Ahead Of Paris Talks, NOAA Proclaims 2014 Totally Like The Warmest Ever!

by William Teach | July 17, 2015 7:44 am

Of course, this doesn’t prove any anthropogenic causation (except in the way NOAA adjusts their data)

International report confirms: 2014 was Earth’s warmest year on record[1]

In 2014, the most essential indicators of Earth’s changing climate continued to reflect trends of a warming planet, with several  markers such as rising land and ocean temperature, sea levels and greenhouse gases ─ setting new records.  These key findings and others can be found in the State of the Climate in 2014[2] report released online today by the American Meteorological Society (AMS).

One of their findings is

Record temperatures observed near the Earth’s surface: Four independent global datasets showed that 2014 was the warmest year on record. The warmth was widespread across land areas. Europe experienced its warmest year on record, with more than 20 countries exceeding their previous records. Africa had above-average temperatures across most of the continent throughout 2014, Australia saw its third warmest year on record, Mexico had its warmest year on record, and Argentina and Uruguay each had their second warmest year on record. Eastern North America was the only major region to experience below-average annual temperatures.

Huh. Near the surface, but not at the surface? Of course, many of the actual data sets[3], such as RSS, dispute the findings. And, then there is this from the Met Office[4]

The  HadCRUT4 dataset (compiled by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit) shows last year was 0.56C (±0.1C*) above the long-term (1961-1990) average.

Nominally this ranks 2014 as the joint warmest year in the record, tied with 2010, but the uncertainty ranges mean it’s not possible to definitively say which of several recent years was the warmest.

Colin Morice, a climate monitoring scientist at the Met Office, said: “Uncertainties in the estimates of global temperature are larger than the differences between the warmest years. This limits what we can say about rankings of individual years.

Using an average that includes data which had a slight cooling effect through 2/3rds of the period (1960-1979) is rather disingenuous, wouldn’t you think? Love all the uncertainties.

(Watts Up With That[5]) As many readers know, NOAA/NCDC (NCEI) is the SOLE SOURCE of data the global surface temperature dataset. They are the source for GHCN surface temperature record[6], and for the ERSST v4 sea surface temperature dataset[7]. Both are highly adjusted, the adjustments are in one direction, a warmer trend, and both datasets are entirely under the control of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. The other agencies and their “independent” datasets use the source GHCN and ERSST data from NOAA/NCDC to make their own datasets, applying their own set of adjustments.

Even if the data offered by NOAA was 100% rock solid, it still wouldn’t provide proof that the warming since 1850 is mostly/solely caused by Mankind, or even that it is 50% caused. And that is what the debate is about: causation. There has been warming, there could still be more warming, just like has happened throughout the Holocene, particularly since many of the previous warm periods have been warmer and seen more sea rise than the current one.

But, if Warmists are so concerned, perhaps they should give up their own use of fossil fuels and go carbon neutral.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove[8]. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach[9].