Flashback to 2007 – SST to plunge again?

You gave me a real flashback there until I realized you weren’t talking about the Super Sonic Transport.

Very Interesting, this see saw effect. Suggestive of a mechanism that can be quickly altered. (Magnetic field?) In any event, not the slow steady rise of C02, nor a steady decline.

The el Nino, is it a result of one of the so called conveyor belt’s ?
Or is it surface temps? Or both, perhaps?

The following shows that that El Nino confined to aa relatively small area in 3+4 El Nino, there is no such El Nino along the west coasts of SA. Just compare this with 1998-98, and don’t forget the solar minimum we are in.
GCR still up up and away:
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/query.cgi?startdate=1964/01/05&starttime=00:00&enddate=2010/02/05&endtime=01:27&resolution=Automatic choice&picture=on

IJIS is sea ice extent is stuck?

One big difference between January, 2007 and January, 2010 is that this time around, land temperatures are not so warm. Many parts of the planet have been reporting near record cold temperatures, in particular Europe, Siberia, Antarctica and the US.
Why trumpet Jan 2010 if this has the high potential to lead to a far colder year?
Someone may have taken a pawn sacrifice thinking of a game of attrition.
Just a thought.

Given that surface temps tend to lag the ENSO index, I’d suspect the next few months will be quite warm. Channel 5 so far in February agrees: http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps
That said, we should avoid reading too much into temperatures during major ENSO events, be it in 2008 or 2010.
REPLY: Yes, like forecasting “barbecue summers” – A

OT: Penn State investigation a total whitewash
http://foxnews.com/
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/05/penn-state-probe-michael-mann-total-whitewash/

kwik (13:40:34) :
The el Nino, is it a result of one of the so called conveyor belt’s ?
Or is it surface temps? Or both, perhaps?
Lost UFO, upside down on the floor of the Pacific. Every now and then the powerful propulsion system turns on for a while, and since the craft is flipped over it generates a plume flowing up to the surface that brings along warmer water from under the surface, resulting in a cooler ocean as the heat is released into the atmosphere.
Actually, last I heard, no one really knows why it happens, so the above is merely an “as likely as anything else” hypothesis. Maybe.

OT: All climate scientists should reaad this:
Why Climate Science is on Trial.
“The findings of climate science will (and should) be held to a much higher standard of accuracy and certainty than normal scientific studies. Scientists can be wrong about the lesser spotted skink for twenty years and then change their minds; no harm, no foul except maybe to the skinks. But if the implications of the work of climate scientists lead to serious proposals for the entire world to make dramatic shifts in its basic patterns of energy usage, it would be utterly naive and idiotic for scientists to expect that there wouldn’t be lots of people second guessing their work and checking over it in the hope of discovering mistakes.”
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/02/05/why-climate-science-is-on-trial/

john,
The UK is headed for yet another extended blast of snow and cold, to finish off The Met Office’s warm winter.
http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/4909843.Snow_predicted_across_Sussex/
Not surprising that climate scepticism is increasing in the UK. The emperor (or Prince Charles) can only run around in his new clothes for so long before he gets noticed.

kadaka (14:07:55) :
kwik (13:40:34) :
“The el Nino, is it a result of one of the so called conveyor belt’s ?
Or is it surface temps? Or both, perhaps?
Lost UFO, upside down on the floor of the Pacific. Every now and then the powerful propulsion system turns on for a while, ….”
Sure that UFO is not a volcano?
“…. so the above is merely an “as likely as anything else” hypothesis. Maybe.”

Okay, I gotta say something about Pachouri’s idiotic asbestos comment. I know it isn’t really on topic and it doesn’t really matter in any big way, but it does point out what an idiot Pachouri is.
There is *Nothing* poisonous about Asbestos! In it’s raw form, it’s fibrous and rather soft. You could make a washcloth out of it and rub it on your face every day and NOTHING BAD WOULD HAPPEN TO YOU! Sheesh, Pachouri is supposed to be some kind of scientist and he only has a third graders cartoon version idea of what asbestos really is?
The *only* way asbestos is dangerous is if it is ground into a form where it becomes a dust that hangs in the air, and you stay in that atmosphere breathing it for many years.

