荆门骗保事件:全球变暖仍在继续

那些对全球变暖是否真正发生还存在疑问的人，要让他们相信温度计无法显示温度的变化这一谬论要比你想像的容易地多。

There are three compilations of mean global temperatures, each one based on readings from thousands of thermometers, kept in weather stations and aboard ships, going back over 150 years. Two are American, provided by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), one is a collaboration between Britain’s Met Office and the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (known as Hadley CRU). And all suggest a similar pattern of warming: amounting to about 0.9°C over land in the past half century.

世界上有三个全球平均气温数据的汇集点，每个汇集点的数据都是来自于成千上万个分布于各个气象站及船上温度计的读数，150年来一直是这样的。其中的两个汇集点是美国的，由美国国家航空航天局和国家海洋和大气管理局 (NOAA) 所提供。另外一个汇集点是一个合作机构，由英国Met Office气象局和东英吉利大学气候研究所（也称为哈德利CRU）共同合作。以上的三个汇集点得出了一个很相似的建议性结论：在过去半个世纪中，全球陆地上空的温度共升高了大约0.9度。

To most scientists, that is consistent with the manifold other indicators of warming—rising sea-levels, melting glaciers, warmer ocean depths and so forth—and convincing. Yet the consistency among the three compilations masks large uncertainties in the raw data on which they are based. Hence the doubts, husbanded by many eager sceptics, about their accuracy. A new study, however, provides further evidence that the numbers are probably about right.

对大多数科学家面言，这一结论也与其他全球变暖的迹象相吻合——不断上升的海平面、正在融化的冰川以及海洋深处的温度升高等等，这些迹象对全球全暖来说是有说服力的。然而三个汇集点数据的一致性又使得他它们所基于的原始数据存在着不确定性。因此这些不确定性被那些激进的怀疑论者牢牢抓住，他们在质疑其准确性。但已有新的研究证明这些数据很有可能是正确的。

The uncertainty arises mainly because weather stations were never intended to provide a climatic record. The temperature series they give tend therefore to be patchy and even where the stations are relatively abundant, as in western Europe and America, they often contain inconsistencies. They may have gaps, or readings taken at different times of day, or with different kinds of thermometer. The local environment may have changed. Extrapolating a global average from such data involves an amount of tinkering—or homogenisation.

不确定性的产生主要是因为气象站从来没有打算提供气候记录。他们提供的温度数据系列往往是参差不齐的，甚至在气象站相对比较多的区域也是这样。比如在西欧和美国，各个气象站提供的数据通常会有不一致的地方，这通常是因为各个气象站通常会在一天中的不同时段读取或用使用不同类型温度计测量，这样造成数据的不同，也有可能在测试时当地的温度环境已经改变。通过以上的数据推算全球温度的平均值水平会涉及到数据的修修补补量或均化。

It might involve omitting especially awkward readings; or where, for example, a heat source like an airport has sprung up alongside a weather station, inputting a lower temperature than the data show. As such cases are mostly in the earlier portions of the records, this will exaggerate the long-term warming trend. That is at best imperfect. And for those—including Rick Perry, the Republican governor of Texas and would-be president —who claim to see global warming as a hoax by grant-hungry scientists, it may look like a smoking gun.

它可能涉及遗漏的数据，物别是那些令人尴尬的数据；例如，像飞机场这样的热源会对附近气象站的温度数据的准确性有影响，这种情况下录入的数据要比实际显示的要低一些。上述情况通常会发生在数据记录的早期部分，这会夸大全球变暖趋势的长期性，那样是不恰当的。对于那些对全球变暖持怀疑态度的人（包括上任德克萨斯州共和党籍州长里克·佩里）也声称，他只将全球变暖看作是那些渴求成功的科学家的恶作剧，这看起来就像是一枝冒烟的枪。

To build confidence in their methodologies, NASA and NOAA already publish their data and algorithms. Hadley CRU is now doing so. A grander solution, outlined in a forthcoming Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, would be to provide a single online databank of all temperature data and analysis. Part of the point would be to encourage more scientists and statisticians to test the existing analyses—and a group backed by Novim, a research outfit in Santa Barbara, California, has recently done just that.

