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101 conspiracy theories about troposphere temperature: the RSS love affair is over
Sou | 10:48 PM Go to the first of 56 comments. Add a comment
Over at WUWT there have been three articles about the lower troposphere temperatures. The first (archived here) was a Guest Post by Werner Brozek and Nick Stokes, Edited by Just The Facts with the title: "Long Satellite Pauses Ending (Now Includes January Data)". The second article was about the February data for UAH (archived here, latest here). It had the wistful wishful title: "Global Temperature Report: Warmest Ever February 2016 driven by El Niño". The third article is the real doozy (archived here). It's by Anthony Watts so could well have some awful blunders in it. He's called his article: "The 'Karlization' of global temperature continues – this time RSS makes a massive upwards adjustment."
This article is a few hours late, and I'm not satisfied that I've got everything right because this is a subject on which I am feeling distinctly out of depth. Science deniers will try to tell you that there are little thermometers on satellites sending raw data to Earth and miraculously drawing temperature charts - or something like that. That's a pile of hogwash. The real story is much more complicated. Satellites come and go. Instruments change. Orbits decay. Temperature isn't measured directly, it's estimated from measurements from microwave sounding instruments (MSUs). What's reported is the result of complex calculations after adjustments and conversion to temperature. What we get are temperature trends in very thick layers in the atmosphere (kilometers thick, looking upwards into space), not the temperature of a particular spot or distinct level in the sky. Then there is "diurnal drift" - which is largely what the new paper by Carl Mears and Frank J. Wentz is all about.
Warning: this article is rather long. It explains the new RSS paper in more detail than I did in the previous article.
The lower troposphere "Pause" is officially dead
The first article was written ahead of the release of UAH and RSS data, and was in part about how the so-called "pause" will end in either February or March, depending on whether the February anomaly is 0.88 C or higher for RSS or 0.315 or higher for UAH. It was. For both. So the RSS and UAH "pauses" are officially ended, if you take WUWT to be anything like official.
The February temperature record was driven by more than El Niño
Despite the headline that the UAH February record was "driven by El Niño", the second article had this to say (my emphasis):
By a statistically significant amount, February 2016 was the warmest month in the satellite temperature record, according to Dr. John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. Interestingly, however, that record might have as much to do with an extraordinarily warm month in the Arctic as it does with warming caused by the El Niño Pacific Ocean warming event.
Which is what was pointed out here at HW - and here.
Anthony Watts jumps up and down and sez the new RSS paper has a fatal flaw
The third article shows just how sensitive Anthony Watts is to any hint that the world really is getting hotter. He jumps on something Roy Spencer said to him, but unlike Roy, Anthony decides it means there's a "fatal flaw" in the new RSS paper. As if Anthony Watts would know!
Anthony began his article once again falsely accusing the NOAA scientists of fraud. Anthony Watts is just another wacky conspiracy nutter of the lizard men kind. He wrote:
Forget homogenization, that is so 2010. If the pause is bothering you and your belief is that there must be more warming, we only need to find it in the data, then what you need is "Karlization", named after director of the National Climatic Data Center, (now NCEI) Tom Karl who pulled a fast one this summer trying to adjust the past down, so the present would be warmer. The sleight of hand on this was so obvious that even warm-oriented scientists such as Michael Mann and Ben Santer co-authored a rebuttal paper that said Karl was dead wrong and the pause was real. There is now a congressional investigation into Mr. Karl's apparently political actions disguised as science.
Of course no scientists wrote anything about Karl15 being "dead wrong" or a "pause" being real in the sense that global warming stopped. Anthony is talking through his hat. (This is what he's referring to, and Graham Readfearn has a terrific article at the Guardian about it, too.)
And does Anthony Watts know that of all the main four temperature datasets, NOAA has the lowest warming trend for the period since 1971? The 1970s was the last time the trend changed, according to research published in Cahill15. Does Anthony Watts know that the trends per decade differ in only the second decimal place - by 0.01 or by 0.001 if you want to talk annual trend? Here are the trends from the different datasets from 1971 to 2015:
Figure 1 | Trend per decade for four global surface temperature datasets. Data sources: UK Met Office, NOAA, Berkeley Earth, GISS NASA
Anthony Watts has been trying to get sued for defamation for years now. He might succeed one of these days. (RSS isn't a government agency so Carl Mears could sue if he thought it worth his while.) Anthony's specialties include lying about science (as above), falsely defaming scientists (as above), looking stupid (as in Russian steampipes), acting in a cowardly fashion (slinking away from U Bristol), and being unethical.
Having set the scene, Anthony wrote about Dr Mears:
Clearly, he's miffed. So what to do? Taking a cue from the other Karl, he publishes a paper and claims that new and improved adjustments have "found" that missing warming.
He has falsely accused the NOAA scientists of fraud, so by taking this stance he is also effectively accusing Carl Meares and Frank J. Wentz of fraud.
How does RSS v4 differ from v3.3?
Before getting into Anthony's so-called "fatal flaw", I'll try to set out how the new version 4 of RSS mid-troposphere temperature differs from v3.3. Early in their paper, Mears and Wentz explain how they have to remove the diurnally-varying component from observations to derive the long term trend in temperature.
The derivation of long-term trends in tropospheric temperature from satellite observations requires that the diurnally varying component for the observation be removed. This is because the local observation time for most of the satellites drifts over time (Christy et al. 2000; Mears and Wentz 2005), causing diurnal variations to be aliased into the long-term record.
They describe how this has been done by them previously (in v3.3) and by others:
In previous RSS versions, they constructed a climatology using a general circulation model. NOAA's STAR used the same approach.
UAH in version 5.6 used "cross-scan differences" to work out the "local diurnal slope"
They report how Po-Chedley et al showed that none of the models completely remove the effects of the diurnal cycle, and this new paper of Mears and Wentz confirms that finding. Instead of using a general circulation model, they have adopted "an harmonic method" for removing biases relating to satellite diurnal drift. This method is based on analysis of the satellite observations themselves. The authors explored three approaches, all of which gave similar results for AMSU data:
MIN-DRIFT - where they exclude parts of each satellite record during times of rapid drift in observation time. They couldn't adopt this approach holus bolus (a technical term) because it wouldn't work for MSU data in the early part of the record.
REF-SAT - where they use two satellites that didn't drift (AQUA and METOP-A) as reference satellites to adjust the drifting satellites. Again, that only works with the period in which those satellites were operational, and couldn't be applied to the earlier part of the record.
DIUR-OPT - where they adjusted GCM-derived diurnal cycles (ie from general circulation models, I presume) using information got from comparing satellite observations at different local times. This can be applied to the entire record and is the one that Mears and Wentz used for v4.
Oh it's all very technical. I expect some HW readers will understand it. However I'm not even a novice when it comes to satellites and microwave sensors and correcting for diurnal drift and I don't understand a lot of it, so if you can't follow any of this, blame me.
Anthony Watts issues a plea for help from denier scientists
Now Anthony Watts wouldn't know the difference between a satellite and a weather station any more than he can tell an anomaly from a baseline. So just in case his message didn't get through to Christopher Monckton (who has adopted the RSS dataset as the "gold standard" of temperature datasets), he sent a hasty missive to Roy Spencer and John Christy to see if they could find fault with the paper. Well, they'd barely had time to read it. In fact they may have just looked at the pictures without reading the text, because Roy wrote back fairly promptly. Just getting an email from Roy Spencer was sufficient for Anthony to proclaim a "fatal flaw":
Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr. John Christy have already looked into this latest "Karlization" and have found what appears to be a fatal flaw.
It's fairly obvious that Anthony didn't understand the paper or Roy's email or what the so-called "fatal flaw" might be. He added no comment other than "Yes, yes it does", which was wise, knowing Anthony as we do. He just put up a picture from the new paper. Roy wrote back saying:
The paper is for MT, not LT…but I think we can assume that changes in one will be reflected in the other when Mears completes their analysis.
That's what I figured, too. So that part was okay, because I agree :) (However it suggests that Anthony got the wrong end of the stick and mistakenly thought the paper was about lower troposphere data.) It's the next bit that got Anthony Watts all excited.
Roy Spencer thinks he's found a problem - but has he?
In his email Roy wrote:
From what little we have looked at so far, it appears that they did not correct for spurious warming in NOAA-14 MSU relative to NOAA-15 AMSU…see their Fig. 7c. They just leave it in.
Since this spurious warming is near the middle of the whole time period, this shifts the second half of the satellite record warmer when NOAA-14 MSU (the last in the MSU series) is handed off to NOAA-15 AMSU (the first in the AMSU series).
Why do we think NOAA-14 MSU is at fault?
1) AMSU is supposed to have a "Cadillac" calibration design (that's the term a NASA engineer, Jim Shiue, used when describing to me the AMSU design, which he was involved in).
2) NOAA-14 MSU requires a large correction for the calibrated TB increasing with instrument temperature as the satellite drifts into a different orbit. The NOAA-15 AMSU requires no such correction…and it wasn't drifting during the period in question anyway.
So, it looks like they decided to force good data to match bad data. Sound familiar?
With his comment "They just leave it in", Roy seems to be arguing that Mears and Wentz should have removed NOAA-14 from their dataset. See below for the big gap that would have caused. However, notice that Roy wrote "relative to NOAA-15". The authors of the RSS paper found that it was NOAA-15 that had degraded, and that's the one for which they stopped using data after December 2010.