kwik (13:40:34) : You asked, “The el Nino, is it a result of one of the so called conveyor belt’s ?”
Nope. It’s a coupled ocean-atmosphere process extending across the tropical Pacific. Here are links to two NOAA FAQ web pages about ENSO:
http://faculty.washington.edu/kessler/occasionally-asked-questions.html
and:
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/general/enso_faq/

kadaka (14:07:55) :
I see. Well, if one doesnt know the true nature of these conveyor belts….how wide, how deep, their temperature, the speed…..then there is no way one can ever model the climate.
Or does these sensors deployed as I saw on a map the other day, measure temperature, speed and direction? Just wondering. Cant know everything, you know.
hehe.

Steve
I agree that the Met Office long term (experimental) forecasts have proved that they cannot yet model seasonal trends. It a good decision to withdraw them.
But an easterly wind in winter in the UK for a couple of days does not have much of an impact on global temperatures (I always find that if the UK is colder than average, Moscow is warmer than average – the cold war has more than one front – so some places are colder while other are warmer). But assuming the Met office can use a thermometer properly – you seem happy to quote their short term forecasts, the long term global trend over a long period is up and will contiue up given the temperatures over the last few years.
What mechanism will make the temperatures fall below the 30 year average for long enough to start make the trend flat, never mind fall? I hear a lot of arguements saying the temperatures are being manipulated and the physics twisted but that would make all climate science into a good old fashion western (black and white hats), but there are some adults out there that are sceptics who understand a grey world.

john pattinson (14:23:59) :
You have to paddle your own canoe when it comes to what’s going on with the climate. Skepticism has sharply increased due to very bad forecasts, which are in turn based on model output which come from suspicious Climategate data doings.
You can believe, at this point, what you can see & observe for yourself.
Beyond that, it’s totally up to you.
May I suggest that if you are well to do, that you travel to the South Pacific in Search Of the hot oceanic anomaly?

john,
Moscow has been far below normal this winter.
http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/UUEE/2009/12/1/CustomHistory.html?dayend=6&monthend=2&yearend=2010&req_city=NA&req_state=NA&req_statename=NA
as has London
http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/EGLL/2009/12/1/CustomHistory.html?dayend=1&monthend=1&yearend=2010&req_city=NA&req_state=NA&req_statename=NA

ENSO cycles at less than half the rate of the annual cycle on average, so a dose of reality is encouraged. It takes awhile to come down off an ENSO high – and the thing doesn’t have stationary periodicity – and it isn’t understood like the tides (yet) – so speculation is gambling. If my life depended on betting money, I’d put money on 2014 plus or minus a few years for a circulation/redistribution regime shift. My impression is that a lot of folks have been fooled by 1998. See here:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/ChristmasTreeIndex.PNG
and here:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/RegimeChangePoints.PNG
and here:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/100204.PNG

“There is *Nothing* poisonous about Asbestos! ”
What has always tickled me is how they treat asbestos when they remove it. It is almost as if they have to “seal” it from the environment.
I have a better idea. The best place to put asbestos is right back where they found it … in old asbestos mines. Maybe that will return some jobs to the areas that were devastated when asbestos mining was cut back. It is a natural mineral, not a man made substance. If you want to get rid of it, just put it back where you got it from to begin with!

crosspatch (15:47:31) :
“There is *Nothing* poisonous about Asbestos! ”
….. It is a natural mineral, not a man made substance.”
Yes, I have a really nice “crystal” of asbestos in my mineral collection. My father used to sell the stuff and I played with it as a kid. I think old Patchy was thinking of fiberglass when he made that statement. The asbestos material and cloth Dad had was soft.

So let’s see…
We have
cold land masses… check
a phasing out El Nino that belched lots of heat out… check
a not so active sun… check
many volcanos that could erupt… check
I don’t know about you guys, but this is much more scarier than global warming.

