Category: climate data

Climate data are time series of sufficient length, consistency, and continuity to determine climate variability and change.  A qualifying time series is called a climate data record.

This data record is a specific definition of a climate data series, developed by the Committee on Climate Data Records from NOAA Operational Satellites. These measurements are supposed to provide an objective basis for use in predicting and understanding climate and climate variability.

These data can also be based on measurements of temperature using surface temperature measurements, weather balloons, and temperature estimates from proxies such as tree rings, ocean sediments, and other methods.

The study of global warming or climate change is based primarily on historical records of temperature measurements and estimates.  On the other hand, climatology per se consists of statistics based on historical records of observations and measurements of all of the elements that make up the weather.  This would include temperature, relative humidity, absolute humidity, wind speed, wind direction, cloud cover, visibility, the frequency of the various amounts and types of precipitation, and a number of other elements.

The Data Denier – James Hansen, by Bob Endlich

Data denier, [James] “Hansen says the science is settled and there are no data which contradict the alarmist view of imminent catastrophic [global mean] temperature change and tipping points. Hansen can’t accept the fact that measurements, observations, facts and data show that present temperatures are quite ordinary and that the rates of temperature change are among the smallest of the past 10,000 years, despite present CO2 concentrations.”

This item describes interactions between Bob Endlich and data denier, James Hansen, at The Santa Fe Institute in 2013 during, and subsequent to, a presentation there by Hansen.   In response to a question about inconsistencies between the measured data and Hansen’s alarmist contentions, Hansen chose to deny the data. At the time, Hansen was the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies; he has since retired from that post.  We are reproducing Bob’s account of the exchange here for the archives.

Continue reading “The Data Denier – James Hansen, by Bob Endlich”

Seasonal Radiative Response

 

[This was originally posted in 2013 on Judith Curry’s site and was authored by CASF member, Steve McGee.  We have included it here as part of the CASF Archive.  Posted on December 26, 2013 | 169 Comments]

by Steve McGee

In science, one likes to have more examples than theories. – Dusan Djuric

Those words, spoken whimsically about cosmology, apply to climate science as well. The theory of the sensitivity of climate to the radiative SFCTforcing imposed by a doubling of carbon dioxide suffers from a lack of observed, repeatable examples. Paleo-climate studies carry with them the uncertainty of the proxy data and unmeasured assumptions on which they are based. Studies regarding the forcing from volcanoes and other transient events may not be repeatable for some time. However, Lindzen et. al. 1995 (link ) and Ramanathan and Inamdar in Frontiers of Climate Modeling, 2006 (link ) each have pointed out that the seasonal variation of earth temperature is quite large and possibly a surrogate for climate change. With this in mind, I set out to determine how the seasonal variation Continue reading “Seasonal Radiative Response”