UAH global temperature anomaly for May – down again, near zero

This is very interesting.
Has anyone been putting together comparisons between temperature anomalies in:
i. the troposphere
ii. land surface
iii. Sea Surface
to see how these differ and, hence, how different slants on ‘climate change’ may be coming about?
In particular, are there any indications that trends in e.g. the troposphere show correlation to lagging changes in e.g. land surface?
This would be very valuable as people start to try to understand how all the different measurements which scientists have been making, often apparently in isolation, may contribute to an overall picture of earth’s temperature cycles, fluctuations and anomalies……..

” For example, the poles could be 100 degrees above average and the satelite(sic) would still indicate nothing.”
That is probably what’s happening… Why didn’t I see it?

Flanagan,
“For example, the poles could be 100 degrees above average and the satelite would still indicate nothing. Does anyone know wether GISS and HadCrut take some polar staiton data into account?”
100 degrees above average?? That sounds like a Hansen “temperature data correction” to me!
Taken from a WUWT article from 7 May 2009:
‘Once again there is a rather large discrepancy between our monthly anomaly (+0.09 deg. C.) and that produced by Remote Sensing Systems (RSS, +0.20 deg. C). We (John Christy and I) believe the difference is due to some combination of three factors:
1) we calculate the anomalies from a wider latitude band, 84S to 84N whereas RSS stops at 70S, and Antarctica was cooler than average in April (so UAH picks it up).
2) The monthly anomaly is relative to the 1979-1998 base period, which for RSS had a colder mean period relative to April 2009 (i.e. their early Aprils in the 1979-1998 period were colder than ours.)
3) RSS is still using a NOAA satellite whose orbit continues to decay, leading to a sizeable diurnal drift adjustment. We are using AMSU data from only NASA’s Aqua satellite, whose orbit is maintained, and so no diurnal drift adjustment is needed. The largest diurnal effects occur during Northern Hemisphere spring, and I personally believe this is the largest contributor to the discrepancy between UAH and RSS.’

“I think one should be really careful then with the purely satelite-based anomalies. For example, the poles could be 100 degrees above average and the satelite would still indicate nothing.”
OK, but who could care less if the temperature is -30C when it should be -31C at these extreme latitudes? It’s not going to melt the ice, and global warming is only a worry, if it’s a worry, where people actually live and work.

How is the zero level defined?

Flanagan, at the risk of stating the obvious, there are no stations near the N Pole! GISS does use the data from the station at the S Pole (and a glance at the GISS data shows that the claim of large positive anomaly there is completely false) .
What HadCrut currently uses, nobody knows, because they refuse to release this information (see latest post at climate audit).

Flanagan- “For example, the poles could be 100 degrees above average and the satelite would still indicate nothing. Does anyone know wether GISS and HadCrut take some polar staiton data into account?”
As far as I recall, GISS uses GCM’s to estimate polar temperatures, adds them to the database and then reports them as ‘measured’. HadCrut does not have polar coverage. This was discussed last year either here or at CA.
As for your example of the poles being 100 degrees above average- in the spirit of your silly example, they could also be 100 degrees below average.
Either way, last year Hansen taught us, after having to clean up an error in the GISS database, that the U.S. anomaly ‘does not matter’ in the global picture because it is such a small fraction of the global surface area. Surely Hansen’s philosophy also applies to the polar regions, say 80 – 90 north or south, whether they are warming or cooling?
“I think one should be really careful then with the purely satelite-based anomalies.”
What do you suggest as a more accurate, reliable alternative to satellite data, which provides global coverage every day, measured from MSU sensor platforms?

NSDIC’s Dr Mark Serreze is carving WUWT a new one on Climate Progress.
Ubuntu

Flanagan
the fact that de ice sheat in de northern and southern poles are around normal suggest that the red parts on your french website are false. And you alsow take a average of 68 to 96. that is very suspicious because in the early 70’s you had coulder weather and in 96 you had a sunspot minimum and colder weather.

