Spencer & Christy's model not working again: "A Comparative Analysis of Data Derived from Orbiting MSU/AMSU Instruments" by

Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, Vol. 34, No. 1 (2017) 225-232; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JTECH-D-16-0121.1

A Comparative Analysis of Data Derived from Orbiting MSU/AMSU Instruments

R. Eric Swanson^a  (Warrensville, NC, U.S.A.)

Received June 14, 2016; final form October 3, 2016; published online January 16, 2017.

Abstract

Spencer and Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) recently introduced a new method to process MSU/AMSU satellite brightness temperature data with their version 6 (v6) data. A comparison of UAH v6 north polar lower stratospheric (TLS) data with that from Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) is presented, indicating a possible bias between 1986 and 1988. Comparing UAH and NOAA Center for Satellite Applications and Research (NOAA) TLS data produces a similar result. An additional analysis utilizing midtropospheric (TMT) data also found a similar bias. Comparing the NOAA TMT data for the May 2016 release against UAH and RSS TMT evidenced another excursion, dated at the middle of 2005, that was corrected in later releases. These comparisons reinforce the concerns expressed by other analysts regarding the merging procedure for UAH v6, repeating similar concerns regarding the earlier UAH v5 products. Any biases in the UAH, RSS, or STAR products would impact the trends calculated for these products and could explain the differences between these trends. Biases in the UAH series would also impact the UAH TLTv6 lower-troposphere product, which is a linear combination of the UAH TMT, tropopause temperature (TTP), and TLS series.

Key words: Climate records; Satellite observations; Filtering techniques; Pattern detection; Time series

^a Retired.

© 2017 American Meteorological Society. For information regarding reuse of this content and general copyright information, consult the AMS Copyright Policy (www.ametsoc.org/PUBSReuseLicenses).

Corresponding author e-mail: R. Eric Swanson, e_swanson@skybest.com

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JTECH-D-16-0121.1

Joe Romm: Climate Deniers’ Favorite Temperature Dataset Just Confirmed Global Warming

CREDIT: ROY SPENCER, UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT HUNTSVILLE

by Joe Romm, Climate Progress, March 2, 2016

February smashed monthly global temperature records, according to the satellite data analyzed by the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH). At the same time, a brand new study concludes that miscalculations explain why the Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) satellite temperature dataset had appeared to show a relatively slow rate of global warming.

So Ted Cruz and his fellow climate science deniers need a new meme to replace their “satellites find no warming since 1998” talking point, which replaced the “there’s been no warming since 1998” talking point after that one fell apart when 2014 became the hottest year on record — and again when 2015 blew away the 2014 record.

In fact, for those who live in reality, as opposed to in denial, satellite data, ground-based weather stations, sea-based buoys, and even weather balloons all reveal a steady long-term warming trend.

Let’s start with the UAH data, which show a stunning 1.5 °F (0.83 °C) warming in February 2016 compared to the historical (1981-2010) average for the lower troposphere (the lowest part of the atmosphere):

The lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly, via UAH scientist Roy Spencer.

How amazing is this temperature jump? First off, remember that the 1981-2010 baseline used by the UAH is itself some 0.8 °F (0.45 °C) hotter than pre-industrial levels — so you can add that to all of the numbers here.

Second, February was more than half a degree Fahrenheit — 0.52 °F (0.29 °C) — warmer than January, which itself was “the warmest January in satellite record.”

Third, it was so hot last month that Dr. Roy Spencer of the UAH reports, “Incredibly, land areas outside the tropics in the Northern Hemisphere were a ‘whopping’ 1.46 degrees C above average, 0.5 degrees above any previous monthly anomaly.” This is a 2.6 °F warming above the 1981-2010 average — topping the previous anomaly by 0.9 °F.

Lower atmospheric warming over land outside of the tropics (vs. the 1981-2020 average) via UAH scientist Roy Spencer.

Fourth, it was so hot last month that Spencer — one of country’s leading climate science deniers — told the Washington Post:

I’ve always cautioned fellow skeptics that it’s dangerous to claim no warming. There has been warming. The question is how much warming there’s been and how does that compare to what’s expected and what’s predicted.

