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Fresh doubt over global warming 'pause'


Still Waters

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A controversial study that found there has been no slowdown in global warming has been supported by new research.

Many researchers had accepted that the rate of global warming had slowed in the first 15 years of this century.

But new analysis in the journal Science Advances replicates findings that scientists have underestimated ocean temperatures over the past two decades.

With the revised data the apparent pause in temperature rises between 1998 and 2014 disappears.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-38513740

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All the ice melted from the Poles helped a bit for a little while ... the temperature though adds more than melting glaciers can relieve ...

~

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The only "pause" is in believing science. 

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32 minutes ago, ChaosRose said:

The only "pause" is in believing science. 

As is typical for you, Chaos, you don't realize that the aforementioned "pause" was part of the science until the temperature records were recalibrated.

From the article:

"The authors showed that the ocean buoys used to measure sea temperatures tend to report slightly cooler temperatures than the older ship-based systems.

Back in the 1990s, ship measurements made up the vast majority of the data, whereas now the more accurate and consistent buoys account for 85% of measurements."

Or do you not trust the IPCC, who also believed in the "pause"?

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1 minute ago, Socks Junior said:

As is typical for you, Chaos, you don't realize that the aforementioned "pause" was part of the science until the temperature records were recalibrated.

From the article:

"The authors showed that the ocean buoys used to measure sea temperatures tend to report slightly cooler temperatures than the older ship-based systems.

Back in the 1990s, ship measurements made up the vast majority of the data, whereas now the more accurate and consistent buoys account for 85% of measurements."

Or do you not trust the IPCC, who also believed in the "pause"?

Are you arguing that there is not a pause in believing in science going on?

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2 minutes ago, ChaosRose said:

Are you arguing that there is not a pause in believing in science going on?

There definitely is, on both sides. But it's more accurately described as a pause in believing in the conclusions reached by science.

Whenever you can, without losing meaning, replace "science" in a sentence with "God" is where we get problems.

I love "science".

I believe in "science".

How can people not believe in "science"?

People these days don't believe in "science" like they used to.

It's a fun game to play with your posts. You also should realize that apocalyptic fear mongering, even when a scientist does it, is not science. (See Ehrlich, P.)

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I read an article on this and what I took away is that the "pause" was due to using data from buoys, rather then ship. AND that the buoys were more accurate. BUT, the pause disappears when the difference between ship and buoy is accounted for. 

But, wait, I thought I read the Buoys were MORE accurate? If that is true, shouldn't they back calculate what was happening before they used buoys, rather then simply jimmy the numbers to make them look like they came from a ship?

I'm not denying that warming is happening, but if the current measurement system is more accurate, then wouldn't the "pause' be real, and the previous data need to be re-examined?

On 1/5/2017 at 6:22 AM, Still Waters said:

With the revised data the apparent pause in temperature rises between 1998 and 2014 disappears.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-38513740

From quoted link....

Quote

The authors showed that the ocean buoys used to measure sea temperatures tend to report slightly cooler temperatures than the older ship-based systems.

Back in the 1990s, ship measurements made up the vast majority of the data, whereas now the more accurate and consistent buoys account for 85% of measurements.

The new analysis of buoy and satellite data shows that ocean temperatures have increased steadily since the 1990s

When the researchers corrected the data to take this "cold bias" into account, they concluded that the oceans had warmed 0.12C per decade since 2000, nearly twice as fast as previous estimates of 0.07 degrees.

So the expected trend showed up when the "More Accurate" data was "Corrected"?

Edited by DieChecker
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Die, I was curious about that also. The most likely explanation, based on what I've gleaned about sea temp measurements, is this.

The ships record a warmer temperature than "true" because they sample water near the engine. Therefore, they need to correct by lowering the measured temperature by some factor to account for that. The buoys do not have that engine temperature issue. However, they still must have been using the correction, therefore making the buoy measurements cooler then "true". When they removed the correction, the buoy measurements went up...since they were getting artificially lowered to begin with as a holdover from shipboard measurements.

That explanation begs the question as why the heck it took them so long to figure that out, of course. But I think thats what was going on.

