MET Office: The Recent "Pause" in Warming - 3 papers

The Met Office Hadley Centre has released three new reports providing yet more details to understanding our warming planet.

At:  http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/news/recent-pause-in-warming

The recent pause in warming

James Balog, Chasing Ice and finding Extreme Ice loss

Besides arguing with Republicans (and their libertarian pals) who are in denial and struggling to bring a little self skepticism and real science into their economic/politically blinkered world-views.  

My other self appointed goal is to help broadcast authoritative educational material.  In keeping with that mission, here is a collection of excellent YouTube videos concerning James Balog's amazing ongoing mission to photograph melting glaciers throughout the world.

Using time lapse photography in some of the most hostile locations on Earth James Balog along with documentarian Jeff Orlowski and a host of further development and support team members have put together an astounding record.

If seeing is believing these videos and James' project will make an impact on anyone who gives them a serious objective viewing.

INDEX: 

EXPOSED - The RealClimate.org's "McKitrick and McIntyre" Files

Traveling around the blogosphere these past years I keep running into the same misinformation being repeated based on the "authority" of an economist and a mining prospector turned mining engineer with a mathematical background.  Two men who have been clearly motivated by the political implications of climate science.

Basically they are dead set against any sort of limitations or restrictions being put on carbon fuels and the global warming greenhouse gases we are adding to our thin atmosphere.  Unfortunately they are so politically motivated that they have tossed Scientific Standards out the window and have adopted the ruthless standards of power-politics where any dirty trick and misrepresentation is part of the 'rules of engagement.'

Unfortunately, this global warming situation requires a commitment to listening and learning or Catastrophic Global Warming will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.  

In order to shed light on the many mistakes and misrepresentations Ross McKitrick and Stephen McIntyre are guilty of I have culled the search results over at RealClimate.org to produce this voluminous post.  

It is in chronological order - some posts I reprint more from than others, since I feel a one stop source for this information may come in handy in the struggle to educate our business and political leaders along with all the folks who prefer to ignore this situation that touches everyone of us.  I've included links within the title and following each post, to the original at RealClimate.org so please do check them out!

These are unauthorized reproductions and I appreciate the folks at RealClimate.org allowing me to continue with this effort.  Step right up and see real science in action.

REVEALED: Dr. Mann's letter to Rep. Joe Barton and Ed Whitfield - 7/15/2005

Here is an interesting letter that Dr. Mann wrote in response to a series of questions he received from the ranking members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Oversight and Investigations committee.  

The sad thing is that in hindsight it seems as though both US Representative Whitfield and US Representative Barton didn't read a single word of this letter and instead continued steamrolling their personal agenda of attacking the science and ignoring the evidence.

I reprint it complete, 
though I have taken the liberty of adding paragraph breaks and highlights. 

===================================================

July 15, 2005

RealClimate's "Dummies guide to the latest 'Hockey Stick' controversy"

This is a continuation of my recent Hockey Stick theme and my trying to help in getting this information into the light of the blogosphere.

The greatest human tragedy in all this is that contrarians and denialists have been so successful in burying this sort of solid information from which people can constructively learn.  

Instead, the Republican machine (with their "libertarian" pals) remains committed to it's 1950s mindset, faux think-tanks and single minded focus on power-politics.  Rather than any commitment to honestly learn about the scientific issues or facing up to the obvious consequences - they'd rather ruthlessly attack anyone and anything that threatens their perceived personal interests, than learn.  No matter how compelling the information.

Here's another unauthorized pilfering, and sharing, this time a complete and nearly eight year old RealClimate.org post - that's as relevant today as it was back then:

Dummies guide to the latest “Hockey Stick” controversy

Filed under:

• Climate Science
 
• FAQ
 
• Paleoclimate

 — gavin @ 18 February 2005 - ()

by Gavin Schmidt and Caspar Amman

Due to popular demand, we have put together a ‘dummies guide’ which tries to describe what the actual issues are in the latest controversy, in language even our parents might understand. A pdf version is also available. More technical descriptions of the issues can be seen here and here.

Now I know why climate science 'skeptics' hate SkepticalScience.com (+ climategate)

{edited for some typos, and to add two more investigation reports.  7/18/2013}


I've been reminded this afternoon why science-skeptics demonize "SkepticalScience.com" so viciously.  It's because the SkepticalScience team do such a great job of collecting and organizing real scientific information in a wonderfully simple and clean, accessible manner.  The occasion was a discussion over at http://www.debate.org.  The topic being "The Hockey Stick is Bad Science."  The actual debate was about a year ago, now it's down to the sparsely visited comments thread.  

