Climate change: 2015 'shattered' global temperature record by wide margin

originally posted by: VoidHawk
Oh come on!!!
The earth has been here for billions of years, how many times was it MUCH warmer than it is now?
To say that its shattered global temperatures is just ridiculous!

A question to all pro gw peeps.
Please describe normal weather.

Of course the earth has been here for billions of years, and will continue to be here for billions more, with - or much more likely, without - human beings. We're not ending the earth, just making it unlivable for ourselves (and a bunch of other species).

sorry

Cthulhu - yes 76 was a belter - remember the school playground melting in places(lived just north of Glasgow then).

To those saying the earth has been here for billion years - it'll survive blah blah -NOBODY IS SAYING THE EARTH WILL NOT SURVIVE - what they are pointing out is that as millions of humans live in coastal areas that are liable to flooding, as sea levels continue to rise a LOT of major cities will be underwater.

worldoceanreview.com...

Nearly all the population and therefore most of the national economy of the low-lying archipelagos of the Maldives and the Bahamas are now under threat. In absolute numbers China is at the top of the list.
The most vulnerable regions in Europe are the east of England, the coastal strip extending from Belgium through the Netherlands and Germany to Denmark, and the southern Baltic Sea coast with the deltas of Oder and Vistula rivers. There are also heavily-populated, flood-prone areas along the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, such as the Po delta of northern Italy and the lagoon of Venice as well as the deltas of the Rhône, Ebro and Danube rivers.
Some densely-populated areas in the Netherlands, England, Germany and Italy already lie below the mean high-water mark.

Without appropriate coastal protection, even a moderate sea-level rise of a few decimetres is likely to drive countless inhabitants of coastal areas in Asia, Africa and Latin America from their homes, making them “sea-level refugees”.

www.worldbank.org... stal-cities-at-highest-risk-floods

In terms of the overall cost of damage, the cities at the greatest risk are: 1) Guangzhou, 2) Miami, 3) New York, 4) New Orleans, 5) Mumbai, 6) Nagoya, 7) Tampa, 8) Boston, 9) Shenzen, and 10) Osaka. The top four cities alone account for 43% of the forecast total global losses.

However, developing-country cities move up the list when flood costs are measured as a percentage of city gross domestic product (GDP). Many of them are growing rapidly, have large populations, are poor, and are exposed to tropical storms and sinking land.

The study lists the 10 most vulnerable cities when measured as percentage of GDP as: 1) Guangzhou; 2) New Orleans; 3) Guayaquil, Ecuador; 4) Ho Chi Minh City; 5) Abidjan; 6) Zhanjing; 7) Mumbai; 8) Khulna, Bangladesh; 9) Palembang, Indonesia; and 10) Shenzen.

In most of these cities, the poor are most at risk as rapid urbanization has pushed them into the most vulnerable neighborhoods, often in low-lying areas and along waterways prone to flooding.

Just pointing out that the one of the biggest danger of global warming will be an increase of insects and microbes.

originally posted by: yesyesyes
Just pointing out that the one of the biggest danger of global warming will be an increase of insects and microbes.

I would think food and fresh water would be the biggest dangers.

originally posted by: VoidHawk
Oh come on!!!
The earth has been here for billions of years, how many times was it MUCH warmer than it is now?
To say that its shattered global temperatures is just ridiculous!

Temperature and heat are not the same thing. Temperature is a measurement of heat. Thermometers have not been around for billions of years.

a reply to: yesyesyes

Good point - already many species are pushing out further from their traditional habitats towards to the poles causing many indigenous species problems - I've not looked into the spread of insects and microbes/ virus etc but I would expect they too are migrating north and south as temperatures increase and new areas of the world become habitable for them.

This could actually be the biggest issue for human health if tropical diseases suddenly start popping up in the USA, Europe, N.Asia exacerbated by the higher water levels providing more pools of standing water for mosquitoes to breed in.

(Possibly worth a thread in itself )

Yup....those thermometers placed in the middle of asphalt filled cites sure have been rising for some bizzare reason....no way it could have anything to do with cities being huge heat sinks

yet satellite data says no increase in mean global temperature for the last 18 years, so how can last year be the hottest yet? in any case, the 'increase' which is less than one degree, could be covered by variations in satellite measurements.
There was still snow on the ground in Buffalo, NY state in June, must have been a really cold spot.

a reply to: pikestaff
For the umpteenth time, satellites ain't all that great. They are not thermometers. They do not directly measure temperature.

Polar orbiters (as their name implies) pass between the poles, and do so multiple times a day - yet do not sample the poles (UAH includes between 82.5N and 70S). However, they might orbit over a spot near the equator only once every three days.

They are measure microwave emissions and then run that data through a complex (and different depending on who does it) algorithm to guesstimate temperatures at a particular layer in the atmosphere.

