Aug 10, 2007
Global Warming Y2K Bug?!
Wow. If this is true this might be a really big deal: 1998 is no longer the hottest year of last century.
Fram Daily Tech:
While inspecting historical temperature graphs, Steve McIntyre, (climateaudit.org) noticed a strange discontinuity, or “jump” in many locations, all occurring around the time of January, 2000.
These graphs were created by NASA’s Reto Ruedy and James Hansen (who shot to fame when he accused the administration of trying to censor his views on climate change). Hansen refused to provide McKintyre with the algorithm used to generate graph data, so McKintyre reverse-engineered it. The result appeared to be a Y2K bug in the handling of the raw data.
McKintyre notified the pair of the bug; Ruedy replied and acknowledged the problem as an “oversight” that would be fixed in the next data refresh.
NASA has now silently released corrected figures, and the changes are truly astounding. The warmest year on record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place. 1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II.
More here.
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That is really interesting and I hope to heck things aren’t quite as dire as they’ve appeared in recent years.
However, I’m no climatologist, but I’m operating on the assumption here that we’ve got more than one team working on this global warming issue. I mean, aren’t there like many thousands of other computer programs crunching temperature data at other institutions on other systems without Y2K glitches? This sounds like an indication that one small part of a much larger confluence of data might have been incorrect.
Bad news: the guys who readjusted the temperatures are making unsubtantiated claims about the effects of GW. I wrote about it on my site: http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/08/10/is-it-hot-in-here-or-is-it-just-me/ (but I saw it here first, so you get a link Gia!).
Irony: my anti-spam secret word to post this was “earth”. :-)
How can NASA have missed it? Hmm. J. Hansen asked the crew: What happens if we correct the error? [-answer-] Oh… then we wonn’t correct it! And for gods sake, keep the code and the algore-rithm secret!
When I first read about this at Lubos Motl’s blog, I certainly thought “Holy shit! Was it all just a mistake after all?” But as illustrated here, the absolute change after the bug is corrected is negligible. People are also saying that 1998 remains the warmest year on record globally, even if 1934 was a little warmer in North America. For that matter, 2007 is on track to rival 1998. So there is no reprieve here.
But I will admit that it is extremely challenging to make sense of all the climate data and theory that is available. The bleeding edge for me is “climate sensitivity”, which is a quantitative measure of how much the climate should change given a change in CO2 levels. If climate change can be reduced to a single number, this is it. The standard estimate is that if CO2 levels are doubled, the temperature should go up by 3 degrees, plus or minus 1.5 degrees. What I would like to see is a causal explanation of that number. However, it seems to derive from an average across computer models of climate which differ in their details (here’s an excellent history), or from a complicated averaging over heterogeneous historical data which isn’t about mechanism. Just last night I found a simple dynamical model on the web, which I have not yet studied, that gives a figure close to 3 degrees, but the author is not a climatologist.
The reason this matters is that whether the sensitivity is 3 degrees or, say, 0.3 degrees makes all the difference between catastrophic and noncatastrophic change. Empirically, since the 19th century, we seem to have gained about 0.75 degrees after an increase in CO2 of one-third, which is consistent with the larger value of the sensitivity. But I look forward to the day when I have a simple physical model in which I can actually derive that number from first principles.
The ‘re-jiggered’ data do not explain all of the *other* changes in climate that have been occurring, such as:
-The melting of the polar ice sheets
-*Worldwide* disappearance of glaciers due to melting
-Changes in precipitation patterns
-Species migration to higher latitudes *worldwide*
-Acidification of the oceans
-Increased coral bleaching
-Temperature data for the past 7 years showing that the first years of the 21st century have been among the warmest in the climactic record
Also, data from *several* climate centers, plus satellite data, have demonstrated that the troposphere is warming. None of the major climate models match the changes we have been seeing in precipitation, etc *unless* they factor in anthropogenic CO2-induced global warming.
Note that the head of NASA, Mike Griffin, has gone *on record* saying that global warming isn’t happening, and it was under his tenure that James Hansen’s report on global temperature rise was covered up. The current Twunt-in-Chief also has a bad history of distorting the science to fit political goals. I wouldn’t trust *any* ’science’ that comes out of NASA these days; same goes for any ’science’ out of NIH or any of the other Federal Agencies that have been fucked with under the Bush Admin.
Now, if the *Hadley Centre* comes up with data suggesting no temp increase, other centers confirm it, then I’ll breathe a sigh of relief, as the entire climate crisis scares the piss out of me.
