January 2008 was an exceptional month for our planet, with a significant cooling, especially since January 2007 started out well above normal.
January 2008 capped a 12 month period of global temperature 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 year.
Also see the recent post on what the last 10 years looks like with the same four metrics – 3 of four show a flat trendline.
Here are the 4 major temperature metrics compared top to bottom, with the most recently released at the top:
UK’s Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature anomaly (HadCRUT) Dr. Phil Jones:
Reference: above data is HadCRUT3 column 2 which can be found here
description of the HadCRUT3 data file columns is here
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) Dr. James Hansen:
Reference: GISS dataset temperature index data
University of Alabama, Huntsville (UAH) Dr. John Christy:
Reference: UAH lower troposphere data
Remote Sensing Systems of Santa Rosa, CA (RSS):
Reference: RSS data here (RSS Data Version 3.1)
The purpose of this summary is to make it easy for everyone to compare the last 4 postings I’ve made on this subject.
I realize that not all the graphs are of the same scale, so my next task will be to run a combined graphic of all the data-sets on identical amplitude and time scales to show the agreements or differences such a graph would illustrate.
UPDATE: that comparison has been done here
Here is a quick comparison and average of ∆T for all metrics shown above:
| Source: | Global ∆T °C |
| HadCRUT |
– 0.595 |
| GISS | – 0.750 |
| UAH | – 0.588 |
| RSS | – 0.629 |
| Average: | – 0.6405°C |
For all four metrics the global average ∆T for January 2007 to January 2008 is: – 0.6405°C
This represents an average between the two lower troposphere satellite metrics (RSS and UAH) and the two land-ocean metrics (GISS and HadCRUT). While some may argue that they are not compatible data-sets, since they are derived by different methods (Satellite -Microwave Sounder Unit and direct surface temperature measurements) I would argue that the average of these four metrics is a measure of temperature, nearest where we live, the surface and near surface atmosphere.
UPDATE AND CAVEAT:
The website DailyTech has an article citing this blog entry as a reference, and their story got picked up by the Drudge report, resulting in a wide distribution. In the DailyTech article there is a paragraph:
“Anthony Watts compiled the results of all the sources. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C — a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year time. For all sources, it’s the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.”
I wish to state for the record, that this statement is not mine: “–a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years”
There has been no “erasure”. This is an anomaly with a large magnitude, and it coincides with other anecdotal weather evidence. It is curious, it is unusual, it is large, it is unexpected, but it does not “erase” anything. I suggested a correction to DailyTech and they have graciously complied.
UPDATE #2 see this post from Dr. John R. Christy on the issue.
UPDATE #3 see the post on what the last 10 years looks like with the same four metrics – 3 of four show a flat trendline.
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Seems like GISS is the odd man out and should be discarded as an “adjustment”.
Anthony – if you’re going to use a common reference period, use a 30-year period that ends in 2000 (the latest decade). This is at the recommendation of the WMO.
I think that would be 71-2000 (which should still cover the “modern global warming” period).
Remember, GISS consistantly shows as the “hottest” because of the reference period (51-80, I believe), while HadCRU and NCDC use later time periods.
Why in the world should 2000 be used. we’re already almost a decade past that and inconveniently, showing, a dramatic decline in temps. This past 7 years has already given back all of the gain of the past 150 years. Shows how vulnerable the purported changes are to real results.
speaking of real results, did you know it snowed in San Diego last week?
This drop in temperature is certainly very unusual. The fall of 0.595 degrees since Jan 2007 is the largest January-to-January drop in HAD CRU3 since 1875, and the biggest drop for any 12-month interval since -0.681 degrees in February 1974.
The January temperature is the lowest for any month since 1994, and the lowest for a month unaffected by volcanic eruptions in 20 years.
January 2008 was cooler than January 1932, even after all the downwards adjustments they have applied to the old data.
Nice to see that the data with the highest decline is the GISS, which has relied on Polar Amplification to reinforce its warming position. There’s way too much noise to pluck anything of value from the N Pole data, but the MSU data shows the Extratropics have dropped 0.94 deg C in the last 12 months. That’s a chunk, to use technical language.
NOAA is still showing an elevated SOI (1.9 for January, 1.8 for December, 0.9 for November). Dependent on the time lag between the SOI and the La Nina (2 to six months typically) we’re in for some chillier weather for a couple more months, assuming one believes ENSO has an impact on global temp. It’s tough to miss.
How long can the trend continue? How long is the lag between solar and global temperature? We won’t be seeing the rest of the recent drop in TSI for a few more years now. There go a couple more tenths.
It’ll be fun to watch.
So how’s that correlation of the temperature anomaly with the atmospheric CO2 change going? /rhet
Does anyone have an early-access look at UAH or RSS data? Can we see were we stand 20 days into February?
