winter of 2010

I attended a whole day long climate change symposium at my university where both sides presented their arguments for and against climate change. They picked the brightest and best minds of science to present both sides equally. It was hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson and brought scientists from around the world, including NASA. It was the most interesting set of lectures I've ever attended and the result at the end of the day was very clear: No matter how you look at it, global temperatures are on the rise. Even the opposing side admits that temperatures are on the rise, but they argue it is good for the economy (land further north can produce more than before) or that it is normal climate fluctuations.

Up until about 2008, I too believe that the earths climate was just cycling as usual, but now there is too much data and evidence pointing otherwise. You don't have to look at temperatures only... it can be seen in nature. Birds migrate later in the fall and go back earlier in the spring. Flowers and trees around the world are blooming earlier than ever recorded. Pine beetles which can't survive extremely cold temps are surviving the milder winters to kill pines across the west. Glaciers are retreating at accelerated rates. To fully site and describe the statistical methods on these points would take YEARS, thus I won't be bothered to do that for you.

But more to that random fact I mentioned earlier:
418335main_land-ocean-full.jpg


If you want the details of how it is calculated, you can read the following quote from nasa:
Current Analysis Method

The current analysis uses surface air temperatures measurements from the following data sets: the unadjusted data of the Global Historical Climatology Network (Peterson and Vose, 1997 and 1998), United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) data, and SCAR (Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research) data from Antarctic stations. The basic analysis method is described by Hansen et al. (1999), with several modifications described by Hansen et al. (2001) also included.

Graphs and tables are updated around the 10th of every month using the current GHCN and SCAR files. The new files incorporate reports for the previous month and late reports and corrections for earlier months. NOAA updates the USHCN data at a slower, less regular frequency; we switch to a later version as soon as a new complete year is available.

The GHCN/USHCN/SCAR data are modified in two steps to obtain station data from which our tables, graphs, and maps are constructed. In step 1, if there are multiple records at a given location, these are combined into one record; in step 2, the urban and peri-urban (i.e., other than rural) stations are adjusted so that their long-term trend matches that of the mean of neighboring rural stations. Urban stations without nearby rural stations are dropped.

A global temperature index, as described by Hansen et al. (1996), is obtained by combining the meteorological station measurements with sea surface temperatures based in early years on ship measurements and in recent decades on satellite measurements. Uses of this data should credit the original sources, specifically the British HadISST group (Rayner and others) and the NOAA satellite analysis group (Reynolds, Smith and others). (See references.)

The analysis is limited to the period since 1880 because of poor spatial coverage of stations and decreasing data quality prior to that time. Meteorological station data provide a useful indication of temperature change in the Northern Hemisphere extratropics for a few decades prior to 1880, and there are a small number of station records that extend back to previous centuries. However, we believe that analyses for these earlier years need to be carried out on a station by station basis with an attempt to discern the method and reliability of measurements at each station, a task beyond the scope of our analysis. Global studies of still earlier times depend upon incorporation of proxy measures of temperature change. References to such studies are provided in Hansen et al. (1999).

Modifications to the analysis since 2001 are described on the separate Updates to Analysis.

Programs used in the GISTEMP analysis and documentation on their use are available for download. The programs assume a Unix-like operating system and require familiarity with FORTRAN, C and Python for installation and use.

So no, I'm not just taking statistics that I read and automatically believing they are true. I am considering the data measurements, analysis method and calculations done and the source to decide if it is reasonable or not. I'm sure there is a more complete statistical analysis report written on this data set, but I'm hoping this is detailed enough for you.
 
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Ditto (on both counts). We're getting hammered as well. Supposed to get 9-14 in the next 24-30 hours, with the added bonus of 30-40mph winds starting tonight/tomorrow.

Actually supposed to go to Chicago Thursday afternoon (for the auto show on Friday) and then go to Madison from there....

Don't know if that's going to happen at this point. The stretch between South Bend and Chicago on the toll road is a nightmare on good days.