Gust Of Hot Air

Analysis of Australian Temperature - Part 7 - Adjusting temperature for cloud cover

2011-11-08T13:15:00.002+11:00

Previously I analysed the relationship between cloud cover and temperature in Australia at certain times of the day. Not surprisingly the results found that increases in cloud cover were related to lower temperatures during the day and higher temperatures at night. Similarly, lower levels of cloud cover resulted in higher day time temperatures and lower night time temperatures.

I have also shown previously that the cloud cover levels have decreased substantially since 1950.

So what happens if we eradicate the variable cloud cover from the database? In other words, if we keep the cloud cover level and adjust the temperatures, we should be able to see what happens to Australian temperatures at certain times of the day irrespective of any increase or decrease in cloud cover levels.

The following are the standard 8 graphs of temperature anomalies with the trend shown by the light blue line, and also the cloud adjusted temperature anomalies as represented by the regressed red line.

The graphs above might be confusing to some but let me explain.

Basically it shows that when we adjust for cloud cover during that particular year, the temperatures increases at Midnight, 3am and 6am have little difference. The slope of those lines is very similar. However at 9am a massive change occurs. When adjusting for clouds, instead of an increased temperature at a rate of 0.92 degrees per 100 years, it only increases by 0.68 degrees per 100 years, or a 26% less.

This increases even more so as you get to the 3pm time slot. Where previously we recorded a 1.09 degree per 100 years increase, when we account for cloud cover during that particular year, we only see a 0.44 degree increase per 100 years, or a 60% decrease in temperature. Interestingly, this is generally part of the day where the maximum temperature often occurs.

The trend then decreases, and then by 9pm, there is no difference between normal temperature anomalies and cloud adjusted temperature anomalies.

Quite clearly, the only times where clouds make a difference in the long term Australian temperature averages is during the day. The more clouds there are, the less the sun can get through and the cooler it is. Similarly for the opposite.

The graph below shows the difference between the average of the maximum and minimum temperatures in Australia and the average of the cloud adjusted temperature anomalies.

What the above graph shows, is that by using the normal method of calculating the average long term temperature, we have an increase of 1.17 degrees per 100 years, whilst the average of the cloud adjusted temperatures record an average of just 0.54 degrees per 100 years, or 54% less.

Perhaps it is true that we are overestimating how much Australia is warming up by more than double. But there is more to come on this, and in the next post I will look at some more long term trends in cloud cover and what effects they have on temperature, which will have very interesting results indeed.

Alternative GustofHotAir Analysis

2011-11-08T12:31:00.003+11:00

Whist I haven't finished my analysis of the temperature, and expect some posts to come again soon, the boys at Bishop Hill have done a fantastic job at analysing it.

This is a must read for followers of my blog and goes into more details about the specifics of why some of the statistics that I have found might be taking place

http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/11/4/australian-temperatures.html

Massive rainfall in Australia? The Bureau of Meteorology claim the opposite to their predicitons

2011-03-10T13:21:00.003+11:00

Wow, what a summer we've had in Australia. It's been non stop raining everywhere across the continent. So much so that Australia has had its second wettest summer on record. In victoria the rainfall comes even moreso. We recorded over 336mm of rainfall this summer alone, well and truely beating our previous record set back in 1910 of 237mm. The Murray Darling Basin, also had its third highest summer rainfall on record as well.

The year 2010 was quite different to the norm. Australia had the second highest rainfall since records began. Such a huge dumping of rain must have been predicted surely?

Lets look back to the CSIRO's climate change in Australia's website: http://climatechangeinaustralia.com.au/

Here they claim that:

"Projected reductions in precipitation and increases in evaporation are likely to intensify water security problems in southern and eastern Australia"

Ouch! Lower rates of precipitiation? They go on:

"In no regions or season do models suggest a 'likely' increase in rainfall"

Not one single model in any single area project even a likely increase in rainfall? What's wrong with theses models? ANd they continue:

"For 2030, best estimates of rainfall change indicate little change in the far north and decreases of 2% to 5% elsewhere"

Ahh damn, things haven't got onto a good start. So I presume now that the data strongly shows that rainfall is increasing Australia wide, are we going to scrap these models altogether?

Such a shame that the leading experts in weather predictions and climate change in Austraia canot predict the or climate change.

Or can they: (The Bureau of Meteorology on the wettest summer on record in Victoria: http://reg.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/vic/20110228.shtml)

"Whilst any one such event cannot be attributed to global climate change, a recent study of extreme weather events across the globe suggests that there has been an increase in the frequency of such events over recent decades, and this trend is consistent with what we expect under global climate change."

Oh Geez

Im back!

2011-03-10T13:06:00.002+11:00

Wow it's been a long time since I've posted.
Going way back to Dec 2009 I see. However, considering that there are plenty of things in the Australian news at the moment with regards to global warming (not least the carbon dioxide tax) and the fact that I didn't release the very last of my analysis on Australian temperatures, and the fact that the amount of rain we have had lately goes far and beyond (and opposite) all that most predicted (except me)....

I thought now was a great time to finish off the series as well as make a few posts about the current climate scenario. So stay tuned.....more is coming very soon!

Analysis of Australian Temperature - Part 6 - Relationship between cloud cover and temperature

2009-12-17T11:26:00.003+11:00

One would expect that a greater amount of cloud cover would result in a lower temperature and a lower amount of cloud cover would result in a greater temperature. We should previously that the amount of cloud cover in Australia has been decreasing since 1950, and we also showed that temperatures in Australia have been increasing, especially during the middle of the day, and temperatures have not been increasing during the night.

So what influence does the amount of cloud cover have on Australian temperatures during certain parts of the day and night? Shown below are the graphs of cloud cover anomalies verses temperature anomalies since 1950.

So what is quite clear from the above graphs is the clear relationship between cloud cover and temperature during the day. All relationships were significant apart from 9pm and Midnight, where no significant relationship was found. Interestingly, the relationship between cloud cover and temperature at 3am and 6am was positive, in that greater amounts of cloud cover was related to greater temperatures.

This is not that surprising, as cloud cover at night works as a blanket, helping to keep the temperature in. From 9am until 6pm, the relationship is undeniably negative, in that lower amounts of cloud cover is related to higher temperatures, and greater amounts of cloud cover is related to lower temperatures.

This is summarised in the graph below:

Here we can see that the strength of the relationship increases until Noon/3pm and decreases after/before this.

So it is clear that cloud cover amounts have a very strong relationship with temperature, as we previous hypothesised. As we showed previously that cloud cover levels in Australia, especially during the day, have been decreasing, what effect does this have on temperature?

Can we adjust the temperatures for this decrease in cloud cover? What effect will that have on the long term averages on Australian temperature? We will find this out in the next post.

Analysis of Australian Temperature - Part 5 - Cloud cover over time

2009-10-13T17:42:00.003+11:00

What effect does cloud cover have on Australian temperatures? Has cloud cover increased or decreased over time? Obviosuly, and especailly during the day, the more clouds that abound, the lower the temperature, and conversely the less clouds during the middle of the day, the higher the temperature.

When the sun is set, the relationship is a little more dubius. Cloud free summer days will have hotter nights if there is cloud cover, however the more days that are cloud free, the higher the atmosphere will be to start off with.

Either way, have Australia’s cloud cover increased or decreased over time? Fortunately, the Australian Bureau of statistics provides good data on this, and we are even able to measure the level of cloud cover as a variable over certain times of the day.

The following are Australia’s cloud cover anomalies from 1950 until current. Note that from about 1996 to current for midnight, and from 2000 to current for 3am, limited data was available.

SO what does this show? Well quite clearly it shows no major change in cloud cover at midnight, but from then on the level of cloud cover decreases dramatically overtime, reaching its decreasing trend peak at 3pm, and then the trend increases, where it actually has a positive value at 9pm, before stabilising.

Take a special look at the last five years of cloud cover from 9am to 6pm. These are dramatic negative cloud cover anomalies, and if you remember what the temperatures looked like during these last few years at the same times, perhaps there is a strong relationship between the two.

It is interesting, that during the heat of the day at 3pm, the cloud cover trend is at its decreasing peak. This is interesting. Scientists do not know much about cloud cover and the reason why its levels vary. However quite clearly here, a pattern arises where the level of cloud cover has decreased over time up until 3pm, before increasing back to a level state. This is highlighted by the graph below.

What happens to Australia’s temperature over time, when we account for the changing values of cloud cover? We will find out in the next article.

Analysis of Australian Temperature - Part 4 - Summer/Winter Effect

2009-06-05T10:13:00.002+10:00

If CO2 was the major cause of global warming, then we should see a constant increase of temperature in summer as in winter. The blanket of Co2 should increase the temperature constantly over the year. Likewise it should increase the temperature constantly over the day and night, however I have showed previously that this does not happen.

So are summer and winter temperatures in Australia in increasing at around the same rate? Even according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology this isn't quite happening. Summer temperatures are increasingly, well, slightly as shown here, whilst winter temperatures are increasing at a rapid rate as shown here.

One could argue here that this occurs mainly because of the different tropical climates that Australia has, and indeed this may well be the case. As northern Australia's summer temperatures do not increase at all, whilst their winter does. And conversely, southern Australia's summer and winter temperatures seem to be increasing. I'm not 100% sure why the tropics summer tends not to increase in temperature. It might be a threshold (its damn hot up there already in summer), or it might be something to do with the humidity. I'm also not sure why the BOM only have a trend going back to 1950 on these graphs, when there clearly is more data available.

In fact, the more data that they could use is that of shown below which compares the summer and winter temperatures based on the standard times of midnight, 3am, 6am, 9am, noon, 3pm, 6pm and 9pm. We have showed previously how the minimum temperature is not a good indication of long term trends at night, so the analysis to come should be interesting.

If CO2 were the major cause of global warming, then we should see a relatively constant increase in temperature in summer when compared to winter across all the times given above. Lets see if we do:

So what do we find? We find that there is no difference between summer and winter trends at night (namely Midnight, 3am and 6am). This is no surprise as we previously found that overnight temperatures have hardly increased over the past 60 years. However something happens at 9am which is quite drastic. All of a sudden summer temperatures at 9am are decreasing at such a rate when compared to winter temperatures.

What does this mean? It means basically that at 9am winter temperatures are increasing quite drastically when compared to summer. This trend is not small either, it is at a rate of 3.1 degrees per 100 years, more than 3 times the world average. Similar trends, but decreasing in nature occur at Noon and 3pm, where as at 6pm and 9pm the trend is reversed.

Interestingly, at 6pm and 9pm the sun will generally still be in the sky and have an influence in summer in Australia, but not in winter. Perhaps this is the reason why summer temperatures are increasing at a greater rate than winter temperatures at this time?

Either way, the trends are extremely strong and disturbing. If CO2 were the major cause of global warming, then we should see a constant trend throughout the day, and when comparing summer and winter trends throughout the day. We see none of this, but rather the opposite.

Perhaps Australia's Cloud Cover levels could be a major contributor to the increasing temperatures that Australia is recording? We shall look at this in the next post.

Australian Bureau flips over Antarctica

2009-05-04T11:02:00.002+10:00

As reported in the Australian

THE Bureau of Metereology has backed down from a claim that temperatures at Australia's three bases in Antarctica have been warming over the past three decades.

A senior bureau climatologist had accused The Weekend Australian of manufacturing a report that temperatures were cooling in East Antarctica, where Australia's Mawson, Davis and Casey bases are located.

The trend of temperatures and ice conditions in Antarctica is central to the debate on global warming because substantial melting of the Antarctic ice cap, which contains 90 per cent of the world's ice, would be required for sea levels to rise.

While calvings from ice shelves in parts of West Antarctica have generated headlines, evidence has emerged that temperatures are cooling in the east of the continent, which is four times the size of West Antarctica.

Contrary to widespread public perceptions, the area of sea ice around the continent is expanding.

_______________________________________

My analysis here at Gust of Hot Air has easily shown this. Here is my previous analysis of temperatures at Mawson, Antarctica. And for want of comparison, Macquarie Island, which is situated half way between Australia and Antarctica.

Analysis of Australian Temperature - Part 3

2009-04-16T11:04:00.003+10:00

For all new readers, please read Analysis of Australian Temperature - Part 1 and Part 2 first.

Previously we found that temperatures overnight in Australia are staying relatively steady over the years despite the minimum temperatures increasing. Temperature trends over time suddenly rose when the sun made an appearance, increasing at a greater rate until the middle of the day and then fading away. A case for the sun can be easily argued here.

This can be backed up even more when looking at time based differences over the years. Shown below are the differences in temperature trend over the years for two neighbouring times.

The above graphs show us a few things. Firstly that there is no difference in temperature trends over time at night from 9pm to 6am. Temperatures are steady over time. Then suddenly at 9am we see a sudden increase in temperature. Temperatures remain steady throughout the day (despite a seemingly seasonal trend?), but at 6pm the temperature drastically decreases when compared to 3pm. All this could have been deduced from the previous graphs.

But what happens if we look at the differences in trends from summer and winter?
I will look into this further and in a lot more detail in the next post.

Analysis of Australian Temperature - Part 2

2009-04-08T13:15:00.003+10:00

For all new readers, please read Analysis of Australian Temperature - Part 1 first.

Part 2:

What is interesting in the analysis done in Part 1, might not have been that 44% of all warming in Australia is accounted for, simply by a better mathematical method of analysing the data, but rather the variations in the temperature throughout the day as shown below:

Why is it that we are seeing a significant warming trend between the hours of 9am and 3pm, and a smaller increase in other times? Surely, if CO2 were the principle mean of global warming, then we should see a constant increase amongst all times. This clearly is not the case in the analysis of Australian temperatures.

We can look even closer at Australian time based temperatures by comparing their anomalies over time as compared to the maximum and minimum temperatures. If global warming has been by and large been a result of an increase in CO2 emissions, then we should have a steady increase when compared to maximum and minimum temperatures over time. This is what we find below:

What we find in the above is something quite extraordinary. For 9am, noon, 3pm, 6pm and 9pm there is little trend. This indicates that temperatures at these times have increased at around the same rate as the minimum temperature. Readers will note however a large increase in the last 10 years of differences in temperature between 9am and the minimum.

However for midnight, 3am and 6am, we see a very strong decreasing relationship. This indicates that the minimum temperature has increased at a significant rate when compared to these temperatures. Some readers will say that this is understandable considering the analysis done in part 1, however it is highlighted here for significantly.

It seems, that the minimum temperature is more strongly related to the temperature in the middle of the day than at night. Too may times, people quote minimum temperature trends as having something to do with overnight temperatures, when we clearly show here, and the fact that the minimum rarely occurs at night, that this is not the case.

Put frankly, the minimum is a poor measure of overnight temperatures, and its trend has more to do with day temperatures than night. And what of maximum temperatures? An analysis of time vs maximum temperatures is shown below.

Whilst the above graphs show that maximum temperatures have increased at a greater rate over time when compared to midnight, 3am and 6am temperatures, this was expected. What was not expected is the strong negative relationship between maximum temperatures and time based temperatures during the day. In particular 3pm. Maximum temperatures are shown here to be increasing at a lot larger rate over time when compared to 3pm (and other day temperatures).

This is strange, as we would expect the maximum temperature to be reached between noon and 6pm depending on various aspects, especially the season. What this indicates therefore, is that during the day, Australia is heating up at a greater rate per hour, reaching a peak temperature and then falling in temperature at a greater rate per hour.

One could argue that Co2 could not be the cause of this. The carbon blanket should increase temperatures steadily throughout the night and day at a relatively constant rate. However, what we are seeing here is minimal increases at night, and then steady increase and then decreases during the day, the rate of change of this increase and decrease during the day increasing over time.

What could cause this? Well in Part 3, we will compare time based temperatures as well as look at temperature trends based on season (summer, winter).

Analysis of Australian Temperature - Part 1

2009-04-03T12:33:00.005+11:00

Australian temperatures are on the increase, there is little doubt about that. Maximum and minimum temperatures have risen by about 0.7 degrees in the last 100 years. Our analysis will look not only at maximum and minimum temperatures, but also at time based temperatures, which we previously argued are a better more consistent representation for temperature analysis.

Using 21 weather stations around Australia that have accurate and consitant time based temperature data from 1950 onwards, we also found that the maximum and minimum temperatures have significantly increased in the last 50 years. This is shown below. Click on them for a larger graph.

You should note a couple of things. Firstly, the maximum temperature has increased since 1950 at a rate of 1.5 degrees which is larger than normal. This is for a couple of different reasons. One is that temperature has warmed up quicker in the last 50 years than the 50 before that, and secondly, because we have had to use some urban weather station in our analysis which is not normally used because of the heat island effect. Thus the increase is greater than normal.

But that shouldn't worry us or hinder any analysis that we undertake. Secondly you will notice that the minimum temperature has increased at a rate to what was expected or at a lower rate than the maximum temperature. It is still a significant increase, although there seems to be no major changes in the temperature since around 1972. Before this we saw mostly negative anomalies, and after positive.

Either way, both maximum and minimum temperature are shown to have increased significantly since 1950 as expected.

So what about time based temperature? Well as shown below we have 8 time based temperature since 1950 for Midnight, 3am, 6am, 9am, Noon, 3pm, 6pm and 9pm. It must be noted that for some reason the amount of data for 9pm is less than the other time variables.

There are many things that we can talk about with regards to the above graphs. Readers will first note that night time temperatures (Midnight, 3am, 6am) show little increase in temperature. In fact, they average just 0.43, 0.26 and 0.28 degree increase in temperature per 100 years. This is a lot lower than the expected, which clearly indicates that night time temperatures in Australia are only increasing a very small amount.

But how can this be when the minimum temperature is shown to be increasing a lot more? Well the answer is simple and surprising to many, in that, the minimum temperature more often than not occurs during the day. Basically, as soon as the sun sets, the temperature decreases over night. When the sun rises it starts to heat up the atmosphere, and only after 30 mins to an hour after sunrise to we fall to a minimum and the temperature starts to increase again for the day.

Hence, the minimum temperature has little to do with night time temperature and is a lot more influenced by the sun and cloud cover.

Readers will also note the sudden increase in temperature at 9am, noon and 3pm. Which then starts to fade a way a little from 6pm onwards. This is highlighted in the graph below:

So it is clear that temperatures in the middle of the day have increased at a greater rate than temperature outside this time. What would cause this? It is also clear that the maximum (which generally occurs around 3pm depending on the season), and also the minimum (which generally occurs around 6am to 9am depending on the season) are highly influenced by the increase in temperature in the middle of the day.

This graph alone strongly suggests that analysis of maximum and minimum temperatures solely is not an accurate way to measure temperature. A better method would be to take the average of each of the times to come up with an average temperature increase since 1950.

