Homogenized Anomalies

NASA makes an attempt at determining the World’s temperature each month and publishes the result around the middle of each month in various reports one of which is called the Land Ocean Temperature Index, or LOTI. This table of values is published back to January 1880 and the lasted version includes temperatures though April 2014, or 1,600 values. However, rather than publish an actual temperature they first establish a base of 14.0 degrees Celsius and then using a complex algorithm determine a value higher or lower than the 14.0 degrees Celsius base in hundredths of a degree which they call an anomaly, i.e. 13.5 degrees Celsius would be -50 and 14.5 would be +50. Each month when the new table is created using this process called “homogenization” NASA recalculates all the temperatures all the way back to January 1880.

After several years of studying the published values, sometime in early 2013 as I remember it, a major change was noticed in the 2012 published values from those in earlier periods. Previous to this minor changes of a few hundredths of a degree were commonly observed in the LOTI data but they just appeared to be random or rounding changes, which would be normal in a process like NASA uses, so they were ignored. The reason is that a few pluses and a few minuses would mostly cancel out and could be ignored as having no real affect. What was observed was something much different and so an in depth analysis was made of the entire set of 13 available tables and then by entering all the data for 8 of them plus 5 new ones into a spreadsheet which created a table with now over 22,000 values, which could be reviewed.

To simplify the analysis the data for the 13 reports was looked at in ten year blocks e.g. January 1880 to December 1889 which would be 120 values and an average determined; this would eliminate any random or rounding changes. This was done for the period January 1880 through December 2009 creating a Table of 169 values which were placed into an Excel Chart. What should have been observed would be a more or less horizontal line across the Chart for each time block for the average value of the NASA anomaly for that period. Instead what was observed were major shifts mostly down meaning colder in a large number of the ten year time blocks all occurring during 2012; meaning that a programming change must have been made that shifted around entire blocks of temperature anomalies. This has to be intentional and not random.

Rather than show all 13 plots four new ones were created to show where the major change was and they are plotted here as 1900 to 1919, 1920 to 1939, 1940 to 1959 and 1960 to 1979 each plot containing 240 values for each of the 13 NASA LOTI reports. Virtually all the 13 original time blocks showed this kind of shift, some up and some down in values, but since many overlapped it was hard to track the individual plots and this simplified version shows the core of what was done with the temperatures without the distraction of too many plots.

It’s obvious that there has been a major shift in the values shown in NASA table LOTI during these four 20 year periods totaling 80 years; shown in the area contained in the blue oval with the question mark. What appears to have been done is to make the 1900 to 1919 period .15 degrees colder; make the 1920 to 1939 period .1 degree colder; make the 1940 to 1959 period about .05 degrees colder and them make the 1960 to 1979 period about .025 degrees warmer. While doing this they made the 1960 to 1979 period warmer than the earlier 1940 to 1959 period such that the look of the data fit the narrative of the alarmist message being promoted by Hansen and Gore of dangerous anthropogenic global warming which was the original message being promoted at the time. The data after the 2012 change shows a very clear ~.35 degree progressive warming, red arrow, from 1900 to 1979 compared to less than ~.2 degrees prior to 2012, black arrow, and it also gets rid of the 1940 to 1959 warm period which doesn’t match the overall message being promoted.

It’s hard to image how this change could come about without conscious effort being applied to make this the end result; it’s just too convenient to be by chance.

Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian and British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics. He is considered one of the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century, and he also wrote extensively on social and political philosophy. The following quotes of his apply to this subject.

If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories.

Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.

… (S)cience is one of the very few human activities — perhaps the only one — in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected

What really going on with the Climate?

The analysis and plots shown here are based on the following: first NASA-GISS temperature anomalies (converted to degrees Celsius) as shown in their table LOTI, second James Hansen’s Scenario B data, which is the very core of the IPCC Global Climate models which was based on a CO² sensitivity value of 3.0 degrees Celsius, lastly, a plot based on an alternative climate model designated the ‘PCM’ climate model based on a sensitively value of .65 degrees Celsius. To smooth out large monthly variations a 12 month running average is used in all the plots. This information will be shown in four tables and updated each month as the new data comes in.

The first plot, UL is a plot of the NASA temperature anomaly converted to degrees Celsius shown in red with a black trend line added. There has been a very clear reversal in the upward movement of global temperatures since about 2001 and neither the UN IPCC nor anyone else has an explanation for this. Since CO² has continued to increase at what could be argued an increasing rate this raises serious doubts about the logic programmed into all the IPCC global climate models.

