As Climate Worsens, a Cascade of Tipping Points Looms

The extinction is imaginary.

 

It does nothing of the sort. It merely bends a proxy model into a pretzel.

There's nothing to refute. His proxy model pretzel behaves just as he describes it. It just doesn't describe reality.

ISTM you are the one who doesn't grasp what he did.

 

Please see the IUCN Red List data linked in #623.

 

I attack your irrational embrace of a stupid paper because as bringiton astutely explains..., "Because it substitutes a modeled proxy for actual instrumental data."

I post the actual Satellite data and you ignored it.

The initial versions of satellite and radiosonde datasets suggested that the tropical surface had warmed more than the troposphere, while climate models consistently showed tropospheric amplification of surface warming in response to human-caused increases in well-mixed greenhouse gases, as shown by the diagrams above. This observation gave rise to deep concern, and resulted in a number of studies (e.g. NRC 2000) where strong attempts were made to find warming in the troposphere. As new data sets have been made available and new corrections introduced, the scientific literature have witnessed a number of attempts of reconciling the modelled and the observed atmospheric warming pattern. Conflicting conclusions have, however, been reached. Some scientists conclude that a discrepancy between modelled and observed trends in tropical lapse rates still exists, while other argue that there is no longer a serious discrepancy. A few key references on this debate are represented by Lindzen 1999 and 2007, NRC 2000, Douglass et al 2007, and Santer et al 2008. Ongoing web-based discussions can be followed here and here. This debate reflects the importance of the point raised by Lindzen (1999) on monitoring temperature changes at the height in the troposphere corresponding to an infrared optical depth near 1.




Now here is the rest of it from the link showing what Satellite data shows about the two regions of the Tropical Troposphere:




Temperature change at 200hPa (c. 12 km height) between 20oN and 20oS since 1979, according to HadAT. The thin blue line shows the monthly values, while the thick blue line represents the simple running 37 month average, nearly corresponding to a running 3 yr average. The stippled red line shows the linear fit for the period shown, with basic statistics shown in the upper left corner of the diagram. The data were normalised by setting the average of their initial 120 months (10 years) from January 1979 to December 1988 = 0. Last month shown: December 2012. Last diagram update: 4 May 2013.

and,



Temperature change at 300hPa (c. 9 km height) between 20oN and 20oS since 1979, according to HadAT. The thin blue line shows the monthly values, while the thick blue line represents the simple running 37 month average, nearly corresponding to a running 3 yr average. The stippled red line shows the linear fit for the period shown, with basic statistics shown in the upper left corner of the diagram. The data were normalised by setting the average of their initial 120 months (10 years) from January 1979 to December 1988 = 0. Last month shown: December 2012. Last diagram update: 4 May 2013.

LINK HERE

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From Sherwood garbage paper, where he excitedly says he kridges and homogenizes data:

"We present an updated version of the radiosonde dataset homogenized by Iterative Universal Kriging (IUKv2), now extended through February 2013, following the method used in the original version (Sherwood et al 2008 Robust tropospheric warming revealed by iteratively homogenized radiosonde data J. Clim. 21 5336–52)...."

bolding mine

A comment caught my attention:

“No climate models were used in the process that revealed the tropospheric hotspot.”

“We present an updated version of the radiosonde dataset homogenized by Iterative Universal Kriging (IUKv2), now extended through February 2013, following the method used in the original version (Sherwood et al 2008 Robust tropospheric warming revealed by iteratively homogenized radiosonde data J. Clim. 21 5336?52). This method, in effect, performs a multiple linear regression of the data onto a structural model…”
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/10/5/054007

“In statistics, originally in geostatistics, Kriging or Gaussian process regression is a method of interpolation for which the interpolated values are modeled…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriging

So if no “climate models” were used, were these fashion models?"

bolding mine

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Now here are the RATPAC-A data:

From climate4you,

Vertical temperature profile of the atmosphere; weather balloons

Radiosonde Atmospheric Temperature Products for Assessing Climate (RATPAC)



Seasonal global upper air temperature anomalies at 300-100 mb according to RATPAC-A Version 2. The thin lines represent the seasonal (3-month) average, and the thick line the simple running 13-season average, nearly corresponding to a running 3 yr average. Last season shown: July-September 2018. Last diagram update: 28 October 2018.

and,



Seasonal global upper air temperature anomalies at 100-50 mb according to RATPAC-A Version 2. The thin lines represent the seasonal (3-month) average, and the thick line the simple running 13-season average, nearly corresponding to a running 3 yr average. Last season shown: July-September 2018. Last diagram update: 28 October 2018.