Currently, climate change analysis simply averages the maximum and minimum temperatures to come to a conclusion that the world has increased by 0.7-1.0 degrees over the past 100 years. With our data, this equates to 1.17 degree increase per 100 years. However if we average all of the time based temperatures, which no doubt, would be a more accurate way of measuring temperature over time, we find an average increase of only 0.66 degree per 100 years. This is shown below:

Hence we can conclude that 44% (1 - 0.66/1.17) of all increase in temperature in Australia since 1950 can be accounted for, simply by a better mathematical method of measuring temperature!

44%!

We've just reduced the amount of temperature increase that Australia has seen, simply by looking closer to the data and analysing it in more depth. But we are going to get a lot more in depth that this. And that will have to wait till part 2.

Melbourne Stage 4 Restrictions

2009-04-02T12:26:00.000+11:00

Melbourne should now be in stage 4 restrictions for water usage, which means that watering the garden and washing the car is not allowed at all.

The trigger point for stage 4 restrictions is 29.3 percent. This was hit on the 30th of March, and already 2 days later, Melbourne's water storage levels are now at 29.1 percent.

The Brumby government said that they will stay on stage 3a till at least November. Water minister, Tim Holding said that

``We are not using trigger points because we need to take into account not only the level of water in the storages but the amount of demand there is on those storages,''

Brumby Government water minister Tim Holding said the mixture of 3a restrictions and the Target 155 water saving campaign meant metropolitan users were already held to a high standard.

It seems to me, that the only reason why we are not on stage 4 restrictions is that if we go there, then it is clear that the Brumby government's "Target 155" scheme was a failure.

With the population increasing all the time in Melbourne, and no extra water storages becoming available, it is clear that the Target 155 scheme will always inevitably be a failure.

Travelling, Working and Analysing Weather

2009-03-30T12:46:00.003+11:00

It's been a long while since I've reported any statistical analysis of late. In fact, I've even managed to debunk a couple of my own statistical analysis on Australia's weather. I've been travelling to Europe a couple of times, working hard in my own buiness that I have set up and of course, am continuing to analyse Australian weather data patterns.

My analysis in this area is a lot stronger than has been reported on this blog, and I intend on producing almost all of it in the next week or two. That means stay tuned for some very interesting analysis on Australain weather including full temperature, cloud, and sun analaysis.

The results are quite dramatic and will hopefully cause a big discussion point. Some of the analysis is semi-repeated from analysis that has been put out here previously, but lots of analysis, especailly at the end, will be brand new and no doubt extremly interesting to many. But to start off with, I am going to give a repost of my maximums and minimums post done almost two years ago. See you real soon!

Maximums and Minimums

The world is heating up. One thing is for sure, is that there is scientific consensus on this issue! Analysis of maximum and minimum temperature have proven it. Both have gone up significantly world wide, and also too in Australia.

The maximum is used as a measure of how hot we are getting during the day, whilst the minimum is a measure of how cold we get during the night. But are they good variables to use as a measure of average temperature?

Maximum and minimum temperatures occur at different times of the day, often by large amounts when in different seasons. Surely a better measure would be to keep the time constant and see if the temperature has increased at that (and other) specific times?

But unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of good data lying around for this type of analysis. A large exception to this is Australian data. Whilst there is not as many time based data as maximum and minimum data, I feel that statistical analysis on the raw data is by far more advantageous than doing statistical analysis on a statistic (which is derived from the raw data).

So why has there been no scientific analysis on time based temperatures? For me it seems very strange that we can spend billions of dollars on global warming, yet still have not done the proper statistical analysis on temperatures?

The answer is simple. There is no reason to do further analysis on temperatures. We have already proven and clearly show that maximum and minimum temperatures are increasing - quite dramatically in fact. As we said earlier, there is scientific consensus on this. The world is heating up and this is beyond doubt.

So why do more analysis on something that is crystal clear and proven beyond recognition? So, naturally, noone has.

Hence we are stuck in a scientific world where we are spending billions of dollars on what will happen when the world heats up, and what we can do about it, yet have not done a full statistical investigation about how the world is heating up.

We know why the world is heating up (Co2 emissions, right?). We know who (humans of course). We know where (the entire world, especially where there is ice). We know what (our pagan earth). We even know when (now, and the devastating effects it will have on our children's children).

But we do not know how. We only know that maximum and minimum temperatures are increasing.

But as most scientists will argue, this is plenty of evidence to prove that we are warming up during the day and at night. In fact, evidence suggests that minimum's are increasing at an even greater rate than maximum temperatures (which lead some scientists to believe in the urban heat island effect etc.).

Whilst most will say that the maximum temperature is a reasonable statistic to relate to average temperature during the day (time based temperatures is obviously better), how good does the minimum temperature relate to the average temperature at night?

Maximum temperatures occur generally when the sun is at it's hottest. Well at least when we feel it the most. Generally this is around 3pm, but changes dramatically in the different seasons and weather conditions. 3pm is almost the middle of the day. It's a little later than the middle, and maximums occur a little later than the middle due to the atmosphere warming up (by the sun). Still, we as civilians, are always interested in the maximum predicted temperature by the weather forecasters as a reference to how hot tomorrow will be.

But when looking at minimum temperatures, the issue is different. As a general rule, as soon as the sun sets we start losing heat in the atmosphere and the temperature will slowly subside. It will keep going down and down until, you guessed it, the sun warms up the atmosphere and then rises.

So the minimum temperature will occur right at the end of night time - the period shortly before light. Is the minimum temperature therefore a good representation of night temperatures? Would you think that taking the temperature at sunset would be a good representation of how hot the day is?

The answer is quite clearly no. Whilst we can suggest that maximum temperatures is a reasonable (although not fantastic) statistic when it comes to it's relation with average daytime temperatures, the minimum temperature is a terrible representation of how cold a certain night is.

This being for a couple of reasons. One; in that it is not generally the minimum temperature around the middle of the night, and two; in that it is actually influenced by the sun.

The what? the sun? How on earth can the minimum temperature be influenced by the sun?

Well it does. A warmer sun would heat up the atmosphere at a greater rate, just at the time where we would normally achieve a minimum temperature. Warmer days (thanks to a hot sun!) would result in hotter nights. Maximum and minimum temperatures are related and both are quite dependent on the strength of the sun.

So what has any of this got to do with global warming? Well, tomorrow, we will show you exactly why minimum temperatures are a poor statistic in measuring overnight temperatures and will prove the suns influence and changing behaviour over time.

In short, we will prove to you that global warming - the increase in maximum and minimum temperatures - is primarily due to increases in solar radiation.

And you don't want to miss that!

Climate change not imminent danger

2008-12-16T09:21:00.002+11:00

Opps,
Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC seems to have spilled the beans here:

There is no clear evidence that global warming is an imminent danger to the world, says Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

But even so why not continue to cut emmissions even though thre is no clear evidence of danger to the world:

Even so, it would be good for governments to go further with proposed cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions to deal with dire predictions made in a 2007 panel report, he told the Associated Press in an interview on Tuesday.

It would be good? so what, it doesn't really matter, but it'd be good if it happened?

Rudd to decrease emissions by how much?

2008-12-16T09:08:00.002+11:00

Almost exactly a year ago, Kevin Rudd supported cutting greenhouse emissions by 25 to 40%:

THE Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, signalled his support for developed countries, including Australia, agreeing to making deep cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions in the next 12 years.

In a significant move last night the Australian delegation to the UN climate talks stated it "fully supports" the proposal that developed countries need to cut their greenhouse gas emission by 25 to 40 per cent by 2020.

But just yesterday, the Prime Minister announced a 5% reduction is his plan on cutting the deadly gas by 2020. So what does 5% actually mean? Bob Brown and the Greens for example, want a 100% reduction.

Well Australa's CO2 emmisions are currently at 326,000 thousand metric tonnes. Which is about 1.2% of the worlds.

If we assume that CO2 has caused 100% of the 0.7 degre increase that we have seen over the past 100 years (extremly unlikely - even the IPCC don't perscribe to this, but still - for interests sake), then australia cutting greenshouse gasses by 5% will result in a decrease of

0.00042 degrees per 100 years, or

0.0000042 degree decrease per year.

Well done Kevid Rudd!!

Global Warming to increase crime levels

2008-11-10T13:29:00.001+11:00

Yep, apparently according to the ABC:

A new report from the Strategic Policy Institute says climate change could lead to an increase in crime.

...the report's author, Anthony Bergin, is predicting global warming will lead to an increase in violent crime and so called 'climate crime'.

More police resources may be needed to cope with an influx of migrants from low lying areas as the sea level rises.

Please

Everything back to normal! Phew!

2008-11-07T15:24:00.003+11:00

Accoring to Geliogenic Climate Change, tropical cyclones are back to normal:

Link here:

And after one of the most quickest and amazing turns of ice coverage on record, Global ice records are currently at the same level as 1979:

Graph here:

Thank goodness for that, for a while I was getting scared, very very scared.

The pointlessness of a Prius

2008-11-04T13:28:00.001+11:00

Australian Climate Madness explains the pointlessness of hybrid cars:

The latest advert for the Toyota Prius claims that by driving one for 10 years or 100,000km, you can save 7.5 tonnes of CO2 as compared to a regular petrol-engined car.

Let's put that into perspective. If you drove a Prius for, say, 70,000 years, you would save the same amount of CO2 that a large coal-fired power station generates in a day.

Moral of the story: don't fool yourself into thinking that driving a butt-ugly hybrid car is anything but a feel-good gesture.

Fly everywhere to see everything before it disappears

2008-10-31T09:56:00.003+11:00

Frommers has released its latest book:

500 Places to see before they disappear.

A lot of the places are, according to the book, going to disappear due to global warming. The whole of Tasmania is on the endagered list apparently. And there are several places on the list that you must je set across the universe to see because they will shortly (maybe in several thousand years) fall below sea level due to rising sea levels.

Fommers have done their part and sent copies of the book all around the world by plane for you to buy, so its up to you to jet set around the world vising everywhere before the CO2 levels that you guzzle out destroy the actal things that you want to see.

Hmmm....

Natural History? What History?

2008-10-20T22:10:00.002+11:00

New Yorks Natural History Museum decides to open the floodgates into non lived "history". Somehow through propaganda:

Water, 16 feet of it, smothers the southern tip of Manhattan, covering the landfill of Battery Park City. Tropic coral reefs are stripped of life, their rocks pocked with contusions. Polar bears rummage in junk heaps seeking food amid construction debris. Glaciers split into ice chips, floods ravage coastlines, droughts parch the Earth and forest fires rage untamable.

If the End of Days were going to be portrayed in a museum exhibition, it might look like the array of natural disasters, both real and imagined, that can be found at “Climate Change,” which opens Saturday at the American Museum of Natural History.

There is something almost biblical about these worst-case scenarios, apocalyptically suggested even in the subtitle: “The Threat to Life and a New Energy Future.” And if the plagues promised with global warming don’t include an onslaught of frogs, there is more than enough to worry about: the exhibition predicts proliferation of malaria and desperate foraging of wildlife.

PDO and temperature trends

2008-10-20T22:03:00.002+11:00

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) was switching into cool and/or warm modes almost exactly when cooling/warming trends began in the 20th century.

This observation has been known to Joe D'Aleo and others for years. Roy Spencer is now completing a paper for Geophysical Research Letters in which he quantifies these relationships:

Weather Questions, Anthony Watts's blog

Spencer assumes that the cloud cover is affected by the PDO index - which is almost certainly the case, the only question is "how much". These variations influence the deeper ocean where the heat may be stored and mixed for many decades or a century. Finally, he puts these things together to optimally match the thermometer data.

You can see that the PDO-only model describes the temperature pretty well at the qualitative level, including the slight cooling between the 1940s and late 1970s. However, the fit gets improved if you add a term proportional to the CO2 concentration. However, such an addition only adds 0.2 °C to the temperature or so - close to the expected effect of CO2 throughout the 20th century. It shouldn't be shocking that the resulting CO2-induced warming for the 21st century is well below 1 °C, too.

Incidentally, the highly asymmetric (red) IPCC range indicates that what dominates their calculations of the sensitivity is not a full-fledged model of reality but a set of priors. If they had a full model, the 90% confidence level range would be pretty much symmetrically distributed around the most likely central value.

In fact, it's known that the upper bound of the confidence interval depends almost exclusively on priors - how much you are willing to admit a crazily high sensitivity in the first place. Because the amount of non-trivial data (inferences) they apply to refine the estimate is low, the prior prejudices are not affected too much. A typical example of a prejudice-dominated science.

Spencer and Braswell ended up with a 0.6 °C warming for the 21st century only but I guess that Lindzen would still beat them by a little bit.

Thanks lubos

Alaska saved

2008-10-17T23:26:00.001+11:00

Good news from Alaska:

Alaskan Glaciers Grow for First Time in 250 years

High snowfall and cold weather to blame.

To blame?

Worst Autumn on Record!

2008-10-12T23:14:00.000+11:00

If it doesn't fit the bill, just pretend it never happened

2008-10-09T18:02:00.003+11:00

Seems to be the case of recent with many pro global warming websites. One in particular is Open Mind which proved this week to be anything but.

They start the first paragraph saying how terrible my website is for claiming that Australia has seen an increase of rainfall since records began:

It even suggested that over the long term, Australia is getting increased rainfall, and refers to a post on a website titled gustofhotair as supporting evidence. The website claims to present the author’s “statistical analysis of Australian Weather,” but I don’t see evidence of very much statistical analysis on the site. The author claims to be expert in statistics, but I don’t see any evidence of that at all.

Its quite obvious that the author failed to even have a look at my website, but was still very hasty to make comments about it.

None the less, only two paragraphs later "Open Mind" stated that:

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology provides climate data for Australia throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, from which we can see some of the changes in rainfall over the last 100 years. Overall, Australia has increased rainfall over the last century

So he ridicules my website, but then two paragraphs later, confirms that the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has provided the same conclusion. Interesting.

The remainder of his article talks about rainfall in the murray darling basin as well as pan evaporation and temperature. For those who want to be informed, here is the data for temperature in the MDB, rainfall here and pan evaporation here.

The report goes onto show that since pan evaporation records started in the area (1975) whenever temperature is high for a certain year, so is pan evaporation, and draws the conclusion that higher temperatures equals higher evaporation.

He says earlier in the report that "the drought currently plaguing the Murray-Darling basin is the worst in Australia’s history"

This is where I stepped in and decided to reply to his comments:

Lol, look harder, and please try not to contradict yourself within a couple of paragraphs, it doesn’t look good for your argument.

Ohh and the Murray Darling Basin you say is “is the worst [drought] in Australia’s history”

Take a look here at the data here: http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/timeseries.cgi?variable=rain®ion=mdb&season=0112

and tell me if you think its the worst in history. There is no statistical evidence that the murray darling basin is significantly decreasing in rainfall.

Oh also, your graphs are fantastic, and I like the way you have used a smoother to show that the current rainfall in the Murray Darling Basin is bad, almost as bad as 1900.

However, lets look at the actual data and find out when the worst the Murray Darling actually was.

And the answer is between 1944 to 1946 the rainfall of the Murray Darling was in fact less than currently.

In fact if we take the last 4 or 5 or 6 or 7 or 8 or 9 or 10 years average annual rainfall and compare that to 1946 and the 4 to 10 years before that, we see that in every single instance rainfall was a lot less than it is now as shown below:

Av.Prev.Years to 2007 to 1946 Difference
4 423.5 361.1 62.4
5 429.0 391.9 37.1
6 405.6 402.1 3.6
7 407.0 386.6 20.4
8 428.9 406.5 22.4
9 447.0 399.6 47.4
10 460.9 397.5 63.4

So rainfall back around that time was around 30-40mm less rainfall than currently. I’m not saying that rainfall isn’t low now, but it’s not the worst in history and there is also no statistically significant decreasing trend like suggested.

"Open Mind@ replied

[Response: Drought depends on more than just rainfall. Not clear enough for you?]

My reply was obvious, however it was edited. IT is a shame that I didn't keep a copy of exactly what I wrote, but I learnt for the next time that this website picks and chooses what you reply with:

Hi,
after my long 2 comments which show that the Murray Darling Basin is not in its worst drought in Australia’s history based on rainfall information, comments about how you criticise my website for saying that rainfall is increasing and then two paragraphs later confirm that the ABM say the same thing I get a simple reply like that?

What about the other comments? Also you should delete the “smoother” that you added to the Murray Darling rainfall graph. A smoother is meant to highlight the trends of a graph which might otherwise be harder to see. Your smoother is so ridicules that the nature of it alone will exaggerate the start and the ends of your data. Clearly a better smoother is the one on the ABM website as shown here

http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/timeseries.cgi?variable=rain®ion=mdb&season=0112

which shows no significant trends since 1900. My conclusions of this is that either you are incapable of accurate statistical analysis by using such a smoother, or that you used it on purpose to alarm and exaggerate your point. Lets hope its the former.

And in reply to your comment about drought is more than just rainfall. I completely agree, however I was merely informing you of the fact that the Murray Darling Basin has had less rainfall in the past.

Your correlation of pan evaporation and maximum temperature is interesting, but somewhat simple. Pan evaporation is also highly correlated with rainfall. Greater rainfall years = less pan evaporation years. Sounds strange? That’s because maximum annual temperatures are also highly correlated with rainfall. Years of high temperature also have years of lower rainfall. It makes sense. If we have greater cloud cover one year, most likely we’ll have greater rainfall, lower maximum temperatures and hence less pan evaporation. If we have less cloud cover in a certain year, most likely we will have less rainfall, higher temperatures and greater pan evaporation.

All these variables, and more, are intercorrelation, and have to be looked at in whole. Pan evaporation quite clearly according to the graph

http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/timeseries.cgi?variable=evap®ion=mdb&season=0112

has not increased or decreased in the last 32 years. And even though you say, that 32 years is not enough to find a trend, perhaps this is only because the data do not suit your argument.

I continued to him discussion various aspects of climate, and links to my website showing the statistical analysis that he said did not exist, but these were hastily deleted by the author, presumably, so that he would not be wearing egg on his face.

he replied:

[Response: This is why it's just about impossible to get through to you. Has pan evaporation really neither increased nor decreased in the last 32 years? Has it done both? What analysis did you apply? Are you even aware that "trend" doesn't mean the same thing as "linear trend"?

You repeatedly say "look at this graph" then pronounce that there's "no change" without even mentioning any analysis performed or any possibilities considered. You take a real correlation (between evaporation and temperature) with a clear physical causative link and hand-wave it away, expecting us to buy that "related to other variables" bullshit. You take a clear and statistically sound decrease in recent long-term rainfall and attribute it to the choice of smoothing, mainly because you can't wrap your mind around the concept that trends don't have to be linear.

No previous historical records for the Murray-Darling Basin indicate the combination of reduced rainfall and increased temperature observed today.]

