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Posted by on Jan 16, 2013 in Climatology, Evironment, Research, Science | 13 comments

The 2012 Update to Global Warming

The numbers have been crunched and the results are in.  2012 continues to show that global warming has and will continue to have a major impact on our lives.

NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies reports that 2012 is officially the 9th warmest year on record.  So, 9 of the ten warmest years on record have been in the 21st century.  The one exception is 1998.

Again (and NASA says this too) one more year of warm temperatures does not verify global warming.  However, 2012 supports the trend that temperatures in the 21st century are much warmer than temperatures even 15 years ago.  Considering decade over decade, the temperatures are rising.

Further, localized areas had some of the highest temperatures ever recorded.  The continental US, for example, had the warmest year on record by far.

According to the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the trend is getting worse.  This group just released a study comparing record breaking temperatures on a month-by-month basis for 12,000 points on the Earth’s surface over 131 years.  What the found is that there monthly record breaking temperatures are not evening out, but increasing.  In fact, there has been a five times increase in the number of record breaking warm temperatures as there should be without global warming.

Think of it this way.  A record breaking score in a basketball game is a pretty rare event.  And it should be.  Over time, as selection picks those players that are just better than others, the there may be that one game with a great team against a crummy team and we see a record breaking score.

But the current state of the climate is like having a record breaking basketball score 15 times in a season… every season… for the last decade.

The study isn’t just comparing summer months either.  Winter months are warmer and having record breaking high temperatures. This trend has been really apparent in the last 40 years… not coincidentally, this matches the time frame for the massive increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

If the global warming trend continues (and it’s not showing any signs of letting up), then the PIK is expecting as much as a 30 times increase in the number of record breaking warm months.  And all of those records are breaking the ones set now. We’re looking at more and more extremes of heat.

Was that 112F we experienced in August of 2012 a little too hot… well that record will be shattered over the next few year.  Not just in August, but in June, July, September, and October.

Meanwhile,the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL released a study that uses tree rings to reconstruct the May/June temperature of Eastern Europe all the way back to 1040AD.

The temperature anomaly (based on the 1961-1990 mean) is shown in the graphic below.  The team examined 545 trees (both living and cut) to determine this data.  Click on the link for some interesting cultural implications and comparisons.

 

 

http://www.alphagalileo.org/AssetViewer.aspx?AssetId=71167&CultureCode=en&MaxWidth=800&MaxHeight=400

 

As you can see, even the 1961-1990 baseline is warmer than the average over the last 1000 years.  but when you hit the mid 1900s, that’s when it really shoots up.  Look at that cluster of warmest years in the present.  Sigh… and there are still people who don’t think global warming exists.

  • klem

    Um, your graph is from “A total of 545 precisely dated tree-ring width samples, both from living trees and from larch wood (Larix decidua Mill.) taken from historical buildings in the northern Carpathian arc of Slovakia”

    This graph does not represent global warming, it represents Slovakian warming only. Sigh… and there are still people who think global warming is man made.

    • SmilodonsRetreat

      Do you think that Slovokia is somehow isolated from the rest of the world?

      Did you ignore the other two studies that do show GLOBAL warming?

      Do you ignore the correlation between carbon dioxide levels and global average temperatures?

      Apparently, you do.

      • klem

        Yes, Slovakia is not the world.

        No, I don’t ignore the other two studies.

        Yes, I do ignore the correlation between CO2 and global average temp. It has mislead alot of people including yourself. There is also a correlation between CO2 and the price of stamps. I ignore that one too.

        cheers

        • Gingerbaker

          Klem is evidently another demigod who doesn’t believe in the greenhouse effect, because, unlike all the rest of us morons, he does not live in a world that is constrained by physical laws.

  • SmilodonsRetreat

    I think says it best.

    http://www.skepticalscience.com/its-not-us-advanced.htm

    This link is to a blog site that explains why it is humans that cause global warming. A number of studies support this. In fact, the consensus seems to be that without human caused global warming, the Earth would be a cooling trend. All natural systems point to a cooling trend.

    The most telling is this one: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0442%282004%29017%3C3721%3ACONAAF%3E2.0.CO%3B2

    Which used hindcast models to determine if humans are indeed causing global warming. By changing the nature of various aspects that are known to cause global warming and then placing that varied data into a model and comparing the model with what is known to have already happened (hindcasting) we can judge the validity of the model.

