From Heartland Daily News
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IN THIS ISSUE:
- New Research Further Demonstrates Problems with Surface Temperature Records and Models
- Video of the Week: Mann vs. Steyn: Climate Trial of the Century Continues – Guest: Phelim McAleer
- Global Hurricane Update: No Detectable Change Despite Warming
- Urban Agriculture Produces More Carbon Dioxide than Conventional Agriculture
- New Deep Sea Coral Reef Surprises Discoverers
- Podcast of the Week: Climate Change on Trial: Mann’s Failing Grade
- Climate Comedy
- Recommended Sites
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New Research Further Demonstrates Problems with Surface Temperature Records and Models
Climate Change Weekly has long detailed the severe problems with surface temperature records, driven largely by the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect compromising the integrity of the vast majority of temperature stations.
In two studies for The Heartland Institute, meteorologist Anthony Watts detailed the extent to which the surface station record in the United States is compromised by station siting that violates the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) own standards for the proper, unbiased, siting of surface stations. Watts’ initial 2009 study found that 89 percent of the surface stations in NOAA’s and the National Weather Service’s (NWS) system were poorly sited and biased. After the study, NOAA/NWS closed some of the most severely compromised, ridiculously sited stations highlighted in report. Indeed, NOAA had already recognized the problem and had prior to the first study’s release established the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN), consisting of 137 climate observing stations with the best equipment, existing in stable locations unlikely to ever be compromised by nearby development. At the same time, however, NOAA also added thousands of previously unregulated stations established and maintained by others to its system.
The larger system provides more comprehensive coverage, but the vast majority of the stations are, unsurprisingly, poorly sited. As a result, Watts’ follow up survey of NOAA’s surface station network found 96 percent of the stations used to determine U.S. average temperatures are biased upward due to poor siting. The UHI has compromised them.
How bad is the problem? As explained in an article in The Epoch Times, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that “daytime temperatures in urban areas are 1–7 degrees Fahrenheit higher than temperatures in outlying areas, and nighttime temperatures are about 2–5 degrees Fahrenheit higher.” Whereas the temperature record from the USCRN indicates little or no temperature change during its 18 years of existence, the broader network supports claims that the U.S. is warming. By the way, as detailed in previous Climate Change Weekly posts, what’s true for the United States is also true for the global surface station network and, since 2015, for the ocean temperature measurement system. Both are biased by poor siting compromising the validity of the temperatures measured.
A new report from the Heritage Foundation by Roy Spencer, Ph.D., a long-time friend of The Heartland Institute, principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and currently a visiting fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment, looks at a slightly different problem with temperatures: the difference between measured warming and climate model temperature projections. It is not just that the Earth has warmed less than biased temperature measurements indicate, it has also warmed less than climate models have said it should for the amount of CO2 humans have emitted into the atmosphere.
Spencer’s research found recent warming is likely not due solely to human greenhouse gas emissions, and the warming experienced is substantially less than climate models have predicted—43 percent less, in fact. And that’s even when readings from the UHI-biased stations are included.
Spencer examined summertime temperature readings for 12 Corn Belt states in the United States. Each of the 36 models he compared to measured warming by surface stations, weather balloons, and global satellites overstated the amount of warming experienced, with most of the models off by 100 percent or more. (See the graphic, below)
Spencer is also working on a large-scale study to explain the discrepancy between urban and rural temperature stations globally, and how that plays into recent claims temperatures are setting all-time records. His preliminary data suggests measured warming is strongly correlated to population density. As cities grow, and populations increase and become more densely packed, temperatures in urban and suburban areas rise faster than in the surrounding countryside, once again confirming Watts’ conclusion that the temperature record is compromised by UHI.
If Watts’ and Spencer’s research are correct, not only do climate models “run too hot,” as even some of their proponents have been forced to admit, but the regularly reported surface station record is running too hot as well.
Sources: Heritage Foundation; The Epoch Times; Dr. Roy Spencer
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Video of the Week
In the second week of the defamation trial, where serial litigator and special climate snowflake Michael Mann sued Mark Steyn and others for libel, the proceedings featured notable developments and surprising revelations. To discuss, Phelim McAleer, a filmmaker and journalist who is attending the trial in a federal court in Washington, DC, joins episode 95 of Climate Change Roundtable.
Thursday afternoon marked a significant moment in the trial, featuring Steyn cross-examining Mann. McAleer will share his observations with host Anthony Watts and panelists H. Sterling Burnett, Linnea Lueken, and Jim Lakely.
Read the brutal truth about how battery production for electric vehicles cause immense environmental destruction and human tragedy.
Global Hurricane Update: No Detectable Change Despite Warming
New research from Professor Roger Pielke, Jr., Ph.D., of the University of Colorado at Boulder, and research meteorologist Ryan Maue, Ph.D., suggests there may have been a slight upward trend in global landfalling major hurricanes since 1970, but there has been no similar trend in minor landfalling hurricanes.
They throw cold water on the idea major landfalling hurricanes have increased due to global warming by looking at longer-term records and trends.
If one begins the analysis in 1950 rather than 1970, in the Western North Pacific and North Atlantic, where we have reliable longer-term data, one finds no upward trend in either major or minor landfalling hurricanes.
As Pielke, Jr. and Maue remark, their research confirms the findings of NOAA in the United States and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC):
In technical terms, detection of change has not been achieved—which is fully consistent with the scientific consensus of NOAA and the IPCC. Without detection there can be no attribution under the IPCC framework for detection and attribution. Given the large interannual and decadal variability in tropical cyclones, data are easily cherrypicked (intentionally or unintentionally) to identify spurious trends.
Looking beyond the number of major, minor, and total hurricanes, Pielke, Jr. and Maue cite the work of Phil Klotzbach, Ph.D., examining hurricane severity over time. Klotzbach’s research on Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE), a measurement of annual hurricane frequency, intensity or strength, and longevity, found that as the planet has modestly warmed, there has been no increase in ACE since 1980. (see the graphic, below)
No matter who measures it or what metric is used, there is no evidence climate change is causing more frequent or more powerful hurricanes.
Source: The Honest Broker