My next reply was in depth and was as follows:

Hi and thanks for the reply.
Firstly I was wondering why my comment was edited? Not all of it was shown by yourself. And also you failed to comment on my comments about how you criticized gustofhotair for claiming that Australia’s rainfall has increased and then quoted the ABM a few paragraphs later who said that Australia’s rainfall had increased. I am still waiting for that one.

As for the statistical analysis, I could do it on the data but it is quite clear with the naked eye that there is no significant trend, linear or otherwise has occurred in the last 32 years of pan evaporation. But hey, I did it anyway. As shown by the links just below, there is quite clearly a seasonal but no significant increasing or decreasing trend. To say otherwise is to be blind.

http://www.gustofhotair.com/MDB1.jpg
http://www.gustofhotair.com/MDB2.jpg
http://www.gustofhotair.com/MDB3.jpg

This is where Mr. Fix it came in. Check out the posts below. All of this was included in the same comment and was deleted by the author. He explains why in his reply late, but such deletion of comments is highly unsatisfactory.

As far as the ‘"related to other variables" bullshit’ goes, perhaps you should look into it. Just to mention a few Murray Darling Basin weather stations. Are you aware that Mildura, for example, has increased its sunshine duration hours from approximately 8 sunshine hours per day 18 years ago to over 9 sunshine hours now as shown here.

http://www.gustofhotair.com/mildurasunshine.gif

The data for sunshine duration in Mildura is limited, but the increasing trend is obvious. However also at the heat of the day at 3pm, cloud cover has decreased in Mildura by as much as 8% from 4.25 eighths down to 3.9 eights since 1947. Incredible.

http://www.gustofhotair.com/milduracloud3pm.gif

“You take a real correlation (between evaporation and temperature) with a clear physical causative link and hand-wave it away” So similarly, I have previously (you obviously failed to look at my website despite saying “I don’t see evidence of very much statistical analysis on the site. The author claims to be expert in statistics, but I don’t see any evidence of that at all.”) analysed this in similar pattern to yourself and concluded that sunshine duration accounts for 91% of all warming of Australia since 1951.

Find the full details here: http://gustofhotair.blogspot.com/2007/12/sunshine-duration-accounts-for-93-of.html.

If you think that cloud variation is simply a rubbish variable, then it would help if you stop making ill informed comments about Australian weather statistics and trends. Normally I wouldn’t write with just aggressive tone, I apologise, however it seemed that you openly criticized my website without jurisdiction and even without any effort to analyse lead alone read any of the statistics on the webpage.

I look forward to your reply.

SO there we have it. More links to proven statistical analysis. The kind of stuff he has said all along doesn't even exist on my website.

So what does the author of "Open Mind" do now? He deletes all those comments, because

1. he has no argument against my analysis.
2. He has said all along that I have no idea about statistics and that my website has no statistics in it, when quite clearly the above proves that I do.

He is stuck in a conundrum. Keeping my comments means that I have provided all the statistics that he cant argue against and he will end up with egg on his face. Deleting them will go against any bloggers claim to freedom of speech. After all that's half the reason why blogs are around.

So what does he do? He deletes my comments, hopes that I didn't keep them, hopes even more that I wont report this on my website, and makes a reply that should make you feel sick:

[Response: This is why it's impossible to get through to you. You haven't done any analysis at all.

You just plotted graphs, and frankly, you've done a lousy job of that. Then you draw a conclusion based on "it is quite clear with the naked eye ..." What's "quite clear" is that when it comes to data analysis, you don't know what you're doing.

Here is a graph of monthly pan evaporation anomaly (departure from the seasonal pattern) for the MDB from 1975 to the present, plotted on a scale big enough that people can actually SEE something.

Here is a 4th-degree polynomial fit to that data, showing that pan evaporation was higher in 1980 and 2005 than it was in the early 1990s. The difference is statistically significant, as is the 4th-degree polynomial fit is as well. Goodbye to your ridiculous "no significant increasing or decreasing trend" -- there's both.

And since you seem to like moving averages so much, here are 11-year moving averages showing the same pattern, with error bars illustrating the statistical significance of the changes. Here is the same thing, with 5-yr moving averages.

This seems to be your modus operandi -- produce a few graphs, draw a sweeping conclusion based on the "naked eye" and then make pronouncements about your in-depth statistical analysis when in reality there isn't any.

As for deleting the rest of your comment, and not answering all of your objections, I prefer to spend my time on those who have something intelligent to say and some real analysis to back it up.]

Draw some graphs, make some comments? Isn't that exactly what he just did. This is worst of any kind of blogger. I provided statistical analysis, plenty of graphs with statistical significance included, in depth statistical analysis, and then to back up his argument, he deletes the comments that I made and then claims that I do not provide any form of statistical analysis.

It seems, that if the bill doesn't fit, just pretend that it never happened. Shame on you "Open Mind"

My reply, which I am sure will not get posted is as follows:

I would put it to you that the reason that you edited my post is because by including it made you look stupid. It included links to accurate and thoroughly research statistical analysis, which showed that almost all of Australia’s recent warming has been caused by an increase of sunshine hours and a decrease of cloud cover. MY theory is that if you had not edited such a comment, you wouldn’t be able to make comments such as “when it comes to data analysis, you don’t know what you’re doing.” And “make pronouncements about your in-depth statistical analysis when in reality there isn’t any.”

This is a terrible case against freedom of speech. I provide you with complete statistical analysis of the weather data, arguments about pan evaporation, cloud cover, sunshine hours, rainfall and temperature in Australia and the murray darling basin, and then you decide for yourself to edit it out and claim that I did on such thing.

Is it worth me even replying to your highly edited, no debate, no group discussion, unintelligent, lack of freedom of speech website when this is how you treat a logical reply? I think not. Instead, I will include the full comments that I and yourself made on my website, and let people decide for themselves the whole debate; which is of course impossible to be had on your website.

It seems that there is a growing trend with pro global warming crew, not to wager in debate. AL Gore does this, and my only conclusion why this is so is either

- because they are afraid that they know less than their opposition
- they want to silence their critics (so did various evil dictators of the past)
- they realise that if there is any form of doubt on the science, then their jobs, and government funded money will be up the clacker.

"Open Mind" at least allows some form of debate in his comments. That's what a blog is for. But if he continually deletes part of your comments and then claims that you never made the comments that you did, this is pure propoganda.

"Open Mind" is anything but

The Murray Darling Basin - the worst rainfall ever?

2008-10-07T08:55:00.003+11:00

So much news has been about Australias crops and the lack of rainfall of the Murray Darling Basing. The worst drought in 1000 years, and most definetly the worst on record.

However the BOM website shows that there is no decreasing trend: http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/timeseries.cgi?variable=rain®ion=mdb&season=0112

Ok, so the past few years have had lower rainfall than the norm, but is it the worst on record?

The answer is no, the years leading up to 1946 had less rainfall than currently. In fact you can simply average the last 4 or 5 or 6 years up to 10 and in every case, the rainfall leading up to 1946 was less than current.

The results are below:

YearsAv 2007 1946 Diff
4 423.5 361.1 62.4
5 429.0 391.9 37.1
6 405.6 402.1 3.6
7 407.0 386.6 20.4
8 428.9 406.5 22.4
9 447.0 399.6 47.4
10 460.9 397.5 63.4

As shown below 60 years ago we had around 30-40mm less rainfall per year along the murray darling basin than we do now. Its not the worst drought on record, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be concerned about it. However quite clearly, the graph indicates no statistically signifcant decrease in rainfall over the region: http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/timeseries.cgi?variable=rain®ion=mdb&season=0112

And as for the worlds data, rainfall seems to have very little changes at all when compared to global temperature: http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/g_timeseries.cgi?variable=global_r®ion=global&season=0112

Gotta hate the plastic

2008-10-03T04:52:00.001+10:00

Australia to cut emmissions by 90% by 2050

2008-10-01T09:37:00.001+10:00

One question: how?

RSPCA blaims global warming for the number of stray cats

2008-09-17T20:17:00.001+10:00

Knee deep in stray cats? Blame global warming, RSPCA says

The RSPCA claims climate change is producing a boom in the number of feral felines prowling streets in Melbourne’s leafy east.

The society, based in Burwood East, said warmer seasons encouraged breeding and urged moggy lovers to lock up their cats and stop feeding scraps to strays.

RSPCA animal welfare spokesman Andrew Foran said Melbourne’s stray cat population had eclipsed 500,000 and was on the rise.

“Warmer weather is improving breeding conditions, extending breeding seasons and reducing the natural attrition rate, resulting in thousands more kittens being born into lives of disease, neglect and starvation,” he said.

Wind power speed record bid fails

2008-09-12T19:28:00.000+10:00

A team that had hoped to break the world land-speed record for a wind-powered vehicle is blaming climate change for its failure.

Eco Graffiti Allowed

2008-09-12T00:47:00.001+10:00

Its ok to tresspass and vandalise anyone's property, as long as you are saving the world:

In a ground breaking court case, Greenpeace activists have successfully defended themselves against allegations of criminal damage amounting to £30,000, during a protest at the Kingsnorth power station owned by E.ON, in October last year.

Yesterday afternoon, jurors at Maidstone Crown Court decided that the accused, Huw Williams, 41, Ben Stewart, 34, Will Rose, 29, Kevin Drake, 44, and New Zealand native Emily Hall aged 34, were all found not guilty.

In his summing up the Judge, David Caddick, had urged jurors to consider if the defendants’ actions had any valid legal excuse.

The jury seemed to take the hint and found by a 10 to 2 majority that they did have a legal excuse for their actions.

The costly nine day trial has set off alarm bells at E.ON and many other similar companies, who believe that this ruling now gives cart blanche to any group who wants to invade and occupy any facility that they see as a danger to the environment.

The activists had climbed a tall chimney at the plant with the intention of painting the words ‘GORDON BIN IT’ down its length.

Then in a bizarre twist they were served with an High Court injunction via police helicopter, restraining them from finishing their artwork that had only managed to reach the word GORDON.

Yesterday, through the company’s press officer, E.ON said that they had no objection to legal protests and in fact were equally as concerned about the environment as Greenpeace are.

Overnight warmth?

2008-08-26T19:16:00.001+10:00

I guess someone forgot to tell the Australian Bureau of Meteorology that minimum temperatures generally do not occur overnight:

"Average spring minimum temperatures are also favoured to be warmer than normal across most of the country, with the exception of Queensland's southern half and the northeast half of NSW (see map). The chances of increased overnight warmth (averaged over the coming three months) are between 60 and 80% over most of Australia. Or to put it another way, for every ten years with ocean patterns like the current, about six to eight would be expected to warmer than average in terms of overnight temperatures averaged over spring."

Deep statistical analysis of temperatures to come soon....promise!

The Green Olympics

2008-08-14T23:11:00.003+10:00

The green hypocrisy

World Ice Levels Continues to Grow

2008-04-18T10:30:00.002+10:00

World ice levels have continued to grow with levels now more than 1 million square kilometers more than normal. The northern hemisphere has shown a continued increase to almost normal levels. Whilst in the south, the Antarctic continues to grow!

Last post for a while

2008-04-11T20:09:00.002+10:00

This will be the last post for a while, before I head over to Europe for various reasons. When I return (6 months to a year) I will be going full steam ahead with my research. Thanks for all the comments in the past, and hopefully soon we'll be back up and running.
Cheers
Jonathan Lowe

Climate change could see pubs run dry

2008-04-08T15:06:00.002+10:00

with emphasis on the word "could"

"It will mean either there will be pubs without beer or the cost of beer will go up," Jim Salinger said.

"Most areas in Australia where malting barley is cropped are likely to experience producing declines," he said.

So maybe it might be better to see if malting barley has decreased in volume in the last years. But yes it has! From 148,000,000 tonnes in 1974 to 138,000,000 tonnes in 2005.

Surely due to global warming!

A timelineof climate change science (politics)

2008-04-03T11:05:00.002+11:00

Matthew Knight at CNN has devised a timeline of the most important discoveries of climate science. Have a read of them as shown below:

Did anyone else see a pattern? The early discoveries are all about scientific discoveries. In the last decade, almost all the advancements are political and not scientific. If we did a timeline of Physics or Chemistry or Mathematics, do you think we would get political advancements in the highlights? No. They are pure sciences. Just goes to show that climate science is now more political than scientific.

1824

French physicist Joseph Fourier is first to describe a "greenhouse effect" in a paper delivered to Paris's Académie Royale des Sciences.

1861

Irish physicist John Tyndall carries out research on radiant heat and the absorption of radiation by gases and vapors including CO2 and H2O. He shows that carbon dioxide can absorb in the infrared spectrum, and it can cause a change in temperature. Tyndall famously declares: "The solar heat possesses. . . the power of crossing an atmosphere. But when the heat is absorbed by the planet, it is so changed in quality that the rays emanating from the planet cannot get with the same freedom back into space. Thus the atmosphere admits of the entrance of the solar heat, but checks its exit. The result is a tendency to accumulate heat at the surface of the planet."

1896

Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius first proposes the idea of a man-made greenhouse effect. He hypothesizes that the increase in the burning of coal since the beginning of industrialization could lead to an increase in atmospheric CO2 and heat up the earth. Arrhenius was trying to find out why the earth experienced ice ages. He thought the prospect of future generations living "under a milder sky" would be a desirable state of affairs.

1938

British engineer Guy Stewart Callendar compiles temperature statistics in a variety of regions and finds that over the previous century the mean temperature had risen markedly. He also discovers that CO2 levels had risen 10 percent during the same period. He concludes that CO2 was the most likely reason for the rise in temperature.

1955

John Hopkins University researcher Gilbert Plass proves that increased levels of carbon dioxide could raise atmospheric temperature. By 1959 Plass is boldly predicting that the earth's temperature would rise more than 3 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century.

In the same year chemist Hans Suess detects the fossil carbon produced by burning fuels, although he and Roger Revelle - director of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography - declare that the oceans must be absorbing the majority of atmospheric carbon dioxide, they decide to conduct further research.

1958

Revelle and Suess employ geochemist Charles Keeling to continuously monitor CO2 levels in the atmosphere. After only two years of measurements in Antarctica an increase is visible. The graph becomes widely known as the Keeling Curve and becomes an icon of global warming debate and continues to chart the year on year rise in CO2 concentrations to this day.

1970

The first "Earth Day" takes place on April 22nd across America. Twenty million people participate in the event organized by Democratic Senator Gaylord Nelson. It follows and precedes a series of U.S. Department for Energy reports highlighting concern about global warming

1979

The first World Climate Conference is held in Geneva attended by a range of scientists and leads to the establishment of the World Climate Program.

1985

Scientists at the World Climate Program conference at Villach in Austria confidently predict that increased CO2 concentrations will lead to a significant rise in the mean surface temperatures of the earth. A hole in the ozone layer is discovered over Antarctica.

1987

Officially the hottest year on record to date. Three years later the 1980s is confirmed as the hottest decade since records began.

1988

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is set up by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The IPCC will provide reports based on scientific evidence which reflect existing viewpoints within the scientific community.

Parts of the Mississippi river are reduced to a trickle and Yellowstone National Park becomes a tinderbox. In June, Dr James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies delivers his famous testimony to the U.S. Senate. Based on computer models and temperature measurements he is 99 percent sure that the [human caused] greenhouse effect has been detected and it is already changing the climate.

1990

The IPCC delivers its first assessment on the state of climate change, predicting an increase of 0.3 °C each decade in the 21st century -- greater than any rise seen over the previous 10,000 years.

1992

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development -- better known as the Earth Summit -- takes place in Rio de Janeiro attended by 172 countries. It is the first unified effort to get to grips with global warming and leads to negotiations which result in the Kyoto Protocol.

1995

The hottest year on record. Four years later the 1990s are confirmed as the hottest decade in 1000 years.

The IPCC report for that year states that "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate."

1997

The Kyoto Protocol: Industrialized countries agree to cut their emissions of six key greenhouse gases by an average of 5.2 percent. Under the terms of the agreement each country -- except developing countries -- commits to a reduction by 2008 -- 2012 compared to 1990 levels. Notably, the U.S. Congress vote 95 to 0 against any treaty which doesn't commit developing countries to "meaningful" cuts in emissions.

2001

Newly elected U.S. President George W. Bush renounces the Kyoto Protocol stating that it will damage the U.S. economy. The third IPCC report declares that the evidence of global warming over the previous 50 years being fueled by human activities is stronger than ever.

2003

Europe experiences one the hottest summers on record causing widespread drought claiming the lives of over 30,000 people.

2005

Following ratification by Russia -- the 19th country to do so -- in November 2004, the Kyoto Protocol becomes a legally binding treaty. America and Australia continue their refusal to sign up claiming reducing emissions would damage their economies.

2007

175 countries in total have ratified the Kyoto Treaty. Under new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Australia ratifies the treaty. The IPCC report for a fourth time states that "warming of the climate is unequivocal" and that the levels of temperature and sea rise in the 21st century will depend on the extent or limit of emissions in the coming years.

Former vice-president Al Gore and the IPCC jointly win the Nobel Peace Prize for services to environmentalism.

2008

160 square miles of the Wilkins Shelf breaks away from the Antarctic coast. Scientists are concerned that climate change may be happening faster than previously thought.

Following the Bali talks/roadmap, negotiators from 180 countries launch formal negotiations towards a new treaty to mitigate climate change at the Bangkok Climate Change Talks

Arctic Sea Ice Gone in Summer Within Five Years?

2008-03-30T13:10:00.002+11:00

Oops!

An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer—a sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point.

One scientist even speculated that summer sea ice could be gone in five years.

"The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming," said Zwally, who as a teenager hauled coal. "Now as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died. It is time to start getting out of the coal mines."

And just like lazarus, this arctic canary has risen from the dead, in what is seen had the biggest ever recorded increase in ice in the arctic.

The Facts

2007 shattered records for Arctic melt in the following ways:

Still to be released is NASA data showing the remaining Arctic sea ice to be unusually thin—another record

(or) The Facts:

2008 shattered records for Arctic growth in the following ways:

- Never before has the arctic increased in ice as such quickness and magnitude, so that earth's total ice is at 1 million square kilometers greater than normal.

Al Gore next president?

2008-03-28T17:24:00.003+11:00

a few weeks ago he had no chance, with odds posting around at $500 on betfair. But now some democrat's are thinking about giving him their vote because of the hillary - obama standoff. Gore's odds have come into $40, which means the market views him at around a 2.5% chance.

Still small of course, but reasonably probable

Massive ice shelf collapses, but ice near record high

2008-03-27T11:34:00.002+11:00

As reported by the Australian:

A CHUNK of Antarctic ice about seven times the size of Manhattan has suddenly collapsed, putting an even greater portion of glacial ice at risk.

