Lab Report #2 STAT 656 Ying Wang

Lab Report #2
Nice analysis and great report
Thanks for the effort
STAT 656 Ying Wang
25/25
Abstract
This study approaches the topic of global warming by investigating the
relationship between global temperature anomalies and CO2
emissions/solar radiation. We find it is the rise of CO2 emissions that is
linearly correlated with temperature anomalies in the period of 1961-1990,
but not the solar radiation. In addition, temperature anomalies behave
more extremely in the period 1981-1990, which indicates that human
activities might be the major cause because of industry booming, as other
natural forcing that change the composition of atmosphere do not have any
dramatic change in recent decades.

1. Introduction
Climate change has been a controversial issue for decades. The central piece of the
debate has been the cause of the climate change: whether it is attributed to the human
factors or the nature forcing. There is no clear answer to this question yet. For one thing,
this question is complicated enough by its own nature; for another, the findings of climate
change are confounded by the effects of human activity and nature forcing. To tackle this
perplexing problem, we begin by addressing a simpler question: is recent change in earth
temperature more related to solar activities or CO2 levels on earth?

2. Definition and Data

We begin our analysis by briefly introducing the concept of climate change, including its
signs and contributing factors.

2.1 Climate change

2.1.1 The signs

Climate change greatly draws people’s attention in recent decades. Global warming is the
strongest sign. Figure 1 from NASA GISS 1880-2009 Global Temperature shows that
global land-ocean temperature anomaly has been rising fast since the mid-20th century.

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Temperature anomaly is “a departure from a reference value or long-term average”

according to the definition by National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information
Service (NESDIS). A positive anomaly means the measured temperature is higher than
the reference value and a negative anomaly means the temperature drops below the
reference value. Therefore, it can be seen from figure 1 that temperature has been above
the reference value since around 1960s and climbing up further since the 1980s.

Nice reference

Figure 1 Global land-ocean temperature anomalies

2.1.2 Factors

There are many contributing factors to the global warming, such as emissions of
greenhouse gases (e.g. CO2), solar output, volcanic eruptions and continental drift. Here
we focus our study on the effect of the first two factors: CO2 emissions and solar
radiation.

Albeit the sea would discharge more CO2 as the temperature rises, the increase in CO2
emissions is thought to be mainly due to the emission from the industrialization, because
CO2 discharge from the sea due to temperature rise was not so salient in the past, but only
emerging evident after the industry blossom. Probably need a reference here

Solar radiation is known to rise and fall periodically. See figure 2 created by Robert A.
Rohde / Global Warming Art below. Therefore, if the temperature anomaly is caused
solely by the solar radiation, it should also display a periodic pattern.

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Figure 2 Solar cycle variations

For these two factors, there exists some evidence supporting the idea that human
activity is the cause but not the solar radiation. Gabriele Hegerl (Hegerl, Gabriele C.; et
al., 2007) pointed out solar output warms the stratosphere; whereas greenhouse gases
cool the stratosphere. Measurements show that the stratosphere has been cooling since
1979 (Randel, William J.; Shine, Keith P.; Austin, John; Barnett, John; Claud, Chantal;
Gillett, Nathan P.; Keckhut, Philippe; Langematz, Ulrike et al., 2009).

Moreover, according to the global

warming art project, Greenhouse
gases are the main cause for the global
temperature rise. See figure 3 below.
Fuel burning is thought to generate the
most part of greenhouse gases each
year, and deforestation due to
economy development is also an
important cause.

Therefore, our hypothesis is human

activity is more related to the global
warming, rather than nature forcing
such as solar radiation.

Figure 3 Climate change attribution

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2.2 Data

The data we use in this project includes the global yearly temperature anomalies (oC)
from 1901-2000 average, the yearly CO2 concentration (ppm) measured at Mauna Loa
Observatory, Hawaii, and the monthly sun radiation (kWh/m2/day) in Columbus, Ohio,
for the period of 1961-1990. Note that we would first convert the monthly sun radiation
data to yearly average to match up with other observations.

3. Statistical Analysis
3.1 Descriptive analysis

First, we conduct the descriptive analysis with the summary statistics of CO2
level, temperature anomaly, and sun radiation data. The table below includes
mean, sample standard deviation, minimum, maximum, and select quantiles of
each variable.

Summary Statistics

Mean Std. dev. Min 1st Quartile Median 3rd Quartile Max

CO2 Level 333.41 11.39 317.65 323.44 331.58 342.43 354.16

Temp 4.22 0.15 3.98 4.13 4.20 4.32 4.57

Radiation 0.08 0.13 -0.14 -0.02 0.08 0.15 0.37

Table 1 Summary statistics of CO2 level, temperature anomaly, and sun radiation.

