Roy Spencer har gjort en djupdykning i havtemperaturerna och kommit fram till att det inte alls är säkert att juli 2009 var så rekordvarm som det påstås.

Läs hela hans redogörelse här.

Idag hittade jag ett mycket intressant inlägg på Dr Roy Spencers blogg. Det handlar om havstemperatur med anledning av den senaste tiden El Nino-relaterad värme.

För enkelhetens skull återger jag hela inlägget nedan. Dessvärre går det inte att kommentera på Roy Spencers blogg, så vi kanske kan ha en liten diskussion här i stället.

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Something’s Fishy With Global Ocean Temperature Measurements

Yesterday I posted the satellite-based global-average monthly sea surface temperature (SST) variations since mid-2002, which was when the NASA Aqua satellite was launched carrying the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E). The AMSR-E instrument (which I serve as the U.S. Science Team Leader for) provides nearly all-weather SST measurements.

The plot I showed yesterday agreed with the NOAA announcement that July 2009 was unusually warm…NOAA claims it was even a new record for July based upon their 100+ year record of global SSTs.

But I didn’t know just HOW warm, since our satellite data extend back to only 2002. So, I decided to download the NOAA SST data from their website — which do NOT include the AMSR-E measurements — to do a more quantitative comparison. (The NOAA oceanic data they post there seem to be based upon the UK Climatic Research Unit [CRU] data, but I could not tell whether those are indeed the data that were the basis for NOAA’s record high temperature announcement).

From the NOAA data, I computed monthly anomalies in exactly the same manner I computed them with the AMSR-E data, that is, relative to the June 2002 through July 2009 period of record. The results (shown below) were so surprising, I had to go to my office this Saturday morning to make sure I didn’t make a mistake in my processing of the AMSR-E data.

As can be seen, the satellite-based temperatures have been steadily rising relative to the conventional SST measurements, with a total linear increase of 0.15 deg C over the 7 year period of record versus the conventional SST measurements.

If the satellite data are correct, then this means that the July 2009 SSTs reached a considerably higher record temperature than NOAA has claimed. The discrepancy is huge in terms of climate measurements; the trend in the difference between the two datasets shown in the above figure is the same size as the anthropogenic global warming signal expected by the IPCC.

I have no idea what is going on here. Frank Wentz and Chelle Gentemann at Remote Sensing Systems have been very careful about tracking the accuracy of the AMSR-E SST retrievals with millions of buoy measurements. I checked their daily statistics they post at their website and I don’t see anything like what is shown in the above figure.

Is it possible that the widely-used CRUT SST temperature dataset has been understating recent warming? I don’t know…I’m mystified. Maybe Frank, Chelle, Phil Jones, or some enterprising blogger out there can figure this one out….I’ve got to go hang some plywood.

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Vi borde ha gjort något redan i Kyoto. För nu, inför Köpenhamn, kan det redan vara för sent. Så skriver Newsweek och hotar med den smältande permafrosten.

”As temperatures rise, permafrost, which holds an enormous amount of carbon from long-dead plants, tends to dry out, allowing decay and a release of carbon into the atmosphere. If this phenomenon, called ”outgassing,” were to kick in, it could inundate the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, perhaps doubling or tripling the effect of the past century of human industry.”

Problemet med detta resonemang är bara – stiger temperaturen fortfarande?

• New Paper “Ocean Heat Content and Earth’s Radiation Imbalance” By D.H. Douglas and R.S. Knox 2009
  - Roger Pielke Sr tipsar.
• Prominent scientists push to revise physics society climate statement – Examiner.com
  - Pressen på APS ökar.
• Oil lobby to fund phoney campaign against US climate change strategy – guardian.co.uk
  - Den illasinnade oljeindustrin sponsrar en anti-AGW-kampanj.
• Cheap Climate-Change Fix Needed, Lomborg Center Says – Bloomberg
  - Måla taken vita är billigare och mer effektivt än att försöka minska CO2-utsläppen.

