by John Goetz
Update: Thanks to an email from John S. – a patron of climateaudit.org – we have learned that the Russian data in NOAA’s GHCN v2.mean dataset is corrupted. For most (if not all) stations in Russia, the September data has been replicated as October data, artificially raising the October temperature many degrees. The data from NOAA is used by GISS to calculate the global temperature. Thus the record-setting anomaly for October 2008 is invalid and we await the highly-publicised corrections from NOAA and GISS.
Update 2: The faulty results have been (mostly) backed out of the GISS website. The rest should be done following the federal holiday. GISS says they will update the analysis once they confirm with NOAA that the software problems have been corrected. I also removed the subtitles since the GISS data no longer reflects October as being the warmest ever.
GISS (Goddard Institute of Space Studies) Surface Temperature Analysis (GISSTemp) released their monthly global temperature anomaly data for October 2008. Following is the monthly global ∆T from January to October 2008:
Year J F M A M J J A S O
2007 85 61 59 64 55 53 53 56 50 54
2008 14 25 62 36 40 32 52 39 50 78
Here is a plot of the GISSTemp monthly anomaly since January 1979 (keeping in line with the time period displayed for UAH). I have added a simple 12-month moving average displayed in red.
The addition of October has changed some of the temperatures for earlier months:
GISS 2008 J F M A M J J A S O
As of 9/08 14 25 62 36 40 29 53 50 49 ..
As of 10/08 14 25 62 36 40 32 52 39 50 78
The 0.78 C anomaly in October is the largest ever for October, and one of the largest anomalies ever recorded. Although North America was cooler than normal, Asia apparently suffered from a massive heat wave.
Also, after several months of being downgraded to a 0.61 C anomaly, 2005 has been lifted back to 0.62 C.
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The anomoly for August ’08 was initially released as 0.39, adjusted to 0.50 last month, and re-adjusted to 0.39 this month. Laughable.
Secondly, the UK Met Office says: “Maximum, minimum and mean daily temperatures were all below average across the UK. Most areas, provisionally had their coldest October since 2003, but Northern Ireland had its coldest since 1993 with mean temperatures around 1 deg C below average.” But GISTemp has the UK warmer than normal. GISTemp can’t be trusted.
I”m not so sure we should take this information at face value.With so many faulty temperaues sites here in the U.S. ,how not to measure temperatures,that Anthony has showed on this site watts up with that I feel sure there is a lot of bias .And as far as Asia is concerned this is the first i’ve heard of this masive heat wave.How do we know there isn’t the same bias there to .
Anthony,
Can you over lay the GISS plot with the Satellite plot, to show the difference?
Russ
Are the GISS methods peer reviewed and reproducable by independent scientists?
Excerpt from a global weather news blog posted Nov. 1st: “Eastward, however, over southern central and northern Europe (Scandinavia), the cool gave way to above-normal temperature. Eastward from Poland, Hungary and Romania into western Russia, mean monthly temperature 1.5-3.0 degrees C was widespread. And, still farther east, things really got warm. The greater part of the vast Russian Federation land mass together with northeast China and much of central Asia (Kakazhstan) had mean monthly temperature 3 to 5 degrees C above normal. Departures above normal of 1.5 to 3.0 degrees C above normal were widespread over China as a whole as well as Japan, Korea and a significant fraction of the Subcontinent. Indochina was also warmer than usual.”
Moscow’s temperature was frequently warmer than London’s during October, I happened to see, and that is super unusual. Also, most other temperatures I looked at across Russia were very warm throughout the month. Nonetheless, the GISS value seems incongruously high compared to UAH.
The GLOBAL sea ice anomaly at zero as of today, and one would not anticipate such a situation to follow on the heels of the warmest October ever.
Unprecedented! This may be the tipping point we have been waiting for. Can we now march forward and seize the helm of the Earth ship, and steer a clear course to green freedom? Yes we can!
Wow…has there ever been a greater discrepency between the satellite and GISS records than now? I doubt it.
The NOAA says the U.S. just had their 44th coolest October (out of 114 years), much of Europe was cool, ice extent grew at a record pace and snowcover exploded in Asia…and yet somehow we just had the warmest October globally ever?
One needs to see the GISS anomaly map to believe it.
All of Russia and the Arctic above Russia was +4.0C (and more maybe 13.7C?) above normal. (Obviously the ice was not refreezing as the satellites showed.)
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2008&month_last=10&sat=4&sst=0&type=anoms&mean_gen=10&year1=2008&year2=2008&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg
Laughable… GISS is Hansen’s sand box… no one else is allowed to play there unless they are part of the “team.”
That’s outrageous. GISS is rapidly approaching the edge of lucidity. People looking out the window will be able to see that it is unrealistic.
It si about time Hansen explained himself, this is bizarre.
Well I’ve had a look at GISS maps, and most of the hot red is around east Asia and also far northern Europe. I used 250 km smoothing and one thing that stands out like a sore thumb to me is the coverage of Australia. Only one red spot, which correponds to one of the most remote corners of our coastline.
