Why does Muller’s Berkeley Earth data start in 1753?

Why not 1750 which has just as much data and was about 0.0C?

Why not 1730 which was perhaps +1.0C.

Because 1753 was a nice low point to start with.

Berkeley 2012 versus HadCET going back to 1659.

http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/2005/berkeley12vshadcet12mon.png




Why not start in 1773? Of course because it looks like this.

http://img560.imageshack.us/img560/502/berkeley20121773.png

Anyone been keeping an eye on WZ's 'Weather News' of late. Seem's to be a pattern (trend) forming.

Sydney's coldest start to August in 14 years

Adelaide shivers through its coldest August morning in 13 years

Canberra's frosty run to persist into August
'Canberra has just had its coldest July nights in 15 years and August is set to begin similarly frosty.'

Melbourne soaking in wettest start to winter in 16 years

Adelaide has received it's heaviest rainfall in a month and the heaviest July rain in 14 years.

Perth chilling through coldest July nights in 14 years

except for:

Red Centre cold snap not enough to break record
'Alice Springs records 2nd coldest July on record'

Melbourne's unseasonable warm streak ends
'Melbourne has just experienced its longest run of July days above 14 degrees since records began, but this is all about to change.'


http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/

Just ignore WA rainfall snafu and you'll be fine.

Just ignore USA weather at the moment PG and you will be fine!

Sorry, I will desist from such comments and get back to the real business...just could not resist a few digs!

weatherzone headlines: More and more coldness ...to add to Snafu's current list!

12.05 EST Riverland shivers through cold June, July
11:59 EST The Riverland has recorded its coldest June and July in five years.
10:35 EST Icy morning in NSW
10:31 EST Coldest morning in years for Brisbane and Bundaberg
09:35 EST Ice forces closure of New England Highway
07:41 EST Sydney's coldest start to August in 14 years

BoM statement for WA in July here. Record low rainfall in the south west, and some record-low minimum temperatures too.

Have a look at this MSLP anomaly chart for July.



One could also make the comment that this is consistent with the meridional expansion of the Hadley circulation, as predicted by the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming.

"....and some record-low minimum temperatures too(in WA)."(quote PG) More developing coldness to add to snafus' list!

Tis winter here after all. We expect there to be coldness.

Now, as this here is the Temperature trends section of the forum show us where the long term trend is. A few cold months that aren't even particularly noteworthy do not a trend make.

Watts et al gets a mention.

3. NEW INFORMATION ON SURFACE TEMPERATURE PROCESSES
In general, the issue of global warming is dominated by considering the near-surface air
temperature (Tsfc) as if it were a standard by which one might measure the climate
impact of the extra warming due to increases in greenhouse gases. Fundamentally, the
proper variable to measure is heat content, or the amount of heat energy (measured in
joules) in the climate system, mainly in the oceans and atmosphere. Thus the basic
measurement for detecting greenhouse warming is how many more joules of energy are
accumulating in the climate system over that which would have occurred naturally. This
is a truly “wicked” problem (see House Testimony, Dr. Judith Curry, 17 Nov 2010)
because we do not know how much accumulation can occur naturally.



Unfortunately, discussions about global warming focus on Tsfc even though it is affected
by many more processes than the accumulation of heat in the climate system. Much has
been documented on the problems, and is largely focused on changes in the local environment, i.e. buildings, asphalt, etc. This means that using Tsfc, as measured today,
as a proxy for heat content (the real greenhouse variable) can lead to an overstatement of
greenhouse warming if the two are assumed to be too closely related.

A new paper by my UAHuntsville colleague Dr. Richard McNider (McNider et al. 2012)
looked at reasons for the fact daytime high temperatures (TMax) are really not warming
much while nighttime low temperatures (TMin) show significant warming. This has
been known for some time and found in several locations around the world (e.g.
California – Christy et al. 2006, East Africa – Christy et al. 2009, Uganda – just released
data). Without going into much detail, the bottom line of the study is that as humans
disturb the surface (cities, farming, deforestation, etc.) this disrupts the normal formation
of the shallow, surface layer of cooler air during the night when TMin is measured. In a
complicated process, due to these local changes, there is greater mixing of the naturally
warmer air above down to the shallow nighttime cool layer. This makes TMin warmer,
giving the appearance of warmer nights over time. The subtle consequence of this
phenomenon is that TMin temperatures will show warming, but this warming is from a
turbulent process which redistributes heat near the surface not to the accumulation of
heat related to greenhouse warming of the deep atmosphere. The importance of this is
that many of the positive feedbacks that amplify the CO2 effect in climate models depend
on warming of the deep atmosphere not the shallow nighttime layer.

