Regional Temperature Change (Part 1)

When most of the world was taken in by the Climate Change Hoax, John Daly was writing a blog called Still waiting for the Greenhouse. (LINK) He was such a thorn in the sides of the alarmists that, upon Daly's death in 2004, the ClimateGate emails reveal that the Chief Scientist at CRU, Phil Jones wrote

“… in an odd way this is cheering news” (LINK)

John Izzard wrote a tribute to John Daly, published by Quadrant On-line (LINK)

Daly was a pioneer in the questioning of global warming theory when the rest of the world was taking little interest in the issue. In the year the IPCC was formed under the shelter of the UN (1988), and a year before Margaret Thatcher gave the IPCC her blessing, Daly was writing a scathing book on what he called the myths and politics of the Co2 scare campaign.

Another who was aware of the errors from the beginning was Vincent Gray, whose NZ Climate Truth emails are regularly published in these pages. In 2002, Gray, who has a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Cambridge University published a book, The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of "Climate Change 2001". He has been an Expert Reviewer for the IPCC's Assesment reports.

The following is a paper by Vincent Gray published by John Daly in 2002 (LINK)

REGIONAL TEMPERATURE CHANGE 

by Vincent R. Gray 

ABSTRACT 

Data compiled by Karl (1998) of the temperature changes between 1901 and 1996 for 5°x5° grids on the earth’s surface, have been divided into smaller regions than those used by him, and the mean temperature change for each region calculated.

It is found that the data show large differences in the temperature change between 1901 and 1996 for different geographical and political regions. The extreme ranges (6.17°C between individual 5°x5° boxes, and 1.96°C between regions) are large enough to cast doubt on measurements, such as those from ice cores and tree rings, taken in only a few places, and also on values for mean temperature change from the data considered here, which omit several important regions. 

A feature of the results is the large temperature increase in the former Imperial Russia/ Soviet Union (+1.23°C), more than double the change in Western Europe (+0.5°C) or the USA (+0.41°C). This large temperature rise in Russia/Siberia by so many stations that were regarded by Peterson et al (1999) as predominantly “rural”, casts doubt on their assumption that the effects of local heating in rural stations are negligible. Removal of the Russia/Siberia set from their analysis would surely show a significant urbanisation effect from cities in the rest of the world. This widespread local heating around surface measurement stations would explain the differences between the surface temperature record and temperature measurements in the lower troposphere by satellites., and so the major human influence on the climate.

There is a large positive temperature change gradient of about 0.9°C from the North to the South Atlantic and several small regions show a temperature fall. 

Karl’s (1998) data suffer from many limitations.. There are only a few continuous records, with notable gaps during the two world wars, and several apparently anomalous results which may indicate inadequacies of measurement. These limitations would appear to derive from the accepted surface measurement datasets of Jones (1994) and Folland and Parker (1995) 

INTRODUCTION
According to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), (Houghton et al 1996), the mean surface temperature of the earth’s surface has increased by about 0.3 to 0.6°C since the late 19th century, and by about 0.2 to 0.3°C over the last 40 years, although, recently, Jones (1998) speaks of “the 0.6°C global warming during this century”. Regional variation of this temperature rise has, however, not been entirely clear, despite studies, some of which contained coloured maps, of Hansen and Lebedeff (1987), Jones and Briffa (1992) Parker et al. (1994). Houghton et al (1996), and Jones et al. (1997). 

Karl (1998) in Annexe A, of the IPCC report Regional Trends and Variations of Temperature andPrecipitation (Figure A-2 in that report) showed the temperature change between 1901 and 1996 on a Mercator map of the world by means of coloured dots for each of the geographical grids of 5° x 5° for which acceptable measurements are available. The size of the dot inside each grid indicated the size of the measured temperature change. There were red dots for a temperature rise and black dots for a temperature fall. 

Fig A-2: Temperature -Annual 1901-1996

The dataset, which consisted of mean annual temperature anomalies from 1901 to 1996, with regard to the 1961-1990 average, for 5°x5 grids on the earth’s surface, was then used to provide individual mean annual temperature anomaly figures for each of 12 regions to give a plot of its temperature history from 1901 to 1996. 

The regions chosen by Karl were rather large, and usually spanned over several geographic and political boundaries. Also, they did not include some oceans. This paper divides the same data into smaller regions, based on better defined geographic and political boundaries, and calculates the mean temperature change for each region in the same manner as that carried out by Karl (1998), in an attempt to throw more light on the details of regional temperature change. 

Fig A-3: GIS mask used to define the 10 regions covered in this special report

 

REGIONAL TEMPERATURE TRENDS 1901-1996 

Table 1. Latitudinal distribution of temperature   observations in 5°x5° boxes for 1901-1996 (Karl 1998), from Figure 1  

The data are available on the NOAA ftp website 
 http://www.john-daly.com/guests/ftp.ftp.noaa.gov/temtrn5.dat.

They are derived from the series developed by Jones (1994 plus updates) for land-based measurements, and by Folland and Parker (1995 plus updates) for ocean-based measurements.

