Korea - temperature

A discussion at Watts up with That (WWUT)
(http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/29/uhi-in-south-korea-responsible-for-over-half-of-the-warming/#more-53862)
... reports on a paper which shows the due to its high energy use the effect of the Urban Heat Island in South Korea accounts for much of its apparent rise in temperatures. (Quantitative estimates of warming by urbanization in South Korea over the past 55 years (1954―2008) KIM Maeng-Ki   and KIM Seonae )

This posting examines that claim.

The two Koreas have similar land areas, 100,000 km2 for the South and 120,000 km2 for the North. The population of the South, 49 million, is twice the of the North, 24 million. Where they differ most markedly is in their CO2 emissions. From 1990 to 2008 (the last year with data available) South Korea's CO2 emission have increased from 260 million metric tons to 509 million while those of North Korea have fallen from 240 million to 8 million. At WWUT someone has commented it would be nice to compare North and South Korea - and this is what I am about to do.

In the current NCDC average temperature data set there are data for 28 stations in North Korea and 60 in South Korea. From these I extracted 9 stations with long-term data from the North and 11 from the South. Two of the stations in the North went back to 1906 and four stations in the South went back to that year or earlier. In the North the remaining stations were mainly for the period 1961 to present, the critical period for temperature change. Periods of missing data were infilled using data from other stations. In the case of North Korea many stations had gaps for the period 1944 to 1960 (the Korean War) and some years were infilled by reference to stations from South Korea.

The first analysis I carried out was to do a double-mass plot  of average cumulative monthly temperature from South Korea against similar values for North Korea.




The plot is an almost perfect straight line. Had temperature for South Korea risen more rapidly than that of the North, due to the urban heat island effect, then the line would have curved upwards from the point when the effect cut in.

I also looked at the tempeature anomaly, with respect to 1906 to 1950, for the two countries.



This shows that temperature in both countries rose at a similar rate. If one assumes that in North Korea, with its minimal energy use (its per capita CO2 emissions at 3.3 t/p/a are 1/3 those of the South at 10.6 t/p/a) there is no heat island effect then it is questionable whther the effect can be as large as the authors of the paper mentioned have concluded.

As a caveat I should mention that my sole criteria for choosing stations was length of record and I only used data from the NCDC data base. It may be that the authors had access to larger data base of South Korean data.

Site Comments

This is where you can comment on our site. Is there other data you would like to see? Do you have comments on the data we have presented or the way we have described it? Have you found and errors in the data, And, of course, words of thanks or encouragement would also be appreciated.

At the RealClimate blog blog there have been comments on this site. Whilst I have addressed many of them as comments in that blog, to deal with them fully needs more space than the moderators are likely to allow. So I am addressing them here. The thread was essentially about the analogy between convincing people about the reality of a heliocentric universe and that of convincing people about the reality of climate change. I commented that it could be instructive to study why once widely accepted scientific views fell into disregard. Another commentator followed the link to this site and a discussion about this site then ensued.

Two of the commentators felt that the aim of this site was to promote a 'sceptical' agenda. I disagreed. The site has no 'agenda' but is rather an examination of data surrounding climate.

Comment#67 said:

";[the site is ] not about ‘climate change’ and promoting a particular perception of it
It seems to be about obscuring a particular perception, rather.
I’m just poking at one of the blatant issues, not reviewing the whole site, which as others noted has pages and loads of subtle spin and distortion.
You claim that if you knew the Milankovich contribution it might change how you think — but you know the Milankovich forcing is trivial compared to CO2 and you omit that.
How do you justify not informing people about the rate of change?
Would you provide the relevant information if that were professional work? Surely how fast a change happens and how large it is relative to other changes would be important information to provide."

It is widely accepted the earth moves out of an ice age when the coincidence of cycles gives a maximum of solar radiation at 65 degees north in July. There is however no generally accepted theory of why this should be so. It is of course true that the changes in radiation linked to the Milankovitch effect, over millennia, are in no way linked with current climate change, over decades. However the increase in temperatures observed by thermometers over the last century and a half does not follow a smooth trend. Sixty five degrees north is a band of latitude where a higher proportion of the earth’s circumference is covered by land than elsewhere. It is also covered by boreal pine forests which have a high difference between summer and winter albedo and is a band where melting permafrost releases methane. Understanding these issues in relation to Milankovitch cycles could clearly lead to a better understanding of climate change.

We do of course provide information on the rate of change of temperature (and snow cover, sea level, cyclones etc.)

Comment#68 said:
"You say these days everyone is either sceptic or warmist and go on to say that you are no sceptic (because you do not falsifying data, although you do come to some contrarian conclusions).
Your website however is strongly sceptical. Whether its ‘climate data’ or ‘climate change,’ its still sceptical. If the views expressed there reflect your own, then you are indeed a sceptic. Giving primacy to WUWT in your climate blog search function, using PIPS to underplay the loss of Arctic sea ice, presenting graphs & text on snow cover that a sceptical propagandist would be proud if. Those were the three pages I visited earlier that rang alarm bells. Elsewhere I note that your only concern with burning fossil fuel is in not running out of the stuff. In my book, that’s a bit of a clincher.
You may deny being a sceptic but I see scepticism as being in denial about a whole lot of stuff, so denying being a sceptic would not come as that much of a surprise."

WUWT is at the top of our list as it happens to be currently the most popular.

In the description of ice thickness using PIPS I comment on the fact whilst the ice area rebounded after 2007 the thickness and volume did not and this gave credence to those who pointed out that whilst the ice area may have recovered it was 'rotten'.

I preset a graph of long term Arctic ice estimates from 1870 which shows a steady decline since the 1960s. I also make it clear that whilst Antarctic sea ice is increasing the decrease in Arctic sea ice is larger. The graph on global snow cover, which you specifically object to is, as far as I can tell, an accurate reflection of the global picture. That snow cover is reducing at a steady rate.