Is BEST trying to "hide the decline"?

Question

Or at least the flatness of temperatures for the past decade. Let's see BEST shows flat for the past 10 years, UAH, RSS and HadCrut3 show a decline since 1998 despite the fact we've been pumping more CO2 than ever into the atmosphere during that time. Are we all sure that man made CO2 is the primary driver of any supposed temperature increases?

BEST http://thegwpf.org/the-observatory/4230-best-confirms-global-temperature-standstill.html

Satellite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Satellite_Temperatures.png

Answer 1

Jeff M. You might want to take another look at that graph. The graph starts at 2001 (it doesn't include 1998).



Also, the last record in the BEST global, summarised, data is for May 2010, so the full year for 2010 cannot be included.



Something that's important, but not immediately apparant, is that this data is for "Land Surface" only... it is not a Land/Ocean mean. This is not identified anywhere on the chart, but it's in the header of the data file. Also, if you check the processing method here (steps 1-12, http://www.berkeleyearth.org/dataset.php ) you'll see no mention of integrating any SST data source. So, BEST includes no Ocean data at all. This means that when you're comparing it with other data set (GISS, Hadley, RSS, UAH etc) you need to be careful that you're using the 'Land only' versions.



If anyone wants to verify the linked chart for themselves... download the data here... http://www.berkeleyearth.org/downloads/analysis-data.zip

It contains two files; Full_Database_Average_complete.txt and Full_Database_Average_summary.txt.



Use the 'Full_Database_Average_complete.txt' file. Col1 is the year, col2 is the month, col 3 is the anomaly. Note that the BEST data has the "seasonal signal removed", so again, caution is needed when comparing to other data.



If you chart that content with no averaging or smoothing applied, you will get exactly the graph in the link given in the question.



i.e. according to the BEST data; LAND based temperature measurements, from Jan 2001 to May 2010 show neither a rising nor falling trend.



Edit Jeff M. My apologies, I thought you were referring to the chart in the first link.



For Pegminer. "CO2 increase will drive temperatures upward in the long term--you have no scientific argument that can refute that. " Do you have have the empirical model that shows how much temperature increase will come from CO2 in the future? I'd quite like to test it using some historical data.



Edit for Pegminer. "The empirical model is the first law of thermodynamics, plus the quantum mechanics of infrared absorption" Oh please... If that were the case then temp would simply always be proportional to CO2 concentration. Got a better one?



Edit AMP. I suppose I'm not too concerned about the seasonal variation, but I think it's quite likely that people will accidentally compare BEST to HadCRUt3 or GISStemp LOTI... both of which include SST approximations.



I read the Tamino piece. I notice he talks a lot about the upper end of the error bars but doesn't give the same import to (actually completely omits to mention) the lower end.

Answer 2

A lot of this yammering about temperature would go away if people would just take the time to understand that CO2, through the greenhouse effect, affects HEAT RETENTION. Temperature, on the other hand, is determined by the heat available and how it is distributed - a glass of water with an ice cube in it stays at the same temperature through a large range of heat content, air at a given heat content will change temperature due to pressure changes.

The IPCC estimate for additional heat retention due to a doubling of CO2 is around 3 watts per square meter, this figure conforms to known historical effects and several labs with different approaches come up with about the same numbers. Whatever the number, it is a relatively smooth change, as a consideration of the Keeling curve and the mixing of the atmosphere should show you. There are not all the fluctuations that come from distributing heat through a system consisting of gas, liquid, and solid, with varying heat capacities and trying to see what is going on by measuring temperatures, nevermind the introduction of random instrumentation errors. The atmosphere, since it has the widest temperature variance, is actually the worst measure of world temperature change, nevermind heat content change.

Answer 3

So which is it, 1998 or the last decade? You're changing your own story.



I downloaded the data and plotted their series from 1998-present (May 2010) and obtained these linear trends from the start of each year:



1998: 0.159 K/dec

1999: 0.228 K/dec

2000: 0.176 K/dec

2001: 0.030 K/dec

2002: 0.062 K/dec



Last 10 years of that data (June 2000-May 2010): 0.172 K/dec



So where the GWPF gets their data is from plotting January 2001 - May 2010.



I'll even grant this: the trend over the last 9 years of data (June 2001 - May 2010) is effectively zero.



But that's the whole point, right? The trend can be affected in a single direction by over 0.14 K/dec just by extending your view out five more months. The uncertainty ranges in the trends becomes very high as you move to such close intervals of time, and as such you can see such massive swings - the argument that you can look at starting points between times A and B and see a flat trend doesn't mean anything if I can look at A-5 and get a completely opposite conclusion you do.



Why does the GWPF not show certainty bounds? Or even a trend line, for goodness sake? Is it because they're too incompetent there to know WTF they're talking about, or are just liars?



For what it's worth I don't even think that this qualifies as grounds for cherry picking, if they can't even perform a decent analysis then what's the point of identifying the shortcomings in what data they used?





DaveH: I agree that caution is needed when comparing the BEST data to that from NASA or HadCRUT due to the autocorrelation the seasonal detrending introduces, but I think that unless we're going to get into analyses going beyond trend analysis then it shouldn't be a problem.





I suggest that everybody read Tamino's post on the subject.

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/10/30/judith-curry-opens-mouth-inserts-foot/

Answer 4

A comparison between GISS and the other datasets shows that 1998 sticks out like a sore thumb on datasets other than GISS, but not on GISS itself.

