So where's the proof of the statement that global warming is increasing ever faster? These annual pronouncements are revealed to be what they are: efforts to resuscitate a dimming paradigm, that humans’ use of fossil fuels results in carbon dioxide emissions that are disrupting earth’s climate.
Average Global Temperature as the "Warmest-on-Record"?
by the Greening Earth Society (December 13, 2002)

[OBJECTIVE SCIENCE.COM] As predictably as reclusive authors reappear on talk shows to flog their latest book or movie stars can be seen yucking it up with Jay Leno just before he coincidently runs a clip from their upcoming box office smash, right on cue, this last week, came the flurry of announcements that characterize this year’s average global temperature as the whatever-warmest-on-record. Somehow these announcements always manage to precede the actual end of the year when all of the data actually is in, but let’s run with this year’s declaration that 2002 is – as you’ve heard by now – "the second warmest on record," a record that extends back into the mid- to late-1800s."

Basically there are three organizations that compile global surface temperature records. Usually three separate announcements are made in rapid succession. Once one organization jumps to its conclusion, then the other two quickly follow. This year, it was NASA’s Jim Hansen who first made the announcement. Tom Karl of National Climatic Data Center was right on his heels. Then came Kenneth Davidson of the World Meteorological Organization. While this modus operandi virtually is guaranteed to assure global press saturation, in a few weeks the Big Three will repeat their announcement because all the data will be in and they can make it "official."

After the monster El Niño of 1997-98 pushed global temperatures to values much above anything else previously observed in all three data sets, we suggested that all the fun would be drained from these annual temperature pronouncements. Even with a warming trend, it would be quite some time before the "warmest year in history" title belt could be wrested from 1998. And that’s precisely the case.

The announcements in the last few years have required increased creativity because a claim that the previous year was the second (or fifth or eighth) warmest on record just isn’t all that compelling. So this year’s attention-grabbing twist is that 2002’s temperatures alarm scientists because they represent a "quarter-century pattern of accelerated warming," according to Reuter’s coverage of the story. The LA Times headline summary described it this way, "Unprecedented stretch continued this year, the second warmest on record, suggesting the planet is heating more rapidly than expected." The problem is that there is no data to support such claims.

The world emerged from a three decade-long cooling trend rather suddenly in 1977 with an event that has come to be known as the "Great Pacific Climate Shift." In 1976-77, an enormous volume of warm water bubbled from the central Pacific’s subsurface to its surface. Ever since, the world has been in a warming trend. As you read this, scientists are tracking a large, cool pool of subsurface water that they believe soon will pop to the surface in the tropical Pacific. It will be interesting to see how global temperatures (and the world press) respond to that development. Stay tuned.

Figure 1 depicts the temperature history contained in the three global temperature records since 1977. Remember, now, that’s at the beginning of the recent warming.

Figure 1

The annual temperature history from 1977 to 2002 from the three primary global temperature data sets: National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), National Aeronautics and Space Administration–Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA-GISS), and the World Meteorological Organization–Climate Research Unit (WHO-CRU). Trends in these data sets are linear, not curvilinear as they would be if the rate of warming were accelerating.

If press reports about accelerated warming are correct, the temperature histories should curve upward, not simply head upward in a straight line. While there is quite a bit of year-to-year variation in the average global temperature (arising from such events as the eruptions of El Chichon in 1982 and Mt. Pinatubo in 1991, and the large El Niños of 1982-83 and 1997-98), there is no indication that the shape of the overall trend is anything but linear.

Figure 2 illustrates this data in a different way.

Figure 2

The temperature trends in these three data sets begin in 1977 and end in the year indicated. There is no evidence the trends are increasing.

Each point on the graph represents the average annual temperature trend calculated from the temperature data beginning in 1977 and ending at the time indicated on the graph’s horizontal axis. For example, the first point represents the temperature trend from 1977 to 1981. The last point represents the trend from 1977 to 2002. Obviously, the more data that go into the trend calculations, the less the trend jumps around from year to year. In other words, the change from point to point on the right-hand side of the graph is much smaller than on the left-hand side. If there were a trend toward accelerating warming, then the points on Figure 2 should trend upward. Again, the data don’t support such a conclusion.

So where’s the proof of the statement that global warming is increasing ever faster? These annual pronouncements are revealed to be what they are: efforts to resuscitate a dimming paradigm, that humans’ use of fossil fuels results in carbon dioxide emissions that are disrupting earth’s climate.

-- Reprinted from Greening Earth Society at www.CO2andClimate.org
 

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