The global surface temperature anomaly data from the UK Hadley Climate Research Unit (Temp anomaly is plotted below) has just been released, and it shows a significant drop in the global temperature anomaly in January 2008, to just 0.034°C, just slightly above zero.
This caps a full year of temperature drop from HadCRUT’s January 2007 value of 0.632°C
above data is HadCRUT3 column 2 which can be found here
description of the HadCRUT3 data file columns is here
The ∆T for the past 12 months is minus 0.595°C which is in line with other respected global temperature metrics that I have reported on in the past two weeks. RSS, UAH, and GISS global temperature sets all show sharp drops in the last year. We are in an extended solar minimum, we have a shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation to a cold state, and we are seeing arctic ice extents setting new records and rebounding from the summer melt.While weather is defined as such variability, the fact that so many things are in agreement on a global scale in such a short time span of one year should give us all pause for consideration.
UPDATE: see all 4 global temperature indexes compared in this next post
So the “Mother of all El Ninos” ends not with a bang, but a BuBRrrrrr!
Hmm. That puts it colder than at any time since 1993, if I am reading that correctly. And the steepest 1-year drop on the chart. Nearly as large as the rise from 1997-1998, and even steeper.
I will be very interested to see the data on February.
I am also willing to entertain the notion that as the rise since 1979 has been exaggerated by heat-sink effect, likewise this drop may also be exaggerated by reverse heat-sink effect, as the effect “undoes” itself.
Wow. That’s a huge drop on that series. Coldest month in over 10 years it appears to me.
If it gets any warmer around here, we’ll all freeze to death…..
Now that you have 4 source of data ( rss,uah.giss.hatscrewd) the scrunity
applied will drive them toward consensus.
How about linkies to HadCRUT?
REPLY: Done, see post
what exactly is the global temp and how is it computed?
REPLY: You couldn’t ask and easy question first off? 😉
Start here:
http://climatesci.org/2008/02/08/an-error-in-the-construction-of-a-single-global-average-surface-temperature/
Well, we should have a contest for the first person to spot the “well, global warming is happening but it is being masked by the sun/moon/my chillblains” excuse offered by a warmenist.
[…] drops on all of the major well respected indicators. I have reported in the past two weeks that HadCRUT, RSS, UAH, and GISS global temperature sets all show sharp drops in the last […]
How about showing the full HadCRUT graph from 1860 onwards?
I think they also say that 2007 was the 8th warmest on record.
Check out the UK’s MET Offices web site for full (unbiased – no agenda) data on global warming.
REPLY: See the detailed post above this one where I provided the links to the full data set to HadCRUT, GISS, UAH, and RSS under each graph, and I also mentioned that I would be creating a new graph to merge all datasets into a similar scale, and there are links in the glossary page to all of those again, plus links to previous posts which have larger scale graphics. So please don’t accuse me of bias or agenda. The data speaks for what has occurred, there’s been a significant drop in the past year. If you don’t like that, there’s little I can do about it.
How interesting. In the Salt Lake City area we have had an abnormally cold and snowy winter and in my native Vancouver, they have received far more snow than is typical. It’s interesting how this “global cooling” can even be felt.
thanks for sharing!
I am so glad to see the temperature fall. But I am concerned about your words, referring to “other respected global temperature metrics” , implying respectability of RSS, UAH, and specifically GISS. It would be puzzling to refer to them respectable when they report falling temperatures, and then give at least the impression that they are all biased with errors implying not worthy of respect when the temperature is going up.
REPLY: Irregardless of their problems, they are respected by many. I respect the work they do, as it is significant, but at the same time I and others question aspects of the methodology. My goal is to help them become even more respectable.
Interesting to note that last year the CRU would include a year-to-date number in their annual graphs. They were more than happy to do this when we had an El Nino spike at the beginning of last year. Funny how this practice has not been continued this year now that the temperature have dropped! Just confirms how the dishonest the whole climate alarmist movement is!