Nope Radiosonde data doesn't show the hot spot at all either.

================

Here is the official data center for Radiosonde,

NOAA

Radiosonde Atmospheric Temperature Products for Assessing Climate (RATPAC)

There is ZERO evidence that Dr. Sherwood's "updated version of the radiosonde dataset homogenized by Iterative Universal Kriging (IUKv2)" was accepted by the NOAA. not found on the website at all.

You should realize that both Satellite and Radiosonde data doesn't support Sherwood at all.

You have nothing left.

 

Why are you STILL ignoring post 623?

 

I'll see your 623 and link and raise you it's official: scientists say we are now in the 6th extinction and it's our fault, plus there is no guarantee that we will survive it. On your side is one pathetic post and an outlier link. On the other, a massive showing of unanimity from the science community. Guess which side I am listening too? GSM.

 

Ha ha ha, Post 623 was posted by........ JACK HAYES!

It is clear you have ignored it.

POST 623 HERE

Your ranting is silly since you keep staying away from a real debate, just insulting seems to be all you can do.

What Jack posted IS the official extinction database, but you ignore it anyway, not impressed with your disinterest in seeing all points of the debate.

 

Like I said, among scientists a unanimity of agreement. Let's test your knowledge. Assume for the sake of argument that we are in the midst of the 6th extinction with extinction rates 100 to 1000 times greater than background natural extinctions. When would you say ir began?

 

The link you ignore will help you, IF you have the courage to go beyond your bias, it is how you learn more about it.

 

I would love to argue with you, but you are not equipped. It would be like dueling with an unarmed opponent. If you can't even come up with the universally agreed start point, even after I left a large cookie crumb, you are definitely not ready for me. Come back when you figure out the start point and can identify the cookie crumb.

 

You talk like a child, too bad you can't get beyond your irrational fear of discussing it.

I accept your defeat.

Cheers.

 

Whatever lets you sleep at night. I do note absence of start point and failure to identify really obvious cookie crumb. I accept your retirement from the field. Probably the smartest thing you have done for awhile. Remember, start point, cookie crumb. Otherwise no response from me. I suspect I won't be hearing from you again.

 

So far you are batting zero on the extinction discussion you are on record saying you don't want to discuss it, you refuse to see the link, you did the same to others as well, you are TROLLING.

YOU are the one who refuses to discuss anything, that is why you are becoming a liar here, you either debate it or shaddap!

 

Since the extinctions are imaginary, the start point would be imaginary. Meanwhile, "unanimity of agreement" is both redundant and meaningless.
“Why 100? If I were wrong, one would have been enough. [In response to the book "Hundred Authors Against Einstein"]”

― Albert Einstein

 

The IUCN is the "official" keeper on extinction statistics.

 

The fool doesn't care, he has an ideology to hang onto because evidence at post 623 scares him badly, that is why he treats it like holy water.

 

More than 37,400 species threatened with extinction. What's your point. Supports my point, don't you think? Maybe you don't? Why"? How is it not a mass extinction? Couple the more than 37,400 with the known holocene and anthropocene extinctions and you gave a truly horrifying scenario. I don't understand your fixation with the IUCN red list. It's not even close to the whole story. How do you hope to hold your own in a thread if you ignore completely published data?

 

Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions

The cascading failure rate is embarrassing, but many persist in still being made a fool of over the next one.

 

Don't become fixated on one chart or data point. See the whole board, the whole picture. Nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with your science. Your red list and the rest of the story. I swear, sometime it's like dealing with unruly, ignorant children. Read farther. Use your head and think for crying out loud.

 

You still have nothing to say and your ignoring post 623 makes you a hypocrite.

Seriously are you that dumb?

 

You ignored his link, that makes you look foolish, since you have no idea what it is about.

Really your prejudice is making you ignorant.

I have seen and read many extinction claims over the years, one thing I learned is that extinction numbers are always wildly different from other extinction numbers mainly because there is no true documentation to support them, they are speculative numbers made for propaganda use, nothing more.

It is likely I know more about this than you do, which is why your ignoring post 623 link makes me think you are the typical programmed follower of an uncertain ideology that is all over the place in their numbers.

The fact that you are unaware of this convinces me that you have superficial knowledge of this topic.

 

I ignored his link? You haven't been paying attention. Get yourself up to speed and then come talk to me. I promise to go easy on you! I'm dealing with children! Did you even read my post before responding? The certainty is this: you either did not read my post or you did not read link, for you would not have made that response if either were true. Just kidding! Of course you would, regardless!

 

To be clear, I made no such prediction. I posted data from a link, a link that you are enamored of, and commented on it.