Heatwave in Asia? Well being autumn, would it need to be a heatwave? Or just an extended mild autumn and late winter? Being a keen ENSO watcher I’ve noticed a fringe of warm water around North East Asian (Pacific side) which would be consistent with unusually warm conditions on land in that area.
Why is Giss so different to satellite? Perhaps poor coverage in areas like Australia that may have been closer to average, and high coverage in areas like Asia where there has been a lot of heat?
The difference between GISS and Uah probably has an explanation if someone looks hard enough, and this explanation may tell an interesting story….
How is that possible. Extreme cold weather in Arctic, North America, Europe and Bhutan. The southern hemisphere must have been 1,5 degrees celcius warmer than normal just to break even.
Isn’t anyone going to come up with a viable alternative to Hansens Folly ?
The addition of October has changed some of the temperatures for earlier months
How’s that possible? Why do temps need to be changed even months afterwards, aren’t they measured and automatically recorded in real-time?
May be Oct will be corrected as well, in Jan next year?
China joins Algore and the UN/IPCC in the global scam with the caveat: The cost is for thee, not for me.
China tells rich polluting nations to change lifestyle
“Chinese officials have said wealthy nations should divert as much as 1 percent of their economic worth to paying for clean technology transfers and helping the Third World overcome damage from the rising temperatures bringing more heatwaves and droughts, more powerful storms and rising sea levels.”
http://fe9.story.media.ac4.yahoo.com/news/us/story/nm/20081107/ts_nm/us_china_climate
There might be one or two issues with the GISS figure (e.g UK as mentioned by Fred in first post) but it would seem to be broadly correct. There were a number of very warm areas around the globe in October. As i’ve already mentioned on the UAH thread, AMSU temperatures support the warm surface record. October AMSU temps at 900mb (3300 ft) are also at record high levels.
You can count on the media picking up on the GISS figures and completely ignoring/disregarding UAH, RSS, and even the Hadley figures (when they are released).
I think he must be using the Magic 8 Ball method of climate prediction-
Has the temperature gone up?
● As I see it, yes
● Ask again later
● Better not tell you now
● Cannot predict now
● Concentrate and ask again
● Don’t count on it
● It is certain
● It is decidedly so
● Most likely
● My reply is no
● My sources say no
● Outlook good
● Outlook not so good
● Reply hazy, try again
● Signs point to yes
● Very doubtful
● Without a doubt
● Yes
● Yes – definitely
● You may rely on it
Twice as many positive answers than negative.
The NSIDC just put out a press release claiming that the latent heat of fusion from the freezing of the arctic ocean is keeping arctic air temperatures above normal… while there may be truth to that claim, they neglect to point out that the heat capacity of the atmosphere is dwarfed by the heat capacity of the ocean, and they neglect to mention that the atmosphere can give up its heat to space rather quickly, especially when the sun is constantly below the horizon.
In a way, they are admitting that the additional heat that may be gained by the arctic ocean when the sea ice shrinks and more sunlight is absorbed is offset by the rapid cooling of the sea when there is no ice layer present to insulate it when the sun goes down.
This is pretty much basic thermodynamics at play here. If the sea ice goes down below normal, the regrowth rate will be much higher because there is no ice layer to act as a blanket to keep the arctic ocean from losing its stored energy…
There is a lot of spin doctoring in the NSIDC press release if you ask me…
Data at this link
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
I agree with Fred that the Oct 08 GISS anomalies for Britain appear to be plain wrong – i’ve posted about this on Lucia’s blog.
However, there’s no doubt that anomalies really were pretty high over Russia. This is confirmed by the MSU/AMSU TLT anomaly map:
http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_data_monthly.html?channel=tlt
(Click next to “Anomaly” at the top of the screen)
Also, note that UAH has “NoExt Land” (i.e. land masses north of the tropics) for Oct 08 at +0.62C making it the third warmest after 2005 (+0.75C) and 1998 (+0.70C)
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
How is that possible. Extreme cold weather in Arctic,
This is the kind of stuff that needs to be challenged and corrected. The Arctic has not been cold – it has been considerably warmer than average.
This is the Met Office anomaly map for Britain in October 2008:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/2008/october/maps/TMean_Anomaly%20No%20Stations.jpg
It’s in relation to the 1961-1990 average (no more than ~0.1C different to the 1951-1980 average, which is the standard GISS baseline)
Note that most of the country has an anomaly of between -0.5C and -1.0C. The pockets marked -0.5C are the least cold bits (i.e. anomaly between -0.5C and 0C)
Now compare GISS:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/
You can even change the GISS baseline to 1961-1990 to be sure.
It’s GISS that’s wrong.
John Finn-
You continue to ignore corrections about the AMSU satellite data. One more time: you cannot take the daily readings at face value. They have to be corrected because of satellite drift. Did you expect October 2008 UAH to be cooler than October 2007? It was, by .06C.
Chris-
Yes, the satellite data confirms that much of Russia was warm. But not 4-13C above normal, as GISS’s map shows. Funny how it’s always the least populated areas that GISS broadbrushes with red…