In point 2 above, I'm guessing the TB refers to "brightness temperature". Although the letters are back to front, so I could be wrong. Whatever, section F of the paper on MSU/AMSU Difference Trends has a discussion about NOAA-14. The authors talk about differences in trends for periods when the data from different satellites overlap, that is, the older MSU overlaps with the newer AMSU (my emphasis):
One of the unexplained mysteries of the previous version of our analysis (V3.3) was a large positive trend in the MSU minus AMSU differences during the period of overlap from late 1998 until mid-2002, followed by a period of smaller negative trend from mid-2002 until late 2003. The origin of these differences is not known....We included the effects of this difference trend into the uncertainty estimate for the V3.3 dataset (Mears et al. 2011). This mystery remains in the version of the dataset even after the optimization of the diurnal adjustments for MSU and AMSU.
In that section, Mears and Wentz discuss three possible reasons and exclude two of them, leaving this one: Errors in the NOAA-14 target factor. They conclude that:
We are left with explanation that the differences are caused by a calibration in either NOAA-14 or NOAA-15 (or both). Our baseline dataset will use both MSU and AMSU measurements during the overlap period. If we exclude MSU data after 1999 (implicitly assuming the error is due to NOAA-14), the long-term trend decreases by 0.019 K/decade, and if we exclude AMSU data before 2003 (implicitly assuming the error is due to NOAA-15), the long term trend increases by 0.01K/decade).
So the authors did consider calibration problems with both NOAA-14 and NOAA-15, and they tested what would happen if they removed them. They wrote about an unresolved problem with the data, which they narrowed down to one of three things. They were able to discount two of the possibilities, leaving the possibility of "errors in the NOAA-14 target factor". Now I wouldn't have known what that means, but Mears and Wentz explain:
The target factor is a calibration target dependent adjustment we use to account for instrument non-linearity. Because the target temperature for NOAA-14 has a strong trend during 1999-2004, an error in the target factor could lead to a spurious trend in the NOAA-14 radiances. Such an error would cause large oscillations in the MSU minus AMSU differences (See supplemental Figure S5).
I'm not really too much wiser about that and can't find the supplementary information, which might add some clarity. It seems to me it's to do with what adjustments are made to work out actual "brightness temperature" readings so as to convert them to temperature. Maybe there's an expert who'll drop by to explain. (Mears and Wentz specifically discard the term "brightness temperature" in their paper and instead use "temperature units". They explained that the mean radiances reported are slightly different to what people usually refer to as "brightness temperature".)
NOAA-14 was the last MSU instrument, starting in 1995 and ceasing in 2004. NOAA-15 was the first satellite with AMSU instrumentation, starting in 1998 and still active in December 2014. Table 1 of the paper shows that in version 4.0 the authors left in the entire period of NOAA-14, but excluded NOAA-15 for the period from January 2010 to its end of life, December 2014.
I cannot say why NOAA-14 was left in for its entirety. I can speculate though. I'd say it's because removing it would have resulted in inconsistencies in other ways, so it probably wasn't causing errors that couldn't be corrected. Plus it would have meant they only had one satellite for a substantial period at the turn of this century, which would have made it impossible to benchmark against any other satellite.
In support of my first speculation, the authors found that their new dataset is consistent with two things:
For the tropics, it's consistent with the UW dataset that is "constructed using different methods, but with a similar goal of deducing the needed diurnal adjustments from the satellite measurements themselves". (That's opposed to basing diurnal adjustments on general circulation model outputs, which was the approach used for V3.3); and
It agrees "more closely with estimates of changes in total column water vapor than the STAR and UAH datasets".
Eliminating some records from degraded satellites: AQUA and NOAA-15
The researchers went to some effort to get the best dataset possible. They found that data from AQUA degraded from 2010, so they excluded those data, writing:
We focus first on the ocean results, which depend less on the diurnal adjustments. We note that the differences that involve AQUA all trend to large negative values starting in 2010. This corresponds to a period when increasing scan-to-scan noise suggests that this channel on AQUA is beginning to degrade (Roy Spencer, personal communication, also see Fig S1). Given the evidence for substantial instrument drift, we exclude AQUA data after December 2009.
They also found that NOAA-15 degraded later in its life, so they eliminated it from December 2011. They noted that the impact was minor, writing:
The effect of this change on the global mean trend is fairly minor. If the post 2011 NOAA-15 data were included, the 1988-2014 AMSU trend would decrease by 0.004 K/decade. We note that if the AQUA data, which we excluded because of excess noise after December 2009, were also included the 1988-2013 AMSU trend would increase by 0.035 K/decade, more than canceling the effects of excluding the post-2011 NOAA-15 data.
I'm not an expert in the subject, I'm not even a novice, so I cannot say whether Mears and Wentz are right or whether Spencer and Christy are right, or whether they are all right or all wrong. All I can do is report what was in the paper. What I can say is that what was in the paper doesn't seem to gel with Roy's comment to Anthony.
Dr Mears had told me that, as stated in their paper, they cannot tell if the problem is NOAA-14 or NOAA-15 or both. It doesn't make a huge difference to the trend whichever way they go - if they removed NOAA-14 it would reduce the trend to Feb 2016 from 0.133 C/decade to 0.123 C/decade. He said in part:
There is no evidence that NOAA-14 drifts for time periods before 1998, because it agrees well with measurements made by other MSU satellites (NOAA-11 and NOAA-12) over the ocean, where the diurnal adjustment is not important. The drift would have to suddenly appear in 1998.
So we cannot assume that the problem is with NOAA-14. We instead explore the 3 cases:
we assume NOAA-14 is wrong and remove it to the extent possible*
we assume NOAA-15 is wrong, and remove it to the extent possible
we assume that the error is shared between them, and we keep all the data.
*we keep about a year of data during the MSU/AMSU oeverlap period -- any shorter time period would lead to excess noise in the MSU-AMSU difference we use to adjust AMSU to match MSU.
These results are reported in the paper, and the differences between them should be viewed as part of the uncertainty in the final results. For the final dataset, we present case 3 where the errors are shared between NOAA-14 and NOAA-15, which is reasonable because we do not know the source of the problem.
Added by Sou 5:45 am AEDT 5 March 2016
When the satellites were active
There was a nice chart in the paper, which I'll use to illustrate the different periods each satellite/instrument was providing data. The chart was to illustrate the first of the methods the scientists checked, but don't let that distract you. I'm just including it to give you an idea of the number of different satellites and instruments that have been used to build up the dataset from 1979 onwards. I've added some text (animated) so you can see which instruments had data that was excluded from version 4. There are only two as discussed above:
NOAA-15 was excluded from December 2010, and
AQUA was excluded from December 2009.
I've also labeled NOAA-14 on the diagram. None of that data was excluded from version 4.
Figure 2 | The time scale at the bottom shows when each of the satellites were providing data. The rest of this caption is as in the paper: Ascending local equator crossing time (LECT) for each of the satellites used. The LECT drifts over time for all satellites except AQUA, METOP-A, and METOP-B, which are maintaining at constant local time by orbit keeping maneuvers. For the drifting AMSU satellites, the thinner lines denote the portion of the missions excluded in the MIN_DRIFT analysis. (That's different to the time excluded from v4.) Source: Meares and Wentz 2016
What if NOAA-14 was excluded?
If NOAA-14 were pulled out, as Roy Spencer seems to be suggesting, then there'd have been an extended period in which there was only one satellite providing data. The chart below shows there was one short period early on where there was only one source of data, and I've also highlighted the extended period when there would have been only one source of data if NOAA-14 were excluded. That would be from the end of NOAA-12 in November 1998 to the start of AQUA in August 2002, a period of almost four years:
Figure 3 | As for Figure 2, adding rectangles showing the period for which there is only one satellite, and the period for which there would only be one satellite if NOAA-14 were excluded.
What about the UAH dataset?
Few people would have much of a clue about what is going on with the UAH version 6.0 beta because, unlike Carl Mears and Frank Wentz, Roy Spencer and John Christy haven't published anything but a blog article. This is despite the fact that it's been out for almost a year. So while they have argued that Mears and Wentz should have applied a different correction to NOAA-14, or excluded it altogether, it can be argued that once again theirs is probably the odd one when it comes to the mid-troposphere.
In his blog article, Roy Spencer has excluded different data than Mears and Wentz. He listed the following exclusions:
NOAA-17 - that wasn't included in RSS either
Metop (failed AMSU7) - I don't know which one. RSS has both METOP-A and METOP-B and say nothing about any failure.
NOAA-16 (excessive calibration drifts) - that's not in RSS either
NOAA-14 after July, 2001 (excessive calibration drift) - RSS uses that to December 2004
NOAA-9 after Feb. 1987 (failed MSU2) - RSS stopped using that on the same date.
In addition, RSS has excluded NOAA-15 from December 2010 onwards and AQUA from December 2009, noting degradation problems. UAH haven't excluded those.
In the chart below I've included the period NOAA-14 was operational as well as showing NOAA-15 and AQUA. The gray is when the latter two were operational but their data was excluded from RSS v4. (UAH only stopped using NOAA-14 in 2001, not altogether, and it hasn't excluded either NOAA-15 or AQUA.) I've aligned them all to a common baseline of the 1981 to 2010 mean. As always, click the chart to enlarge it.
