Mystery solved: Rain means satellite and surface temps are different. Climate models didn’t predict this…

A funny thing happens when you line up satellite and surface temperatures over Australia. A lot of the time they are very close, but some years the surface records from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) are cooler by a full half a degree than the UAH satellite readings. Before anyone yells “adjustments”, this appears to be a real difference of instruments, but solving this mystery turns up a rather major flaw in climate models.

Bill Kininmonth wondered if those cooler-BOM years were also wetter years when more rain fell. So Tom Quirk got the rainfall data and discovered that rainfall in Australia has a large effect on the temperatures recorded by the sensors five feet off the ground. This is what Bill Johnston has shown at individual stations. Damp soil around the Stevenson screens takes more heat to evaporate and keeps maximums lower. In this new work Quirk has looked at the effect right across the country and the years when the satellite estimates diverge from the ground thermometers are indeed the wetter years. Furthermore, it can take up to six months to dry out the ground after a major wet period and for the cooling effect to end.

In Australia rainfall controls the temperature, which is the opposite of what the models predict, but things are different in the US. (In the US, temperature affects rainfall).*

In Australia maximum rainfall occurs in the summer but it is highly variable, whereas in the US, while the summer rain is heavier, it’s the winter precipitation where the big variations occur. This seasonal pattern makes a big difference. . Both the Australian pattern and the US pattern appear in other places around the world, but the models only have the one scenario. It appears the modelers figured out the situation in New Jersey and programmed it in for the rest of the world, but whole zones of the world are behaving quite differently.

Models predict that temperature affects rainfall — but in Australia the rainfall affects the temperature. No wonder these models are skillless at predicting  temperature and on rainfall — they are even worse.

As far as I know this is new and original research. Tom Quirk has run it past a few people, including John Christy of UAH who notes that this has been seen elsewhere. Let’s keep up with the peer review…

UPDATE: I’ve discovered Ken Stewart reported this correlation back in 2015. So for the record — his post was the first: “over three quarters of the difference between surface and atmospheric temperature anomalies is due to rainfall variation alone.” Some great graphs there….

— Jo

* Added for clarity. A more detailed post coming very soon.

In Australia, the bulk of the rain,
Falls in summer across its terrain,
With less heat above ground,
Where temp. readings are found,
Which the surface through drying would gain

                — Ruairi

Why Satellites and Surface Thermometers Don’t Agree: Explaining the Difference in Australia with Rainfall

Original Research and Guest Post by Tom Quirk

There is continuing questioning of the relationship of rainfall and temperature. Does temperature determine rainfall or is it the reverse…? The following analysis is a comparison of rainfall and near surface (BOM) and lower troposphere (UAH) temperatures for continental Australia.

This analysis shows that  rainfall modifies surface temperatures in Australia.

Figure 1 shows a temperature comparison. The BOM annual temperatures are averaged from 1979 to 2017 and then normalized to the UAH average, an adjustment of -0.33 0C so the two different time series can be compared.

The temperature increases are:

UAH   0.176 +/- 0.036 0C per 10 years

BOM   0.154 +/- 0.048 0C per 10 years

There is no significant difference in trends at 0.022 +/- 0.030 0C per 10 years.

Yearly measurements and analysis

While there is a good correlation of surface (BOM) and lower troposphere temperatures, there are two periods, 1999 to 2001 and 2010 to 2012 where the UAH satellite temperature anomalies are 0.40C above the near surface measurements of the BOM.

Australian temperatures, UAH, Satellite, Bureau of Meteorology.

Fig 1: UAH and BOM Australian annual temperatures where the BOM anomalies have been normalized to the same mean value as that of the UAH measurements.

Bill Kininmonth, former head of Australia’s Climate Centre, suggested that this could be linked to periods of high rainfall as the dampened surface would lower the measured temperatures due to evaporation. This fits with other work by Bill Johnston showing a link between rainfall and temperature at individual sites.

A comparison of Australia wide rainfall sourced from the BOM (Figure 2) and the difference of UAH – BOM temperature anomalies (Figure 3) show that there is a correlation.

 

Australian temperatures, UAH, Satellite, Bureau of Meteorology.

Fig 2:  Australian annual rainfall – source BOM

Australian temperatures, UAH, Satellite, Bureau of Meteorology.

Fig 3: Annual UAH – BOM difference of temperature anomalies

This can be demonstrated in a scatter plot of the UAH – BOM temperature anomalies and the Australia-wide rainfall (Figure 4) where the slope on the scatter plot is 0.16 +/- 0.03 0C per 100mm rainfall. This shows rainfall has some effect on temperature. The increasing rainfall lowers the near-surface temperature below that of the lower troposphere.

Australian temperatures, UAH, Satellite, Bureau of Meteorology.

Fig 4: Scatter plot of rainfall against the UAH-BOM temperature anomaly. The straight line is a least squares fit with a slope of 0.16 +/- 0.03 0C per 100mm rainfall

So there is a relationship of rainfall with temperature.

Monthly measurements and analysis

However the monthly rainfall in Australia shows large variations from month to month with the peak rainfall in summer being four times greater than the winter rainfall. An example of this is shown in Figure 5 for the period 2006 to 2014.

Australian temperatures, UAH, Satellite, Bureau of Meteorology.

Fig 5: Example of the large variations in Australian monthly rainfall – source BOM

 

The seasonality is best removed by expressing the variations as monthly rainfall anomalies. The mean monthly rainfall is shown in Figure 6 for 1979 to 2017 along with the standard deviations for each month. The large rainfall variations are where there are the largest standard deviations in January, February and March.

Australian temperatures, UAH, Satellite, Bureau of Meteorology.

Fig 6: Mean monthly rainfall for 1979 to 2017. The error bars are the standard deviations for monthly rainfall.

 

So after the removal of the mean monthly rainfall, the rainfall anomalies are shown in Figure 7 along with the UAH and BOM temperature anomalies in Figure 8.

Australian temperatures, UAH, Satellite, Bureau of Meteorology.

Fig 7: Example of the rainfall anomalies for Australian monthly rainfall

 

Australian temperatures, UAH, Satellite, Bureau of Meteorology.

Fig 8:Monthly UAH and BOM temperature anomalies. Note the 1 0C differences of temperature anomalies in 2011.

In Figure 8 the monthly temperature anomalies for 2010 to 2012 show the near-surface temperature is 1.0 0C below the lower troposphere values in the summer months of 2011.

The relationship of the UAH and BOM monthly temperature anomalies to the Australia-wide monthly rainfall anomaly for 1979 to 2017 (but omitting 1996[i]) is shown in Figure 9 as scatter plots for the months of February, March and April. This again demonstrates the influence of rainfall where the relationship to temperature anomalies shows monthly variations.

 

Relationship to rainfall anomaly for February, March and April

0C per 10 mm rainfall anomaly

BOM  surface temperature anomaly

-0.12 +/- 0.02

UAH   lower troposphere anomaly

  0.04 +/- 0.02

 

Australian temperatures, UAH, Satellite, Bureau of Meteorology.

Fig 9: Scatter plots for BOM (Left) and UAH (Right) temperature anomalies against rainfall anomalies along with straight line fits.

 

However, rainfall in one month may well leave moisture on the surface for a longer period. This can be seen by using a sliding correlation test of rainfall against temperatures.

A sliding correlation calculates the correlation coefficient in time series by first calculating the correlation coefficient by matching month with month, that is for example, January rainfall with January temperature and matching all succeeding months. Then calculate the correlation coefficient matching January rainfall with February temperature and likewise a one month shift for all the following months. This process is continued with succeeding shifts.

The results of this approach are shown in Figures 10 and 11 for rainfall from 1981 to 2015, a 420 month period.

In Figure 10 there is no correlation of rainfall with temperature until the series shows a sharp negative correlation coefficient when there is no monthly shift. There is also a delayed effect after the rainfall month of six months before the correlation is lost…

Australian temperatures, UAH, Satellite, Bureau of Meteorology.

Fig 10: Correlations coefficients found by sliding monthly rainfall time series against BOM near surface temperature anomalies…

 

On the other hand, Figure 11 shows there is no correlation of rainfall with UAH lower troposphere temperatures.

Australian temperatures, UAH, Satellite, Bureau of Meteorology.

Fig 11: Correlations coefficients found by sliding monthly rainfall time series UAH lower troposphere temperature anomalies…

 

This final test shows that the major change in surface temperatures in Australia is a result of rainfall and consequent evaporative cooling of the surface.

Conclusion

There are real and significant differences between near surface and lower-troposphere temperatures. The Australia-wide temperature and rainfall data are a clear demonstration of the interaction between temperature and rainfall. The sensitivity of the UAH – BOM anomaly to the rainfall anomaly has a variation which is naturally dependent on rainfall variations and the period of time that the moisture remains on the surface. The temperature changes can be explained by evaporation having a cooling effect on near-surface temperature which is not seen in the lower troposphere. Thus for above average rainfall the BOM temperature anomaly may be less than the UAH temperature anomaly while with below average rainfall the reverse occurs with the BOM temperature anomaly above the UAH temperature anomaly. This can be seen in Figure 1.