Robert Wood’s prediction of ‘excuses’ from warmers may rather pre-empt what I was about to write, but I hope you can take this as a genuine question… I count myself sceptical of the grosser AGW claims and (as a computer scientist) take computer model results with plenty of salt (GIGO)… Hence this realtime data is fascinating and to my mind, the only really valid game in town.
However, to try to see both sides, I have been wondering: Is it still possible that a combination of PDO, solar minimum and a few other poorly understood chaotic influences is causing short-term (decadal) cooling, but there is still an underlying anthropogenic warming trend? Is there currently any way of empirically either demonstrating or refuting this, or do we just have to wait until (say) the next solar maximum and warm PDO?
I’m no statistician, but I remember (as through a glass, darkly) a little signal theory: Is it feasible to apply a low pass filter to the data to remove the decadal noise, or is the amount of data available simply too short? I see people doing 11-year running means to try to remove the solar cycle, but has anyone tried playing around directly in the frequency domain (Fourier transform)?
REPLY: It is certainly possible that an underlying trend exists. I’ve never said that GW does not exist, but the the human contribution cannot be precisely measured and that our temperature measurement systems likely have a bias, which is why I started the surfacestations.org project. It is also possible that we fully don’t understand the sun-earth relationship and that TSI is not the full effect.
Practically all the facts are on the side of GW “skeptics”. Now it appears that the current climate conditions and temperature data is pointing to a colder rather than warmer planet. What will it take to convince the AGW alarmists that they might be wrong? I suspect it won’t be easy, because they are so entrenched and have many interests to protect. It’s not being reported much yet in the media, but there is a growing army of “skeptics” who will sooner or later be heard. It will be interesting how this all plays out.
Fine to see the AGW theory being debunked but cooling? Have a heart, I have vegetables to raise and the last decade or so has been great in this cold forsaken place.
Paul,
Check out Williams Briggs webpage. http://wmbriggs.com/ He did some work on RSS satellite data using wavelets with interesting results (but didn’t draw any conclusions from them).
Hi Anthony,
Saw your post over at Accuweather blog; nice rebuttal. If you’re interested, here was another smartass attack by poster Steve Bloom (slightly edited) that may warrant a response from you :
“Watts comprehensively and intentionally misrepresented the nature of the CRN ratings. That you are so ready to believe him says more about you than him. But anyway, the proof is in the pudding: Let’s see the calculations that went into those error estimates. Let’s see even a reference in the linked document to such calculations. Instead, what we have is this statement at the bottom of page 6: “The errors for the different classes are estimated values.”
BTW, did Baker ever tell Watts that the CRN ratings should be applied to the USHCN? No. Thy’re happy to have the photos, but the rating bit is useless. How do I know this? Beacuse last summer I picked up the phone and called him at his listed number on the CRN site. Don’t you find it curious that Watts never did that with Baker or (as far as I know) anyone else at NOAA, leaving any interactions to some chance encounters? If not then you’re astonishingly naive.”
Keep up the great work !
GW
The Warmists won’t miss a beat in rationalizing away the cooling temps. They will claim this was predicted in their models and is a signal of global warming caused by nasty man. They will not miss a beat. You already see it in their explanations of what is happening in China.
They probably will also claim that the Kyota Protocol is working and starting to rein in temperatures. These are not rational people and they have not need to try and portray their science in a rational manner. This is about power and control and they will not give up that end easily, especially when they sense they were so close to having it all.
“The Warmists won’t miss a beat in rationalizing away the cooling temps. They will claim this was predicted in their models and is a signal of global warming caused by nasty man.”
Of course it fits the model!
The model:
X = Global Warming
Everything = X
Everything = Anything
X (Everything and Anything) proves X (Global Warming)
So shut up and go away.
Evan,
Your model is right on. How can so many people worldwide go so bonkers?
Global warming is caused by everything … ignorance, the most expensive commodity produced by mankind.