Figure 4 | Comparison of four mid-troposphere temperature records. I've also included the period in which NOAA-14, NOAA-15 and AQUA were operational The grey portion of the bars are where RSS v4 excluded data. Data sources: RSS v3.3 and v4; UAH v5.6 and 6.0 beta 5
Looking at the above chart might hint at the solution to a mystery that many of us noticed back in 2011, when for the lower troposphere, RSS markedly diverged from UAH v5.6 (which was the latest at the time), and from the surface data. 2011 is around the time that AQUA and NOAA-15 were said to have degraded. Since then UAH has brought out their beta version 6.0 which got rid of the divergence between UAH and RSS. That is, until RSS v4 for TLT becomes available. (Is your head spinning yet?)
Comparing the mid-troposphere with the surface trends
In comparing the mid-troposphere with surface temperature, GISTemp (surface) starts off lower and ends up higher. The trend for surface temperature is greater than both mid-troposphere trends shown, but RSS v4 is closer to that of GISTemp than UAH v6.0 beta 5 is. I've aligned them all to a common baseline of the 1981 to 2010 mean.
Figure 5 | Comparison of two mid-troposphere temperature records and GISTemp surface temperature record. Data sources: RSS v4; UAH 6.0 beta 5; GISS NASA
The trends are:
GISTemp (surface) 0.16 C/decade
UAH version 6.0 beta 5 0.07 C/decade
RSS v4 0.13 C/decade.
I'm not suggesting that the surface should warm at the same rate as the mid-troposphere. Still it's interesting that RSS v4 is much closer to the surface trend than UAH v6.0 beta 5 is.
Unprofessional behaviour from Roy Spencer
In keeping with the sullied reputation Roy Spencer and Anthony Watts cultivate, Anthony added an update to his article:
UPDATE1: Given this sort of work has only two groups doing it, it is a very narrow field of scientific specialty, I asked Dr. Spencer this question:
"I assume neither you or Christy were asked to review this paper? There aren't many satellite temperature data experts in the world."
He replied: "Interesting question….
John reviewed their original paper submission to JGR, in detail, asking for additional evidence — but not advocating rejection of the paper. The JGR editor ended up rejecting it anyway.
Mears & Wentz then revised the paper, submitted it to J. Climate instead, and likely asked that we be excluded as reviewers."
The Journal of Geophysical Research and Journal of Climate would hardly approve of that display of unprofessional behaviour. And Roy did not provide any evidence that Mears and Wentz asked that they be excluded as reviewers. They may have, or it may be merely conspiratorial thinking on Roy's part. (It isn't necessarily a bad thing to have people who would be expected to be very critical review your paper, I'd have thought. And Roy already said that John Christy didn't advise it be rejected.)
Well, all this is very bad news for deniers at WUWT. RSS satellite data has now fallen from its hallowed spot as the ultimate in temperature data - at WUWT and other denier blogs. You can expect that now UAH v6 whatever's the latest beta will become the record of choice for deniers. That is, until Roy and John change it again.
Not disheartened, the "thoughts" contain a multitude of reasons for ignoring or discounting the satellite data. This first lot of comments come from the article by Werner Brozek and Nick Stokes telling deniers that the pause is no more.
dbakerber says that the El Nino blip proves "CAGW" is a sham. The reasoning, if you can call it that, is odd:
Well, I think an el Nino blip would be strong evidence against CAGW. Warming the sea first is the opposite of what CAGW theory says.
Richard M suggests that the ENSO signal be removed. Now that wouldn't be a bad idea, except for the fake sceptics. That's because it would also remove the signal from that very important peak in the lower troposphere record that allowed the "pause" in the first place - the 1997-98 peak.
No rationalization needed. This has been predicted for months by those who understand ENSO. What's curious is why you seem to think it is meaningful. Do you know what happens next? If the past is any guide we should see a 2-3 year La Nina. The pause may disappear for a few months just to reappear next year.
It would be nice if Werner or Nick could use an approach like Santer et al 2014 where they remove ENSO from the signal. This would eliminate these types of meaningless discussions.
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v7/n3/fig_tab/ngeo2098_F1.html
george e. smith is waiting for the potty peer to tell him what he should be thinking:
The Monckton Pause is restricted solely to the RSS data set. He makes that quite clear. He has not prohibited any person from generating their own algorithm for whatever purpose they wish.
But the pause of 18 yrs and 8 months is limited to the RSS data set.
Lord M of B will inform us in due time, if and when the pause is interrupted.
emsnews is going to wait for 2017 to roll around:
This el Nino wasn't as great at the peak as the 1999 one and it is collapsing rapidly now so this 'warming' will be short lived. The next cooling cycle may be strong.
Werner Brozek thinks that scientists should time their dataset reviews for cold periods, or hot periods, or any period when the fake sceptics aren't shouting "pause":
Why in the world would anyone release a new data set now that ends the pause? The pause is ending anyway with the old data set. I believe they are just shooting themselves in the foot and opening themselves up to the criticisms directed at Karl.
And if the pause ends on the new data set, many people would end up believing that adjustments ended the pause and not actual high temperatures.
MattN is another one who's waiting for the next La Nina so he can draw a line from the top of the El Nino downwards (maybe):
Wouldn't the coming La Nina offset the El Nino bump?
It was the comments on the new version of RSS that brought out most of Anthony's conspiracy theorists.
Toneb put up some charts showing that RSS v3.3 started diverging during the time of NOAA-15, not NOAA-14
It's not NOAA14 at fault.
It's 15.
RSS v3.3 did not sit with calibration with RATPAC data since the new AMSU on 15.
Tom T sez it's a conspiracy:
Toneb,
RATPAC doesn't suddenly veer. It didn't exist prior to 2005. It matches that satellite data so well because it was pegged to the satellite data in development. The moment it went live it started to diverge because it was designed to. NOAA didn't like what the weather balloons were saying so they rigged a new dataset to show warming.
Roy Spencer was slow off the mark, but he's finally got around to submitting a paper on his new version 6 beta for publication. I must say that it would be a better look to add new, significant material to a paper before it's published, especially if it hasn't yet had peer review, rather than add various corrigenda afterwards.
Our UAH v6 paper has been already been submitted for possible publication, although it still has to go through peer review. It's a little awkward to add new, significant material to a manuscript after it's already submitted, so John Christy and I need to discuss this.
Since Roy and John said they reviewed another version of Mears and Wentz, Jaime innocently asks if Carl Mears will review their new paper.
Dr Spencer, will Carl Mears or anyone on the RSS team be peer reviewing the UAH v6 adjustments? This is all getting rather messy in my opinion. UAH adjustments decrease the trend in LT, RSS adjustments then increase the trend in MT, especially over the tropics, thereby miraculously finding the missing tropical mid-tropospheric hotspot. From the outside, for the lay-person who doesn't understand all the intricacies of satellite tropospheric temperature retrieval, it's coming down more to a matter of whom do we trust more to give an unbiased analysis of satellite data? Mears has demonstrated repeatedly an unscientific bias in favour of endorsing AGW theory. His recent behaviour in that regard falls far short of what one should expect from a scientist who is dispassionately surveying the evidence for and against a significant, perhaps overriding influence of man on climate. He is behaving more like an advocate than a scientist whereas yourself and John Christy have maintained a more balanced approach. So unless Mears can demonstrate an overwhelmingly good scientific case for his positive adjustments vs. the UAH negative adjustments, the balance has to be in favour of giving more credence to UAH data rather than the new 'pause buster' RSS data.
Tom Halla has another conspiracy theory:
RSS probably got tired of dealing with complaints from it's funding sources. Why else "correct" to match known bad data?
Peter Miller is quite ignorant. UAH scientists adjusted their recent records downwards, and not a whimper from WUWT. NOAA adjusted early records upwards so the long term trend declined, but deniers ignored that.
Do the gatekeepers of government controlled temperature statistics ever adjust their numbers downwards?
It would be nice to think that this was possible, even if it was only done once.
Matt G doesn't believe in attempts to improve datasets:
I never trust data that has been adjusted to show a trend that didn't appear before while it was in operation. Adjusting good data to bad data just because it matches the surface data closer is bad science practice.
Village Idiot popped in with:
But I thought it was UAH (Mr Spencer) that 'adjusted' his data (the so called Version 6) after copying RSS's homework. Turns out Mr Mears' answers were wrong. This leaves UAH high and dry…
Begs the question….what will Sir Christopher Monketon make of developments?
dbstealey adds his twopenneth worth of nonsense:
Buncha nonsense. No one has ever measured AGW, so that's merely speculation.
rogerknights complains that fake skeptics are criticised for cherry-picking. He doesn't mention the fact that they keep shifting their "pause". His logic is quite fallacious as expected:
Mears's repeated claim that skeptics are cherry-picking the start year for the pause, despite repeated explanations that it's calculated backwards from the end, makes him nearly as bad as anyone on his side of the fence.
Martin Hertzberg is hopeless at arithmetic. He missed the class on averaging. I'd guess he never went to a class on biology, or climate studies.
Why such a big fuss about a temperature anomaly of only few tenths of a degree C when the range of diurnal and seasonal temperatures vary by about 50 C? In any case, those variations have nothing to do with atmospheric CO3 and even less than nothing to do with human emission,
Roy Spencer passes proof-reading, writing:
carbon trioxide. I like the sound of that. :-)
Tim mutters something about a "cool aide". Aide to whom or what - he doesn't say. A "cool dude" who has a job as an "aide"?
