'Best evidence yet' for global heating
2010
Global warming pushes 2010 temperatures to record highs
Scientists from two leading climate research centres publish 'best evidence yet' of rising long-term global temperatures
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jul/28/global-temperatures-2010-record
According to two leading climate research centres, global temperatures in the first half of this year (2010) have been the hottest since records began.
Scientists have also released the "best evidence yet" of rising long-term temperatures. The report is thorough and extensive, collating 11 different indicators, from air and sea temperatures to melting ice, each based on between three and seven data sets, dating back to between 1850 and the 1970s.
Publishing the data, Peter Stott, the head of climate modelling at the UK Met Office, states that the evidence is unequivocal:
"When you follow those decade-to-decade trends then you see clearly and unmistakably signs of a warming world.
"That's a very remarkable result, that all those data sets agree. It's the clearest evidence in one place from a range of different indices."
These new findings are significant in the aftermath of the controversy of the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia (UEA). Climate change deniers exploited these hacked emails to maximum effect, casting doubt upon climate science and alleging that temperature records have been manipulated to show global warming. These charges have been decisively rejected by three subsequent inquiries. Climate science has been subject to close scrutiny for months now as a result of so-called Climategate. We can now see that the real scandal has been the hacking of the emails of the UEA and their political exploitation. Newly published data makes it crystal clear that the trend is ever upwards to a dangerously heating world.
To date (2010), the hottest year on record is 1998. Now, two combined land and sea surface temperature records, from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the US National Climatic Data Centre, both calculate that the first six months of 2010 have been the hottest since records began. Four of these six months also showed record highs according to the Goddard Institute.
Another programme, by the Met Office, shows that this period has been the second hottest on record, with 1998 the hottest. The two months of January and March were hotter than their equivalents in 1998.
Climate change deniers tend to pounce on any variations between the figures relating to the same phenomenon. The Met Office has taken precautions here, explaining that such variations are due to the fact that the Met Office uses only temperature observations, whilst NASA makes estimates for gaps in recorded data such as the polar regions, and the NCDC employs a mixture of both approaches.
The trend is as clear as clear could be. Deniers repeatedly claim a trend to global cooling from the peak year of 1998. More fool anyone who believes them. Such a claim has nothing to do with science and is entirely attributable to a crude statistical sleight of hand. The new figures establish the clear trend upwards. The 2000s will be hotter than the 1990s, which in turn were clearly hotter than the 1970s.
Rafe Pomerance is a senior fellow at Clean Air, Cool Planet, a US group searching for solutions to global heating. Pomerance argues: "These numbers are not theory, but fact, indicating that the Earth's climate is moving into uncharted territory."
This should be born in mind when characters like Ian Plimer describe the case for global heating as a ‘premature scientific hypothesis’. Climate science has long since moved beyond being a hypothesis. This theory is based on hard fact, discovered by impeccable and thorough scientific research. It is worth underlining the gold standard status of this research, so that people are in no doubt of its significance. The Met Office’s full list of warming indicators, compiled by Hadley Centre researcher John Kennedy, formed part of the State of the Climate 2009 report published as a bulletin of the American Meteorological Society by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which runs the NCDC series.
In the last few decades, seven of the indicators rose – air temperatures over land, air temperatures over oceans, sea surface temperatures, ocean heat to 700 metres in depth, the tropospheric temperature in the atmosphere up to 1km, humidity caused by warmer air absorbing more moisture, and sea levels as hotter oceans expand and ice melts.
The rising air temperature over land included data from the Climatic Research Unit at the UEA and six other research groups. They all showed the same rising trends.
Peter Stott is clear that the cause of this global heating is "dominated" by greenhouse gases emitted by human activity. "It's possible there's some [other] process which can amplify other effects, such as radiation from the sun, [but] the evidence is so clear the chance there's something we haven't thought of seems to be getting smaller and smaller."
Few people are climate scientists, few people understand climate science. We are now at a stage where this issue comes down to who we trust. Is it plausible that the bulk of the world’s scientists are engaged in an international conspiracy to hoodwink governments and people into believing in a global heating, just to increase taxes and extend government power? Is it all plausible that such a pseudo-science could withstand the scrutiny to which all science is subject? What is the alternative explanation and where is the research and evidence to back it? The world is on the brink of a climate emergency. How much longer do we have to indulge climate change deniers? One day, we will run out of time.