Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Climate & Climate Change

Sea-surface Temperatures along the Great Barrier Reef

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We’re often told that the sea temperature along the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is increasing and that soon the coral will be bleached and the reef be destroyed. But what’s the real story according to the data?

The USA’s National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has a web page with recent data and maps, along with links to archived data of sea surface temperatures since 1982. The data is matched to grid cells of 1 degree Latitude and 1 degree longitude and from it I extracted the data applying to the GBR Marine Park and calculated the average across the park for each month.

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Beware Thermometer Temperature Data

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In the next week/s the institutions responsible for collecting and collating thermometer temperature data will complete their analysis for December 2008 thus enabling a comparison of the entire year with other years typically back to the 1860s. 

There will be much discussion about how warm the year 2008 was, relative to other years in Australia, North America, and globally. 

While this news will no doubt grab mainstream media headlines it is unlikely there will be any discussion in the same media about how reliable the information actually is.

Meteorologist and blogger, Anthony Watts, has been surveying official weather stations in the US since May 2007 and his findings often make incredible reading.  Indeed, many official weather stations are very poorly located – including one beside a barbeque and others immediately above air conditioner exhausts.   

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Global Warming is Over: Don Easterbrook

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IN 2001 geologist Don Easterbook predicted the beginning of a period of global cooling.  At a recent meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco he again predicted a period of cooling based in part on correlation between past glacial fluctuations, his area of expertise, with periods of low solar irradiance and changes in the Pacific Ocean: 

“GLOBAL, cyclic, decadal, climate patterns can be traced over the past millennium in glacier fluctuations, oxygen isotope ratios in ice cores, sea surface temperatures, and historic observations.  The recurring climate cycles clearly show that natural climatic warming and cooling have occurred many times, long before increases in anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 levels.  The Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age are well known examples of such climate changes, but in addition, at least 23 periods of climatic warming and cooling have occurred in the past 500 years. Each period of warming or cooling lasted about 25-30 years (average 27 years).  Two cycles of global warming and two of global cooling have occurred during the past century, and the global cooling that has occurred since 1998 is exactly in phase with the long term pattern.  Global cooling occurred from 1880 to ~1915; global warming occurred from ~1915 to ~1945; global cooling occurred from ~1945-1977;, global warming occurred from 1977 to 1998; and global cooling has occurred since 1998.  All of these global climate changes show exceptionally good correlation with solar variation since the Little Ice Age 400 years ago.

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Global Warming Since 1958

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I know it’s a tough job – but let’s just check the International Panel on Climate Changes (IPCC) iconic, widely-quoted conclusion* and parse its meaning:

“Most of the observed increase in globally-averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations.” 

How should one interpret this ex cathedra declaration to the faithful?

IPCC helpfully defines ‘very likely’ as ‘90-99% certain’, but they don’t tell us how they reached such well-defined certainty. 

What remarkable unanimity! 

Just how many and whom did they poll?

IPCC doesn’t define the word ‘most.’  We may assume it means anything between 51 and 99%.  Quite a spread. 

But a footnote  informs us that solar forcing is less than 10% of anthropogenic [0.12/ 1.6 W/m2]; so ‘most’ must be closer to 99% than to 51%.

OK; let’s check out the data since 1958.  But we don’t want to rely on contaminated surface data – which IPCC likely used – although they omitted to say so. 

Atmospheric data were readily available to the IPCC in the CCSP-SAP-1.1 report (Fig 3a, p.54; convening lead author John Lanzante, NOAA), with independent analyses by Hadley Centre and NOAA that agree well.  And further, according to GH models, atmospheric trends should be larger than surface temperature trends.

1958 – 2005:  Total warming of +0.5 C  (But how much of that is anthropogenic?)
1958 – 1976:  Cooling
1976 – 1977:  Sudden jump of +0.5 C  (Cannot be due to GHG.)
1977 – 1997:  No detectable trend
1998 – 1999:  El Nino spike
2000 – 2001:  No detectable trend
2001 – 2003:  Sudden jump of +0.3 C  (Cannot be due to GHG.)
2003 – present: No trend, maybe even slight cooling

In conclusion: The IPCC’s ‘most’ is not sustained by observations; the human contribution is very likely only 10% or even less.

By Fred Singer, who lives in Arlington, Virginia, and holds a B.E.E. in Electrical engineering from Ohio State University and an A.M. and PhD in Physics from Princeton University

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*IPCC Synthesis Report, Summary for Policy Makers, November 2007

Photograph of Fred Singer taken in New York by Jennifer Marohasy in March 2008.

This note is from SEPP Science Editorial #17 (December 27, 08), ‘Keeping the IPCC honest’ http://www.sepp.org/