    Here’s part of the conclusion

    The late-twentieth-century warming can only be reproduced in the model if anthropogenic forcing (dominated by GHGs) is included, while the early twentieth-century warming requires the inclusion of natural forcings in the model (mostly solar).

    Humans do cause and are causing the global warming trend. And until we stop emitting greenhouse gases, that warming trend will continue.

  • Vic

    Ah, so tree rings keep their usefulness for reading temperature?

    I thought I heard that scientists were stilll figuring why modern tree rings do not show the same behaviour like old tree rings.

    http://www.climatedata.info/Proxy/Proxy/treerings_introduction.html <- last part

    • SmilodonsRetreat

      Tree rings from northern climates are no longer good proxies for temperature data from the 1960s or so to present (which is sad, but OK since we have actual temp data from the 60s). It was first noticed in 1995 and a 2004 paper showed that southern trees still performed OK as proxies… it’s just northern trees that don’t do well. (These are latitutes not North/South hemispheres.) And again, this only applies to proxie data from 1960 to present. All indications are that tree rings are good proxies for temperature data prior to 1960. There are many ways in which the temp proxy can be verified (historical data from the mid 1880s to present, ice cores, corals, etc).

      There are several possible reasons that since the 60s tree rings aren’t as useful and it’s most likely a combination of several of them:
      1) Warming induced drought
      2) Increasing pollution
      3) global dimming (reduced available sunlight in high latitudes)

      Basically, any tree ring data from prior to 1960 or so is a good proxy for temperature. Post 1960, tree rings are not as reliable with northern latitude trees being much more unreliable than southern latitude tree rings.

      The tree ring report was mainly to provide a Eastern European view of tree ring temperature proxies, where there was almost no data prior to the study.

      Does that help?

      • Vic

        It does. Thanks a bunch for your answer.

      • klem

        “Tree rings from northern climates are no longer good proxies for
        temperature data from the 1960s or so to present (which is sad, but OK
        since we have actual temp data from the 60s).”

        What! You’re saying that northern tree rings after 1960 are unreliable but before 1960 they’re good? The north is where almost all of the worlds temp data comes from over the last 300 years. So the further back in time, the more reliable the tree data? I’ve never heard that one before, that’s a good one. Unbelievable.

        I find it rather revealing that tree rings growing today do not closely match actual temperature data, so they simply claim it is unreliable. That was easy. The tree data are clearly telling them that they are wrong, but they brush it aside. Wow.

        • smilondonsretreat

          “North” as in above 60-70 degree latitude… not northern hemisphere. The reason that tree rings are not reliable after 1960 or so is because (at least in part) because of global warming.

          Besides, even if tree ring data after 1960 isn’t reliable, we have between about 1880 and 1960 where the tree ring data is highly correlated with measured temperatures. Since the trend is for more unreliable data after 1960, then we can say with some degree of confidence that data before 1880 is still valid.

          Of course, your claims ignore that there are several other sources of temperature proxy data which allows several levels of comparison between data sets.

          Like I said, we still have actual measured temperatures for the last 130 years and those indicators show very clearly that the global temperature is increasing.

          • klem

            “..those indicators show very clearly that the global temperature is increasing.”

            And none of them show that CO2 is the cause. Oh well, what can you do.

            cheers

  • ThePrussian

    There are a large number of scary graphs like that, sadly: http://www.skepticink.com/prussian/2012/11/01/hokey-sticks-for-sale/

    • SmilodonsRetreat

      I specifically don’t use the IPCC for the same reason you cite. Politics. Too many issues.

      As far as the graph, that’s also why I try to find actual temperatures and don’t use proxies or anomalies. Under certain baselines (5-year moving mean, for example), the 1930s were much hotter than the 1990s. Which simply isn’t the case. The difference between the actual temperature and the 5-year mean was larger, but the 1990s actual temperatures were warmer than the 30s (and the 2000s are warmer still).

      Doing that gets us out of that damn hockey stick. There’s still an upward trend in the data though (which you do recognize).

      As far as the tree rings, I would say that given a lot of the comparison between data sets (ice cores, tree rings, historical temps, etc) that they are useful proxies with the provision that they are proxies, not actual temperatures. We’ll never know what the actual temperatures are for any period before 1880 or so. The proxies should be pretty close, especially if many of them are done from all over the world and compared with other data.

      There is a lot of uncertainty in the tree ring data.