This is of course another difficulty for climate models, particularly regional model predictions.

 

 


[i]  In 1996 there is no correlation of UAH and BOM temperature anomalies with a correlation coefficient of -8%. This is at a time when automatic weather stations were introduced.

9.6 out of 10 based on 59 ratings

153 comments to Mystery solved: Rain means satellite and surface temps are different. Climate models didn’t predict this…

  • #
    Kevin Lohse

    Climate Models = 21st Century Philosopher’s Stones.

    111

  • #
    sillyfilly

    All this futile analysis based on the false assumption that UAH v6 has credibility. One of Roy Spencer’s best productions of crock data in many years, totally outlier from every other data set including his own v5.6

    537

  • #
    RickWill

    This is good news for the BoM. They now have reason to apply an upward temperature correction based on rainfall; more “homogenisation”.

    See it is actually hotter than the raw measurements indicate!.

    An alternative would be to place all temperature stations on a 1 hectare patch of gently domed bitumen so that darn water cannot sit under the screens and cool them.

    On the other hand any temperature measurement over land has zero significance from the perspective of global climate so why bother.

    132

    • #
      el gordo

      BoM will now adjust those recalcitrant stations to produce a warm bias.

      72

    • #
      toorightmate

      I have a unique suggestion:
      DO NOT ADJUST THE RAW DATA – for any reason (real or perceived).

      211

      • #
        Greg Cavanagh

        Not unique. Many over the years (including myself) have been asking for exactly this.

        The problem with it however, is that most of the thermometers are in or near towns, and thus are affected by the development of the town. All the while pretending to measure the temperature between towns.

        That’s why they do the adjustments, to bring the town temperature down to what they believe would be the temperature if the town didn’t exist.

        Personally, I still advocate leaving the temperature data unadjusted and letting others model the difference themselves. The whole “average temperature of the earth” is a crock anyway.

        61

      • #
        manalive

        IMO if data is thought to be unreliable for whatever reason it should be rejected.

        60

  • #
    robert rosicka

    make you wonder what if any difference the old thermometer vs the new one second thermistor has in all this .

    120

    • #

      Good question except as far as I know the BoM do not use thermistors.

      The surface area of the inglass thermometers and the platinum resistance thermometers would different. So the rate of heat exchange between the air and thermometers would be different when covered with condensation etc. It is the rate of exchange that varies the time constant of the thermometer so that a 1 second sample is NOT likely to be the same if the time constant has been matched under different conditions.
      Lance Pidgeon

      100

  • #
    pat

    cold weather comment is in moderation on “Unthreaded”.

    all I know is it is ridiculous that politicians claim they want to control the weather to stop the warming…at an unbelievably high cost to the public!

    17 Mar: UK Express: Met Office weather WARNING: Snow to CUT OFF villages as severe weather to block roads
    MET Office weather warnings are predicting snow and ice could cut off entire rural villages with alerts covering almost the whole country this weekend as the Beast from the East returns to give yet another taste of winter to the UK.
    By Alessandra Scotto di Santolo
    Currently, seven different Met Office weather warnings, of which two are amber warnings, are in force across the UK as snow showers cause travel disruption and threaten to cut-off many villages in the country.
    Amber warnings are in place for most parts of the east and south of England, including London and the south-east as well as the West Midlands and West Wales.
    Yellow warnings are in place for the North East of England, Northern Ireland and Scotland.
    The latest Met Office weather forecast this morning read: “Very cold and windy…

    BBC News weather forecaster Helen Willetts also warned of “serious weather” to hit the UK in the next 48 hours.
    The BBC weather forecaster said southern parts of the UK should expect to wake up to a “winter wonderland” on Sunday morning with several centimetres of snow…
    “The snow showers will come in thick and faster thorough the rest of the day.
    “The reason for the switch in our weather is because we had Atlantic winds through the week and now this high-pressure from Scandinavia is allowing that really bitter easterly wind, very strong and gusty wind, to push in…
    https://www.express.co.uk/news/weather/933108/Met-Office-weather-warning-uk-snow-BBC-news-weather-forecast-latest-travel

    how come the record cold was in the 80s and 90s?

    17 Mar: UK Sun: BABY IT’S COLD OUTSIDE How cold is it in the UK today, what’s the lowest temperature ever recorded in Britain and where is the Earth’s coldest place?
    Find out how cold it is today – and it compares to previous weather lows
    GETTING out of bed in the morning is proving a challenging task at the moment due to the bitter cold – particularly now we’ve reached the weekend…

    If you thought today was chilly then brace yourself, you haven’t seen anything yet.
    UK temperatures have been known to plunge to lows of -27.2 C, in Braemar, East Scotland, and Altnaharra in the North of Scotland.
    These lows were recorded on 10 January 1982 and 30 December 1995, respectively.
    The third lowest temperature ever recorded in the UK was clocked in Shawbury in the Midlands on 13 December 1981, when the mercury dipped to -25.2C…
    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5111740/uk-weather-temperature-coldest-place-on-earth/

    20

  • #

    I can suggest two more possible mechanisms.
    1) The ground around and under the Stevenson screen would have a higher albedo in the dry periods. While the Stevenson screen is protected a bit from the light above by a roof and gap then a ceiling, the floor is very different. Light coloured dead and or dying grass would be a bright reflection as would bare sand or dust.
    2) When the Stevenson screen is wet it is not too much different from the famous Australian food cooler, the Coolgardie safe. It worked a bit like an evaporative airconditioner with convection as the fan.

    122

    • #

      In Fi8 8 above the Bom thermometer readings can be seen to go way above the UAH values. 2013 was a year of very low rainfall in vast areas of the country.
      http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/awap/rain/archive.jsp?colour=colour&map=percent&year=2013&month=12&period=12month&area=nat

      This means the Stevenson screens look to me like they have heated the thermometers via high albedo. This in a year that would have a lot of dead high albedo grass that grew well in the previous wet years.
      Lance Pidgeon.

      80

    • #
      Philip Mulholland

      So evaporation causes cooling?
      Wow. Who’d have thunk that?

      160

      • #
        toorightmate

        Phillip,
        If you utter that too loudly, you will be nailed to a cross.

        90

      • #

        “So evaporation causes cooling?
        Wow. Who’d have thunk that?”
        So thermometer screens can be heated from underneath too. Who woulda thunk that?

        100

        • #
          PeterS

          They also can be heated from air conditioners, airport runways, traffic, etc. However, the “scientists” don’t appear to mind. After all, it helps to continue their funding scam.

          91

          • #
            Greg Cavanagh

            No they aren’t, the Stevenson screens out all the artificial temperatures and only records the Oooo-Natural temperature.

            The whole Climate Science field if full of Magical Thinking, me thinks.

            40

        • #
          Philip Mulholland

          Siliggy,

          You have proposed two possible mechanisms, 1. Albedo and 2. Evaporation.
          Both of these are credible processes, however one can only operate in the daylight, whereas the second can operate at anytime there is a hot drying wind. So now it is necessary do the science bit as per Richard Feynman and test both mechanisms against data to see if it is possible to determine which is the dominant process.

          30

          • #

            Thanks Philip. I like your plan but not your purpose. The reason is in your text. “anytime there is a hot drying wind.”. In a month of more hot drying wind days with intermitant rain, frost, snow etc one may dominate. In a month with more cloudless days the other may dominate.
            So rather than look for a winner it would be better to quanitfy each. What ever you do it would be very very important to use only daily data. Monthly or yearly averages could confuse the causes. Checking the other weather observations for each day against the thermometer data may indicate that both mechanisms are viable, significant, swap dominance and are not alone.

            30

    • #

      From this study it looks like the albedo warming of some types of screen may be only 10 degrees C. So sadly not a good pizza oven.
      https://www.researchgate.net/publication/44098340_Albedo_effect_on_radiative_errors_in_air_temperature_measurements

      90

  • #

    So clouds get in the way of sun. Hmmm. And this affects surface temperature. As does rain. These radical theorists attribute many low maxima to mere cloud cover and precipitation.

    Extraordinary claims! There are even murmurings that cloud and rain often increase minima, so that our notions of warm and cool are hopelessly distorted when based on min-max. This cannot be! The choicest spirits of elite climate science have been basing all kinds of important conclusions on min-max because of its perfect clarity and simplicity.

    Where are the models? The simulations? The peer reviewed literature? If this assault on min-max proved true it would mean that climate statistics are utterly superficial. It would mean that all statistics are at best superficial.

    It would mean the end of civilization as the joystick generation knows it.

    120

  • #
    RAH

    I have always wondered why the temperature data from radiosondes at pressures above the 400 hPa level (below about 23,000 feet ASL) are considered to be less accurate and thus “minimally acceptable”. If such data were in fact reasonably accurate the reason(s) for the discrepancy between satellite and surface station temperatures would probably have been explained long ago. It would be interesting to see the difference in readings if radiosondes were tethered about 500-1000 feet directly above surface stations.

