10 thoughts on “Graphs of the Day: The Pause no More”
BTW, kudos to Zeke for his nice graph of the surface temperature vs model comparison. It’s nice to see the different sources of uncertainty laid out; I find it clearer and cleaner than Gavin’s graph. It particularly helps show “okay, here’s the model uncertainty, but the weather uncertainty is a separate thing that we also need to include”. Which has become important when discussing whether the models are doing okay or not, to account for all the sources of uncertainty.
Re: Gavin’s graph, I’d probably have the forcing-adjusted CMIP5 model mean as the solid color, and the non-adjusted as the dotted lines – in other words, reverse the graphical schema. Visually, it makes sense to use the solid shading to draw the eye to the “real world” scenario/case, which is what the forcing-adjusted case is.
I know it can seem like trivial stuff, but presentation matters, and it helps with communication.
“The Pause” was always a misnomer. It was defined as “no statistically significant warming”.
But “no statistical significance” means we can’t say if it’s warming *or* cooling. Or flat. It means the temperature data over this time period is too noisy to tell.
It’s an example of “lying with statistics”, designed to fool people who don’t understand what statistical significance or rejection of null tests means. As such, it’s dishonest and deceptive.
See “The Escalator” image from Skeptical Science. We are in real time living through the escalator, with some denying that the escalator is moving upwards. The temperature trend is indeed moving upwards, and realistic folks have been saying that for decades. You would be better served to admit that there is an upward trend, rather than attempt some projection of revisionism onto others. The real revisionism is applied by trumpeting down or flat years while never saying a word about years with substantial increases in temperature, depending on what part of the escalator we happen to be on at the moment. The constant revisionism is actually among those that change their story depending on year to year variability in an attempt to confirm a previous notion that nothing is abnormal and nothing should be done about it. The decadal trend matters, and it is upwards. This is a risk.
Sobering data. With 4-6 month lag impact of El Nino on global temperature, 2016 could easily exceed 2015 by another 0.1C, making for a rocket-like trend.
But I have a complaint about these charts. Each uses a different baseline. No wonder the public is confused about where we stand relative to +1.5 or +2C over preindustrial average global temperature (arbitrary and very dangerous) “threshold”.
I wish every climate chart would do two things:
1. Use a standardized baseline. IPCC cites 1850-1900 as reasonable proxy for pre-industrial global average temperature.
Others: Hansen has used 1880-1920, Rob Honeycutt over at SkepticalScience uses 1880-1909 NASA GISS, NOAA uses 20th century average, NASA GISS uses 1951-1980 average.
FYI the differences between different baselines
(all values based on NASA GISS annual global land and sea average temperature, except for 1850-1900, which is derived from IPCC statement that 1850-1900 was 0.61C lower than 1986-2005)
1880-1920 -0.10
i.e. 1880-1920 average was 0.10C below 1850-1900 average
1880-1909 -0.09; 20th century avg. +0.15; NASA 1951-1980 +0.18
2. For sea ice where there is a true zero value, all charts should use zero for the X axis in order to provide accurate proportional context for increase/decrease of change relative to the total.
BTW, kudos to Zeke for his nice graph of the surface temperature vs model comparison. It’s nice to see the different sources of uncertainty laid out; I find it clearer and cleaner than Gavin’s graph. It particularly helps show “okay, here’s the model uncertainty, but the weather uncertainty is a separate thing that we also need to include”. Which has become important when discussing whether the models are doing okay or not, to account for all the sources of uncertainty.
Re: Gavin’s graph, I’d probably have the forcing-adjusted CMIP5 model mean as the solid color, and the non-adjusted as the dotted lines – in other words, reverse the graphical schema. Visually, it makes sense to use the solid shading to draw the eye to the “real world” scenario/case, which is what the forcing-adjusted case is.
I know it can seem like trivial stuff, but presentation matters, and it helps with communication.
The pause can now exist, but when it existed, it wasn’t. Until it comes back, and then it won’t exist any longer.
Climate change revisionism, the one thing that never pauses
Moron!
“The Pause” was always a misnomer. It was defined as “no statistically significant warming”.
But “no statistical significance” means we can’t say if it’s warming *or* cooling. Or flat. It means the temperature data over this time period is too noisy to tell.
It’s an example of “lying with statistics”, designed to fool people who don’t understand what statistical significance or rejection of null tests means. As such, it’s dishonest and deceptive.
omno:
See “The Escalator” image from Skeptical Science. We are in real time living through the escalator, with some denying that the escalator is moving upwards. The temperature trend is indeed moving upwards, and realistic folks have been saying that for decades. You would be better served to admit that there is an upward trend, rather than attempt some projection of revisionism onto others. The real revisionism is applied by trumpeting down or flat years while never saying a word about years with substantial increases in temperature, depending on what part of the escalator we happen to be on at the moment. The constant revisionism is actually among those that change their story depending on year to year variability in an attempt to confirm a previous notion that nothing is abnormal and nothing should be done about it. The decadal trend matters, and it is upwards. This is a risk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0vj-0imOLw
Mauricio is the dog.
Nor so sure about that. Although the dog wanders a bit, it is still following its more focused master and is therefore proceeding in a “direction”.
Maurizio has no “direction” at all, and is more like a shotgun blast of inanities—-pellets of willful ignorance landing everywhere simultaneously.
Just sayin’
nor = not
Reblogged this on A Green Road Daily News.
Sobering data. With 4-6 month lag impact of El Nino on global temperature, 2016 could easily exceed 2015 by another 0.1C, making for a rocket-like trend.
But I have a complaint about these charts. Each uses a different baseline. No wonder the public is confused about where we stand relative to +1.5 or +2C over preindustrial average global temperature (arbitrary and very dangerous) “threshold”.
I wish every climate chart would do two things:
1. Use a standardized baseline. IPCC cites 1850-1900 as reasonable proxy for pre-industrial global average temperature.
Others: Hansen has used 1880-1920, Rob Honeycutt over at SkepticalScience uses 1880-1909 NASA GISS, NOAA uses 20th century average, NASA GISS uses 1951-1980 average.
FYI the differences between different baselines
(all values based on NASA GISS annual global land and sea average temperature, except for 1850-1900, which is derived from IPCC statement that 1850-1900 was 0.61C lower than 1986-2005)
1880-1920 -0.10
i.e. 1880-1920 average was 0.10C below 1850-1900 average
1880-1909 -0.09; 20th century avg. +0.15; NASA 1951-1980 +0.18
2. For sea ice where there is a true zero value, all charts should use zero for the X axis in order to provide accurate proportional context for increase/decrease of change relative to the total.