I made a comment and the debate "contender" showed up to reply.  Unfortunately he dished up the usual denialist mantra I've come to know so well.  The sentence that inspires this post is:

"The Climategate e-mails showed a deliberate attempt to suppress skeptical viewpoints from ever being published."

When I hear someone inflating Climategate, like that, it's like a red flag - and I want to yell: "Stop and learn about what you're talking about!  Why can I be so absolute?  

Because, when one actually takes the time to familiarize themselves with all the claims based on those stolen emails, it comes down to maybe a half dozen short quotes, taken out of context, at that.  Most pathetic of all is that we are talking about personal, private emails, not data-sets or studies or actual publications.  Personal freak'n correspondences.

In any event, when I went looking for a list of the many investigations examining the "ClimateGate" claims and charges - I found a factual listing at SkepticalScience.com and it's this sort of focus on the facts and the sharing of information that most threatens the community of climate science denialists.

Thanks to their generous Reposting policy I'll be reposting it here - though first I want to share some other SkepticalScience.com posts that chronicle this "Climategate" farce.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Did CRU tamper with temperature data?

http://www.skepticalscience.com/CRU-tampered-temperature-data.htm

Climategate and the peer-review process

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Peer-review-process.htm

Climategate and the Freedom of Information (FOI) requests

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Freedom-of-Information-FOI-requests-climate-scientists.htm

Clearing up misconceptions regarding 'hide the decline'
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Mikes-Nature-trick-hide-the-decline-intermediate.htm

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Mikes-Nature-trick-hide-the-decline-advanced.htm

What do the 'Climategat' hacked CRU emails tell us?

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climategate-CRU-emails-hacked-advanced.htm

This is a more recent post than the one I've 'reposted' below and it includes two more studies.

This post actually deserves reposting also - but there's only so much room, so please link to the complete article.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climategate-CRU-emails-hacked-intermediate.htm

8.  In February 2011, the Department of Commerce Inspector General conducted an independent review of the emails and found "no evidence in the CRU emails thatNOAA inappropriately manipulated data". 

9.  In August 2011, the National Science Foundation concluded "Finding no research misconduct or other matter raised by the various regulations and laws discussed above, this case is closed".

Here's a PDF of one of those official investigations:

The Independent Climate Change E-mails Review 

July 2010 - Chair: Sir Muir Russell

Review team:
Professor Geoffrey Boulton 

Professor Peter Clarke David Eyton
Professor James Norton 

http://www.cce-review.org/pdf/FINAL%20REPORT.pdf

Discovered and revealed! - Where the climate codes and data have been hiding

{edited 8/7/2013}
  
A lot of folks have been convinced climatologists are hiding data - that's why it was interesting to came across this list while I was compiling my previous post.  It doesn't quite jive with the steady stream of accusations and innuendo folks like ClimateAudit's Mr. McIntyre send out: 

"I have an ongoing campaign to improve standards of data archiving, disclosure and due diligence - which are independent of any particular substantive points on paleoclimate studies. I have no idea why the “Hockey Team”, as they styled themselves, have elected to withhold data and methods from scrutiny; it’s an unwinnable position, but they’ve done so and I’ll continue to criticize them on this point." (CA, Blog Rules and Road Map)

I think a review of the following list makes clear that such talk is political dirty tricks - and not a reflection of reality or the situation within the climate science community.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Data Sources

Filed under: — group @ 27 November 2009

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/

This page is a catalogue that will be kept up to date pointing to selected sources of code and data related to climate science. Please keep us informed of any things we might have missed, or any updates to the links that are needed.

• Climate data (raw)
• Climate data (processed)
• Paleo-data
• Auxiliary data
• Paleo Reconstructions (including code)
• Large-scale model (Reanalysis) output
• Large-scale model (GCM) output
• Model codes (GCMs)
• Model codes (other)
• Data Visualisation and Analysis
• Master Repositories of climate and other Earth Science data

Climate data (raw)

• GHCN v.2 (Global Historical Climate Network: weather station records from around the world, temperature and precipitation)

• USHCN US. Historical Climate Network (v.1 and v.2)
• World Monthly Surface Station Climatology UCAR

• Antarctic weather stations

• European weather stations (ECA)
• Italian Meterological Society IMS
• Satellite feeds (AMSU, SORCE (Solar irradiance), NASA A-train, Ocean Color)

• Tide Gauges (Proudman Oceanographic Lab)

• World Glacier Monitoring Service
• Argo float data
• International Comprehensive Ocean/Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS) (Oceanic in situ observations)

• AERONET Aerosol information
• Arctic data from the Cooperative Arctic Data and Information Service (CADIS)

Climate data (processed)

