Now here you are, Bern, a paper from the National Academy of Sciences. Of course we know them thar all pointy headed pinko scientists don't know nuthin' at all, now don't we, Bernie Boy.
Global temperature change ? PNAS
Global temperature change
James Hansen*,,, Makiko Sato*,, Reto Ruedy*,§, Ken Lo*,§, David W. Lea¶, and Martin Medina-Elizade¶
+ Author Affiliations
*National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Institute for Space Studies,
Columbia University Earth Institute, and
§Sigma Space Partners, Inc., 2880 Broadway, New York, NY 10025; and
¶Department of Earth Science, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Contributed by James Hansen, July 31, 2006
Next SectionAbstract
Global surface temperature has increased ≈0.2°C per decade in the past 30 years, similar to the warming rate predicted in the 1980s in initial global climate model simulations with transient greenhouse gas changes. Warming is larger in the Western Equatorial Pacific than in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific over the past century, and we suggest that the increased WestEast temperature gradient may have increased the likelihood of strong El Niños, such as those of 1983 and 1998. Comparison of measured sea surface temperatures in the Western Pacific with paleoclimate data suggests that this critical ocean region, and probably the planet as a whole, is approximately as warm now as at the Holocene maximum and within ≈1°C of the maximum temperature of the past million years. We conclude that global warming of more than ≈1°C, relative to 2000, will constitute dangerous climate change as judged from likely effects on sea level and extermination of species.
climate change El Niños global warming sea level species extinctions
Global temperature is a popular metric for summarizing the state of global climate. Climate effects are felt locally, but the global distribution of climate response to many global climate forcings is reasonably congruent in climate models (1), suggesting that the global metric is surprisingly useful. We will argue further, consistent with earlier discussion (2, 3), that measurements in the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans provide a good indication of global temperature change.
We first update our analysis of surface temperature change based on instrumental data and compare observed temperature change with predictions of global climate change made in the 1980s. We then examine current temperature anomalies in the tropical Pacific Ocean and discuss their possible significance. Finally, we compare paleoclimate and recent data, using the Earth's history to estimate the magnitude of global warming that is likely to constitute dangerous human-made climate change.
So even though most of the data we are hearing about says there has NOT been any warming over the last 15 years or so. These guys say surface temperature recordings are going up. Rocks act your fucking age and get some common sense. Ground based readngs are going to be about the most susceptible to cold/heat interference than any other data source out there. Maybe that's why you true believers lean on it so heavily because it is the most likely data source to show the results you want. The best to use would be satellite data.