It is important to remember that – while ALL of the before-zero (pre-satellites) historical temperatures have been “adjusted” dowward by Hansen’s cronies (thereby increasing the apparent global warming trends) – NONE of the post zero-satellite temperatures CAN BE “adjusted” any direction BECAUSE the satellite temperatures create an honest baseline.
So, if we compare the above record to the ORIGINAL (pre-Hansen) surface temperature record, what do we find for rural and small town sites? Once UHI effects are removed, what id left? How much have we cooled since 1935-1945?

Dug up from the archives at RC –
1. [Response: Science is about making predictions and seeing if they pan out. This is a relatively new endeavour and has a number of issues (the limits to predictibiilty of ENSO, other sources of variation etc.). But if you look at that data more in detail, there is definite skill – ie. the forecast outperforms persistence (r=0.74 vs 0.36), OLS regression = 0.98 compared to 0.5 (though the bias is less, -0.01 compared to 0.07). It might not be perfect, but the variations are being tracked quite well. Given that, their estimate of relative warmth in 2009 is probably a good bet. – gavin]

Ozzie John (05:25:12) :
“Not sure how the maths ae [sic] calculated here but can someone explain how the global average is 0.043 when the tropics are -0.168 and both NH & SH anomolies are 0.043.”
Ozzie, if I understand your question correctly . . . the NH, SH and tropics are not separate subsets. The tropics overlap with both the NH and SH. Apparently, the higher northern and southern latitudes had higher anomalies to offset the negative tropics anomaly.

“Watts, who is apparently in the tinfoil-hat and black helicopter club, that poster reveals dark purposes:”
When you can’t argue the facts one resorts to ad hominem attacks. One shouldn’t, but often one does, especially when “one” is a climate “scientist.”
The disgustingly low level of dialog on AGW is going to one day be the shame of ALL of us who consider ourselves scientists. The agenda-driven activist “scientists” have forever tarred the profession for the rest of us.

Climate Progress believes in “Mark’s Arctic Death Spiral!” Anagrammed = “Mark’s Patriarchical Edicts”… I didn’t even know the sea ice was alive…

Flanagan (04:36:06) :
Yes, the incomplete coverage of the Earth should be considered, but most regular readers of this blog will know that this has been covered before. See:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/03/08/putting-a-myth-about-uah-and-rss-satellite-data-to-rest/
In it Dr. Christy is quoted to say: (I hope my formatting experimentation works)

As the spacecraft rolls over the pole it does so at an inclined orbit so
that the highest nadir latitude is about 82 deg with the scanner looking
out a bit closer to the pole. Since we apply the scan line data mostly to
the nadir area directly below the satellite, the actual data only go to
about 83 deg. In the gridded data I interpolate over the pole, but I
wouldn’t trust the data too much beyond 85 deg.
MikeEE

“How is the zero level defined?”
The mean of all temperatures 1979-1998.

Ok, David Archibald was a little too optimistic with his temperature projection but…temperature is still going down. It obviously takes more time before the effects of the current solar minimum materialize.
We are in a learning process here and there is no scientist in the world who made any progress without engaging a trial and error process.
I miss the respect for the trial and error process with some of the posters here and I absolutely reject the mentality of burning down people who stick out their necks publishing about subjects to be discussed here.
Without people like David Archibald, and many others, WUWT would be a blank page and nobody would learn anything.

The May AMSU anomaly tracks with surface temperatures away from urban heat islands close to the Canadian border (44’62” N). We are 4.6% above the long term heating degree day averages for this year with snow down to 2000 feet last week and frost again in the valleys last night.

Dave Middleton,
Where can I find the UAH Lower Tropospheric data separated by land and ocean? I have only seen global data and data segregated by latitude bands.
GHD

Somehow, this one doesn’t look quite right. The chart in this post appears to be Spencer’s April chart. When I go to Spenser’s site, his May numbers are not yet posted. If you check out the real-time ASMU temp charts at various altitudes, they appear to show temperatures for May ’09 higher than May ’08.
What am I missing here?