The next plot UR, also in red, shows the IPCC estimates of what the Global temperature should be, based on Hansen’s Scenario B, with the NASA actual temperatures’ subtracted from them. Therefore this plot represents a deviation from what the Climate “believers” think the temperature should be; with a positive value indicating the IPCC values are higher than actual and a negative value indicating the IPCC values are lower than actual. A black trend line is added and we can clearly see that the deviation from expected is increasing at an increasing rate. This makes sense since the IPCC models project increased temperatures based primarily on the increasing level of CO² in the earth’s atmosphere. Unfortunately, for them, the actual temperatures from NASA are trending down since other factors are in play, therefore each year the gap between them widens. Since we have 12 years of observations’ showing this pattern it becomes hard to justify a continuing belief in the IPCC climate models, there is obviously something very wrong.

The next plot LL shown in blue is based on the equations in the PCM climate model described in previous papers and posts here and since it is generated by “equations” a trend line is not needed. As can be seen the PCM, LL, and the NASA, UL, trend plots are very similar the reason being that in the PCM model there is a 68.2 year cycle that moves the trend line up and then down a total of .30 degrees Celsius (.0044 degrees Celsius per year); and we are now in the downward portion of that trend which will continue until around 2035. This short cycle is clearly observed in the raw NASA data in the LOTI table going back to 1880. Because there is also a long trend, 1052.6 years with an up and down of 1.36 degrees Celsius (.0013 degrees Celsius per year) also observed in the NASA data; there is a net cooling of .0031 degrees Celsius per year going up right now. After about 2035 it will reverse and be a net increase of .0057 degrees Celsius. These are all round numbers as both curves are sine curves.

The last plot LR in blue uses the same logic as used in the UR plot, here we use the PCM estimates of what the Global temperature should be with the NASA actual temperatures’ subtracted from them. A positive value indicates the PCM values are higher than actual and a negative value indicates the PCM values are lower than expected. A black trend line was added and it clearly shows that the PCM model is tracking the NASA actual values very closely. In, fact since 1970 the PCM model has rarely been off by more than +/- .1 degrees Celsius and has an average trend of almost zero error, while the IPCC models are erratic and are now approaching an error rate of +.5 degrees above expected.

The IPCC models were designed before a true picture of the world’s climate was understood. During the 1980’s and 1990’s CO² levels were going up and the world temperature was also going up so there appeared to be correlation and causation. The mistake that was made was looking at only a 20 year period when the real variations in climate move in much longer cycles. Those other cycles can be observed in the NASA data but they were ignored for some reason. By ignoring those trends and focusing only on CO² the models will be unable to correctly plot global temperatures until they are fixed.

The purpose of this post is to make people aware of the errors inherent in the IPCC models so that they can be corrected.

Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian and British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics. He is considered one of the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century, and he also wrote extensively on social and political philosophy. The following quotes of his apply to this subject.

If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories.

Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.

… (S)cience is one of the very few human activities — perhaps the only one — in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected

Water the climate stabilizer

This post is an “opinion piece” although I believe it is based on sound principles and the conclusion is probably not all that far off from what we actually have with the planets climate.

What so many people forget when they are discussing the subject of Climate Change or Anthropogenic Climate Change is that the primary greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is Water, just plain old H₂O at .25% or 2,500 ppm. The Carbon Dioxide CO₂ that so many are extremely worried about is only a minor player at only .04% or 400 ppm. The how that these two interact in our atmosphere along with incoming solar radiation and outgoing infrared (IR) is what keeps the atmosphere of the planet 33 degrees Celsius warmer than it would be without these two gases. In other words the planet would be an ice ball and probably devoid of life without them.

When studying climate in relationship to Water and the various other trace gases such as CO_2, Ozone, and Methane one finds that there are only a few bands (frequencies) of visible (incoming) or Infra red radiation (outgoing) where the trace gases could affect water which is the repository of the heat making up that 33 degrees Celsius of warming.   Ozone absorbs ultra violet which is very important to us but does not interact with the water or the Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere so it can be dismissed for considerations involving changes in global temperature. Methane at present levels is only 1.8 ppm and so even though it could be a factor at higher levels it can also be dismissed; and so for all practical purposes that only leaves Water and Carbon Dioxide to consider for changes in the climate with the variations of these gases in the atmosphere.