I have asked a simple question of those I meet who espouse AGW — How do you know? After a long blank stare, they respond with something like “I saw it on TV” or Al Gore told me. I then follow it up with a repeat, “how do YOU know”. Usually they walk off at this point.
Most people don’t have a clue about most things science, they just parrot the latest rumor heard on TV. Makes them easy targets.
I’m no scientist but play the stock market and here are a couple of observations:
1. the HadCRUT graph displayed above has a clear trend, and it’s positive
2. taking a small,12 month, sample is meaningless unless you’re trying to sell something aganst a trend.
Cheers
Actually Johnny R is correct. But, global warming hysterics
tend to use the latest temperature blip as proof that global
warming is caused by humanity, so it is excusable that the
skeptics have adopted the same tactic.
Using the trend is more correct, and here the trend is for
the decadal temperature trend to rise much too slowly to give much
comfort to those who assert that CO2 is the major driver in
recent temperature shifts.
I have traded stocks, options, currencies, and many commodities. I’m not basing my opinion on the chart above. It’s only one tiny bit of data in the GW picture. If you will thoroughly investigate trends over long periods (1000s of years, it becomes apparent that the small increase (less than 1 degee C) in GT during the last 125 years or so is well within normal variations. The current GT is about 1.5 degrees C below what it was about 1000 years ago. Also, You need to know that GT correlates very well with solar activity and hardly at all with CO2.
“How can so many people worldwide go so bonkers?”
One bestseller.
Johnny R is not correct, well not exactly. It depends on T0 and TF , the starting and final timepoint you average over. T0 could be 200,000 years ago. I prefer to look at things over decades to see a trend. So why not start 1998 and finish the end of 2008? For sure the chicken little warmers held up 1998 as proof for AGW. So why not go from El Nino and go to La Nina? If you look over the last ten years the trend is negative.
OK–but how much long term trending is really seen in this downshift to slightly cooler temps worldwide?
This February in SC is VERY mild. Granted we get flows of Gulf of Mex. air that surge in, but very little cold right now. This is not the warmest winter on record for the south, I know. Still, its been quite a while when I could wash the car in the winter and the days of pipes bursting due to bad insulation seem long gone in the Carolinas.
The US east coast has had a mild warming all winter (including January). The rest of the world, however has not.
If the PDO is in remission, we can expect a twenty-to-thirty year cooling trend. The current warm phase has lasted 28 years (and has flattened over the last 5 or more), and last time the downturn occurred it was heralded by a La Nina. (A waning solar trend may or may not contribute.)
None of that proves anything (“90%” or otherwise), but it’s a reasonably fair indication, and I bet it beats the so-called reliability of the Global Climate Models out there.
BTW, I’d like to see the 1990s and 2001 GCMs plotted against the “adjusted” temperatures to date (even though I think the current upward swing has probably been exaggerated).
Sam said “They probably will also claim that the Kyota Protocol is working and starting to rein in temperatures. “
Well, no. I wouldn’t put THAT on them. They might be in the wrong, but the explanations for Kyoto would be truly absurd. It is not even kicked into full effect and not signed by the United States. Elsewhere it does little to offset carbon emissions or the plans, say, of China to bring dozens of Co2 belching coal fired plants online between now and 2020. And the whole issue of biofuels (burning and clearing vast swatches of food supply and/or land in order to have richer people well carred and jetted) is fraud, as are carbon credits.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/science/earth/08wbiofuels.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&ei=5087&em&en=b90a6c6cca379cde&ex=1202792400&oref=slogin
On carbon credits:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/48e334ce-f355-11db-9845-000b5df10621.html
So far, Kyoto is only piddling and little more than posture. The problem is the costs are high, the returns on environment are low to imperceptibale, and the hypocrisy is immense across the globe from those pundits yelling the loudest. Just like it was when it was written about by Robert Samuelson:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/28/AR2005062801248.html
See also George Will’s take on this, also worth a peek:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/11/AR2007041102109.html
But then to add some balance that SOMETHING IS happening here due to AGW, we have this, which I think is the best precis on environment to date and a more balanced view that those of the “think tanks” which give us men like Singer and the other naysay experts in verbiage:
http://wsbradio.com/weather/global_climate_change3.html
Since Watts is a meteorolgist by trade also, I’m quite sure he’s heard of Mellish. Mellish is pretty good, and answers the myth that “the earth has been through all this before” and that “heat island effect” is what we’re seeing OR that “there was a consensus in the 1970s” that the earth was cooling off.
