Climate Data: Siberia 1955-2010

The split between Siberia and the rest of Russia is usually defined as the Ural Mountains. Since I wanted to make it a rectangle is longitude and latitude, I chose 60 degree East for the leftmost cutoff point.

We think of Siberia as "frozen wasteland" and "place of exile", but I have read several Russian writer who say it has a meaning similar to the West in United States' cultural memory, a big, mostly empty place of challenge and opportunity.

Whichever it is, it certainly is not wanting for weather stations to measure its progress. Very good coverage from east to west and north to south.

The temperatures in Winter vary drastically. While the warmest Winters have spiked pretty close to each other all through the 1955-2010 era, the coldest Winters are getting generally warmer and the median keeps sneaking upward era by era.

Spring does not show as much fluctuation and the sequences show more steady increase.

Summer fluctuates even less and every measurement method shows consistent increase, but the total increase of the median from the 1955-1975 era to the 1999-2010 era is less than a degree Celsius, the mildest increase of all four seasons.

Like Winter, Fall temperatures jump around a lot. The warmest Fall are only slightly warmer, but the median has climbed over a degree and a half.

Confidence level of warming from time interval to time interval: 99.99%

Confidence level of the trend showing increasing warming: 65.8%

Average seasonal change in the medians of 1955-1975 to 1999-2010: 1.555° C.

1.555° C in 56 years is the number that matters. This is way too fast. More than that, the Siberian permafrost, like the Winter ice in the Arctic Circle, can become a really scary feedback loop. There's a lot of permafrost in Siberia, and most importantly there is a contiguous permafrost about the size of France and Germany combined. When permafrost melts, it changes the albedo, absorbing heat instead of reflecting it. If that wasn't bad enough, there is a huge amount of CO2 and methane trapped in the permafrost that will be released when it melts, things will only get worse.

I've only been looking at climate data for about ten weeks now, but I am pretty close to convinced it's real and it does not have to speed up for it to be a serious problem for humans, if not in my lifetime then in the lifetime of kids growing up today. Tomorrow, I will introduce another way to look at the data. I have not done the programming yet, so I don't know if the data will alarming or not, but it is an attempt to look at patterns worldwide instead of getting useful data region by region.

Climate Data: Mongolia 1955-2010

During my four weeks of climate data, the regions I selected followed a set pattern. Right now, I am hopping around the map with no consistent rhyme or reason. I chose the Sahara and Australia because they are both dominated by desert. I chose China because I wanted to see what was happening in a very populated area. I choose Mongolia today because it fits nicely in a longitude/latitude rectangle, it was part of the China map yesterday and it contains a large part of the Gobi Desert, continuing with the theme of deserts started earlier.

Mongolia is much more sparsely populated than China and not as well covered by weather stations. Even so, there were 23,627 seasonal reports between 1955 to 2010, so it is nothing like the paucity of information we had in the polar regions.

Average Winter temperatures are all over the place, from less than 2° C to nearly 10° C. These temperatures are much colder than China and much more variable. The general trend is upward, though there was a drop in the low temperature and median at the beginning of this century compared to the end of the last.

Change in 1955-1975 median to 1999-2010 median: 1.6925° C. 

Spring shows steadily climbing in all our measurement standards, though the amount of increase is slowing down.

Change in 1955-1975 median to 1999-2010 median: 1.877° C. 

Summer shows increasing temperatures and the rate of warming is going up.

Change in 1955-1975 median to 1999-2010 median: 1.46° C.

Fall shows a temperature dip between 1988-1999 to 1999-2010, but these temperatures are still over a degree higher than what was seen in the 1955-197 era.

Change in 1955-1975 median to 1999-2010 median: 1.35° C.

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Confidence level of warming from time interval to time interval: 99.98%

Confidence level of the trend showing increasing warming: 65.8%

Average seasonal change in the medians of 1955-1975 to 1999-2010: 1.59° C.

We are very confident that this is a warming trend and not just random variation. We are not confident at all that the warming is speeding up, but at 1.59° C in 56 years, we don't have to be.  This number is definitely in the "hair on fire" range. Of the regions I've looked at, this is the worst increase of anyplace outside the polar regions.

This gets me interested in deserts in general.  Tomorrow: the Atacama desert in South America.

