Category Archives: climate data

“Naïve empiricism and what theory suggests about errors in observed global warming”

A post from one of my favorite statistics-oriented bloggers, Variable Variability, dealing with a subject too casually passed over. See Naïve empiricism and what theory suggests about errors in observed global warming.

Posted in Anthropocene, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, confirmation bias, geophysics, rationality, statistics, time series, Variable Variability, Victor Venema | Leave a comment

“Full-depth Ocean Heat Content” reblog

This is a re-blog of an excellent post at And Then There’s Physics, titled Full-depth OHC or, expanded, “full-depth ocean heat content”. Since my holiday is now over, I thought I might briefly comment on a recent paper by Cheng … Continue reading

Posted in Anthropocene, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, climate models, computation, differential equations, ensembles, environment, fluid dynamics, forecasting, geophysics, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, Lorenz, Mathematics and Climate Research Network, model comparison, NOAA, oceanography, physics, science, statistics, theoretical physics, thermodynamics, time series | Leave a comment

Six cases of models

The previous post included an attempt to explain land surface temperatures as estimated by the BEST project using a dynamic linear model including regressions on both quarterly CO2 concentrations and ocean heat content. The idea was to check the explanatory … Continue reading

Posted in AMETSOC, anemic data, Anthropocene, astrophysics, Bayesian, Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, BEST, carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, climate models, dlm package, dynamic linear models, dynamical systems, environment, fossil fuels, geophysics, Giovanni Petris, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, information theoretic statistics, maths, maximum likelihood, meteorology, model comparison, numerical software, Patrizia Campagnoli, Rauch-Tung-Striebel, Sonia Petrone, state-space models, stochastic algorithms, stochastic search, SVD, time series | 1 Comment

On Munshi mush

(Slightly updated on 2016-06-11.) Professor Emeritus Jamal Munshi of Sonoma State University has papers recently cited in science denier circles as evidence that the conventional associations between mean global surface temperature and cumulative carbon emissions are, well, bunk, due to … Continue reading

Posted in Bayes, Bayesian, Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, BEST, carbon dioxide, cat1, climate, climate change, climate data, climate education, climate models, convergent cross-mapping, dynamic linear models, ecology, ENSO, environment, Ethan Deyle, evidence, geophysics, George Sughihara, global warming, greenhouse gases, information theoretic statistics, Kalman filter, mathematics, maths, meteorology, model comparison, NOAA, oceanography, prediction, state-space models, statistics, Takens embedding theorem, Techno Utopias, the right to know, theoretical physics, time series, zero carbon | 1 Comment

UnScientific Americans: Congress Aims to Cut Climate Science

YOU can make a difference! Support measuring the Keeling Curve. Click on the image of the coffee cup to the right. The emergence of Willful Solipsists in the leadership of the United States will harm it more than any terrorist … Continue reading

Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, atmosphere, carbon dioxide, citizen science, citizenship, climate data, denial, ecology, Ecology Action, environment, ignorance, rationality, reasonableness, science, science denier, the problem of evil, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, zero carbon | Leave a comment

Absorption of long wave, or thermal radiation by CO2 at 667 per cm

From time to time, I engage with science deniers on the Web, typically in Comment sections, and primarily regarding aspects of climate science or physics. Some think this to be a waste of time, but, as I enjoy debating (have … Continue reading

Posted in Anthropocene, astrophysics, atmosphere, Bill Nye, carbon dioxide, chemistry, citizen science, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, climate education, denial, evidence, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, physics, rationality, reasonableness, science, science denier, science education, spectra, SuperCorrector1, Svante Arrhenius | Leave a comment

Climate Denial Fails Pepsi Challenge

Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Statistical Association, card draws, card games, chance, climate, climate change, climate data, climate education, confirmation bias, data science, denial, disingenuity, education, false advertising, fear uncertainty and doubt, fossil fuels, games of chance, geophysics, global warming, ignorance, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, obfuscating data, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, sociology, the right to know | Leave a comment

Kevin Anderson’s latest

Also note Oxfam’s “World’s richest 10% produce half of carbon emissions while poorest 3.5 billion account for just a tenth“. Update, 2016-04-28: And what, exactly, does the Paris agreement (COP21) mean? See this story.

