Dr. Syun Akasofu presented the temperature trend and the decadal oscillations of the global temperature superimposed upon the longer linear trend line using the global temperature data since 1880 and up to 2000. The linear trend line for that period is projected back into the very late Little Ice Age and forward. The graph indicates where the temperature had been measured to be through 2008 and the IPCC AR4 report of 2007 prediction out to the year 2100 is shown. This graph was presented at the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change, New York, March 2009. The pink area is the UN IPCC range of predictions, which are proving to be too high. This is not surprising given that they were a projection themselves largely based on a time from the bottom of the last cooling temperature oscillation and the maximum of the warming oscillation of the late 20th Century. Such climate predictions are incredibly foolish.
The upper graph of temperature is basically that between the end of the yellow box area to the present, showing a slight temperature decline. This decline is consistent with the indicated temperature oscillations superimposed on the long term linear trend line since the end of the Little Ice Age in the Akasofu graph. Of course, there is no certainty that the linear long term warming rate from 1880 to 2000 will be maintained into the future, since the natural forces causing this warming trend are not well-understood and they have been known to frequently change direction in the past. But, it is a more reasonable guess than that of the UN IPCC AR4 report of 2007, whose science we know to be wrong on steroids.
How can one fit an almost useless linear trend to the data series? Try a polynomial of higher order. You can clearly eyeball the linear trend and see that it doesn't do any justice to the data.
ReplyDeleteThis is close to irresponsible data portraying.
Of course one can come up with many trends depending upon when you start the time and end it. Exactly this was done by starting the trend analysis at the bottom of the last solar cycle and ending it near the hottest part of the warming portion of the solar cycle and then claiming that the rate of heating was alarming and must be due to CO2 emitted by man.
ReplyDeleteThe significance of the 9-year linear trendline decline is that it is not a steep rise and that it may be an early indication of the onset of a cooling solar cycle, which is a natural force, not a man-made force. One starts at this point in time not really arbitrarily, but because it appears to correlate with the solar cycle. The second figure attempts to put all of this in the context of a longer term trend with oscillations due to the solar cycle imposed on it. In this context, all is fairly presented.
You're missing the point. Irrespective of where you start, the green line and the black line are totally useless and mis-leading. The real 'trend' is not shown. It's highly non-linear in amplitude and frequency.
ReplyDeleteThe way the trends are projected is highly subjective and certainly NOT objective. Amateur science is shown here.........
The black line is the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. Knowing what that has been through the course of the last 9 years is hardly useless.
ReplyDeleteThe UN IPCC AR4 report of 2007 claimed a 90% certainty that the warming of the late 20th Century was caused by man-made greenhouse gases, the most important of which was CO2. However, the additional adsorption of IR radiation by additions of CO2 to the atmosphere is small, so the UN IPCC both exaggerated CO2's absorption power and added a positive feedback warming contribution of extra water vapor they claimed was produced as a result of the feeble warming caused by more CO2. This additional water vapor effect was claimed to be several times stronger as a warming factor than was the additional CO2. They also claimed to have understood numerous natural factors, presumably all of the important natural factors. The predictions they made for the future climate are indicated in the second graph in my post. The temperature data acquired since 2000 is supposed to be rapidly rising in accordance with the UN IPCC AR4 models, but it is not doing so. That is the real significance of the data from 2000 to 2008.
If we suppose that the basic trend is as indicated in the Akasofu plot with a long term linear trendline, but with something akin to a sinusoidal oscillatory natural effect superimposed on it, then it is reasonable to believe that the temperature passed through a local peak in say about 2000 and that it might be reasonable to add a quadratic term to approximate the curvature of a peak in the sinusoidal component to a local set of data from say 1992 to 2008. But, in our present case, we are not plotting out a long term trendline, but only asking if the general direction over a 9-year period is that predicted by the UN IPCC AR4 report of 2007. The answer is clearly that something is going on that affects the climate which the UN IPCC AR4 models are not comprehending. What we have been seeing is a flattening of the temperature over several years consistent with the superposition of an oscillatory natural force on a longer term linear trendline, and some indication perhaps of the beginning of a temperature decrease for a period of time due to that oscillatory force.