“Tinfoil-hats and black helicopters?”…It’s a conspiracy theory jab.
“Tinfoil-hats” refers to people who wear such things to prevent the CIA, space aliens or the UN from using mind control devices on them or reading their thoughts. See the movie Signs for an example.
“Black helicopters” refers to mysterious black helicopters (presumably UN helicopters) that were supposedly snooping on Americans in the 1990’s. Some of the “black helicopter” crowd also claimed that the Clinton Administration was putting bar codes on the reverse sides of highway signs so that the UN invaders could navigate our highways – UN invaders drive on the wrong side of the road…I guess. I have a friend who literally believed in this sort of crap.
Basically they are referring to Mr. Watts and WUWT as a bunch of conspiracy geeks because we are skeptical of the AGW fraud. It’s sort of a compliment. It’s like a Creation Science blog referring to a Stephen J. Gould blog as being in “the tinfoil-hat and black helicopter club.”

Exclusive: New NSIDC director Serreze explains the “death spiral” of Arctic ice and the “breathaking ignorance” of blogs like WattsUpWithThat
From: http://climateprogress.org/
Congratulations Anthony, I regard it as a compliment when professional warmistas take aim at WUWT.
It’s like an open invitation.
It’s only a pitty that they don’t allow you to post a comment if it does not support their overheated ideas.

New Scientist quotes Steig’s paper in an article about Antarctic ice. I guess NS didn’t get the memo re Steig is wrong. I don’t trust reconstructions by the Wizards of Oz anymore. Or maybe the approach should be “Distrust and Double-check.”

Ubuntu (06:25:51) :
“NSDIC’s Dr Mark Serreze is carving WUWT a new one on Climate Progress. ”
Hardly surprising coming from one of Al Gore’s climate advisers…
http://newsrelease.uwaterloo.ca/news.php?id=5042
“Top climate change expert, Al Gore adviser, gives UW public talk on Arctic ice loss
WATERLOO, Ont. (Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2009) — One of North America’s leading experts on climate change, Mark Serreze, will give a public talk on the sharp loss of Arctic sea ice during a visit next week at the University of Waterloo.
One of Al Gore’s key environmental advisers, Serreze is the senior research scientist and Arctic specialist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, based at the University of Colorado in Boulder. ”
—

Please Frank Mosher,Keith W. and everybody. The NOAA U.S. Records-Site is really helpful to keep in mind,that there is record cold and record warmth in the U.S. any given day. But funny enough even Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf,german power forward of the hockey team couldn`t resist to note in his website named KlimaLounge,that Potsdam/Germany had a record warm April,unprecedented in 114 years. If you are a layman like me,don`t dare to mention weather events like this.

Flanagan (07:14:47) :
Hi everybody,
of course, the 100 degrees figure was just for fun. The thing is, for what I remember, that the fastest warming regions are around the poles (even if the temperatures do stay below 0 in most parts), so I’m not sure data based on everything-but-the-polar region is really the best choice. RSS should have similar problems. The French estimate is based on forecasting models for the polar regions, including boundary conditions known from other data set.
Gisstemp uses estimations from ice coverage, the French use models, which you tried to represent as data. Do you laugh when you post this intentionally misleading rubbish? From now on, I will. [Flanagan]=set on hilarious.

Does Flanagan think it is proper to extrapolate/interpolate surface station up to ~1250 km? Inquiring minds want to know….
Of course models which have 0 degrees latitude spatial coverage are always more reliable than satellite data 🙂

EXCUSE ME! But isn’t a +0.043C anomaly over a record period of 30 years equivalent to a century’s rise of 0.15C or more than 1/4 degree F? Isn’t anyone concerned? My God we are cooking ourselves to death and all you skeptics are making jokes. OH THE HUMANITY!
By the way Frank K, I haven’t observed any Arctic sea ice at Waterloo this year…could be a problem.