    80

  • #
    Geoff Sherrington

    Bill Johnston was on to this for Australian stations years ago, just analysed the same effects in different ways. Science is good when different paths lead to compatible results.
    There is more to the story, though. Does rainfall not affect the UAH method as well? Large areas of wet ground should cause evaporation, to be seen by satellites as mild cooling. Unless the heat flow is in the opposite direction of incoming sunlight heats air that heats the ground after passing by the Stevenson thermometer. But surely these flow paths were worked out long ago.
    Many Australian sites recorded soil temperatures, some to several depths. Just as Dr Bill has used rainfall to normalise temperatures, can soil temperatures be used as well to help explain heterogeneities? The BOM prefer neighbouring stations to do this, maybe soil T is worth a deeper look.
    The big computer models class effects as forcings or feedbacks. Is rainfall evaporation a forcing on temperature? Should it be parameterised to give an adjusted temperature? For some applications, an evaporation corrected temperature would seem to have advantages over the raw one. If evaporation affects temperatures and CO2 is claimed also to affect temperatures, should both be treated together in modelling? How does one assign % attribution to each of the 2 processes?
    Not bad for settled science, uh? Geoff

    90

    • #

      Geoff, re rainfall affecting the UAH method — satellites must be collecting data from the bottom few kilometers of air. The evaporative cooling effect of rain would have to be localized closer to the ground don’t you think?

      42

      • #
        Peter C

        The evaporative cooling effect of rain would have to be localized closer to the ground don’t you think?

        Possibly,

        ROM may confirm this, but as a glider pilot, I prefer not to cross irrigation areas and areas of recent rain. The thermals shut down.

        If the thermals shut down the air at 2-3km height has blown in from somewhere else with the wind. Hence UAH may not detect the cooling effect unless the rain is very widespread, whereas it would be detected by ground stations.

        80

    • #
      Another Ian

      Geoff

      Take this up with your nearest friendly agricultural modeller.

      IIRC there is an approved methodology for estimating soil temperature from the surface temperature figures. Which obviously must kick this can below ground level.

      40

    • #

      Geoff. I think it makes more sens to use soil temperatures because anyone who has noticed there are days should have also noticed that air cools quickly when there are nights. If there is “global warming” it has to be the globe that warms not the feeble little bit of quickly cooling air around it.

      50

  • #
    Hivemind

    “Climate models didn’t predict this”

    No, they couldn’t. If they had been programmed with a realistic and easily forseeable result of rain, they would have to program in a negative feedback. That would have worked against the large positive feedback they had to program in to get the dangerous level of warming they needed. Otherwise no lucrative grants.

    101

  • #

    Send these links to the Australian Politicians:

    High School Climate Change Term Paper for Those Who Don’t Want to Follow the Herd
    https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2018/03/17/high-school-climate-change-term-paper-for-those-who-dont-want-to-follow-the-herd/

    Climate Change Global Warming Homework to Piss Off Your Teacher
    https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2018/03/16/climate-change-global-warming-homework-to-piss-off-your-teacher/

    Climate Change Science Fair Project; CO2 and Global Warming
    https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/global-warming-science-fair-project-co2-and-global-warming/

    101

  • #

    reminiscent of Wheeler’s “Gravity tells matter how to move; matter tells gravity how to curve.” One can’t get the math right without dealing with both.

    60

  • #
    RicDre

    It might be hard to model this effect if the size of your grid cells are 100 km by 100 km. It sounds like more parameterizations are needed.

    41

  • #
    TdeF

    This all shows the folly of trying to talk about meaningful surface temperatures across the whole planet, pole to pole, across the entire year, night and day to 0.001C. What this demonstrates is that gross changes less than 1C are meaningless in practical terms let alone the history of such changes. Significant effects like local rainfall are potentially endless and raise the serious question of what you are trying to measure let alone how you are measuring it. Raise all the Stevenson screens by one meter and the results would be different again.

    Remember the core allegation is man made, CO2 driven global warming. So far in a few decades the correlation with CO2 has been busted. That should be enough to end the insanity of furious windmill building at our expense. However it continues, without reason, without science, without justification. As for climate models, does anyone seriously believe them at this level of detail?

    Besides, Prof Weiss has completely explained the gross temperature movement for the last 2500 year with one sun cycle and the induced PDO. He did this with mathematics, not a priori computer models. That great and simple analysis predicts a global and rapid drop in temperatures over the next few years. Surely that is what we have seen in 2017 . The Michael Mann hockey stick is in the faux science bin, along with most of the political science of the IPCC.

    What Tom Quirk has demonstrated is that anyone can punch holes in the data variations under 0.5C. That’s no surprise. There are probably scores of other effects, all involving water and not CO2. Water and sunshine are the core drives of climates around the world on the water planet. Water in all its forms from vapour to liquid to ice and snow. The determination to blame CO2 is post cold war manipulation coupled with massive political and financial opportunism led by socialist governments and bankers like Goldmann Sachs.

    If man made Global Warming was real science, you could not poke holes in the data so easily. The data is simply not meaningful to 0.5C and never was.

    153

    • #
      TdeF

      I am not being critical of Dr. Quirk’s analysis. It is really interesting and insightful careful work. My point for Australia is that when you have 500 full time scientists in the BOM and another 350 Climate Scientists in the CSIRO at PhD level who have done temperature and rainfall analysis for a full time living in the search for proof of Climate Change, the clear correlation between rainfall and temperature should not have gone unnoticed. What on earth have they been doing at our vast expense? Or is that a silly question?

      141

      • #
        TdeF

        The correlation between rainfall and differences between ground measurements and satellite measurements.

        50

        • #
          Bob in Castlemaine

          TdeF I think your 850 government scientists are all too busy trying to “prove” catastrophic man-made global warming exists to be bothered with such mundane matters. Just as these people don’t want to part with the secrets of ACORN or divulge their tax payer funded climate research to heretics e.g. the Phil Jones of EA CRU response to Warwick Hughes some years back – “Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.”
          It’s not that these people don’t get it, on the contrary I think it’s more a case that they “get it” only too well.

          80

      • #
        robert rosicka

        Tdef it’s a bit like an oil company scientist who invents perpetual motion or instant oil just add water ,they would no longer have a job .
        This is why the science will never be settled and all these Phd’s in yuk as brainy as they may be pretend they can’t count to 14 and never mention Co2 has been high when we have had iceages .

        50

      • #
        RickWill

        You have the mistaken view that CSIRO Climate Scientists look at measured data.

        Climate Scientists determine what measured data should be by using Tuned, Coupled Climate Models. The BoM scientists and technicians are charged with homogenising the measured data to match the CSIRO models.

        This new knowledge provides another factor that the CSIRO can homogenise for so will be well received.

        81

  • #
    michael hart

    So the thermodynamics of the phase-change of water evaporating affect local thermometer measurements near the ground. Who’d have thunk it?

    Actually there are a few people around the web who regularly point out things like that, along with how the Arctic Pole still remains at the freezing point of seawater during peak melt season. But, curiously, they seem not to be the professional alarmist climate ‘scientists’.

    In many such instances, the surface temperature records are measuring the effects of water, not carbon dioxide. It beggars belief that this is even still an issue. Why would anyone take such methods seriously as a measurement of global temperatures?

    Of course, using temperature anomalies allows adjusters to evade many such difficulties. Anomalies regularly wipe the slate clean, allowing a ‘fresh’ lie to be told where necessary. After all, if they actually gave cumulative adjusted absolute-temperature figures which were clearly well above freezing then people could quickly spot the lie when there was still snow/ice on the ground. Far easier to tell someone that it has risen x-degrees in y-decades, but without knowing the absolute temperature it is impossible to tell if ice should have melted or not.

    120

    • #
      robert rosicka

      Good point but as every climate scientist knows Co2 traps heat but only radiates the heat in a downward direction ! They should make overhead heaters out of this stuff they’d make a fortune .

      52

  • #
    Graham Richards

    Sorry we can’t accept logical results, especially those that don’t agree with the warming religion.

    91

  • #
    PeterS

    What about the elephant in the room? The modelled temperatures are now so far from reality of both satellite and ground based measurements it’s not funny. In real science the models would have been scrapped some time ago, yet the hoax continues. This proves it never was about the science but about perpetrating a scam – the biggest of all time. People have gone to prison for perpetrating smaller scams.

    90

  • #
    Ken Stewart

    Jo, Lance, Geoff, Bill, Tom:

    I reported on this in my post of 20 November 2015. See
    https://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2015/11/20/why-are-surface-and-satellite-temperatures-different/

    I found that: “over three quarters of the difference between surface and atmospheric temperature anomalies is due to rainfall variation alone.” I used 12 month means because after rain there is soil moisture, vegetation growth, and higher humidity for many months.

    132

  • #
    rk

    The statement that rainfall controls temperature is not correct. Whilst the temperature will certainly be cooler around and under clouds with rain, it is the pressure systems that control temperature and from those pressure systems the surface that those air masses travel over. In Australia it is the frontal systems and S.E. Trades that bring rain and they are caused by the high and low pressure systems moving west/east across and below the continent. At certain times of the year with large highs there will be fine weather for days with no cloud or rain and yet the temperature will vary all the time as the pressure varies at each location. One only has to look at the QNH at different weather stations at the same time of the day to see this. And the change in pressure also causes changes in windspeed which again affects the temperature.