Mellish points out that whether or not “consensus” on something is valid depends on whom you’re dealing with. Radicals? Think tanks from libertarian groups” Leftover hippies with an axe to grind? Cocktail waitress chatter?
It is the exception, not the rule, however, that consensus being bucked by a lone wolf in the night means something. There IS consensus among most meteorologists and climatologists about AGW being the proximate cause of slight warming over the past century. Mellish makes sure we understand that cyclic variations in snow or hurricane intensity and dry or cold spells in and of themselves cannot prove anything one way or another. Al Gore is just as wrong to use hot summers for his concerns in saving Mother Earth to prove something as are kids playing in snow in Madrid.
There was not a consensus outside of Newsweek, however, that the planet was heading to an ice age in the 70s. Oopsy.
true believers never apologise or recant……in this case too much money and power at stake for a”nevermind”
Lots of deep thinking going on here but seems like the main point is very simple. The dramatic drop in the temperature average over the last year indicates that something well beyond CO2 is driving this. There are much bigger hammers driving global warming or cooling than what might come from our CO2 input.
At least use the same reference time…..
RSS,UAH: 1979-1998
Hadley: 1961-1990
NASA: 1951-1980
calculate data so that reference time is 1979-1998 for ALL the time series.
Since 1951-1980 it’s colder than 1961-1990 which is colder than 1979-1998 it is quite likely that nasa giss shows very few negative points….and satellite much more
Furthermore a more realistic comparison would require that data measure the same quantity(SST+T2M is not the same of troposphere temperature) and that dataset are defined in the same area…but…
Hadley is not interpolated…a lot of missing pixels in areas that shows great warming(north eurasia,arctic), NASA GISS is interpolated up to 1200Km and so covers almost all the globe unless west antarctica….
REPLY: Read other posts please, mire work on this has been done
[…] deniers/delayer-1000s cite recent UK Hadley Center data to promote their “climate is cooling” disinformation. Even Roger Pielke, Jr. is […]
Paul Clark asks a very valid question. Could it be that there is still an underlying anthropogenic warming trend?
I believe the answer to that question would be given by a proper scientific review of the IPCC Report. My reading (and re-re-re-reading) of the IPCC report tells me that they have ignored or dismissed all natural factors and then applied artificial factors for CO2 into their computer models which will give them figures that match the observed warming of the late 20th century. Then when they run the models, surprise surprise all the warming was caused by CO2.
So, to answer Paul’s question – the underlying anthropogenic warming trend is so much smaller than calculated by the IPCC that it can safely be ignored.
It also flows from this that, if we do get serious global cooling, there will be no point at all in burning more coal in order to try to combat it.
Burning coal will be a good idea here in the Northeast US as it will be cheaper to keep my home warm than oil, gas or electricity.
Mike
“So, to answer Paul’s question – the underlying anthropogenic warming trend is so much smaller than calculated by the IPCC that it can safely be ignored.”
Have you seen the trend calculated by the IPCC in 1990?
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Nature/rahmstorf_etal_science_2007.pdf
What have you read that make you think your claim is true?
Buzzo
“The dramatic drop in the temperature average over the last year indicates that something well beyond CO2 is driving this.”
It’s called ‘La Nina’, the cold part of the ENSO (El Nino Souther Oscillation). Basically the heat is taken to deeper waters, and it later resurfaces as ‘El Nino’. Global temperature oscillates due to ENSO, PDO, etc that’s why longer trends are more meaningful than a year or two.