British Antarctic Survey scientist David Vaughan said the collapse was the result of global warming.

While icebergs naturally break away from the mainland, collapses like this are unusual but are happening more frequently in recent decades, Mr Vaughan said.

Mr Vaughan had predicted the Wilkins shelf would collapse about 15 years from now.

Scientists said they are not concerned about a rise in sea level from the latest event, but say it's a sign of worsening global warming.

Such occurrences are “more indicative of a tipping point or trigger in the climate system,” said Sarah Das, a scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in the US.

However, as reported here

The full Wilkins 6,000 square mile ice shelf is just 0.39% of the current ice sheet (just 0.1% of the extent last September). Only a small portion of it between 1/10th-1/20th of Wilkins has separated so far, like an icicle falling off a snow and ice covered house. And this winter is coming on quickly. In fact the ice is returning so fast, it is running an amazing 60% ahead (4.0 vs 2.5 million square km extent) of last year when it set a new record. The ice extent is already approaching the second highest level for extent since the measurements began by satellite in 1979 and just a few days into the Southern Hemisphere winter and 6 months ahead of the peak. Wilkins like all the others that temporarily broke up will refreeze soon. We are very likely going to exceed last year’s record. Yet the world is left with the false impression Antarctica’s ice sheet is also starting to disappear.

Indeed that is true, because of current the world ice levels has no reached 1 million square kilometers above normal.

Novermber 1922 - Arctic warmth, vanishing seals, melting icebergs

2008-03-18T14:07:00.002+11:00

Oz heat due to climate change, world freeze is not

2008-03-16T14:34:00.002+11:00

Elissa Lawrence reports:

SOUTH Australians are being warned to brace for harsher and more regular heatwaves amid fears climate change may be occurring faster than forecast.

South Australian Bureau of Meteorology regional director Andrew Watson said he was confident the current record heatwave – which yesterday stretched into its 13th day – was a result of global warming, and it was evidence the rate of climate change could be gaining pace.

However, maybe climate change is only effecting Australia because world wide temperatures have plummeted.

More Non Consensus

2008-03-09T17:15:00.001+11:00

Only about one in three Alberta earth scientists and engineers believe the culprit behind climate change has been identified, a new poll reported today.

The expert jury is divided, with 26 per cent attributing global warming to human activity like burning fossil fuels and 27 per cent blaming other causes such as volcanoes, sunspots, earth crust movements and natural evolution of the planet.

A 99-per-cent majority believes the climate is changing. But 45 per cent blame both human and natural influences, and 68 per cent disagree with the popular statement that "the debate on the scientific causes of recent climate change is settled."

Global sea ice levels well above normal

2008-03-09T13:47:00.001+11:00

Yep, so true.

So can we put to rest the drought?

2008-03-04T15:15:00.002+11:00

I think we can

(although the ABOM can't - note the "decade-long rainfall deficits". See if you can find decade long deficits here.

Australia's second coldest Feb since 1976

2008-03-03T19:26:00.003+11:00

Australia recorded its second coldest Feb since 1976.

All Australian capitals, bar Perth, recorded lower than average temperatures, especially maximum temperatures.

If fact, just doing a bit of playing around on the ABOM website, we come across some interesting information.

Maximum temperatures in Feb have not significantly increased (t = 1.3, p = 0.2). However minimum temperatures in Feb have significantly increased and the graph shows this quite clearly ( = 4.1, p < 0.001).

Maximum temperatures in Jan have not significantly increase either (t = 1.8, p = 0.075), however minimum temperatures in Jan have increased hugely (t = 3.8, p < 0.001).

For December, maximum temperatures have not significantly increased, and make sure you check out the graph because its obvious there is no trend (t = 0.8, p = 0.4). However minimum temperatures in Dec have shown a constant increase in December and the increase is significant (t = 3.8, p < 0.001).

So all throughout summer in Australia, we are not heating up during the day. You can even check out the min and max increases in summer from the ABOM website.

Strange thing this global warming. Has no effect on summer time day temperatures.

Global Ice Levels Not Decreasing

2008-03-03T11:30:00.003+11:00

Global Ice Levels are not decreasing and in fact are perfectly on normal according to the Arctic Climate Research at the University of Illinois.

This largely due to another sudden increase in ice levels in the northern hemisphere over the last couple of days.

So are world wide ice levels decreasing due to global warming? Answer is NO.

Drive for new fuel tax

2008-02-29T11:34:00.001+11:00

As the herald sun reports

MOTORISTS will pay at least 10c extra per litre for petrol, with oil giants poised to pass on the cost of reducing greenhouse gas.

Australia's biggest petrol refiner, Caltex, yesterday called for a direct 10c carbon tax on drivers.

"Every time motorists filled up at a service station, there would be awareness of the carbon tax, encouraging motorists to think about driving less, taking public transport or buying a smaller car when possible," Caltex spokesman Frank Topham said.

But other oil giants admitted drivers would still be hit at the bowser when emissions trading started in 2010.

BP Australia said emissions trading was preferable to a direct carbon tax, but consumers would see a price rise either way.

Fun times ahead!

Australia makes bold plan to reduce world wide temperature by 0.000043 degrees per year

2008-02-21T22:01:00.004+11:00

The Australian version of the Stern report was released today, well at least the first part. And the conclusions are terribly dire. Shocking:

CLIMATE change could be worse for Australia than any other developed country if dire predictions are realised, the architect of the country's policy on the issue says.

Coinciding with the release of his interim review into the global crisis, Professor Ross Garnaut said Australia should be ready to slash its carbon emissions by much more than the 60 per cent stated figure by 2050.

Wow more than 60%. Thats huge. But lets look at this a different way. Australia's emission rate per capita has been pretty consistent since 1990 at a little over 16 metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emission per head. (incidently, when looking at a ratio with GDP, we fare in the middle).

However Australia's population, currently at 20mill, is expected to reach around 30mill by 2050. All those extra bodies and we are still recommended to cut emissions by at least 60%. An increase in 10mill by 2050, means that a 60% decrease in greenhouse gas is equivalent to a 73% decrease in 2050. And remember exactly what Ross Garnaut said, "Australia should be ready to slash its carbon emissions by much more than the 60 per cent stated figure by 2050". That's "much more"

But how much is Australia's deadly greenhouse gas emissions killing the world? Well Australia emits around 326 million metric tonnes a year. That's compared to a world wide rate of 27 billion metric tonnes. Hence Australia emits around 1.2% of the worlds greenhouse gas.

Now lets assume that we reduce our emissions by 60%, and lets assume that 100% of all warming has been caused by greenhouse gas (note that this assumption is clearly ludicrous but hey for the sake of the example...). With the world increasing at a rate of 0.6 degrees per 100 years, this means that if Australia were to cut our emissions by 60% by 2050, we would cool the globe by around 0.000043 degrees per year.

Thats right we would cool to world by around 0.000043 degrees per year.

Like pissing in the ocean. Of course some might argue that we all have to start somewhere and someone has to set the example etc. etc. but seriously, even with the most ludicrous assumptions involved to calculate this figure, the amount of dollars spent can hardly justify the possible results.

This is merely just another token that is costing us millions.

China's Storms are/are not due to climate change

2008-02-01T15:44:00.001+11:00

It's official, despite previous reports that China's snow storms are due to global warming,

Dong Wenjie the National Climate Centre says that

"This is mainly related to abnormal atmospheric circulation and the La Nina event"

What a relief. it's not due to climate change! But then he says:

"With climate warming, extreme weather events are clearly increasing in frequency and intensity."

Gasp! So it is related to climate change?

Australian climate scientist Penny Whetton says

"Those conditions are things that occur naturally and so every few years, few decades, everything just comes together right to produce an extreme event,"

Ahh Phew! Not due to climate change. What a relief!

"My guess is this is a natural event without any particular reason to link it to climate change. The climate change models are not predicting increases in snow events like this," Whetton told Reuters on Thursday.

Thank God for the Climate Models! Beats checking the data hey?

"Cold extremes are generally not predicted to become more intense and frequent because we have a warming climate," she said.

More good news. More good news.

But as China warms, its cold northern regions might experience more intense snow storms as moisture levels in the atmosphere rise, creating similar conditions to those that have caused the snow storms now in southern China.

Say what? The very next paragraph says that it is related to global warming. Noooo!

"Snow will hang around for less but you will probably get more heavy snow events in winter," said David Jones, head of climate analysis at Australia's National Climate Centre.

Damn it! It's related. I thought the previous paragraph said it wasn't. Someone need to make up their mind.

Jones also said China's snow storms could not be directly linked to climate change,

Ohh thank God! It's not related. Wow, this is stressful. Who knows how it will end.
But never fear, someone has actually done some data analysis:

The average number of severe snowstorms over the first 32 years of the study period was 3.2 per year, while the average over the 20-year period of 1981 through 2000 was notably less at 2.7 per year

Phew! Reading the one report I was convinced and not convinced at least 5 times each that china's snow storms were related to global warming.

Warming sure doesn’t make Chinese burn

2008-01-31T15:36:00.000+11:00

As Andrew Bolt explains:

China is suffering from climate change, but not of the kind you'd expect:

One of the worst snowstorms to hit China since the government began keeping records in 1950 has wreaked havoc throughout the country. At least two dozen people have died in accidents and 827,000 people have been displaced. Heavy snowfall has caused gridlock at train stations and airports, just two weeks before the Chinese New Year begins and hundreds of millions of Chinese return home for the holidays.

The weather is already taking its toll on the Chinese economy. So far the snowstorms have cost $3 billion in damages, according to the Civil Affairs Ministry. The heavy snow, sleet, and freezing rain have created transportation bottlenecks for travelers as well as for shipments of coal, vital to fueling China’s power plants.

But colder or hotter, the same culprit is always to blame:

Chinese meteorologists blame global climate change for the unseasonably high snowfall.

This of course follows an unusually cold and snowy winter in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and New Zealand. Global warming sure is a trickster.

Australia's Climate Change Rainfall Non-Crisis

2008-01-28T16:11:00.000+11:00

We've been told over and over again how global warming will result in a decrease of rainfall over Australia.

The CSIRO have said that

"Projected reductions in precipitation and increases in evaporation are likely to intensify water security problems in southern and eastern Australia"

"In no regions or season do models suggest a 'likely' increase in rainfall"

"For 2030, best estimates of rainfall change indicate little change in the far north and decreases of 2% to 5% elsewhere"

and "The rainfall decrease in south western Australia since the mid-1970s is likely to be at least partly due to human-induced greenhouse gases"

Notice the language, "likely", "Best estimates" (not average estimates??) and "partially due". In other words, no-one is really sure, and it is clear that no-one has done the appropriate statistical analysis to prove or disprove the argument.

So how did we go in 2007 with rainfall? With decreases predicted Australia wide, lets take a look at the stats.

Australia 8.8% more rainfall than normal
New South Wales 3.8% more rainfall than normal
Northern Territory 23.3% more rainfall than normal
Queensland 6.9% more rainfall than normal
South Australia 2.3% less rainfall than normal
Tasmania 8.9% less rainfall than normal
Victoria 3.1% less rainfall than normal
Western Australia 8.6% more rainfall than normal.

So some up, a few down. But the general nature of it is pretty obvious, Australia wide we have seen an increase in rainfall in 2007 than the norm.

This complements our findings that show that every state in Australia has had an increase in rainfall in since 1950 compared to the 50 years before that. Almost a 10% increase in fact, with south Australia, our driest state, recording a 14% increase.

Australia's rainfall deficiency's graphs show, well, not a lot. The last 3 months show no deficiency at all, anywhere in Australia.

Even the last 12 months show only a small patch in central western Western Australia with low rainfall.

But that doesn't the BOM from reporting Australia wide deficiencies.
Notice the title,

"Short-term deficiencies ease, long-term deficiencies remain"

Which, would at first glance make people believe that the short term problems have gone away, but the long term problems are hear to stay.

However, this is just more spin. In reality it means that 2 years ago we had lower than normal rainfall, but the last year was just fine. In fact last year, we had great rainfall. If we get something similar in 2008, there will be no drought statement from the BOM, and someone will be out of a job.

Warming Trend: PDO And Solar Correlate Better Than CO2

2008-01-28T16:06:00.000+11:00

Whilst I have to be very critical of the statistical techniques used in this analysis, as shown on whatts up with that, the results are quite interesting never the less

Joe D'Aleo, an AMS Certified Consulting Meteorologist, one of the founders of The Weather Channel and who operates the website ICECAP took it upon himself to do an analysis of the newly released USHCN2 surface temperature data set and compare it against measured trends of CO2, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and Solar Irradiance. to see which one matched better.

It's a simple experiment; compare the trends by running an R² correlation on the different data sets. The result is a coefficient of determination that tells you how well the trend curves match. When the correlation is 1.0, you have a perfect match between two curves. The lower the number, the lower the trend correlation.

If CO2 is the main driver of climate change this last century, it stands to reason that the trend of surface temperatures would follow the trend of CO2, and thus the R²correlation between the two trends would be high. Since NCDC has recently released the new USHCN2 data set for surface temperatures, which promises improved detection and removal of false trends introduced by change points in the data, such as station moves, it seemed like an opportune time to test the correlation.

At the same time, R²correlation tests were run on other possible drivers of climate; Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), and Total Solar Irradiance (TSI).

First lets look at the surface temperature record. Here we see the familiar plot of temperature over the last century as it has been plotted by NASA GISS:

The temperature trend is unmistakeably upwards, and the change over the last century is about +0.8°C.

Now lets look at the familiar carbon dioxide graph, known as the Keeling Curve, which plots atmospheric CO2 concentration measure at the Mauna Loa Observatory:

CDIAC (Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center - Oak Ridge National Lab) also has a data set for this that includes CO2 data back to the last century (1895) extracted from ice core samples. That CO2 data set was plotted against the new USHCN2 surface temperature data as shown below:

A comparison of the 11year running mean of the USHCN version 2 annual mean temperatures with the running mean of CO2 from CDIAC. An r-squared of 0.44 was found.

The results were striking to say the least. An R²correlation of only 0.44 was determined, placing it between fair and poor in the fit between the two data sets.

Now lets look at other potential drivers of climate, TSI and PDO.

Scafetta and West (2007) have suggested that the total solar irradiance (TSI) is a good proxy for the total solar effect which may be responsible for at least 50% of the warming since 1900. To test it, again the same R²correlation was run on the two data sets.

In this case, the correlation of TSI to the surface temperature record is better than with CO2, producing an R²correlation of 0.57 which is between fair and good.

Finally. Joe ran the R²correlation test on PDO, the Pacfic Decadal Oscillation. He writes:

We know both the Pacific and Atlantic undergo multidecadal cycles the order of 50 to 70 years. In the Pacific this cycle is called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. A warm Pacific (positive PDO Index) as we found from 1922 to 1947 and again 1977 to 1997 has been found to be accompanied by more El Ninos, while a cool Pacific more La Ninas (in both cases a frequency difference of close to a factor of 2). Since El Ninos have been shown to lead to global warming and La Ninas global cooling, this should have an affect on annual mean temperature trends in North America.

This PDO and TSI to surface temperature connection has also been pointed out in previous post I made here, for former California State Climatologist, Jim Goodridge. PDO affects the USA more than the Atlantic cycle (AMO) because we have prevailing westerly wind flow.

Here is how Joe did the data correlation:

Since the warm modes of the PDO and AMO both favor warming and their cold modes cooling, I though the sum of the two may provide a useful index of ocean induced warming for the hemisphere (and US). I standardized the two data bases and summed them and correlated with the USHCN data, again using a 11 point smoothing as with the CO2 and TSI.

This was the jackpot correlation with the highest value of r-squared (0.83!!!).

An R²correlation of 0.83 would be considered “good”. This indicates that PDO and our surface temperature is more closely tied together than Co2 to surface temperature by almost a factor of 2.

But he didn’t stop there. He also looked at the last decade where it has been commonly opined that the Top 11 Warmest Years On Record Have All Been In Last 13 Years to see how well the correlation was in the last decade:

Since temperatures have stabilized in the last decade, we looked at the correlation of the CO2 with HCSN data. Greenhouse theory and models predict an accelerated warming with the increasing carbon dioxide.

Instead, a negative correlation between USHCN and CO2 was found in the last decade with an R or Pearson Coefficient of -0.14, yielding an r-squared of 0.02.

According to CO2 theory, we should see long term rise of mean temperatures, and while there may be yearly patterns of weather that diminish the effect of the short term, one would expect to see some sort of correlation over a decade. But it appears that with an R²correlation of only 0.02, there isn’t any match over the past ten years.

As another test, this analysis was also done on Britain’s Hadley Climate Research Unit (CRU) data and MSU’s (John Christy) satellite temperature data:

To ensure that was not just an artifact of the United States data, we did a similar correlation of the CO2 with the CRU global and MSU lower tropospheric monthlies over the same period. We found a similar non existent correlation of just 0.02 for CRU and 0.01 for the MSU over troposphere.

So with R²correlations of .01 and .02 what this shows is that the rising CO2 trend does not match the satellite data either.

Here are the different test correlations in a summary table:

And his conclusion:

Clearly the US annual temperatures over the last century have correlated far better with cycles in the sun and oceans than carbon dioxide. The correlation with carbon dioxide seems to have vanished or even reversed in the last decade.

Given the recent cooling of the Pacific and Atlantic and rapid decline in solar activity, we might anticipate given these correlations, temperatures to accelerate downwards shortly.

While this isn’t a “smoking gun” it is as close as anything I’ve seen. Time will give us the qualified answer as we have expectations of a lower Solar Cycle 24 and changes in the Pacific now happening.

Baghdad snow blamed on global warming

2008-01-13T12:44:00.000+11:00

The first snow to have fallen on Baghdad in 100 years has been blamed on global warming.

The director of the meteorology department, Dawood Shakir, told AFP that climate change was possibly to blame for the unusual event.

"It's very rare," he said. "Baghdad has never seen snow falling in living memory.

"These snowfalls are linked to the climate change that is happening everywhere. We are finding some places in the world which are warm and are supposed to be cold."

Incredible.

2007 warmest year on record? Coldest in this century

2008-01-05T12:23:00.000+11:00

As Lubos explains,

One month ago, we noticed that November 2007 was the coldest month since January 2000. Well, the RSS MSU satellite data prepared by remss.com show that December was even cooler. The December anomaly was -0.046 °C, compared to -0.014 °C in November. That means that December 2007 was also cooler than the average December from 1979. Moreover, we can finally complete the ranking of the years!

Let me start with forecasts in the mainstream media.