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1 hour ago, DieChecker said:

I read an article on this and what I took away is that the "pause" was due to using data from buoys, rather then ship. AND that the buoys were more accurate. BUT, the pause disappears when the difference between ship and buoy is accounted for. 

But, wait, I thought I read the Buoys were MORE accurate? If that is true, shouldn't they back calculate what was happening before they used buoys, rather then simply jimmy the numbers to make them look like they came from a ship?

I'm not denying that warming is happening, but if the current measurement system is more accurate, then wouldn't the "pause' be real, and the previous data need to be re-examined?

From quoted link....

So the expected trend showed up when the "More Accurate" data was "Corrected"?

no, because they want global warming to be a fact.  they can't do that with correct temps.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On ‎1‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 6:05 PM, danielost said:

no, because they want global warming to be a fact.  they can't do that with correct temps.

The difficulty here is in determining what is the correct temp.

I note that it doesn't matter which way you run the numbers the hiatus in land surface temperatures remains and is detectable in tree ring chronologies.  There really was a "hiatus" even though it wasn't really intense enough to make much difference in 30-year averages.  So now science is trying to figure out exactly what the hiatus was.  Just another case of refining understanding, which is science's job.

Doug

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If the buoys are more accurate, why is their data disregarded as "cold biased" in favor of older, less accurate ships data? How can a buoy have a bias?

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All methods of collecting data have a bias.  Your inexperience with science shows too much.

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26 minutes ago, Frank Merton said:

All methods of collecting data have a bias.  Your inexperience with science shows too much.

Then how do we know the ship sensors don't have warmth bias? Your asininity shows too much. 

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3 hours ago, Hammerclaw said:

Then how do we know the ship sensors don't have warmth bias? Your asininity shows too much. 

Finding biases in our equipment is an ongoing project.  The best clue is generally when one data source tends to give results systematically at variance from others, which seems to be the case here.

 

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2 hours ago, Frank Merton said:

Finding biases in our equipment is an ongoing project.  The best clue is generally when one data source tends to give results systematically at variance from others, which seems to be the case here.

 

So, the more "accurate sensors" are giving incorrect data. All of them, all over the world. Yeah. right.

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On ‎1‎/‎20‎/‎2017 at 0:31 AM, Hammerclaw said:

Then how do we know the ship sensors don't have warmth bias? Your asininity shows too much. 

According to the article, they do.  Just enough engine heat was thought to reach the censors that it biased the result (A bias is consistently being off in the same direction.).

However you cut this one, there is a lot more research coming.  Think I'll postpone my decision.

Doug

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On ‎1‎/‎20‎/‎2017 at 6:22 AM, Hammerclaw said:

So, the more "accurate sensors" are giving incorrect data. All of them, all over the world. Yeah. right.

There is another source of data on sea surface temps:  satellites.  Any bets that satellite-derived data don't exactly agree with either buoy or ship data?

Global temp change is determined using satellite sea surface temps.  The buoy vs. ship debate has not affected global warming estimates.  As of now, it is irrelevant.

Doug

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I think that everyone in this conversation would do well to read up a little.

Hammer, I'll direct your attention to post #8 vis-à-vis posts #9, #11, #15.

doug, I'm going to have to disagree with you on the importance of this issue.

Quote

Sea surface temperature (SST) records are subject to potential biases due to changing instrumentation and measurement practices. Significant differences exist between commonly used composite SST reconstructions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Extended Reconstruction Sea Surface Temperature (ERSST), the Hadley Centre SST data set (HadSST3), and the Japanese Meteorological Agency’s Centennial Observation-Based Estimates of SSTs (COBE-SST) from 2003 to the present. The update from ERSST version 3b to version 4 resulted in an increase in the operational SST trend estimate during the last 19 years from 0.07° to 0.12°C per decade, indicating a higher rate of warming in recent years. We show that ERSST version 4 trends generally agree with largely independent, near-global, and instrumentally homogeneous SST measurements from floating buoys, Argo floats, and radiometer-based satellite measurements that have been developed and deployed during the past two decades. We find a large cooling bias in ERSST version 3b and smaller but significant cooling biases in HadSST3 and COBE-SST from 2003 to the present, with respect to most series examined.These results suggest that reported rates of SST warming in recent years have been underestimated in these three data sets.