    71

    • #
      rk

      Likewise in the north of Australia, it is the pressure systems that bring the monsoons or wet season and the resulting cyclone and storm development across the top end of the country.

      50

    • #
      rk

      The comment by Tom Quirk above that ” this analysis shows that rainfall modifies surface temperature in Australia” is valid but it does not CAUSE it. Cloud cover is more important as you can have large amounts of cloud cover and no rain but it will still help reduce the temperature, again all caused by the pressure systems and the air mass picking up moisture over the sea. There is then different types of cloud both low and high level. Cumulus at low level will be far more dense than alto cumulus or cirrocumulus and far more likely to produce rain, in fact cirrocumulus will never have rain because at that altitude it will be ice crystals. Here is a link to the pressure systems and wind over the globe that bears out my comments. If you look at the isobaric charts on BOM right now you can see a cold front about to cross the coast in S.A. and Victoria – https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/1000hPa/orthographic=-243.87,8.27,333

      70

  • #
    Ruairi

    In Australia, the bulk of the rain,
    Falls in summer across its terrain,
    With less heat above ground,
    Where temp. readings are found,
    Which the surface through drying would gain.

    80

  • #
    Kinky Keith

    Sort of off topic.

    Today I thought I’d do something different and looked up the news.

    One headline that caught my eye was about the topic in this post: rain.

    It seems that sometime in the last 10 years it rained in Tathra.

    That’s not so unusual but it seems that all levels of government responsible for our safety, federal, state and local, forgot, or ignored the fact that rain brings growth of native vegetation around houses and in this case, Tathra.

    The untouchable ” native growth ” caught fire and burned down seventy homes.

    After getting through most of last century with a workable relationship with the bush and fire and homes the vast majority of Australians were safe from fire, but now that is no longer the case.
    The PC approach to fire safety is to now put your faith in GAIA.

    Thoroughly preventable fires are now far too commonplace and have only one cause: Ignorance.

    KK

    102

    • #
      TdeF

      My neighbour has another point which supports this. When we had a less precious view of dead wood, leaf litter, broken branches and overgrowth, we cleared. Farmers understood what was needed.

      Now in many cases that is controlled by a government intent on preventing all fires. Governments he argues are only good at stopping things. So when fires come, as they surely do, the results are devastating. Houses and lives lost and the area devastated.

      Instead of a quick fire and regrowth, the fires are so intense the trees are killed and the forest takes a decade or more to recover. The next year, instead of a canopy of new bright green, the trees are still dead. Then the topsoil is lost with rains and habitats destroyed, perhaps permanently. So the nett result of all this caring and preserving is devastation in an ecosystem which used to be very adapted to regular fire.

      I have read that in the new age of mankind in Australia, there are far few fires. When they come, they are now far worse. The tragic Canberra fire where a whole suburb was incinerated was due in part to residents refusal to allow clearing of the excess growth and litter. Management of fuel load everywhere was inadequate.

      As they have learned in Tahiti where they learned from Pacific Islanders that the Crown of Thorns starfish invasion was natural and beneficial, we need to understand how to cope with a country where the plants use fire to propagate, unlike Europe.

      92

      • #
        Another Ian

        The way it seems here

        Urban (including fire control central) “A fire! Put it out before it burns something”

        Rural “We aim to burn something before we put it out”

        70

      • #
        Kinky Keith

        That’s it TdeF, it’s the intensity which is related to the modern obsession with having a low frequency of fires.

        The modern authorities make it almost impossible to carry out regular low intensity backburns and the result as seen locally has been horrifying over the last couple of years.

        Local councils must have thought that the long absence of fire s meant that they had done the right thing.
        Unfortunately, with nearly ten years since the last fire, the bush on the northern side of Glenrock lagoon went up one day. It was loaded ready to go.
        It was a big fire, as was the one over the hill where a nursing home was threatened.

        Looking north from Newcastle, across the flats, was the most recent big out of control fire near Williamtown. Several days of sheer panic with chances of wildlife escaping reduced by the extent and intensity.

        Proper maintenance burns during low risk periods are just common sense but in the modern pc era that’s just not allowed.

        KK

        92

        • #
          yarpos

          I live in the area of the 2009 Black Saturday fires in VIC. Controlled (mostly) burns are now a feature of every autumn and spring (not just here but across the State). Sounds like some other States havent seen enough carnage yet to learn the lessons and do something in a systemic way.

          One area where we fail is the urban fringe, there are kilometres of suburbs buried in gum trees and undergrowth/litter (Eltham/Warrandyte). If a fire takes off in there on a windy day it will be Canberra on steroids.

          30

          • #
            Annie

            It’s bad enough around here but there is absolutely no way I’d live in Eltham, Warrandyte, The Dandenongs, Kangaroo Ground, etc. As far as I can see, they are disasters waiting to happen. A friend in Warrandyte had a close shave a couple of years back. They were lucky that time. Even within the city area there are danger spots; think Blackburn, south of the railway line.

            10

  • #
    Hasbeen

    The opposite effect occurs in winter. In wet winters here in south east Queensland, the minimum temperature is considerably higher.

    I am well out of town, in an area where there is one house to about 40 acres.

    Our lowest winter temperature over 26 years has varied from a low of -6C to a low of +5C

    These temperatures have a very close correlation to the rainfall in the previous wet season, & particularly in the later half of it.

    Some years with a late wet, with rainfall well above average in April or May have produced the warmest winters, suggesting the level of moisture in the ground near the surface, has a large effect on minimum temperature.

    I have been propagating Hibiscus here for many years, & adjusted my frost protection of my bushes for next years cuttings depending on the late summer rainfall.

    The coldest winter with frosts down to -6 was after 2 consecutive years where our total rainfall for the year was under 500mm, against the average of 945mm, with dry autumns.

    With this years late wet season, I am predicting a warmish winter around here.

    90

    • #
      el gordo

      ‘I am predicting a warmish winter around here.’

      The easterly breezes are new, I’m forecasting a cooler than usual winter for South East Qld because the subtropical ridge has lost its intensity and blocking highs have become the norm.

      40

  • #
    Hasbeen

    Note on above.

    With only a quarter of a century of data, I may be making entirely the wrong assumption on this, but so far it has worked for me.

    60

  • #
    Roy Hogue

    Mystery solved: Rain means satellite and surface temps are different. Climate models didn’t predict this…

    Is there anything climate models did predict? I don’t know of anything. They didn’t even predict the huge waste of money they caused.

    100

    • #
      PeterS

      Yes they did predict correctly one thing. The gullibility of many if not most people. So many have fallen for and are still falling for the hoax. It is so widespread it has become “fact” in many schools and other places despite the real scientific evidence to the contrary.

      51

      • #
        Roy Hogue

        Peter,

        Good point and I stand corrected. But then, sucking the whole world into their scheme was probably their only point in the first place. That gave them power to control people and nations, power to bleed everyone for money, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

        It’s certainly the longest running farce ever. Too bad it isn’t a Broadway play. It could be permanent employment for hundreds of actors and good for a laugh to thousands of theater patrons. Instead it’s become permanent employment for the incompetent in science and government.

        30

    • #
      ROM

      Worse than the money and wealth destruction that the climate models and climate modellers and assorted climate experts.; Flannery anybody?.is the destruction of political and social cohesion and the immense social costs in lives and poorer living standards for all but the elites which have been a direct consequence of the near divine belief in the Oracle of Delphi output of the utterly useless in real life, climate models.

      However I have noted over the last few months a very subtle change taking place in the language and phraseology of both skeptics and believers of CAGW.

      The skeptic’s language, their phraseology, the structuring of their sentences are in many cases beginning to reflect a post CAGW / Global warming / “Carbon” catastrophe,” we are almost over that” attitude and don’t give a damn about the whole thing anymore except to keep on trying to tell the rabid, rabbiting on, Silly Filly’s of this world just how ignorant and behind the times and particularly how far behind the science they really are becoming.

      Meanwhile the rabidly hypocritical , rabbiting on, CAGW catastrophe promoting, [ they rarely if ever believe their own propoganda because if they actually did believe it , they would change their entire public behaviour and demeanour ] are becoming shrilier and shriller in their propaganda with then promotion of ever greater extremes of force be used against any skeptics or apostates who refuse to bow on bended knee to te climate model loracles and the self promoters who rely on the climate models to reinforce their own bogotry against anybody who does not think and believe as they themselves believe.

      40

      • #
        ROM

        Fat Finger syndrome there;
        Accidently hit the Comment button.