Now we know there has been a lot of warming, it’s consistent with what scientists predicted, and, most worrisome of all, scientists now predict it will keep speeding up! Maybe we should start listening to them.

I’m sure you’ve heard from Ted Cruz and other climate science deniers that there hasn’t been any warming in the satellite record since 1998. What they really meant was there was not as much warming as expected in the lower troposphere in the (questionable) RSS data.

The UAH’s Spencer and Dr. John Christy — both leading deniers — reported just last month that the UAH data shows a “Global climate trend since Nov. 16, 1978 [of] +0.12 C [0.22 F] per decade.”

In fact out of all the temperature datasets — land, sea, weather balloons, and two from satellites (UAH and RSS) — only one dataset had shown unexpectedly slow warming in recent years, the RSS data. Unsurprisingly, that is the dataset deniers like Ted Cruz have glommed on to — despite the fact that it was widely believed the RSS data was being misanalyzed.

Indeed, back in 2011, Spencer himself explained the discrepancy between the UAH data and the RSS data on his website: “my UAH cohort and boss John Christy, who does the detailed matching between satellites, is pretty convinced that the RSS data is undergoing spurious cooling because RSS is still using the old NOAA-15 satellite which has a decaying orbit, to which they are then applying a diurnal cycle drift correction based upon a climate model, which does not quite match reality.”

The drift correction is needed because different parts of the planet are observed by satellites at different times during the day — and because satellites drift from orbit to orbit. Spencer adds that the UAH data is probably better because “We have not used NOAA-15 for trend information in years…we use the NASA Aqua AMSU [advanced microwave sounding unit], since that satellite carries extra fuel to maintain a precise orbit.”

Since Spencer is a leading climate science denier, however, he did not urge his fellow deniers to avoid using the likely flawed RSS data. Quite the reverse:

But, until the discrepancy is resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, those of you who REALLY REALLY need the global temperature record to show as little warming as possible might want to consider jumping ship, and switch from the UAH to RSS dataset.

Seriously! Spencer is such a gung-ho denier of climate science he is telling his fellow deniers who want to minimize the reality of global warming that they should not use his own data set, which he and Christy believes is superior, but instead they should use the RSS data, which they believe had a flawed diurnal cycle drift correction.

So only hard-core climate science deniers should be surprised to learn that the new study in the Journal of Climate by members of the RSS team finds that the … wait for it … the RSS data had been low-balling recent global warming because of a flawed diurnal cycle drift correction. That study, aptly titled, “Sensitivity of satellite-derived tropospheric temperature trends to the diurnal cycle adjustment,” concluded, “Previous versions of the RSS dataset have used a diurnal climatology derived from general circulation model output to remove the effects of drifting local measurement time. In this paper, we present evidence that this previous method is not sufficiently accurate, and present several alternative methods to optimize these adjustments using information from the satellite measurements themselves.”

The researchers then use an improved and optimized adjustments methodology and report:

The new dataset shows substantially increased global-scale warming relative to the previous version of the dataset, particularly after 1998. The new dataset shows more warming than most other middle tropospheric data records constructed from the same set of satellites. We also show that the new dataset is consistent with long-term changes in total column water vapor over the tropical oceans, lending support to its long-term accuracy.

In short, once a long-standing analytical error was fixed, the RSS data showed long-term global warming comparable to UAH. Here is the result:

Comparison between previous, flawed RSS global (80° S to 80° N) anomaly time series (V3.3, black line), with results using a more accurate methodology (V4.0, blue line).

The corrected dataset shows a 0.125 °C [0.225 °F] rate of warming per decade from 1979 to 2014. The corrected trend is 60% higher than the earlier, flawed rate of warming.

For those wondering why the satellite trends are slightly lower than the surface temperature trends, which exceed 0.16 °C (0.29 °F) per decade — and rising: It is always worth remembering that the surface temperature data directly measures the temperature at the surface where we live. The satellites indirectly measure the temperature of the lower atmosphere, where we don’t. Also, given that 2016 is likely to be the hottest year in the satellite record, the satellite trend — like the surface temperature trend — appears to be speeding up.

