Wednesday 9 December 2009

Do thermometer readings "cut out the doubt"?

An article in today's Times reports on yesterday's Climate Change debate in Copenhagen, and is headed "Back-to-basics measure cuts out the doubt".

It reports that the data from the World Meteorological Organisation is a welcome return to basics. It does not rely on any of the 'proxy' measurements that are subject to criticism, but is based on the simplest, most direct measure of temperature- land and sea-based thermometers.

It is this method of temperature comparison that I expressed concern about in my posting of 14th October. Stephan Harrison responded:

You said: "During the 20th century the number of stations providing data must have fluctuated, and those situated in or near cities must have been influenced by the 'urban heating effect'".This is a good point. However, the inhomogeneities in the data sets are well known and accounted for..... In addition, the UHI is well known and can be accounted for in climate records.We can measure C02 levels from proxy records too (including ice cores, plant stomata etc) and they also show a consistent rise with GHG emissions.

So I am not at all sure how thermometer readings "cut out doubts". and maybe Stephan, you could clarify how "inhomogeneities in the data sets" are accounted for.

You also stated in a comment on October 19th that "The input data to the models doesn't include average annual temperature. The models are developed from simple energy balance models....temperature is an output rather than input." Even more confusing!

1 comment:

  1. So I am not at all sure how thermometer readings "cut out doubts". and maybe Stephan, you could clarify how "inhomogeneities in the data sets" are accounted for. I did not understand the things here, what was going on?

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