Errors in IPCC climate science

I was interested in this Sydney Morning Herald article with various statements about recent warm conditions in Sydney.
When you search for the headline – Cooler weather to mark start of winter – at the SMH website you get this intro text at the link –
“Another warm month makes the last 12 the hottest June-May stretch on record for Australia…think about that over the wet, cool weekend.” So I thought about that – take a look at the BoM map of maximum temperature anomalies for the 12 months ended 31st May. See that the highest ranking anomalies are in areas where the data is most scarce. Note that Alice Springs with data from ~1878 is the longest term station by far near these BoM high rank red anomalies. Checking Alice Springs history at this BoM site you need to copy and paste data for Alice Springs Post Office 15540 and then Alice Springs Airport 15590. Updating recent months from here.
You find that the 12 months ending 31 May 2013 averaged 30.6 – the 12 months ending 31 May 1881 averaged 30.8 – and the 12 months ending 31 May 1893 averaged 30.7. So I am left with the suspicion that if we had adequate historic data over Australia – then the statement – “Another warm month makes the last 12 the hottest June-May stretch on record for Australia…think about that over the wet, cool weekend.” – would be even harder to justify.
Any warmth in Autumn is at least partly due to the ever growing Urban Heat Island over Sydney. Rarely mentioned by the BoM and their supporters.
Another claim in the article – “Autumn registered only six days of days below 20 degrees…”. Attempts to paint Autumn as unusually warm – yet look at the BoM maps of maximum temperature anomalies for autumn – amazing anomalies of zero to 1 degree C. Near normal weather – what an utter non-event.

An interesting call because Perth Regional Office weather station 9034 never recorded a minimum of 0°C for any month in all the years 1897-1992, see my table below. Chris Gillham has an account of the history of the various locations for Perth weather instruments.
BoM forecast late afternoon 30 May 2013 -

From 1993 and current Perth weather is recorded at “Perth Metro” which is at Mount Lawley near Edith Cowan University. As my table shows Perth Metro like Perth Regional Office has never recorded a frost in May and probably will not this morning. It looks obvious to me from my table that the ever growing Perth urban heat island has suppressed frost over a century while stations more peripheral to Perth commonly record frosts in the cooler months.

Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Ridley’s page “The greening of the planet” lead me to the work of Professor Ranga Myneni of Boston University. A page listing his publications has a link to this 2012 paper – “Surface Urban Heat Island Across 419 Global Big Cities”.

Peng et al., 2012 Surface Urban Heat Island Across 419 Global Big Cities, Environ. Sci. & Tech., Environ. Sci. Technol., 2012, 46 (2), pp 696-703, DOI:10.1021/es2030438
ABSTRACT: Urban heat island is among the most evident aspects of human impacts on the earth system. Here we assess the diurnal and seasonal variation of surface urban heat island intensity (SUHII) defined as the surface temperature difference between urban area and suburban area measured from the MODIS. Differences in SUHII are analyzed across 419 global big cities, and we assess several potential biophysical and socio-economic driving factors. Across the big cities, we show that the average annual daytime SUHII (1.5 ± 1.2 °C) is higher
than the annual nighttime SUHII (1.1 ± 0.5 °C) (P < 0.001). But no correlation is found between daytime and nighttime SUHII across big cities (P = 0.84), suggesting different driving mechanisms between day and night. The distribution of nighttime SUHII correlates positively with the difference in albedo and nighttime light between urban area and suburban area, while the distribution of daytime SUHII correlates negatively across cities with the difference of vegetation cover and activity between urban and suburban areas. Our results emphasize the key role of vegetation feedbacks in attenuating SUHII of big cities during the day, in particular during the growing season, further highlighting that increasing urban vegetation cover could be one effective way to mitigate the urban heat island effect.

Just came across this concise article at the Arizona blog WryHeat – Urban heat island effect on temperatures, a tale of two cities – Authored by Jonathan DuHamel. We need more examples defining the UHI out there all the time to counter the colossal IPCC compliant propaganda.

Over a decade ago I posted this page – Phoenix AZ five degree grid cell –
Had a quick look at it, graphics need improving but stands the test of time I think – an example of one of the great rorts in science.

Quite a morning for the 1st of September – and the 2nd is also frosty with the 30 minute data from the Airport shows a minus 4.8 at 6am.
Even Toytown had a chilly morning Saturday.
But a couple of things the main stream media do not rush to tell you.
Australian mean temperature has been cool for at least a year.

And ditto Australian nights – and note that this map shows clearly the error in BoM gridded data that I jokingly named “national night-time hotspot”.

Just Google – national night-time hotspot – to find my June 2011 article birthing the NNTHS and others of mine commenting on the BoM gross error.
And of course the data from Sydney region and Canberra Airport is in the face of the ever expanding urban heat island which is inexorably driving up temperatures.

Chris Gilham has posted an item from the West Australian newspaper reporting the results of aerial thermal scans over Perth by a commercial firm Scantherma.
Of course this imagery can be used to prove the existence of the urban heat island (UHI) which magically never finds its way into IPCC temperature trends.
It is good to see this airborne technology used in Australia but airborne and satellite imagery has been detecting the UHI for decades. Here are several examples.
Read the rest of this entry »

With the budget to be delivered tonight and the Carbon Tax about to slam into our hip pocket nerves – I thought that the assembling MP’s mostly from warmer climes might like knowing that the Canberra bleakness they had encountered was a 55 year old record. In 1957 there were 10 consecutive frosts from the 3rd to 12th May – and they were colder than this year – but the urban heat island was much less in 1957. May 2011 had a 54 year record for total frost days.

13.6 degrees C on 25 April 2012 – 1952 was 13.3, 1939 – 13.2 and 1944 – 11.6.
And this is in the face of constant growth of the Canberra urban heat island (UHI). No doubt this is what we can expect from global warming. Camooweal in NW Queensland is also having chilly times – is anybody aware of other record cold sites ?

Just saw this scenic shot in the Canberra Times – high alpine ridges near Perisher on ANZAC Day – another good pic in the article.

While working on my benchmarking study on April 5th, 2012 – I noticed a clearcut step change in 1997 between CRUT3 and CRUT4 over much of north America.
I have portrayed this in map form to understand better what the CRU team has done in the various grid boxes.

It seems that for most of the USA grid boxes CRUT4 is warmer by one division on the temperature anomaly scale (0.3 degrees C). But note the grid box for Los Angeles has warmed by 3 divisions or ~1 degree C.
I am intrigued that the CRUT team makes such large adjustments over the USA – home to so many climate researchers. In 2006 I found amazing agreement over the USA between HadCRUT2 and satellite lower troposphere temperature data. I assumed that was one area of the globe where the CRUT team had little “wriggle-room” to adjust data. Not so it seems.
Anyway, I will do more on the subject later but wanted to get this surprising result out there. Who was it said something like – “…the future is known – it is the past that changes…”

This global study at the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE) – How Natural is the Recent Centennial Warming? – is the first that jumps to mind in over two decades by a group sceptical of AGW – that applies statistical analysis to thousands of temperature station data and concludes there is a standout UHI signal.
Andrew Bolt has an article on this – “Climate study: er, what man-made warming?”
I just hope this is the start of a determined research effort that might in the years ahead blunt the harm done to science by over two decades of the UHI infested various CRUTem versions.