GISS: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.gif

HadCRUT3 http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/

UAH http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/



Since 1998 was an unusual year because of a very strong el Nino and given that el Ninos are rearrangements of the Earth's energy, that the most comprehensive measure of the Earth's temperature would be the one least sensitive to energy rearrangements, such as el Nino's. The GISS is the only dataset which includes polar regions, and is therefore, the most comprehensive of the datasets.







Given that climatologist use 30 year trends to determine trends, then yes, to make comments about climate based on the last decade is cherry picking, or in other words, a trick.

Answer 5

BEST does not hide anything, David Whitehouse does, the author of the article of your first link.



He does so very deceptively by making his very own graph showing "the past ten years plotted from the monthly data from Best’s archives". That is very nice of Dr Whitehouse but not in accordance with all the data BEST presented which cover a much longer period.



BEST archives, which Whitehouse did link to (but very few actually bother to check) do give two graphs for this longer period: an Annual Land-Surface Average Temperature & a Decadal Land-Surface Average Temperature both clearly showing a trend in rising temperatures.



Bottom line: astronomer Whitehouse uses yet another variation of the false "it has not warmed since 1998" denier claim. One cannot establish temperature trends by leaving out data and just focusing on a 10 year period. Climate scientists know that, astronomers apparently not (and why should they?).



EDIT @Ian:



<>



The trick is that the author cherrypicks data from BEST out of a much longer period only to conclude that there is a global temperature standstill, a fundamentally flawed claim as scientifically speaking one cannot spot temperature trends over just 10 years. Whitehouse's science is simply flawed. Basically, he claims that 2 plus 2 equals 5 and then claims that BEST 'seems to have worked hard to obscure it'. That is utter BS.



EDIT @A Modest Proposal:



Thanks for the Tamino link!

Answer 6

It's amazing that we have people arguing in these forums that no one is saying it is not warming, meaning a long term warming trend. Yet here you are stating what you stated in this question. You do understand that climate change is, usually, taken by a 30 year minimum right? If you look at your graph you have one outlier year, that being the year of the super el-nino of 1998. Since when does one year destroy a trend? You'll also notice that after that year temperature continued to rise with 2007 being the warmest aside from 1998 with afterward a sharp drop occurring up until the year 2009. 2010, which is not on your graph, however was the warmest or second warmest year on record in all data sets beating out 2007. Your graphs leave this out. The upward trend is continuing. Why do people stick to 1998 and falsely claim it has been cooling since then when the trend continues to be positive?



If you want to see the proof all you need do is look at man-s emissions, at roughly 31gt/y (2), compared to atmospheric increase, at roughly 2ppm or 15.8gt/y (1), and look at measurements of outbound (3) and downward (4) longwave radiation showing where the warming is coming from.



Edit: Ian can you not read? Again, if you'll look at the graph, you'll see year to year variability. Many ups and downs. And I did nto say "2007 and 2010 was as warm as 1998" What I did say was "It is secodn warmest with 1998 being an outlier due to the super el nino. However after that year the trend has continued to be positive." You should really learn to understand what you read. And look at a more up to date graph that includes 2010.



DaveH: You might want to take another look at the graph in the second link, as that is what I am referring to. It stops at 2009. Again, some people have trouble understanding what is being stated. Using longer data sets outside a 30 year time period is preferrable regarding climate to weed out any noise due to natural, short term variation as people have been told time and time again yet do not listen.

Answer 7

People who are not so dim-witted will be curious about what BESt says about the data

http://berkeleyearth.org/FAQ.php#stopped



"The large fluctuations up and down that take place every few years correlate very strongly with the North Atlantic temperatures (the AMO index) and with El Nino (ENSO index 3.4)."



Stupid people can't deal with the slightest complexity. There's no fixing stupid. Every La Nina will will bring those really dumbs ones out, and every El Nino year they go away for awhile. The rest of us just need to ignore the stupid and and look to statistians for statistics and scientists for science. The data is all for us. The stupid people just want us to look a small pieces at a time.

Answer 8

It's amusing that people like Ian will claim the temperature is declining even though it's been the warmest ten years on record.



EDIT: Why should I "argue those facts"? Take a short enough trend you say the temperature is going up, down, or flat--big deal--the long term trend is clearly upward, which is what matters. Not only is the trend upward, there is no other explanation for it, and the physics tells us that it will be up.



CO2 increase will drive temperatures upward in the long term--you have no scientific argument that can refute that. You people don't care about truth--even when you come across a study like this, funded by denier billionaires, you pretend it is slanted.



EDIT for DaveH: The empirical model is the first law of thermodynamics, plus the quantum mechanics of infrared absorption.

Answer 9

Climatologists have rules regarding data, statistics and trends. And the number one rule is that all other rules must show that CO2 causes warming. And other than the number one rule, all other rules are flexible.



In the rare case where a climate rule cannot be made to show CO2 warming, then there is always the alternate explanation of renegade data that states: "Natural variability is masking the long term human caused warming trend."



They think that sort of reasoning will hold off the skeptics for decades.

Answer 10

We need a fourth category (for the local YA ant-science deniers of the reality of climate change):

Lies, damn lies, statistics

AND

Stupid lies about simple statistical tricks (using unrepresentative endpoints).

Answer 11

Look up "chemtrails" on Google and on Youtube.

Answer 12

no

Answer 13

the people above me are morons





http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2055191/Scientists-said-climate-change-sceptics-proved-wrong-accused-hiding-truth-colleague.html