Yesterday I was messing around with the temperature time series, again. It’s kind of a fun thing to do, even if it is mostly a big waste of time. This time it was triggered by a post by a post at Climate Progress, Eighth warmest June on record means Great Ice Age of 2008 is STILL over. The monthly report that was released recently was published by NOAA, not NASA. While I started looking at the NOAA data, it became evident that the NASA data was more interesting. I wanted to present the temperature data in a way besides the typical time series.

First I needed a couple sample time series that looked similar to the temperature time series that we’re all familiar with. I’ve plotted those below. The top panels and bottom left panel are time series with a prescribed slope but with differing levels of white noise. The bottom right panel is a time series with no slope, with a 12 ‘month’ periodic signal and white noise.
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Whew. Yesterday was a busy day, and I don’t mean with work. I got zero actual work done. Nope, yesterday I signed my new lease. I’ll be moving 10 miles to the northeast by east. So I spent the entire morning dealing with that. And the afternoon was spent waiting in a doctor’s office. Not a pleasant experience; plus I get to go back on Monday. Woohoo.
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Has anyone been able to determine which scientific papers the media will report? It seems like a crap shoot to me. The latest is about aerosols and their effect on surface temperatures. The journal Geophysical Research Letters published a paper titled Aerosol and cloud effects on solar brightening and the recent rapid warming by a group of scientists mostly from Switzerland.

They found that the temperatures in Europe have been increasing faster than expected if greenhouse gases were the only cause. They also calculate that aerosols will cause a surface cooling. This is not news. The “surprising” part (their word) is that the cooling is mostly due to the direct aerosol effect and not the indirect cloud effect.
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In case you missed the announcement, Scienceblogs has a new blog about energy called The Next Generation of Energy Ideas. Their about page says that it “is a blog about energy policy and alternative energy solutions. It is sponsored by Shell…” Hmmm, not a great start in my book. In fact, it’d probably be a deal breaker. But I wasn’t asked to be part of the team. [Insert fake sobbing sounds here.]

So who are the writers at this “new” blog? It’s composed of 7 people, 3 of whom already have been assimilated by the Scienceborg: Connolley, Hrynyshyn, and Kirshenbaum. Romm gets added to the mix, as well as two people from Seed. So this blog really only brings one new voice to the table, that of Solomon Hsiang, a Ph.D. Student in Sustainable Development.
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