.
Weather it is an update or downdate, depends on what the meaning of is is, or zero.
.

I don’t know how important David Archibald is in the Global Warming discussion, but he predicted an anomaly of -0.4 degrees C for the May 2009 UAH MSU Global Temperature Result here: http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=197
It goes to show that it’s not that easy to do short-term predictions. Did David Archibald predict anything else lately?
We have ENSO neutral conditions or an El Niño coming on. If temps stay relatively low the coming year and a half I’ll probably become less of the warmist I am today. We’ll just have to wait and see. First thing on the agenda is minimal Arctic sea ice extent.

Another note on the NCDC graphs, the coolest 12-month period of the past 10 years was in 2001 but is bracketed by much warmer years before and after. What we have seen here is three consecutive cooling years. NOTE that these temperatures are North American land observations only and probably more a reflection of jet stream changes than any global climate.

A note about black helicopters.
If you read the book Blackhawk Down you learn quite a bit about the black
helicopter method of operation, at least during the 1990s. Come in fast,
deploy quick-rope, drop operators, back off 300 yards and hover, wait
for ground team to give the OK, then leave at high speed.
This method of operation was not developed, or practiced, in a vacuum.
Rather, it was practiced where it could be practiced. One of those practice
sites was Centennial Park in Santa Ana Ca. Near Pendelton, El Toro,
Seal Beach NWS, Los Alimitos, and directly on a helicopter fly path, the
Santa Ana River Flyway, Centennial is a really good “target”.
On suitable moonless nights, battle groups would load from a carrier
off the coast, fly in and practice the drop, hover and exit. My house
happens to be 300 yards from Centennial Park, and we have the tallest
tree around. The tree was used as a landmark.
There is nothing quite like having a pair of Blackhawk helicopters park
over your house at night at 200 feet. They are very loud and mostly
invisible.
I do not have a tinfoil hat, but I have personally experienced the black
helicopter problem. This was a Clinton-era problem. Once or twice
I thought about emptying a few clips from my M1 into the bottom of
a Blackhawk. I refrained from doing so, but those copters were violating
so many laws, policies and procedures I lost count.

I wonder if we’ve seen the last of Dr. Meier here now that he has a new boss with iron boots and a riding crop.

crosspatch (10:12:16) :
“…you discover that the most recent 12-month period is the second coolest since 1999.”
Crosspatch really must learn to communicate in NASA-speak. Let me translate: “…you discover that the recent 12-month period is the 9th hottest since 1999.”

Brian D (11:54:56) :
I wonder if the Mt. ReDoubt eruptions helped out some with the N Hemisphere cooling off this Spring. The added aerosols have to have some effect, one would think. The northern oceans seem to have been staying generally cooler, as well.

Maybe a bit. Volcanic cooling of the lower atmosphere is usually associated with warming of the upper atmosphere. UAH does show a little bit of stratospheric warming over the last few months.

Reinhard Bosch. I agree that every day there are ew records made, both warm and cold. My point was merely that Flanagan’s observation of “hot” in California was not accurate.
Leif. I have a problem with Warming or Cooling, as they are not absolute values, but relative values. If one is allowed to pick his start point, he can argue either case. IMHO, climate is like life, a lot more complex than is generally acknowledged. fm
‘

Neven (10:01:13) :
It goes to show that it’s not that easy to do short-term predictions. Did David Archibald predict anything else lately?
Yes, David has predicted a 2 deg decline in global temperatures over the next “few years” which is probably even more ridiculous than his May prediction. You say it ‘s not easy to do “short-term predictions”. I disagree. I predicted that David’s prediction would be a “spectacular failure”. I found that quite easy.
Fortunately, the AGW crowd seem to have largely ignored David’s “predictions”. Thankfully, they appear to recognise that DA’s views are not typical of responsible sceptics.