        The final part of the climate triumvirate is the public which is switching off of the whole debacle as year after year, catastrophes are predicted withe the apparent impramatur of the infallible climate models only to see such catastrophes, like christmas wrappings, promising much, very thin with lots of lurid colouring and swept into the waste basket as soon as the reality is unwrapped.
        The public not only here in Australia but now increasingly in Germany, fired up by the gross intrusion of wind turbines into pristine natural areas and parks and across the rest of Europe are beginning to ask the hard questions of the politicians and climate persuaders, what have you given us for all the deprivation and hardship you are imposing on us to supposedly” prevent” something, not even to “stop” something already happening but to carry out a furturistic and therefore “prevent” something unpredictable in the true reality from happening.

        Climate models have about the same chances of predicting future climate patterns as does a geology model of predicting the precise moment when a particular rock will fall in the mountains and the size of the avalanch it will possibly set off.

        51

      • #
        Another Ian

        ROM Around this area

        A visitor to Brisbane this week has the following observations:-

        1. Usually weather and climate don’t feature in Brisbane conversations. This week they have.

        2. The feature of note is that global warming didn’t get a mention but the projected cooling is the subject.

        40

  • #
    pat

    unrelated, but focussing on minor differences to make big claims, major MSM coverage:

    34mins38secs to 37mins23secs: BBC’s Gareth Mitchell asks Copley about recent Nature study on Great Barrier Reef, involving PH levels:

    AUDIO: 17 Mar: BBC The Science Hour
    The Science Hour was presented by Gareth Mitchell with comments from Jon Copley, Associate Professor of Ocean Exploration at the University of Southampton.
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csvt17

    what Copley discusses:

    14 Mar: BBC: Rising carbon dioxide levels impair coral growth
    By Mary Halton
    The team replicated the ocean acidity levels that are likely to be present by the middle of this century.
    Pre-industrial-era oceans had a pH of 8.2. Current measurements at the site are 8.1, and the acidified water introduced for the study had a value of approximately 8.0, marking a significant impact on the ecosystem from a relatively minor change.
    http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43391388

    theirABC loved it:

    15 Mar: ABC: Acidic oceans could slow coral reef growth by a third
    ABC Science By Joanna Khan
    Dr Albright and team used acidity levels that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change expects will occur under a business as usual emissions scenario by 2050.
    “We wanted to do something that’s relevant,” Dr Albright said, adding that the large impact seen resulted from a very tiny change in acidity — a reduction of pH by 0.1…

    These new findings build on previous research from the same team. In 2016, they exposed a reef to lower levels of acidification to reflect pre-industrial conditions…

    To learn more about the ocean and climate change tune into The Science Show this week to hear about an idea of burying carbon dioxide in the ocean at a rate 500 times faster than we once thought possible — without dissolving the Great Barrier Reef.

    Dive Mag: Ocean Acidification Due to Elevated Levels of Carbon Dioxide Prohibits Reef Growth
    The current pH level of the world’s oceans averages at 8.1, a reduction from the pH level of 8.2 associated with the pre-industrial era.
    To perform the experiment, the team of researchers constructed a tank, filled with seawater, which was saturated with carbon dioxide, and released it over 400 square metres of reef near One Tree Island, in the southern part of the Great Barrier Reef. This reduced the pH level of the surrounding seawater to just under 8.0, which is the predicted pH level of the ocean by 2060, should atmospheric CO2 continue to increase at its current rate.

    The researchers, led by Dr Rebecca Albright, assistant curator at the California Academy of Science and Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution of Science, found that the rate of calcification decreased by as much as 30 per cent, a worrying figure based on only a slight reduction in pH levels. Dr Albright said that this was much greater than the 15 per cent found in previous studies, but also noted that those studies had been conducted on individual corals in a laboratory, and not on an open reef…

    The new research follows a 2016 experiment by the same team in which they increased the alkalinity of the sea water surrounding a coral reef to reflect the pH level of 8.2 from the pre-industrial era. There, they found that the rate of calcification increased with the change in the sea water’s chemical composition…

    ‘Coral reefs offer economic opportunities to their surrounding communities from fishing and tourism,’ said Dr Caldeira. ‘But for me, the reef is a beautiful and diverse outpouring of life that we are harming with our carbon dioxide emissions. For the denizens of the reef, there’s not a moment to lose in building an energy system that doesn’t dump its waste into the sky or sea.’

    25 Feb: TheConversation: Ocean acidification is already harming the Great Barrier Reef’s growth
    by Kennedy Wolfe, PhD Candidate, University of Sydney, Maria Byrne, Professor of Developmental & Marine Biology, University of Sydney
    Disclosure statement:
    Kennedy Wolfe works for the University of Sydney. He is completing his PhD with a government-funded Australian Postgraduate Award (APA) scholarship.
    Maria Byrne receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation She is affiliated with the Sydney Institute of Marine Science.

    We and our colleagues, led by Rebecca Albright and Ken Caldeira from the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California, carried out the first experimental manipulation of seawater chemistry in a natural coral reef ecosystem. Previous climate change studies on coral reefs have been done either in the laboratory or in closed-system tanks on the reef…

    However, it was hard to pinpoint exactly how much of the decline was due to acidification, and how much was caused by other human-induced stresses such as ocean warming, pollution and overfishing…

    To answer this question, we manipulated the pH of seawater flowing over a reef flat at One Tree Island in the southern Great Barrier Reef. By adding sodium hydroxide (an alkali), we brought the reef’s pH closer to levels estimated for pre-industrial times, based on estimates of atmospheric carbon dioxide from that era. In doing so, we pushed the reef “back in time”, to find out how fast it would have been growing before human-induced acidification began.

    It was clear from our results that reef calcification was around 7% higher under pre-industrial conditions than those experienced today.

    Most other ocean acidification experiments manipulate seawater conditions based on the low pH levels predicted for coming decades, to understand the potential effects of future ocean conditions. But we have shown that present-day conditions are already taking their toll on corals…

    As our colleague Ken Caldeira has pointed out, the only real and lasting solution is to make deep, rapid cuts in our carbon dioxide emissions. Otherwise the next century could be one without coral reefs.

    14 Mar: Nature: Letter: Carbon dioxide addition to coral reef waters suppresses net community calcification
    Rebecca Albright, Yuichiro Takeshita, David A. Koweek, Aaron Ninokawa, Kennedy Wolfe, Tanya Rivlin, Yana Nebuchina, Jordan Young, Ken Caldeira
    https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25968

    30

  • #

    The Climate Clowns have no idea of how Earth’s excess entropy, (sensible heat) may be spontaneously dispatched via EMR to yonder elsewhere\when, violating the idiot ‘conservation of energy’ (never about this Earth!)

    Alan Kendall says: 15 Mar 18:07:27
    Ron 14 Mar 18:16:45 pm
    “Is an electric current flowing through the floor?”
    How would anyone know that never attempts to know\understand, nor will admit ‘I do not know’? Self appointed academics anyone?
    What is the space mass contained in a 1 km² by 1 light-yr column (collimated) of what you think is this Universe in any direction? What is the EMR absorption coefficient in any wave band? What is the radiative attenuation by that mass? Dark mass/energy, HA-ha-ha-ho-ho!!

    23

    • #
      Kinky Keith

      Will,

      don’t you read Stephen Hawking’s books about tha yuniverse?

      I would roughly, mind you, very roughly, estimate that columnar mass at close to zero.

      ?

      KK

      And that estimate did not account for drk mttr.

      20

      • #

        KK, “And that estimate did not account for drk mttr.”
        Algebra rather than spirituality Keith!
        Consider even 0.1 H2 molecule/km³ in that column, of one light year. Please calculate that mass! Please consider the same mass of FE56 in that volume. What is the difference in dark mass\dark energy in that very same direction. How does that stuff interact within this Earth’s atmosphere? 🙂

        41

        • #
          Kinky Keith

          Mass of H2 in one column is 3.141*10-11 grams.

          Three, hundred billionths of a gram.

          As I said: pretty much nothing. Is that real, does that include Claire deLune and the planets?

          🙂

          20

          • #

            Mass of H2 in one column is 3.141*10-11 grams. Three, hundred billionths of a gram As I said: pretty much nothing. Is that real, does that include Claire deLune and the planets?

            Yea, tis only 3×10^8 Km/sec x 3600 hr/sec x 8600 hr/yr! Somptimes I gets confused wid da gosinta vs goesonta; especially wid dat damned imaginary PI.
            GOD is so unforgivably correct, but always nice, with another cold beer for you, if trying to understand! 🙂

            21

          • #

            How many light years for the current claimed radius of this Universe? 2 grams per MOL for decedent H2! Have you been deliberately Scammed by your academia? 🙂

            31

            • #
              Graeme Bird

              Indeed. They have no idea on that question. Starting with the makeup of stars and including the distance of galaxies. So cluelessness on the components necessary to make that calculation.

              30

            • #
              Graeme Bird

              I misunderstood what you were on about.

              30

              • #

                you are not the first.

                Doesn’t condone racism though.

                20

              • #
                Kinky Keith

                There have been two instances of racism, strangely the targets have always been seen as oppressed and oppressor.

                20

              • #
                Graeme Bird

                Don’t embolden him Annie. If he’s a gatekeeper trying to get in the way of my project (to expose junk science) you are only going to give him confidence.

