This is just a short appendix to my post from yesterday, wherein I described fraud being perpetrated by the likes of Monckton and Watts in convincing low-information types that global warming (aka climate change) has "stopped". (If you haven't read my diary from yesterday, go ahead and do it. I'll wait.)
Below the doohickey, I've got some graphs that will put the fraud into a little more context.
The graphs below were generated using the data and software available at woodfortrees.org. It's a pretty amazing interactive site they've got there.
First, in my previous diary, I pointed out that Monckton keeps changing the start dates for his graphs. That is, he changes the date when he says global warming "stopped". The reason he does this is that global warming hasn't stopped. In order to keep a flat trendline, he has to drop cooler months off the left end whenever he adds new data -- i.e., warmer months -- on the right. If Monckton didn't do this, the trendline wouldn't stay flat.
The first graph from Monckton that I presented yesterday claims global warming "stopped" in August of 1996. The graph runs up through March of 2014. Monckton's third graph runs up through April of 2015, adding thirteen months to the end of the graph. But Monckton had to drop data from the front end to keep a flat trendline. His third graph claims global warming didn't stop until December of 1996.
Here's why he did that. The first graph below shows what happens if we start in August of 1996, and run up to April of 2015. That is, we start at the beginning of the first of the three graphs I included last time from Monckton, and end it at the last of the three Monckton graphs. As Monckton did, I show the RSS monthly average temperatures, and I add a linear trend line. This is what happens:
RSS Temperature Trend Aug 1996 - Apr 2015
It is, admittedly, not impressive. But it reveals why Monckton had to change the date that global warming ended, from August of 1996 to December of 1996. The trendline -- the green line on the above graph -- goes
up. Not by much (only two or three pixels at this resolution) -- but we've only added thirteen months of data to the righthand end of Monckton's first graph. The point is,
it does go up.
In the third graph I showed last time, the one Monckton produced in April of 2015, Monckton claimed the global warming "pause" was still going on -- the same "pause" he had described thirteen months earlier -- the "pause" he'd claimed, in March of 2014, had begun in August of 1996. He defines "pause" by a flat trendline. But the trendline from August of 1996 to April of 2015 is not flat. It doesn't go up much, but it doesn't have to. It's not flat. At best, Monckton is being intentionally misleading. At worst, it is purposeful fraud.
Last time, I also said that Monckton cherry-picked the RSS (Remote Sensing Systems) dataset to create his fraud. RSS gathers information about the lower troposphere, which is warming more slowly than the ocean or than the Earth's surface. NASA has a dataset which is created by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) which has surface temperatures. Let's look at the same time period using the GISTEMP dataset:
NASA GISTEMP Temperature Trend Aug 1996 - Apr 2015
Not only is the trendline up, but it is up a great deal
more that in the lower troposphere RSS data. Monckton doesn't like the GISTEMP dataset, for obvious reasons.
I also stressed that Monckton cherry-picked a recent time period from which to create a claim for a "pause". In any noisy dataset, there are likely to be stretches of arbitrary length that exhibit any features you care to look for. Clearly, there are times when the temperatures fall for several months, and times they go up -- and times when you can draw a flat trendline. None of that says anything about the overall long-term trend.
So let's see what RSS says about the long-term trend, instead of a cherry-picked faux pause. Remote Sensing Systems data goes back to to their first satellites at the end of 1979. Here is the entire RSS dataset, with an added linear trendline:
RSS Full Temperature Trend 1979 - Apr 2015
It should be pretty clear what has happened since 1979, even in the RSS dataset, which is Monckton's preferred data because it shows the
slowest increase in global temps.
Let's do one final graph. There's that huge temperature spike in 1998. What caused that is an El Nino. In very simple terms: most of the excess heat energy that the Earth absorbs -- over 90% of it -- is swallowed by the ocean. At seemingly random intervals, the Pacific burps, and releases some of that heat into the atmosphere. In 1998, the Earth experienced the largest such El Nino event in recorded history. It produced the immense spike seen in these graphs.
One of the effects of this spike is to raise the left end of Monckton's linear trendline, since he starts his trend right about the time of the El Nino. Let's see what happens if we eliminate the El Nino. Let's start the trendline at the beginning of March, 1999.
RSS Temperature Trend Mar 1999 - Apr 2015
The upward trend isn't as dramatic as, say, the NASA GISTEMP. But it is clearly up. Monckton is using the random 1998 El Nino -- the strongest such event
ever -- (and it was that strong
because the Earth is warming) -- Monckton uses this event to raise the left end of his trendline.
The point here is that this faux pause period does have an upward temperature trend -- even in Monckton's cherry-picked dataset. It is only the presence of the greatest El Nino in history that makes it appear otherwise.
Even using Monckton's cherry-picked dataset, it is clear that Monckton is dishonestly manipulating the data he presents. It's time he gets called out on his fraud.
There is no "pause".