RE: [cdn-nucl-l] Energy Firms Come to Terms With Climate Change

["Dukelow, James S Jr" <jim.dukelow@pnl.gov>]

Jerry Cuttler wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: cdn-nucl-l-admin@mailman1.cis.McMaster.CA
[mailto:cdn-nucl-l-admin@mailman1.cis.McMaster.CA] On Behalf Of Jerry
Cuttler
Sent: Sunday, November 26, 2006 7:41 PM
To: Ruth Sponsler; andyenglish@vianet.ca; 'ANS Member Exchange
Listserv'; 'Canadian Nuclear Discussion List'
Subject: [cdn-nucl-l] Energy Firms Come to Terms With Climate Change

Ruth,
It looks like the earth is warming in the northern hemisphere, but I
understand it's cooling in the southern hemisphere.  There is too much
politics in all this.  It just doesn't feel like a scientific endeavour.

   <snip>

==========================

Jerry,

Perhaps I can improve your understanding a bit.

The MSU satellite data for the lower troposphere is the favorite data
source for global warming skeptics, but they don't always do a good job
of telling you what the data really says.

You can go to  vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2 and
download a text file that has monthly mean global, northern hemisphere,
and southern hemisphere temperature anomalies from December 1978 to
October 2006 (that is, the whole MSU data record).  The file reports
trends (confirmed by my MS Excel calculation) of +0.128 deg C per decade
for the whole earth, +0.198 deg C per decade for the northern
hemisphere, and +0.057 deg C per decade for the southern hemisphere.
All trends are highly statistically significantly greater than a zero
trend.

Similarly, from the web site  www.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu in the
directory  2lt  you can download the file  uahncdc.lt  that has monthly
data over roughly the same period for the whole Earth, the NH, the SH,
the tropics, the northern extra-tropics, northern polar, southern
extra-tropical, southern polar, and USA lower 48.  For each of these
regions, the mean and the land and ocean means are given.  All of these
regions have a positive trend, highly statistically significant, except
for the southern polar region, with a trend of -0.115 deg C per decade,
of marginal statistical significance.  The US lower 48 states have a
highly statistically significant trend of +0.316 deg C per decade.

All of this is Spencer and Christy analysis of their own MSU data.
Other scientists and groups of scientist that have analyzed the same
data have reported higher positive trends.

For surface temperature data, you can find NASA Goddard Institute for
Space Science data at  cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/temp/hansen/hansen.html  which
has a short text discussion and graphical representation of the
temperature histories for the whole Earth, the NH, the SH, and three
latitudinal zones -- the tropics (23.6S to 23.6N), southern extratropics
(23.6S to 90S), and the northern extratropics (23.6N to 90N).  The web
page also has the underlying data, but I haven't downloaded that and
computed trends yet.  The graphs show strong positive trends for all six
regions described.

Best regards.

Jim Dukelow
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Richland, WA
Jim.dukelow@pnl.gov

These comments are mine and have not been reviewed and/or approved by my
management or by the U.S. Department of Energy.