I have to admit UAH definately seems to have a problem somewhere.

The key point is NOT that the curve goes wonky when extrapolated outside of the data series time limits; but of course it is equally wonky inside; so interpolation doesn’t work either, to derive values for unmeasured points; there being no underlying physical cause for the shape. I do applaud his attempt to show some shape to the data; because my eye says there does seem to be some shape to at least the second half of the time frame (1998 excepted and understood); But Roy, it is just natural variability.

And my intent was not to jump heavily on the good Dr’s toes. We need to see the data as it comes out of the oven; after all there is no way for us to predict what the next plotted point will be; or even its direction from the latest; so we need to see the numbers as they are released.

George

George

So the whole cycle of evap/snow formation/ocean precipitation, and snow melting, is a huge transfer of thermal energy from the ocean to the atmosphere to be lost to space. (Emphasis added.)

Further, evaporation, formation of water dropplets and precipitation (rain) is another form of this …

Re George Smith:
“The sea water cannot freeze until it gets down to the freezing point temperature, and also until the latent heat of freezing is removed as well; and the only place for it to go, is into the atmosphere, and out into space.

So the freezing doesn’t raise the air temperature; the colder air sucks out the excess thermal energy so that freezing can occur.

I don’t believe anybody ever observed the air temperature to rise while the ocean freezes.”

I agree with you when it comes to sea water freezing, but what about snow landing on Antarctica and building up there? If the snow landed instead in the ocean or on land and melted, it would absorb heat. By not doing so it effectively raises the temperature of the rest of the planet.

Where is the error in the logic? “”"

Andrew, first of all, in order for snow to fall, it must first form; i.e. freeze, so it has already given up its latent heat to the atmosphere; at whatever altitude the snow formed.

If it Lands on Antarctica; most of the time it isn’t going to melt, given the typical Antarctic surface temperature.

If it lands in the ocean, hwether it melted or not would depend on the ocean surface temperature; which could be below zero; in which case the snow would persist, and could from into sea ice.
But let’s say it lands in the ocean and does melt. Well then it certainly is going to take up the latent heat of freezing (80 calories per gram); and that energy is most likely to come out of the sea water, given the relative thermal properties of water and air. So the melting snow is no different from melting sea ice; it is going to cool a large amount of sea water, and cause it to shrink; so the sea level will go down. Presumably the water that formed the snow originally came from the ocean, so the total ocean water content isn’t changing; but the warmer ocean water evaporated taking lots of energy into the atmosphere (about 545 cal per gram latent heat of evaporation, and then it dumps out another 80 cal per gram in turning into snow; and all that energy is delivered to the upper atmosphere for radiation to space.

So the whole cycle of evap/snow formation/ocean precipitation, and snow melting, is a huge transfer of thermal energy from the ocean to the atmosphere to be lost to space.

Exactly where I don’t know and it doesn’t matter; conservation of energy says if it has given up heat that heat’s gone somewhere!

The large month-to-month temperature variability is dominated by tropical intraseasonal oscillations in the transfer of heat from the ocean to the atmosphere. It’s not a radiative effect, but a non-radiative one. Higher than average surface winds over the tropical oceans lead to greater than average evaporation rates (cooling the surface), and then higher than average precipitation rates, heating the atmosphere.

Note that they would not exist if we did not have two very different heat reservoirs — the ocean and the atmosphere — exchanging energy in an episodic fashion.

As large as those fluctuations seem, they represent only about 1% variations in the average rate of infrared energy loss to space (or solar energy gain from the sun).

-Roy

In my analogy, the refrigerator is ‘ideal’ and the motor adds no heat.

And by snow, I mean any precipitation that is frozen (i.e. has given up its latent heat).

Let’s just start with a simple one. What might be causing the pumping nature of the line graph? It is quite clear that there is a beat to the measure. Is that artifact? Seasonal heating and cooling? Some oscillation somewhere? It certainly does not coincide with the regular and fast beat of CO2 measures from Mauna Loa. What is making this slightly irregular and noisy but obvious beat? Can all the up beats and down beats be explained by the same set of circumstances?

“Anywayn the anomaly is much larger than last year, same time. Must be the 7th warmest ever or so…”

It’s the 15th actually…

“… it’s perfectly reasonable to point out that in February, there was an equally large divergence between RSS and UAH, but in the opposite direction.”

Of course it’s reasonable. I can speak only for myself, but I really do not have any bias. In February there was actually not only divergence between RSS and UAH, but UAH was clearly the “odd one” also compared to HadCrut and GISS. We’ll see pretty soon, as HadCrut and GISS will come out in a week or so, whether it’s RSS or UAH that is behaving strangely.