                11

            • #
              Graeme Bird

              Hey give it a rest thought-Nazi. Holy ****. Your name gives you away as a ….. sissy. But try and act like a man in public why don’t you. Have some dignity. Mardi Gras, where you people all dance around like babies .. thats over. That was a few weeks ago. Time to wear the big boy pants again.

              22

              • #
                Annie

                That is unpleasant of you to write like that…please don’t do it. Most people on this blog know how to behave themselves and are polite.

                21

  • #
    Graeme Bird

    NO HAWKING Kinky Keith … Hawking has been dead a long time and in his alleged public output he was completely full of **** . I have been away a few years. But what the public takes to be the greenhouse effect is really just about two things 1. Air pressure 2. The latent thermal energy in the phase change of water.

    If this claim sets of your *** detector, you may be thinking about Venus. But Venus is a new planet, and heated from the inside out. It is true however, that its high air pressure, and the effects of CO2 will hinder the rate at which Venus can cool. But to apply that to the earth would be a case of Wrong-Way Corriganism since we are heated from the sun. Whereas Venus is losing heat to the outside. Now it may be the case that all planets emit more thermal energy then they receive. Part of this is the electrical energy that we receive being converted to thermal energy and then readmitted. This ought not be controversial since everyone agrees we have an electrical field. But in the case of Venus the heat emitted and the heat profile of the atmosphere goes way beyond this.

    So on earth if you contemplate the Sahara, Singapore, and Death Valley, The Atherton Tablelands, Chang Mai …. if you think about the conditions enough you will see that it all comes down to air pressure and the latent heat of water phase changes.

    [Graeme, please stop using crass language in every single comment. – Jo]

    32

    • #
      Kinky Keith

      Mr. Bird,

      I have read one of Mr Hawking’s books. Most of it was set at local high school physics standard and the rest wasn’t convincing. As for dark matter I haven’t heard anyone give a convincing outline of energy distribution in the universe.

      Most astrophysicists trying to explain the universe would probably be better off doing something else more useful.

      You seem to be jumping at things and jumping in all directions.

      Not a good look.

      30

      • #
        Graeme Bird

        Not a good look? Attempt not to be an idiot man. This is science. Not fashion.

        Do you have an intelligent question or are you just going to sit there with egg on your face?

        24

    • #
      AndyG55

      “I have been away a few years.”

      When did you get released ??

      10

  • #
    Graeme Bird

    “And that estimate did not account for drk mttr.” Dark matter is just more science ***. Gravity is a MECHANISM and cannot be described in its entirety by a set of formulae, given to us by a gay virgin hippy, several hundred years ago. The oligarchical moratorium on rational gravity research, and the deification of formulae (and quantum “principles) over proposed mechanisms …. this has spat out dark matter and dark energy.

    But its not real. Its not science. Its just more *** from the usual suspects.

    If I am banned you will never get to understand how the universe really works.

    [If you understand how the universe works you can probably figure out why your comments are being edited and are slow to approve. 😉 Jo]

    43

  • #
    Graeme Bird

    “The Climate Clowns have no idea of how Earth’s excess entropy, (sensible heat) may be spontaneously dispatched via EMR to yonder elsewhere\when, violating the idiot ‘conservation of energy’ (never about this Earth!)”

    Excellent work. Things have changed. I’ve been all over the internet under dozens of identities rubbishing the conservation of energy. If energy were conserved there would be no energy anywhere ever. Conservation laws tend to be logical impossibilities.

    22

    • #

      Excellent work. Things have changed. I’ve been all over the internet under dozens of identities rubbishing the conservation of energy. If energy were conserved there would be no energy anywhere ever. Conservation laws tend to be logical impossibilities.

      Who da fu*k are you? We groveling Sloths accept our no\little knowledge, but gladly eat those with lesser knowledge. Mmmmn protein,good! Now what?
      All the best! perhaps!-will-

      41

      • #
        Graeme Bird

        If energy could neither be created nor destroyed there would be no energy. Now am I going too fast for you hey dummy?

        32

        • #

          Chomp, spitout, nasty, wheris my mommy!

          41

          • #
            Graeme Bird

            Admit that I am right and you are wrong dopey. Because it cannot be denied.

            A physicist claiming that matter cannot be created, nor destroyed, is as full of **** as a chocolate rabbi angrily proposing a conservation of chocolate law. Lets have you admit I am right.

            24

  • #

    For KK and others!
    Please consider this lonely Earth planet!! as GOD’s construct to totally isolate critters so insane that they believe they have ‘some’ of GOD’s knowledge. Just what would such a construct be like? Welcome to Earth as so constructed! You cannot leave to spread such insanity to God’s Universe!

    32

  • #

    Sometime I wonder if climate scientists ever venture outdoors while conscious.

    30

  • #
    pat

    18 Mar: ClimateDepot: Marc Morano: Gore travels to Dubai, warns: ‘Global warming’ triggering ‘flying rivers, rain bombs’
    Gore issues new climate warning: Bizarre weather such as “flying rivers” and “rain bombs” are just some of the recent effects of climate change, warned former US vice-president Al Gore at the Global Education and Skills Forum (GESF) in Dubai on Sunday…global weather is becoming “extreme” and “disruptive”, mainly because of global warming, Gore explained.
    http://www.climatedepot.com/2018/03/18/gore-doubles-down-global-warming-triggering-flying-rivers-rain-bombs/

    30

  • #

    Besides evaporation, rainfall introduces other plausible mechanisms that can influence local, observed (near-)surface temperatures.

    The first is that liquid water has a high specific heat than soil so it takes more heat to increase it than dry soil.
    Nominally cool rain may infiltrate the soil, reducing the temperature of the soil below the immediate surface, resulting in less intense outward radiation of heat conducted back up to the surface. The thermal conductivity of soil is quite variable; but the convective action of water through the soil can (re)move much larger amounts of heat more rapidly by infiltration.

    The wet soil has a different surface albedo to dry soil. And a different emissivity. Drastically different in some cases. The radiated power thus changes; less heat is trapped to be available for conduction into the atmosphere.

    Another aspect is when there is run-off either on the surface or within soil resulting in convective heat transfer away from the measuring station.

    These are probably just a few aspects that scratch the surface; immensely complex to model physically. So many mechanisms, variables and boundary conditions.

    Maybe Ag. Scientists can chime in on other energy storage and transfer aspects. Soil temperature seems to be very, very important to growing stuff. I’m blinkered by my Engineering education.

    40

    • #

      Bernd Felsche March 19,18:16:35 pm

      Besides evaporation, rainfall introduces other plausible mechanisms that can influence local, observed (near-)surface temperatures.

      Can you or anyone else define ‘temperature’ as anything having physical property, rather than insane conjecture? The concept of mass ‘sensible heat’ remains tied to such conjecture. The elusive word ‘heat’ (energy) remains somehow the accumulation of ‘power’ as sensible heat. Such is of power of imaginary “sensible heat” an extremely weak lossy mass storage (accumulation) of “power” (‘force x distance’ = energy.
      Compare other power storage; atmospheric water evaporation lifting mass, compressing spring, charging battery.! Do these self appointed Climate Clowns have anything of worth to offer Earthlings except fodder for the Solient Green Machine? 🙂

      31

      • #
        Kinky Keith

        Will,
        I know that you are obsessed with the idea that all of us must acknowledge the primal fact that our atmosphere derives its energy status from the compressive forces produced on that air by gravity.

        I so acknowledge.

        But on the second day, God said, this is too easy, so he spun the Earth so that the atmosphere was exposed to the Sun’s rays..

        Now this really messed things up and air rushed towards the East to fill up the void left by air that had earlier been heated, expanded and risen.

        Bernd has been describing a situation of some practical importance to those growing our food and it always helps to have better grip on such things. I doubt that any green scientist is going to be too worried about this, it’s far too useful.

        🙂

        KK

        20

  • #
    pat

    19 Mar: 9News: Malcolm Turnbull ‘disappointed’ the Greens linked Tathra blaze to climate change
    By Lane Calcutt
    “I’m disappointed that the Greens would try to politicise an event like this,” the Prime Minister told reporters, speaking from the fire-ravaged town this afternoon.
    “You can’t attribute any particular event, whether it’s a flood or fire or a drought or a storm – to climate change.”

    As Tathra residents waited to hear if they’d lost their homes, businesses, and or livelihoods, Greens leader Richard Di Natale rose in the Senate and linked the catastrophic bush fires to climate change.
    “We are seeing climate change in our every day lives have an impact on the risk of bush fires in our communities,” he said.
    “We can’t any longer be complacent about risk of bush fires once the end of summer comes around.
    “Right now, we’d normally be talking about the end of the bush fire season.
    “And yet here we are with bush fires racing through my home state and indeed my community.”

    But Malcolm Turnbull said such intense fires are part and parcel of life in Australia.
    “We are the land of droughts and flooding rains, we’re the land of bushfires,” he said.
    “Nature hurls her worst at Australians – always has and always will.”
    “We saw from the air how the fire had not just leapt over a river, but had leapt over streets of houses, apparently without any damage, and then landed on a group of houses which had been burnt out. So, you can see how unpredictable it is.
    “We have an environment which has extremes. Bushfires are part of Australia, as, indeed, are droughts and floods.”