What does Brian say about this?
I prefer to call El Presidente the “Twunt in Front”. It scans much better, and hey, he’s not really in charge. He’s just the front man.
Excellent point, Jasmine! Cheney is the *real* Nazi-in-Chief.
Actually, my position re: Global Warming: who cares how it’s happening? I think it *is* getting warmer, but can we be 100% sure that it’s all cos of CO2 or could it merely be another Medieval Warm Period-like upswing? All I know is that linking it to “polluting” is distracting us from what our real goal should be: sorting it out.
At the moment it’s like there’s been a glass of milk spilled and we’re arguing about whether the cat knocked it over or whether I did… when really we should just clean it up before it soaks into the carpet even more and starts to smell…
Gia, I think knowing the reason behind it is critical. What if it’s a simple thing to fix, and all we need to do is a minor readjustment to our current modus operandus? What if it turns out that it’s caused by our buried nuclear waste from reactors? :-) I know, that’s silly, but my point is that knowing why it happened will inform us about the mitigation.
Your example of the cat is a really funny one– years ago, our cat knocked over a cactus plant on our table. My wife uprighted it, cleaned the mess, and then left it as it was. The cat knocked it over again. Mrs. BA swore at the cat, and I told her “The first time it was her fault. The second time it was *your* fault!” She laughed, and agreed. We put the cactus where the cat couldn’t reach it. In fact, we know she can get almost anywhere in the house, and so we don’t have many plants. We had to make a minor change in our lifestyle to accommodate the cat.
My cat is global warming. We’re all doomed.
Must agree with the BA on this one: knowing what is causing global warming *is* an absolute necessary first step to finding a solution for it. As for trying to cope with the effects of global warming, I’ve read about some proposed mitigation strategies, none of which have been tried on a large scale yet. If the second try at Kyoto fails to get the worst offenders (the US, India, and China) to substantially lower carbon emissions, then those mitigation strategies will need to come into play.
Some of the mitigation strategies have been shown to be ineffective in small-scale trials (seeding the oceans with iron), but there are others that sound promising (artificial trees). Some people are proposing sending a satellite up to Earth’s L1 point to block a portion of the solar radiation coming in; this may work, but the price tag would be enormous. Others have suggested seeding the upper atmosphere with particulates (SO2 has been suggested for use in this strategy) to create an enhanced ‘global dimming’ effect; however, this would not be a permanent solution, as these particulates would not remain in the atmosphere. Moreover, there may be huge unintended environmental consequences of doing this; we MAY make things worse.
If CO2 levels get much higher, we may *need* mitigation strategies *in addition* to reductions in man-made CO2 emissions in order to stabilize the climate at a reasonable level. However, wholesale planetary engineering is a LOT harder to do and is riskier AND costlier than not emitting greenhouse gases in the first place.
Sorry for the long posts, Gia. GW is one of my pet subjects. :)
I want there to be less pollution cos it causes huge numbers of health problems (and according to the WHO, 3m deaths worldwide per year) – that’s mainly transport related. That should change for the health reasons first and foremost. If CO2 emissions *are* causing Global Warming, then that’s yet another thing that makes pollution bad.
Pressuring the transport industry by using *children’s health* or the huge numbers of deaths which happen every year is a much more understandable than a vague ‘The Earth’s temperature seems to be rising and this looks like it’s being caused by CO2 emissions, so you’re bad and need to change.’
I recycle, not really to ’save energy’, but in order to keep large amounts of stuff out of the landfills. Why stick a bottle in the ground when it can be reused? Again, especially in the UK, I think people respond to the idea of “landfills” and not wanting to stick stuff in the ground, rather than ‘Recycling might save energy, though it might not cos, you know it takes a lot of energy to recycle plastic n stuff…’
I don’t think *reducing* energy use is a good aim at all. We should be reducing pollution and generally cleaning our environment because it’s simply *nicer* that way.
It’s the same thing with your body. You might have a health issue that could potentially cause you problems in the future. Let’s say ‘high blood pressure’. You’re overweight, you eat badly, you don’t exercise etc… You can go to your doctor and get a pill to take which will regulate your blood pressure *without* dieting or starting to exercise… *But* if you *do* change your diet and start to exercise you will not only help your blood pressure (and perhaps allow you to come off the pills), but also will gain loads of other health benefits not directly related to your blood pressure- lowering your cholesterol, lowering your heart rate, eating more fiber, making you generally feel good about your body….