Why am I not surprised. If a crime has similar modus operandi to other crimes it is suspected that there is a single group or individual behind the crimes.
We are supposed to see nothing, hear nothing, and say nothing. Just believe and the cool aide will go down easier.
FJ Shepherd thinks this will cause problems for the US Congress, at least those behind the witch hunt who touted RSS as being "perfect":
Oh my. I am surprised that the folks at RSS are not less transparent. What will Congress say if one of the satellite data centres starts to "adjust" their temperature data as well. This is turning into one big mess.
ristvan doesn't try to hide the fact that he's an utter nutter conspiracy theorist:
FWIW, made essentially the same comment as this post on the previous thread. AW is correct. We now have Karlization and Mearsization. Same ization. Erase that darned pause. No matter how.
Joel O'Bryan is another one:
Did someone put the thumbscrews to Mears' funding source?
About the only "hootin' and hollerin'" I see is at WUWT. They are making an awful racket. Yet philincalifornia wrote:
At the step back and look at the big picture level, it's all getting a bit pathetic isn't it? These supposed grown-ups who purport that increasing atmospheric CO2 levels pose a threat to humanity because the temperature is going up, all hootin' and hollerin' and high fiving because the temperature is going up. Sad people.
D.I. is probably not too familiar with all the different UAH versions (it's already up to version 5 - and that's just of its new beta dataset), or scientific data in general. Thing is, deniers more often complain that they can't find data for old version than they complain about version numbers.
Really comical that 'Climate Science' relies on so called 'Version' numbers for their Data Sets.
I didn't know that Science had 'Versions'.
Did all the great Scientists of the past have 'Version' numbers?
Now I wonder which "temperature" in the troposphere talldave2 would like to see reported, and whether he would be happy with an average temperature going up several kilometres from the cool to the distinctly cold levels:
Once again, I urge everyone to stop reporting anomalies and start reporting temperatures.
Chip Knappenberger seems to have looked into the NOAA-14 treatment and wrote:
Regarding the NOAA-14/NOAA-15 treatment, as far as I can tell, this was handled very similarly in RSS v3.3. If this is indeed the case, then, it is evidently not the source of the reported trend increase from RSS v3.3 to RSS v4, and the statement that "it looks like they decided to force good data to match bad data" in this regard is misplaced (by at least several years). Is there something I am missing regarding a new handling by RSS of the NOAA-14/NOAA-15 transition? (Also I think UAH v6 uses NOAA-14 through July 2001).
Carl A. Mears and Frank J. Wentz, 2016: "Sensitivity of satellite-derived tropospheric temperature trends to the diurnal cycle adjustment." J. Climate doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0744.1 (subs req'd)
The RSS Middle Tropospheric Temperature Now V4.0 - blog article by Carl Mears about the paper.
Stephen Po-Chedley, Tyler J. Thorsen, and Qiang Fu, 2015: "Removing Diurnal Cycle Contamination in Satellite-Derived Tropospheric Temperatures: Understanding Tropical Tropospheric Trend Discrepancies." J. Climate, 28, 2274–2290. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00767.1 (pdf here)
Mears, Carl A., and Frank J. Wentz. "The effect of diurnal correction on satellite-derived lower tropospheric temperature." Science 309, no. 5740 (2005): 1548-1551. DOI: 10.1126/science.1114772 (pdf here)
John R. Christy, Roy W. Spencer, and William D. Braswell, 2000: "MSU Tropospheric Temperatures: Dataset Construction and Radiosonde Comparisons". J. Atmos. Oceanic Technol., 17, 1153–1170. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/1520-0426(2000)017<1153:MTTDCA>2.0.CO;2 (open access)
Niamh Cahill, Stefan Rahmstorf and Andrew C Parnell. "Change points of global temperature". 2015 Environ. Res. Lett. 10 084002. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/10/8/084002(open access)
Roy Spencer's article where he describes UAH version 6.0 beta
From the HotWhopper archives
The mid-troposphere has been warming faster than you thought - February 2016
Deniers will be delighted with UAH v. 6 beta - April 2015
Links to various articles including ones where Anthony Watts falsely accuses NOAA scientists of fraud
Posted by Sou at 10:48 PM
Labels: Carl Mears, Frank J. Wentz, global temperature, mid-troposphere, RSS
MightyDrunken March 5, 2016 at 12:05 AM
The RSS is a den of warmist scientists. True skeptics (who don't let evidence sway their opinions) should listen to the respectable Mann who is a true scientist! Well listen to the bits that we like.
Phil Clarke March 5, 2016 at 12:53 AM
OT but "If all else fails, we could simply grow extra food in storm proof greenhouses."
So says master debunker Eric Worrell in response to a paper predicting increased malnutrition in a changed-climate future.
When I say master, Eric is so good, he does not even need to read the paper before penning a rebuttal.
Genius.
Olof R March 5, 2016 at 1:46 AM
Good post Sou,
There is a new RSS TTT v4 out now, with the overall trend 0.172 C/decade. I think we have to wait a while for a new TLT...
Spencer and Christy have demonstrated their scientific credibility by making important choices based on anectodes. A Nasa scientist have told them that the AMSUs have a "Cadillac calibration", which makes them trust NOAA 15 fully and not NOAA 14. I think they prefer the outcome of this choice as well..
I believe that NOAA 15 is wrong and NOAA 14 right. The NOAA STAR team has developed a AMSU only data set, poster here (there is a paper with the same title)
In the figure down right it is shown that the trend of AMSU channel 5 is much lower than an average of the nearby channel 4 and 6. The culprit seems to be NOAA-15, dominating with its long service, and drifting compared to the other satellites (figure upper left).
I am also quite convinced that a validation vs radiosonde date would prove that NOAA-14 is right and NOAA-15 is wrong. NOAA-14 may have issues, but not worse than it can be fixed with IMICA intercalibration and a proper diurnal drift correction.
Everett F Sargent March 5, 2016 at 4:04 AM
IMICA?
Yes, the RSS TTT is as you say, 0.172C/decade. In v3.3 TTT is 0.118C/decade and TLT is 0.126C/decade. For TMT, v3.3 0.083C/decade, v4.0 0.133C/decade.
From the above datasets I've taken three SWAG's and end up with an estimate for v4 TLT of 0.177C/decade (0.173, 0.176, 0.181).
Looking at the differences between versions 4.0 - 3.3, for TMT and TTT, shows residual trends that are slightly concave up (an OLS quadratic fit for TMT -> R^2 = 0.9362 and for TTT -> R^2 = 0.9364 (ludicrous precision necessary to show 1st significant digit difference)). YMMV
Victor Venema March 5, 2016 at 1:56 AM
What we get are temperature trends in very thick layers in the atmosphere (kilometers thick, looking upwards into space), not the temperature of a particular spot or distinct level in the sky.
Surely that ain't true for the favorite dataset of the mitigation skeptical movement.
These are the people who are comfortable with blog posts claiming that there is no such thing as a global mean temperature because it varies spatially. The temperature may well vary more within this kilometers thick layer over which the tropospheric temperatures are estimated.
D.C.Petterson March 5, 2016 at 2:05 AM
Thanks for this informative article. I learned quite a lot about the satellites and their interaction.
It's especially nice to see the question of the recent apparent "divergence" of the satellite data from the surface data may have an answer. A group of deniers has been using that as evidence that the surface data is being rigged ( = conspiracy). From the new paper, it seems instead to do with AQUA and NOAA-15 getting funky (that's a technical term, I'm sure). It makes more sense that there's been mechanical problems with the orbiting weather stations that theorizing there are thousands of scientists playing a massive practical joke and keeping it secret.
I confess too I was unaware there are so few satellites involved in the measurements. Deniers go on and on about "siting issues" with a tiny handful of the many thousands of surface stations. We don't hear (probably because some of us--meaning me--got too lazy to learn) that there are only two (2) satellites most of the time furnishing microwave data for the troposphere measurements. A tiny flaw in one of them would create massive inaccuracies, wouldn't it?
Bellman March 5, 2016 at 4:21 AM
"I confess too I was unaware there are so few satellites involved in the measurements."
That surprised me when I first discovered it. I'm sure I've read denier blogs claiming there are over 100 satellites, along with claiming they are accurate to 100th of a degree. I don't know if this is the result of deliberate deception, or if they just assume that is the case.
Bill H March 5, 2016 at 6:54 AM
Yes, Monckton in his recent wuwt effort spoke of rss and Uah as possessing "their satellites". He actually thought that these organisations each had their own sets of data that they then proceeded to analyse.
What a buffoon.
Layzej March 5, 2016 at 2:25 AM
Here are the steps required to get the RSS global mean tropospheric temperature from satellites: http://www.skepticalscience.com//pics/rss_flowchart.png . SkS has more info here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/Satellite-record-vs-thermometers.htm
JCH March 5, 2016 at 3:45 AM
"...likely asked that we be excluded as reviewers" is unsubstantiated speculation. Maybe they were; maybe they weren't. In the retelling, being excluded as reviewers will be retold as a fact.
Is it an insult to be published by the Journal of Climate?
