The message
from Terry Fields contains these words:
snip
http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newslet...7/monckton.cfm
Near the start, it says this:
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(G)LOBALLY-AVERAGED land and sea surface absolute temperature TS has
not risen since 1998 (Hadley Center; US National Climatic Data Center;
University of Alabama at Huntsville; etc.). For almost seven years, TS
may even have fallen (Figure 1). There may be no new peak until 2015
(Keenlysideet al., 2008).
-----
I don't have the time to read that at the moment but I do have time to
repeat what I have said before. Anyone who takes an extreme anomaly like
1998 as a baseline is a charletan.
So, planetary temperatures may be falling, and may have been doing so
for some years, according to a number of researchers, including the
Met Office's own Hadley Centre. No mention of warming at all. And
these are not figures measured from some arbitary 'baseline'; they are
absolute figures.
The Met Office show the trend is rising up to 2004.
Worse, it goes on to say this:
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The models heavily relied upon by the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) had not projected this multidecadal stasis in
global warming; nor (until trained ex post facto) the fall in TS
from 1940-1975; nor 50 years cooling in Antarctica (Doran et al.,
2002) and the Arctic (Soon, 2005); nor the absence of ocean warming
since 2003 (Lyman et al., 2006; Gouretski&Koltermann, 2007); nor the
onset, duration, or intensity of the Madden-Julian intraseasonal
oscillation, the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation in the tropical
stratosphere, El Nino/La Nina oscillations, the Atlantic Multidecadal
Oscillation, or the Pacific Decadal Oscillation that has recently
transited from its warming to its cooling phase (oceanic oscillations
which, on their own, may account for all of the observed warmings and
coolings over the past half-century: Tsoniset al., 2007); nor the
magnitude nor duration of multi-century events such as the Mediaeval
Warm Period or the Little Ice Age; nor the cessation since 2000 of the
previously-observed growth in atmospheric methane concentration (IPCC,
2007); nor the active 2004 hurricane season; nor the inactive
subsequent seasons; nor the UK flooding of 2007 (the Met Office had
forecast a summer of prolonged droughts only six weeks previously);
nor the solar Grand Maximum of the past 70 years, during which the Sun
was more active, for longer, than at almost any similar period in the
past 11,400 years (Hathaway, 2004; Solankiet al., 2005); nor the
consequent surface global warming on Mars, Jupiter, Neptunes
largest moon, and even distant Pluto; nor the eerily- continuing 2006
solar minimum; nor the consequent, precipitate decline of ~0.8 °C in
TS from January 2007 to May 2008 that has canceled out almost all of
the observed warming of the 20th century.
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The anti wing don't like the IPCC but is any of the above even true, let
alone relevant to the charge that the IPCC has got it all wrong.
Note that statement: "nor the consequent, precipitate decline of ~0.8
°C in TS from January 2007 to May 2008 that has canceled out almost
all of the observed warming of the 20th century."
Has it really? Oh goody so more snow for winter mountaineering at last.
Pity I am now too old to really take advantage of it.
That's surely worth a headline....the whole of the 20th Century
'global warming' just about gone in a year. The expensive models
failed to predict that, along with just about every other variation.
Figure 1 is a graph, which cannot be reproduced here, but the notes
accompanying it say this:
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Since the phase-transition in mean global surface temperature late in
2001, a pronounced downtrend has set in. In the cold winter of 2007/8,
record sea-ice extents were observed at both Poles. The
January-to-January fall in temperature from 2007-2008 was the greatest
since global records began in 1880. Data sources: Hadley Center
monthly combined land and sea surface temperature anomalies;
University of Alabama at Huntsville Microwave Sounding Unit monthly
lower-troposphere anomalies;
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What was that? "In the cold winter of 2007/8, record sea-ice extents
were observed at both Poles". And the figures are from that pesky
Hadley Centre again.
Oh....so the planet's cooling, and sea-ice has broken records...not
for melting, either.
I don't have time to try and track that down on the Met Office site so I
will stick my neck out and say it appears that this report seems to have
got that the wrong way round. Surely the record extent of sea ice was at
a minimum, not a maximum. Given arctic summer ice limits for 2007 and
2008 I can't see how the winter ice limit could be anywhere near a
record maximum.
And even better, or worse, according to one's view, is this:
"January-to-January fall in temperature from 2007-2008 was the
greatest since global records began in 1880. Data sources: Hadley
Center". Oh!
No time to check that but the previous biggest drop seems to have been
from 1998 to 1999 and over the subsequent 4 years the temperature
climbed back to close to the 1998 maximum.
snip
--
Roger Chapman