为了增强受众对其数据生成方法的可信度，NASA（美国国家航空航天局）和NOAA（美国国家海洋和大气管理局）已经发布了他们的数据和算法。 Hadley CRU（哈德利气候研究中心）就是在做这些事情，在即将发布的美国气象学会公报的纲要中，部分内容提到鼓励更多的科学家和统计学家检测现有的分析报告， 一个由Novim（一个位于加利福尼亚州圣塔芭芭拉分校的研究机构）支持的研究小组已经开始了这项工作。

Inconvenient data

难以忽视的数据

Marshalled by an astrophysicist, Richard Muller, this group, which calls itself the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature, is notable in several ways. When embarking on the project 18 months ago, its members (including Saul Perlmutter, who won the Nobel prize for physics this month for his work on dark energy) were mostly new to climate science. And Dr Muller, for one, was mildly sceptical of its findings. This was partly, he says, because of “climategate”: the 2009 revelation of e-mails from scientists at CRU which suggested they had sometimes taken steps to disguise their adjustments of inconvenient palaeo-data. With this reputation, the Berkeley Earth team found it unusually easy to attract sponsors, including a donation of $150,000 from the Koch Foundation.

天体物理学家理查德·穆勒领导着一个研究小组，该小组自称为伯克利分校地球研究小组，该小组在几个方面值得观注。18个月之前，在刚开始开展该项目时，其成员 （包括因对暗能量的研究而获得诺贝尔奖的扫罗·佩尔穆特） 大多数都初次接触气候科学。而穆勒博士，对该领域的研究成果持轻度的怀疑。他说，究其原因，在一定程度上是因为“气候门”：2009年，CRU科学家的邮件泄露，在邮件中提到，他们有时会采用一定的措施来掩盖有可能引起不便的古数据。由于这个原因，伯克利分校地球研究小组发现要吸引赞助商非常困难，包括对科赫基金会15万元捐款的争取也不轻松。

Yet Berkeley Earth’s results, as described in four papers currently undergoing peer review, but which were nonetheless released on October 20th, offer strong support to the existing temperature compilations. The group estimates that over the past 50 years the land surface warmed by 0.911°C: a mere 2% less than NOAA’s estimate. That is despite its use of a novel methodology—designed, at least in part, to address the concerns of what Dr Muller terms “legitimate sceptics”.

伯克利分校对地表温度的研究结果已汇总为四份论文，这些论文最近正在接受同行评议，这些论文会在10月20日发表，这会对现有的温度汇总提供有力的支持。该小组估算，在过去50年中，地表温暖升高0.911度，比 NOAA 的估算仅仅小2% 。尽管用的是经过改良的新方法；但对于穆勒小组的“合理怀疑”理论，至少部分地引起了关注。

Most important, Berkeley Earth sought an alternative way to deal with awkward data. Its algorithm attaches an automatic weighting to every data point, according to its consistency with comparable readings. That should allow for the inclusion of outlandish readings without distorting the result. (Except where there seems to be straightforward confusion between Celsius and Fahrenheit, which is corrected.) By avoiding traditional procedures that require long, continuous data segments, the Berkeley Earth methodology can also accommodate unusually short sequences: for example, those provided by temporary weather stations. This is another innovation that allows it to work with both more and less data than the existing compilations, with varying degrees of certainty. It is therefore able to compile an earlier record than its predecessors, starting from 1800. (As there were only two weather stations in America, a handful in Europe and one in Asia for some of that time, it has a high degree of uncertainty.) To test the new technique, however, much of the analysis uses the same data as NOAA and NASA.

