[Vision2020] Australian Government: Persistent Southern Heat Wave

[Paul Rumelhart]

How do they come up with an average global temperature, anyway?  Do they 
just sum up all the readings of all the measurements and average them?  
Do they take into account the relative areas involved?  How do they get 
so precise that they can say whether or not the average global 
temperature has risen by as little as half a degree?

In my ignorance, I would expect that if you had a computer reading all 
the networked weather stations and averaging on the fly that the values 
would fluctuate greatly.  Doesn't each thermometer vary on a 
minute-to-minute basis?  If you doubled the number of measuring sites 
that currently exists, I imagine the numbers would be different, 
especially if you placed more of them on the oceans.

What are we measuring, exactly, anyway?  Air temperature?  Wouldn't it 
be more scientific to measure ground temperature (i.e. the actual 
temperature of the earth)?  What about water temperature in the oceans?

Shouldn't they be trying to get to some kind of measurement of the 
actual energy absorbed by the Earth as a system?  It seems like they  
should have spacecraft measuring the amount of infrared rays escaping 
from the Earth, and comparing that to what is going in, preferably from 
far enough away from the Earth to get a good single reading.

Measuring the progress of global warming using measurements from weather 
stations seems silly because of the sheer amount of data coming in.  You 
get lost in all the numbers.  Readings like that would go a long way 
towards answering the skeptics (which I'm sure you're lumping me in with).

Paul

Ted Moffett wrote:
> As our recent cooler than normal weather on the Palouse led some local 
> residents to rejoice that indeed anthropogenic global warming is a 
> hoax, let's hope they are correct!  Because down under they have been 
> experiencing a record breaking heat wave, at the beginning of what is 
> their Fall season in March. 
>  
> Read these temperature data carefully, because this is a way serious 
> heat wave, over a large area, over a period of weeks.  Of course, this 
> does not prove, any more than our local cold weather recently 
> disproved, the theory of long term global warming from human sourced 
> CO2 emissions.  It does, however, perhaps put into perspective that it 
> is the global average temperature over decades that reveals or refutes 
> climate change, not local seasonal variations, some of which are 
> predicted to potentially be cooler than in the past, even in a warming 
> global climate. 
>  
> This March, 2008 heat wave in Australia to some extent cancels out the 
> cool weather locally, and some of the cooler global average 
> temperatures during January and February 2008 (NOAA ranks 
> climatological winter (Dec. Jan. Feb.) 2007-8 as the 16th warmest 
> globally, land and sea combined, since record keeping started in the 
> 1800s), in the yearly global average temperature that will be figured 
> for 2008:
>  
> http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/ho/20080320.shtml
>  
> http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2008/20080313_coolest.html
>  
> Adelaide had 15 consecutive days above 35 °C and 13 consecutive days 
> above 37.8 °C (100°F), breaking the previous records of 8 and 7 days 
> respectively. These represent new records for any Australian capital 
> city. Also breaking consecutive day records were Ceduna which had 12 
> days over 35°C, Mildura which had 14 days over 35 °C, and Kyancutta 
> which had 13 days over 40°C.
>
> In addition to the prolonged heat wave conditions, a number of record 
> high temperatures for March were set, both for daily maximum and 
> overnight minimums.
>
> In Tasmania, Hobart reached 37.3 °C on 14 March which matched the 
> record March high temperature from 13 March in 1940. At nearby 
> Campania, the temperature reached 38.0 °C – the highest March 
> temperature ever recorded in Tasmania.
>
> In Western Australia, Eyre set a new all-time Australian record for 
> the range of temperatures observed in one day. The overnight minimum 
> of 6.8°C warmed to a maximum of a 44.2°C on 5 March, setting a new 
> record single-day temperature range of 37.4 C.
>
> Not only were the days hot, but warm nights also made sleep 
> uncomfortable for many. Records for the hottest March nights were set 
> in both Adelaide (30.2°C overnight on 13/14 March) and Melbourne 
> (26.9°C overnight on 17/18 March.)
>
> Mean maximum temperatures for the period 1 – 17 March are running far 
> above average, with some locations in South Australia 12°C or more 
> above their normal March value.
>
> -----------------------------------------
>
> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
>
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