Iceage, Here we come!

[prashamk]

Climate change is true but same can't be told for Global Warming!!!

Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.

All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.

There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2007 was exceptionally cold. It snowed in Baghdad for the first time in centuries, the winter in China was simply terrible and the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the austral winter was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered the place in 1770.

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[forfismum]

Still plugging links to your forum I see,not the done thing old chap.

[Bored Wombat]

Originally Posted by prashamk

Climate change is true but same can't be told for Global Warming!!!

This must be for some other planet.

[effektz]

I say global warming even though I should "know better". But I know climate change and global warming are the same thing when I'm talking, but it gives a bad perception since it is climate change. But since global warming was the first term to be engraved in our heads, thats what works sometimes.

[prashamk]

Originally Posted by Bored Wombat

This must be for some other planet.

Though the graph you have displayed here isn't wrong, but then it isn't updated either.

How about this one

[prashamk]

Or would thisone help...

[prashamk]

And especially for the people who are having problems with my specific links...

.: U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works :: Minority Page :.

Climate experts predict temperature drop - Telegraph

Ice Age is Coming: warmest year search

[Karl]

Those graphs are just "time-series" plots of a single weather parameter (temperature). The fluctuations at different places and times is not strange. The baseline or statistical average of the fluctuations is the important thing. Based on visual inspection (without actual analysis) - these graphs appear to show a trend of higher averages or means (chemists use time-series analyses, right? ).

While the term global warming (or cooling) is often used, the real issue is "climate change". Climate is the statistical average of weather patterns over a limited region and minimum time of 30 years (the standard or convention used by climatologists). The parameters under consideration are more than just temperature - rainfall, humidity, wind speed & direction, cloud cover (and to some extent the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events).

So "climate change" or lack thereof cannot be determined from a ten year dataset (which is not being done here, but people often use 1998 as a starting point). Iff detectable trends of a change in weather patterns can be determined using datasets of meteorological parameters over a 30-yr period then climate change (or otherwise) can be said to have taken place.

Another issue is that it amounts to "environmental uncertainty" (in relation to weather / climate). For example, if macro-scale changes cause (as an example) a change in the onset of the monsoon season this affects development and planning, since all schedules for various socio-economic activities will cater for the specific conditions at a predictable time of year. The same is true of places closer to the equator which experience "predictable" wet-season / dry-season, or the peripheral lattitudes that experience the seasonal dynamics of having "predictable" cycles of cold-winters / hot-summer, etc.

[Karl]

Originally Posted by Bored Wombat

This must be for some other planet.

These NASA graphs seem to be showing trends of a "Global Temperature Land Ocean Index" with "Temperature Anomaly" plotted against year. Without a defintion of these paramaters (especially the index and anomaly aspect) it is difficult to determine exactly what they show.

Further, the times-series plots posted by Prasham appear to be showing entirely different parameters, and therefore probably cannot be directly compared to the previous graphs of temperature anomaly.

Overall, the trends that both sets of graphs demonstrate is difficult to determine where they are posted in isolation, as the context in which they were originally presented (and their actual intent) are not obvious here.

[Karl]

Originally Posted by Karl

....

Based on visual inspection (without actual analysis) - these graphs appear to show a trend of higher averages or means
...

As an illustration of what I am referring to, look at the "0 degrees" (horizontal axis) either of the two graphs posted by Prasham. Using the "spike" of 1998 as a reference point, the temperatures show fluctuation or oscillation both before and after 1998 - however, what is clearly demonstrated is that prior to 1998 the "fluctuations" showed values that were consistently above and below the zero line, whereas subsequent to 1998, the fluctuation trend showed similar characteristics but were almost entirely above the zero line.

------

Another point on the lack of "comparability" between the graphs provided by Bored Wombat and Prasham...

The graphs posted by Bored Wombat show trends related to a "land - ocean" index while Prasham's second graph shows trends related to the lower troposphere.These are three separate, albeit (for climatological purposes) closely linked systems - the hydrosphere (water), the lithosphere (land + biomass), and the atmosphere.

For the purpose of temperature classification, the atmosphere has five (5) regions - the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere and exosphere. The graph refers to the troposphere - this is the region extending from sea level to the tropopause (which depending on conditions is between 7 km and 17 km above sea level). This is the lowest region of the atmosphere (closest to the ground) and it is within this zone that the biosphere is contained.

As such, while the troposphere is the region with the closest physical relationship to the land and ocean, trends cannot be directly transposed from one medium to the other. This is because each of the three systems has different thermodynamic properties (especially "heat capacity") and therefore a different response in space and time, to variations in thermal effects. For example, the fact that the sea water has a significantly higher heat capacity results in the sea having a higher thermal inertia than than the other environmental media - i.e., it generally responds more slowly to heating effects, but retains the energy for longer periods (than the air or land).


PS
Feel free to consult the search engine of your choice for clarification of any of the terms or concepts used above...