During the day, the sun generally heats up the surface, and so air is mixed through a deep
layer. Thus, the daily high temperature (TMax) is a better proxy of the heat content of
the deep atmosphere since that air is being mixed more thoroughly down to where the
thermometer station is. The relative lack of warming in TMax is an indication that the
rate of warming due to the greenhouse effect is smaller than models project (Section 2).
The problem with the popular surface temperature datasets is they use the average of the
daytime high and nighttime low as their measurement (i.e. (TMax+TMin)/2). But if
TMin is not representative of the greenhouse effect, then the use of TMin with TMax will
be a misleading indicator of the greenhouse effect. TMax should be viewed as a more
reliable proxy for the heat content of the atmosphere and thus a better indicator of the
enhanced greenhouse effect. This exposes a double problem with models. First of all,
they overwarm their surface compared with the popular surface datasets (the non-circle
symbols in Fig. 2.1). Secondly, the popular surface datasets are likely warming too much
to begin with. This is why I include the global satellite datasets of temperature which are
not affected by these surface problems and more directly represent the heat content of the
atmosphere (see Christy et al. 2010, Klotzbach et al. 2010).

Fall et al. 2011 found evidence for spurious surface temperature warming in certain US
stations which were selected by NOAA for their assumed high quality. Fall et al.
categorized stations by an official system based on Leroy 1999 that attempted to
determine the impact of encroaching civilization on the thermometer stations. The result
was not completely clear-cut as Fall et al. showed that disturbance of the surface around a
station was not a big problem, but it was a problem. A new manuscript by Muller et al.
2012, using the old categorizations of Fall et al., found roughly the same thing. Now,
however, Leroy 2010 has revised the categorization technique to include more details of
changes near the stations. This new categorization was applied to the US stations of Fall
et al., and the results, led by Anthony Watts, are much clearer now. Muller et al. 2012
did not use the new categorizations. Watts et al. demonstrate that when humans alter the
immediate landscape around the thermometer stations, there is a clear warming signal
due simply to those alterations, especially at night. An even more worrisome result is
that the adjustment procedure for one of the popular surface temperature datasets actually increases the temperature of the rural (i.e. best) stations to match and even exceed the more urbanized (i.e. poor) stations. This is a case where it appears the adjustment process took the spurious warming of the poorer stations and spread it throughout the entire set of stations and even magnified it. This is ongoing research and bears watching as other factors as still under investigation, such as changes in the time-of-day readings were taken, but at this point it helps explain why the surface measurements appear to be warming more than the deep atmosphere (where the greenhouse effect should appear.)
from WUWT plus http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/01/john-christys-testimony-before-the-senate-epw-today/
Full testimony to Us senate...
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/christy-testimony-2012.pdf

"John R. Christy, PhD
Alabama State Climatologist
The University of Alabama in Huntsville
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
1 August 2012
One Page Summary
1. It is popular again to claim that extreme events, such as the current central U.S.
drought, are evidence of human-caused climate change. Actually, the Earth is very large,
the weather is very dynamic, and extreme events will continue to occur somewhere,
every year, naturally. The recent “extremes” were exceeded in previous decades."
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/christy-testimony-2012.pdf

For those incapable of recognizing blue means cold, in this chart of temperature anomalies of July 18 to July 25 from the Terra satellite (ie no crazy adjustments of raw data after the fact and no smoothing of the data over ridiculous 1200 km distances), the blue here means cold but red mean global warming.


http://s8.postimage.org/4ouk4vxlx/July_18_to_25_2012.png

I'm hoping its all tongue in cheek, but daily or monthly (even seasonal)record low or high temps cited by various folks in here are weather, not climate, nor are they evidence of climate change or, for that matter, evidence of no climate change.

UAH anomaly for July 2012 is +0.28

Berkeley Earth turns out to be far too high for comparable records available so scratch this movement since they probably have an error in the methodology.

