UPDATE: PLEASE NOTE UAH DATA FOR THIS POST ARE FROM 6.0 BETA 4. BETA 5 WILL GIVE DIFFERENT RESULTS.
It was two years ago in 2013 that I last posted on the difference between climate scientists’ expectations and reality, so in this series of posts I bring these points up to date, and add a couple of related points.
What the climate scientists tell us:
Dr Karl Braganza in The Conversation on 14/06/2011 lists the “fingerprints” of climate change (my bold).
These fingerprints show the entire climate system has changed in ways that are consistent with increasing greenhouse gases and an enhanced greenhouse effect. They also show that recent, long term changes are inconsistent with a range of natural causes…..
…Patterns of temperature change that are uniquely associated with the enhanced greenhouse effect, and which have been observed in the real world include:
• greater warming in polar regions than tropical regions
• greater warming over the continents than the oceans
• greater warming of night time temperatures than daytime temperatures
• greater warming in winter compared with summer
• a pattern of cooling in the high atmosphere (stratosphere) with simultaneous warming in the lower atmosphere (tropopause).
And later
Similarly, greater global warming at night and during winter is more typical of increased greenhouse gases, rather than an increase in solar radiation.
In this post I look at whether there is a pattern of greater warming in winter than summer.
This indicator appears to be FALSIFIED for both Northern and Southern Hemispheres:
Fig. 1: Winter vs Summer, Northern Hemisphere (UAH)
Fig. 2: Winter vs Summer, Southern Hemisphere (UAH)
And at the Poles:
Fig. 3: Winter vs Summer, Northern Polar region (UAH)
Summers warming faster than winters. And in Antarctica:
Fig. 4: Winter vs Summer, Southern Polar region (UAH)
Winters (which are mostly night) are cooling much faster than summers.
In Australia overall however, winters are warming faster than summers.
Fig. 5: Winter vs Summer, Australia (UAH 1979-2015):
And Acorn surface data since 1979:
Fig. 6: Winter vs Summer, Australia (Acorn 1979-2015):
And since 1911:
Fig. 7: Winter vs Summer, Australia (Acorn 1911-2015):
However, the patterns are very different in different Australian regions. North Australia has winters warming faster than summers:
Fig. 8: Winter vs Summer, Northern Australia (Acorn 1911-2015):
While Southern Australia has exactly the reverse:
Fig. 9: Winter vs Summer, Southern Australia (Acorn 1911-2015):
Let’s look at different parts of the South, first the South East:
Fig. 10: Winter vs Summer, South Eastern Australia (Acorn 1911-2015):
And the South West:
Fig. 11: Winter vs Summer, South Western Australia (Acorn 1911-2015):
This shows a particularly strong summer warming effect.
In the North, the pattern seems driven by greater summer rainfall and drier winters:
Fig. 12: Summer and Winter rainfall anomalies, Northern Australia
There has been much less winter rain in the Southwest (in the Southeast, there has not been as much variation):
Fig. 13: Summer and Winter rainfall anomalies, South Western Australia
In both the North and Southwest, there are distinct changes in rainfall in the late 1960s or early 1970s:
Fig. 14: Northern Summer rainfall changes
Note the long term slow decrease to 1973, the wet 1970s and dry 1980s, and all except 6 wetter than average seasons since 1991.
By contrast, the South Western rainy season shows a long term slow increase with great variability until the 1960s, with a sharp step down in 1969, and another in 2001, with less year to year variability.
Fig. 15: South Western Winter rainfall changes
This shows up in trend maps of summer and winter rainfall 1970-2014:
Fig. 16: Trends in summer rainfall
Fig. 17: Trends in winter rainfall
The effect of less winter rain on temperatures in the following summer in South Western Australia is clearly seen in this scatterplot:
Fig. 18: Summer means and previous winter rain:
While the IPCC and its acolytes in the Climate Council predict less rainfall for southeastern and southwestern Australia, this would not be difficult given the trend for southwestern Australia had been established for 20 years before the IPCC was even formed, and 45 years before AR5. Northern Australian rainfall is not mentioned.
Assessment of this evidence for the enhanced greenhouse effect: FAIL. Tropospheric data show this to be falsified in both Hemispheres and both Poles. Australia appears to go against this pattern, but drastic changes in rainfall patterns in the Northwest and Southwest appear to be involved in the difference between north and south.
Theory has been mugged by reality yet again.