Interval	Area weighting	Boxes filled	%	Area covered
90-85°N	.0019	0	0	0
85-80°N	.0057	0	0	0
80-75°N	.0094	1	1.4	.0001
75-70°N	.0131	5	6.9	.0009
70-65°N	.0167	20	29.1	.0046
65-60°N	.0201	41	58.3	.0114
60-55°N	.0234	47	62.5	.0146
55-50°N	.0266	68	94.4	.0251
50-45°N	.0295	61	84.7	.0250
45-40°N	.0322	59	81.9	.0264
40-35°N	.0346	57	73.6	.0255
35-30°N	.0368	52	72.2	.0266
30-25°N	.0387	47	65.2	.0252
25-20°N	.0403	38	52.8	.0210
20-15°N	.0416	40	55.6	.0231
15-10°N	.0426	44	61.1	.0260
10-5°N	.0432	38	52.8	.0228
5°N-0	.0436	36	50.0	.0218

Totals - Northern Hemisphere

                          .5                 649            50.1           .3001

                                                                                    60%

Weighted Mean temperature change, Northern Hemisphere, 0.58°C

0-5°S	.0436	34	47.2	.0206
5-10°S	.0432	34	47.2	.0204
10-15°S	.0426	26	36.1	.0154
15-20°S	.0416	30	41.7	.0174
20-25	.0403	31	43.1	.0174
25-30°S	.0387	33	45.8	.0177
30-35°S	.0368	41	56.9	.0209
35-40°S	.0346	38	52.7	.0182
40-45°S	.0322	12	16.7	.0054
45-50°S	.0295	5	6.9	.0020
50-55°S	.0266	4	5.6	.0015
55-60°S	.0234	0	0	0
60-65°S	.0201	1	1.3	.0003
65-70°S	.0167	0	0	0
70-75°S	.0131	0	0	0
75-80°S	.0094	0	0	0
80-85°S	.0057	0	0	0
85-90°S	.0019	0	0	0

Totals, Southern Hemisphere 

                               .5                     289                   22.3          .1572,   31.4%   

Weighted mean temperature change 0.62°C

Totals, Globe                             

                             1.0                    938                    36.2           4573,  45.7%  
  

Weighted mean temperature change  0.59°C

Table 2. Regional Temperature Change  1901-1996 (Data from Karl (1998) Is published in a separate post HERE

Perhaps the most interesting results from the above subdivision of  Karl’s temperature data are the temperature change figures for the former Russian Empire/Soviet Union. West Siberia/Russia showed a mean temperature rise, 1991 to 1996 of +1.19°C for  59 grids, representing 2.17% of the earth’s surface, and East Siberia showed a mean temperature rise of 1.30°C for 39 grids, 1.50% of the earth’s surface. The combined figure for Russia/Siberia is a rise of 1.23°C for 3.67% of the earth’s surface.  This compares with a rise of only 0.51°C for Western Europe (50 grids, 1.84% area) and 0.41°C  for the Continental United States (36 grids, 1.67% area).

These Russia/Soviet results distort conclusions about global temperature change. For example, Peterson et al (1999) found that global rural temperature trends did not differ significantly from overall global temperature trends. They concluded that this meant that both sets were free from local heating, whereas it actually means that both sets are equally affected by local heating. Most of the Russia/Soviet data would have been classified as “rural”, and their high figures would have counterbalanced a probable lower temperature trend of rural sites as compared with urban sites in other parts of the globe. Omission of the Russia/Soviet data  from the rural sites studied by Peterson et al 1998 would surely show that elsewhere in the world there was a significant “urbanisation” effect in urban sites. The evident local heating around measurement sites, particularly in cities and in cold rural sites,  would explain the differences between the surface temperature record and that of the lower troposphere, as determined by satellites and thus account for the human influence on surface temperatures

The high Russia/Soviet figures  indicate a common trend  of large temperature rises in remote rural sites in severe climates.  Other examples are Canada minus W Yukon (+0.96°C), North Pacific (+0.90°C) Spitzbergen (+4.06°C) and South Georgia (+1.91°C). The main reason would surely be the pressure to improve living conditions in these remote sites, involving better heating in the buildings, provision of roads, and the tendency for vegetation around the sites to be encouraged. The narrowing of  the diurnal temperature range for many of these sites (Easterling et al. 1997) is further evidence for this tendency. An additional possibility for the Russia/Soviet sites is that as many are at, or close to prison camps rations and food in the 1920s might have depended on claims of low temperatures.

 Discussion

The data consist of those series for which there are at least 72 observations out of  a possible 96. The temperature change from 1901 to 1996 was calculated by Karl (1998) by subtracting the average of the first five figures from the average of the last five figures.  Of the 938 records, only 297  are complete, and only  619  begin in the year 1901. Two of them do not start until the year 1925. The figures do not therefore strictly represent the temperature change over the whole period 1901 to 1996.  Of the up to 24 missing annual readings in each record, most are in the 1914-1918 and 1940-1945 years. 81 records have missing readings for the whole period of 1914-1918 and 40 records have missing readings for 1940-1945. 412 (44%) readings are missing for 1918 and  236 (25%) in 1945.

Examination of the data shows that almost all of the 1901-1996  temperature rise for Russia/Soviet Union took place in one year, 1987 to 1988. Table 3 gives the details. The average rise for the whole of the region was 1.21°C which contributes 0.16°C to the Northern Hemisphere for that year, and 0.10°C to the Global temperature increase. Since the recorded temperature increase for the Globe is 0.02°C, this means that without the Russian figure, ther would have been a fall of 0.08°C.

TABLE 3  Change in Annual Mean Temperature, °C, between 1997 and 1998 for West Siberia/Russia, for 5°x5° grids, according to Karl (1998) Published in a separate post HERE.

Paper continued in Part 2 - HERE.