Steve
Thanks for the lesson in using links on the nternet. Have you seen this one yet
http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_data_monthly.html?channel=tlt and hit the anomaly button
Of course its all about periods short or long

OK – Everything is packed up, food (tinned), clothes & locked up the house – everything turned off – gas, electricity – post cancelled. Kids laden with books and clothes on travois. Mass migration to Spain about to commence. We are meeting 36 other families on the way through France. Going on foot because fuel too expensive! Wind-up radio tuned to AlGore.FM for latest updates. Hang on a minute – Didn’t our ancestors used to do this? Yes – but without the b***ard taxes, and a freedom to roam without hindrance. How did they survive? Who knows, they did – we will, and it will be another great journey in the story of “Life on Earth”. Someday, hundreds if not thousands of years in the future, scholars will try to work out how we did it in such an inhospitable environment. B***ocks say I, we booked a package tour to Spain via Thomas Cook just like half of Great Britain do every year. The only problem is we have to pay too much tax to go by plane that this year we tried to sneak in on a fishing boat. It took 2 weeks to get the smell out of my shorts!!
Cue song: “When will they ever learn?”

Asbestos in and of itself is fairly benign. However what it does do is to puncture the cell walls and allow chemicals into the cell that shouldn’t be getting in there. Those chemicals often trigger cancer and other rather nasty things. Treat it with respect. At one time it was the best thing around. Since then we have come up with better stuff.

Laymans interpretation:
The accumulation of energy in the oceans over the latter part of the 20th C is being periodically “exhaled” by the oceans via El Nino.
History tells us this exhalation takes much less time than accumulation, hence the sudden drops.
With the less active sun of recent times, El Nino events will gradually weaken.
The water vapour in the atmosphere due to these exhalations manifest themselves in the larger than normal snow covers in the northern hemisphere.
It’s irrelevant to the climate what happens over the land areas as they can’t store heat like the oceans.
The upshot is, buy yourself a good coat for the coming decade or three.
It’s the sun and the oceans stupid, CO2 is largely irrelevant unless you want a new mechanism to tax people.

In addition to my above post.
The PDO has already flipped. This happens sooner than the ENSO because of the smaller ratio of oceans in the northern hemisphere.
ENSO will follow (don’t know the lag time) and will be dominated by La Ninas
Until the sun becomes more active, (possibly by the ascending phase of cycle 27), expect temps to drop followed by a drop in precipitation.
But hey, I’m just speculating like the IPCC. (very likely lol)

The cold land based temperatures are probably more important than the warm SSTs. I think that both land based temperatures and sea based temperatures will respond to radiative forcing. But SSTs can contradict the radiative forcing effect for short periods of time through currents and Kelvin waves. The land will reflect the radiative forcing more quickly. I think that we will see the oceans catch up with the land based trend eventually.

Asbestos, much like CO2 and compact flourescent lamps has had a knee-jerk reaction, it is a great roofing and insulation product, whatever colour it is fairly safe when wet (wet particles have trouble getting in a position to be inhaled) in the UK all asbestos, even cement asbestos sheets are toxic waste (and have to be handled by high cost specialists) until it is in the skip then off to open land-fill where it is inert. It is funny the dusky con man should bring it up at the same time as his fraudulent activity

[quote Richard M
Well, at least there are two separate analyses that are in close agreement (RSS and UAH). This makes me more comfortable.
[/quote]
RSS uses the same type of instrument UAH uses. Which means they’re using statistics too.
If those statistics were set during warming periods (which they were), what’s to say they’re not causing artificial warming when they adjust the data? The statistics are adjusting the readings of channel 5 by 10 times what the reported anomaly is.
That, and you can’t use one unknown process (RSS) to describe another (UAH).

Heat moves from warm places to cool places. When SSTs are warm, heat moves out of the ocean. When SSTs are cool, heat moves into the ocean.

OT: interesting doings on the Sun today.
Flux pops up 4 units, and some 8 hours later up pop 2 new Sunspot groups.
The leading group appears at roughly the same longitude where the last one (1043) appeared.

Steve Goddard (13:54:22) :
Interesting theory about the causes of El Nino here:
=============================================
You have to be ready to duck into a foxhole to avoid a storm from certain people when you bring up the sun sometimes.

Richard M,
“Well, at least there are two separate analyses that are in close agreement (RSS and UAH). This makes me more comfortable.”
You mean like GISS and HadCrut??

By the way, the Hurricane “Oli” that has affected French Polynesia confirms a El nino situation and we know stronger north hemisphere winters influence the translation of the ME southward.

