Wednesday, April 04, 2012

My UAH LT Prediction Was Quite Close

The UAH lower troposphere anomaly for March is 0.11°C.

My "prediction" was 0.12°C, which is luckier than I expected. Or maybe I'm some kind of genius.

Here are the linear slopes for recent periods. The statistical uncertainties are for the 95% confidence level:

last 10 years: 0.01 ± 0.10 °C/decade
last 15 years: 0.07 ± 0.06 °C/decade
last 20 years: 0.20 ± 0.04 °C/decade
last 30 years: 0.16 ± 0.02 °C/decade

full record: 0.13 ± 0.01 °C/decade

The last 10 years (i.e. 120 months) has been 0.20°C warmer than the previous decade.

John Christy wrote me to say there is a further complication besides satellite drift, overheating, etc: The raw channel values on the Discover website are those of AMSU channel 5, not for the lower troposphere. So they have some influence from the stratosphere which has to be removed. All of these corrections are, of course, in their publications. Figuring all these out is really hard core, nitty gritty science, and I suspect it was a little maddening at times, too.

3 comments:

Doug Cotton said...

 


Check the analysis since the year 1900 as in the Appendix here and you will see decreasing rates of increase from 0.06 to 0.05 C degree / decade when you do a "proper" gradient of a gradient analysis.

And if you want reasons, read the whole peer-reviewed paper.

Maybe also consider this ...

Seeing that a microwave oven produces low frequency radiation far more intense than carbon dioxide could ever do, and yet its radiation is not absorbed* and converted to thermal energy in ice, what makes anyone think that radiation from carbon dioxide could warm all the snow and ice covered areas of the planet?

The mechanism by which microwave ovens heat water molecules is totally different from the excitation of atoms which happens when high frequency solar radiation warms water. The oven emits radiation at a very specific frequency which happens to resonate with natural frequencies of the water molecules which then "snap" or "flip" through 180 degrees and back again in synchronisation with the passing waves of electromagnetic radiation. The molecules in water do have the space to do this, and when they flip there is frictional heat generated by collisions of the molecules. In ice there is not sufficient room to move and flip like this.

There is no violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics simply because electrical energy was added to the system.

But the fact that the ice was not melted demonstrates the phenomenon of "resonant scattering" in which radiation is not reflected, not transmitted and not absorbed with conversion to thermal energy. See Section 5 of my publication here.

* Try this home experiment:

Obtain two identical small microwave bowls which do not get warm in the microwave oven. Ensure that they both fit in the oven together. Obtain a small ice cube tray and fill it with filtered or distilled water. Pour that water into one of the bowls. Then refill the tray with similar water and place the ice cube tray in your freezer and both the bowls in your frig overnight. Next day, empty the ice cubes into the bowl without water, then place both bowls in the microwave oven and operate for about 60 to 80 seconds depending on the volume of water - try to bring the water nearly to the boil. Observe that the ice has not been affected - you might even try comparing its temperature with other ice in the freezer. To do this, pack the ice samples in a tall insulated mug and insert a meat thermometer with a metal spike.

Why wasn't the energy in the radiation shared equally between the water and the ice? If you pour the hot water into the bowl with the ice it will easily melt the ice within a couple of minutes, so this demonstrates that sufficient energy did enter the water.

Dano said...

what makes anyone think that radiation from carbon dioxide could warm all the snow and ice covered areas of the planet?

I'm not sure exactly which points I can take from this gibberish, but I think I'll take 25 from this...erm..."statement".

Best,

D

David Appell said...

Doug: What makes you think the forces driving climate 100 years ago are the same forces driving it today?

I.e. what justifies a linear fit over such along such a long interval?

You've done this for SSTs. What is the result for surface temperatures, or the lower troposphere?