Summary: Effective propaganda often requires making people forget what they know, as well adding an overlay of simplistic narrative. Looking at climate on all time frames challenges the simple “co2 drives global climate” story. Here we look at one of the few direct and reliable sources of global temperature data. Only a short record, but still interesting.
Recent climate history, following the roughly 150 years of warming as the rebounded from the little ice age (not caused by people, as industrial activity was too small). From the Earth System Science Center of the University of Alabama in Huntsville (click to enlarge):
Description from John Pielke Sr (emeritus professor of the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State U; see his Wikipedia entry):
The processed temperature data is available on-line at the National Space Science and Technology Center of the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
As part of an ongoing joint project between UAHuntsville, NOAA and NASA, Christy and Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist in the ESSC, use data gathered by advanced microwave sounding units on NOAA and NASA satellites to get accurate temperature readings for almost all regions of the Earth. This includes remote desert, ocean and rain forest areas where reliable climate data are not otherwise available.
The satellite-based instruments measure the temperature of the atmosphere from the surface up to an altitude of about eight kilometers above sea level. Once the monthly temperature data is collected and processed, it is placed in a “public” computer file for immediate access by atmospheric scientists in the U.S. and abroad.
Neither Christy nor Spencer receives any research support or funding from oil, coal or industrial companies or organizations, or from any private or special interest groups. All of their climate research funding comes from federal and state grants or contracts.
For more information about decadal climate cycles
- Will food prices continue to rise, destabilizing the third world?, 31 January 2011 — About La Nina.
- Another climate wild card: solar cycle 24, perhaps causing food riots during the next decade, 1 February 2011
- Update about the weather – on the Sun. Perhaps coming soon to Earth., 9 February 2011
- Update about the potential for another year of bad harvests, 10 February 2011