Climate Data: China and surrounding areas 1955-2010

China is not like the Sahara or Australia. It's farther away from the equator, it's not a mono-climate and it fits rather clumsily in a Mercator rectangle. It's not warming as fast as the Sahara, but it is showing much more warming than Australia. Most climate scientist I've talked to think of 2 degrees Celsius in a century as a "hair on fire number" .82 degrees in 56 years would average out to about 1.5 degrees in 100 year if this keeps up.

The region is very well covered by weather stations.

Of all the seasons, Winter is showing the greatest increase in median temperature from the 1955-1975 era to the 1999-2010 era, about 1.02 degrees Celsius. (The choice of the beginning and ending numbers of these eras is based on Strong La Niña years, for those of you who are new to my posts on climate.)

The Spring red dotted line jumps up by 0.94 degrees Celsius from the first era to the last.

Summer temperatures dipped in the time period from 1975 to 1988, but other than that we see an increasing trend.

Fall temperature also have just one dip, but this one is from the end of last century to the beginning of this one.

Confidence level of warming from time interval to time interval: 99%

Confidence level of the trend showing increasing warming: 94.87%

Average seasonal change in the medians of 1955-1975 to 1999-2010: 0.82° C.

Climate Data: Australia 1955-2010

Geographically, Australia has a lot in common with the Sahara. They are about the same distance from the equator, the Sahara to the north and Australia to the south, and the northern section of Africa is a little wider west to east. Both regions are dominated by deserts with very little water.

The major difference in climate is simply stated. Australia is not warming as quickly or as convincingly as the Sahara.  Less than half a degree Celsius in 56 years is not particularly alarming, not like the 1.08° C change seen in the Sahara.
 

The grid coverage of Australia from 1955 to 2010 has a few points in the west without any coverage, but ignoring those few glitches, the shape of the grid closely matches the shape of the country.

Since Australia is south of the equator, we begin the year with the Summer temperatures. In every one of our measuring systems (also called metrics), the numbers bounce around. Because I distrust cherry picking, I look first at the median of our time periods, marked in the dotted bright red line, and there we see an increase from the first era (1955-1977) to the last (1999-2010).

Change in 1955-1975 median to 1999-2010 median: 0.4705° C.

The changes in the Fall numbers also look generally random, but the median does show an increase, also less than a half degree.

Change in 1955-1975 median to 1999-2010 median: 0.395° C.

The Winter variations show a step increase function in the record highs and lows, but the median took a step down between the 1988-1999 era and the most recent one.

Change in 1955-1975 median to 1999-2010 median: 0.493° C.

Spring show slow but steady increase in nearly every metric across the board.

Change in 1955-1975 median to 1999-2010 median: 0.569° C.

Confidence level of warming from time interval to time interval: 99.6%

Confidence level of the trend showing decreasing warming: 79.2%

Average seasonal change in the medians of 1955-1975 to 1999-2010: 0.48° C.

While the Sahara and Australia have geographical traits in common, the climates are moving in very different ways. Australia is warming, but not by alarming amounts and we have no confidence the rate is increasing and a very tepid confidence the rate is decreasing.

It would be nice if there was a reasoned discussion of the data, but the current climate of discussion makes that seem impossible.

Climate data:Sahara Desert 1955-2010

When I first did the climate data, the regions were chopped up along specific latitude and longitude line.  Now I want to look at regions that we think of as being mono-climates. The first one is the Sahara Desert.

Here is a map of the grid which shows where the temperature data was collected. The rectangle I chose was 15° West to 35° East in longitude and 10° North to 35° North in latitude. As you can see, there is a lot of the middle of the desert that is not being measured. Still, there were a total of 42,708 seasonal readings, so this is not a place with next to no data like certain regions of the poles.

Until this century, the Winter temperatures in the Sahara were bouncing around somewhat randomly, even showing a mild cooling trend when we look at the record highs and lows. The median was climbing up but only slightly.

Then came the 1999-2010 time period and things jumped up on both the record highs and record lows.

Change in 1955-1975 median to 1999-2010 median: 0.872° C, more than the worldwide average of about 0.5° C. I arbitrarily consider 1 degree Celsius to be the cut-off for very serious warming.

