the point is that if we still want to make the point that the media is liberal, then much less of the current false equivalency would be in effect with outfits like CNN when many liberals do see this issue as a very important one.)

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/11/18/faux-pause-media-ignore-study-finding-globe-is/196939

[sleestak]

@Aji_de_Gallina

Somebody’d better tell that third-rate Nature.com thingy; they just published about the lull, and GASP, they mentioned PDO…OMG, Monkton and Watts have take over Nature!!!

That is what I was going to come in and post.

The interesting thing is watching the climate scientists and their quest for missing heat. Their vaunted models are rapidly diverging from reality. Instead of questioning why the models don’t match reality they assume the models are correct and hunt for “missing” heat.

For the paper in the OP, they decide that they will fill in the missing data in the Arctic. Note, GET THAT. THEY ARE FILLING IN THE MISSING DATA. It is not an observation. It is not a thermometer. It is not an actual reading from an actual instrument. It is a guess. And climate scientists do a lot of that. The odd thing about their guesses is that they only go in one direction no matter what.

Judith Curry has a good write up about this paper and the issues with the analysis here.

A side note, the paper came out a few months ago…

Slee

[GIGObuster]

@sleestak

That is what I was going to come in and post.

The interesting thing is watching the climate scientists and their quest for missing heat. Their vaunted models are rapidly diverging from reality. Instead of questioning why the models don’t match reality they assume the models are correct and hunt for “missing” heat.

For the paper in the OP, they decide that they will fill in the missing data in the Arctic. Note, GET THAT. THEY ARE FILLING IN THE MISSING DATA. It is not an observation. It is not a thermometer. It is not an actual reading from an actual instrument. It is a guess. And climate scientists do a lot of that. The odd thing about their guesses is that they only go in one direction no matter what.

Judith Curry has a good write up about this paper and the issues with the analysis here.

A side note, the paper came out a few months ago…

Slee

A misunderstanding as other papers (like the OP) show where the warming most likely did go, overall it is very likely that it explains why the oceans and the ice on the north pole is losing volume every year at faster rates than expected. And really your say so that they are just guessing is not supported by what I know the researchers are doing.

And that is why that Nature article is just humoring the skeptics, in reality most scientists are expecting something else:

Scientists may get to test their theories soon enough. At present, strong tropical trade winds are pushing ever more warm water westward towards Indonesia, fuelling storms such as November’s Typhoon Haiyan, and nudging up sea levels in the western Pacific; they are now roughly 20 centimetres higher than those in the eastern Pacific. Sooner or later, the trend will inevitably reverse. “You can’t keep piling up warm water in the western Pacific,” Trenberth says. “At some point, the water will get so high that it just sloshes back.” And when that happens, if scientists are on the right track, the missing heat will reappear and temperatures will spike once again.

[PastTense]

Why are there data gaps in the weather station network in the Arctic since it is important to climate change research? Can’t these be automated?

[FXMastermind]

@PastTense

Why are there data gaps in the weather station network in the Arctic since it is important to climate change research? Can’t these be automated?

That is not what they mean by “gaps”.

[GIGObuster]

@FXMastermind

I wish people would quit repeating that myth.

Only the internet experts say that sort of thing.

Data.GISS: Forcings in GISS Climate Model: Solar Irradiance

Wood for Trees: Interactive Graphs

Fight ignorance, don’t spread it.

Indeed, cite from anyone at GISS that claims that solar irradiance is driving the current warming or shut up.