Sunday, February 12, 2017

RTFR No. 543

One of the watchwords here at Rabett Run has been RTFR, a derivative of RTFM but no less trenchant advice.  So with everybunny jumping up and down about the baselines and adjusting boats to buoys or whatever (Zeke has a nice summary at ATTP), Eli though he would take his own advice, and thanks to the kindness of Climate Peter, he found the article which introduced ERSSTv.4

On page 928 in the summary Eli finds

Buoy SSTs have been adjusted toward ship SSTs in ERSST.v4 to correct for a systematic difference of 0.12 C between ship and buoy observations. Although buoy SSTs are more homogeneous and reliable than ship observations, buoys were not widely available before around 1980. However, the selection will not affect the evolution of the SSTAs. Further studies are needed to consider the potential of including C-MAN SSTs and other near-surface ocean temperature measurements not presently incorporated in ERSST.v4 (e.g., from oceanographic profiling instruments).
Pleasingly pretty much saying what Rabett Run has been telling one and all.  Ocenographic profiling instruments Eli assumes includes the Argo float network which only went operational about five or six years before the HRSSTv4 data set was done.

Oh yes, the timeline first submitted 20 December 2013, accepted 3 October 2014 and appeared on line 4 February 2015, so as they say, out there well before the Karl et al paper appeared in June.  ERSST.v4.

12 comments:

E. Swanson said...

David Rose has a new commentary in today's Daily Mail:

How can we trust global warming scientists if they keep twisting the truth

He begins by gloating that his previous post had some 150,000Facebook ‘shares’ over the week. He eventually gets around to admitting that they did make a mistake on the plots of the two temperature series, claiming that: "the caption on a graph, showing the difference between NOAA’s sea data records and the UK Met Office’s, did not make clear that they used different baselines. We corrected this immediately on our website". Funny, I can't a mention of the correction in the online article.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, things are a bit toasty for Inhoffe and Smith...

Bernard J. said...

E. Swanson.

So that's 150,00 people who swallowed Rose's fake news, and who were misinformed as a result.

And he's proud of that? The creep is lower than a snake's belly in a basement.

Susan Anderson said...

You guys have too much faith in honesty and truth. I think SNL, while often sophomoric, has a better grip on reality. We are set on a short hard-right journey towards mutually assured destruction in the form of a fossil-fueled monopoly on government by a kleptocracy who think their wealth is worth the price. While they're at it, death panels for the poor, public education be damned, and full speed ahead with voter suppression.

Shame doesn't matter to them, they're in charge now. We're irrelevant, and it's up to us to stop fighting with each other and face the real enemies.

Susan Anderson said...

They don't need the truth, that's too complicated.

They've got their series of one liners and their Congress and their president, and apparently the governments of Australia and the UK.

Who needs weather and evidence?

E. Swanson said...

Susan - Yeah, things are progressing as predicted. I've been reading some books by Chris Hedges from 2009-2010, in which he pointed to the trend toward the take over of the US by corporate oligarchies allied with the radical right (aka: Fascism) and Fundamentalist Christians. He even mentioned our D. J. Plump (whose name can not be written for fear of the attack of the Twit) as a possible leader. Of course, this trend isn't a new idea, as the tendency of Capitalism to move toward monopoly is well known. Hedges claims to being a socialist, but not one of the Marxist violent revolutionary sort. He thinks violent confrontation only plays into the terrorist narrative of the right fear mongers. Another very smart man, who is being totally ignored by the MSM.

Jan Galkowski said...

I fear less the triumph of alt-fact over fact than the destruction of capabilities and mechanisms needed to deal with whatever developments in Reality will be tossed our way, whether because of undoing of regulations, admittedly a patchwork anyway, or loss of organizational knowledge and talent, or loss of technical capability.

Possibly worst is an erosion in loss of faith in federal and other authority, based upon the curious but continuing belief that 45 is as good as anyone else out there, and his administration's missteps would have been done by anyone. Okay, maybe not worst. Worst is the idea that checks and balances are getting in the way of good governance.

"Reality" can assert itself in several forms, whether these be natural phenomena or a clever Chinese leadership.

I don't know what others think, but I sense there's a pivot in the science denier camp from "There's no evidence of climate change" to "There is climate change, but people have nothing to do with it."

Anyway, that warm Arctic is sure making a mess of the weather. We'll see what happens now that we're facing a majority ice free Arctic this summer coupled with a return of ENSO+.

Jan Galkowski said...

Of course, contrary to the thing I said about, this kind of public behavior is not helpful.

Bryson said...

Of course the next lie is almost ready to come of the oven-- fresh and hot and (just) well-formed enough to displace its predecessor on the denialist stage. All that's needed is a continuing supply of new distractions to help the lost maintain their faith...personally, I feel a fair bit of despair these days.

The Old Man is back said...

Bryson: nil illegitimi carborundum

Susan Anderson said...

For those without Latin, that would be:

Don't let the bastards grind you down.

Jan G, funny, I've been keeping the Boston Globe article about Mish Michaels front and center for a couple of days. Harvey Leonard, the head of that department, is the best, and works hard at educating people as well. The Globe explains it well. www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/02/13/why-weather-forecasters-question-climate-science/h93iEPs3YSwxPLJ58gWCxJ/story.html

My "subscription" links don't always work, here's the title for a search: "Mish Michaels isn’t alone: Many meteorologists question climate change science"

The whole article is a good summary of the situation, it's tempting to paste the whole thing here, but I'll just provide the ending:

ALL QUOTE-
Rob Eicher, a former weekend meteorologist at WHDH-TV in Boston, said viewers shouldn’t put too much stock in weather forecasters’ views on climate change.

“It’s like asking a podiatrist for help when you have chest pains,” he said. “It’s a different specialty.”

He also pointed to politics as the cause of many skeptical forecasters, especially those who work at stations run by right-leaning owners.

“What people need to understand is that there’s a completely different set of physics in understanding weather and climate changes,” he said.

“We can predict tides years and years in advance, but I can’t tell you what the wave heights will be in a few days from now. Climate deals with much larger issues.” - end quote

Hank Roberts said...

> E. Swanson: Chris Hedges

Good pointer, thank you.

This one looks timely: " Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle"

Fernando Leanme said...

I used to work on a NOAA vessel (summertime job), and had to launch the xbt devices to take temperature profiles. We didn't have computers or anything like that, but we recorded the data in log books, and all the xbt profiles were saved. My job also involved tracking buoys we launched, and everything was plotted on charts. We didn't have GPS, so we located using either LORAN or other systems we had on the bridge. So I can't see why that data wasn't included, there were gobs of it (I remember in those days the Iselin was cruising towards Antarctica, and one of my classmates got a job on a ship going towards the Galapagos to take Niño data).