So Unbuntu
It is clearly Climate Progress that is in the tinfoil hats brigade. The phemomena we are seeing there is called projection.

“Before someone is critical of anothers public prediction, ISTM, they should have also made a very public prediction that was substantially more accurate. ”
I kinda addressed this point on my blog:
4.3 But Skeptics Have Not Done any Better at Predicting Temperatures
That may very well be true, but this argument is attacking a bit of a strawman. I’m not claiming that I can accurately predict future temperatures — I’m claiming that Jim Hansen cannot. At least not as well as he thinks he can. Put another way, it’s not necessary for me to accurately predict the future to win this debate.

“Wonder what folks will do when we hit negative …”
You will hear a lot more references to “climate change” and a lot fewer references to “global warming.” IMHO

“I have a feeling this whole blog is here because of the owner’s views on freedom.”
Actually, I think Anthony has said repeatedly why this blog is here. He wanted a place where he could comment “…on puzzling things in life, nature, science, weather, climate change, technology, and recent news. You have the freedom to come into his internet abode here and comment as you see fit, as long as you are a good guest. Freedom is the reason that every one of us is here Neven, including you. IF the internet becomes a place where one’s views cannot be freely expressed this blog and many others will no longer exist. However freedom will not be denied forever.

“Frank Mosher (07:58:05) :
Anthony. Several people have criticized Archibald’s prediction. ” Those that are without sin cast the first stone”. Before someone is critical of anothers public prediction, ISTM, they should have also made a very public prediction that was substantially more accurate. A little humility goes a long way. fm”
It is not a requirement to come up with a “better” projection when someone decides to make a prediction that doesn’t past muster. IMO, the delivery of said criticisms chould be delivered in a manner that is without ridicule. The person who delivered the projection also has a responsibility to not personalize their work. It’s a viscious cycle when emotion is injected. Witness the comments on consensus CAGW sites.

Some Canadian anecdotal to go along with this.
B.C. bakes while Ontario, Prairies freeze in the dark
Still, Phillips said that this spring (March, April and May) has been the coldest season in five years, in terms of average temperatures right across the country.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090605/Cda_Weather_090605/20090605?hub=TopStories

Flanagan, Is it not true that UAH/RSS cannot use 2-3% of the globes surface?
Is it not also true, that Landbased measurements like GISS and Hadcrut only has 30% land area to begin with, and then has to extrapolate over the ocean (Including the arctic ocean..).
But you think Landbased temperature measurements has better coverage of the globe?

wow, I had never been to Climateprogress.com… Their post about WUWT makes me want to start keeping an ad-hominem counter for both sites, and compare the two numbers.

RE: Frank Lansner (17:04:13) :
. . .
“Is it not also true, that Landbased measurements like GISS and Hadcrut only has 30% land area to begin with, and then has to extrapolate over the ocean (Including the arctic ocean..).”
Your statement is more incorrect than insightful. GISS and Hadcrut do use non-land based estimates for the ocean. GISS does have a convoluted reference to satellite data for the oceans, but its algorithm borders on bizarre and will not be detailed in this post. Hadcrut by necessity does not have a consistent source of data for ocean temperatures, and it likely that Hadcrut over relies on the Northern Hemisphere oceans. Nevertheless, neither GISS nor Hadcrut simply extrapolate land temperatures to the ocean as your post suggests.

RE: George DeBusk (08:11:28) :
. . .
“Where can I find the UAH Lower Tropospheric data separated by land and ocean? I have only seen global data and data segregated by latitude bands.”
Look at http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
It has 25 different separations of the UAH historic record. The May data has not yet been added.

