It matters where you look

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER GRAPH. Well, two graphs today. A treat.

The computer models of the UN/IPCC suggest that the troposphere (the lowest 5 miles of the atmosphere) and the lower stratosphere (covering an altitude range of about 9-12 miles) are where we should see warming at "a slightly larger rate" than the warming on the earth's surface. Yet for some reason the majority of discussions you see about temperature are of the surface record.

To check both troposphere and of the lower stratosphere we need to look at the measurements taken from satellites. Furthermore, and unlike the surface record, the satellite temperature measurements cover the whole globe, not just the sometimes sparsely distributed land-based weather stations. So today's graphs show the satellite temperature record for "Land Only" measurements, and then for "Ocean only" :
See any warming? Anything catastrophic?

There's more variability with the land record than the ocean record of course -- that's what the "thermal smoothing" of the oceans does. Says Vincent Gray:

The El Chichon volcano in 1982 caused a fall of over 0.6ºC on land, but only 0.3ºC on the ocean. Pinatubo in 1992 caused a fall of over 0.6ºC on land and 0.4ºC on the ocean. There is similar, but more complex behaviour with El Niño and La Niña. Tje 1998 El Niño took the land tremperature up 1.0ºC on land , but only 0.8ºC over the ocean. The land temperature is inflenced by its rough character which causes greater changes in wind and convection currents. A low figure in 2005 was more prominent over land and a temporary high peak in the beginning of 2007 happened only over land. The ocean record gives a guide to the temperature over a smooth surface, and is therefore a better guide to changes in climate.

One very glaring fact emerges here: The satellite temperature record shown here does not agree with the "global surface temperature anomaly record" for the same period that is promoted by the UN/IPCC -- and this is the period for which CO2-induced warming is supposed to be occurring, and measured in the very place in which it's supposed to be happening.

You may draw your own conclusions as to why the UN/IPCC sets more store in the surface record with all its attendant problems (changes in land use; urbanisation; changes in the number of weather stations -- see Vincent Gray's analysis of these problems here [pdf]) than they do the satellite record which actually measures what their models say is warming, or should be warming.

It shows clearly that between 1979 and 1997 there was no overall change in temperature in the lower atmosphere. It was suddenly disturbed by the 1998 El Niño, but when that was over, the temperature went back down to the previous mean value. Then, an upwards climate shift took place in 2001, and the average temperature went up by 0.25 ºC, and has remained there until the present day. This behaviour is quite incompatible with the theory that climate is being influenced by increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. There is no sign whatsoever of any form of steady increasing "trend"... [Emphasis mine.]

The global warmers are getting desperate, so they are bombarding us with continual propaganda that the world is warming when it is blindingly obvious to all of us that this is not true. When will the bubble burst?

Who's going to burst it when so many are riding such a lucrative bubble?

PEOPLE LIKE AL BORE who want to ride it all the way to the White House. "The IPCC's exaggerations and errors parallel those of Al Gore in his notorious sci-fi horror film An Inconvenient Truth, now being peddled to schoolchildren worldwide," says Christopher Monckton, who's reminded us recently of Al Gore's uncorrected errors and sci-fi horrors in this brief article [pdf: head to page 8]. Perhaps those of you who make a hobby of berating the Global Warming Swindle team for their oversights can get on to Big Al about his own errors before his sci-fi horror hits the schools (and he hits the White House).

AND I'VE HEARD PEOPLE SAY that they have "faith" in the IPCC, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- even people here at this very blog. This is an organisation that publishes its summary of the science (written by politicians and bureaucrats) three months before the science itself, which is then rewritten where necessary to match the summary.

But the IPCC's reports are thoroughly reviewed, you say? And by the scientists themselves? Says the irredeemably smug Gavin Schmidt at the irredeemably warmist Real Climate, "As lead author Gerald Meehl remarked to one of us on his way to Paris" -- get that self-important 'look at us, we're on the way to Paris' bit? -- "scientists have to be okay, they have the last check. If they think the science is not represented, then they can send it back to the breakout groups. " See, it's all okay, scientists have to be okay, "they have the last check." But do they?

Steve McIntyre gives a clue here to the bureaucratic runaround non-warmist scientific reviewers actually faced. In his capacity as a reviewer, he requested a copy in January of "the reviewer and government comments" as promised by IPCC protocols. After a runaround worthy of Sir Humphrey, come MAY (and the publication of the actual scientific report on which he was supposed to be commenting) he finally received an email advising him "these materials are available by appointment within the hours of 10am - 4:45pm weekdays at Littauer Library, Harvard."

When you look under the bonnet at the actual process, it's not exactly what you'd call "open" is it.

But the science is thoroughly assessed, you insist? Then how about these errors picked up by Christopher Monckton in the IPCC Summary (and pointed out in that same article linked above), including a ten-fold exaggeration in the effect of melting ice-sheets on sea-level rise -- an error quietly amended without comment by the IPCC after the headlines had moved on; amended with a change of units to help conceal the blunder -- and a twenty-fold exaggeration of the effect of the climatic effect of CO2 oncentration. A twenty-fold exaggeration! Asks Monckton quite reasonably:

Why did the IPCC’s 2,500 scientists fail to spot so serious an error?

Because the table did not appear at all in the version of the Summary for Policymakers that the Scientific Assessment Working Group sent to governments for approval. The table was inserted by the IPCC bureaucracy after the scientists had reached their conclusions on the science.

So much, one might think, for the "rigour" of the IPCC process, the results of which are being used to politically strangle western industry.

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The graphs above were prepared by Dr Vincent Gray from figures obtained by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) TIROS-N series of polar-orbiting weather satellites, and downloadable here.