Sou March 5, 2016 at 3:53 AM
They'd be comparable. J Climate has a higher impact factor:
https://www.researchgate.net/journal/0148-0227_Journal_of_Geophysical_Research_Atmospheres
https://www.researchgate.net/journal/0894-8755_Journal_of_Climate
Nick March 5, 2016 at 12:25 PM
Instead of give a good faith answer, and say there are other sat temp experts that can review....
Tadaaa March 5, 2016 at 4:15 AM
classic denier tactic create a bit of FUD
MChicoine March 5, 2016 at 4:26 AM
Spencer and Christy have responded on Spencer's blog.
"The evidence suggests that the new RSS v4 MT dataset has spurious warming due to a lack of correction for calibration drift in the NOAA-14 MSU instrument. Somewhat smaller increases in their warming trend are due to their use of a climate model for diurnal drift adjustment, compared to our use of an empirical approach that relies upon observed diurnal drift from the satellite data themselves. While the difference in diurnal drift correction methodolgy is a more legitimate point of contention, in the final analysis independent validation with radiosonde data and most reanalysis datasets suggest better agreement with the UAH product than the RSS product."
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2016/03/comments-on-new-rss-v4-pause-busting-global-temperature-dataset/
This is what Roy Spencer wrote back in 2011, before he changed his tune, or tuning :)
my UAH cohort and boss John Christy, who does the detailed matching between satellites, is pretty convinced that the RSS data is undergoing spurious cooling because RSS is still using the old NOAA-15 satellite which has a decaying orbit, to which they are then applying a diurnal cycle drift correction based upon a climate model, which does not quite match reality. We have not used NOAA-15 for trend information in years…we use the NASA Aqua AMSU, since that satellite carries extra fuel to maintain a precise orbit.
In their new article, they are using the trick they've done before. They've averaged radiosonde data from different datasets, which would hide the differences between them. I'd prefer to see them plot them separately. From the comments they've also excluded some key data and instead used less reliable data.
I wonder how their peer review will go?
BTW I think UAH now include NOAA-15 so they must have changed their mind somewhere along the line.
Yes, just saw that one, and in typical Deniersville fashion Woy shows this radiosonde chopped off at 0.75 R^2 graphic ...
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/GL_MT_r2_vs_roab_and_reanalysis.png
correlation != causation
The actual differences are like ~0.05 in the total R^2 space (0 < R^2 < 1).
Something with a LOWER r^2 just might pass a significance test at a higher level (p value) than a HIGHER scoring r^2 result. There, fixed that for me.
M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E
RobH March 5, 2016 at 6:38 AM
There you go! Roy blogged it so it must be true (said every denier everywhere).
It amazes me that Anthony can attack Peter Sinclair questioning the accuracy of satellites in the same article as he says you have to exclude one of the satellite because it's showing spurious warming.
Harry Twinotter March 5, 2016 at 4:50 AM
The levels of cognitive dissonance must be off the charts.
I tried to comment over at WUWT, but my comments didn't go through. Probably just as well, usually no one there is brave enough to address my points.
I am glad the satellite measurements do show the El Nino peak, it does give confidence that the measurements do respond to temperature. The trend line is another matter, last time I looked over 20 years of data is required for it to show statistically significant trend.
I am curious to see how the stratospheric measurements will respond to the El Nino.
Seeing as I cannot post at WUWT, I might as well repeat my comments here.
"There never was a "pause" of course.
Saying the data shows "no statistically significant warming" might be syntactically correct, but it is misleading. There may be underlining warming, cooling or temps staying the same, you cannot exclude any of these possibilities with confidence if the data is not statistically significant."
Tony Banton March 5, 2016 at 9:55 AM
I wondered where you had gone Harry (Brandon too).
I've been stirring up the pot there (Toneb)
and also at Spencer's place.
Brandon R. Gates March 5, 2016 at 7:10 PM
How nice to be missed. :)
I've been giving WUWT a rest in favour of doing my own studies and writing them up on my own blog. It's really difficult (I increasingly appreciate the abilities of our host, Eli, ATTP, etc.), but I find it a more rewarding and educational challenge, and far less frustrating.
Tony Banton March 5, 2016 at 7:41 PM
I can go with that Brandon - I suppose I'm lazy in a way as I use their obvious ignorant confirmation bias to brush up my knowledge. It's the anger that drives me. Totally frustrating I know because the only vindication coming is when they don't reply. Usually you have to follow them down the "rabbit-hole" when they respond and that way lays madness. One should always deny ignorance however.
There's no doubt that Watts and friends have pushed me to learn more. When I first started up over there, most were quite happy to have me and I thought many of my first discussions were quite good. Before your pal mpainter wore out his welcome at WUWT and took up residence at Spencer's, he trotted out his favourite question about the difference between the Sahara and the Amazon. Which, at the time, I thought was a perfectly reasonable and genuine question. Little did I know. Goodwill lasted about two rounds before he started quoting me out of context on other threads and declaring victory ... even going so far as to say that I "disgust" him. The man gives new meaning to the term, "gibbering twit".
My relations with most of the other denizens soon followed suit. It long ago ceased being fun for me. Give it a few months, I might miss it. For now, whenever I chance to read a WUWT article, I have to resist the urge to hurt my computer.
citizenschallenge March 5, 2016 at 5:01 AM
"They've averaged radiosonde data from different datasets, which would hide the differences between them."
Isn't that something like the hockey stick Trick, only way more manipulative?
That didn't come out quite right, since adding the modern temp record to the paleo-record isn't manipulative in the least.
Averaging is fine, as long as the averaging is valid and makes sense.
I will give a crude example: you could find the "average" weight of humans and cats by taking all the weights and averaging them. Does it make any sense to do this: no.
"Isn't that something like the hockey stick Trick, only way more manipulative?"
Not sure why you are referring to a "hockey stick Trick", unless you are indulging in rhetoric. The "trick" used in the climate change literature was not referring to the hockey stick chart exactly.
When Mann et al calculated the hockey stick curve, they went to a lot of trouble to ensure that the calculations made sense. Mann outlines the methods they used in his book.
There is no explanation of how the radiosonde data was averaged.
To clarify about NOAA-14 and NOAA-15, Dr Mears has told me that, as stated in their paper, they cannot tell if the problem is NOAA-14 or NOAA-15 or both. It doesn't make a huge difference to the trend whichever way they go. He added:
"These results are reported in the paper, and the differences between them should be viewed as part of the uncertainty in the final results. For the final dataset, we present case 3 where the
errors are shared between NOAA-14 and NOAA-15, which is reasonable because we do not know the source of the problem."
I've added an update with more detail.
Dr Mears about the so far perfectly working NOAA-14:
"The drift would have to suddenly appear in 1998"
Yes, the drift appeared suddenly in 1998. The drift has a name, NOAA-15, the first and longest serving AMSU, that can't be verified by anything else...
metzomagic March 5, 2016 at 9:50 AM
Olof makes a good point. These articles by tamino:
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/01/15/drift/
and Nick Stokes:
http://moyhu.blogspot.ie/2016/01/satellite-temperature-readings-diverge.html
show that the satellite data have clearly been diverging from the land-ocean data from ca. 2000.
@sou
so is Dr Spencer just commenting (negitively) because he feels he HAS to comment - whether is makes sense or not
just to give the deniers a "hook" to construct an argument on
DavidR March 5, 2016 at 7:17 AM
From what I can see, yes.
As I'm aware every time RSS has made an adjustment to it's data set, UAH has followed.
Also, every time there has been discrepancy between the satellite and surface data the scientific analysis has found in favour of the surface data.
I believe that Spencer&Christy are very stressed right now. They have retreated to the "Cadillac calibration" defense line, There will probably be major difficulties to justify and publish their paper on UAH v6 beta, since its major strength, the similarity with RSS 3.3 TLT is gone now..
I think Roy Spencer and John Christy get quite anxious about their data being questioned. Given the fact that they've usually only made corrections after people have pointed out what's wrong, and only then very tardily, it's not a surprise.
This time it's not just RSS, it's the Po-Chedley paper as well. The fact the latest UAH version lowered the trend, Roy and John must be worried that they'll look foolish again. They'll be concerned that they will have to make more changes that will bring it back in line with RSS (and surface trends).
Even though they are both science deniers, their self esteem must be tied up in getting the record right, even if the results go against their religion.
Henk Lankamp March 5, 2016 at 9:34 AM
I thought UAH didn't use AQUA after 2009, because of 'increasing noise' (see update 5 Oct 2012 in the Readme for version 5.6)?
Sou March 5, 2016 at 10:16 AM
Henk, I'm thinking that UAH must have brought some satellites back into play with version 6.0 beta. In 2011 Roy Spencer also said that NOAA-15 had problems, but now says it doesn't.(I linked to the article about their v6.0beta up above. They process they use is quite different for v6.0 than v5.6 I believe.)
Perhaps when their paper gets published we'll find out more about what they are currently doing.
David Appell March 5, 2016 at 12:05 PM
Werner Brozek's comment is especially comical. He does't realize that RSS hasn't changed the data for the lower troposphere -- it's still version 3.3 -- and still the pause ends.
Werner is all about numerology, not science.
metzomagic March 5, 2016 at 12:44 PM
That's part of the problem with my country cousins, always skimping on the important stuff. The AMSU calibration may indeed have been to Cadillac standard, but it obviously needed to be Lamborghini.
Everett F Sargent March 5, 2016 at 3:20 PM
Cadillac? How about Lincoln Continental?
Some of us still remember the big ole American junkyard road boats of the 70's and 80's.