Posted in adaptation, agriculture, Anthropocene, biofuels, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to nowhere, bridge to somewhere, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, Carbon Worshipers, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, denial, destructive economic development, disruption, distributed generation, ecology, efficiency, electricity, electricity markets, energy, energy reduction, energy storage, energy utilities, environment, ethics, evidence, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, fracking, global warming, greenhouse gases, grid defection, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, Kevin Anderson, liberal climate deniers, local generation, microgrids, natural gas, rationality, reasonableness, science, sustainability, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, zero carbon | 1 Comment

reblog: “The Big 3: CO2, CH4, N2O”, from Tamino

Greenhouse gases seen from the perspective of their marginal radiative forcings. This is a nice normalization of how much we should care about each. Note the context in the figure below (found on Mr Smiths Physics at Weebly.com): (Click on … Continue reading

Posted in Anthropocene, carbon dioxide, chemistry, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, di-nitrogen oxide, diffusion, geophysics, Hyper Anthropocene, methane, mitigation, science, Tamino, water vapor | Leave a comment

Remember 2012?

“Welcome to the rest of our lives …” Peter Sinclair speculates 2016 will be as bad and possibly worse than 2012.

Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, Carbon Worshipers, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, denial, environment, Exxon, FEMA, forecasting, forest fires, fossil fuels, fracking, games of chance, geophysics, George Sughihara, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hermann Scheer, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, liberal climate deniers, Mathematics and Climate Research Network, meteorology, physics, rationality, reasonableness, regime shifts, science, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets | Leave a comment

Gavin Simpson updates his temperature analysis

See the very interesting discussion at his blog, From the bottom of the heap. It would be nice to see some information theoretic measures on these results, though.

Posted in AMETSOC, Anthropocene, astrophysics, Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, carbon dioxide, changepoint detection, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, climate models, ecology, environment, evidence, Gavin Simpson, Generalize Additive Models, geophysics, global warming, HadCRUT4, hiatus, Hyper Anthropocene, information theoretic statistics, Kalman filter, maths, meteorology, numerical analysis, R, rationality, reasonableness, splines, time series | Leave a comment

“The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Consensus”

“The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus“, T. C. Peterson, W. M. Connolley, J. Fleck, http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1. Abstract Climate science as we know it today did not exist in the 1960s and 1970s. The integrated enterprise embodied in the … Continue reading

Posted in AMETSOC, Anthropocene, carbon dioxide, citizen science, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, climate education, climate zombies, coastal communities, differential equations, dynamic linear models, dynamical systems, ecology, environment, fluid dynamics, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, ice sheet dynamics, investing | Leave a comment

HadCRUT4 and GISTEMP series filtered and estimated with simple RTS model

Happy Vernal Equinox! This post has been updated today with some of the equations which correspond to the models. An assessment of whether or not there was a meaningful slowdown or “hiatus” in global warming, was recently discussed by Tamino … Continue reading

Posted in AMETSOC, anemic data, Bayesian, boosting, bridge to somewhere, cat1, changepoint detection, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, climate models, complex systems, computation, data science, dynamical systems, geophysics, George Sughihara, global warming, hiatus, information theoretic statistics, machine learning, maths, meteorology, MIchael Mann, multivariate statistics, physics, prediction, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, regime shifts, sea level rise, time series | 5 Comments

Going down to the Southern Ocean, by Earle Wilson (on the Scripps R/V Roger Revelle)

(Click on picture to see a larger image, and use your browser Back button to return to reading.) Getting steady data from the Earth’s oceans demands commitment and not a little courage. I could never do what these oceanographers do, … Continue reading

Posted in Alison M Macdonald, anemic data, Antarctica, climate data, complex systems, Earle Wilson, Emily Shuckburgh, engineering, environment, fluid dynamics, geophysics, marine biology, NOAA, oceanic eddies, oceanography, open data, Principles of Planetary Climate, sampling, science, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, thermohaline circulation, waves, WHOI, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution | Leave a comment

On friction and the duplicity

(Hat tip to Peter Sinclair at Climate Denial Crock of the Week.) Has Senator Cruz called Dr Carl Mears (video) of Remote Sensing Systems, the maker and interpreter of the sensor Senator Cruz used for his Spencer-Christy-Curry carnival? No. Of … Continue reading