In January 2007, we were informed that 2007 was either likely or certain to surpass 1998 and become the world's warmest year on record by most media, including:

Reuters
AP & Foxnews
IHT
BBC
MSNBC
CBS
USA Today
The New York Times
The New York Sun
The Washington Post
National Geographic
CBC
The Guardian
The Independent
China People Daily
ABC Australia
Discovery Channel
Science Daily
Met Office

as well as virtually all other media you know. They justified this statement by referring to scientists who have combined greenhouse gases with the observed El Nino. Many sources, such as the New York Sun, even gave you the probability that 2007 would be the hottest year as 60 percent. They immediately added that this should "add momentum for the next phase of the Kyoto protocol", a comment that clarifies what is the actual goal of many of the people who study these questions professionally.

In the middle of the year when it started to be clear that the prediction was bogus, Phil Jones (Reuters) changed his mind only infinitesimally. It would be the second hottest year, he said. These big-shot agenda-driven scientists never have the courage to say that they were simply wrong.

Reality: thermometers

However, the greenhouse gases are not too important and El Nino was replaced by La Nina. As a consequence, RSS MSU data for the lower troposphere (graph, more graphs) show that 2007 was the coldest year in this century so far. In alarmist jargon, it was the ninth hottest year on record: the most recent year was cooler than all other years in this century as well as 1998 (by a whopping 0.41 °C) and even 1995. According to different datasets (HadCRUT3, UAH MSU, NOAA), the year is going to be approximately the 8th (HadCRUT3) or 7th (NOAA) or 6th warmest year. UAH might report 2007 as the 4th warmest year and GISS will be a real exception because 2007 will be almost certainly its 2nd warmest year (as James Hansen said a few weeks ago, after 2005 but slightly above 1998) - but it is still very far from the hype about the hottest year. Your humble correspondent is not the only one who believes that the satellite measurements such as RSS, UAH are more accurate than GISS, HadCRUT3. It just happens that HadCRUT3 is closer to RSS than UAH to RSS, as far as the recent rankings go.

The RSS MSU linear trend extracted from the 1998-2007 interval is -0.48 °C per century of cooling! Numerically, it's almost the same trend that we assign to the 20th century but with the opposite sign. The RSS MSU data imply that 2007 was 0.12 °C cooler than the already cool year 2006. Other teams will generate qualitatively compatible results but substantially different numbers, raising doubts about the reliability of the temperature measurement even in the modern era.

Figure 1: Global cooling. Nine hottest years on record as shown by the RSS MSU calculations, from the hottest year 1998 to the coolest year 2007.

The choice of 1998 as the beginning of this graph is, of course, a P.R. trick to make the trend look as cooling as possible. If someone chooses e.g. a year in 1970s - the coldest year in the last 70 years - as his beginning, it is a P.R. trick, too, even though the goal has the opposite one. Certain qualitative conclusions simply depend on these choices and one must be careful about this fact. Similar issues are also discussed in the fast comments. Moreover, I only included the last 10 years for efficiency because typing three times as many numbers to the Excel file would be rather tiresome. Incidentally, if I wanted to demonstrate recent global cooling, I could have been even tougher and show you 36 months since January 2005, including the linear regression:

Figure 2: Global cooling 2005-2007. The trend is over 15 °C of cooling per century. ;-) Also, the trend is accelerating: for the 12 months of 2007, a similar linear regression gives about 35 °C of cooling per century. :-)

Sunshine duration vs Cloud Cover

2008-01-04T16:36:00.000+11:00

One would expect a significant relationship between sunshine duration and total cloud cover. Greater cloud equals less sunshine, and less cloud equals greater sunshine.

And just to test this I looked at the relatioship between sunshine duration and total average monthly cloud cover at 3pm. Results were highly significant for at eh Giles weather station (t = -6.33, p < 0.001), as well as at Darwin (t = -4.77, p < 0.001) and at Tennant Creek (t = -3.03, p < 0.01).

So expectedly, the variable sunshine duration is a good measure of cloud cover throughout the whole day. But even better than that, we have a very extensive data set of total cloud cover (in eights) Australia wide.

So instead of having to look at the variable Sunshine duration, we can look at total cloud cover at eight different times of the day, too see what effect, if any, it has on recent warming trends.

And the results, will startle you....

In 2008, a 100 Percent Chance of Alarm

2008-01-02T13:38:00.000+11:00

A highly recommended article

More Global Ice than Average

2008-01-02T13:16:00.000+11:00

Currently the world has more ice cover than normal. As shown here, there is currently around 1 million squared kilometers more of ice on the worlds surface than normal. The webpage also shows no obvious increasing or decreasing trend since 1979. In other words, as the north decreased in ice, the south increased.

Admittedly, from 2004 to late 2007 we saw a big decrease in ice levels, however no doubt thanks to some record cold temperatures and record snow levels of late, the global sea ice levels have increased to very high levels.

So should we be worried about global ice melting. Once again I'll show the graph, because it clearly says "no".

Cloud Cover in Australia

2007-12-31T14:27:00.000+11:00

We showed in our previous post that the variable "sunshine duration" accounts for 93% of all warming since 1943. Quite an amazing find. So how does variation in the variable sunshine duration occur?

Well unless there is a tilt in th earth axis, the only way for it to occur is due to cloud cover. Recent increases in sunshine duration (accompanied with warmer weather) is an indication that perhaps we are just experiencing less clouds than normal, and that clouds is the sole reason why we are warming up.

However this website suggests that despite cloud cover decreasing from 1975 to 1998, cloud cover levels were greater than the 20 years before that.

Of course it really matters when the cloud cover is occurring. More cloud at night means warmer nights, whilst more clouds during the day generally means colder days. So is Australia experiencing any trends in cloud covers during the day and at night? We'll find out next.

Ohh, and Merry Christmas all and happy new year! (thats the reason why there hasn't been a post of late - my liver is feeling it!)

Sunshine duration accounts for 93% of all warming since 1951

2007-12-20T13:30:00.001+11:00

Please Note: Added Edit:

On closer examination of the below analysis, a calculation error was found in the analysis of temperature and sunshine duration. The calculation error has a large effect on the results and the conclusion. The information below should not be taken as evidence or for any talking or arguementive point. On ocrrection of the error it was found that the effect of sunshine duration on maximum tempertaures is a lot smaller than as shown below. This will be discussed in analysis shortly to come. Apologies for the error involved and I will be providing more analysis and more in depth analysis of Australian temperatures in the very near future.
Thankyou
Jonathan Lowe

Abstract: Using twenty two weather stations across Australia, the variable sunshine duration is shown to have significantly increased since 1951. Its correlation with maximum temperature anomalies is highly statistically significant. By eliminating the influence of sunshine duration from the maximum temperature dataset, maximum temperature trends were shown to drop from an average of 1.4 to 0.1 degrees increase per 100 years. Hence the variable sunshine duration accounts for 93% of all positive trends in maximum temperature since 1951 in Australia. Implications of these findings and the relationship of the variable sunshine duration with respect to cloud cover trends and how they is measured will be discussed.

Our introduction on Tuesday laid out that we intend on looking at the variable sunshine duration to see if it has any effect on temperature change over the years.

Using our dataset we found a highly significant increase in maximum temperatures (t = 5.95, p < 0.001). Maybe because we have used urban stations or maybe because the bulk of the weather stations occur on the east coast of Australia (an area which has seen the majority of increase), that the rate of increase of temperature as shown on that graph (linked) is at 1.42 degrees per 100 years, which is more than greater Australia and the rest of the world.

Either way, this doesn't matter, as we are merely looking at the relationship between sunshine duration and temperature. Because some stations have data for maximum temperature that goes back further than sunshine duration (and vice versa), all years that did not have recordings for sunshine duration as well maximum temperatures were eliminated from the dataset for each individual station.

Interestingly, sunshine duration also significantly increased since 1951 (t = 2.58, p = 0.013). The strength of the trend is not as strong as temperature, but is still statistically significant.

The two variables shown on the same graph is shown above. Note that in general when temperatures are high, so too is sunshine duration and vice versa. The last six years of data highlights this. anomalies

The relationship between the maximum temperature per year per station as well as sunshine duration per year per station is shown below. The correlation between them is highly significant (t = 14.71, p < 0.001), and the r squared indicates that 17.5% of the variance of temperature can be explained by sunshine duration.

That might not sound like much, but when we account for the variable sunshine duration (i.e. minus its relationship with temperature off the original dataset), then we can analyse temperature without any influence of sunshine duration. In other words, we can look at temperature trends over the past 50 years by assuming that there has been no trends and no anomalies in sunshine duration at all.

The results are amazing. The following graph shows the temperature trend since 1951 should there be no variance in sunshine duration. The increase in temperature since 1951 still occurs, as is statistically significant (t = 5.8, p < 0.001), but take a look the rate of change of temperature, in particular the formula for the line of best fit as well as the left hand axis.

When taking into account sunshine duration, temperature rise in Australia is at the rate of 0.00099 per year or 0.099 degrees per 100 years. Now a 0.1 degree increase every 100 years is hardly anything to get worries about. It's not going to cause any great catastrophe. So we've gone from 1.4 degrees of warming per 100 years to 0.1 degrees of warming per 100 years. The variable sunshine duration has accounted for 93% (1.3/1.4) of all warming trend that we have seen since 1951.

So therefore the warming that we are seeing, is by and large highly correlated with sunshine duration. So does this mean that clouds are the major cause of global warming? Well, probably not. In order to discuss why the variable "sunshine duration" has a major effect on temperature change, we have to look into how it is measured, and the trends of clouds in Australia. And that will be in the next post

Clouds and Global Warming

2007-12-18T18:17:00.000+11:00

Clouds have often been a problem for climate scientists. Global dimming or global brightening? Wikipedia states that

Feedback effects due to clouds are an area of ongoing research. Seen from below, clouds emit infrared radiation back to the surface, and so exert a warming effect; seen from above, clouds reflect sunlight and emit infrared radiation to space, and so exert a cooling effect. Whether the net effect is warming or cooling depends on details such as the type and altitude of the cloud. These details are difficult to represent in climate models, in part because clouds are much smaller than the spacing between points on the computational grids of climate models.

Recently when questioning embers of the CSIRO as to why north-west Australia has seen a cooling trend in the last 50 years, he replied that it was due an increase in clouds in that area, possibly, due to an increase in aerosol usage in Asia.

And increase in clouds in that area made sense. IT has, after all, seen a massive increase in rainfall in the last 20 years, so one would also expect an increase in cloud activity. I asked him if eastern Australia is warming up due to less clouds, as the east also, has received less rain. His response was it could have a small minor effect, but that greenhouse gases were shown through models to be the major cause.

I needent have asked.

So, is what he says is true? Are we seeing more clouds in the north west, and no difference in clouds in the east? One would expect more or less clouds would cause an decrease and increase in temperature. How much of an effect it has we shall see. Luckily, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has the data so we can look into it.

However, the data is not as extensive as temperature based data, and to get a good sized data range, we've had to include stations that are classified as urban.

The following stations have data on "sunshine duration" that go back to at last 1961, (the standard of comparison over years in climate data is from 1961 to 1990):

GILES METEOROLOGICAL OFFICE
DARWIN AIRPORT
TENNANT CREEK AIRPORT
ALICE SPRINGS AIRPORT
WOOMERA AERODROME
CEDUNA AMO
MOUNT GAMBIER AERO
KAIRI RESEARCH STATION
WALKAMIN DPI
TOWNSVILLE AERO
BRIAN PASTURES
COFFS HARBOUR MO
WILLIAMTOWN RAAF
SCONE SCS
EAST SALE AIRPORT
HOBART AIRPORT
GROVE (COMPARISON)
STRATHGORDON VILLAGE
NORFOLK ISLAND AERO
DAVIS
MAWSON
MACQUARIE ISLAND

The placements of the stations are shown at this link.

Unfortunately, Western Australia is not very well surveyed, with only one station at Giles having accurate and lengthy data on sunshine duration. Similarly country Queensland and New South Wales have gaps. Conversely Tasmania and Cairns are over sampled.

But the purpose of this exercise is not to formulate whether Australia is warming or cooling based on the stations, but rather what relationship does sunshine duration have on temperature. If we account for sunshine duration, do we still see an increase in temperature over the past 50 years?

But to start off with, we will look into if sunshine duration, in the stations provided has increased or decreased or stayed around the same in the past 50 years. And this will be in the next post

Daying Summer/Winter effect goes against man made global warming

2007-12-16T20:10:00.000+11:00

We previously showed that overnight temperatures had no summer/winter effect, as well as showing that summer has increased in temperature significantly greater at 6pm and 9pm than winter. If global warming was caused by CO2, then there should be no summer/winter effect, in that, temperatures are increasing relatively constant at any time. However this has shown not to be the case, and 6pm and 9pm temperatures increased more during summer when the sun is still int he sky than in winter when it is long set.

But what happens at 9am, Noon and 3pm. The details are below.

Interestingly, Winter was increasing at a significantly greater rate than summer at 9am (t = 5.62 , p 0.001). Likewise, Noon temperatures in winter were increasing in temperature significantly greater than summer since 1950 at Noon(t = -3.5, p = 0.001). However at 3pm, there was no significant summer / winter effect (t = -1.3, p = 0.21)

Lets look at the individual temperatures or summer and winter. No significant temperature increase was found during summer at 9am (t = -0.76, p = 0.45), Noon (t = 0.51, p = 0.61) and 3pm (t = 1.92, p = 0.06). Note here that an increase in temperature was found at 3pm in summer, but was only just insignificant.

During winter, temperature increases were significant at 9am (t = 7, p < 0.001), as well as at Noon (t = 4.7, p < 0.001) and 3pm (t = 3.1, p < 0.01).

So what does this all mean? What it means is that during winter we are seeing over time no temperature increasing trends overnight, then a dramatic increase in temperature at 9am. Increases over time in temperature continue at Noon and 3pm (although not as strong), and then from 6pm onwards there is no significant increases in temperature over the years.

In Summer we also are seeing no positive trends in temperature overnight, but it is taking longer to warm up. Positive trends in temperature over the years start to occur at around 3pm and last till 9pm, and from then on no increase.

In other words, in winter, massive increases when the sun rises, in summer, increases from the middle of the day until sunset. Perhaps this is because a warmer sun will increase a colder place quicker than it will a warmer place. I'm not entirely sure.

But either way, we are seeing a very strong summer/winter effect. Something that should be present if global warming was mainly sun induced, and would not be present if the world was warming up due to CO2.

But is it just the sun that is causing the warming? What about clouds and sun duration? We'll take a look at that next.

What consensus? Experts protest the Bali madness

2007-12-14T11:47:00.001+11:00

Distinguished academics and researchers have sent an open letter to the UN Secretary General and the alarmists in Bali, saying there’s no proof man is heating up the world to hell. Excerpts:

It is not possible to stop climate change, a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity through the ages…

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued increasingly alarming conclusions about the climatic influences of human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2), a non-polluting gas that is essential to plant photosynthesis. While we understand the evidence that has led them to view CO2 emissions as harmful, the IPCC’s conclusions are quite inadequate as justification for implementing policies that will markedly diminish future prosperity. In particular, it is not established that it is possible to significantly alter global climate through cuts in human greenhouse gas emissions. On top of which, because attempts to cut emissions will slow development, the current UN approach of CO2 reduction is likely to increase human suffering from future climate change rather than to decrease it.

The IPCC Summaries for Policy Makers are the most widely read IPCC reports amongst politicians and non-scientists and are the basis for most climate change policy formulation. Yet these Summaries are prepared by a relatively small core writing team with the final drafts approved line-by-line by government representatives. The great majority of IPCC contributors and reviewers, and the tens of thousands of other scientists who are qualified to comment on these matters, are not involved in the preparation of these documents. The summaries therefore cannot properly be represented as a consensus view among experts.

Contrary to the impression left by the IPCC Summary reports:

z Recent observations of phenomena such as glacial retreats, sea-level rise and the migration of temperature-sensitive species are not evidence for abnormal climate change, for none of these changes has been shown to lie outside the bounds of known natural variability.

z The average rate of warming of 0.1 to 0. 2 degrees Celsius per decade recorded by satellites during the late 20th century falls within known natural rates of warming and cooling over the last 10,000 years.

z Leading scientists, including some senior IPCC representatives, acknowledge that today’s computer models cannot predict climate. Consistent with this, and despite computer projections of temperature rises, there has been no net global warming since 1998. That the current temperature plateau follows a late 20th-century period of warming is consistent with the continuation today of natural multi-decadal or millennial climate cycling.

In stark contrast to the often repeated assertion that the science of climate change is “settled,” significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming. But because IPCC working groups were generally instructed (see http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/docs/wg1_timetable_2006-08-14.pdf) to consider work published only through May, 2005, these important findings are not included in their reports; i.e., the IPCC assessment reports are already materially outdated.

The UN climate conference in Bali has been planned to take the world along a path of severe CO2 restrictions, ignoring the lessons apparent from the failure of the Kyoto Protocol, the chaotic nature of the European CO2 trading market, and the ineffectiveness of other costly initiatives to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Balanced cost/benefit analyses provide no support for the introduction of global measures to cap and reduce energy consumption for the purpose of restricting CO2 emissions. Furthermore, it is irrational to apply the “precautionary principle” because many scientists recognize that both climatic coolings and warmings are realistic possibilities over the medium-term future…

Attempts to prevent global climate change from occurring are ultimately futile, and constitute a tragic misallocation of resources that would be better spent on humanity’s real and pressing problems.

2007-12-14T11:33:00.000+11:00

The Great Barrier Reef and other coral reefs will be annihilated by global warming, even if the world's governments slash greenhouse gas emissions, scientists say. And its also probably too late to save the Great Barrier Reef and other coral reefs from global warming.

Ummm...what warming?

Significant Summer/Winter effect in evening points towards sun induced global warming

2007-12-10T14:17:00.000+11:00

If global warming was largely man induced, then we would not see a summer/winter effect. Basically, temperatures would rise throughout the day and night at a constant rate irrespective of the time of the year.

However if the sun was one of the major causes of global warming, then we would see no or little summer/winter effect overnight (as we previously showed), but would find that summer would be increasing in temperature at a greater rate than winter at 6pm and 9pm.

This is because during summer, the sun is still heating up the surface, whilst in winter, it is long set.

So what do we find? Firstly we find a significant increase in temperature for summer minus winter at 6pm (t = 2.85, p < 0.01). Likewise we also find a significant increase in summer minus winter temperatures at 9pm (t = 3.98, p < 0.001).

Both these two results give more evidence of sun induced global warming as opposed to man made global warming.

In fact both 6pm and 9pm showed significant increase in temperatures during summer (6pm: t = 2.24, p < 0.05; 9pm: t = 4.3, p < 0.001), whilst in winter, both 6pm and 9pm showed no significant increase or decrease in temperature (6pm: t = -1.88, p = 0.067; 9pm: t = -0.98, p = 0.33). Statisticians will note that the above figures actually indicate a decrease in temperature at 6pm and 9pm during winter, however insignificant.