• Surface temperature anomalies (GISTEMP (see also Clear Climate Code), HadCRU (alternate site), NOAA NCDC, JMA, Berkeley Earth)
• Satellite temperatures (MSU) (UAH, RSS, Zou et al)
• Sea surface temperatures (Reynolds et al, OI)

• Stratospheric temperature

• Sea ice (Cryosphere Today, NSIDC, JAXA, Bremen, Arctic-Roos, DMI)

• Radiosondes (RAOBCORE, HadAT, U. Wyoming, RATPAC, IUK, Sterin (CDIAC), Angell (CDIAC) )
• Cloud and radiation products (ISCCP, CERES-ERBE)
• Sea level (U. Colorado, NOAA)
• Aerosols (AEROCOM, GACP)

• Greenhouse Gases (AGGI at NOAA, CO2 Mauna Loa, World Data Center for Greenhouse Gases, AIRS CO2 data (2003+))

• AHVRR data as used in Steig et al (2009)

• Snow Cover (Rutgers)

• GLIMS glacier database

• Ocean Heat Content: NODC, PMEL

• Ocean CO₂ (CDIAC)

• GCOS Essential Climate Variables Index

• NOAA Climate Indicators State of the Climate 2009

Paleo-data

• NOAA Paleoclimate
• Pangaea
• GRIP/NGRIP Ice cores (Denmark)

• GISP2 (note that the age model has been updated)

• National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC)
• Insolation (i.e. Milankovitch cycles): Lasker (2004), Berger and Loutre (1991), Huybers (2006)

Auxiliary data

• Solar System Calculations (JPL Horizons)

Paleo Reconstructions (including code)

• Reconstructions index and data (NOAA)
• Mann et al (2008) (also here, Mann et al (2009))
• Kaufmann et al (2009)
• Wahl and Ammann (2006)
• Mann et al (1998/1999)

Large-scale model (Reanalysis) output

These are weather models which have the real world observations assimilated into the solution to provide a ‘best guess’ of the evolution of weather over time (although pre-satellite era estimates (before 1979) are less accurate).

• ERA40 (1957-2001, from ECMWF)
• ERA-Interim (1989 – present, ECMWF’s latest project)
• NCEP (1948-present, NOAA), NCEP-2
• MERRA NASA GSFC
• JRA-25 (1979-2004, Japanese Met. Agency)

• North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR)
• 20th Century Reanalysis (1871-2008)

Large-scale model (GCM) output

These is output from the large scale global models used to assess climate change in the past, and make projections for the future. Some of this output is also available via the Data Visualisation tools linked below.

• CMIP3 output (~20 models, as used by IPCC AR4) at PCMDI

• GISS ModelE output (includes AR4 output as well as more specific experiments)

• GFDL Model output

Model codes (GCMs)

Downloadable codes for some of the GCMs.

• GISS ModelE (AR4 version, current snapshot)

• NCAR CCSM(Version 3.0, CCM3 (older vintage))
• EdGCM Windows based version of an older GISS model.

• Uni. Hamburg (SAM, PUMA and PLASIM)
• NEMO Ocean Model
• GFDL Models
• MIT GCM

Model codes (other)

This category include links to analysis tools, simpler models or models focussed on more specific issues.

• Radiative Transfer models (AER RRTM)
• Rahmstorf (2007) Sea Level Rise Code
• Vermeer & Rahmstorf (2009) Sea Level Rise Code and Data

• ModTran (atmospheric radiation calculations and visualisations)

• Various climate-related online models (David Archer)

• Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) (FUND, FAIR, DICE, RICE)

• CliMT a Python-based software component toolkit
• Pyclimate Python tools for climate analysis
• CDAT Tools for analysing climate data in netcdf format (PCMDI)
• RegEM (Tapio Schneider)

• Time series analysis (MTM-SVD, SSA-MTM toolkit, Mann and Lees (1996))

• MAGICC

Data Visualisation and Analysis

These sites include some of the above data (as well as other sources) in an easier to handle form.

• ClimateExplorer (KNMI)

• Dapper (PMEL, NOAA)
• Ingrid (IRI/LDEO Climate data library)

• Giovanni (GSFC)
• Wood for Trees: Interactive graphics (temperatures)
• IPCC Data Visualisations
• Regional IPCC model output
• Climate Wizard

Master Repositories of Climate Data

Much bigger indexes of data sources:

• Global Change Master Directory (GSFC)
• PAGES data portal

• NCDC (National Climate Data Center)

• IPCC Data
• NCAR’s ClimateDataGuide

• Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Lab: Atmospheric trace gas concentrations, historical carbon emissions, and more

• CRU Data holdings
• Hadley Centre Observational holdings
• UCAR Climate Data Guide