3.2 Compare temperature anomaly, CO2 level, and sun radiation before and after 1980

Further, we want to examine the relationship between temperature rise and the two
factors, CO2 and solar output. Also, we would like to take into account of the time effect
for the global temperature anomaly.

3.2.1 Temperature anomalies

Let us take a close look at the period that anomalies are greater than zero. The data of
1961-1990 seem to contain two clusters, one ranging from year 1961 to 1980, and
another ranging from year 1981 to 1990 (1980 is an arbitrary pick to segment the period
according to values of anomaly). We want to test the null hypothesis that anomalies after
1980 are not significantly different than before. The method used here is to draw the 95%
confidence region for the data of 1961-1980, and to measure how much data out of 1981-
1990 would fall into this confidence interval. If most of them fall within the confidence

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interval, then we would not have enough evidence to reject the null hypothesis; otherwise,
we would reject the null hypothesis.

See results in figure 4 below. The magenta lines are the upper and lower bounds for the
confidence interval for temperature anomalies in 1961-1980. The blue line is a
segmentation marker at 1980. On its left are the anomalies in 1961-1979 ,while on its
right are the anomalies in 1981-1990. The red line is a linear regression line.

0.5

0.4

0.3
temperature anomaly

0.2

0.1

-0.1

-0.2
1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990
year

Figure 4 Temperature anomalies in 1961-1990.

The regression line of a positive slope (t=4.641, p=7.41e-05) confirms that the overall
trend for the temperature anomaly is upward. The result that 60% of the data from 1981
to 1990 do not fall into the confidence interval suggests that temperature anomalies are
getting more extreme since the 1980s. Suppose human activity is the main cause for the
temperature anomaly, the possible reason is that global economy began to thrive since the
1960s and some 20 years were like a crash cushion. Hence significant global warming
problem does not show up until after those cushion years.

3.2.2 CO2 emissions level

Next, we turn to CO2 emissions. Figure 5 shows that it is almost monotonically

increasing each year in 1961-1990. Again, the magenta lines are the upper and lower
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bounds for the confidence interval for CO2 emissions in 1961-1980. The blue line is a
segmentation marker at 1980. On its left are the CO2 emissions in 1961-1979 ,while on
its right are the CO2 emissions in 1981-1990. The red line is a linear regression line.

355

350

345

340

335
CO2

330

325

320

315

310
1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990
year

Figure 5 CO2 emissions in 1961-1990.

The regression line of a positive slope (t=45.10, p<2e-16) confirms that the overall trend
for the CO2 emissions is upward. Nevertheless, none of the data points in 1981-1990 fall
into the 95% confidence interval of the data of 1961-1980, which echos the observation
that the CO2 emissions level is almost monotonically increasing each year in 1961-1990.
This result is also in line with our findings for the temperature anomalies in the sense that
they are all backed by the prosperation of the economy and the industry in general.

3.2.3 Solar radiation

Lastly, we apply linear regression and confidence interval to solar radiation. Results
are shown in figure 6 below. The magenta lines are the upper and lower bounds for the
confidence interval for solar radiation in 1961-1980. The blue line is a segmentation
marker at 1980. On its left are the solar radiation in 1961-1979 ,while on its right are the
solar radiation in 1981-1990. The red line is a linear regression line.

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4.8

4.6
sun radiation

4.4

4.2

3.8
1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990
year
Figure 6 Solar radiation in 1961-1990.

We can see the solar radiation data oscillates around the regression line, and there is no
clear trend of constant increase over the years. Also, the confidence interval includes
almost all the data. However, the regression line is of low reliability in that the p-value is
not small enough to reject the null hypothesis that the slope is zero (t=-0.482, p=0.634).
This also confirms the cyclical pattern of the solar radiation exhibited in figure 2.

3.2.4 Construct a 95% confidence region

To lend some support to the idea that 1981-1990 made things much worse than 1961-
1980, we construct the 95% confidence region of the samples of the year 1961-1980, to
assess how much data out of the samples from 1981-1990 fall outside. Note that each
sample is a 3-element vector, consisting of temperature anomalies, CO2 emissions level
and solar radiation. Therefore, the confidence region is an ellipsoid. As we can see from
figure 7 below, all observations after 1980 are outside of the 95% confidence region.
Although solar output is not changing abnormally, 1981-1990 is still largely inconsistent
with 1961-1980. Is it expected? even if there is NO change after 1980?