    Coalition Senator, Ian Macdonald, called the speech “hypocritical and a fraud”.
    “These events happened before. They will happen in the future,” he said…
    https://www.9news.com.au/national/2018/03/19/11/18/greens-link-climate-change-to-bush-fires

    19 Mar: Residents Fury: Entire Town Burns In Bushfire As ABC Radio Plays Footy Match
    By B&T Magazine
    Residents of the small NSW coastal town of Tathra – devastated by a weekend bushfire – have unleashed on ABC Radio after the public broadcaster chose to cover an NRL match rather that alert residents of the catastrophic dangers.
    Thankfully, residents evacuated in time and there has been no reports of loss of life.

    However, residents are fuming that the local ABC Radio continued to play coverage of the Raiders-Knights NRL match rather than report on the danger to resident’s homes.
    ABC Radio has a requirement as a community broadcaster to send out emergency alerts for things like floods or bushfires.
    Like many small regional towns, Tathra is reportedly a communications “black spot”. One local resident tweeting: “Tathra 2018. Power goes out. No internet no TV. Smell smoke. Helicopter starts water bombing behind the house. There is no mobile coverage in Tathra. It’s a black spot. Radio is playing NRL. Decide to leave.”

    The ABC has not yet made any comment on its decision to play coverage of the NRL match.
    http://www.bandt.com.au/media/residents-fury-whole-town-burns-bushfire-abc-radio-plays-footy-match

    30

  • #
    pat

    comment in moderation re: 19 Mar: 9News: Malcolm Turnbull ‘disappointed’ the Greens linked Tathra blaze to climate change

    40

  • #
  • #
    Peter C

    As so often before I am inclined to comment first and then read the article more thoroughly later.

    I have read it through now.

    I would say that the correlation of rainfall and reduced surface temperatures might be even stronger if the Australian continent could be divided into North and South. The North of Australia is tropical and gets rain in summer and is dry in winter. In the south (temperate) the rainfall is more evenly spread but we tend to get higer winter rainfall with a dry summer (including bushfires).

    The UAH temperature series seems to treat Australia as one entity whereas it should be two, North and South. Then it might be more clearly seen that drought years in the South East are associated with HOT Weather!

    In 2012 I attened a conference of the Australian Environmental Foundation in Sydney.

    Dr David Stockwell gave a paper; “Is the temperature or temperature record rising?” in which he made the point that Dry years are Hot Years!
    http://www.australianenvironment.org/testimonials/
    Unfortunately the text of his paper is not on line. 🙁

    40

  • #
    Graeme Bird

    There is no validity to averaging the temperature of a revolving planet to derive a 33 degree “anomaly.” If we had a flat planet, always noon, almost twice as far from the sun as our own, and with the same air pressure ….. if it had water it would be cooler than if it didn’t have water. Because evaporation is a powerful refrigerant, and water vapour is lighter than air. Plus the latent heat of evaporation is typically going to be transported well above the ground. And the clouds (as well as the water vapour) will block incoming radiation.

    But as soon as we go to a rotating planet then it becomes hard to get a net effect to the presence of all this water. There is no 33 degrees anomaly and this alleged anomaly has not taken into account transmuted electrical energy coming in. But even aside from that, if the earth is rotating and you have all this water, this water can go on absorbing a great deal of thermal energy with only a small increase in temperature. The direction of the movement of thermal energy is dependent on temperature and not on some total amount of energy already absorbed.

    So one wonders whether someone could give the trace gas hysterics a new starting point. They don’t even have an apriori starting point.

    In Chiang Mai I used to go to this roadside restaurant near San Kam Pang. It had a whole lot of water running down the shade cloth and on hot days the refrigerant effect was amazing. You would come off the road, your feet almost burning through your shoes, you get under this big canopy and its about the strongest air conditioning I’d ever experienced.

    62

    • #
      Philip Mulholland

      There is no validity to averaging the temperature of a revolving planet to derive a 33 degree “anomaly.”

      I totally agree with you.
      Climate Science is built on a set of failed models of atmospheric physics that starts with a model of the illumination and radiative heating of a flat surface. The failure starts right there. The solid surface of a terrestrial planet forms a round orb and not a flat plane and so all planets orbiting a single star have a heated lit side and an unlit dark side that can cool by thermal radiation to space.

      A one-dimensional static model, such as the process of surface heating a column of nitrogen gas that cannot cool by gaseous thermal radiation to space, is also patently absurd as each planet with a gaseous atmosphere (of whatever composition) will always possess an unlit night side hemisphere that can thermally radiate to space from the solid ground surface. Consequently one-dimensional models used to prove that in the absence of greenhouse gases an atmosphere is isothermal are false because all such models ignore the existence of the fundamental and necessary second dark side column of air present on the night-time hemisphere. It is the absence of the second column of surface cooled air in the one-dimensional column model of a static atmospheric that fails to account for the 2-dimensional dynamic structure of atmospheric circulation cells, such as the Hadley Cell, which will exist on all terrestrial planets that undergo dominant surface heating on the lit day-side and also undergo the surface radiative cooling that predominates on the corresponding dark night-side hemisphere.

      Quoting CO2islife here
      Key step #5 states the following:-

      At no time does the GHG effect warm the atmosphere above the temperature of the radiating body. The GHG effect does not ever add energy to the system; it only helps contain some of the existing energy

      This is truly fundamental to the problem of the Greenhouse Gas Effect. It tells us how the surface temperature of the planet is maintained BUT it does not tell us how that temperature is achieved.
      And there is the problem in a trice. Global warming apologists hide behind sophistry and claim that the GHE effect is like a blanket that reduces heat loss, but the statement #5 tells us At no time does the GHG effect warm the atmosphere above the temperature of the radiating body. So the action of raising surface planetary temperature by a “blanket process” of reduction in surface thermal emission to achieve thermal values above the baseline surface temperature predicted by the fundamental flat surface radiatively balanced model of planetary surface heating can never ever have got started in the first place!
      Only one possible conclusion should be drawn from this, that the flat surface radiatively balanced model of planetary surface heating is false. A fundamentally different process of planetary atmospheric heat retention is required to explain the apparent surface temperature paradox of the failed model and that process is gravity induced atmospheric compression by air undergoing forced descent in planetary wide circulation cells.

      40

  • #

    I take exception to the notion that in the USA temperature controls rainfall.

    The USA is a continental sized place with several dramatically different climate zones. They do not act the same.

    California has a “Mediterranean” climate type. Much of it very similar to the area from Sydney to Melbourne. We get cold winter rains, and essentially nothing in summer. Eucalyptus love it here. Our rain comes directly off the ocean. The land temperature is irrelevant to rainfall, wet or dry. Lows form up in the Pacific and just barrel on in.

    Over in Florida, it’s subtropical. Very different.

    In Florida, Winter is the dry season. Summers are hotter, and wetter. There, the morning heat (sun) raises humidity. It rises and starts to condense into clouds. During summer, between about noon and 3 PM (sometimes a bit later) nice heavy rain happens. This drops the temperature considerably, then the sun comes out again. (Occasionally those patterns change, like with hurricanes and heavy tropical storms, or with no rain forming) But summer rains are eagerly awaited to cool off the afternoons.

    In Phoenix Arizona you can be an accurate 95% of the time weatherman by saying:
    “Pleasant morning, hot and sunny in the afternoon”. It occasionally rains when a hurricane / tropical storm remnant in Mexico runs up the Gulf of California and dumps a load, but that’s not very often. Again rain cools things off, but neither cool nor hot causes rain.

    Now it may well be true that in Iowa or New Jersey a hot day makes more evaporation so more rain, in the summers. However, in the winters you get a load of snow in Iowa and that certainly keeps things cold for a good while. So the causality of temperature from precipitation vs precipitation from temperature can change seasonally.

    In short, this is a very complex place and there is not just one relationship. I’m also certain no climate model will get the relationships right in all the various places. Just the tendency for ridge lift rain on the Sierra Nevada, Cascades, and Rockies is going to be complicated to properly match to temperature trends. Wind causing lift causing precipitation, some as rain some as snow, and releasing all that heat of vaporization / fusion while dropping to freezing temperatures at altitude… So did the heat that caused the wind cause the cold at the end? The precipitation? Or was it the cold low that caused the wind that… etc.

    Just sayin’… it’s much more complex than A causes B.

    80

    • #

      Just sayin’… it’s much more complex than A causes B.

      Indeed more complex than any Earthling can conceive! What a wonderful, joyful planet, for critters that do not claim to know!
      All the best!-will-

      61

    • #

      E.M. You are absolutely right. Apologies — I can see I was a bit ambiguous, but when I refer to US pattern here I was meaning that temp controls rain, not the Australian pattern of rain controlling temp (loosely) —

      “Both the Australian pattern and the US pattern appear in other places around the world, but the models only have the one scenario. It appears the modelers figured out the situation in New Jersey and programmed it in for the rest of the world, but whole zones of the world are behaving quite differently.”

