Bob,
The thing I have learnt today, (and it’s just my opinion,) is that for some of the hoax believers, if your information source is from those that support the theory of global warming then it is manipulated, false, data that must be dismissed. However, if your information source is from those that support the theory of global warming being a hoax, then even if it has been manipulated, it is accurate, and therefore the gospel truth.
I must admit I had never heard of The University of Alabama in Huntsville (
UAH).
so I did a bit of research on Bob’s assertion that “HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (Nov. 29, 2017) — The rate at which Earth’s atmosphere is warming has not significantly accelerated over the past 23 years, according to research at The University of Alabama”.
Well shiver me timbers, and cor blimey Mary Poppins The University of Alabama in Huntsville (
UAH). Manipulate their data.
From a website I found on the subject.
The problem is, their results don’t agree with NOAA. In particular, the UAH team, led by Dr.
John Christy and Dr.
Roy Spencer (who have discounted the importance and occurrence of climate change for years) present results that differ quite a bit from the others. In fact, in the new current paper on the subject, it is stated that “Despite using the same basic radiometer measurements, tropical TMT trend differences between these groups differ by a factor of three.”
An important aspect to this issue is that for many reasons, it is expected that the tropospheric temperatures in the tropics will warm more than surface temperatures. This is called “tropospheric amplification.” According to two satellite groups, there is in fact such amplification. According to the UAH team, there is no amplification.
Now if you have got this far here is the important bit. The presence or absence of amplification is often used by some skeptics to discount the importance of global warming.
As the authors state in the new paper, their new results agree with the two groups that show more warming. They disagree with UAH. As the authors state,
In general, our trends corrected with a GCM and trends corrected with our observationally derived diurnal cycle correction are similar to trends from NOAA and RSS ... the UAH ocean trend is notably lower than trends from the other datasets.
So, how do the trends compare? Well the lowest trend, in degrees Celsius heating per decade are from UAH and they equal 0.029 for the 1979–2012 period for the mid-troposphere region between 20° South and 20° North. The new results are almost 4 times higher at 0.114°C per decade. The results using a diurnal correction from a climate model are in close agreement with the new findings (0.124°C per decade). As additional support, the NOAA and RSS values are also close to the corrected results. The simple fact is, UAH is an outlier.
The results from RSS, NOAA, and the new study all show tropical amplification and are in agreement with the expected amplification from climate models. They state, “There is no significant discrepancy between observations and models for lapse rate change between the surface and the full troposphere.
”To summarize the amplification factor, the new study obtains a value of 1.4. If the diurnal cycle is eliminated using climate models, the result is 1.49. According to NOAA and RSS, the values are 1.31 and 1.10, respectively. Again, UAH is the outlier with an amplification factor of 0.56.
In short, the conclusion of the new paper is, the Earth is warming, the warming is amplified in the troposphere, and those who claim otherwise are unlikely to be correct.