Sean Houlihane

I posted this as a comment at the Telegraph Blog, where Christopher Booker is discussing the cost (in any senses) of the Man-made global warming scare. As a reference for foreign readers or readers from the future, Feb ‘09 saw a severe cold snap in the UK, with councils running short of grit for the roads, and Dec’09-Jan’10 are giving us our coldest winter for at least 15 years. 2009 CET had some warm months, ending at +0.64 Celsius w.r.t. 1961-90, Jan was -0.8, Dec -1.6. Jan’10 is estimated at -5.75 to 10th, according to NetWeather (the met office is not updated since the 7th.) 1963 had -5.6 for the whole month of January, so this month is not particularly extreme yet.

As many people seem to be grasping, weather and climate are not quite the same thing. Roger Pielke Sr has a blog post comparing the surface anomalies in December against 2009. Very different. Yet the Met Office (who claim to have a good understanding of these matters) have stated that snow will become rare in the UK (March 2000), and repeatedly made (presumably) politically motivated seasonal forecasts. The UK is unusual in that our weather seems to be the residuals of several systems. Sadly, one of the best instrumental temperature records is therefore mostly noise. Following in the theme that localised temperature measurements tell us almost nothing about global climatic trends, how about those poor twisted scrub trees in Siberia which tell us how warm it was there 1000 years ago? On a more technical front, some analysis here shows that Over-fitting is likely to show a historical dip and then a recovery to a mostly unchanging prediction for past temperatures (see figure 4).
Regardless of the meaning of the global average temperature, comparing the trend from 1950, ‘60, ‘70, ‘00, ‘01 to November 2009 against the accepted model means shows a statistically significant difference (and remember that the models were designed around the perid of better agreement). Temperatures averaged everywhere are not continuing to rise as they seemed to be in 1980-2000, and yet it was this rapid rise which could not be otherwise explained that lead to the demise of the coal mining industry in the UK. A plausible explanation for this could be the dramatic number of instrumental stations used to contribute to the instrumental records. This peaked at 6000 in 1970, and has now dropped to less than 2000. Consider how difficult it is to ensure an accuracy sufficient to identify a 0.1 degree trend over 20 years when thermometers move and their local environment changes. Satellite readings have their own problems, but comparing the reagonal differences in trends does show that surface temperature measurements in some places give a high result.

The last decade may well have been the warmest on record (in the context of our chosen measurement scenario) but even without significant volcanic activity, the upward trend has definitely stopped. Regardless of that, weather is not becoming more extreme. The current weather in Europe is not particularly significant on a global scale, other than to emphasise that the impacts of global warming are not observable today, and should definitely not be relied upon when making forecasts or policy decisions.

WUWT has a thread on a press release from the University of Waterloo claiming Study shows CFCs, cosmic rays major culprits for global warming.

Prof. Qing-Bin Lu published a paper (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.118501) in Physical Review Letters suggesting a correlation between Cosmic Rays and Ozone Depletion, using data up to 2007. There are predictions on the paper of large Ozone losses in 2008-2009, and certainly Cosmic Rays have peaked in 2009 as a result of the prolonged minimum in solar activity. (Solar activity tends to shield the earth from cosmic rays).

This article has a demonstration of the depletion and recovery of Ozone, which does seem to correlate with F10.7 solar flux.

Lu’s paper says little about climate. Ozone seems to have an indeterminate effect as a greenhouse gas. What is clear is that Ozone reached a minimum around 1997, and has been recovering slowly since. The solar minimum could be expected to slow that recovery. As it stands, Ozone seems to be inversely correlated with surface temperature, which has a recent peak around 2000, and a more recent stabilisation. Actually, Ozone may well be driven by temperature so the whole argument seems a little confused.

Now CFCs are strong greenhouse gases, so at least that part makes sense. CFC production started roughly at the point where temperatures started to rise, and cosmic rays could impact the lifetime and concentration. Nothing proven yet, just more potential mechanisms.

A 2007 presentation (pdf) has more detail on modelling the recovery of ozone, and the presence of CFCs.

Following on from this post, and since it will be a while before this month’s data appears, here is an update to my representation of the F10.7 solar flux. i have subtracted a presumed constant background level (67 flux units) and made a bit of an arbitrary partition between SC23 and SC24 during a period of overlap.

I postulate that in addition to the peaks in F10.7 associated with sunspots, there is also a more steady increase from features which are not directly observable. Sunspots are more strongly quantised, and even taking the monthly averages, there is a noisy signal which is difficult to interpret. I originally plotted this graph to demonstrate a couple of months afo that the sun was dragging itself out of the current minimum, and also to show how a delay in the onset of SC24 would affect the shape of the curve. The graph shows the equivalent SC23 ramp-up (adjusted to fit the decline of 22 with the decline of 23).

Note:

1. The signal is noisy, it is difficult to estimate trends
2. SC24 is making headway, but maybe half as fast as 23.
3. SC24 is 2 years delayed in getting to this amplitude compared with 23.

Click for full-sized image.

Note that I am not making any claims that this is having an effect on climate. Even another 5 years of data alone will probably be insufficient to give that claim any credence.