The phantom slowdown in the last of the big global temperature datasets is gone. The reality is that the globe has warmed and will continue to warm — primarily because of human-caused carbon pollution — as climate scientists have been saying for decades.

No doubt the climate science deniers will find another talking point to urge delay. But it is time for the rest of us to redouble our efforts to preserve a livable climate.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/03/02/3755715/satellites-hottest-february-global-warming/

When nutcases and idiots are elected to Congress, this is what we get

While these damned fool Republicans are busy talking about farts and listening to a quack like John Christy, Spain is experiencing off-the-charts, record-breaking temperatures


On May 13, 2015, the Committee held a hearing on a proposed guidance to federal agencies on implementing the National Environmental Policy Act. Republicans on the Committee spent the hearing denying the science and risks of climate change. These are the highlights.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIPeOKNlHZU

Quelle suprise! UAH low-balling satellite temperature data by a factor of three

[Readers, this is something like the 5th time in the past 10 years that UAH (i.e., John Christy and Roy Spencer) has been caught lowballing their satellite temperature data.]  

A new study suggests that the University of Alabama at Huntsville is lowballing the warming of the atmosphere

by John Abraham, "Climate Consensus - The 97%," The Guardian, March 25, 2015

 Satellite orbiting Earth. Photograph: JG Photography / Alamy/Alamy

A very important study was just published in the Journal of Climate a few days ago. This paper, in my mind, makes a major step toward reconciling differences in satellite temperature records of the mid-troposphere region. As before, it is found that the scientists (and politicians) who have cast doubt on global warming in the past are shown to be outliers because of bias in their results.

The publication, authored by Stephen Po-Chedley and colleagues from the University of Washington, discusses some major sources of error in satellite records. For instance, after satellites are launched, they scan the Earth’s atmosphere and calibrate the atmospheric measurements using a warm target onboard the satellite and cold space. The accuracy with which the atmospheric measurements are calibrated can influence the inferred temperature of the atmosphere (called the warm-target bias). Additionally, over the years, multiple satellites have been launched and the selection of which satellite data are used can play a role. Finally, biases can occur because the satellite orbits drift during their lifetime, and the influence of diurnal temperature variation can affect the global temperature trends. 

Of these three errors, the last one (probably the most important one) was the focus of the just-published paper. 

It is known that there is a problem because there are multiple groups that create satellite temperature records, for instance: NOAA, Remote Sensing Systems (RSS), and the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH). The problem is that their results don’t agree with each other. In particular, the UAH team, led by Dr. John Christy and Dr. Roy Spencer (who have discounted the importance and occurrence of climate change for years), presents results that differ quite a bit from the others. In fact, in the current paper, it is stated that “Despite using the same basic radiometer measurements, tropical TMT trend differences between these groups differ by a factor of three.”

An important aspect to this issue is that, for many reasons, it is expected that the tropospheric temperatures in the tropics will warm more than surface temperatures. This is called “tropospheric amplification.” According to two satellite groups, there is in fact such amplification. According to the UAH team, there is no amplification. The presence or absence of amplification is often used by some skeptics to discount the importance of global warming.

Why are there differences? Well, that’s part of what this paper tries to answer.

Each of the teams tries to deal with and correct for various satellite errors. For example, sometimes the diurnal cycle effect is removed using temperatures from climate models. The RSS and NOAA teams “apply a drift correction based on the diurnal cycle from a GCM (global climate model), whereas UAH produces a microwave-sounding-unit, mid-tropospheric-temperature, diurnal correction based on temperature comparisons between three co-orbiting satellites ... UAH does not yet correct the diurnal drift for satellites carrying Advanced Microwave Sounding Units because they attempt to use these satellites during periods when the diurnal drift is small.”

The present paper presents a calibration scheme that allowed a diurnal correction to be obtained from the satellite measurements themselves, in particular by solving for a common diurnal cycle correction using temperatures from all available satellites.