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Interesting plot

Figure 7 A 95% confidence region of temperature anomalies, CO2 emissions and solar radiation .

Hence these findings suggest if we use a multivariate normal distribution estimated from
observations before 1981, it would only cast very dim light on the description of the
observations after 1980.

3.3 Regression analysis

Knowing that both temperature anomalies and CO2 emission have been increasing but
solar radiation has not, the correlation matrix only consolidates the idea that CO2
emission is more correlated to temperature anomalies than solar radiation is. The
correlation matrix is shown below:

Correlation Matrix Temp_anomaly CO2 Solar_radiation

Temp_anomaly 1 0.71 -0.02

CO2 0.71 1 -0.08

Solar_radiation -0.02 -0.08 1

Table 2 Correlation matrix of temperature anomalies, CO2 level, and solar radiation.

whereas temperature anomalies and CO2 have a high correlation 0.71 and solar radiation
is not strongly correlated with temperature and CO2 (-0.02 and -0.08 respectively).
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Then, we regress temperature anomalies against CO2 and solar radiation and draw the
following graphs.

0.5

0.4

0.3
temprature anomaly

0.2

0.1

-0.1

-0.2
315 320 325 330 335 340 345 350 355
CO2

Figure 8 Regression of temperature anomalies against CO2 emissions.!

0.5

0.4

0.3
temprature anomaly

0.2

0.1

-0.1

-0.2
3.9 4 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7
yearly sun radiation

Figure 9 Regression of temperature anomalies against solar radiation.!

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Summarize our findings in the following table:

Dependent Variable: Temperature Anomalies

Estimate Standard Error t-value Prob.!|t|

Intercept -2.757 0.749 -3.679 0.001

CO2 Level 0.008 0.002 5.211 1.73e-05

Solar Radiation 0.034 0.119 0.281 0.781

Table 3 Regression results of temperature anomalies against CO2 level, and solar radiation.

As expected, the coefficient of CO2 level is positive and significant, whereas the
coefficient on solar radiation is not statistically different from 0. Although not in the table,
the adjusted R-squared for this multiple regression is 0.46, i.e. CO2 level “explains” about
half of the variations we observe in temperature anomalies. These results clearly depict
that a linear relationship is more probable between temperature and CO2.

4. Conclusion
This study investigated the relationship between temperature anomalies and CO2
emissions/solar radiation. It is found that temperature anomalies and CO2 emissions have
been rising in the period of 1961-1990 and are highly correlated in a linear relationship.
However, solar radiation does not show any departure from its usual cyclic activities
during this period and does not affect temperature anomalies in the way that CO2 does.

In addition, temperature anomalies behave more extremely in 1981-1990, much higher

than before, which indicates that human activities might be the major cause because 1)
industry boomed in developed countries after the WWII which led to expedited CO2
emissions in the 1980s and the developing countries also contributed to CO2 emission
after the 1970s as their economies take off; 2) Other natural causes that change the
composition of atmosphere do not have any dramatic change in recent decades and thus
could not contribute as much to CO2 emissions as burning of fuels and anthropogenic
deforestation.

In conclusion, in line with other findings, this study discloses a high correlation
between global warming and CO2 emissions. As most of CO2 is from fuel burning,
human activity is probably the major cause for climate change.

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5. References
[1] “Global Surface Temperature Anomalies,” last modified August 12, 2010,
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cmb-faq/anomalies.html.

[2] “NASA GISS 1880-2009 Global Temperature,” last modified February 10, 2011,
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/

[3] ”Solar Cycle Variations,” image created by Robert A. Rohde / Global Warming Art,
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:Solar_Cycle_Variations_png

[4] ”Climate Change Attribution,” image created by Robert A. Rohde / Global Warming
Art, http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:Climate_Change_Attribution_png

[5] Hegerl, Gabriele C.; et al. (2007). "Understanding and Attributing Climate Change".
Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to
the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. IPCC.

[6] Randel, William J.; Shine, Keith P.; Austin, John; Barnett, John; Claud, Chantal;
Gillett, Nathan P.; Keckhut, Philippe; Langematz, Ulrike et al. (2009). "An update of
observed stratospheric temperature trends". Journal of Geophysical Research 114:
D02107.