What we seem to be doing w Global Warming is arguing over whether it really is ‘eating too many fatty foods’ or ‘not exercising’ and working out whether we should blame our *parents* for not teaching us about nutrition, when we should be taking a pill quickly *and* change our lifestyle for general, holistic health… it’s the *blame* thing that is causing the problems…
I think Gia is on to something. I recently feel that many of the arguments about climate change look something like this. A truck (the climate) is slowly rolling down a hill towards a crowd of people. On one side of the street the crowd either denies that the truck is rolling, or that the truck would roll anyway and there is nothing they could do about it anyway. On the other side they are saying that it’s entirely the fault of people, usually capitalists in first world countries. They must change their entire way of life immediately! Meanwhile, the truck keeps rolling……why doesn’t someone try to move the crowd out of the way? The group on one side doesn’t want to do it because it would undercut their denials, the group on the other side doesn’t do anything because they fear that it will divert attention, money, and commitment from their cause (you can’t pay equal attention to both the cause and the result).
I don’t know what causes global warming. I don’t know if it’s possible to stop it, or if it’s a natural phenomenon beyond our control. However I would like to see some of the current talking heads on both sides of the issue take some of their speaker fees and maybe set up some funds to pay for some of the possible results of global warming. Can you imagine the expense of having to evacuate the coastal regions of all the continents? The food and medical issues? Rather then buy carbon offsets to pay for global concerts perhaps a high interest savings account would be a better use of that money…just in case.
Well, that’s fine in principle, Nicholas, but you have to know what is *causing* the warming in order quantify what the possible consequences will be, as in how much rise in sea level to expect, what areas will see changes in precipitation patterns, etc. Yes, we can generally say that precipitation patterns will change, sea levels will rise, glaciers will melt, corals will bleach, ocean uptake of CO2 will decrease, etc, but modeling the *amount* and *severity* of these effects is dependent on knowing the underlying mechanisms (and I use the plural of the word as natural climatic cycles are contributing to warming also) behind the warming. Some natural mechanisms may actually *mask* the effects of man-made CO2 on climate, at least temporarily.
There have been several interesting articles in ‘Science’ recently RE climate change and global warming and the newly-discovered natural cycles that one must consider when modeling the climate. They are available on http://www.sciencemag.org/. For some of the articles, you may need a subscription to read the entire article. If there is a subscriber-only article you wish to read, post here asking to read it; I subscribe to ‘Science’ and will post the link to the full article, if possible and if I won’t get hauled off to jail for violating copyright laws. ;)
I have also posted summaries of these articles on a couple of threads in the BAUT, if you are a member of that forum. The BA also discusses GW on his blog.
I did not mean to imply that I don’t find the cause important, and after rereading what I wrote I can see that I never addressed that issue. I just feel that no one is bothering to address what we will do if a whole range of scenarios come true. I just don’t want to be reading blog posts about how horrible it is that the glaciers are all gone but we are THIS CLOSE to finding out why, while in the meantime some of my favorite places in the entire world are under water. I fear it would be like a bizarre twilight zone episode, Scientists struggle mightily to discover why, why is it happening? Then suddenly two years later a break through, but it’s to late! Nothing will stop it, but if we had started planning for this outcome two years ago we would have had enough time to save us, but now we are all doomed. I guess I just look at this as perhaps a “3rd side” to this issue, but one which no one wishes to address.
I will try to get to those article tonight, at least the ones that I don’t have to pay for! And if you do get hauled off to copyright jail let me know, I’ve always wanted to plan a prison break!
Thanks, Nicholas–you’ll be my co-conspirator! ;)
I agree that we can’t wait until we know ALL the answers to address the problem–the situation is too dire to treat as an academic exercise–but I think we already now enough about the cause of the current problem to act.
What you said in your posts reminds me of when my husband and I went scuba-diving in the Buck Island National Monument during our honeymoon last October. From all of the pictures I’d seen of coral reefs and the IMAX movies, I was expecting some kind of underwater forest, teeming with fish, turtles, *sharks* (eek!), etc and chockablock with coral. I hadn’t realized before getting in the water that all of the pics I’d seen had been taken 10 years before–or had been taken in places where coral was still abundant and the reef was still flourishing.
It was an eerie feeling, being 40 ft down and still being able to breathe, and the world under water was *completely* unlike *anything* I’d seen on land–but it was a desert compared to the pictures I’d seen of healthy reefs. There were relatively few fish, and the coral on the reef was rather sparse and stumpy-looking. Yes, the living coral was brilliantly-colored, but they were islands of color interspersed with a lot of white. White = dead coral.