Was 2014 Really the Warmest Year?

• The media is widely reporting 2014 as the warmest year on record, yet the underlying data don't support that conclusion.
• The data actually lead to a different finding, of 2014 tied with 2010 and 2005 within the margin of error, reflecting little warming since 2005.

When I opened today's Washington Post and turned to the Opinion section, I found two op-eds that began almost identically: Eugene Robinson's column stated, "We now know that 2014 was the hottest year in recorded history," while Catherine Rampell announced, "Last year, government scientists tell us, was the hottest year on record." The President even repeated this in his State of the Union address. However, that is not really what the figures in question indicate.

I suppose it's understandable that the Post's editors and those of many other media reporting the same finding might rely on the expertise of the government agencies involved, rather than digging deeper. The Post's columnists apparently based their comments on information provided to the media by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The NASA press release, entitled, "NASA, NOAA Find 2014 Warmest Year in Modern Record," included links enabling one to scrutinize the raw data upon which this conclusion was based. I've reproduced the relevant portion below in picture form as of noon today, since this data is subject to periodic revisions.

NASA's dataset displays the differences between measured temperatures and the 14.0°C average from 1951-80. On this basis it confirms that the average recorded temperature in 2014 was 0.02°C higher than the average for the previous warmest year, 2010, which was in turn 0.01°C higher than 2005's. Unfortunately, neither that page nor the press release includes any information about the uncertainty inherent in these figures, which turns out to be larger than the increase from 2010-14.

All physical measurements, including those from the weather stations providing data to NASA, are plus-or-minus some error. Averaging them doesn't entirely negate that. Within the accuracy of these temperatures, it's not possible to distinguish among 2005, 2010 and 2014; they represent a statistical tie. That fact was explained more clearly than I have done in a report on January 14, 2015, from the team of scientists at Berkeley Earth. Hardly climate skeptics, this is the same group that made headlines a couple of years ago with a comprehensive study of existing climate data.

Why does this distinction matter? After all, measured temperatures have warmed nearly 2° Fahrenheit since the early 20th century, as shown in the graph above. Whether last year or 2010 was warmer might seem like more of an academic point than a practical one. However, the refrain of "record temperature" reports gives a false sense that the warming is accelerating. Instead, as the Berkeley Earth report found, "the Earth's average temperature for the last decade has changed very little." That's a very different impression than the one created by the stories I saw, with implications for how we respond to the risks of climate change.
 

A New Era in Space

In the lead-up to the launch of the last space shuttle, "Atlantis", I've been seeing a number of articles on the general theme of an era ending. This week's Economist went so far as to suggest it marks the "End of the Space Age." I sincerely hope they are wrong, and not just because I have followed the US space program avidly since before the first moon landing, but also because of my primary focus on energy. Most of the resources of the solar system, including most of its energy resources, lie outside the earth's atmosphere. To choose a relevant example, space solar power (SSP) might not contribute significantly for decades, but it still looks like an important option for ensuring that energy limits don't constrain our long-term prosperity after the ages of oil and coal wind down.

One presentation that I still recall vividly from the many meetings involved in the economic review of NASA's "Fresh Look" approach to SSP in the 1990s, and from my time on NASA's oversight committee for SSP, dealt with the crucial role of a low-cost, high-frequency launch system in putting the components of solar power satellites into orbit affordably. Even then, it was clear that the current shuttle was not that system. It was equally clear that the traditional alternative of disposable rockets couldn't come close to the $ per pound-on-orbit threshold required. He was proposing a second- or third-generation system using unmanned reusable cargo vehicles that would land like airplanes. This was before the recent advances in drone aircraft.

I wonder what that scientist would recommend today. Perhaps he would build on some of the private spacecraft designs currently under development, such as those of SpaceX, Orbital Sciences and XCOR. However, assembling a solar power system over dozens or hundreds of launches involves very different requirements than taking tourists into space or sending astronauts back to the moon or on to Mars. In any case, without reliable access to space--traveling as passengers on Russian vehicles using a 50-year-old design doesn't count--the benefits of space will be limited to capabilities like the communications and remote sensing of today's satellites. Those are impressive enough and have transformed our world and our view of it, but they can't supply us with the concentrated energy to power cities or industries.

During the space shuttle program's 30-year history, shuttle crews accomplished extraordinary feats at tremendous risk, and sadly some of them paid with their lives. It's interesting to contemplate, as a noted space commentator did this week in Technology Review, whether the right shuttle design was chosen in the early 1970s, though mainly from the perspective of what it might tell us about what our next steps in space should be. I'm as intrigued as anyone by the prospect of resuming manned exploration beyond earth orbit, but it's hard to square the cost of that with the deep cuts that must be made elsewhere to set our financial house in order. A serious examination of the techniques and hardware necessary to deliver space resources for use on earth--now that it wouldn't have to fit an existing shuttle's capabilities--could provide a suitably pragmatic focus for NASA in the current environment.

I have a hunch that a goal of obtaining non-polluting energy from space would go a lot farther towards galvanizing the necessary public support for NASA than the next planetary mission--which incidentally might be easier to construct with the capabilities that a more nuts-and-bolts effort might create. Either way, while it's nice to look back at past achievements, I'd much rather be looking ahead to the accomplishments of the next era in space.