As the authors state in the paper, their new results agree with the two groups that show more warming. They disagree with UAH. As the authors state,

In general, our trends corrected with a GCM and trends corrected with our observationally derived diurnal cycle correction are similar to trends from NOAA and RSS ... the UAH ocean trend is notably lower than trends from the other datasets.

So, how do the trends compare? Well, the lowest trends (in degrees Celsius heating per decade) are from UAH, and they equal 0.029 °C per decade for the 1979–2012 period for the mid-troposphere region between 20° South and 20° North. The new results are almost 4 times higher at 0.114 °C per decade. The results using a diurnal correction from a climate model are in close agreement with the new findings (0.124 °C per decade). As additional support, the NOAA and RSS values are also close to the corrected results. The simple fact is – UAH is an outlier.

They also discovered that the results from RSS, NOAA, and the new study all show tropical amplification and are in agreement with the expected amplification from climate models. They state, “There is no significant discrepancy between observations and models for lapse rate change between the surface and the full troposphere.”

To summarize the amplification factor, the new study obtains a value of 1.4. If the diurnal cycle is eliminated using climate models, the result is 1.49. According to NOAA and RSS, the values are 1.31 and 1.10, respectively. Again, UAH is the outlier with an amplification factor of 0.56.

I wrote to Stephen Po-Chedley and asked for a summary. He told me,

We developed an observationally based diurnal cycle correction to remove the influence of satellite diurnal sampling drifts on long-term tropospheric temperature trends. This is important because other analyses (RSS and NOAA) used a model-derived diurnal cycle correction and questions have been raised about the validity of this bias correction. Trends from our work are in accord with trends from global circulation models and basic theory. 

We also found that the model-derived diurnal cycle correction used by RSS and NOAA is similar to our bias correction. The tropical tropospheric trend from the present study is 2.5 times that from another group, UAH. While this work shows that it is possible to understand discrepancies between MSU/AMSU datasets, there are still important differences between the datasets that need further scrutiny.

In short, the Earth is warming, the warming is amplified in the troposphere, and those who claim otherwise are unlikely to be correct.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/mar/25/one-satellite-data-set-is-underestimating-global-warming

American Meteorological Society Objects to Congressional Investigation of Its Anti-Science Members

by Brad Johnson, Hill Heat, February 28, 2015

AMS Executive Director Keith Seitter

The American Meteorological Society's executive director, Keith Seitter, has condemned a Congressional investigation of the potential corruption of scientific testimony on climate change by AMS members.

The investigation was launched by Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) following the revelations that the research of Dr. Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Laboratory was secretly financed by the fossil-fuel industry, including Koch Industries, Exxon Mobil, and Southern Company. Soon testified before Congress in 2003 questioning the scientific consensus on fossil-fueled global warming.

Grijalva sent letters to the universities of seven other academics who have been Republican witnesses challenging the climate-science consensus, asking for testimony-related financial disclosure. Seitter responded by condemning the investigation.

"Publicly singling out specific researchers based on perspectives they have expressed and implying a failure to appropriately disclose funding sources — and thereby questioning their scientific integrity — sends a chilling message to all academic researchers," Seitter wrote in the AMS response. "Further, requesting copies of the researcher’s communications related to external funding opportunities or the preparation of testimony impinges on the free pursuit of ideas that is central to the concept of academic freedom."

Not mentioned by Seitter is that six of the seven targets of the Grijalva investigation are AMS members.

Judith Curry was elected a Fellow of AMS in 1995 and a councillor of AMS in 1997. John Christy received a Special Award from AMS in 1996, and was elected a Fellow in 2002. David Legates has been the faculty advisor to the Student Chapter of AMS and is an AMS certified consulting meteorologist. Richard Lindzen has received AMS's Meisinger and Charney Awards and was a member of the AMS Council. Robert Balling is a member and frequent presenter at AMS conferences. Roger Pielke Jr is an AMS member.

Pepperdine and American Enterprise Institute historian Steven Hayward is the only investigative target not in the American Meteorological Society.

These AMS members are notable for their public denunciation of the scientific community and specific scientists, including other members of AMS.