Berkeley for the UK has a 43.0% higher trend than HadCET going back to 1753.

http://s8.postimage.org/mdjgdalmt/Berkeley_UK_vs_Had_CET_1753.png




And Berkeley Contiguous US is 28.3% higher than even the double-adjusted trend of CONUS USHCNV2 back to 1895.

http://s11.postimage.org/3suobq4kj/Berkeley_US_vs_USHCN_1895.png

The Berkeley UK series covers the entire United Kingdom whereas HadCET only covers a roughly triangular area of the United Kingdom enclosed by Lancashire, London and Bristol.

To call for the entire Berkeley Earth temp series to be scratched based your two graphs above is not credible.

Berkeley has, obviously, adjusted their data trends up to increase the trend.

Pretty common action for those that believe too strongly in the theory.

You shouldn't be "too" anything. Too nice, too smart, too dumb, too fake, too wedded to a particular theory.

A nice moderate fake temperature series would be more believable.

From yesterday's PM radio show.

Forty per cent increase in extreme temperatures

TIM PALMER: Australian scientists have shown extreme hot temperatures are becoming far more common.

Researching a 60 year period they measured a 40 per cent jump in the number of days that fall into the hottest category.

And on these hottest days both the average maximums and the average minimums were up by around one degree Celsius.

The researchers from the University of New South Wales' Centre for Climate Change Research claim this is the first work of its kind in the world.

They investigated the six decades of global data to reach their conclusions, which was published today in the journal, Geophysical Research Letters, as David Mark reports.

DAVID MARK: Climate scientists have been telling us for years that temperatures are increasing. But up until now there's been no global study looking at the extremes. How hot are the hottest days, and how many more are there?

Dr Markus Donat is a visiting research fellow at the University of New South Wales Climate Change Research Centre.

MARKUS DONAT: Extreme temperatures values often have a greater impact on society and ecosystems than just the average temperatures do.

And an unanswered question so far was kind of how the extreme temperatures are changing compared to the average temperatures.

DAVID MARK: So what does extreme mean? In this case, Dr Donat and his team defined an extreme temperature day as one that was in the top 5 per cent of all recorded temperatures.

They also looked at the extreme minimums and they did this by collecting data from around the world.

MARKUS DONAT: We used a data set which comprises more than 70,000 stations globally.

DAVID MARK: Seventy thousand?

MARKUS DONAT: Seven- zero thousand, exactly. It is at least the most comprehensive source of global observations which is available.

DAVID MARK: Using the data they looked at temperatures from the past 60 years. The group divided the period into two lots of 30 years; 1951-1980 and 1981-2010.

They then compared the two periods. And what did they find?

MARKUS DONAT: That, for example, the extreme temperatures are changing stronger compared to how the average temperatures change.

On the example of the night-time temperatures, globally we see an increase of the average by 0.8 degrees. But let's say the mark of the warmest 5 per cent changed by more than 1 degree.

DAVID MARK: So that was for the minimum temperature. What about for maximum temperatures? What sort of increase did you see there?

MARKUS DONAT: Yeah, we see the same pattern there. So we also see that the extremes are increasing stronger, although the difference in increase is a bit smaller for the daytime temperatures.

So it's, for example, 0.8 degrees for the extreme warm days compared to the 0.6 degrees for the average.

DAVID MARK: Overall the researchers found the number of extreme heat records for day and night increased by 40 per cent in the second period compared to the first, and this happened around the world.

MARKUS DONAT: What is consistent is that we see warming patterns in most regions of the globe but of course the magnitude differs and one thing which is quite commonly known as, for example, there's an asymmetry in warming between northern and southern hemispheres which means that the magnitudes we see, for example in Australia, are smaller compared to the magnitudes we see in higher northern latitudes like North America and also northern Asia and also Europe.

DAVID MARK: As to why this is occurring, Dr Donat isn't making any guesses.

MARKUS DONAT: I mean this is of course not part of the study. Our study was a pure documentation of how the changes looked like.

But there's a bunch of other studies around which of course kind of tries to relate increases in temperatures, also increases in extreme temperatures, for example to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

DAVID MARK: But that's a job for other scientists. He's just looking at the facts.

link

Valid point made about believing 'too strongly in a theory'. It applies equally to Watts et al 2012 who are on record as saying: "After Muller could not find a strong signal that we knew must be there by physics of heat sinks and neither could we in Fall et al 2011, we went looking, and discovered the new Leroy 2010 classification system and WMO ISO approval." in the Back story on the new surface station paper

So Watts et al went out of their way to find a way of supporting their theory even to the extent of using raw data, and not homogenised data, because it gave them the result they wanted.