The Spring data was showing some warming in the last half of the 20th Century and that only increased in the first decade of the 21st.

Change in 1955-1975 median to 1999-2010 median: 1.164° C.

The Summer data shows the classic increasing temperature steps.

Change in 1955-1975 median to 1999-2010 median: 1.1185° C.

The Fall data is also unambiguous.

Change in 1955-1975 median to 1999-2010 median: 1.178° C.

Confidence level of warming from time interval to time interval: 99.999%
Confidence level of the trend showing increasing warming: 97.9%
Average seasonal change in the medians of 1955-1975 to 1999-2010: 1.08° C.

Like much of the Arctic Circle and parts of Western Antarctica, the Sahara is one of those regions that show serious warming over these 56 years.

Four weeks of climate data: Southern Temperate Region #5

The fifth region of the Southern Temperate Zone is the last major land mass to be covered, as the last region which will be discussed later today is just two small islands in the south Atlantic.

As we can see, the actual land mass of Chile, Uruguay and Argentina is very well represented, as are a few islands both east and west.

The high temperature records haven't moved much in the Summer months, but the coldest Summers are getting warmer noticeably and the median has risen slightly.

Again, the record warmest in Fall is bouncing around, but the coldest Fall since the early 1970s has jumped up about a degree while the median is almost unchanged.

Winter gives us an idea of what data should look like if there was no overall trend.

Spring on the other hand shows upward movement in the low temperature measurement and two upward steps and one downward in the median and high measurement systems.

Confidence of the region warming: 97.7%
Confidence of decreasing rate: 88.5%
Change in median temperature from the 1955-1975 interval to the 1999-2010 interval: 0.15° C



There are important people in the history of statistics who were not in love with confidence tests, W. Edwards Deming being the best known. This data goes a long way towards proving Dr. Deming's point. We are confident of a warming trend because of 24 upward steps and 12 downward, and not quite confident of a slowing rate of warming because of 9 increasing steps and 15 decreasing steps.  More to the point, 0.15° C is really small for 56 years.

Later today, two little islands in the middle of the South Atlantic get their say, our last data points covering the globe.

Four weeks of climate data:Southern Temperate Region #4

Now we look at the temperate part of the South Pacific Ocean between New Zealand and South America.

Most of the famous South Pacific Islands are in the tropics. The best known of these islands are Easter Island, rightmost at (-105° long, -30° lat) and Pitcairn, where the Bounty mutineers settled, the second rightmost.

The low temperatures for Summer bounce around a lot, but the median shows steady increase.

Fall numbers show an increase at nearly every step.

Again, the low temperatures are bouncing around but the median grows steadily.

The cold Spring late last decade keeps this graph from showing steady increase everywhere.

Confidence of the region warming: 99.%
Confidence of decreasing rate: 65.8%
Change in median temperature from the 1955-1975 interval to the 1999-2010 interval: 0.45° C

We get a similar story to many of our regions. Yes, it's warming. No, we can't say if the rate is increasing or decreasing with any confidence and the amount of warming is in the range of a half degree Celsius in 56 years.


Tomorrow, our last two regions, Temperate South America and the temperate south Atlantic.

Four weeks of climate data: Southern Temperate Region #3

 And now we hit a big clump of land the the Southern Temperate Zone, Australia and New Zealand.

Unlike that one island in the south Indian Ocean, most of the land here is between the 25th and 45th parallels, which makes for more moderate weather in general.

All three of our measurement systems have two upward steps and one downward step. The increase in the median from the first era to the last is less than half a degree.

In the Fall, the general trend of increase is more noticeable, but the difference in medians from first to last is slightly less that the Summer change.

The increasing trend is more noticeable in the Winters and the median jump is over a half degree.

Spring is bouncing up and down more randomly than the other seasons, but the median shows a steady increase of about a half a degree.

Confidence of the region warming: 99.9%
Confidence of decreasing rate: 65.8%
Change in median temperature from the 1955-1975 interval to the 1999-2010 interval: 0.44° C

We get a similar story to many of our regions. Yes, it's warming. No, we can't say if the rate is increasing or decreasing with any confidence and the amount of warming is in the range of a half degree Celsius in 56 years.

Later today, the fourth region, the Pacific islands between New Zealand and South America.