Word association ...
Cadillac? Junk!
Gold Standard? Fixed!
MSU? Weather!
Gold standard ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard
"A gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is based on a FIXED quantity of gold."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard#Bretton_Woods
"The $42.22 par value was made official in September 1973, long after it had been abandoned in practice. In October 1976, the government officially changed the definition of the dollar; references to gold were removed from statutes. From this point, the international monetary system was made of pure fiat money."
Ted Cruz ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Cruz
"Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz (born December 22, 1970) ... "
Someone born in 1970 using the term "gold standard" seriously needs to pick up a history book or three, then shot himself in the head.
Someone ELSE anecdotally mentioning Cadillac and NASA, in the same sentence even, ought to shot himself in the head.
There, fixed that for me: Part Deux.
Sou,
Maybe there's an expert who'll drop by to explain [calibration targets].
Definitely not me, but this might be in reference to post-launch calibration which minimally involves two things:
1) Taking a reading from deep space (the cold target)
2) Taking a reading from an onboard emitter (the hot target)
Some suspect, certainly not Eli, that the onboard hot targets degrade over time, or otherwise go wonky, thus introducing a bias in long-term trends.
This has been looked at before. An older paper, Mears and Wentz (2005) is freely available on the RSS website and has this to say:
The long-term behavior of a time series constructed from TLT is also dependent on the procedure used to merge the nine MSU satellites together into a single time series, in particular on the values of the parameters ("target factors") used to empirically remove the spurious dependence of the instrument calibration on the temperature of the hot calibration target (5,7,15) (SOM text). For the results presented below, we used exactly the same merging procedure and target factors (but different offsets) as we used when producing our results for MSU2 (26).
What I gather from all this is that even if the onboard hot targets aren't being flukey on a single satellite, cross-satellite comparison may involve a little more art and less science than the average WHUTTer would normally stand for.
Bellman March 5, 2016 at 10:55 PM
Even Roy Spencer seems to agree - when he introduced version 6, he said:
One might ask, Why do the satellite data have to be adjusted at all? If we had satellite instruments that (1) had rock-stable calibration, (2) lasted for many decades without any channel failures, and (3) were carried on satellites whose orbits did not change over time, then the satellite data could be processed without adjustment. But none of these things are true.
All data adjustments required to correct for these changes involve decisions regarding methodology, and different methodologies will lead to somewhat different results. This is the unavoidable situation when dealing with less than perfect data.
Let it not be said that the UAH crew are completely at sea about reality.
Layzej March 6, 2016 at 12:01 AM
Spencer has an update on his site that says: "while the warming in RSS v4 versus UAH v6 might be as described above, when RSS v4 is compared to RSS v3.3, the increase in warming might be mostly due to their new diurnal cycle adjustment. In other words, the NOAA-14 calibration issue was also in their v3.3, but maybe it was obscured more by diurnal drift adjustment issues."
MartinM March 7, 2016 at 1:42 AM
Spencer's reply looks pretty weak to me. Radiosonde data isn't particularly close to global coverage, and the uneven sampling makes a simplistic comparison to global products less than useful. The correct comparison is to a version of the satellite records subsampled to match the radiosonde coverage. When I subsample RSS TMT v4.0 and UAH v6.0b5 to match HadAT, RAOBCORE and RICH coverage, RSS is a much better fit to each than is UAH, both in terms of r^2 and, more importantly, the long-term trend.
Ray March 8, 2016 at 8:05 AM
I have seen this link repeatedly posted today http://realclimatescience.com/2016/03/noaa-radiosonde-data-shows-no-warming-for-58-years/. "Steve Goddard" thinks that NOAA's balloon data shows no warming for 58 years.
MartinM March 8, 2016 at 11:11 AM
Goddard's just lying. Here's a fair comparison between the 1977 graph, and the same up-to-date radiosonde data he linked. Odd that he didn't bother to plot them together, since he had access to both.
Thanks, MartinM. Yes, odd if one is looking to present valid information. No at all odd if one is looking to rile up one's conspiracy theory believing blog visitors.
Carl Mears has written a blog article about the new paper, for anyone not yet able to access it. (I'm told the paper will be open access at some stage, not sure when.)
His article addresses some of the questions people may have had. (I've added a link to the references under the article as well.)
From the references on Mears' post:
"University of Alabama, Huntsville Data: No relevant paper has been published."
Subtle :D
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As the sun rises on Pat Chambers' eighth season at the helm of Penn State basketball, the Lions are in an interesting place. They steamrolled through the NIT field to close out last year, but are faced with replacing two of the most prolific scorers in program history. Gone are Tony Carr, PSU's first NBA draft pick in nearly 30 years, and all-time 3-point leader Shep Garner. The gang is back to discuss all things Penn State hoops!
The fellas recap Penn State's exhibition win at West Virginia, and talk about what to expect from incoming freshmen Myles Dread, Rasir Bolton, and Myreon Jones. Chambers will need consistent production from the trio to replace points and minutes vacated by Carr and Garner. Also, can sophomore Jamari Wheeler take over full-time at the point?
It's Josh Reaves' senior season, and it still feels like his role is ever-changing. Does the team need him to be a primary scorer? Be a facilitator? Just be a leader?
With Mike Watkins and Satch Pierce currently out of the rotation, can Penn State survive with Lamar Stevens and John Harrar until Watkins is cleared? Is there any developing front court depth? Will this be Stevens' year as the Nittany Lions unquestioned No. 1 player?
Circling back to the top, can Chambers survive another season without making the NCAA tournament? With already seven campaigns and just two winning seasons, how long is his leash?


One thousand people of faith turned out at Sardis Missionary Baptist Church, a historically Black church in Birmingham, on Friday night for the Founding Convention of Faith in Action Alabama, the newest federation to join PICO National Network through our expansion program.
Faith in Action Alabama -- an umbrella organization with organizing hubs in Birmingham, Huntsville, Mobile, and Montgomery and 60 congregations -- committed to address the state's history of slavery and Jim Crow segregation laws and dismantle the policies that perpetuate systemic racism today, including mass incarceration, denial of voting rights, poverty, and inadequate health care.
Secured commitments from thousands of voters across the state to vote in the 2016 district attorney elections.
Prayer vigils on May 21 to end mass incarceration at all four Faith in Action Alabama organizing hubs.
A Rally on June 17 at the Alabama State House calling on the Governor and state legislators to address Alabama's mass incarceration crisis.
Trainings in all four organizing hubs in preparation for the launch of local work on issues such as voter engagement, reforming district attorneys' policies to help address the mass incarceration crisis, and a campaign to create a public defender's office in Mobile County.
In late 2017, the kickoff of a statewide campaign to end mass incarceration that will focus on the 2018 state legislative session and November 2018 gubernatorial election.
Welcome Faith in Action Alabama to the PICO National Network and connect with Faith in Action Alabama on Twitter and Facebook.


As you can see, it's kinda long. I like it long but I want it to be a bit more a certain style and bit more tidy. So what should I do with it? I honestly have no clue.
A new hair style that would work for me?
What areas should a girl shave?
Do you like men with hairy armpits?
Just realised there's a separate board for hair stuff, woops! Sorry!
Get it cut into a style you like?
Well yeah, but I don't know what kind of style to get it. Should I keep it long, moderately long or short? I don't really know any styles I like, I'm a hair novice.
google image "mens hair" and see if you see anything you like.
I kinda like it how it is But I know what you mean, just have it trimmed but keep the same style?
Yeah, I guess I'll just trim it. It's actually a lot longer than it looks, despite looking really long anyway.
How about curling it ?
Looks like it'd make me look too feminine, don'tcha think?
shave it off for charity. someone with hair longer than yours at my old school did that. He got around £200.
£200 for the charity? That's pretty sweet!
it happens >_> and thanks, I think I'll just trim it shorter but keep it the same style!
Turn that thing into an afro.
Anyone know what hair product I would need to style hair like this?
Can anyone help me with my (rather!) embarassing male hairspray problem?
what do you think of hair down there?


text:
Microsericaria arrowi är en skalbaggsart som beskrevs av Frey 1974. Microsericaria arrowi ingår i släktet Microsericaria och familjen Melolonthidae. Inga underarter finns listade i Catalogue of Life.

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Having been born in South Africa, then from age 16 lived in South Wales, UK for some years and feel these formative experiences have given me an affinity to landscape, open spaces, skies and the feeling of that mystery of what may lay beyond the next horizon.
I have been committed to painting and image making all of my professional working life through various disciplines of stage set scenery-painting, stained glass window designing/glass-painting, always working to deadlines, but all through this has been a love of outdoor painting 'en plein air'. I chiefly use oil paint but watercolour is an indispensable medium too.
Painting outside, on site, is a demanding way of working but the rewards are hugely satisfying. One cannot predict the outcome and the result is often a surprise. The deadline with Plein Air work is imposed mainly by changing light and weather. A painting may frequently be accomplished in one session but after 2hrs the light changes so much it needs to be brought to a conclusion. Sometimes a second sitting is possible or necessary to bring it to a better conclusion. It is the nature of a the limited time and changing light which forces one work speedily, achieving results in composition, tone and colour, more by instinct than conscious deliberation.