Below are some examples.

"The problem is that Obama is listening to scientists that are either playing politics with their expertise, or responding to a political mandate from the administration (probably a combination of both). Not just administrators in govt labs (e.g. [Gavin] Schmidt, [Tom] Karl), but think of the scientist networks of John Holdren and John Podesta: to me the scariest one one is [Michael] Mann to [Joseph] Romm to Podesta." - Judith Curry, 1/21/15

"When you're an alarmist, being wrong, lying, cheating, misleading the public and killing jobs simply do not count against you — even when the allegedly human-caused global warming stopped in 1996." - David Legates, 10/16/13

"[The hacked University of East Anglia email correspondence] is clear proof of what we have suspected: That these thugs have strong-armed and subverted the peer review process by demanding they be reviewers of papers critical of their work, removing editors who are not predisposed to their views, and even threatening to boycott journals that publish papers with which they disagree.” - David Legates, 1/18/10

"Because this issue has policy implications that may potentially raise the price of energy significantly (and thus essentially the price of everything else), the U.S. Congress should not rely exclusively on the U.N. assessments because the process by which they were written includes biased, false, and/or misleading information about one of the most murky of sciences – climate." - John Christy, 3/31/11

"[The Draft National Assessment on Climate Change] is much closer to pseudoscience than it is to science. . . . History tells us that when scientists willingly endorse sweeping governmental agendas fueled by dodgy science, bad things soon happen." - Robert Balling, 4/15/13

"It is quite amazing to see the contortions the IPCC has to go through in order to keep the international climate agenda going." - Richard Lindzen, 9/28/13

"Current global warming alarm hardly represents a plausible proposition. Twenty years of repetition and escalation of claims does not make it more plausible. Quite the contrary, the failure to improve the case over 20 years makes the case even less plausible as does the evidence from climategate and other instances of overt cheating." - Richard Lindzen, Congressional testimony, 11/17/10

Hill Heat has previously compiled a list of dozens of attacks made by Roger Pielke, Jr., a political scientist, against climate scientists.

Roger Pielke, Sr., Pielke, Jr.'s father and another climate scientist who has testified before Congress rejecting the climate science consensus, was elected a Fellow of AMS in 1982. Pielke, Sr., was a member of the AMS Committee for Statements on Weather Modification, which issued AMS's official statement on climate change in August 2012, after significant delay. Pielke, Sr., was a likely source of such delay, as he strongly advocated for changes to weaken the statement. Pielke, Sr., has accused fellow AMS members including Tom Karl, Ben Santer, Tom Peterson, Tom Wigley, and Peter Thorne of "inappropriate" behavior, "collusion," and "conflicts of interest" to suppress dissenting views [his].

This is not the first time the executive director of the AMS has criticized efforts to hold climate deniers publicly accountable.

Seitter previously criticized the science-activist organization Forecast the Facts for "apply[ing] public pressure" on "broadcast meteorologists who are identified as 'deniers' based on views they have expressed with respect to climate change."

Dozens of television weather reporters who have attacked climate science and scientists are AMS members. At least twenty television weathermen who publicly reject basic climate science are AMS Certified Broadcast Meteorologists, the society's seal of approval granting them scientific legitimacy in their role as weather and climate communicators.

"The AMS maintains that peer-review is the appropriate mechanism to assess the validity and quality of scientific research," Seitter wrote, "regardless of the funding sources supporting that research as long as those funding sources and any potential conflicts of interest are fully disclosed."

The pursuit of that disclosure is, of course, the stated purpose of Grijalva's investigation, as the scientific community failed to ensure such disclosure in the case of Willie Soon.

According to the AMS bylaws:

Members should conduct themselves in an ethical manner and reflect dignity and honor on their profession.

Members should base their practice on sound scientific principles applied in a scientific manner.

Members should not direct their professional activities into practices generally recognized as being detrimental to, or incompatible with, the general public welfare.

Members should refrain from making exaggerated or unwarranted claims and statements.

