trysail
Catch Me Who Can
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2005
- Posts
- 25,593
Up 'til 1980, temperatures for 70% of the earth's surface:
by Rebecca Hersher
NPR
"(NPR)...To know how ocean temperature is changing today, scientists rely on more than a century's worth of temperature data gathered by sailors who used buckets to gather samples of water.
It's the best information available about how hot the oceans were before the middle of the 20th century, but it's full of errors and biases. Making the historical data more reliable led researchers on a wild investigation that involved advanced statistics and big data, along with early 20th century shipbuilding norms and Asian maritime history.
"I sometimes joke with my friends, 'I'm not only a climate scientist, I'm a detective!' " says Duo Chan, a graduate student who led much of the analysis for an influential study published early this year. The underlying problem Chan and Huybers were dealing with is that different countries used buckets made of different materials, in different sizes, on different lengths of rope — all things that could change a temperature reading.
For example, the water in a midsize canvas bucket can lose up to 0.5 degree Celsius over the course of just a couple of minutes, says Chan.
"Half a degree doesn't sound like a big deal, right? However, if you look at the whole global warming, it's only, like, 1 degree," Chan explains. "Every 0.1 degree matters a lot."..."
It's the best information available about how hot the oceans were before the middle of the 20th century, but it's full of errors and biases. Making the historical data more reliable led researchers on a wild investigation that involved advanced statistics and big data, along with early 20th century shipbuilding norms and Asian maritime history.
"I sometimes joke with my friends, 'I'm not only a climate scientist, I'm a detective!' " says Duo Chan, a graduate student who led much of the analysis for an influential study published early this year. The underlying problem Chan and Huybers were dealing with is that different countries used buckets made of different materials, in different sizes, on different lengths of rope — all things that could change a temperature reading.
For example, the water in a midsize canvas bucket can lose up to 0.5 degree Celsius over the course of just a couple of minutes, says Chan.
"Half a degree doesn't sound like a big deal, right? However, if you look at the whole global warming, it's only, like, 1 degree," Chan explains. "Every 0.1 degree matters a lot."..."
The accuracy of the historic global temperature record is a fucking joke.