Posted in AMETSOC, anemic data, Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, BEST, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, confirmation bias, corruption, denial, disingenuity, ecology, evidence, fear uncertainty and doubt, geophysics, global warming, greenhouse gases, hiatus, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, meteorology, model comparison, NCAR, NOAA, obfuscating data, oceanography, physics, rationality, reasonableness, statistics, time series | Leave a comment

“Causal feedbacks in climate change”

Today I was reviewing and re-reading the nonlinear time series technical literature I have, seeking ideas on how to go about using the statistical ensemble learning technique called “boosting” with them. (See the very nice book, R. E. Schapire, Y. … Continue reading

Posted in Anthropocene, boosting, Carbon Cycle, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, cat1, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, complex systems, convergent cross-mapping, denial, differential equations, diffusion processes, dynamical systems, ecology, Egbert van Nes, empirical likelihood, ensembles, environment, Ethan Deyle, Floris Takens, forecasting, fossil fuels, geophysics, George Sughihara, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hao Ye, machine learning, Maren Scheffer, mathematics, maths, meteorology, physics, rationality, reasonableness, science, state-space models, Takens embedding theorem, time series, Timothy Lenton, Victor Brovkin | 2 Comments

Hottest Year on Record

Reposting from Tamino’s blog. And there still are intelligent people out there, including statistician colleagues, who don’t buy the facts of warming. Generally speaking, they have a look at a few time series and get quickly skeptical, failing to realize … Continue reading

Posted in AMETSOC, Anthropocene, Berkeley, Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, BEST, BLUE, carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, climate education, climate zombies, environment, evidence, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, James Hansen, kriging, meteorology, NCAR, NOAA, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, Richard Muller, Robert Rohde, science, science education, Tamino, the right to know, time series, University of California Berkeley | Leave a comment

Not too shabby: “What’s warming the world” (Bloomberg Business), and “The siege of Miami” (The New Yorker)

What’s warming the world Infographic allowing the visitor to overlay time series of candidate causes for global warming, and thereby permitting them to draw their own conclusions. And Elizabeth Kolbert’s piece in The New Yorker, brings home the contradictions and … Continue reading

Posted in Anthropocene, business, climate change, climate data, climate zombies, complex systems, critical slowing down, denial, disingenuity, economics, environment, evidence, fossil fuels, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, mitigation, model comparison, time series | Leave a comment

About that “hide the decline” thing …

(Hat tip to Climate Denial Crock of the Week) It’s amazing what you can do when you take words out of context. Watch The Daily Show some time. But that’s entertainment, not governance. Hide the decline? The email doesn’t say … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, climate, climate data, climate disruption, denial, environment, ethics, evidence, fear uncertainty and doubt, geophysics, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, meteorology, oceanography, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, science, temporal myopia | Leave a comment

Climate Conclusions: The American Petroleum Institute (1980)

The following are excerpted from a memorandum quoted by the Inside Climate News team, documenting the minutes of a 29th February 1980 of a task force on climate change at the American Petroleum Institute. Hat tip to Climate Denial Crock … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, American Petroleum Institute, AMETSOC, Anthropocene, bridge to nowhere, Carbon Cycle, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, Chevron, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, climate models, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, denial, ecology, economics, environment, ethics, evidence, Exxon, fear uncertainty and doubt, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, greenhouse gases, Gulf Oil, Hyper Anthropocene, meteorology, natural gas, open data, physics, pipelines, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, science, selfishness, Standard Oil of California, sustainability, Texaco, the right to know, the value of financial assets | Leave a comment

dynamic linear model applied to sea-level-rise anomalies

I spent much of the data working up a function for level+trend dynamic linear modeling based upon the dlm package by Petris, Petrone, and Campagnoli, while trying some calculations and code for regime shift detection. One of the test cases … Continue reading

Posted in Bayesian, citizen science, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, dynamic linear models, floods, forecasting, Frequentist, global warming, icesheets, information theoretic statistics, Kalman filter, meteorology, open data, sea level rise, state-space models, statistics, time series | 1 Comment

Admiral David Titley (USN, retired), oceanographer, on climate models and satellite temperature data

(Hat tip to Peter Sinclair’s Climate Denial Crock of the Week.) More: Still more: And a 22 minute lecture at TEDx Pentagon:

Posted in AMETSOC, astrophysics, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, climate models, denial, environment, geophysics, global warming, ignorance, IPCC, James Hansen, NCAR, NOAA, oceanography, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, science | Leave a comment

Courage in Congress

When someone cannot argue on the basis of evidence and logic, a tempting ploy is to discredit their opponent by tarnishing their character. This is, of course, an invalid argument, since it is entirely possible that even one of tarnished … Continue reading

Posted in Bill Nye, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, corruption, denial, evidence, fear uncertainty and doubt, global warming, hiatus, ignorance, physics | Leave a comment

Is Earth Much More Sensitive to CO2 Than Thought?