Either the claims made by AMS and the rest of the global scientific community are exaggerated, unwarranted, and detrimental to the general public welfare, or the claims of the academics under investigation are. Either the burning of hundreds of billions of tons of fossil fuels is disrupting the climate and threatening the public welfare, or the global scientific community has been corrupted into deceiving the general public into policies that would unnecessarily transform global energy production through massive government intervention. Either the climate conspiracy theorists are ethical AMS members, or all of the other members are.

For decades now the AMS has looked the other way and pretended this fundamental conflict within its ranks does not need to be resolved.

The American Meteorological Society seems uninterested in maintaining the ethical standards of its members and defending scientific integrity. Its executive director is compounding the error by criticizing Rep. Grijalva for taking action to do just that.

http://www.hillheat.com/articles/2015/02/28/american-meteorological-society-objects-to-congressional-investigation-of-its-anti-science-members

Seth Borenstein, AP: Earth warms like a broken record; for 3rd time in 10 years, globe sets mark for hottest year

by Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer, The Republic, January 16, 2015


FILE - In this July 25, 2014, file photo, a roofer works under the mid-day sun in Gilbert, Ariz. Federal science officials announced Friday that for the third time in a decade, the globe sizzled to the hottest year on record. Both the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA calculated that in 2014 the world had its hottest year in 135 years of record-keeping. Earlier, the Japanese weather agency and an independent group out of University of California Berkeley also measured 2014 as the hottest on record. (AP Photo, File)

WASHINGTON — For the third time in a decade, the globe sizzled to the hottest year on record, federal scientists announced Friday.

Both the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA calculated that in 2014 the world had its hottest year in 135 years of record-keeping. 

Earlier, the Japanese weather agency and an independent group out of University of California Berkeley also measured 2014 as the hottest on record.

NOAA said 2014 averaged 58.24 degrees Fahrenheit (14.58 degrees Celsius), 1.24 degrees (0.69 degrees Celsius) above the 20th-century average.

But NASA, which calculates temperatures slightly differently, put 2014's average temperature at 58.42 degrees Fahrenheit (14.68 degrees Celsius) which is 1.22 degrees (0.68 degrees Celsius) above the average of the years 1951-1980.

Earth broke NOAA records set in 2010 and 2005. The last time the Earth set an annual NOAA record for cold was in 1911.

NOAA also said last month was the hottest December on record. Six months in 2014 set marks for heat. The last time Earth set a monthly cold record was in December 1916.

"The globe is warmer now than it has been in the last 100 years and more likely in at least 5,000 years," said climate scientist Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University, who wasn't part of either research team. "Any wisps of doubt that human activities are at fault are now gone with the wind."

Texas A&M University climate scientist Andrew Dessler and other experts said the latest statistics should end claims by non-scientists that warming has stopped. It didn't, as climate denial sites still touted claims that the world has not warmed in 18 years.

2014's heat was driven by record warmth in the world's oceans that didn't just break old marks: It shattered them. Record warmth spread across far eastern Russia, the western part of the United States, interior South America, much of Europe, northern Africa and parts of Australia. One of the few cooler spots was in the central and eastern United States.

"Every continent had some aspect of record high temperatures" in 2014, said Tom Karl, director of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center.

Nine of the 10 hottest years in NOAA global records have occurred since 2000. The odds of this happening at random are about 1 in 650 million, according to University of South Carolina statistician John Grego. Two other statisticians confirmed his calculations.

Climate scientists say one of the most significant parts of 2014's record is that it happened during a year where there was no El Nino weather oscillation. During an El Nino, when a specific area of the central Pacific warms unusually and influences weather worldwide, global temperatures tend to spike. Previous records, especially in 1998, happened during El Nino years.

Every year in the 21st century has been in the top 20 warmest years on record, according to NOAA.

Temperatures have risen by about 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit (0.9 degrees Celsius) since the mid-19th century and pre-industrial times, said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, where the space agency tracks warming temperatures.

"We are witnessing, before our eyes, the effect of human-caused climate change," said Pennsylvania State University professor Michael Mann.

Some non-scientists who deny man-made global warming have pointed to satellite temperature records — which only go back to 1979 — which show a warming world, but no record this year and less of a recent increase than the longer-term ground thermometers. 

