Gotta Love Those Islands

Well, if we have a bunch of islands in the same Gulf Stream sending water from the Atlantic and the Caribbean over toward Europe, you would expect their trends to be similar. Now it’s true that the Bermuda Islands are closer to the Sargasso Sea than the Caribbean Sea and are only on the edge of the Gulf Stream, and it is equally true that Jamaica is on the “Warmer Side” from Cuba and away from the Gulf Stream. But these are all nice warm places and they are all sitting in this giant bath tub of warm water together. At least the trends ought to match.

How About The Bermuda Islands?

Well, The Bermuda Islands come up a little short. (Oh, quit groaning, you KNEW it had to be coming, just be glad I got it out of the way early ;-). The data cut off in 1995. Part of The Great Dying of Thermometers. Wonder where it’s “filled-in” from now?

Not a whole lot of trend here either. It’s a 2.5 C range with a gentle downward slope. As is often the case, the oldest readings are a bit more volatile, but it’s a nice long series that just ends too soon. It would be interesting to see if they have CLIMAT reports available that are just not quite making it into the GHCN data set. I’m sure they still have an airport and people go there all the time, so METARS are certainly available.

OK, well, lets head from Bermuda back over to Jamaica and see what’s it looks like. Whatever it is, it ought to be more or less like that one. The place just doesn’t change climate much.

Jamaica – a rolling gate with a swing to it

So what have we got? Jamaica. I loved the place. Doctors Cove is to die for. Had a room in an old house / hotel with a picture “window” that had no glass in it overlooking the beach. 86 F pretty much all the time day or night, and the water was the same. Plants grew so fast you would swear the vines around the window were bigger at the end of the week than the start. And the food…. But I digress…

OK, the scale on this is fine grained so you can see some ‘action’. That’s all of about 2.5 C variation over the decades. In looking at the temperature data we find the “usual suspects” of Duplicate Number changes ( I’m swapping over to using the NCDC name rather than Mod Flag, that I think is from the GIStemp code). There are also a couple of thermometers that ‘drop out’ around the late ’60s / early ’70s. The “count” of thermometers jumps from 2 to 4 in one year, 5 the next for a few years, then back down to 2. Then we start playing with the Duplicate Numbers again in about 1988-1990. Here is a little peek at them.

So we can see that there was a gentle downward drift, until someone got way crazy and stuck thermometers all over the place, then yanked a bunch of them out. That caused a really big spike in the temperature anomalies. Then lately we’ve gotten a bit of a drift but not much as the Duplicate Number flags change again.

The Bahamas

Well, nice little string of Islands. Stable water all around them. A bit of the Caribbean mixing with some Sargasso as it heads for the Gulf Stream. Just the place for the same thing we’ve seen already. But may as well stick it in.. :

Speaking of “sticking it”, looks like we got ourselves a Hockey Stick. Now when you look at the data, there are a LOT of Duplicate Number flags again. There are a couple of different thermometers that come and go too. But at the end of the day, the “Hockey Stick” shows up when the older thermometers and Duplicate Number flags are dropped and they unmask this one lone record, and we get the stick. The other records drop over a period of time, so I’ve chosen to make this segment graph with a ‘break’ a bit late in the series of drops. I didn’t want to be accused of picking cherries in Bahamas (they need winter chill to make fruit anyway ;-) but here are what the trends look like with a break in the segments just after all the thermometer dropping:

We get two very different trends out of those two segments. I think we need a new name for this “uncover the newer Duplicate Number flag by dropping old thermometers” process, er, excuse me “trick” ( I do want to sound like a Professional Climate Scientists so I’d better learn to user their jargon properly.) I think I’ll call it an “UN-splice”. Prior to the drop we had both sets together and this thermometer was masked by the others, as we UN-splice them, this trend can then dominate. I think the UN-splice trick is rather clever, don’t you?

And just for Ruhroh who liked it so much the last time, here is the “Hair Graph” showing all the individual months data. Again we notice the ‘peak clipping’ with excessive clipping of the down peaks during the transition; though in this case we have the very interesting return of the down spikes lately. It’s that “bald batch” below zero sort of between 1990 and 1996 or so. Almost as though someone thought they had enough “trick” in the bag and didn’t want to overcook it…

If you would like to know what’s causing Global Warming, check out the thermometer changes in The Bahamas. It isn’t CO2.

Conclusions

Well, we can add The Bermuda Islands to the Carbon-Guilt-Free Club. All residents of those Islands may resume driving, BBQ ing, running party boats, fishing and generally having a wonderful time. Further, as a new Official Carbon-Guilt Policy: All tourists headed to those Islands get a Carbon-Guilt Free Pass for the duration. Clearly you have no impact on Global Warming when you are there.

For folks headed to Jamaica, you get a 70% discount on your Carbon-Guilt. They have played the Duplicate Number flag game, but only half heartedly, and they’ve ended up more or less back where they started. Furthermore, most of it came out of some thermometer changes when folks were playing around with them a lot in the ’60s and ’70s and, well, a lot of folks who went to Jamaica then don’t remember exactly what they did, so just kind of cut them some slack, OK? Heck, someone probably tried to light one up when they ran out of ganja one weekend… So feel at ease spending time on the beach, in the wonderful restaurants, and just touring the beautiful parts of the islands. However, the fuel for the flight in, well, you will just have to suck it up and accept that part of the Carbon-Guilt Tax. You are expected to leave 20% tips for the staff in Jamaica as pennance for as long as you can remember what hotel room you are staying in.

However, all folks destined for a visit to The Bahamas, I’m sorry to report, you must pay your full Carbon-Guilt Tax and feel miserable for the whole time. I’ll be establishing facilities for you to pay me to assuage your Carbon-Guilt shortly. Until then, Hit the Tip Jar, go to Bermuda instead, or stay home. Further, upon arrival in The Bahamas, all food is to be eaten as close to raw as possible (think Sushi or Salad ;-) and travel is to be by those wonderful horse drawn cabs they have. Hey, you don’t HAVE to be completely miserable just because you feel guilty …

I’ll be working my way around the world in further postings, so if you are looking for other types of Carbon-Guilt Free vacations, there are other options. As a teaser, I’ll just mention that Italy is probably a Carbon-Guilt Free destination as is Greece.