Good news about climate change
(December 2018)

First, my report about the HadCRUT4 temperature data

The accuracy of the data is discussed in a report which was published by Robert Boyle Publishing in October 2018. It found more than 70 problem areas with the data, including incorrect temperature data adjustments that exaggerate warming.

Click on the image to go to the web site where the 135-page report can be purchased for USD $8.00.

1. The average global temperature since 1979

The most accurate temperature data is obtained using satellites to measure the temperatures from the Earth's surface up to about 50,000 ft (or almost 17,000 metres). It measures all of the earth's surface except for a small area at the North and South Poles.

The trend line (in red) is 0.0127^oC/year, which will be almost 1.3^oC every century (100 years) if the trend continues. But it's a trend that's exaggerated by the temperature spike in 2016, caused by a strong El Nino event.

2. Temperatures over the last 20 years

The data used above also shows that there has been little warming in the last 20 years. (The graph includes 2018 and the data is only until October, but the last two months of the year would have to be very warm to cause much change to the average for the first ten months.) The trend in the data is a warming of 0.0074^oC/year, which would mean 0.7^oC in 100 years, but exclude just one year, 2016, and the trend is a tiny 0.004^oC/year. Compare these trends to the trend in the graph above, which is from 1979 to 2018 and you'll find it's much smaller.

But look at the atmospheric carbon dioxide since 1998.

According to data from NOAA, what we've emitted since 1998 is 29% of the increase since the baseline of 270ppm, below which we're told it's all natural CO₂. Or start from 1959, the first year for which we have annual average CO₂ measurements (see below) and what we've emitted since 1998 is 44%. All that extra CO₂ and almost no warming!

3. Climate models over-predict temperatures

In his presentation to the US senate in 2016 John Christy showed that models predict greater warming than temperature data shows (see Figure below). The graphs are of the average of 102 climate model runs - about 40 models run multiple times with slightly different settings - and the average air temperature from the Earth's surface to 50,000 ft (about 16,000 metres), both averaged over five years. The warming since 1990 is less than half of what climate models say.

And from the IPCC's 2013 report ...

"... an analysis of the full suite of CMIP5 historical simulations (...) reveals that 111 out of 114 realisations show a GMST trend over 1998-2012 that is higher than the entire HadCRUT4 trend ensemble ..." [Working Group I contribution, chapter 9, text box 9.2, page 769, and in full Synthesis Report on page SYR-8]

In simpler language this means that 111 of 114 (97%) of climate model runs predicted greater warming over the 15 years prior to the writing of the report than the temperature recordings indicated.

The message is simple - climate models cannot be trusted.

4. Sea level is not rising fast.

According to tidal gauges along coastlines - the only place where sea level really matters - the global average sea level has been rising at about 1.5mm/year for about 100 years. (When satellites started measuring sea level in 1993 they started reporting sea level rising at just over 3mm/year but there's a lot of doubt about the accuracy of the data, especially with how it's adjusted.) The American Geophysical Union has produced a graph of sea level that shows the trends over three periods (see below). If we extend the 1.4mm/year trend to 2018 (broken line) the average sea level has risen about 78mm (or 3") since 1950, which is almost 70 years ago. That's nothing to be alarmed about. (For more information, search for sea level and names like Judith Curry and Nils-Axel Morner.)

What's also interesting is that while sea level and temperature graphs both rise over time (see below), the sea level graph doesn't look much like the temperature graph. Average sea level did not slow its rate of change when temperatures weren't rising from 1945 to 1979, nor did sea level rise sharply when warming occurred after 1979. Worries about rising temperatures - usually predicted using climate models (see above) - causing sea level to rise sharply seem unfounded.

About 20 years ago we were told that Kiribati, Tuvalu and Maldive islands would shrink and disappear under rising seas. We've just seen that sea level isn't rising fast, but there's something else too - according to scientific papers by Kench (and others) many islands in the Pacific Ocean are growing larger rather than shrinking.

From Kench (2018):

Sea-level rise and climatic change threaten the existence of atoll nations. Inundation and erosion are expected to render islands uninhabitable over the next century, forcing human migration. Here we present analysis of shoreline change in all 101 islands in the Pacific atoll nation of Tuvalu. Using remotely sensed data, change is analysed over the past four decades, a period when local sea level has risen at twice the global average (~3.90 ± 0.4 mm/yr). Results highlight a net increase in land area in Tuvalu of 73.5ha (2.9%), despite sea-level rise, and land area increase in eight of nine atolls. Island change has lacked uniformity with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size.

... and from Duvat (2018):

Over the past decades, atoll islands exhibited no widespread sign of physical destabilization in the face of sea-level rise. A reanalysis of available data, which cover 30 Pacific and Indian Ocean atolls including 709 islands, reveals that no atoll lost land area and that 88.6% of islands were either stable or increased in area, while only 11.4% [of islands] contracted.

To put it simply, rising sea levels are not the threat that people have claimed.

5. Arctic sea ice has not disappeared.

We were told that Arctic sea ice would rapidly shrink with manmade warming. In 2007 the BBC reported that Arctic summers could be ice-free by 2013 (see here), but that's just not happening. Arctic sea ice did shrink in 2007 but NASA said that was because of wind and storm pushing broken ice into the path of warm ocean currents. After shrinking in 2007 ice is struggling to build up again, but it's still there and 2018 ice cover is similar to the last 6 years. Sea ice cover for 2018 is the red line in the image below, the plot coming from the University of Bremen.

(Like all other graphs of sea ice cover this one is based on small areas, e.g. 1 deg latitude x 1 degree longitude, and counts the whole area as covered by ice if the sea ice covers just 15% of the area. Six areas of 15% coverage would have the same amount of ice as one area with 90% coverage. Graphs of coverage can therefore be a little misleading.)

6. Food production has increased rather than decreased.

We've often been told that higher temperatures will mean less food. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FOA) regularly publishes reports on food production (see here). Those reports provide data about the production of various food types, with the four major types being - wheat, rice, coarse grains (all other cereals except wheat and rice, e.g. maize, barley, sorghum) and meat. Despite 2001 to 2016 suposedly having some of the warmest years since 1850 the production of the four major food types all increased across those years, the lowest increase being for rice (26%) and the highest for coarse grains (55%). (Year 2016 is taken as the end year for this work because it is the last year of reported, rather than estimated or forecast, production.)

Food type	2000 / 2001	2016 / 2017	% incr
Wheat	585	756.7	29.4%
Rice	398	501.2	25.9%
Meat	233.4	326.8	40.3%
Coarse grains	873	1355.3	55.2%

(All values in millions of tonnes. Data for meat is for years 2000 and 2016 respectively because it has a different reporting period to others).

I'm sure that all of the increases aren't entirely due to changes in climate but the main thing is that food production certainly isn't falling fast nor does there seem to be any threat of food shortages.

You can relax and enjoy your Christmas or holiday season