Bill P (12:59:25) :
A 120,000 acre-foot Strategic
Do you have that measurements in firkins, sydharbs or perhaps cubic attoparsecs!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_units_of_measurement
Come on – science went SI units years ago. It is impossible to tell if temperature is being discussed in deg F or deg C on this blog (it makes a difference!).

rbateman (22:34:07) :
David Archibald (16:13:25) :
I see that the overall direction of anomaly is down on both UAH and RSS.
When you made your prediction of -.04C for May 2009, what is your reading of the noise/uncertainty factor (i.e the +/-? Even Leif has a +/- in his solar prediction.
You were off by .083 for the exact reading. How much of that .083 is outside your uncertainty?
The prediction was for an anomaly of -0.4 not -0.04 . The prediction was off by ~0.44 degrees. There were those of us who said it was complete nonsense at the time but we tend to get ignored. Just as there are those of us who think that current relatively low satellite temperatures are a lagged response to the low SST which were evident a few months back.

David Archibald (16:13:25) :
John Finn corrects my 4am can’t sleep again question.
But I am still interested in your estimate of uncertainty in your prediction.

Leif Svalgaard (10:21:07) : “Since 1880, there has been 20 cases before this one where the monthly anomaly has been exactly the same to 1/1000 of a degree in both hemispheres”
That’s a bold assumption since it is highly unlikely that with the earlier measurement techniques and density thereof such an accuracy (to 1/1000 of a degree) could be achieved whilst showing such a coincidence of both hemispheres being in sink.

I think our global temerature will fall half a degree a year if the sun deep minimum will stay like this if we look at the all the past records of deep solar minimums this could last untill 2039 or even longer since 1980 untill now every solar maximum there have been less sunspots it could well be 1850 the solar wind has droped 30 percent this will effect the jet stream and will move up towards greenland this will allow high pressure to build from the continent and colder winters its happend many times in the past as we know the polar ice caps have been growing for 20 years and air temperature has not risen for the length of time the sun has gone a little dimmer less radiation effecting the earth each global warming cycle has a duration of 130 to 160 years and the peak of each cycle has a duration of 50 to 90 years there for the current global warming cycle will run from 1910 to 2060 itwill peak between 1950 and 2015 the warming will level off around 2015 to fall fast affter or no latter than the year 2030 to 2040 once cooling begins it will take 20 to 30 years to cool so the lowest part of the cooling cycle temperatures like that of 1800s we know over the last 11400 years how many times this has happend through proxy dating in polar ice caps and the rings we are not fully out of the the last ice age yet the sun is in a deep state now allmost like 1913 we are due for a long cold spell we must have warmed the planet up only a little bit around 5% the sun will have the opposite effect on the world temperatuer every time this happens to the sun all what ive been studying over the years it will get colder ive been doing this reasearch for a long time I also study astronomy ive studied astronomy for 30 years i wonder how the sun will stay like this the current warming began in 1500 ad will peak around the year 2000 and end in 2500ad we are dou for a cooling there is cooling breaks in some years we could cool down at a fast rate nothing compared to the last ice age and the gulf stream has changed many times in the past due to warmer climates we are in now the gulf stream could easily slow or stop again because the fresh water coming down from the north pole this will have drastic effects which looks like has happend in other warming periods.

Bob Tisdale
This is the sea ice level in 2007. 2007http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/20071001_pressrelease.html
It would seem to me the 2007 low ice level is “one of a kind” event and not at all a long term trend for diminishing ice . I expect the ice to return as the ocean cooling continues for the next several decades.

Flanagan, at the risk of stating the obvious, there are no stations near the N Pole! GISS does use the data from the station at the S Pole (and a glance at the GISS data shows that the claim of large positive anomaly there is completely false) .
What HadCrut currently uses, nobody knows, because they refuse to release this information (see latest post at climate audit).

“I still think that have yet to hit month of minimum.”
I would say timidly, the current spurt in 24 activity mirrors that of last Oct/Nov. Spots will again subside below a smoothed 1.0 for an upcoming month, possibly more than one.
But then I check the locks twice on leaving, look bothways multiple times before crossing, etc.