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Appendix: Computation Code

#lab 2

library(plotrix)

library(MASS) # load library MASS

library(lattice) # load library lattice

library(car) #companion to regression

library(nlme) #Linear and Nonlinear Mixed Effects Models

temperature <- read.table("Temp_CO2.txt",header=T);

attach(temperature)

radiation <- read.table("Sun_Rad_Columbus.txt",header=T);

attach(radiation)

year<-c(1961:1990)

a<-matrix(c(1,1))

for (i in 1:30)

{a[i]<-Year[12*(i-1)+1]}

avg_rad<-matrix(c(1,1))

for (i in 1:30)

{avg_rad[i]<-sum(SunRadiation[(12*(i-1)+1):(12*i)])/12}

plot(year,CO2,main="CO2 in 1961-1990")

plot(year,Temp,main="Temperature anomaly in 1961-1990")

plot(year, avg_rad,main="Yearly sun radiation in 1961-1990")

plot(CO2,Temp,main="Temperature anomaly versus CO2")

plot(avg_rad,Temp,main="Temperature anomaly versus Yearly radiation")

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All<-cbind(Temp,CO2,avg_rad)

##mean of the first 20 years

m<-c(mean(Temp[1:20]),mean(CO2[1:20]),mean(avg_rad[1:20]))

#covariance matrix

cm<-cov(All[1:20,1:3])

##test if the last 10 years fall into the confidence region of first 20 years

F<-10.7186

n<-20

invcm<-solve(cm)

yes<-matrix(c(1,1))

for (i in 1:10)

if( ((All[20+i,1:3]-m)%*%invcm) %*%(All[20+i,1:3]-m)<=F )

{yes[i]<-1}

else

{yes[i]<-0}

#percent of falling into

sumyes<-sum(yes)/10

##confidence intervals

#temperature

T<-1.7291

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for (i in 1:10)

if( (Temp[20+i]-m[1])*(Temp[20+i]-m[1])/cm[1,1] <= T*T )

{yes[i]<-1}

else

{yes[i]<-0}

sumTyes<-sum(yes)/10

#CO2

for (i in 1:10)

if( (CO2[20+i]-m[2])*(CO2[20+i]-m[2])/cm[2,2] <= T*T )

{yes[i]<-1}

else

{yes[i]<-0}

sumCyes<-sum(yes)/10

#sun radiation

for (i in 1:10)

if( (avg_rad[20+i]-m[3])*(avg_rad[20+i]-m[3])/cm[3,3] <= T*T )

{yes[i]<-1}

else

{yes[i]<-0}

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sumSyes<-sum(yes)/10

reg1<-glm(Temp~CO2)

plot(Temp,CO2)

reg.line(glm(Temp~CO2),col="red")

reg2<-glm(Temp~avg_rad)

# Confidence region

library(rgl)

m.1 <-m[2:4]

ellipse3dCR<-ellipse3d(cm,centre=m.1,subdivide=3,t=sqrt(qchisq(0.95,3)), smooth=F,
which=1:3)

plot3d(ellipse3dCR,col=hcl(360),xlab="Temp Anomaly",ylab="CO2 Levels",zlab="Sun

Radiation", ylim= c(323,355), alpha=0.3)

after80 <- All[21:30, 1:3]

x <- after801[,1]

y <- after801[,2]

z <- after801[,3]

points3d(x,y,z,col='green',size=6,pch=20)

%% MATLAB code below

year=1961:1990

T=1.7291

len=T*sqrt(42.7746976)

figure(2)

plot(year,CO2,'-o')

hold on

Y= -2205.778 + 1.285*year

plot(year, Y,'r-','linewidth',2)

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line([1960 1990],[mean(CO2(1:20))+len mean(CO2(1:20))+len],'Marker','.','LineStyle','-

','Color',[1 .0 1])

hold on

line([1960 1990],[mean(CO2(1:20))-len mean(CO2(1:20))-len],'Marker','.','LineStyle','-

','Color',[1 .0 1])

line([1980 1980],[315,355],'Marker','.','LineStyle','-','Color',[.0 .8 .8])

hold off

xlabel('year')

ylabel('CO2')

year=1961:1990

T=1.7291

len=T*sqrt(0.024241776)

figure(2)

plot(year,rad,'-o')

hold on

line([1960 1990],[mean(rad(1:20))+len mean(rad(1:20))+len],'Marker','.','LineStyle','-

','Color',[1 .0 1])

hold on

Y= 7.242316 -0.001529*year

plot(year, Y,'r-','linewidth',2)

line([1960 1990],[mean(rad(1:20))-len mean(rad(1:20))-len],'Marker','.','LineStyle','-','Color',[1 .0

1])

line([1980 1980],[3.9,4.7],'Marker','.','LineStyle','-','Color',[.0 .8 .8])

hold off

xlabel('year')

ylabel('sun radiation')

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