So what we are seeing is that throughout the year, we we seeing no significant increase or decrease in temperature when the sun is not risen, however when the sun is in the air and influencing the earth, it is only then that we are seeing an increase in temperature in the last 50 years.

This points towards very strong proof that global warming is largely caused by the sun and not by man.

Road To Bali

2007-12-10T14:02:00.000+11:00

Ecomyths writes:

A short, easy to comprehend and an accurate assessment of the Bali conference is offered here. The central premise?

...the issue is not whether humanity will succumb to a "climate crisis," or how the international community might craft a successor to the tattered Kyoto Accord (Let's call it KyoTwo). The real theme of this United Nations gabfest -- like that of its 12 predecessors, and of the hundreds, if not thousands, of related meetings --is whether globalization and trade liberalization will be allowed to continue, with a corresponding increase in wealth, health and welfare, or whether the authoritarian enemies of freedom (who rarely if ever recognize themselves as such) will succeed in using environmental hysteria to undermine capitalism and increase their Majesterium.

How did this situation evolve? Just how did the science become so politicized to be unrecognizable as science?

Phillip Stott provides a brilliant summary in this essay where he examines the role of science in a postmodern world. As he states:

Science has to learn that science no longer controls the debate, and that 'truth' will not be legitimised by science alone.
...the language games of science are no longer self-legitimised, but are legitimised against the power and media relations in which they are embedded. They are, accordingly, legitimised by the social bond, which seeks out the 'science' that supports the bond, but actively rejects, and pours scorn on, the 'science' that challenges the bond.
The social bond has created a desire for 'global warming' to be true in order to legitimise a whole suite of pre-ordained Neo-Malthusian agendas and fears....from anti-growth to anti-Americanism. Thus, the science is also uncritically legitimised...
Science can no longer function in a vacuum and legitimise itself. Indeed, it is questionable whether this was ever the case. The fight for 'truth' involves, above all, the use of language, of words of power...
Language is everything. One mythical phrase employed by one clever media outlet can overthrow the whole edifice of science at the press of a computer key.
The battle ground is the social bond, not science.
And, paradoxically, and perhaps amusingly, this is something that 'global warming' scientists are about to learn to their cost at Bali, where a different, but equally powerful, grand narrative from the developing world could well topple the 'global warming' grand narrative of a rich and ecochondriac North.

Superb.

Now, the challenge is to foster a new social bond: one that is inherently dynamist in its constructs, that empowers the individual rather than holding power over them, one that celebrates creative enterprise and not censure, and one that sustains globalization rather than the false mythology of a global sustainability.

This new paradigm is emerging. It is evident in the blogosphere and in the advent of new media and social networks, What is needed now is a leader around which a new social bond can coalesce, take shape and gather momentum. The times, they are a changing once again.

No summer/winter effect on overnight temperatures

2007-12-07T14:49:00.000+11:00

As shown on the previous post we intend to see whether a summer/winter effect occurs with temperature anomalies in Australia. If global warming was man made then we should see no summer/winter effect at any time. Similarly, if global warming was sun induced, then we should see no summer/winter effect overnight but will see an effect at other times.

So we will first see whether a summer/winter effect occurs overnight. We obviously hope that we don't see an effect here, anything else would prove very interesting. However the overnight summer/winter analysis should not prove or disprove any global warming theory.

As shown below, all of Midnight, 3am and 6am had no significant increase or decrease in summer temperature anomalies over winter temperature anomalies. (Mid: t = 0.7, p = 0.44; 3am: t = 1.0, p = 0.32 ;6am: t = -0.25, p = 0.8).

Also, Midnight, 3am and 6am for summer, as well as Midnight, 3am and 6am for winter each recorded no significant increase or decrease in temperature anomalies over time. (Summer: Midnight: t = 1.3, p = 0.17; 3am: t = 1.7, p = 0.8; 6am: t = 0.9, p = 0.39; Winter: Midnight: t = 0.06, p = 0.96; 3am: t = 0.02, p = 0.99; 6am: t = 0.85, p = 0.4)

Hence it can be safely concluded that there is no summer/winter effect on overnight temperatures. But what happens at other times of the day? We will lok at evening temperatures next.

Summer/Winter hypothesis

2007-12-04T15:01:00.000+11:00

Recently it was suggested to me, that if the sun was a major cause of global warming, then we should see some sought of summer winter effect. There are obviously more daylight hours during summer, so we should get some changes.

But before we go into the analysis, lets hypthesise what changes we should see.

During the night (at Midnight,3am and possibly 6am) we should see very little change between summer and winter. Summer temperature increases may be slightly more, but I doubt that they would be significant. Hence we would hypothesise that there would be no differences between summer and winter temperature anomalies at Midnight, 3am and possibly 6am.

During summer the sun generally sets at around 8.30 to 9pm in many parts of Australia, as opposed to winter when it goes down at 5pm to 6pm. Given this, if the sun was a major contributer to global warming, we should see a positive summer effect at 6pm and 9pm. That is, temperature is increasing at a greater rate at 6pm and 9pm in the summer than it is in the winter.

However what will happen at 9am, Noon and 3pm is interesting. 9am in winter is closer to the minimum temperature time than summer, a time where we see the biggest increase in the day. However in summer, the sun has had a longer effect than in winter.

Does a hotter sun with less staying power increase a colder place more than a hotter sun with greater staying power in a hotter place?

I'm not so sure. But either way if there is a summer/winter effect, it is evidence for the sun being a major part in global warming. If CO2 were the major cause of global warming, then we should so no sumer winter effect, in that all temperature at all times are increasing at constant rate.

We'll find out in the next post if this is or isn't the case.

Temperature Reconstructions without Tree Rings

2007-11-28T13:00:00.000+11:00

Loehle (2007) reconstructs the temperature record without tree ring data, which of course, has received a lot of negative literature of late.

His abstract is shown below with a graph of the temperature record following:

Historical data provide a baseline for judging how anomalous recent temperature changes are and for assessing the degree to which organisms are likely to be adversely affected by current or future warming. Climate histories are commonly reconstructed from a variety of sources, including ice cores, tree rings, and sediment. Tree-ring data, being the most abundant for recent centuries, tend to dominate reconstructions. There are reasons to believe that tree ring data may not properly capture long-term climate changes. In this study, eighteen 2000-year-long series were obtained that were not based on tree ring data. Data in each series were smoothed with a 30-year running mean. All data were then converted to anomalies by subtracting the mean of each series from that series. The overall mean series was then computed by simple averaging. The mean time series shows quite coherent structure. The mean series shows the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and Little Ice Age (LIA) quite clearly, with the MWP being approximately 0.3°C warmer than 20th century values at these eighteen sites.

Save the planet - kill your child

2007-11-24T11:12:00.000+11:00

As Andrew Bolt explains:

And, no, that’s not an exaggeration. Meet Toni Vernelli, who works for PETA, the animal rights group, and is a shiny-eyed believer in apocalyptic man-made global warming:

When Toni terminated her pregnancy, she did so in the firm belief she was helping to save the planet…

“I didn’t like having a termination, but it would have been immoral to give birth to a child that I felt strongly would only be a burden to the world.”

And meet, too, Sarah Irving, who works for the Ethical Consumer magazine:

Most young girls dream of marriage and babies. But Sarah dreamed of helping the environment - and as she agonised over the perils of climate change, the loss of animal species and destruction of wilderness, she came to the extraordinary decision never to have a child.

“I realised then that a baby would pollute the planet - and that never having a child was the most environmentally friendly thing I could do.”

This new warming faith is loathsome and inhuman. Pagan gods were always cruel, but few actually demanded the sacrifice of the believers’ own children. Evil is on foot, and I fear even worse will come.

Bumper Snow season start in Switzerland

2007-11-20T08:15:00.000+11:00

Swiss ski resorts are expecting a record season after promising early snowfall, it has been reported. Ski break spots including Davos, St Antonien and Braunwald have experienced exceptionally strong snowfall for so early in the season, swissinfo has reported.Last weekend, some 62 cm of the white stuff fell in the eastern resort of Davos, while St Antonien received 64 cm and Braunwald got 72 cm of snow on Sunday, states national weather service Meteo Swiss.

According to the report, Switzerland has not received such a strong start to its winter ski season since 1952, with the amount of snow being swept to the southern areas by the wind cited as a particularly interesting feature of the weather.

Maybe they didn't need to adapt to a report that said that

"Skiing will have to become just a side attraction, and not the main attraction anymore," said the report's author Hansruedi Muller, who is professor of leisure and tourism at the University of Berne.

Who should cricketers vote for at the election?

2007-11-15T15:26:00.000+11:00

As written by me to our cricket club:

Well we have on one hand Johnny Howard, the self processed cricket lover who still owes a slab to the Indians for bowling a ball that bounced near his feet. Then there’s KV07, who has nothing really to do with cricket, but at least Bob Hawke had some skill at the game despite being smashed in the face by a West Indies fast bowler. But probably the most important thing for us cricketers that the governments can manage is water. Whilst technically a state issue, both parties have in their budgets water plans.

Water is crucial to our game. In Geelong the whole season was cancelled and this could apply to us in the future. Our own ground hasn’t been watered for 2-3 years now and it is showing. The dirt is so hard only weeds grow and there is a very good chance that the ground will be dug up in the next year or two, hence making our ground unavailable for usage by either soccer or us (like other teams in the competition in the past years). I really can’t imagine our firsts playing at freeway, but that might have to be the way.

But what have the governments got to do with water? Well unbeknown to many, Melbourne’s rainfall is not showing any significant decrease. The media suggests we might be having the worst drought in a thousand years (even though records only go back 100 years), but the graph below shows no downward trend. Ok, the last 5 years have been a little lower than normal, but nothing like the drought of the early 1940s. In fact, every single state, Victoria included, has had more rainfall in the past 50 years than the 50 before that - at an average of 10% more.

So why are we so short of water? Obviously the last 5 years of below average rainfall has caused some of this, but also because Melbourne’s water usage increases in general by 2% each year, largely due to an increasing population. With Melbourne having the biggest increase in population than any other city in the past year (and tipped to outgrow Sydney), something has to be done waterwise. Melbourne has not built a dam since the Thomson in 1978, despite Melbourne’s water usage per year almost doubling since.

Hence the government, albeit a little late, has been working on solutions to this problem. The Mitchell river in Gippsland was previously allocated space for a dam, however the labor party, in their green ideology, made the Mitchell river a national park with the sole intention so that a dam cannot be built there. The labor party (and Vic Water) website said that “new dams do not create new water, but rather steal it from the rivers”. If new dams don’t create new water, then why are we so reliant on the current ones? Twice this year the Mitchell river has over flooded (last time just recently), causing major flood damage in the Gippsland area. Water caused damage which would otherwise be held in a dam for all of us, including our cricket ground, to use.

With Melbourne’s water usage increasing by 2% each year, no extra dams built since the mid 70s, and the labor ideology of not creating another one, labor have turned to a $1 billion National Urban Water and Desalination Plan. A good idea, however this produces one tenth of the water at more than ten times the cost. With desalination plants working hard (desalination plants are high energy producing huge amounts of greenhouse gases), it will only be a year or two before we need more water again due to an increasing population.

The only way to secure cricket being played comfortably and safely is to build a new dam in Gippsland. Desalination plants are merely a short term waste of money, and whilst dams are largely a state not federal issue, labor – state and federally – have clearly said that dams are a no-no. Liberal at least put a new dam on the agenda at their last state election. Water is crucial for our cricket club, and under a labor government, their green ideology will prevent us stealing from rivers that feed the ocean, so that we can play cricket. But hey, at least we all can bowl better than John Howard.

Klaus: Merkel is the new 5-year planner

2007-11-12T12:38:00.000+11:00

As reported by Lubos

Interview of the President of the Czech Republic for the Wirtschaftswoche

Mr. President, German chancellor Angela Merkel fights for climate protection during her state visits throughout the world. She finds listeners in all countries except for yours. Why?

The unfair and irrational debate on global warming annoys me. The topic is increasingly evolving into the fundamental ideological conflict of the present era.

Has Mrs Merkel been caught into an ideology?

She probably thinks about these ideas. That surprises me. Because as a trained physicist, she should be undoubtedly able to test controversial hypotheses. But it also shows that this is not about science. The movement for the protection of the atmosphere embodies a new ideology. Surprisingly, it is espoused by Mrs Merkel who herself lived in socialist society. But she should know the risks associated with those ideologies that are directed against freedom.

Do you consider the chancellor to be a savior of the world?

I don't want to analyze Ms Merkel. The utopians are those who want to improve the world. However, politicians may find utopias to be an excellent thing because these politicians may start to talk about the distant future and avoid their everyday business. Such politicians are "escapists" because they want to escape reality. The issue of climate change is ideally suited for this purpose because we can spend 50 or even 100 years in the future by developing visions - while voters remain unable to control the consequences.

What are they escaping?

Politicians flee away from the emptiness of their own imagination. They have no ideas rich in content that could fill the present.

Does this also apply to the U.S. President George W. Bush who has apparently also warmed up to the climate debate?

I have talked about this topic with Bush several times. During our last meeting in the context of the U.N. high climate event in September, he asked me: "Václav, where is your book? I look forward (laughs)." As many Americans, he views the topic a bit more pragmatically. Americans have never been truly interested in utopias.

In your book, "Blue, Not a Green Planet", you only describe the environmentalists, as you call them, vaguely. Who are those conspirators whom you find so dangerous?

The climate debate itself deserves a sociological analysis. The politicians come first; they use the climate for the reasons explained above. Then we see the journalists who use the issue as a free ticket for a catchy theme on the title page. And finally the climate researchers only act to benefit and to maximize their profit by looking for subjects with the most promising funding situation.

Serious and prestigious researchers are among those who attack you. Are all of them opportunistic small minds?

Let's take for example the United Nations report on the climate. The presidium of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) decides on what is in it. People like IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri may have been scientifically active in the past, but since then they have become bureaucrats. These people published their last journal article years ago. Today they work on policymaking. And among the real scientists, there are many who can't offer any new approaches. They simply follow the mainstream.

One can analyze scientists ad hominem. But if there is a critic with a legitimate criticism, why is he not heard?

Whatever the climatologists find incompatible with the so-called consensus is even not included in the U.N. climate report. Every day, I receive letters from all around the world in which scientists disagree with the prevailing opinion but no one wants to listen to or print their hypotheses. They are simply unfashionable.

You seem to suppose that the climate research is being censored.

You know, the whole thing is very familiar to me. After the Warsaw Pact troops intervened to terminate the Prague Spring, I was dismissed from the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences as an enemy of Marxism. In the 1970s, I couldn't write any articles on economics.

You are trained as en economist, not a climate researcher - are you able to judge the scientific debate?

As an unemployed economist, I had a job in the State Bank of Czechoslovakia. We had the first computer over there. My task was to work on statistical and econometric models and against my will, I became busy with things that are important and relevant for climatology. Climatology is not one of the fields of physics and chemistry where a controlled experiment can be repeated a thousand times. It deals with data and hypotheses which can either be accepted or not. It works with time series that require statistical analysis.

Do you therefore distrust the method of climate researchers?

I have played with similar models for years. In hundreds or thousands of similar equations, I could always see that a slight change of a parameter or the addition of another parameter may radically change the outcome of complex models. That is why I am very critical about this methodology.

Do you flatly disagree that climate is changing?

No, of course not. The fact is that the climate is changing but every child knows that. There have to be no Nobel prize winners or a professor at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Of course, humans also play a role. But the crucial question is: How big is the influence of people on this process? The dispute is about orders of magnitude. Is the induced temperature change nonzero in the third, fourth, or fifth digit after the decimal point? This is a serious question that we must answer. And there is no consensus.

You say that the environmentalists such as the former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore threaten the freedom of thought. It is easy to argue against it. Who would be against freedom? What do you actually mean?

It is hard to answer in a few sentences. I have both political as well as economic and scientific freedom in mind. It is important that we don't lose either of them. Communism was another version of this ideology that placed something else as a "sacred" value above freedom. Environmentalism follows the same logic. First, the climate, then comes freedom followed by prosperity. Such priorities are wrong. For me, freedom is an important value. We Czechs have some experience with a lack of freedom. We sensitively and perhaps oversensitively respond to the threats to freedom - including those that the people in Western Europe don't understand too well.

The European Union has set - with the approval by the Czech government - ambitious climate targets. Your views make you totally lonely.

I am not alone. But I do find the current situation in Europe and the U.S. somewhat tragic. During the recent climate change conference in New York, my speech was the only one that criticized the climate policies. I didn't hear applause. Only after the dinner, many heads of state came to me and congratulated me. "There must have been someone to tell it," they said. One already probably needs political courage to speak against the policy of climate.

Who has thanked you?

I can't give you the names. It wouldn't have the right effect.

You argue that the economy and technological progress has the capacity to solve all problems resulting from climate change. What makes you so sure?

I didn't say the economy, I mean the market! This difference is fundamental. I believe in the market. Throughout my life, I have studied the economy in all of its manifestations, including communism. Plans vs market, external control vs spontaneity - these have been the eternal debates since Adam Smith. Why am I so confident? Because of my life experience. I have seen governments being mistaken hundreds of times. The market is not perfect, but its shortcomings are slight in comparison with the mistakes governments make. I lived in the regime of the planned economy - I consider the 50-year long plans of Angela Merkel just as misleading as the former five-year-plans.

What do you think about emissions trading? If carbon dioxide gets a price, the forces of the market will operate freely.

That's nonsense. This is a fraud by climatologists and environmentalists. Only fake economists could say what you did. This is about dirigism and not a free market. This method only pretends to be market-friendly. Emissions trading is just a game that looks like a market and as a classical liberal, I disagree with it.

There are entrepreneurs who earn money with the help of the environment. Germany has become the market leader in environmental technologies. It seems that the environment and the entrepreunerial spirit fit together wonderfully.

It is completely appropriate when entrepreneurs earn money by their effort to save energy. All of us should be thrifty regarding the energy, after all. Something else happens when entrepreneurs make profits out of alternative technologies. Transactions involving solar and wind energy are only possible because of the high subsidies paid for by the governments. These companies thus have political objectives and they don't play according to the rules of the free market.

No one doubts that we need traffic signs. Without minimal rules, chaos would threaten whole societies. Don't we need a couple of warning signs for the environment as well?

It depends on whether we talk about the environment or climate change. I have nothing against laws that protect ponds against waste disposal. But the environment protection laws, especially those in the EU, now go too far. But in this case we at least know what are the negative consequences of our actions or sins, if you wish. When the lake is polluted, it becomes contaminated. On the other hand, one cannot see how large and important the human influence on climate change is. It is an equation with too many unknowns - I am against climate restrictive laws and other forms of dirigism.