The data is often best represented by itself rather than any trendline, but there are times when a linear fit, a quadratic fit, or a higher order polynomial fit are useful to deal with the noise. But for a nine-year span of temperature data for a chaotic system such as that of climate, there is usually nothing much good to be learned by using high order polynomial fits.
Trying to over-interpret data is a scientific sin, as we can see by examining what the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming alarmists did with the data from the late 20th Century.
Overinterpreting the data.... That's exactly what you're doing!
ReplyDeleteThere is NO linear trend here.
The system is non-linear, possibly chaotic. So why would you plot a linear trend.
The only expanation I can see or come up with......because it fits somebody's viewpoint!! This is SUBJECTIVE!!!
I'm a bit amazed this comes from a meterials scientist or measurement guru.........
Catastrophic anthropogenic global warming alarmism is a religious dogma. I have spent more than enough time explaining this to you.
ReplyDeleteAs an amateur, tho' I do have an old science degree, I found the 2nd graph with its indicative projection from the LIA very illuminating. Of course we are looking at a chaotic variable system, but if there are ANY trends at all its good to have some idea what a long term natural rate might look like. It shows the extreme nature of the IPCC projection, which in turn ups the case that it is for them to produce really good evidence - which in my book they haven't, given the difficulties in the raw data, in its processing, in the models, and in the physics of the effects of CO2.
ReplyDeletePaddling about trying to read signals in noise is a mugs game anyway?
Keith in hastings, UK
Let me know if I have this right or not...
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that the point of the trend line isn't so much to show where the world is heading, but to demonstrate that the current trend is not following the prediction of the CO2 models.
If the models are correct in their assumption (and it is an assumption)that CO2 is the primary driver of climate then we should see no such current trend.
All of the IPCC models predict constantly increasing temps based on the CO2 hypopthesis, therefore there should be no decreasing trend.
Really though, as you implied, any model less than 15 years old really hasn't had enough time to be proven right, but all of the old models have been proven wrong.
The Hansen C model looked good on a graph I saw recently. Let's see where it stands in 15 years.
I do like the 2nd figure. It would be nice to see that aligned with Singer's 1500 yr cycle hypothesis.
Keith,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your very sensible comment. Looked at simply as data, the temperature record has a great deal of noise in it, but in reality the variability of the temperature over short time spans is chaotic. What I and the people whose data plots I borrowed were interested in was simply asking "How plausible is the UN IPCC AR4 projection based on their computer models looking at this point in time?" I am also inclined to expect that the behavior observed by Akasofu might be more indicative of what we have seen since 2000 than the UN IPCC projection. The linear trendline was simply suggestive that we had passed the peak maximum of the most recent natural oscillation, probably related to the sun cycle and the oceanic cycles in sync with it.
Of course, I am very willing to wait and see how the future temperatures develop over time. I see no reason to believe we are dealing with a real crisis, except the political crisis based on what I believe to be bad science. I do not believe we have learned enough yet about climate science to be sure of future predictions, but I am sure that the science behind the UN IPCC climate models is not right, so their predictions are not going to be right over the longer term, or apparently, even over the shorter term.
Greg,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. You are seeing the matter as I do.
I was just looking at the Hansen E model. It follows the period from 1880 to about 2006 fairly well. It claimed that before 1970 the climate was governed entirely by natural forces. Yet, the cycle from about 1880 to near 1940 could be superimposed on the cycle from near 1940 to 2000 and one could see great similarity and little difference. The cycles themselves seemed remarkably similar, though imposed on a linear rise throughout that time as suggested by Akasofu. But, given this similarity, why was CO2 important after 1970, but not after 1910?
I suspect there are so many parameters in his model that using it is rather like fitting n data points with a nth power polynomial. As you say, let's see how well his model does in 15 years. But meanwhile, let's not get in a panic and do stupid things to our economy, destroy people's jobs, and take individual options on living away.
It would indeed be interesting to see Akasofu's plot aligned upon the longer term cycles observed by Singer. Looking beyond that even, one has to wonder when the next real Ice Age is coming. Now that will be a real crisis!