Climate News Roundup December 2024
We often have occasion to complain about the tendency of climate scientists to adjust historical surface thermometer data downwards, thus raising the amount of alleged warming since the early 20th century
This time, however, we note a new study in Nature in which scientists go the other way: arguing that the sea surface temperature record from 1900 to 1930 is biased too cold and the water was warmer than previously thought.
Various commenters have spun the findings different ways. If the past was warmer it eliminates a big part of the warming over the past 100 years which seems to run contrary to the orthodox view.
But wait, because the study authors also point out that it implies the warming over 1900 to 1940, long considered natural, was less than previously thought, meaning natural variability is weaker.
And here’s the real kicker: The big adjustment to the historical record came not from uncovering new data or finding errors in previous studies, but from comparing historical observations to climate models and rejecting the former for the latter.
It seems they couldn’t get the models to reproduce the past so they figured the data must be wrong.
Specifically the poor sailors whose job it was to record the ocean surface temperature just did it wrong for 30 years and the record got contaminated with estimates that are biased too cold.
All hail the mighty computer and never mind that silly old reality.
But are we at least now allowed to point out that the surface record over land is contaminated with estimates biased too warm due to urban heat islands?
Or, alternatively, made up altogether.
It’s the finding of UK journalist Ray Sanders (h/t NoTricksZone) who took it upon himself to visit the 302 official weather monitoring stations listed by the UK Met Office.
His main finding was not that they are poorly sited, too close to cities, sources of heat etc. though those problems were indeed common.
His main finding was that 103 of the stations simply do not exist.
Yet somehow the weather service reports data from them.
The Daily Sceptic visited the missing Kent sites and confirmed that they are, indeed, not there at all. Thus far Sander’s query to the UK government about how this phantom data reporting is possible has gone unanswered.
Evidently it will take them a bit of time to make something up.
If you haven’t seen our video on the Holocene Climate Optimum be sure to do so, and then have a look at yet another peer reviewed study (h/t NTZ) confirming that the HCO was real and, in the case of that study, affected Antarctica.
Proxy measures indicate sea ice retreated over a 4,500 year period from 8,000 to 3,500 years ago, advanced for a while, then retreated again during the Medieval Warm Period (yes, that thing again), then advanced again to its greatest extent since the start of the current interglacial during the Little Ice Age, reaching conditions that persist until the present day.
Put that in your computer and smoke it.
Worth a look:Â ventusky.com. The site presents real time visualizations of current temperature and wind patterns around the world.
You can see where your weather patterns are coming from over the next day or so, what’s going on in other parts of the world, and just why the climate system is so complicated and unpredictable.
Bold emphasis added
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