NZCLIMATE TRUTH 53
JULY 12TH 2004

COLLAPSE OF "GLOBAL WARMING"

The main evidence for the existence of "Global Warming" has been the amalgamated temperature anomaly records from weather stations and ships provided by three main teams, the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit, UK, The Goddard
Institute of Space Studies, New York, and the Global Historical Climatology Network, National Climate Data Center, Ashewille, NC USA. The UK compilation was featured in "Climate Change 2001" some seven times.

These compilations were allegedly "corrected" for bias due to "urbanisation". The validity and adequacy of these corrections has been questioned by many authors, including myself, but the latest studies begin to look like mortal blows

I have already pointed out the work of Ross McKittrick and Patrick J Michaels, Climate Research 26  159-173 in my Newsletter No 49 (June 7th). They plotted both individual temperature anomalies and the gridded anomalies of the IPCC against a large number of local variables, most of which proved to have a significant effect. When they were removed a residual temperature rise of 0.011± 0.106 °C per decade between 1979 and 2000 remained.

A similar exercise has now been carried out for sea surface temperatures by Douglass, David H., Benjamin D. Pearson, S. Fred Singer, Paul C. Knappenberger, and Patrick J. Michaels, 2004. Disparity of tropospheric and surface temperature trends:
New evidence.  Geophys. Res. Lett., 31, L13207, doi:10.1029/2004GL020212, July 9, 2004
Abstract
Observations suggest that the earth's surface has been warming relative to the troposphere for the last 25 years; this is not only difficult to explain but also contrary to the results of climate models. We provide new evidence that the disparity is real. Introducing an additional data set, R2 2-meter temperatures, a diagnostic variable related to tropospheric temperature profiles, we find trends derived from it to be in close agreement with satellite measurements of tropospheric temperature. This suggests that the disparity likely is a result of near-surface processes. We find that the disparity does not occur uniformly across the globe, but is primarily confined to tropical regions which are primarily oceanic. Since the ocean measurements are sea surface temperatures, we suggest that the disparity is probably associated with processes at the ocean-atmosphere interface. Our study thus makes unlikely some of the explanations advanced to account for the disparity; it also demonstrates the importance of distinguishing between land, sea and air measurements.

"we suggest that the disparity is probably associated with processes at the ocean-atmosphere interface" is GRL jargon  to say it agrees with the previous study of

J R Christy, D E Parker, S J Brown, I Macadam, M Stendel & W B Norris 2001 "Differential Trends in Tropical Sea Surface and Atmospheric Temperatures since 1979;  Geophysical Research Letters 28 183-186

which found that the measurement of sea surface temperature at the intake of the engine cooling water of ships introduced an upwards bias.

So both the weather station measurements and sea surface measurements are upwardly biased, and there is doubt whether there is any warming left if the bias is removed.

But the true record of global temperature is to be found in a recent paper by

Seidel, Dian J., J.K. Angell, J. Christy, M. Free, S.A. Klein, J.R. Lanzante, C. Mears, D. Parker, M. Schabel, R. Spencer, A. Sterin, P. Thorne, and F. Wentz, 2004.
Uncertainty in signals of large-scale climate variations in radiosonde and satellite upper-air temperature datasets. Journal of Climate Vol. 17, No. 11, pp. 2225–2240, June 2004

These authors gathered together all the datasets of mean global temperature, from  weather balloons and satellites, as measured in the lower troposphere, and averaged them out in a single temperature record  which gives the best estimate of
global temperature change for the years 1957 to 2003.

It will be seen that there has been no globally averaged temperature change over the period 1957 to 2003.  The temperature in 1957 was the same as it is today. There was a fall over the years 1960 to 1978, and a sudden jump upwards from 1977 to 1980.  The very large spike in 1998 is attributed to El Niño.

There are temperature fluctuations, some of which can be attributed to natural events such as volcanoes and ocean variability, but there is nothing in this record which could be explained by the increases in carbon dioxide concentration in the
atmosphere over the period. These actual figures are in disagreement with every single climate model based on the belief that greenhouse gases are an influence on the climate.

"Global warming" simply does not exist. Of course there are some places close to cities which have warmed because of the local increase in buildings and energy production. But there is ample evidence from more remote weather stations and "proxy" measurements such as tree rings, that there has been no warming whatsoever far from human activity.

The "greenhouse" theory of "climate change" is surely dead.

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