While we were trying (unsuccessfully) to find the criminals who hacked the e-mails of scientists, and trying (unsuccessfully for the most part) to point out that being victims of a crime does not mean a group’s research is faulty, and watching the disastrous results of the cynical assault on American politics by e-mail thieves and modern enemies of Hypatia, the world continues to spin. Galileo so aptly described the news: Eppur si muove!
Lake Tahoe, seen here from Emerald Bay, was one of the primary validation sites for the global lake study. The lake, which straddles the borders of California and Nevada, is the largest alpine lake in North America. Image credit: NASA-JPL
Against those religiously inclined to ignore the facts, a modern Galileo could say: Eppure, lei si scalda!
Just a few months ago critics of science told us that the Copenhagen conference on climate change was unnecessary, because the world is cooling, and not warming. Eleven months ago, supporters of the theft of e-mails from the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain claimed that researchers had goofed about global warming, and then covered it up. The sad old Earth kept turning and orbiting . . .
Comes now this news from NASA:
November 23, 2010
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
RELEASE : 10-308
NASA Study Finds Earth’s Lakes Are Warming
WASHINGTON — In the first comprehensive global survey of temperature trends in major lakes, NASA researchers determined Earth’s largest lakes have warmed during the past 25 years in response to climate change.
Researchers Philipp Schneider and Simon Hook of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., used satellite data to measure the surface temperatures of 167 large lakes worldwide.
They reported an average warming rate of 0.81 degrees Fahrenheit per decade, with some lakes warming as much as 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit per decade. The warming trend was global, and the greatest increases were in the mid- to high-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.
“Our analysis provides a new, independent data source for assessing the impact of climate change over land around the world,” said Schneider, lead author of the study published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. “The results have implications for lake ecosystems, which can be adversely affected by even small water temperature changes.”
Small changes in water temperature can result in algal blooms that can make a lake toxic to fish or result in the introduction of non-native species that change the lake’s natural ecosystem.
Scientists have long used air temperature measurements taken near Earth’s surface to compute warming trends. More recently, scientists have supplemented these measurements with thermal infrared satellite data that can be used to provide a comprehensive, accurate view of how surface temperatures are changing worldwide.
The NASA researchers used thermal infrared imagery from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and European Space Agency satellites. They focused on summer temperatures (July-September in the Northern Hemisphere and January-March in the Southern Hemisphere) because of the difficulty in collecting data in seasons when lakes are ice-covered and/or often hidden by clouds. Only nighttime data were used in the study
The bodies studied were selected from a global database of lakes and wetlands based on size (typically at least 193 square miles or larger) or other unique characteristics of scientific merit. The selected lakes also had to have large surface areas located away from shorelines, so land influences did not interfere with the measurements. Satellite lake data were collected from the point farthest from any shoreline.
The largest and most consistent area of warming was northern Europe. The warming trend was slightly weaker in southeastern Europe, around the Black and Caspian seas and Kazakhstan. The trends increased slightly farther east in Siberia, Mongolia and northern China.
In North America, trends were slightly higher in the southwest United States than in the Great Lakes region. Warming was weaker in the tropics and in the mid-latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere. The results were consistent with the expected changes associated with global warming.
The satellite temperature trends largely agreed with trends measured by nine buoys in the Great Lakes, Earth’s largest group of freshwater lakes in terms of total surface area and volume.
The lake temperature trends were also in agreement with independent surface air temperature data from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. In certain regions, such as the Great Lakes and northern Europe, water bodies appear to be warming more quickly than surrounding air temperature.
For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:
– end –
Global trends in seasonal nighttime lake surface temperatures, 1985-2009. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltec
World wide, a few lakes show not a great deal of warming, but none of the lakes sampled showed any cooling over the past two-and-a-half decades.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
It’s a silly proposal — unnecessary, since it’s already a crime to fake data on federal grant money, and stupid, since it assumes an error that cannot be shown.
I’ve commented some here:
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Ed or anyone here. I posted a link to an article titled “How a Scientific Integrity Act Could Shift the Global Warming Debate “. Does anyone here have any idea of what is being said or do you agree we should introduce a Scientific Integrity Act.
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Found this interesting article posted. This is a short list presented by Rich Kozlovich of the article. Below is link to the entire article
How a Scientific Integrity Act Could Shift the Global Warming Debate
Up until now, peer review has been held up as the gold standard in scientific discourse. Recent developments in the climate science arena, such as Climategate, have led many to conclude that peer review is not all that it is cracked up to be. Having said that, peer review may well be perfectly adequate as a scientific standard when the issues in debate are the mating habits of squirrels. However, if the issue in debate is whether or not trillions of dollars should be spent combating global warming, perhaps a new more rigorous standard should be applied.
I propose that henceforth, five levels of scientific rigour be defined. In brief, they are;
· Level zero which is grey literature from advocacy organisations such as the WWF.
· Level one, which is the current peer review process.
· Level two, which I will call replicatable, is the current peer review process but with mandatory archiving of data and software code within six months of publication.
· Level three, which I will call audited, is where an authoritative body of some sort holds a competition on the internet to “find something wrong” with the calculations in the paper with a prize for any independent researcher who can find incorrect calculations.
· Level four is what I will call Cross Examined and is where the paper in question is deemed so important that, a full scale “internet trial” is conducted. You can think of it as a Scopes Monkey Trial of the researchers and their paper by competent legal personnel advised by scientists. It would mainly consist of oral testimony but with anyone on the internet free to comment and interject in any forum they wish. Naturally these comments can inform the questions put to the researchers.
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Found this interesting. There’s a link to entire article at the end of the brief summary posted.
For entire article go to:
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Thanks Ed. Just curious because I didn’t know.
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Maybe one day the mainstream media will realise the only proper global warming debate is between some real scientists who say it’s going to be disastrous for millions and other real scientists who fear it will be disastrous for billions. On current form, though, that won’t be happening for a while.
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Joe, consider:
Lake Toba is the largest volcanic lake in the world, at 440 square miles. It may have been included in the survey (it’s oddly-shaped, and may not have enough area away from shoreline). Crater Lake’s entire catchment area is less than 24 square miles — therefore excluded. Can you find any other crater lakes big enough to be included (other than Yellowstone)?
No crater lakes there, are there? Not enough to skew a survey much, in any case.
I haven’t found any crater lakes there big enough to be included (I’ve not checked all of ’em).
No crater lakes big enough to be included in the survey.
Region by region, I don’t see any volcanic lake skew.
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Actually, I doubt that more than a tiny handful of the lakes surveyed would be crater lakes. Yellowstone Lake would be the exception, but it’s in a caldera. I don’t think Crater Lake was big enough, for example, it doesn’t appear on the map — nor is there any evidence that Crater Lake is warming.
In any case, out of the more than 150 lakes surveyed, volcanic warming would be insignificant. The Great Lakes alone would cancel out any bias due to volcanic warming.
How many lakes other than Crater Lake are there in the craters of volcanoes? [More than 40, it turns out. How many included in the survey?]
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Just a quick question – some of these lakes are in craters of volcanoes. Do you think that volcanic activity may be increasing (like at Yellowstone) and that could contribute to the temperature of the lakes rising?
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[…] Climate change Our lakes are warming, according to NASA. […]
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