But Mann, Dessler, Francis and others say there have been quality and trustworthy issues with some satellite measurements and they only show what's happening far above the ground. 

They said ground measurements are also more important because it is where we live.

University of Alabama Huntsville scientist John Christy, who measures temperature via satellite, puts 2014 in a cluster of warm years behind 2010 and 1998. He said he is "puzzled that this difference between surface and deep atmosphere continues to occur as it has now for 36 years. Our theories can't explain it. I don't know what is going on."

Georgia Tech professor Judith Curry, who is not in the mainstream of climate scientists, wrote that talk about the record implies that temperatures will get warmer, something she says won't happen for at least another decade. But she added in a blog post in response to the NOAA announcement: "I'm not willing to place much $$ on that bet, since I suspect Mother Nature will manage to surprise us."

NASA's Schmidt says temperatures will continue to rise with year-to-year variations and he wouldn't be surprised if 2015 breaks 2014's record: "The increase in greenhouse gases is unrelenting and that in the end is going to dominate most things going on."

This was the 38th year in a row that the world was warmer than the 20th century average, according to NOAA data. Most people in the world and the United States were born after 1976 and have never lived in a cooler than normal year.

"You want to understand what that (cooler) world is like and you wonder are you ever to going to experience that," said Victor Gensini, a 28-year-old meteorology professor at the College of DuPage in Illinois.

http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/d7375a310ef6475c9841accc756c4ba4/US--SCI--Hottest-Year

Salon: New York Times’ climate skeptic debacle: How a profile of John Christy sets back science

Paper of record issues bizarrely sympathetic treatment of prominent skeptic John Christy, totally misses the point

by Lindsay Abrams, Salon, July 16, 2014

Enlarge(Credit: Reuters/Brendan McDermid)

The New York Times missed the mark big time in its new profile of John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, and prominent climate skeptic who “finds himself a target of suspicion” — and derision, and sometimes even insults — from his peers. Ostensibly, it’s an examination of the way that climate science has become politicized, to the extent that those with dissenting views are silenced or attacked by the cult of mainstream climate science. In reality, it’s an overly credulous and sympathetic portrayal of someone who, his claims having been almost completely discredited, is trying to spin the story in a way that makes him out to be a victim.

Perhaps, writer Michael Wines speculates, the reason why other climate scientists are so mean to Christy (people drew mean cartoons about him!) is because he’s “providing legitimacy to those who refuse to acknowledge” that the consequences of climate change are likely to be dire. The use of the word “legitimacy” is questionable: Unlike those who contest the scientific consensus on climate change with little or no background in climate science themselves, Christy does boast a bevy of credentials, as Wines is careful to denote. Christy’s actual research, on the other hand, along with the data that he insists, in the profile, to be beholden to — well, that’s been deflated, disproven and debunked by all manner of other, highly qualified experts. A dispute over his inaccurate climate models that Wines dismisses as a “scientific tit for tat,” meanwhile, is seen by others as a conscious attempt to misinform the public, in the interest of promoting climate skepticism.

A difference in perspective, perhaps. But in downplaying the many and legitimate issues with Christy’s research, Wines fails to treat this “skeptic” with much skepticism of his own. And worse still, the profile plays into an image that Christy has been working to build — one not of an anti-science “denier,” but instead of a modern-day Galileo, one who dares to contradict mainstream opinion and who will be vindicated by history — in this case, when the effects of climate change turns out to not be so bad, after all. See, for example, the Wall Street Journal Op-Ed Christy authored this February with fellow skeptic Richard McNider. In response to comments by Secretary of State John Kerry, who accused climate skeptics of belonging to the “Flat Earth Society,” they wrote:

But who are the Flat Earthers, and who is ignoring the scientific facts? In ancient times, the notion of a flat Earth was the scientific consensus, and it was only a minority who dared question this belief. We are among today’s scientists who are skeptical about the so-called consensus on climate change. Does that make us modern-day Flat Earthers, as Mr. Kerry suggests, or are we among those who defy the prevailing wisdom to declare that the world is round?