Václav Klaus, Wirtschaftswoche, November 10th, 2007

More evidence of sun induced Global Warming

2007-11-07T12:55:00.000+11:00

If CO2 emissions were the major cause of global warming then we would see constant increases in temperature across the day and night as the CO2 blanket keeps the heat inside our atmosphere. Scientific research has shown that this has occurred with both minimum and maximum temperature increasing.

We have pointed out time and time again how minimum temperatures are not a good indication of night time warming, especially when it rarely occurs at night.

But what about the rate of change of temperature anomalies between neighboring times? If CO2 was the major cause of global warming then we would see no significant difference in rate of change of temperature anomalies, in other words, all temperatures should increase equally. If the sun was a major cause of global warming then we would see no or limited changes at night, an increase int he rate of change approaching the middle of the day, and then a decreasing rate of change of temperature anomalies when the sun starts to lose its daytime strength.

So what do we find when looking at the data?

Rate of change in temperature anomalies between Midnight and 3am as well as 3am and 6am proved insignificant. However when the sun rises, we see a significant increase in the rate of change of temperature anomalies as compared to 6am. The increase is amplified int he last few years which, interestingly is the same period where maximum temperatures Australia wide have been high.

However rate of change of temperature anomalies at Noon was not significantly higher than 9am, nor 3pm compared to Noon (despite large cyclic variations in the latter). However when the sun starts to lose its power, the rate of change of temperature anomalies significantly decreases. The pattern in this decrease as shown below is strong and obvious.

Interestingly, 9pm saw significant increases in temperature as compared to 6pm, which goes against the Sun induced global warming theory. However there is no significant increase since 1960, and the rate of change of temperature anomalies from 9pm as a decreasing trend, although not quite significant in comparison to 9am, Noon and 3pm. Midnight had significant lower rate of change of temperature anomalies as compared to 9pm.

So what does all this mean? Well it shows once again that we are not having any changes in overnight temperatures despite increases in minimum temperature. The minimum is strongly influenced by the sun, and this shows in massive increases at 9am temperatures. Whilst temperatures have seen sudden increases at 9am, the increases have been constant throughout the day. But when the sun starts to lose its strength, we have seen a decreasing rate of change of temperature in comparison to neighboring times.

This shows the power of looking at temperatures at constant times of the day. Whilst maximum and minimum temperatures are increasing, we have shown that night time temperatures are not, and temperature increases are occurring moreso at and around 9am and decreasing in rate of change at 9pm.

A CO2 temperature blanket cannot be the cause of such results. The data points heavily towards sun induced global warming.

Renewable Energy Australia

2007-10-31T12:14:00.000+11:00

Given the extravagant election promises regarding reductions of greenhouse emissions and greater renewable energy, does it come a surprise that the percentage of electricity coming from renewable resources has less than halved in the last 40 years? I guess not.

Significant Urban Heat Island in Melbourne

2007-10-30T12:57:00.000+11:00

We showed previously how much Melbourne temperatures have been increasing. But how much of this is due to global warming and how much is due to the fact that it is situated near a 6 lane road, high skyscrapers and street lights lighting it up at night?

Well we can actually compare Melbourne to Laverton, which is just a good 15 minute drive from the Melbourne site. Whilst we don't expect the two to follow suit exactly, with only a small driving distance between them we should expect only small white noise errors if there was no problem with urban warming.

Unfortunately this is not what we get. Starting from 1955, shown below is the difference between Melbourne and Laverton temperature anomalies for average temperature (average of max and min).

The rate of increase is obvious. IN fact it is increasing at more than 2 degrees every 100 years. The minimum temperature increase was even greater at 3 degrees per 100 years or at 3 times the supposed global mean increase due to global warming. The Urban Heat Island effect obviously has a major influence in the temperature data, so much so that at some stations it can increase it by up to 3 times he normal amount.

Whilst there is debate over to its use in global warming analysis. (this website say that it is not used, this article suggests that it is used in much research, and this Australian Bureau of Meteorology website suggests that it is used in temperature maps, as well as a personal email from the BOM that says that it does, and it is also included in the Australian temperature extreme analysis), there are some big applications in these findings.

Firstly, is suggests that the Urban Heat Island effect is real. This goes against research by Peterson (2003) who indicated that "Contrary to generally accepted wisdom, no statistically significant impact of urbanization could be found in annual temperatures.

Parker (2004) suggested that the Urban heat island effect didn't exist because calm nights were as warm and windy nights (huh???).

Even the IPCC (2007) concluded that

"the global land warming trend discussed is very unlikely to be influenced significantly by increasing urbanisation"

If this is the case, can you explain the above graph? And this one as well as shown on this website?

Granted of course, that this is an extreme case. The weather station might well have been plotted on a few squared of grass, but amongst cars, trams, concrete, street lights etc. Not all stations are like this. However whatts up with that suggests that this is far from a one off occurrence.

So if Melbourne's Urban Heat Island Effect makes a 2 degree increase in temperature per 100 years, and a 3 degree increase in minimum temperatures, then how much will a small urban effect make? Half a degree? One degree?

Either way, the IPCC is clearly only kidding themselves that the Urban Heat Island effect is insignificant. The graph above is significant at less than the 0.001 level of significance.

Windy claims for wind farms exposed

2007-10-30T12:11:00.000+11:00

The latest VENCorp annual planning report has yet more bad news for wind farms.

To the usual problems - that when the wind don’t blow, the power don’t flow - add the fact that the ones already installed at great expense aren’t producing as much power as promised.

From pages 30 and 33 we read that VENCorp has had to revise future summer wind generation from 24 per cent to 23 per cent of installed capacity, and winter wind generation even further down - from 27 per cent to just 19 per cent of capacity.

This is “based on the analysis of actual half-hourly wind generation during peak times”. Ugly, expensive and next to useless.

Thanks Andrew

Wrong predictions on active 2007 hurricane season

2007-10-26T15:32:00.000+10:00

2007 saw predictions of a very active hurricane season. The predictions even got upgraded to be even worse. NOAA predicted a 85% chance of having a season above normal, and only a 5% chance of having a season below normal. And didn't the newspaper love it. Plenty of reports here and here.

But the result? well with hurricane season ending Nov 30th, is looking well below normal. According to COAPS: “Unless a dramatic and perhaps historical flurry of activity occurs in the next 11 weeks (ACE is based on calendar year, not traditional June-November hurricane season) , 2007 will rank as a historically inactive Tropical Cyclone year for the entire Northern Hemisphere.

Melbourne, beautiful city - terrible data

2007-10-24T16:28:00.000+10:00

As shown on Whatts Up With That? they have taken a good look at the primary Melbourne based weather station. Being a Melbourne person myself, I have passed this weather station many times. It's basically in the middle of Melbourne, whilst the Carlton gardens are on the opposite side of the very wide Victoria Street, this intersection comes to an almost standstill in peak our and it is a major access to the central hub of the city from the north.

But it wont stop there, at night, Victoria street and La Trobe street is lit up by street lights. Not country style street lights, but city street lights, so there is not a single section of the area under shade.

View the map here.

So how have the records gone for this station? You guessed it, increases in maximum temperature and minimum temperature, even increases before bitumen was invented. So surprises really, in fact temperatures at Midnight, 3am, 6am, 9a, Noon, 3pm, 6pm and 9pm have all seen increases.

No surprises really. With cars and concrete buzzing past during the night, and under constant heat lights at night, well, the conclusion answers itself.

And as for rainfall? well there's a reasonable chance that the surrounding sky scrapers eliminate some of this, and the last 10 years has seen decreases despite no significant difference. Ohh,and don't even bother getting meaningful readings about Sunshine duration or wind.

Variations in max temp suggest Sun Caused Global Warming

2007-10-24T15:36:00.000+10:00

We showed before about the variations between minimum temperature and that at 3am and 6am. But what about the differences between maximum temperature anomalies and temperatures at say, Noon, 3pm and 6pm? What would we expect?

Well if the CO2 blanket was the major cause of global warming then we would see increased temperature, relatively constant throughout the day. Unfortunately this, as we have shown doesn't occur in Australia at night. However we have shown that maximum temperatures, just like temperatures at 9am, Noonand 3pm all have shown a significant increase in temperature. 6pm and 9pm failed to record a significant increase.

Has the maximum temperature increased at the same rate as temperatures at these times? Well if the sun was the major source of global warming, then unless the maximum occurred all the time at say, 3pm, then maximum temperatures should have increased at a greater rate than those at recorded specific times.

Shown below is the difference in monthly temperature anomalies of maximum temperature and 9am. As one can see, there doesn't seem to be much of a linear trend. A possible cyclic trend might exist, but there is not enough data t prove either way.

However as shown below the difference in monthly temperature anomalies of maximum temperature and Noon is starting to shape form. Whilst in more recent years (since around 1992) there has been no major difference, beforehand there was a significant increasing trend indicating that temperature anomalies at he maximum were increasing at a greater rate than temperatures at Noon.

Shown below are the differences in monthly temperature anomalies of maximum temperature and 3pm and 6pm.

The pattern is obvious. In fact maximum temperatures anomalies have been increasing with respect to 3pm temperatures at a rate of 0.0054 degrees per year or 0.34 degrees since 1943. And the increase compared to 6pm is at a rate of 0.0131 degrees per year or 0.83 degrees since 1943.

The graph of the different between maximum temperature and 9pm is shown below which shows a gradual but not not as significant trend.

So this tells us a few things. Firstly, the maximum temperature anomalies are increasing at a greater rate than temperatures at strict consistent times. Hence we are of more recent times getting more "spikes" around the maximum temperature during the day.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics would no doubt agree with this conclusion as they show that their amount of Warm Days has remained relatively steady bar an increase in the last 5 years.

It also means that using the variable maximum temperature over exaggerates the amount of warming that Australia has actually seen. A more accurate measure would be an average of all increases at each of the 8 constant times of the day/night.

But it also means something else, that temperatures are not increasing constantly throughout the day and night. We have shown earlier that temperatures at night are not increasing and have also suggested here that maximums are increasing at a greater rate over the years that constant times at Noon, 3pm and 6pm. Hence it seems that either the sun is a larger contributer to global warming, or that the CO2 greenhouse blanket is ineffective at night, and is only effective as the sun has a greater influence during the day.

Hence still, the reliance on the sun. But is there more evidence of sun caused global warming in the time based temperature anomalies? You bet. Next we will prove to you about the rate of change of temperature anomalies as we approach the heat of the day and move from it, and it is devastating evidence indeed.

Rewording ClimateChangeinAustralia Part 1

2007-10-23T10:04:00.000+10:00

Original:

"About half of all tornadoes in Australia occur during May to October." (page 23)

My recommended rewording:

"About half of all tornadoes in Australia occur during May to October, as do almost half the months of the year"

Climate Change - Is CO2 the cause?

2007-10-23T10:00:00.000+10:00

McIntyre v Peterson on Urban Heat Islands

2007-10-22T14:16:00.000+10:00

Canadian mathematician and climate scientist Steve McIntyre has found another striking error in the academic work supporting the case for climate alarmism.

Recall, in August McIntyre found an error in the way NASA was collating the temperature records from 1200 North American monitoring stations operating since the 1870s. NASA admitted the error, acknowledging they had been overstating the warming in North America since 1930 by a factor of 1.75x. (We wrote about the incident here, here, here, and here.)

This week McIntyre got his hands on the source data cited in an influential 2003 paper claiming the Urban Heat Island effect not having an important impact on historical temperature measurements. The article suggestively titled, Assessment of Urban Versus Rural In Situ Surface Temperatures in the Contiguous United States: No Difference Found, claimed:

Contrary to generally accepted wisdom, no statistically significant impact of urbanization could be found in annual temperatures.

Using the same data (sent to him by the author Thomas Peterson) McIntyre this claim to be completely unsupported. Here’s McIntyre’s plot of data, separating urban and rural monitoring stations based on Peterson’s own definition (click to enlarge):

Its painfully obvious to the most casual observer that there’s a strong warming trend among urban stations, and none for the rural ones.

McIntyre cuts the data another way. Rather than using Peterson’s definition of what constitutes an urban station, he looks at stations in cities with NFL teams (he calls them ‘major cities’) versus everything else. Here’s the graph (click to enlarge):

Three Questions to the CSIRO

2007-10-22T12:49:00.000+10:00

1. The CSIRO claim that we have seen an increased frequency in hot nights and a decreased frequency in cold nights. This is based on the statistic minimum temperature. Considering that the minimum temperature will generally occur after sunrise, can you explain why you choose to use the statistic minimum temperature to talk about temperatures at night, when in the minimum generally doesn't even occur at night?

2. Can you please explain the predictions of increased drought and flooding, coupled with a decrease in rainfall when you consider that the second half of the 20th century had a 9.5% increase in rainfall compared to the first half of the 20th century (an increase in every state), and that the number of very wet days and not significantly increased or decreased, neither has the number of days of no rainfall?

3. As Kerplunk puts it "If 'the science is settled' then why does the United Nations' IPCC need 17 climate models when just one should do?"

CSIRO's climate "change"

2007-10-19T17:04:00.000+10:00

After attending the climate change seminar held at Melbourne university, it is quite clear of the terror that we are in for when it comes to climate change. 3/4 of the talks presented how we have to curb emissions (or adapt) to climate change, and because we haven't done this n the past, we are doomed for at least a 2-3 degree increase.

This will cause:

"increases in droughts, floods, fire, tropical cyclones and hail"

"large areas of mainland Australia are likely to have less soil moisture"

Expect heavier rainfall events, and the number people who will die every year over the age of 65 from heat waves will increase from 1000 (current) to 2300 to 2500 in 2030 to 4300-6300 in 2050. (or they could just buy air conditioners).

The murray darling basin had the driest September on record and they forecast rainfall in Australia to decline by at least 10%, especially in winter and spring.

And as their website says:

Since 1950, most of eastern and south-western Australia has experienced substantial rainfall declines. Across New South Wales and Queensland these rainfall trends partly reflect a very wet period around the 1950s, though recent years have been unusually dry. In contrast, north-west Australia has become wetter over this period, mostly during summer.

From 1950 to 2005, extreme daily rainfall intensity and frequency has increased in north-western and central Australia and over the western tablelands of New South Wales, but decreased in the south-east and south-west and along the central east coast.

Where to start! I have noted before that there is no evidence of increased drought, and there is no evidence of increased hail or very wet weather scenarios.

And increased cyclones? Nope, no evidence of that. If anything, cyclones are decreasing in Australia.

The Murray darling basin did have the driest September on record, but there is no evidence that we have a decreasing trend there. Long term trends suggest no evidence of decreasing rainfall.

I questioned Dr. Scott Power as to why the north west Australia has cooled down. He replied that it is due to increased cloud cover in that area, hence why it has seen more rain. Of course the reason south east Australia has warmed up is not due to less cloud cover (and less rain) but due to global warming.

I also asked him if under the theory of global warming, do we see temperatures constantly increasing throughout the day, in other words, are night time temperatures increasing at a similar rate to day time temperatures.

I expected an answer of yes, but he "correctly" pointed out that that night time temperatures are increasing at a greater rate (this mind you is due to analysis of the minimum temperatures which as we all know doesn't even occur a night). On questioning why this is, he said he didn't know, despite the fact he did a paper on it. He thinks it might have something to do with increased cloud cover, but he's not sure. Ahh, cloud cover!

But what Dr. Scott Power did mention on many times is the decreasing trend of rainfall since 1950, and because of this the expected continued decrease due to global warming.

I questioned this, and commented that rainfall was actually higher in the last 65 yeas than in the 50 before that. He agreed with me saying that they were very constant back then. A lot more variability now, but continued to say that we are seeing a decreasing trend since 1950.

So are we seeing a decreasing trend in rainfall in the last 50 years. Lets look at the stats:

My regression tells me in fact the complete opposite. Since 1950 Australia has seen an increase in rainfall at a rate of 0.79mm extra per year. Hence in 1950 we averaged around 456mm and then now averaging around 500mm, a 44mm increase since 1950.

So where is this decrease? Note the above is however not statistically significant (p = 0.3).

But is this Australia wide? Victoria is the only state to record a significant decrease in rainfall since 1950 (p=0.03), whilst South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory all record significant increases in rainfall. Queensland, New South Wales and Tasmania all record decreases in rainfall, but it is not significant.

Keeping mind however, that all states, every single one has had on average 10% more rainfall from 1950 to 2006 than from 1900 to 1950.

So where are the decreases in rainfall? Seriously, where are they? And how on earth can one continue to predict decreasing rainfall, when Australia has had nothing but the opposite.

I do hope that someone answers my 3 questions to the CSIRO, which will be posted in the next post

More rain and no change in drought and flood occurrences due to global warming

2007-10-18T16:29:00.001+10:00

Countless times and time again, we are being told that we will be getting more droughts and less rain due to global warming. We've also discussed how the CSIRO website climatechangeinAustralia has looked at devastating trends since 1950.

Apparently, global warming likes to increase rainfall in some places and decrease in others. Who knows why!

But I was strangely interested in why the website only mentions rainfall trends since 1950. Australia has great and accurate rainfall data going back to the start of the 20th century, so why not use these? I'll show you why.

Looking at rainfall patterns from 1900 to 1950 and since 1950 we come across some interesting trends as shown below:

State Av.Pre1950 Av.Post1950 %Increase
TOTAL 3813.3 4174.9 9.5%

NSW 481.2 559.2 16%
NT 486.1 553.0 14%
QLD 586.5 638.3 9%
SA 204.6 233.1 14%
TAS 1110.4 1174.5 6%
VIC 608.6 651.3 7%
WA 335.9 365.5 9%

In the last 57 years, every single state has seen an increase in rainfall compared to the 50 years before this. And Australia wide, we have had a 9.5% increase in rainfall.

Hence, if anything, global warming has meant that we are having increased rainfall in Australia. So does global warming cause more droughts, looks like the complete opposite.

But wait, critics (of the non-critical side) will argue that global warming causes more very heavy rains and more periods of no rain - hence greater rainfall in one particular time (more floods) and more droughts. This of course is not shown in the above table, but lets look at the ABOM's own website to see if this is happening:

This graph shows the number of very heavy precipitation days (mm>30):

Nope doesn't seem to any pattern there. And shown below is the number of consecutive dry days:

Damn! No pattern there either.

So there you have it. There is no evidence at all to suggest that global warming will increase droughts or flooding. But there is evidence that we could be getting more rain, and given the greater need for drinkable rain water...this surely is one major advantage of global warming.

Things we should do to save the planet

2007-10-17T12:57:00.001+10:00

We should get rid of democracy, be buried instead of cremated, stop drinking milk, and the only red meat he eat should be kangaroo.

Ohh yes of course I forgot, we have to throw out the plasma TV as well.