最为重要的是，伯克利分校地球研究小组在寻求另一种处理不准确数据的方法。为了保持与对比数据的一致性，其算法附带对每个数据点的自动分装。为了保持数据的真实性，这种算法甚至允许一些稀奇古怪的读数（除了那些似乎摄氏、华氏混淆不清的读数）。传统程序时间长，对连续数据段存在着依赖性，伯克利分校地球究小组的方法，避免了传统程序的弊病，它还可处理异常短的数据序列。例如，临时气象站提供的数据。这是另一种创新，使它在比现有汇集的数据更多和更少的情况下都能工作， 并有不同程度的确定性。因此，它能够编缉从1800年起（那时美国只有两个气象站，欧洲只有少数的几个、亚州有一个，数据有很高的不确定性）的数据。不过，要测试这相新技术，很多分析都用的是NOAA 和NASA所提供的数据。

Heat maps

热图

In another apparent innovation, the Berkeley team has written into its analysis a geospatial technique, known as kriging, which uses the basic spatial correlations in weather to estimate the temperature at points between weather stations. This promises to provide a more nuanced heat map than presented in the existing compilations, which either consign an average temperature to an area defined by a grid square or, in the case of NASA, attempt a less ambitious interpolation.

另一个明显的创新是，伯克利小组的团队已将“克立格”写进了它的地理空间技术分析中，它应用气候基本的空间相关性来估算气象站之间的点的温度。它会提供一个比现存编缉好的热图更为精细的图，该热图通过网格的区域来表现温度的平均值，对NASA来说，也是一个小的插值尝试。

It will be interesting to see whether this makes it past the review process. Peter Thorne, a climatologist at the Co-operative Institute for Climate and Satellites, in North Carolina, describes it as “quite a hard sell in periods that are data sparse”. He adds: “That doesn’t mean you can’t do it. It means you’ve got to prove it works.”

要看这项技术能不能通过审核是一个有趣的事情。彼得·索恩是北卡罗莱纳州一位气候和卫星合作研究所的气候学家，他将其形容为“数据稀疏时期的强行推销”。他补充道：“这并不意味着你无法做到，而是意味着需要你去证明它是可行的。

Two of the Berkeley Earth papers address narrower concerns. One is the poor location of many weather stations. A crowd-sourcing campaign by a meteorologist and blogger, Anthony Watts, established that most of America’s stations are close enough to asphalt, buildings or other heat sources to give artificially high readings. The other is the additional warming seen in built-up areas, known as the “urban heat-island effect”. Many sceptics fear that, because roughly half of all weather stations are in built-up areas, this may have inflated estimates of a temperature rise.

关于伯克利分校地球研究小组的论文，其中有两篇关注度较小。这是因为，其一：很多的气象站的位置不佳。开源运动的发起人、气象学家及知明博主安东尼·瓦特说，在美国大部分的站点都建在接近沥青、 建筑物或其它热源的附近，所以会人为地造成高读数。另一个原因是在市区会有更高一些的温度，这种现象我们称之为“城市热岛效应”。许多全球变暖的怀疑者担心，约有一半的气象站是建在楼宇密集区，全球变暖可能是对温度升高过大的估计。

The Berkeley Earth papers suggest their analysis is able to accommodate these biases. That is a notable, though not original, achievement. Previous peer-reviewed studies—including one on the location of weather stations co-authored by Mr Watts—have suggested the mean surface temperatures provided by NOAA, NASA and Hadley CRU are also not significantly affected by them.

伯克利分校地球研究小组的论文表明他们的分析能够容纳这些偏见。虽然并不是创造性的成就，但这一点值得注意。在之前的同行评议研究中（这包括一个与瓦特先生合著的关于气象站位置的研究）表明，NOAA、NASA以及哈德利·CRU的提供的地表温度并没有显著的受到上述因素的影响。

Yet the Berkeley Earth study promises to be valuable. It is due to be published online with a vast trove of supporting data, merged from 15 separate sources, with duplications and other errors clearly signalled. At a time of exaggerated doubts about the instrumental temperature record, this should help promulgate its main conclusion: that the existing mean estimates are in the right ballpark. That means the world is warming fast.

然而，伯克利分校地球研究小组的研究正变得有价值。他们打算将大量支持数据发布到网上，这些数据来自于15个单独的数据源。在对温度记录非常怀疑的时期，这样做有助于宣扬其主要结论：现有的估计是正确的，全球变暖的态势正在加剧。