From the climate denier Roy Spencer – August 2017

The Version 6.0 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for August, 2017 was +0.41 deg. C, up somewhat from the July, 2017 value of +0.29 deg. C


Spencer doesn’t rank months but I’m going to start. August 2017 was the third warmest August UAH reading behind 2016 and 1998

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RSS (lower troposphere – August 2017 not included)


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Belated Met Office – July 2017, 4th warmest July recorded (behind 2016, 2015 & 1998)




Predictions for 2017




Vital Signs




Arctic Sea Ice Minimum

Arctic sea ice reaches its minimum each September. September Arctic sea ice is now declining at a rate of 13.3 percent per decade, relative to the 1981 to 2010 average. This graph shows the average monthly Arctic sea ice extent in September since 1979, derived from satellite observations.


Glacier Retreat


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Greenland: how rapid climate change on world’s largest island will affect us all

Greenland is an important cog in the global climate system. The ice sheet which covers 80% of the island reflects so much of the sun’s energy back into space that it moderates temperatures through what is known as the “albedo effect”. And since it occupies a strategic position in the North Atlantic, its meltwater tempers ocean circulation patterns.

But Greenland is especially vulnerable to climate change, as Arctic air temperatures are currently rising at twice the global average rate. Environmental conditions are frequently setting new records: “the warmest”, “the wettest”, “the driest”.

Between 2002 and 2016 (update for 2017) the ice sheet lost mass at a rate of around 269 gigatonnes per year. One gigatonne is one billion tonnes. One tonne is about the weight of a walrus.


In Greenland, like much of the Arctic, rising temperatures are thawing the permafrost. This means the active layer is growing by up to 1.5cm per year. This trend is expected to continue, seeing as under current IPCC predictions, Arctic air temperatures will rise by between 2.0°C and 7.5°C this century.

Arctic permafrost contains more than 1,500 billion tonnes of dead plants and animals (around 1,500 billion walrus equivalent) which we call “organic matter”. Right now, this stuff has been frozen for thousands of years. But when the permafrost thaws this organic matter will decay, releasing carbon and methane (another greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere.

If thawing continues, it’s estimated that by 2100 permafrost will emit 850-1,400 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent (for comparison: total global emissions in 2012 was 54 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent). All that extra methane and carbon of course has the potential to enhance global warming even further.

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Fun with longway

Quote Originally Posted by longway View Post
I didn't mention breitbart because,...

the study is not connected with breitbart in any way, and has been reported by a number of media outlets, it originates in a science journal that has a good reputation.....

Too funny (I’m going to snip the article up a bit, but the entire article is in the link)

Why the IPA's claim global warming is natural is 'junk science'

So when two staffers at Australia’s Institute of Public Affairs managed to get some “science” into a journal earlier this month, there was much delight in conservative media outlets, together with a distinct lack of any genuine scepticism.

“Global Warming Is Almost Entirely Natural, Study Confirms,” wrote Breitbart.

One of the authors, Jennifer Marohasy, took to the Spectator to claim her research had shown that recent global warming was almost entirely natural.

None of the writers bothered to ask a single other genuine climate scientist for their view on the paper.

I asked five. They variously summarised the research as “junk science” and seriously flawed. Oh dear.

It also appears that the lead author, the IPA’s John Abbot, claimed an academic affiliation to James Cook University that, according to that university, had expired more than six months before the research was submitted to the journal.

The gory details

First, they claim that their resulting data shows the world would have warmed by almost as much as it already has, even if the industrial revolution had not happened and we had not added any extra greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

Second, they claim that if you were to double the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere then you would eventually see planet-wide warming of just 0.6C. Their estimate of this “equilibrium climate sensitivity” (ECS) is much lower than other studies (the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says, for example, that studies show the likely range will be between 1.5C and 4C).

So what did the scientists think?

Schmidt also says “something went wrong” when Abbot and Marohasy digitised their results, meaning that for the northern hemisphere the data had shifted by about 35 years “so what they think is 2000, is actually 1965”. This meant that a huge part of modern warming had been missed.

Dr Benjamin Henley, of the University of Melbourne, has published several studies using proxy data to understand ancient climates. He says the paper should never have been published and should be withdrawn.

“The paper is seriously flawed and should be retracted by the journal,” Henley told me by email, pointing out several serious issues with the way the data had been used.

Henley questioned why only six “paleoclimate” records had been used, when a recent paper identified some 692 proxy records that could be used to determine temperatures.

Methodology flaws

Forster reviewed the paper and told me he thought “the methodology is unphysical” because it simply took data and then extrapolated it rather than accounting for what was actually known to be happening in the real world.

Forster said the paper contained “fundamental errors” and gave me a detailed rundown.

Sherwood wrote: “The analysis by the authors seems to work like magic.

“What is interesting about this fancy curve-fitting exercise is that the authors are doing exactly what mainstream climate scientists have falsely been accused of doing: extrapolating into the future from short past records.

“There is much evidence that recent warming is unprecedented, for example ancient ice in various mountain regions such as Peru that is now melting for the first time in millennia. Thus the authors’ conclusion is contradicted by direct physical evidence. Also, the authors are alleging that the climate can exert large natural swings in temperature but is insensitive to heating. This is a contradiction.”

Prof David Karoly, a climate scientist at the University of Melbourne, told me the study “appears to be junk science” and listed several major issues with the paper’s methodology.

He said the authors had not bothered to describe the detailed method they had used to calculate ECS, adding: “ECS is based on global mean temperature changes and cannot be estimated without the globally averaged temperature estimates first.”

The kicker,…….

Marohasy was also the editor of the IPA’s most recent climate book – a collection of essays from a line-up of climate science deniers and contrarians.

The IPA said the book had contributions from “some of the world’s leading experts”. Among these “leading experts” is a New Zealander who has written several New Age-style books on cats (including Pawmistry: How to Read Your Cats Paws) while being the “king of rubber-band magic”.