When we look at charts showing the radiation transmitted by the atmosphere or absorbed by it. It would seem that the ratio of absorption of energy by Carbon Dioxide to Water is about 1 to 6 or in other words 16.7% CO₂ and 83.3% H₂O. Since we know that there is energy in the H₂O in the atmosphere from absorbing visible and Infra red energy and that can be determined to be 33 degrees Celsius that distribution logic tells us that 5.5 degrees Celsius is related to CO₂ and 27.5 degrees is related to H₂O.   Based on these numbers we can generate sensitivity plots. Those plots make sense from observations of the atmosphere when all things are considered in proper context.

We’ll look at CO₂ first and we find that from many peer reviewed papers the sensitivity values for CO₂ have been moving down from the original National Academy of Sciences (NAS) 1979 Charney report of 3.0 degrees Celsius being the most likely to now most being less than 2.0 degrees Celsius. There are even a few studies below 1.0 degrees Celsius such as .68 degrees Celsius Harde and .64 degrees Celsius Lindzen. If we pick .65 and plot the resultant curve we find that 400 ppm intersects the CO2 plot at 5.5 degrees warming which just happens to be the same value that we got looking at the radiation absorption and transmission Charts. In my work I came up with .65 degrees Celsius as well because it was the value that made my model work; so obviously I have no problem with this value.

The following Chart shows the relationship that we just described.

With the Carbon Diode subject now settled (here) that leaves water to be studied and this is a little more complex. Everyone agrees that water is the primary greenhouse gas because of the large amount of heat that it can hold, from Wikipedia we have the following three statements:

Waters heat capacity is the highest of all common liquids and most solids and it prevents extreme changes in the planets temperature i.e. it is a great heat moderator.

Waters latent heat of fusion is also the highest of all common solids and liquids its thermostatic heat regulating effect is due to the release of heat when freezing and the absorption on melting.

Waters latent heat of vaporization is the highest of all common substances so it is immensely important in the transfer of heat in and between the ocean and the atmosphere which makes it a driving force in climate and weather.

We know following the logic used here that 5.5 degrees Celsius was the amount of increase in the atmosphere from Carbon Dioxide and so if we subtract that from 33 degrees Celsius we get a remainder of 27.5 degrees Celsius. That must then be the amount contributed by the water itself to the process and we can make another chart showing the contribution due to water. To make the chart we have water at 2500 ppm and we know the amount of increase in temperature must be 27.5 degrees Celsius so what sensitivity value will produce that curve? The following plot shows that if the sensitivity value of water is approximately 2.45 than we get the required value as shown in the following Chart.

This process makes sense since if the numbers were reversed and we made Carbon Dioxide have a sensitivity of 3.0 degrees Celsius (as the IPCC claims it is) than the warming from CO₂ would be 27.9 and there would be no room for the water as there would only be 7.1 degrees available for the water.  These numbers are almost the same as what was developed here but reversed between the CO₂ and Water so it has to be one way or the other. However, since we know the absorption bands of the CO₂ and Water and we know the distribution on energy coming in and gong out we also know that this is not possible.

Therefore this paper must be a close approximation of the actual situation in the atmosphere and the IPCC value that they use of 3.0 degrees Celsius must therefore be wrong.

Background

Over the past several decades a great deal of international effort has been undertaken to show that anthropogenic CO₂ is causing climate change on the planet by raising the planet’s temperature.  Therefore the increased temperatures will change the world’s climate patterns which will result in the melting of the world’s glaciers, increased storms and probably loss of valuable crop lands by rising sea levels. The implied result on the world’s civilizations will be catastrophic and therefore there will be a significant loss of life from both the climate change and the probable wars that will be fought over dwindling resources. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been given the primary task of showing how this will happen and this research is being done primarily by NASA and NOAA in the United States and the Met Office Hadley Center and Climate Research Unit in the United Kingdom. To show what is happening on a planetary scale very complex computer models have been constructed by some of the world’s best scientists and those models have shown that the temperature of the planet will hit unprecedented levels possibly as soon as 2050.  To prevent this from happening various international forums have been held such as Rio de Janiero in 1992 and Kyoto in 1997 where goals for a reduction in the CO₂ emissions from the burning of fossil fuels primarily from petroleum, coal and natural gas were agreed to by the parties.  Efforts to date have been totally unsuccessful and CO₂ levels have now about to go over 400 ppm and they are increasing by and increasing rate now at 2 ppm per year.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up in 1988 by the United Nations (UN) at the request of some of its members. Its mission is to provide comprehensive scientific assessments of current scientific, technical and socio-economic information worldwide about the risk of climate change more specifically Anthropogenic Climate Change (which is by definition climate change caused by the action of humans). The concern was from the global increase in temperatures which were “presumed” to be from increasing levels of Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere as measured in parts per million (ppm) resulting from burning carbon based fuels; and this resulted in a self full filling prophecy. The IPCC does not do research and so the information they use comes predominantly from four sources the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA-GISS) and the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration Carbon Cycle Greenhouse Gas Group  (NOAA-CCGG) in the U.S. and the Met Office Hadley Centre (UKMO) and the Climate Research Unit University of East Anglia (CRU) in the United Kingdom (UK).  Others are involved as well but these four agencies at the direction of their governments are the primary drivers of this concept.