Here, let me prove it:

Some of our earliest papers on global temperature monitoring gave precision estimates for monthly global averages, daily global averages, and corresponding signal-to-noise ratios. We got these by comparing years of statistics from different satellites flying at the same time but in different orbits. I forget the exact numbers, but yearly global anomalies have a precision of about 0.01 deg. C or so, daily is several hundredths of a degree, etc.

The ABSOLUTE accuracy of the measurements is not nearly as good….probably no better than about 0.5 deg. C. But since each deep-layer measurement of the atmosphere includes individual air layers spanning tens of degrees, even small errors in the microwave absorption theory will translate into that much uncertainty.

You want to pin your hopes on the future on satellites that may be off by half a degree and based on theoretical algorithm-derived temperatures?

Sure, satellites measure a lot more broadly but it isn't a continuous measurement - n or is it complete:

We do not provide monthly means poleward of 82.5 degrees (or south of 70S for TLT) due to difficulties in merging measurements in these regions.

Of course, you don't hear about that. People trust the satellites in space over actual ground-measured temperature from thermometers, because they're satellites.

Let me state this very clearly:
Satellites Do Not Measure Temperatures.
Data from various bands of radiation is measured by satellites and is run through a complex mathematical inversion and combination to indirectly infer temperature.

originally posted by: Royal76
a reply to: johnb

This is complete BS, there is no Global Warming, the Earth has survived so many cycles just like this. Whatever carbon we emit has no baring on this.

How many of those cycles have human civilization survived exactly?

originally posted by: pikestaff
yet satellite data says no increase in mean global temperature for the last 18 years, so how can last year be the hottest yet?

Care to link your source or do you think we should just take your word for it?

These satellite records show a mean global temperature increase over the last 36 years.
Source

There was still snow on the ground in Buffalo, NY state in June, must have been a really cold spot.

This, contrary to what you might think, is not proof that the Earth is not warming.

originally posted by: johnb

Well looks like we are in for another interesting year weather wise if the climate is warming this much.

Wot! just noticed no blogosphere in that report!
Well at least the American girl cared to mention El Niño if only to make it the icing on the GW cake, one other guy talked about the warm waters being er, warm without even mentioning the Christmas child.
It's funny this coming from a BBC online tale, because I did hear a weatherman on the BBC at the time of the Cumbrian floods talking about the difficulties of intimating GW as the cause in an El Niño year. That I can understand.
Once you go to an online site though, the BBC have the same disclaimers posted as any other news site, so no joy there, just people waxing lyrical, and could be whistling Dixie through their arse, as much as they could be sincere as far as they know.

a reply to: Devino

From your graph - and I do agree that satellite temperature records can be off by 0.5 degrees.

Isn't 1987 about the same as 2007 and very close to the same as 2015?

Never mind the up and down stuff, its just variation - but the peaks of those years is very close together. However, I see that they were kind enough mark El Nino for one year but not 2015 (wonder why).

Co2 has risen by about 40 % - why hasn't temperature?

Tired of Control Freaks

a reply to: Devino

why would they have a 13 month agerage. Why not 12 months January to December so that peak cold and peak heat months don't get repeated? Could the running average be August to August for example?

Tired of Control Freaks

originally posted by: Devino
Care to link your source or do you think we should just take your word for it?

These satellite records show a mean global temperature increase over the last 36 years.

Source

.
You left out the other El Niño year+ AKA, this current period in that very limited graph.
Besides, remote sensing, (satellite) is not accounted for.

a reply to: Greven

There are also thousands of weather balloons which are launched every 12 hours all over the planet and return data, and this has been going on for many decades now.

originally posted by: TiredofControlFreaks
Isn't 1987 about the same as 2007 and very close to the same as 2015?

Never mind the up and down stuff, its just variation

If you average out all the single temperature points you can see an upward trend. I haven't had time to look over that site I linked but if you are interested here is more information pertaining to the graph.
Version 6.0 of the UAH Temperature Dataset Released: New LT Trend = +0.11 C/decade

originally posted by: Krazysh0t

originally posted by: Royal76
a reply to: johnb

This is complete BS, there is no Global Warming, the Earth has survived so many cycles just like this. Whatever carbon we emit has no baring on this.

How many of those cycles have human civilization survived exactly?

If cockroaches can survive them but humanity can't, we might want to put a bit more concentration on strengthening our species, and a bit less concentration on trying to change natural cycles...

a reply to: Devino

ok but the 1970s is not a magic decade by which warming must be measured now is it? The global warming religion started because it was said that the rate of warming was unprecedented.

The line appears to actually have TWO slopes. The first would be from the 1970s but take a look at the line from about mid 1995 to current. Kind of flat, isn't it (when you ignore the variations).

That is the "pause" everyone is talking about. There is no model created by climatologist or published by the IPCC that predicted a 20 year "pause".

Tired of Control Freaks