Global Warming Since 1997 Underestimated By Half

Layzej writes "A new paper shows that global temperature rise of the past 15 years has been greatly underestimated. The reason is that the weather station network covers only about 85% of the planet. Satellite data shows that the parts of the Earth that are not covered by the surface station network, especially the Arctic, have warmed exceptionally fast over the last 15 years. Most temperature reconstructions simply omit any region not covered. A temperature reconstruction developed by NASA somewhat addresses the gaps by filling in missing data using temperatures from the nearest available observations. Now Kevin Cowtan (University of York) and Robert Way (University of Ottawa) have developed a new method to fill the data gaps using satellite data. The researchers describe their methods and findings in this YouTube video. 'The most important part of our work was testing the skill of each of these approaches in reconstructing unobserved temperatures. To do this we took the observed data and further reduced the coverage by setting aside some of the observations. We then reconstructed the global temperatures using each method in turn. Finally, we compared the reconstructed temperatures to the observed temperatures where they are available... While infilling works well over the oceans, the hybrid model works particularly well at restoring temperatures in the vicinity of the unobserved regions.' The authors note that 'While short term trends are generally treated with a suitable level of caution by specialists in the field, they feature significantly in the public discourse on climate change.'"

Twice as much to deny!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, crap. Do you know what this means? Global warming deniers have been slacking by one half this whole time! I don't think they'll be able to deny DOUBLE the global warming fast enough to catch up!

Install more weather stations

[Hatta]

Clearly they have a cooling effect.

Re:Install more weather stations

[durrr]

But those few square kilometers that we miss to cover will spontaneously catch fire when all warming have to flee to them.

Re: Orders of magnitude errors dont inspire confid

[Anonymous Coward]

No no no. You don't understand. *this* time we got it right.

Re:Install more weather stations

[erikkemperman]

I have read some stuff about "chilling effects" of certain government programs. Maybe these programs should not be dismantled but rather refocused?

Re:OK, enough

[Chrisq]

Say what you will about anecdotes, I don't give a damn. My experience is unambiguous. The Earth is warming.

No you must be wrong. It's as cool as it has ever been in my gas-guzzler with the aircon on full.

Re:Twice as much to deny!

[Antipater]

Uhh, is it me or do folks really not know how to read basic charts? Yes, the temperature changes due to cycling glacial periods are real. They are also spread out across vast chunks of time; the rate of these cyclic background climate changes are very, very, very slow.

Not guilty, your Honor! Death is a natural cycle; he was dying before I ever met him! The bullets I shot into him had nothing to do with it.

Re:Twice as much to deny!

[Anonymous Coward]

Something doesn't make sense to you off the top of your head, so of course it's wrong. Or you could, ya know, actually cite recent extinction rates, or information about how no one species ever boomed during a mass extinction event. Better yet, you could admit that "their hockey stick chart looks surprisingly similar to the population chart" isn't exactly a profound observation. No, no, I'll admit I'm wrong, one random Internet poster has clearly managed to debunk climate science. Brilliant!

Slashdot.Gov appears to have ate your citations, along with any evidence at all that they are accurate.

Re: Double down

[Alex Cane]

It was autumn, and the Indians on the remote reservation asked their new Chief if the winter was going to be cold or mild. Since he was an Indian Chief in a modern society, he had never been taught the old secrets, and when he looked at the sky, he couldn't tell what the weather was going to be. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he replied to his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect wood to be prepared. But also being a practical leader, after several days he got an idea. He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked, "Is the coming winter going to be cold?" "It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold indeed," the meteorologist at the weather service responded. So the Chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more wood in order to be prepared. One week later he called the National Weather Service again. "Is it going to be a very cold winter?" "Yes," the man at National Weather Service again replied, "it's going to be a very cold winter." The Chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every scrap of wood they could find. Two weeks later he called the National Weather Service again. "Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?" "Absolutely," the man replied. "It's going to be one of the coldest winters ever." "How can you be so sure?" the Chief asked. The weather man replied, "The Indians are collecting wood like crazy."