The concept of Anthropogenic Climate Change actually started in the late 19^th century with the belief that lower levels of CO₂ might be the cause of the past ice ages. During the 20^th century that transitioned into the concept that too much CO₂ might cause global overheating and that belief reached a peak in the 1970’s when the environmental movement started in earnest with the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the U.S. as well as other like agencies and organizations in both the US, UK and what was to become the European Union EU. The environmentalists all had concerns over pollution and the resulting affect on both humans and the environment and this link to CO₂ seemed like a simple way to promote their concerns.  These environmental movements, in themselves, were needed as concerns over pollution were very real back then. However virtually all the worlds energy is produced from carbon based fuels. Most of the real pollution from coal (e.g. sulfur, fly ash, mercury, soot) and from petroleum and gasoline (e.g. nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, ozone and particulate matter) was all fixable through technology and they have been mostly eliminated in the United States. Unfortunately, Carbon Dioxide production from fossil fuels cannot be eliminated by any known cost effective means and so this aspect of the environmental movement was very misguided. It was assumed by many in the movement that alternative means of producing energy could be developed and they were called Clean Energy and the movement took on a life of its own.

The history of the concept of CO₂ being a factor in the worlds temperature was based on the work of many scientists and the fact that CO₂ was originally thought to be a significant greenhouse gas so reasonable attempts were made to calculate the warming effect of this gas on the planet.  There were a lot of concerns that a significant warming of the planet could result from the increasing usage of fossil (carbon based) fuels being used to generate ~400 Quadrillion watts (Quad) of usable energy for civilization in the 80’s. This is especially true because that number of Quads has already significantly increased and will, probably more than double by the middle of the 21^st century as reported by the US Department of Energy (DOE) and the UN as the rest of the world increase’s their standard of living.

Continued in A Short History of Climate Change, Part II

How it all started

During the 1970’s and 1980’s the temperature of the planet did seem to be going up, see Figure 1 from that period, and this led to a reinforcing belief that it was being caused by increasing levels of CO₂ as both seemed to be rising together in lock step, in other words there was a correlation between the two variables.  This is what eventually led to the creation of the IPCC and the construction of the various Global Climate Models (GCM) [1] Hafemeister and Schwartz, which were designed to show how much the planet’s temperature was going up because of the increasing levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere. Inherent in setting up the IPCC and the global climate models was the belief that there was both correlation and cause and effect between the world’s temperature and the level of CO₂ in the atmosphere.  This was a very serious flaw which has led to much wasted effort and a lot of confusion in the world’s science and engineering communities, because instead of working on producing cheap energy which would improve the lives of everyone on the planet and which we would need in abundance, we are working very hard on reducing CO₂ which either significantly increases the cost or reduces the supply of energy and is therefore very counterproductive.

Because of the importance of this Figure 1 some discussion is justified.  The trend lines between CO₂ and temperature appear to be almost exactly the same.  This is, in part, because of the scales used in this chart.  However the scales used here are the basically the same as those used throughout this paper, although the portion (window) shown in any one Figure might be different.  In this Figure CO₂ increases about 9.2% and temperature increases about 4.4% and different scales and units would, in fact, give different numbers. The salient point to the IPCC was that both CO₂ and temperature were moving up simultaneously and that gave them the justification for what they were proposing in their Anthropogenic Climate Change Theory.