Roger Pielke Sr rapporterar om en ny studie av Klotzbach et al, vars resultat tyder på att både NCDC och Hadley Center överskattar temperaturtrenden.

Från Climate Science:

The abstract of the Klotzbach et al (2009) paper reads

“This paper investigates surface and satellite temperature trends over the period from 1979-2008. Surface temperature datasets from the National Climate Data Center and the Hadley Center show larger trends over the 30-year period than the lower-tropospheric data from the University of Alabama-Huntsville and Remote Sensing Systems datasets. The differences between trends observed in the surface and lower tropospheric satellite datasets are statistically significant in most comparisons, with much greater differences over land areas than over ocean areas. These findings strongly suggest that there remain important inconsistencies between surface and satellite records.”

We tested the following two hypotheses:

1. If there is no warm bias in the surface temperature trends, then there should not be an increasing divergence with time between the tropospheric and surface temperature anomalies [Karl et al., 2006]. The difference between lower troposphere and surface anomalies should not be greater over land areas.

2. If there is no warm bias in the surface temperature trends then the divergence should not be larger for both maximum and minimum temperatures at high latitude land locations in the winter.

Both were falsified.

• Globala temperaturen juni 2009 + aktuellt isläge
  - Moderna Myter om den globala temperaturen i juni. Dagens fråga: varför skiljer sig marktemperaturdata från satellitdata och vilka är egentligen rätt?
• New Paper “Surface Temperature Variations In East Africa And Possible Causes” By Christy Et Al. 2009
  - Ny studie som rekommenderas av flera bloggar.
• UK Met Office Refuses to Disclose Station Data Once Again
  - Steve McIntyre har otur igen.
• Andreas Malm om Rachel Carson och den nödvändiga miljöalarmismen
  - Professor Erik Svensson rekommenderar Andreas Malm. Jag har Malms bok (den där med en alldeles för lång titel) och tycker att den är lika intressant som Erik Svensson anser att David Eberhards nya bok är.

En bloggläsare tipsade mig om denna debattartikel i dagens Skånska Dagbladet. Ni kan läsa den själva om ni registrerar er hos Skånskan, det kostar ingenting. Nedan får ni artikeln som två separata bilder. Jag hoppas att den går att läsa, trots att ni får hoppa mellan bilderna.

Och till Per Ingvar Jönsson vill jag säga: Tack för den fina recensionen.

• CO2, Soot, Modeling and Climate Sensitivity
  - Från Watts Up With That.
• Cooling trend does not refute global warming – Examiner.com
  - Spendera lagom?
• Winds of change for British energy – Financial Times
  - Financial Times skeptisk till vindkraft.

”Att politiker tror sig om att kunna styra jordens klimat är inte bara tecken på långt gången hybris, det är också snudd på omoraliskt och oanständigt att som G8-gruppen besluta om detta långtgående resursslöseri med så bristande vetenskaplig underbyggnad”, skriver Ernst Herslow på Newsmill.

Läs och kommentera.

• 90 Billion People, 1 Planet?
  - Andrew Revkin refererar till Hans Rosling.
• GISS for June – way out there
  - Anthony Watts om junis temperaturer.
• How Do Climate Models Work?
  - Roy Spencer om klimatmodeller.
• Storbritannien lanserar gröna poliser
  - Klimatbluffen rapporterar.
• June 2009 and the Big Red Spot
  - Värmen är tillbaka! Eller? Läs även kommentarerna till Steve McIntyres inlägg.
• Warming, interrupted: Much ado about natural variability
  - Real Climate förklarar varför temperaturnedgången de senaste åren inte ska ses som en avkylning, utan bara en paus i uppvärmningen.
• Climate change ‘will cause civilization to collapse’ – Tehran Times
  - Nya State of the Future-rapporten är snart ute.
• Climate change measures will cause rise in fuel bills says minister – Telegraph.co.uk
  - Heureka!