REPLY: No. This is why I keep saying I’m not going to analyze the surfacestation data until the survey is complete. Don’t rush the science.
So, the oceans have turned cooler or at the very least stayed the same over the last few years, and the temperature of the atmosphere have cooled significantly over the last decade. The idea of “committed warming”, i.e. a strong radiative imbalance is rather hard to reconcile with the fact that the climate system has lost heat.
It should be time to
1) use a relatively short response time to perturbations for the climate system when calculating the sensitivity and
2) admit that either the sun or possibly ocean currents play a much bigger role then admitted by the IPCC.
Can I as an AGW agnostic sound a note of caution: that sudden changes in temperature are usually quickly reversed. If that happens we could soon be back in record warm temperatures.
On the other hand it is pleasant to see the low temperatures on the graph. Thank you for doing all this work.
I surely wish that we could have unadjusted records over the peroid of record. I am not a scientists but am having trouble with the current adjustments They seem to be designed to make the recent trend warmer. The raw data dosen’t seem to be doing that.
I just wonder if GISS is trying to adjust the older records up to match current UHI levels? If so they are surely being disengenious. I will not say they are deliberately changing the record, but I do have trouble in that they do seem to have personal bias toward warming and their adjustments seem to show that.
We need to get back to raw data and eliminate the microbias stations from the USHCN and start using good methodology.
From the layman’s point of view I want climate science that I can trust. If we are going to use proxies, use ones that are conclusive (not tree rings that might be moisture related, CO2 related, or temperature related).
Thanks Anthony for such a good job..
Bill
Drop about another .5C, and we’re basically back to where we were in the mid-late 1800s when the Little Ice Age ended.
I’m really, really anxious to see Feb data now.
“Seems like GISS is the odd man out and should be discarded as an “adjustment”.”
That is *exactly* what I thought the instant I saw their data. Looks like they knew they were overestimating for a long time, and this was a great time to adjust their reporting to be in line with everyone else.
REPLY: Soon, after examination of the algorithm, they may be singing “Thats the nights that the lights went out in Georgia….” There is a flaw in the adjustment, see my post on Cedarville…urban adjustment applied to a stable rural station. Nightlights is flawed.
“Lights=0” = 0?
I wonder if there will be a scientific consensus that this temperature drop was not caused by humans?
Please keep in mind that GISS takes 1950-1980 as their reference period and not 1960-1990 as the others do. This may explain the higher values.
Hmm. I think that would only affect their baseline (i.e., “what is zero”), but not the actual raw amount of the drop (0.75C).
And this is odd, condsidering their recent adjustments to NOAA data are nil–they don’t push current temps UP (any more than the NOAA), they have been pushing past temperatures DOWN.
“I wonder if there will be a scientific consensus that this temperature drop was not caused by humans?”
No comment on the subject would probably translate to “not human”. OTOH, there are those who say “it’s Global Warming” (Dr. Pielke points this out in his blog.)
BTW, what happens when one overlays the 100-year record of NASA and NOAA (metadata) with the NOAA data (raw, with only outliers removed)?
REPLY: So many questions, not enough time.
You can actually follow daily temp UAH here
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
by clicking on the graphs you could roughly calculate the temps for feb up to current but as Anthony says it wont be relaible as it’s going up and down ect but its still below (that’s the lower troposphere data)
REPLY: I’ve visited this resource and I’ve seen some errors in the way javascript presents the data on that website, so take it with some caveats that it may not accurately represent the result due to it being an interactive web application.
What stands out to me isn’t the cooling, but the discrepancies in the numbers. There are plenty of variables that could alter the absolute temperature for each study. But if these numbers truly represented a global average temperature, there should be a very high degree of agreement over the delta T. Particularly in the most recent, and presumably most reliable, numbers.
When the data for the single most precisely measured year, shows a disagreement equal to fully 1/4 of the claimed total change, the system simply isn’t knowable at a relevant level. Assuming all the numbers are gathered and adjusted in good faith, that data can only get less precise in preceding years.
GISS includes the poles – the other temperature series do not. A larger drop in GISS simply indicates that the poles got colder faster than the rest of the globe. I would not read too much into the difference between them.
That said, I am not convinced that GISS polar measurement estimates have any connection with reality but that is a seperate issue.
Patrick is absolutely right …except for the part about it being nice to see low temperatures on the graph. I am freezing.
Raven, GISS ESTIMATE the Poles , hadcru does not.
More data for the mix.
El Nino/La Nina effects on ocean temps (+/- 5 degrees from equator, 120-170 degrees West. (Celsius), 1950 to 2007
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml
Anthony,
When you redo the data for the temperatures to a common reference, could you make the raw data available on your website? I have some neat statistical software I am playing with, find it frustrating using all the difference data sets and don’t have a really good idea how to change it all to a common reference.
REPLY: There are links to the raw data below each graph, maybe you missed them?