It is worth saying that at times the session can even feel a failure as it doesn't nearly match the breathtaking splendour we may see before us. However I should stress that the end result really needs to be judged afterward, away from the subject, a day or two later so the painting stands as an object in it's own right. The onlooker will never see the precise situation which has been painted so the painting must speak wholly independently of that time, revealing something born through a unique experience, revealed through composition, colour and brushstrokes.
Years ago someone said to me "It isn't what is painted but how it is painted which is important" and that is very true. Paradoxically, painting en plein air, although a relaxation activity, in a sense often takes much concentration and effort. But I think something of the struggle is revealed in the finished painting that can even add to the work's strength.
The joy and the paradox of painting en plein air is that it can be both a real effort and yet also a relaxation activity at the same, because by focusing on painting one so often finds oneself in a peaceful and almost timeless zone, very close to nature and 'living in the moment'.


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What's My Vibe? Fascinating Aida's Dillie Keane
What's My Vibe? Dillie Keane tells us what entertains her ahead of Rose Theatre, Kingston, show
By Jim Palmer
See Dillie Keane at the Rose Theatre, Kingston, on February 14. Picture by Steve ullathorne
Dillie Keane is an Olivier Award nominated actress and twice nominated for comedy's Perrier Award, including once with the comedy cabaret trio Fascinating Aida.
She brings her latest solo show to the Rose Theatre, Kingston, on February 14.
We asked Dillie what entertains her…
What's My Vibe? Alan Partridge star Simon Greenall
What's My Vibe? Stephen K Amos
What's My Vibe? Magician Chris Wood
What's My Vibe? Comedian Roy 'Chubby' Brown
Like our Vibe leisure page on Facebook for entertainment news, interviews, reviews and features from across south London.
The radio station I listen to…
Radio 4 mostly, I suppose. Does that make me a dreadful old codger? Oh and I like Radio Jack FM when I'm in London, it's so random.
My favourite band…
Um… this is really embarrassing… Status Quo. They are just wonderful live. Haha! I am a codger after all!
The album or song I can't get enough of right now…
Love Ed Sheeran's Tenerife Sea, such a beautiful song
My favourite place to hear live music…
Union Chapel, Islington. Such a great space.
My favourite festival memory…
Eating veggie burgers at Cropredy Festival and laughing at all the crazy macramé clothes people were wearing and meeting Whispering Bob Harris and then falling over in the mud. Somehow it was all hilarious. I can't remember who was playing at all…!
I always laugh at…
I adore OUTNUMBERED. So funny and clever.
The best play I have seen…
Well, that would be hard to say because I've spent the last 557 years going to the theatre and I've seen an AWFUL lot of plays. Recently, however, I saw WASTE by Harley Granville-Barker at the National Theatre with Charles Edwards. It was seriously brilliant.
My all-time favourite musical…
Fiddler on the Roof. No contest.
My favourite place to watch a show…
I adore the National Theatre, we go a lot.
My favourite movie is…
I've got quite a few favourite movies but I can never tire of It's A Wonderful Life.
As a kid I loved…
Oh, dear me, this really is exposing me as a codger. Mr. Pastry. Circus Boy. The Beverley Hillbillies. Popeye. Captain Pugwash.
I'll make a point of staying in to watch…
Nothing's grabbed me since the autumn schedule, as I've just come back from holiday. But I was addicted to The Fall and I think Breaking Bad is the greatest television series ever made.
Dillie Keane is at the Rose Theatre, Kingston, on February 14. Tickets cost from £12. Go to rosetheatrekingston.org

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room to receive Thea Classic award from the Themed Entertainment Association
Walt Disney in the Enchanted Tiki Room. More photos
Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room celebrated its 50th anniversary in June 2013. To our knowledge, there is no longer running theatre show in the industry (it pre-dated Disney's Carousel of Progress, Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln and Pirates of the Caribbean). A "theatre-in-the-round," the Tiki Room stars 225 animated singing birds and flowers in an island-inspired musical revue.
It has provided generations of guests with an immersive experience filled with entertaining characters, fun songs and innovative technology that brought the attraction's story and characters to life in a whole new way. It was the world's first Audio-Animatronics show – introducing a new technology that soon became one of the dominant tools used by designers and engineers in our industry.
The Orange County Register, in an article headlined "Disney's Birds Stand the Test of Time," put the show into clear perspective: "Although the attraction may seem quaint today, without it Abraham Lincoln may never have come to life, there'd be no sword-fighting swashbucklers on the Pirates of the Caribbean, and Lightning McQueen and Mater would just be a couple of old cars." The Enchanted Tiki Room was the pioneer – the very first – show to introduce a brand-new creative and technical innovation called Audio-Animatronics. It also introduced the first original song created for a Disney park show: "In The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room," written by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman a year before they won an Academy Award for Mary Poppins.
It was also the forerunner for many story-tunes they wrote for Disney Park shows: "it's a small world," Carousel of Progress ("There's A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow"), Epcot/Journey Into Imagination ("One Little Spark," "Makin' Memories," "Magic Journeys"). The technology for The Enchanted Tiki Room had a unique beginning; it was based on a just de-classified military system used to fire the missiles on board the Polaris submarines. "The basement was as big as the Tiki Room, and was filled with all kinds of control cabinets, air valves and more," the Register reported. "Now you could probably put all the audio and programming data on a laptop!" Walt Disney's drive to "blend creative imagination with technical know-how" had its first complete show example in Disneyland's Enchanted Tiki Room.
It launched a three-dimensional animation industry that influenced attractions created for practically every theme park in the world.


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Tag: 2022 November general election
Rep. Karen Bass Wins LA Mayoral Election
November 17, 2022 2:30 am November 16, 2022 7:45 pm
Congresswoman Karen Bass defeated developer Rick Caruso in the Los Angeles Mayoral election on Wednesday, garnering an insurmountable number of votes to become the first African American since 1993 and the first woman to be elected to the position. While...
Three Major Mayoral Races Still Have No Winner One Week After Election Day
November 14, 2022 4:59 pm November 15, 2022 6:43 am
Three of the largest mayoral races in California, as well as the entire country, remained undecided nearly a week after election day as of Monday, with Los Angeles, San Jose, and Oakland likely to not have overall winners until late...
LA Mayoral Race Results Tighten With Less Than 3,000 Votes Separating Caruso, Bass
The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk released new voting totals in the Los Angeles Mayoral race late Thursday, with developer Rick Caruso still leading by just over 2,500 votes over Congresswoman Karen Bass (D-CA). Following the election on Tuesday, Caruso...
Caruso Holds Slight 51%-49% Edge Over Bass In LA Mayoral Race With 44% Of The Vote Counted
With 44% of the vote in as of Wednesday morning, businessman Rick Caruso is currently holding a slight 51%-49% edge over Congresswoman Karen Bass (D-CA) in the Los Angeles Mayoral election, with a clear winner unlikely to be known for...
One Final Push For LA Mayoral Hopefuls Bass, Caruso Ahead of Election Day
Congresswoman Karen Bass (D-CA) and Developer Rick Caruso made one final push each Monday, the last day before Midterm Election Day. Each concluded final strategies implemented over the weekend in the hopes to have the edge in the LA Mayoral...
With Election Tuesday, Caruso, Bass In Dead Heat According To UC Berkeley Poll
A final UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll on the Los Angeles Mayoral race was released on Thursday, showing Rick Caruso now only trailing Congresswoman Karen Bass (D-CA) by four percentage points, well within the margin of error. For...
From A 'For Sure Victory' To 'The Tightest LA Mayoral Race In Years'
For Karen Bass and her supporters, the 2022 Los Angeles Mayoral race wasn't supposed to be like this. Back in September 2021, when Bass first entered the race 14 months ahead of election day, she came in knowing that there...


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The Union of North African Football Federations (UNAF) recently proposed a change in transfer regulations among member nations that has prompted a mixed reaction.
The UNAF meeting in Tunisia on 18 August suggested that players from the five members (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt) are no longer seen as foreigners.
Another proposal was to back any bid by any of the UNAF members to host the 2030 World Cup.
Also discussed was the swapping of match officials among the leagues for some of the major matches.
The BBC's reporters in North Africa have been gauging reaction to the idea of the free movement of players among members, which will need to ratified by individual associations.
UNAF's proposal would signal a big change in policy for the Algerian Football Federation (FAF), which as recently as the 2016-2017 season implemented a ban on foreign players.
The current regulations for the Algerian football league are that first division clubs can sign a maximum of two foreign players, who have played a minimum of two years with their nation's under-20, under-23 or senior national teams.
FAF's secretary general, Mohamed Saad, believes the free trade recommendation is 'realistic' and 'doable'.
However Algerian agent Mustapha Maza had a stark warning for the federation despite admitting the idea is a good one for the players.
"I think there will be an exodus, because Algerians are not as well paid as Moroccans or Tunisians," Maza told BBC Sport.
The suggestion would also be a significant change for Tunisian football which has banned overseas players in the second division since 2015.
For top-flight teams there are some very specific limitations: no foreign goalkeepers are allowed and teams can sign a maximum of three players who made at least national team appearances or ten games at under-19 level.
He also was very welcoming of the idea.
"This will be very beneficial to clubs and will significantly help our teams in African competitions," he told BBC Sport.
Moroccan football is unlikely to follow the UNAF's proposal as just last year the federation tightened its control over the signing of players from abroad.
A player coming from the rest of Africa must have played 10 at least international games within the last 3 years.