Just the last bolded sentence relates most to post #17 rather inaccurate. As a bonus, from their introduction:

Quote

Because the oceans cover 71% of Earth’s surface, changes to SST series have large impacts on the resulting global temperature records.

And, as regards satellite data as a sole indicator:

Quote

Buoy data have reasonably complete spatial coverage of the oceans from the late 1990s to the present. Argo floats achieve sufficient coverage for analysis from January 2005,whereas reliable satellite data span from 1996 to the present.

And here's a picture, comparing differently sourced data sets, for the enjoyment of the crowd.

F2.large.jpg?width=800&height=600&carousel=1

Edited by Socks Junior
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On 1/20/2017 at 1:55 AM, Frank Merton said:

Finding biases in our equipment is an ongoing project.  The best clue is generally when one data source tends to give results systematically at variance from others, which seems to be the case here.

I think as far as it goes, the OP article is correct, in that if they adjust the data, the trends continue. I do agree with Hammerclaw though that if the buoys are more accurate, then what does that say about the original trends? Do those original trends need to be examined based off the less accurate bias that is now known to have existed? 

Probably won't change the general trend, but may show that the Chicken Littles of the 2010s overestimated how much of the sky was falling.

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6 hours ago, DieChecker said:

I think as far as it goes, the OP article is correct, in that if they adjust the data, the trends continue. I do agree with Hammerclaw though that if the buoys are more accurate, then what does that say about the original trends? Do those original trends need to be examined based off the less accurate bias that is now known to have existed? 

The trend wouldn't change. Say for the sake of argument you have a dataset where the temperature increases by 1C per day. But your thermometer is out by 3C. Your data would still show a change of 1C per day but would give incorrect values. If you then switch to an accurate thermometer, the 1C per day trend would continue but it would look like the increase stalled for 3 days. When you realise the problem was the first thermometer, you can just lower all those original values by 3 to get the real trend of 1C per day.

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1 hour ago, Setton said:

The trend wouldn't change. Say for the sake of argument you have a dataset where the temperature increases by 1C per day. But your thermometer is out by 3C. Your data would still show a change of 1C per day but would give incorrect values. If you then switch to an accurate thermometer, the 1C per day trend would continue but it would look like the increase stalled for 3 days. When you realise the problem was the first thermometer, you can just lower all those original values by 3 to get the real trend of 1C per day.

Yeah, I see what you mean. If the bias is just a straight forward adjustment then the trend is straight forward. 

But they didn't lower the past values, they adjusted the "more accurate" values. Possibly just to show the trend still existed, but that is what they said they did.

I suppose since all data going backward would have the same bias, that you could not argue that the "start" of the increase should be changed either. 

Edited by DieChecker
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10 minutes ago, DieChecker said:

Yeah, I see what you mean. If the bias is just a straight forward adjustment then the trend is straight forward. 

But they didn't lower the past values, they adjusted the "more accurate" values. Possibly just to show the trend still existed, but that is what they said they did.

I suppose since all data going backward would have the same bias, that you could not argue that the "start" of the increase should be changed either. 

Convenience perhaps? A few years of accurate data has to be easier to adjust than the decades of inaccurate stuff. And since it's only the trend that matters I guess that would make sense.

Personally, my obsessions with numbers being right wouldn't let me do that but maybe that's just me :P

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In the meantime, there's little doubt the world is warming and the climate changing.

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My comment was based on the fact that no two sizable datasets ever come up exactly the same, especially if they're climate data.  But, the ERSST numbers are very close to the buoy data.  So I suppose you could say they are the same, or almost so.

In calculating climate temperature change, NOAA uses satellite data for the sea and land-based stations for the land.  Nobody ever said sea temps weren't important - it's just that the new buoy data has not supplanted satellite data in calculations determining global temperature changes.  Sorry if I didn't say that very well.

One puzzle here:  The buoy data is almost the same as the satellite data.  The satellite data was already being used to calculate temperature changes and this discovery merely confirms it.  So what changes?  Nothing.

Doug

Edited by Doug1029
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