The IPCC in many cases indirectly acknowledges that they don’t really know what they are doing for example in the IPCC 2007 4^th assessment on Climate Change their climatologists admit to having a “low” or “very low” understanding of 13 of the 15 factors that drive climate [2]. So in other words they only know what they are doing 2 out of 15 times or 13.3% of the time yet they want us to trust them and completely change the entire world’s energy production system at a cost of untold trillions of dollars because they just might have guessed correctly; that seems to be a bit much. Most of the science I know, albeit I’m of an older generation, requires over 90% certainty before it is accepted and that’s just the start of a proof of a theory. For example Albert Einstein’s “Theory” of Special Relativity is not acceptance as a law of science it is still only a theory that appears to be correct.

The really amazing thing about what the IPCC and their cohorts are doing is that prior to their founding and the creation of a large amount of government research money there was little to no support for the theory that CO₂ was causing planetary change and increasing the earth’s temperature; given that CO₂ is only .0398% of the atmosphere even today that does seem to be a bit of a stretch.  For example the American Meteorological Society (AMS) had refuted the concept of CO₂ as a greenhouse gas in 1951 in its Compendium of Meteorology [3], In which they stated that the idea that CO₂ could alter the climate “was never widely accepted and was abandoned when it was found that all the long-wave radiation [that would be] absorbed by CO₂ is [already] absorbed by water vapor.” There was also a hugely influential National Academy of Science  in their Charney Report from 1979 [4]. This 33-year-old U.S. government report details the role of carbon dioxide and how it might impact the climate. You will see that while CO₂ is mentioned no less than 112 times, as you’d expect, but nowhere in this report will you find ANY mention of the greenhouse gas effect/theory.

One of the principle architects’ of the anthropogenic climate change theory was James Edward Hansen and according to Wikipedia he is “… an American adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. Hansen is best known for his research in the field of climatology, his testimony on climate change to congressional committees in 1988 that helped raise broad awareness of global warming, and his advocacy of action to avoid dangerous climate change.”  From 1981 to 2013, he was the head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, a part of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Hansen, while at NASA in a leadership role, was the primary driver for the US governments push for control of energy and therefore we must look at his work since it is, if not the primary driver certainly one of the main drivers of world policy on climate today.  Hansen retired from NASA-GISS in April of 2013 and has now become very active in the environmental movement.

From the NASA-GISS website, “In particular Hansen gave a presentation to the US congress in 1988 where he showed them what he thought would happen to Global climate if we did not stop putting Carbon Dioxide CO2 into the earth’s atmosphere. In the original 1988 paper, three different scenarios were used A, B, and C. They consisted of hypothesised future concentrations of the main greenhouse gases – CO₂, CH₄, CFCs etc. together with a few scattered volcanic eruptions. The details varied for each scenario, but the net effect of all the changes was that Scenario A assumed exponential growth in forcings, Scenario B was roughly a linear increase in forcings, and Scenario C was similar to B, but had close to constant forcings from 2000 onwards. Scenario B and C had an ‘El Chichon’ sized volcanic eruption in 1995. Essentially, a high, middle and low estimate were chosen to bracket the set of possibilities. Hansen specifically stated that he thought the middle scenario (B), shown below as Figure 2, the “most plausible”.

Figure 2 James E. Hansen’s three scenarios

Hansen as well as many others are true believers in the Anthropogenic climate change movement and they have, for the most part, made this into a religion and refuse to admit that there could be any other factors besides CO₂ that drive Global climate. What has happened is that rather than look at climate and how it has “always” changed over time Hansen and the IPCC chose to ignore the fact that climate has never been a constant and tried to prove the CO₂ “was” the cause of the current change.  A look at recent history going back to the last Ice Age shows how foolish that belief is, see Figure 3 below.

Figure 3, 11,000 years of Change

What should have been done was construct a null hypothesis argument to see if science could prove that the CO₂ was not the cause instead of trying to make the models show that it was the cause.  Much of what was done in these models was to tweak the assumptions and the raw data to give the result that was desired and that has led to a wide disparity between the current observed downward movement of temperatures and the upward predictions of those temperatures by all the IPCC climate models. This increasing disparity is becoming a major issue with the IPCC (and their supporting agencies) and the other side of this argument. There are now an increasing number of scientists who are not in support of the way the climate work has been done.  We have attempted to show here that after wasting billions of dollars that —

CO₂ is neither the proximate nor the ultimate cause of the world’s temperature going up.

Continued in A Short History of Climate Change, Part III