Players from South America or Europe must present a resume where they show they have played for two years in a professional league, in the last six campaigns.
Hassan El Filali, head of the players status and transfer commission at the Morocco Football Federation says it will be discussing the idea.
Many clubs would welcome the changes as they have been pushing for an amendment to the current restriction over the the last 12 months.
However the federation has not been swayed arguing that the current format is the best way to encourage young footballers and encourage coaches and presidents to put more trust in home-grown youngsters.
The current regulations in Egypt were put in place in August 2017 with clubs able to sign four foreign players, an increase from the three previously permitted.
In addition clubs can also sign a maximum of two further players from Syria or Palestine.
Yehia Ali the agent that oversaw Liverpool striker Mohamed Salah's move from Swiss club Basel to English Premier League side Chelsea in 2014 has mixed views on the proposal.
"In my opinion this decision will not be useful for the football in my country (Egypt), but personally for me as agent it will be excellent," he told BBC Sport.
"With this decision, the clubs will hire more and more players from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, the teams will not depend on the local players and that will not be good for the national team.
"I am not sure that the EFA or the clubs will accept the idea.
Libya currently allow a maximum of three overseas players per team but none of them can be a goalkeeper.
Given the unstable political situation in Libya at the moment players would almost certainly welcome the free movement of players in order to improve their chances of playing elswhere. BBC.


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pompous hobbit project
William David is a freelance photographer & writer, known in recent years for the work with young actors and performers, building up confidence & range for the industry. Trained as a film photographer in the late 70's William David Photographic Projects [which became Actwill] was setup at the start to fully use the benefits of the new digital medium, but without compromising on the film techniques of the past in regards to shoot technique and lighting. For 2014 William David embarked on a massive personal project "pompous hobbit". This takes over from where Actwill leaves working and reflecting with youth of today. In particular it reflects the work of William David away from photography with young people, and forms part of a work towards qualification in the social youth sector. At all times William David aims to reflect those he works with in a positive and confident way, even when dealing with difficult issues and situations - as reflected within the work of pompous hobbit. Pompous Hobbit is an offline and online venture due for full launch later in 2014.
Willliam David
bill dai


On Wednesday 14th May 2014 I reviewed Wu Chi-Tsung's exhibition 'Dust' at Sheffield's Site Gallery on Twitter. I grouped all of my comments together using the hashtag #CulturalWriterReviews.
This was a form of review that I had previously adopted for 'The 8th British Mini Print Exhibition' at The Civic in Barnsley earlier in the year. It was successful on that occasion and I wanted to experiment further with the form.
If you missed out on my tweets about 'Dust' as they were posted on social media, or if you don't follow me on Twitter (where I write as @CulturalWriter), don't worry! I've gathered all of the comments here for you to re-read. Please feel free to contact me via Twitter or by using the Contact Form to let me know your thoughts.
Wu Chi-Tsung's #Dust is on @site_gallery until 31st May 2014. See www.sitegallery.org for full details and opening times.
The exhibition runs at Site Gallery in Sheffield from 4th April 2014 to 31st May 2014. For more details, see the Site Gallery website by clicking here.
All tweets originally posted on Twitter by myself writing as @CulturalWriter on Wednesday 14th May 2014.


Abstract : We consider the space-time scaling properties of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) interim reanalysis products for the wind (u, v, w), humidity (h(s)), temperature (T), and geopotentials (z) and their corresponding turbulent fluxes using the daily 700 mbar products for the year 2006. Following previous studies on T, h(s), and u, we show that that the basic predictions of multiplicative cascade models are well respected over space-time scales below similar to 5000 km, shorter than similar to 5-10 days providing precise scale by scale determination of the reanalysis statistical properties (needed for example for stochastic parameterizations in ensemble forecasting systems). We innovate by including the meridional and vertical wind components (v, w) and geopotential (z), and by considering their horizontal anisotropies, their latitudinal variations and, perhaps most importantly, by directly analyzing the fields (not just fluxes). Whereas the fluxes have nearly isotropic exponents in space-time with little latitudinal variation (displaying only scale independent "trivial" anisotropy), the fields have significant scaling horizontal anisotropies. These complicate the interpretation of standard isotropic spectra and are likely to be artifacts. Many of the new (nonconservation) exponents (H) are nonstandard and currently have no adequate theoretical explanation although the key horizontal wind and temperature H exponents may be consequences of horizontal Kolmogorov scaling, combined with sloping isobaric surfaces. In time the scaling is broken at around 5-10 days, i.e., roughly the lifetime of planetary structures; lower frequencies are spectrally flatter: the "spectral plateau," weather-low-frequency weather regime.


Appetite suppressants may very well be the best weight loss pills on the market alongside calorie burners and absorption blockers. However, in choosing the best weight loss pill on the market, you need to keep in mind your age, gender, existing health conditions, and how much weight you want to lose.
There are a lot of options when it comes to the best weight loss pill on the market. However, the different brands and different ingredients can work best when paired up with a healthy diet and regular exercise.
Some diet pills are actually considered as nutritional or dietary supplements so the FDA do not really test these products so do not trust everything written on the label. Do not be fooled when you see the words "all natural" and "herbal" because these cannot guarantee that the weight loss pill is safe. Furthermore, weight loss pills should never be taken by women who are breastfeeding or pregnant as it can harm the health of the baby.
1. Appetite suppressants - These work by suppressing your appetite, preventing your desire to eat your favorite foods and cravings. They contain stimulants like caffeine but they have other ingredients that may contain Citrimax and CLA (Conjugated Linoleic Acid). Appetite suppressants with Citrimax are safer for women and it can even prevent them from regaining the lost weight. Examples of brands that can suppress your appetite are Phen-Phen, Buporoprion (also known as Wellbutrin), Redux, and Meridia.
2. Calorie burners - Weight loss pills that burn calories have stimulants to increase your metabolic rate so you can burn more calories even when you are not moving. Since they have stimulants, your heart rate increases as well as your tendency to experience anxieties and high blood pressure. Effective ingredients added into calorie burners are green tea, caffeine, and guarana.
3. Absorption blockers - They prevent your body from absorbing carbohydrates, fats, or both and they expel those unwanted fats and carbs through bowel movement. These are usually made from soy beans and kidney beans which are safe. Be careful in using absorption blockers because they tend to block out some of the necessary nutrients your body needs to absorb from the foods that you eat.


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Travis Perkins is the UK's largest builders' merchant, supplying building materials to trade, construction and DIY Markets, with over 20 industry leading brands and over 2000 outlets.
As an employer provider on the Register of Apprenticeship and Training Providers (RoATP), the Travis Perkins Group are passionate about providing the highest quality of apprenticeships. They run the "Learn and Earn" Apprenticeship Programmes (LEAP), giving potential learners the opportunity to embark upon a rewarding career with the group.
Eradicating multiple systems and manual processes
Travis Perkins were using two separate systems to manage their MIS and e-portfolio. With multiple systems and manual processes, time was being wasted. Learner objectives, progression and reviews were entered manually and managed in a spreadsheet.
With the number of learners expected to grow with their apprenticeship programme, they identified a need for an integrated, robust solution, which would simplify the administration of learning, alongside ensuring accuracy and quality of data. It was identified that with growth an increased reliance on systems tools would be required for the management of contracts, funding and reporting.
The right solution
Tribal proposed their leading learning management solution Maytas, alongside their ePorfolio system e-track. As the only single database solution on the market, Travis Perkins would experience the power of a truly integrated solution.
Maytas and e-track will not only simplify their learner and ePortfolio management, but should improve employee and learner engagement, alongside the visibility of their data.
Travis Perkins will have scalable single database solution, ensuring that data quality can be upheld as they continue to grow. Learner, assessor and employer engagements can be captured remotely using a simple and intuitive interface, with Business Intelligence (BI) also incorporated into the solution, they will experience enhanced data visibility.
This not only ensures that Travis Perkins can remove the requirement for spreadsheets but it will allow for extensive management reporting which reflects the Travis Perkins structure; allowing for closer monitoring of learners and in turn better control of the programme.
The combined solution will also support the high quality standards that Travis Perkins have implemented, with built in finance, audit and Ofsted tools, the solution will support Travis Perkins on the expansion of the current apprenticeship programme and beyond.
Louise Powell, Head of Skills Development at Travis Perkins said:
"We were really impressed with the level of integration and efficiency the combination of Maytas and e-track could bring to our learner management. The Tribal team have supported us along the way, and suggested the best combination of systems and tools to address our specific business needs. We attended their annual Maytas conference, which we found informative and exciting, a great way to get to know the team and their products better!"
In the future, the Travis Perkins group plans to launch Level 5 Apprenticeships in Management, alongside offering apprenticeships up to senior leadership level giving a qualification that is the equivalent of a Bachelor's degree.
Tribal can also offer additional services to support Travis Perkins as they move forward with their apprenticeship offering, including ad hoc support for data management, audit and Ofsted.
Speaking on behalf of Tribal Group, Cheryl Watson, Vocational Sales Director said:
"We are delighted to be supporting Travis Perkins and looking forward to exciting times ahead with the expansion of their apprenticeship offering. We have a wealth of experience working with many of the leading employers in the UK, our solutions are designed to grow with your apprenticeships, and can help remove a lot of the administrative burden that can come with an increased number of learners."
Discover more about Maytas