      In an imminent post Tom takes this further and looks at the US closely. That’s what I was thinking of when I wrote the line about climate models using a US pattern.

      I should probably clarify that sentence… thanks for drawing my attention to it.

      60

      • #
        Duster

        Jo, at least in the western US geography controls rain to a great degree followed air masses off the coast over the Pacific Ocean. Rainfall patterns are marked by precipitation on west facing mountain ranges and dried conditions on eastern facing slopes. For California a “blocking high” tends to form in May which pushes storm tracks northward. This expands to include (more weakly) southern Oregon. If you live in Seattle, you may occasionally be startled by the sight of bright object in the sky during the day. The joke up there is that there are two seasons: wet and wetter.

        10

  • #
    Graeme Bird

    In some villages in Chiang Mai. Well at least in Puka where I was staying, on the really hot days in April a council water truck would come past and spray the road with water and it would cool down the whole area. Make everything bearable. You would do this on the concrete at the back of the house also. The effect, at least at that altitude, is very powerful.

    A dozen years ago the alarmists would be saying that everything heats things up. Doesn’t matter what it was, it all seemed to cause heating. Clouds at night reduce temperature loss. Clouds during the afternoon in summer cool things a great deal. I think its easier now to think clearly about the different effects of things. They had us all so bamboozled and wrong-footed a dozen years ago. You had to be worried about anything you said or any questions you asked. The level of mental pressure and brainwashing was truly oppressive.

    61

  • #
    Graeme Bird

    “Dr David Stockwell gave a paper; “Is the temperature or temperature record rising?” in which he made the point that Dry years are Hot Years!

    That correlation holds true for the year. It may even hold true for as long as a decade. But its not going to hold true for a multi-decadal era. When we get to the longer time periods colder means drier and warmer means wetter. So the 70’s was cool and wet. The 1930’s was hot and dry. But I would expect the era of the 2030’s and some time after to be cold and dry. In other words a disaster.

    51

    • #
      Peter C

      Hi Graeme,

      If you click on the reply next to the date line on my comment instead of the larger reply your comment will nest in the correct place. Also you can high light your quote in blue letters if you use the “b-quote” tab above the comment space.

      20

  • #
    robert rosicka

    OT but trying to track down info on the Morocco experiment with solar molten salt power generation and the problems that they may be having , Google is not my friend with this and have a warmist telling me how fantastic these plants are .

    20

    • #
      Peter C

      Noor 2 just completed and coming on line. Noor3 projected for end of 2018.

      Spain has a number of concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plants.
      This article hints at some of the problems:

      While 7 cents is a record, Spain is currently oversupplied with even lower-priced PV and wind to meet renewable energy commitments for 2020. In recent auctions, wind at 4.3 cents per kWh dominated awarded contracts. Spain’s PV will total 1.4 gigawatts in 2018. For now, there is abundant coal and gas-fired power to back up intermittent renewables.

      “Today there is no reason to build new CSP plants in Spain, because right now there is much more backup than needed,” Crespo, said, but he added: “However, the Ministry of Energy is not paying any attention to the real needs of the system going ahead.”

      http://www.solarpaces.org/spains-concentrated-solar-thermal-power-performed/

      30

  • #
    Peter Azlac

    The influence of rainfall on surface temperature has been known for some years as this and similar models confirm.
    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/251361086_All-weather_Ground_Surface_Temperature_Simulation

    20

  • #
    Peter Azlac

    There is also this paper
    Investigating soil moisture–climate interactions in a changing climate: A review
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825210000139
    and of course the Koppen-Geiger climate mapping system is based on a temperature-precipitation index and is a good index of climate change over time as it indicates where different plants grow or not as the climate changes – vines in the N of England in warmer Roman times etc.
    https://www.britannica.com/science/Koppen-climate-classification
    There are others I do not have to hand now but which I referred to a few years back at the blog site of Jennifer Marohasy when discussing temperatures at sites affected by the Snowy River irrigation scheme.

    30

  • #
    Don Gaddes

    Summary of The Terrestrial Model.

    Solar-induced Orbital Dry Cycles, (X Factor.) – Longitudinal influence moving East to West, with the Earth’s Solar Orbit. Subsequent reduced water-vapor ‘albedo’ equates with raised temperatures as the Dry Cycle passes.
    Cooler temperatures prevail, (due to increased water vapor and precipitation,) in the Wet/Normal Periods between the ‘Dry’ Cycles.

    Start longitude – circa 110 degrees East of Prime.

    Prevailing weather moves West to East and towards the Poles – (according to Axial Spin.) – This allows ‘encroachment’ of Wet/Normal Periods into prevailing Dry Cycles – and vice-versa.
    The same ‘spin-mechanics’ apply to both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. (North-West to South-East in the Southern Hemisphere – South-West to North-East in the Northern Hemisphere.)

    Increased volcanic activity – May cause instigation of Low Pressure Systems and increase of ‘albedo’, (due to dispersing ash.) This, (along with factors such as wind-blown dust,) can also mitigate the Dry Cycles – and exacerbate the default Wet/Normal Periods, (Cycles,) providing an overall ‘cooling’ effect, thus negating the ‘warming‘ influence of the X Factor ‘Dry’ Cycles and other factors such as ‘greenhouse gases’ and naturally occurring radioactivity. This overall cooling effect can become self-perpetuating. (See, Tipping the Albedo Balance, p138.)
    ( Extract from ‘Tomorrow’s Weather’ 20 years on…)

    Note that 2017/18 constitutes an X Factor Wet/Normal default period,(Cycle.) {See p 104 ‘Tomorrow’s Weather’ Alex S. Gaddes (1990.)} This One Earth/Solar Year ‘Cycle’ began over 110 degrees East of Prime (circa Beijing) in mid-February 2017. The next One Earth/Solar Year X Factor ‘Dry’ Cycle Has now started over this longitude and will reach Australia’s East Coast in early January 2019.
    An updated version of this work (including ‘Dry’ Cycle forecasts to 2055,) is available as a free pdf from [email protected]

    30

    • #
      Graeme Bird

      It’s a start one supposes. But you want to add in the solar wind and other things as well. The way the solar wind plays out with the cosmic rays. The way electrical energy moves from the ionosphere through the deep earth and how this effects wind patterns and so forth. There is the presumption there that extra CO2 causes warming that can be negated. That’s a dubious proposition that ought to be looked st.

      40

  • #
    Steve richards

    I do hope people are not trying to tell me that the models still do not work and that the science is no longer settled?
    I don’t think I can take many more shocks like this!

    30

    • #
      Graeme Bird

      It sounds to me like Mr Gaddes model should work quite well. But some of the truly great soothsayers went against all sorts of taboos that the science mafia lays down.

      Landsheiit would bring the planets into it and he would extrapolate from where the sun was in relation to a hypothetical centre of the solar system. Corbyn starts with where the moon is in relation to historical weather when the moon was taking the same trajectory . Before the HAARP boys took over McCanney would run this part time gig saying to the day when hurricanes would crop up during Americas hurricane season. He would use the full moon and especially the new moon. He would use what he thought was the August return current sheet.

      40

  • #
    Gershom

    I don’t understand, the science is settled isn’t it? Big Al said so.

    10

    • #
      Graeme Bird

      None of this science can ever get settled, until we root out all the fraudulent physics that has been forced on us, since the era of aether denial. There has to be a lot of sackings to get the job done.
      [Seriously? Alchemy? ]ED

      20

  • #
    Graeme Bird

    Does anyone remember when we had that climategate scandal? You had all these emails of charlatans talking about how to dupe the public and rig the figures. Then you had one really dedicated earnest fellow desperately trying to “reach” these troglodytes. He was trying to talk to them as if they were his fellow scientists. One thing I remember him saying is that we have no real idea of how energy is making its way through the atmosphere. Something close to this. Does anyone know who that was? This true scientist trying to appeal to unrisen apes?

    But I think thats true. I think that because the electrical capacitance issue has been blackballed or ignored, they just haven’t done a lot of the basic work they would need to be doing.

    When there are clouds around the water molecules can get polarised and aligned in such a way as to allow for less stringent resistance to electrical flows from the ionosphere. This is the real source of lightning. The voltage difference buildup between the ionosphere and the deep earth is the source of lightning and not the cloud itself.

    Its not to do with internal friction in clouds. If you have climbed a misty mountain and seen the water particles up close you will see that there is precisely no friction between them. These notions are all rubbish. The tiny droplets are both suspended and kept apart by electrical charges already present. The idea that this water sidles up and rubs against other water and creates all this water friction and electricity generation … this is just risible and negated by even the most casual observations. I was thinking about this walking up Walshes pyramid near Cairns. I could see those little droplets up close and I can tell you they don’t rub up against each-other. Not even once. Not ever. Its all lies. And after awhile you begin to see the patterns of this top-down oligarchical conditioning that we have to put up with.

    11

  • #
    Annie

    Thanks Jo 🙂

    01