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Tracking Crucial Metrics of Earth's Global Warming

climatechangetracker.org

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Re: Tracking Crucial Metrics of Earth's Global Warming

#11

Post by Angostura »

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #3

I really dislike the use of the word "anomaly" in climate change circles. It may be technically correct, but it feels like propaganda. All it is is the difference to the average of an arbitrarily chosen time frame. It would actually be strange if temperatures where exactly like the average all the time, so calling it an anomaly if they are different from the average really seems misleading. Again, it may be the techn…

Temperatures are anomalous, given what we know about the state of all the non anthropogenic factors acting upon climate at the moment. Nothing really contentious or 'propaganda' there.

Re: Tracking Crucial Metrics of Earth's Global Warming

#12

Post by ximeng »

tdrdt wrote: post #2

Does anyone know why the change at the north pole is bigger than the south pole? Is this because the north pole is floating on water?

https://www.news18.com/amp/news/buzz/global-warning-north-po...

This suggests that when the ice melts the darker water absorbs more energy from the light, and then warmer water freezes less resulting in a permanently warmer arctic.

Re: Tracking Crucial Metrics of Earth's Global Warming

#13

Post by tonmoy »

jimmydorry wrote: post #7
kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #3

I really dislike the use of the word "anomaly" in climate change circles. It may be technically correct, but it feels like propaganda. All it is is the difference to the average of an arbitrarily chosen time frame. It would actually be strange if temperatures where exactly like the average all the time, so calling it an anomaly if they are different from the average really seems misleading. Again, it may be the techn…

To add to your post, where and how did they determine that 30 years was the appropriate time scale to use? >The value we show is a 30 year rolling average of temperature change. We have chosen that long term trend because it fits the time scale of the climate and its changes.

There isn’t enough temperature record around before that timeframe to estimate an accurate global average. You can still see the effects of temperate indirectly

Re: Tracking Crucial Metrics of Earth's Global Warming

#15

Post by Muromec »

tdrdt wrote: post #2

Does anyone know why the change at the north pole is bigger than the south pole? Is this because the north pole is floating on water?

Because co2 is not evenly distributed with most polluters concentrated in northern hemisphere and prevailing wind direction to be from equator to poles.

Re: Tracking Crucial Metrics of Earth's Global Warming

#16

Post by 7952 »

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #3

I really dislike the use of the word "anomaly" in climate change circles. It may be technically correct, but it feels like propaganda. All it is is the difference to the average of an arbitrarily chosen time frame. It would actually be strange if temperatures where exactly like the average all the time, so calling it an anomaly if they are different from the average really seems misleading. Again, it may be the techn…

Comparing to a baseline is useful because that is what our culture, technology and habits are adapted to. And the conditions that ecosystems can be based on. An increase in temperature away from that has consequences that need to be understood.

Re: Tracking Crucial Metrics of Earth's Global Warming

#17

Post by bowmessage »

I really like this website. Well presented and informative.

I have been daydreaming of creating something similar that enabled testing weather hypotheses that are often thrown around by the media.

E.g., "Heavy Vancouver Rainfall Due to Climate Change". It would be great to get rainfall information for that area graphed over the last X years.

Does anyone have pointers to useful datasets or APIs that could aid in creating such a tool or website?

Re: Tracking Crucial Metrics of Earth's Global Warming

#18

Post by dpierce9 »

tdrdt wrote: post #6
SiempreViernes wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anomaly relative to the climate without the extra human forcings, like how you could call the dead forest from acid rains an "anomaly". A simple average of a reference period is used as reference for simplicity but is by the fact that climate change is happening much faster than typical climate variations so it's fine for now: the difference is (still) essentially entirely out fault.

I think the point parent is making is that it is possible to cherrypick a reference period. You can say that the melting of glaciers is an anomaly but when an ancient forest appears below the melted glacier how can we agree on what an anomaly is? I don't want to deny global warming but I agree with the parent that it's difficult to state what an anomaly is.

It is true that you don’t want anomalies to be anomalous only with respect to some arbitrarily chosen (or sought) feature of the reference periods. The solution to this is to do sensitivity analysis of the anomaly to these ‘arbitrary’ features (length, starting/ending points). With most climate things, anomalies will persist. This is a standard thing to do.

Re: Tracking Crucial Metrics of Earth's Global Warming

#19

Post by wcoenen »

Muromec wrote: post #15
tdrdt wrote: post #2

Does anyone know why the change at the north pole is bigger than the south pole? Is this because the north pole is floating on water?

Because co2 is not evenly distributed with most polluters concentrated in northern hemisphere and prevailing wind direction to be from equator to poles.

Any air moving towards the poles must necessarily be balanced by air moving away from the poles. This manifests as "Hadley cells" and other similar wind patterns.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Ea...

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