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Earth Hit Record Hot Year in 2016: NASA (news.com.au)

Earth sizzled to a third-straight record hot year in 2016, government scientists have said. They mostly blame man-made global warming with help from a natural El Nino, which has since disappeared. From a report: Measuring global temperatures in slightly different ways, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that last year passed 2015 as the hottest year on record. NOAA calculated that the average 2016 global temperature was 14.84 degrees Celsius (58.69 degrees Fahrenheit) -- beating the previous year by 0.04 Celsius (0.07 degrees F). NASA's figures, which include more of the Arctic, are higher at 0.22 degrees (0.12 Celsius) warmer than 2015. The Arctic "was enormously warm, like totally off the charts compared to everything else," said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies in New York, where the space agency monitors global temperatures. Records go back to 1880. This is the fifth time in a dozen years that the globe has set a new annual heat record. Records have been set in 2016, 2015, 2014, 2010 and 2005.

11 of 267 comments (clear)

  1. Data source by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 5, Informative

    I was disappointed that the article didn't provide links to NASA's and NOAA's findings.

    The Goddard Institute for Space Science data is here: https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gis...

    A press release from Columbia University about the findings is here:
    http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/...

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  2. Data is here by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 5, Informative

    Show the raw temperature measurements NASA! We don't want to see those "corrected" data sets from James Hansen et al. anymore.

    All of the data is available on the GISS site, which I assume you haven't bothered to look at: https://www.giss.nasa.gov/
    The site includes the source code for the analysis and a discussion of what all the data corrections are, why they were done, and what the data looks like before and after corrections.
    You might want to start with the FAQ on how the data analysis is done, here: https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gis...

    If you don't like the way NASA does the data analysis, there's an independent analysis from Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, here: http://berkeleyearth.org/

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  3. Re:Start the clock by haruchai · · Score: 4, Informative

    Don't worry alarmists, El Nino's are cyclic. A new shipment of scare is on backorder. Approx ETA ~ 2020.

    Here's a graph of temp anomalies vs El Nino events from 1950 - 2012. Notice anything unusual?

    --
    Pain is merely failure leaving the body
  4. Re:Chicken Littles forget the El Nino (as usual) by Namarrgon · · Score: 4, Informative

    Of course El Nino contributed. But it's still hotter than every other El Nino year we've ever seen.

    --
    Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
  5. Re:Where are the error bars? by hey! · · Score: 4, Informative

    What Geoffrey said. It's easy enough to pull the instrumental record global average data into a spreadsheet and plot it; I've done it several times myself.

    Also be aware of what error bars can and cannot tell you. You can't tell about the statistical significance of trends just by comparing adjacent years with error bars. It's the wrong statistical test to talk about decades-long tends. You might never ever see a year which is statistically significantly warmer than a prior year at some level of confidence, yet have a trend which over a decade or more hits that confidence level.

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    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  6. Long Cycles--Dry Before Wet by BoRegardless · · Score: 1, Informative

    Year to year changes are "NOISE." California had a drought for several years (virtually a blip in time) and then come the rains. It happens over an over.

    Sun spot cycles are repetitive. Mega-Rains come to California every 160 years or so. Last time was 1862, so 2022 look out. These are formed over decades of hot water buildup in the Eastern equatorial Pacific.

    Cycles have been consistent over centuries and it looks like they are changing now due to more limited solar input.

    How these longer term cycles & their variences affect the Earth don't seem to be of concern in current evaluations where people are only interested in year to year or decade to decade changes.

    Long term cycles are not "sexy", but may hold the fate of nations in their hands because of long term weather changes to dry or wet which cause massive changes in growing regions which means food for billions of people.

  7. Pretty graph of uncorrected data by Namarrgon · · Score: 4, Informative

    Click here to see the uncorrected data graphed alongside the main corrected analyses (source: Berkeley Earth via Ars Technica).

    Hopefully this makes it abundantly clear that the raw data still shows an obvious warming trend even before known problems are removed. It also shows how little difference the corrections have actually made, particularly in the last 75 years.

    --
    Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
  8. IPCC figure (Re:Where are the error bars?) by XXongo · · Score: 4, Informative

    The reason why I ask this is when you peruse Figure 6.1 of the IPCC Carbon and Other Biogeochemical Cycles report, the listed errors of natural carbon sources far exceed those of anthropogenic origin.

    I think you're mis-reading the numbers on that figure. The numbers in red aren't error bars, that's the change since 1750. (each individual element is listed in the form "123= 108.9+14.1", where the first number is the total, the second number is the estimated value in 1750, and the third number is the change since 1750 (printed in red). Note that all that matters from photosynthesis is the difference between the input and output (labelled "net land flux"), which they point out is known to a better accuracy than the component parts.

  9. Re:At this rate... by Layzej · · Score: 4, Informative

    (Dec 2007) This week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: "At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions."

    Here's how 2012 ended up. Looks like he was not too far off!

  10. Re:At this rate... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    Since this is turning "serious", in the interests of proper credit for the inspiration of the humor, as well as rebuttal, here's the more-credentialed Nobel Laureate.

  11. Re:In other news... by silentcoder · · Score: 4, Informative

    You joke... but he basically did already. Trump has announced his intention to shut down NASA's earth sciences division.

    Because apparently Earth is not a planet in space.

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    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *