In my previous post, Is There a True Average Global Temperature, I compared the mean temperature to the fourth root of the fourth moment of the temperature (the mean of T^4). Dr. Pielke was kind enough to post a comment that I misinterpreted his weblog. He says the “it is easy to show that weighting by (T+T’)**4 significantly emphasizes the lower latitudes”.

In this post, I will calculate the radiative imbalance due to the change in temperature for several years. I will briefly describe the procedure. I used the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data as before, and calculated the mean temperature for the entire time series. I assume that each grid emits as a blackbody, and thus used the Stefan-Bolzemann Law to calculate the blackbody irradiance for both the mean temperature and the yearly mean temperature. These were then subtracted to give the “radiative imbalance” at each point for the given year.
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Temperature is something we deal with everyday. Is it cold outside? I’ll wear a jacket. Is it hot? Maybe I’ll wear a t-shirt. We all have an intrinsic idea of what temperature is. Temperature is really a measure of how fast something is moving. Consider a typical nitrogen molecule (N2) in the atmosphere. Near the equator, the molecule has more energy than if it were at the poles. This is a consequence of the Earth being nearly a sphere; more of the sun’s energy is intercepted near the equator than the poles.

The sun’s energy generally won’t go directly into the nitrogen molecule. Instead, it will be absorbed by the surface. The surface will warm, and the nitrogen molecules will bump into the surface. This transfers heat from the surface to the atmosphere. Because the nitrogen molecule has more energy, it will move faster. Continue Reading »

A recent post at Dot Earth has brought out the usual auguments by those that disagree with human-induced climate change (Earth Scientists Express Rising Concern Over Warming). In addition to Dr. Ray Pierrehumbert (a contributor to RealClimate) and Marc Morano (staffer to Senator James Inhofe) being in what I assume to be a fight to the death, there is the typical “how do the warmers explain the fact that it hasn’t warmed in the past X years?” type of argument.
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Is betting on the future climate a good way to make money? That clearly depends upon the bet, and how much it is. Recently there was a bet proposed in The Durango Herald, A chilly response: Durangoan willing to bet $5,000 Earth won’t be hotter in 10 years. At Stoat, William Connolley has a few bets going on sea ice; I wonder if he’d be interested in this one.

Should he, or you, take the bet? (I have no money, so I’m right out.)

Let’s have a looksee at the data. He wants to use ‘authoritative “HadCRUT3? data set’. Fine, here’s the HadCRUT3 global data set. The first, and easiest thing we can do with the data is to just plot it versus time. The results are not exciting.
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