Statistical Incompetence at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology

2007-10-16T15:26:00.001+10:00

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology, might well be good at collecting data, in fact they are world recognised as amongst the best. All that is however completely useless if you cannot analyse the data well. It would seem that either they don't employ statisticians to analyse their data or that the statisticians that they employ are well, incompetent.

Let me tell you why.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology, on their website, love to look at climate extremes. Like how many very hot days have we had etc. All point to the obvious; that we are having more hot days and less cold ones, more hot nights and less cold ones - An obvious conclusion when considering the theory of Global Warming.

But lets concentrate on the nights. They claim that Australia has seen an increase in very hot nights, a veyr large increase in hot nights, whilst also having a decrease in cold nights, a decrease in frost nights (thank goodness - the farmers will be happy) and a decrease in cool nights.

But lets look at how they came to these graphs. This website shows their analysis, where you will notice that the above information is solely put together using the minimum temperature only.

We pointed out before that minimum temperatures in Australia have been increasing since the second world war, but we also showed that temperatures at Midnight, 3am and 6am have shown no statistically significant increase in temperature.

This is because the minimum temperature actually occurs usually around 15 to 60 minutes after sunrise. Thats right, the minimum temperature does not occur at night. Hence the minimum would be influenced by the sun, and is not a reliable statistic to measure overnight temperatures. It doesn't even occur at night.

But that doesn't stop the Australian Bureau of Meteorology from announcing increasing warm nights and decreasing cold nights based on the minimum temperature. Complete Incompetence indeed.

It is a shame that the ABOM cannot analyse their own data statistically well, because their collection methods are one of the best. Generally they get the CSIRO to do the analysis, and, well, we all know how good they are at doing statistical analysis too.

Incompetence or perhaps intolerance.

Climate news from Lubos

2007-10-16T12:15:00.000+10:00

Some critics of Al Gore's award:

Claude Allegre, a Frenchman who is both an esteemed scientist and a new socialist (and a new skeptic), calls the Friday Nobel announcement "a political gimmick"
Klaus, Lomborg, Gray
Richard Lindzen: the award shows that the issue is now about fashions and politics and not science
Manchester Union Leader: the award is a fraud on the people
William Gray: the theory behind the prize is ridiculous and in 10-15 years, everyone will know it
Tehran Times: the award is an attack of old Europe against the Bush team
Anthony Watts: there are emerging calls initiated in New Zealand to rescind Gore's Oscar etc. because of the inaccuracies in the movie
Republican American: Gore is as much a liar as he was before
Business and Media Institute: Gore won thanks to the hysteria in the media

Let us abolish the IPCC:

Vincent Gray, a fresh co-winner of the Nobel peace prize, proposes to abolish the IPCC because the whole process is a swindle
David Henderson: scientists are not in charge of the IPCC (Wall Street Journal)

Maestro has grave doubts about carbon trading:

Alan Greenspan thinks that the cap-and-trade carbon market either destroys the economy or won't work

About Osama's motivation:

Timothy Ball recommends to be skeptical about Kyoto because Osama bin Laden has correctly figured out that it could seriously hurt the West

Amazon shaman fights green colonialism:

Davi Kopenawa, a shaman, visits Britain and blames the anti-greenhouse religion for sickness, depression, suicide, obesity and drug addiction of the indigenous people

Snow:

Colorado gets a foot of snow

Eco-hypocrisy admitted:

Robert Redford and his lovely Porsche
Clooney and private jets

Gore is jealous:

Britney, OJ, Paris get more media attention than global warming (count news.google.com hits), a fact that drives the prophet up the wall

High Court labels Gores film propaganda

2007-10-16T12:13:00.000+10:00

An update on the recent High Court ruling in Britain, via Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters:

Here's something American media are virtually guaranteed to not report: a British court has determined that Al Gore's schlockumentary "An Inconvenient Truth" contains at least eleven material falsehoods.

It seems a safe bet Matt Lauer and Diane Sawyer won't be discussing this Tuesday morning, wouldn't you agree?

For those that haven't been following this case, a British truck driver filed a lawsuit [0] to prevent the airing of Gore's alarmist detritus in England's public schools.

According to [1] the website of the political party the plaintiff, Stewart Dimmock, belongs to (ecstatic emphasis added throughout, h/t Marc Morano):

In order for the film to be shown, the Government must first amend their Guidance Notes to Teachers to make clear that 1.) The Film is a political work and promotes only one side of the argument. 2.) If teachers present the Film without making this plain they may be in breach of section 406 of the Education Act 1996 and guilty of political indoctrination. 3.) Eleven inaccuracies have to be specifically drawn to the attention of school children.

How marvelous. And what are those inaccuracies?
The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Government's expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.
The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.
The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government's expert had to accept that it was "not possible" to attribute one-off events to global warming.
The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming. The Government's expert had to accept that this was not the case.
The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.
The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant's evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.
The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching. The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.
The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt causing sea levels to rise dangerously. The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia.
The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting, the evidence was that it is in fact increasing.
The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.
The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.
In the end, a climate change skeptic in the States must hope that an American truck driver files such a lawsuit here so that a U.S. judge can make similar determinations.

Of course, even if one could find such an impartial jurist, our media wouldn't find it newsworthy, would they?

Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

2007-10-11T14:07:00.000+10:00

A new peer-reviewed study by Professor Arthur B. Robinson, Professor Noah E. Robinson and noted astrophysicist Dr Willie Soon concludes:

A review of the research literature concerning the environmental consequences of increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide leads to the con clusion that increases during the 20th and early 21st centuries have produced no deleterious effects upon Earth’s weather and climate. Increased carbon dioxide has, however, markedly increased plant growth. Predictions of harmful climatic effects due to future increases in hydrocarbon
use and minor greenhouse gases like CO2 do not conform to current experimental knowledge....

Atmospheric temperature is regulated by the sun, which fluctuates in activity as shown in Figure 3; by the greenhouse effect, largely caused by atmospheric water vapor (H2O); and by other phenomena that are more poorly understood… Solar irradiance correlates well with Arctic temperature, while hydrocarbon use (7) does not correlate… There are no experimental data to support the hypothesis that increases in human hydrocarbon use or in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other green house gases are causing or can be expected to cause unfavorable changes in global temperatures, weather, or landscape.

BANG

The Dreaded Drought

2007-10-11T13:53:00.000+10:00

We've been told over and over again, how Australia's lack of rainfall has been due to global warming. The website climate change in Australia, co-hosted by the BOM and CSIRO talk about the massive changes in rainfall and projected droughts due to global warming. This despite, as we pointed out, no statistically significant changes in trends of rainfall Australia or locally wide.

But as World Climate report shows, America too is having certain parts with increased rainfall and others with less rainfall. Must be due to global warming right? Well they also show that the last 50 year of rainfall in Canada has been greater than the 50 before that.

Strangely enough however, the BOM come back and suggest that the our current lack of rain [(despite non significance)] is caused not by warming, but by cooling:

Australia’s climate may continue, at least in the short term, to be influenced by the unusual state of the oceans to the north, and particularly northwest, of the continent. These have been cooling since June when, historically, they would have been expected to warm as the La Niña evolved in the Pacific. These cooler than normal waters inhibit the formation of northwest cloudbands, which are a major source of winter and spring rain for central and southeastern Australia during La Niña years.

Hmm..but well maybe we should eat more kangaroo to decrease global warming. But no need to go full on in the meat race, as last month was the 7th coolest month this century.

Time to Ban TV's

2007-10-10T10:50:00.001+10:00

MOST current plasma TV models would be banned from sale in Australia as early as October next year under onerous mandatory energy requirements recommended in a report commissioned by the Federal Government.

The consulting firm Digital CEnergy, which prepared the report for the Government's Australian Greenhouse Office, also recommends a second tier of even tougher restrictions that would then ban almost all current LCD models from the market in April 2011.

Differences between minimum and overnight temperatures

2007-10-09T12:40:00.000+10:00

Previously we discovered that minimm temperatures in Australia have been on the increase since world war 2 at a rate of 0.522 degrees Celsius in the last 64 years.

However we also found that temperatures at Midnight, 3am and 6am have not seen any significant increases or decreases in temperature over the same time period. This is quite strange, as it has long been thought that the minimum temperature is a good representation of overnight temperatures. Obviously with different trends occurring in each case, we suggest that it is not. However, because no scientific literature has even bothered to look at time based temperature, this type of discovery goes unnoticed in the science world, and we still see dozens of studies looking at the consequences of night time warming.

So why is this occurring? Well lets have a look at the differences between the minimum temperature and temperature anomalies at 3am and 6am, which is shown in the graph below.

The graph above shows an obvious increasing, and statistically significant trend. Minimum temperature anomalies from the second world war up until now have been increasing at a greater rate than temperatures at 3am and 6am. If the minimum temperature were to be a good representation of overnight temperatures then we would expect no trends in the data, and the average "bar" to be around zero.

I've included two parabolic trend lines to highlight the differences between the two variables. It would seem that 6am anomalies closer resemble minimum temperature anomalies. This makes sense, as the minimum temperature generally occurs closer to 6am than 3am. In fact, in about the last 10 years, there has been no major trend between 6am and minimum temperature anomalies.

It is no surprise then that we have seen in the last 10 years, and indeed since 1973, no significant increase in minimum temperature.

Hence in more recent times, the minimum has been a reasonable variable to measure overnight temperature (despite being about 0.05 degrees Celsius above temperatures at 3am and 6am), but was a poor measure of overnight temperature before 1975.

Even the ABOM agrees with us here (aside from other irregularities), in that minimum temperatures have not seen any increase since 1973.

As shown on Andrew Bolts forum, Bob Forster, suggested the following:

If you ignore the distraction of the bars for individual years, and just look at the 5-year running mean, you will discover that most of the warming was in a single step-change in the latter half of the 1970s.

That jump in Australian average temperature correlates with the Great Pacific Climate Shift of 1976/1977. The Shift marks a change from Pacific Decadal Oscillation cool phase to warm phase – thus reversing a cool shift in the early 1940s. This 76/7 climatic step-change correlates with an abrupt reduction in the upwelling quantity of cold deep water in the equatorial eastern Pacific. Put another way – before the shift there was a preponderance of La Niña conditions, and after it El Niño dominated. Change in upwelling quantity on this scale (it varies a lot - but say, from about 26 Sverdrups before the Shift to about 18 Sv after) is an inertial event of huge magnitude. I don’t see how human-caused CO2 emissions could have done that.

An interesting theory, one that I believe will be heavily scrutinized no doubt. But whatever the reason we can conclude that the weather and temperature has been changing since the second world war, and it has not been just a gradual increase in temperature as global warming alarmists cause.

Temperatures at night have not been increasing, and the minimum temperature has not increased in the last 30 years, a period where is more closely resembles overnight temperatures.

And what of differences in temperature anomalies between other times? We'll look at them next.

Countless Exaggerations in Climate Change Report

2007-10-02T21:18:00.000+10:00

In the new Climate Change in Australia report the predictable catastohpic scenarios are outlined. The report, done jointly by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology is very surprising, and it would seen that the Bureau of Meteorology haven't bothered to look at their own stats to come to the reports conclusions.

It predicts lower rainfall, but even by their own Bureau of Meteorology website, this hasn't occurred.

It suggests we will have less spring and winter rainfall, with drops of up to 40 per cent in some southern parts of Australia by 2070. But once again by the Bureau's own website spring rainfall and winter rainfall have shown no decrease at all. Even in the much talked about southeastern Australia there has been no significant decrease in annual rainfall as well as spring and winter rainfalls.

Did the Bureau of Meteorology actually check their own statistics before they issued such a report?

What is interesting is the actual website set up by the two teams, Climate Change in Australia.

Have a look at the observed changes. They state that we have seen significant increases in temperature at both day and night, however my own analysis of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology's data proves that Australia has not seen any night temperature increase at all.

The website also claims that south western Australia is becoming dryer as is New South Wales and Queensland, however northern Australia has seen an increase.

So global warming increases certain parts of Australia's rainfall and decreases others? What an evil deceptive thing this global warming is. It is true that south western Australia has seen a decrease in rainfall, but southern Australia has seen a slight increase, and northern Australia as publicised has increased as well. Geez, even the much talked about Murray Darling Basin has seen no significant increase or decrease in rainfall. Who would have thought that if you read the papers!

So according to the climate change in Australia website, global warming makes some places wetter and other places less wet. Just what those places are, and more importantly why, no-one knows.

I might be pushing some straws here, but don't you think there is a slight chance, just a slight one, that these changes (some up ,some down) we are seeing is due to natural variation? Not one single honest statistician could say otherwise. This is a prime example of finding pattens in randomness.

The CSIRO and BOM should be shamed for such terrible inexcusable analysis of their own data.

This, unfortunately, is completely outrageous.

Australia: Only hot during the day

2007-09-28T13:42:00.001+10:00

We showed earlier that Australian temperatures at Midnight, 3am and 6am have not significantly increased, however as soon as the sun rose, temperatures at 9am and Noon showed significant increases. Whats more, surprisingly maximum and minimum temperatures have increased since the second world war.

So what happens at 3pm, 6pm and 9pm? The results below show is.

Temperature at 3pm showed a significant increase. (t = 3.8, p < 0.01)at a rate of 0.85 degrees Celsius per 100 years. The graph shown below of this, despite a bit of variability is strong, significant and obvious.

However temperatures at 6pm proved not to show a significant increase (t = 0.37, p = 0.7) as shown on the graph below.

The last 5 years have shown above normal temperatures at 6pm, but the overall trend is not significant and not clearly obvious to the eye.

Simiralily at 9pm there as been no significant increase in temperature (t = 1.4, p = 0.15). Although it has to be noted on the graph below, that like 6pm, the last 5 years have all seen greater than normal temperatures at this time.

So we've shown that Australia is only heating up at times when the sun is making an impact, that is from 9am till 3pm. Both 6pm and 9pm temperatures have seen increases, but they are not significant. Overnight temperatures are not moving either way.

So how come therefore we see increases in minimum temperature when overnight temperatures are not increasing? Isn't the minimum temperature meant to be an accurate measure of overnight temperature? We'll show you in the next article, that not only is the minimum a poor measure of overnight temperatures, that there could possibly be some big irregularities with the minimum temperature before the mid 70s and after.

Near Record Ice levels in Southern Hemisphere

2007-09-27T15:44:00.000+10:00

Whilst there has been a lot of talk about record lows for the northren hemisphere ice levels, does the fact that the southern hemisphere is on track to record new record highs reach the media outlets?

How to save 1/10th of a polar bear

2007-09-27T15:30:00.000+10:00

Bjorn Lomborg is not skeptical about human-caused global warming. But he’s checked the maths behind many of the warming scares:

Consider a tale that has made the covers of some of the world’s biggest magazines and newspapers: the plight of the polar bear. We are told that global warming will wipe out this majestic creature. We are not told, however, that over the past 40 years - while temperatures have risen - the global polar bear population has increased from 5000 to 25,000.

Campaigners and the media claim that we should cut our carbon dioxide emissions to save the polar bear. Well, then, let’s do the math. Let’s imagine that every country - including the United States and Australia - were to sign the Kyoto Protocol and cut its carbon dioxide emissions for the rest of this century. Looking at the best-studied polar bear population of 1000 bears, in the West Hudson Bay, how many polar bears would we save in a year? Ten? Twenty? A hundred? Actually, we would save less than one-tenth of a polar bear.

If we really do care about saving polar bears, we could do something much simpler and more effective: ban hunting them. Each year, 49 bears are shot in the West Hudson Bay alone. So why don’t we stop killing 49 bears a year before we commit trillions of dollars to do hundreds of times less good?

As soon as the sun rises, so does the temperature

2007-09-26T12:33:00.000+10:00

We previously found that overnight temperatures have not increased, with all of Midnight, 3am and 6am not having any significant increase in temperature, hence providing strong evidence that Australian temperature have not increased overnight. This despite increases in the daily minimum.

But what happens when the sun makes its appearance? How will the temperature record respond then? Using our designated Australian weather stations, we found that at 9am, since 1943, we have had a very significant increase in temperature as shown on the graph below:

The increase is highly significant (t = 5.5, p < 0.01) and is increasing at a rate of 1.1 degrees Celsius per 100 years. This is, as one would expect, very strange. In that how can we have such a huge and significant increase at 9am and yet 3 hour previous have no swings in temperature at all? What is causing this massive sudden increase at 9am? Could it possibly be the sun?

Well lets have a look at Noon and see if the same issue is occurring.

And yes, as shown on the graph above, one again a big and significant (t = 4.3, p < 0.01) increase in temperature is occurring. The increase is at 0.99 degrees Celsius per 100 years.

So here we have a situation that at Midnight, 3am and 6am we detect no significant increases or decreases in temperature since the second world war. The suddenly at 9am and Noon, the temperature increases suddenly and dramatically.

Australia is definitely heating up. But maybe its only when the sun is out? We'll look at 3pm, 6pm and 9pm next.

Somebody needs to build an ark

2007-09-25T14:01:00.000+10:00

Mick Keelty warns at climate change could cause refugees to flee countires due to sea level rises. He warns that China's available land could dramatically shrink and millions could be on the move.

All this from an at most 59cm increase in sea level in the next 100 years. Amazing.

The ABC take it one more step further suggesting that:

Ultimately, rising seas will likely swamp the first American settlement in Jamestown, Va., as well as the Florida launch pad that sent the first American into orbit, many climate scientists are predicting. In about a century, some of the places that make America what it is may be slowly erased.

Rising waters will lap at the foundations of old money Wall Street and the new money towers of Silicon Valley. They will swamp the locations of big city airports and major interstate highways.

Its amazing what 59cm can do.

Australia not increasing in temperature overnight

2007-09-24T12:54:00.000+10:00

Previously we showed that Australian temperatures since world war II have increased dramatically. Maximum's and minimum temperatures have both increased at a significant rate.

However what is happening to overnight temperatures? We have also previously discussed the terrible statistical technique of somehow defining the average temperature as being the average of the minimum and maximum and have long suggested that time based temperatures, where the time is kept constant (unlike max/min temps), is a far better way to analyse temperature and will also provide a lot more meaningful information.

So lets have a look at what is happening for Australian temperatures overnight. In particularly Midnight, 3am and 6am.

As shown below temperatures at midnight show no obvious trend, and statistically there is no significant increase or decrease in temperature (t = 1.6, p = 0.1)

Similary, at 3am as shown below we have also found no significant increase or decrease in temperature (t = 1.27, p = 0.2).

And not surprisingly, also at 6am as shown on the graph below, we have found that Australia has not recorded any significant increase or decrease in temperature (t = 1.3,p = 0.17)

So if Australia is not warming up at night, then how come we have seen a s significant increase in minimum temperatures? We will answer that question shortly, but in our next article we will look at what happens to Australia's temperatures during the day, starting off in the morning at 9am.