Or did it give them the result they were after? Apparently not!

Watts has now acknowledged problems with the Watts et al 2012 press release. Watts et al 2012 2nd discussion thread Watts provides an update on the result of that blogger review which has found hundreds of suggestions (for improvement) and corrections. There is major criticism by some WUWT bloggers about Watts et al not making corrections for TOB data.

Watts acknowledges the blogger reviews with the following:

"1. Thanks to everyone who has provided widespread review of our draft paper. There have been hundreds of suggestions and corrections, and for that I am very grateful. That’s exactly what we hoped for, and can only make the paper better.
Edits are being made based on many of those suggestions. I’ll post up a revised draft in the next day." (That was on July 31. Your minions are still waiting for that edited paper, Anthony!)

"2. Some valid criticisms have been made related to the issue of the TOBS data. This is a preliminary set of data, with corrections added for the “Time of Observation” which can in some cases result in double max-min readings being counted if not corrected for. It makes up a significant portion of adjustments prior to homogenization adjustments." (Which Watts et al did not do because it might not have given them the result they wanted!)

Here's another critique of the Watts press release paper which reinforces and extends the above Watts' mea culpa: Critique of Watts et al 2012

So the Watts game changer may potentially disappear and fade away, never to see peer review or the light of day in the future if the corrections to Watts et al 2012 paper ends up with results that Watts doesn't want.

The 'too wedded to a particular theory ' is applicable to John Christy from UAH. Despite all the hundreds of corrections and the TOB data oversight, Watts et al 2012 was still deemed by John Christy as being good enough to present to a US Senate committee. So how good is Christy's judgement and how valid is what he presented?

Christy's testimony has been lauded on this website but heaven's knows why given the previous admissions by Watts. For a critique of Christy's testimony, see this link given Christy once again misinforms congress. which, in brief, states:
Basically, "Christy has done nothing more than repeat five common and long-debunked climate myths. Even worse, in doing so Christy referenced the unpublished and incomplete paper he has co-authored with Anthony Watts, which contains numerous fundamental errors which completely undermine its conclusions as has been acknowledged by Watts himself. Despite these errors, and despite the fact that the paper has not been reviewed or even submitted to a journal, Christy presented those wrong conclusions to US Congress." As Patrick Jane, The Mentalist, would say,"Interesting".

If you think that the Berkley group have adjusted their trend upwards, download their data, run your own statistical analysis and show us how they did it and what the trend really is. Now that would be a game changer! Here's the link to where you can access their dataset. Berkeley Dataset It only involves 1.6 billion temperature reports from 16 pre-existing data archives. If you can't do this, then your comments criticising BEST are no more than blah, blah, blah or poetry. The world of climate science skeptics awaits your analysis with bated breath.

The comparison of temperature trends in the southern and northern hemisphere have been different over time..
Even over a short time duration .
From this graph below . From 1970 to 1989 the temperature anomaly in the southern hemisphere was always warmer than the Northern hemisphere..
The south was always warmer than the north hemisphere.!!

A climate regime shift occurred in 1988 /1989 . and a short period of transition from 1989 to 1997 saw a period where southern and northern hemisphere anomalies slowly shifted .
Since 1989 the northern hemisphere temperature anomalies have always remained significantly higher/hotter than the southern hemisphere.

This is important because the northern hemisphere has the greatest impact on global temperature anomalies.
If The Northern hemisphere is running hot then the global anomaly certainly will be running positive warm

This graph indicates that a future hemisphere climate regime change , will be a time when a swap to a cooler northern hemisphere than southern hemisphere,will return again.
When the sth hemisphere will once again be warmer than the Nth Hemisphere.
Consequently the global warming gradient will abate ..

The NAO had a regime shift in 1988/89 and seems to have swapped the nth and sth hemisphere anomalies??

I have marked when the southern hemisphere was warmer than the northern hemisphere, in bright orange.

You can see quite clearly the hemispheric temperature regime change.around 1990
Now what oscillation or forcing factor,caused that hemispheric turn around?

source of graph
http://www.lidskialf.org/2012_07_01_archive.html

[ Below definitely not at all applicable to you, crikey. ]

Somehow this quote seems to fit what passes for some supposedly intelligent posting here!

"For the first time in history, people shouting “the end is nigh” are somehow the sane ones, while those of us who say it is not are now the lunatics!