This interpretation of history, as Joe Romm pointed out at the time, is yet another misconception, as the flat Earth myth was a pre-scientific belief, disproven by — you guessed it — science. Christy and McNiders’ inflated perception of themselves only serves to further confuse the public’s understanding of the scientific consensus on climate change. Their rhetoric, while appealing, falls apart upon examination.

As for the contention, among environmentalists, that Christy may be “a pawn of the fossil-fuel industry who distorts science to fit his own ideology”? Wines dismisses that in a parenthetical comment from Christy (“I don’t take money from industries”), and leaves it at that. This, again, plays right into Christy’s desire to be seen as misunderstood — he’s been careful to avoid associations not just with polluting industries, but with most of the groups dedicated to spreading climate denial. He doesn’t attend the Heartland Institute’s annual climate denial conferences, he told the Times’ Andrew Revkin several years back, because he wants to avoid “guilt by association.”

Yet Christy’s perspective on global warming — that the effects will be mild, and potentially even beneficial — is more or less aligned with those voiced by the participants in Heartland’s most recent conference, which took place last week. Aside from a few remaining loonies, most deniers have by now conceded the two most basic facts of climate change: that the climate is changing, and that man-made emissions of greenhouse gases are at least partially responsible. Christy’s not special in this regard. Instead, he’s part of a growing movement that Will Oremus, writing in Slate, describes as an effort to rebrand climate denial as “climate optimism”: the idea that climate change, while real, isn’t something worth worrying about — and certainly not worth making an effort to mitigate. In some ways, this is even more dangerous than flat-out denial, which is at least easy to shut down; climate optimism, instead, conflates science with conservative political ideology, as Oremus explains:

In fact, it’s not unreasonable to see the climate fight as part of a much broader ideological war in American society, says Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. The debate over causes is often a proxy for a debate over solutions, which are likely to require global cooperation and government intervention in people’s lives. Leiserowitz’s research shows that climate deniers tend to be committed to values like individualism and small government while those most concerned about climate change are more likely to hold egalitarian and community-oriented political views.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that the evidence on both sides is equal. There’s a reason the climate deniers are losing the scientific debate, and it isn’t because academia is better funded than the energy industry. All of which helps to explain how climate optimism might be a more appealing approach these days than climate denial. Models of how climate change will impact society and the economy are subject to far more uncertainty than the science that links greenhouse gas emissions to the 20th-century warming trend. The costs of mitigating those emissions are more readily grasped: higher energy bills, government spending on alternative energy projects, lost jobs at coal plants.

Accepting climate change, but not accepting that we should do anything about it: It’s that ideologically driven belief, and not a debate over science itself, that is the real way in which climate change has become politicized.

None of this is to suggest that there shouldn’t be a debate about science, or that all climate science is settled. Most of what we know about the future effects of climate change, including just how severe they will be, remains decidedly unsettled, and will remain so until they actually come to pass. Because 97% of scientists agree that human activity is contributing to changes in our climate, the debate now can and should be about what the evidence suggests, and what we ought to do about it. But the reason why Christy has attracted so much vitriol is because he’s on the radical fringe of both of those conversations: he’s using error-laden research and misleading claims to advocate for some adaptation and zero mitigation. The American Association for the Advancement of Science compares such a strategy to barreling down the highway without the benefit of seat belts or airbags; more colorfully, in Wines’ article, MIT professor Kerry Emanuel suggests “It’s kind of like telling a little girl who’s trying to run across a busy street to catch a school bus to go for it, knowing there’s a substantial chance that she’ll be killed. She might make it. But it’s a big gamble to take.”

Christy’s supporters are already up in arms about that one. But the comparison is apt, and it’s the reason why, even if history does turn out to vindicate Christy, he won’t be remembered as an anti-establishment hero. He’ll just be someone who, against all evidence to the contrary, got really, really lucky, and put not just a little girl, but the entire world at risk in the process.

http://www.salon.com/2014/07/16/new_york_times_climate_skeptic_debacle_how_a_new_profile_sets_back_science/