 

It seems to be a flaw in the human psyche that many if not most of us are attracted to the idea of apocalypse. We like the idea that even the mightiest will fall, everything familiar be overturned, and evildoers get their comeuppance. Christianity and Islam both have their prophecies of "end-times" when everything will be destroyed (except the righteous, among whom we ourselves are of course always numbered). I'm old enough to remember a considerable sequence of such threats in the popular media: nuclear war, overpopulation, global cooling ( ), ozone depletion, pollution, deforestation, and now the CO2calypse. Problem is, the doomsayers are never embarrassed by getting their prognostications wrong, and just move on to touting the next cataclysmic threat.

 

Thank-you for spending the time to present your opinions and data. You did a good job. I need to study this and get back in a few days.

Sherwood mentioned in his 2013 paper that there was decreased reliability of radiosonde measurements with height, in particular the upper troposphere.He also mentions that the models over estimated surface warming so that led to an over estimation of tropospheric warming- there should be less of a hot spot.

The IPCC AR5 mentions Sherwood's 2008 paper on the radiosonde homogenized data by IUK, this was probably an earlier version.

IPCC AR5 2.4.4 Upper Air Temperature

https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2017/09/WG1AR5_Chapter02_FINAL.pdf

AR4 summarized that globally the troposphere had warmed at a rate greater than the GMST over the radiosonde record, while over the shorter satellite era the GMST and tropospheric warming rates were indistinguishable. Trends in the tropics were more uncertain than global trends although even this region was concluded to be warming. Globally, the stratosphere was reported to be cooling over the satellite era starting in 1979. New advances since AR4 have highlighted the substantial degree of uncertainty in both satellite and balloon-borne radiosonde records and led to some revisions and improvements in existing products and the creation of a number of new data products.

2.4.4.1 a portion of it - note contamination of upper troposphere measurements from the stratosphere: "The ‘Mid-Tropospheric’ (MT) MSU channel that most directly corresponds to the troposphere has 10 to 15% of its signal from both the skin temperature of the Earth’s surface and the stratosphere. Two alternative approaches have been suggested for removing the stratospheric component based on differencing of view angles (LT) and statistical recombination (*G) with the ‘Lower Stratosphere’ (LS) channel (Spencer and Christy, 1992; Fu et al., 2004). The MSU satellite series also included a Stratospheric Sounding Unit (SSU) that measured at higher"

Another portion of 2.4.4.1
"Sherwood and colleagues developed an iterative universal kriging approach for radiosonde data to create IUK (Sherwood et al., 200 and concluded that non-climatic data issues leading to spurious cooling remained in the deep tropics even after homogenization. The HadAT group created an automated version, undertook systematic experimentation and concluded that the parametric uncertainty (Box 2.1) was of the same order of magnitude as the apparent climate signal (McCarthy et al., 2008; Titchner et al., 2009; Thorne et al., 2011). A similar ensemble approach has also been applied to the RICH product (Haimberger et al., 2012). These various ensembles and new products exhibit more tropospheric warming / less stratospheric cooling than pre-existing products at all levels. Globally the radiosonde records all imply the troposphere has warmed and the stratosphere cooled since 1958 but with uncertainty that grows with height and is much greater outside the better-sampled NH extra-tropics (Thorne et al., 2011; Haimberger et al., 2012), where it is of the order 0.1°C per decade.

Another mention of Sherwood's methodology, note the mention of Radiosonde temperatures being affected by time-varying biases and that is why he uses Radiosonde winds :

Atmospheric winds are driven by thermal gradients. Radiosonde winds are far less affected by time-varying biases than their temperatures (Gruber and Haimberger, 2008; Sherwood et al., 2008; Section 2.7.3). Allen and Sherwood (2007) initially used radiosonde wind to infer temperatures within the Tropical West Pacific warm pool region, then extended this to a global analysis (Allen and Sherwood, 200 yielding a distinct tropical upper tropospheric warming trend maximum within the vertical profile, but with large uncertainty. Winds can only quantify relative changes and require an initialization (location and trend at that location) (Allen and Sherwood, 200. The large uncertainty range was predominantly driven by this initialization choice, a finding later confirmed by Christy et al. (2010), who in addition questioned the stability given the sparse geographical sampling, particularly in the tropics, and possible systematic sampling effects amongst other potential issues. Initializing closer to the tropics tended to reduce or remove the appearance of a tropical upper tropospheric warming trend maximum (Allen and Sherwood, 2008; Christy et al., 2010). There is only low confidence in trends inferred from ‘thermal winds’ given the relative immaturity of the analyses and their large uncertainties.