“Take notice that carbon dioxide 50 million years ago may not have been as high as we once thought it was. We may reach that level in the next century, and so the climate change from that increase could be pretty severe, pretty dramatic. CO2 and other climate forcings may be more important for global warming than we realized.” Continue reading

Posted in Anthropocene, Carbon Cycle, carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, differential equations, diffusion processes, dynamic linear models, dynamical systems, environment, fossil fuels, generalized linear models, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, Principles of Planetary Climate, risk, science | Leave a comment

How nice it is that Nature and probability bend to developers whims!

As I have mentioned before, it’s so nice that Nature and probability bend to the whims of property developers and their Town Fathers, with the willing participation of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). If you had property at risk … Continue reading

Posted in capricious gods, chance, citizenship, climate data, conservation, denial, ecology, engineering, environment, ethics, games of chance, ignorance, living shorelines, mathematics, meteorology, obfuscating data, planning, politics, precipitation, prediction, probability, rationality, reasonableness, risk, spatial statistics, University Station, Westwood | 1 Comment

“Same Old Same Old” (Tamino)

Posted in Carbon Worshipers, climate data, environment, geophysics, global warming, hiatus, history, meteorology, physics, rationality, reasonableness, science, Tamino, temporal myopia, time series, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Carbon Worshipers and Worship

There’s agitation and angst in some circles regarding the proper term to dub individuals who, however technical their training, reject the conclusions of climate science, physics, and even Exxon from the 1970s. (Graphs are from Greg Laden’s blog.) There’s denial, … Continue reading

Posted in Anthropocene, atheism, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, chemistry, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate data, climate models, Cult of Carbon, denial, energy, environment, Exxon, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, IPCC, meteorology, oceanography, physical materialism, physics, rationality, reasonableness, science, UNFCCC, UU Humanists, zero carbon | 3 Comments

Leaks in Westwood: Natural Gas — a bridge to nowhere

These are ongoing leaks of natural gas in the Westwood area. They are reported, as required by law, by Eversource, the local utility, to Massachusetts government authorities, along with an indication of Eversource’s estimate of the severity of the leak. … Continue reading

Posted in bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, conservation, consumption, ecology, energy reduction, energy utilities, environment, fossil fuels, fracking, global warming, investment in wind and solar energy, meteorology, methane, natural gas, open data, pipelines, politics, public utility commissions, PUCs, rationality, reasonableness, risk, spatial statistics, sustainability, the right to know, zero carbon | Leave a comment

Solar installation progress, courtesy of MacSolarIndex.com

The MAC Solar Index tracks a set of solar manufacturing and installation companies. It is also the basis for the Guggenheim Investments “TAN” Exchange-Traded Fund (“ETF”, *). They recently published a progress report on global solar installations, which I wanted … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, carbon dioxide, citizen science, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, dynamic linear models, dynamical systems, ecology, economics, efficiency, energy, energy reduction, environment, exponential growth, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, meteorology, microgrids, open data, optimization, physics, politics, prediction, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, solar power, sustainability, the right to know, time series, Tony Seba, wind power, zero carbon | Leave a comment

Pathetic Politics and Lies: “Am I The Only One Who Noticed” (from Dan’s Wild Wild Science Journal)

Am I The Only One Who Noticed.. – Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal – AGU Blogosphere. As Dr Neill deGrasse Tyson is fond of saying, you — and politicians — are entitled to their beliefs, but not to claim things … Continue reading

Posted in Anthropocene, carbon dioxide, citizenship, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, environment, ethics, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, IPCC, meteorology, Neill deGrasse Tyson, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, science, science education, temporal myopia, zero carbon | 1 Comment