Take a close look at the argo ocean heat content curve:
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/loehle_ocean-heat-content-blog.jpg
To me it seems that ocean heat content varies slowly and continously and does not fluctuate wildly as the surface temperature does. This makes sense, the large thermal mass of the oceans makes sudden ocean heat content fluctuations impossible.
I strongly suspect that, let’s say, 30 years of high quality and smooth argo data, would revoulutionize our understanding of the climate. We know so little and have started to theorize long before we have any data…

@Bob Tisdale (15:04:32) :
Thank you sir!
Now I have two resources to study that are “peer approved” as to quality, wading through Wikipedia or a Google search was not necessary. And more than one person has had a smile, a chuckle, perhaps even a good laugh, as opposed to if I had made a dry request for info. Objectives met, mission accomplished.

These sudden (monthly) jumps in the Global temp “anomolies”, while atmospheric CO2 levels effectively remain unchanged, clearly demonstrates that there is no connection between the two and other factors are at work.

Mike Guerin (14:41:41) :
Right on the nail, Mike. What it can’t be is CO². These variations are the same size as the total global warming of the past 100yrs. That can’t be CO induced. What I like is the debate (scientific) that has been provoked by the ‘sudden’ increase in temp this jan. That is what science is about.

tallboke: Disregard my 06:39:46 comment. Excuse my mistake. I missed the word “away” in your opening sentence. I must not be awake. I’ll read your post after some coffee.

J.Peden (02:30:21) :
OT The same phenomena was observed in garment industry workers in spinning mills – fibers coating the lining of the lungs leading to death. Dust of any form can be deadly – silicosis, asbestosis, and others of the same form, small particles, air borne. I’m concerned about the carbon fibers being used increasingly in brakes, and other wearing structures leading to fine dust in the air, not to mention nano-technology. I’m for it, but concerned just the same.
Moderators, maybe this topic deserves its own thread.

@Rob m (14:17:49) :
“OT: All climate scientists should reaad this:
Why Climate Science is on Trial.
“The findings of climate science will (and should) be held to a much higher standard of accuracy and certainty than normal scientific studies.”
Agreed. The late Dr. Carl Sagan’s statement “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” is certainly applicable to climate science’s AGW hypothesis.

@R. Gates (14:11:19)
“…. Now we are seeing an increasingly active sun with its irradiance steadily increasing toward the solar max of 2013.”
We are currently in solar cycle 24. Australian scientist David Archibald is of the opinion that in the next 20 years, solar cycles 24 and 25 will be diminutive.
“In this presentation, I will demonstrate that the Sun drives climate, and use that demonstrated relationship to predict the Earth’s climate to 2030. It is a prediction that differs from most in the public domain. It is a prediction of imminent cooling.”
David Archibald
International Conference on Climate Change
March, 2008
http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri/Solar_Arch_NY_Mar2_08.pdf

I got news for these folks. I live in the middle of the Pacific and it has been freezing, December and January, albeit dry except at higher levels.

There is a significant difference in SSTs already from January 4 to Feb 4.
Jan 4: http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2010/anomnight.1.4.2010.gif
Feb 4: http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2010/anomnight.2.4.2010.gif
El Nino is definitely waning. Feb’10 will be much closer to normal than Jan’10

Found a very nice NOAA Weekly Report that supports Bob’s observations. It looks like the weekly shows more trend detail then the monthly report for Jan.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf
NOAA SST: Nino Regions SST Departures – Recent Evolution
page 5: Regions 3, 3.4, and 4 are showing rapid decline since Jan. 2010. Nino region 1+2 is showing a recent increase in weekly temperature.
page 10:Central & Eastern Pacific Upper Ocean weekly SST (0-300m) also shows rapid decline since Jan. 2010.
page 13: Atmospheric Circulation over the North Pacific & North America During the Last 60 Days show the Temp. Anoms.
page 16: Oceanic Kelvin Waves
page 19: Outgoing Longwave (OLR)
additional pages show models and forecast and summary

These kinds of blog posts: our monthly “how cold/hot was it”, beg for a better way of analyzing temperature data. Once again and I will type slowly: The…Earth’s temperature machine…does…not…care…what…day/week/month…it…is. It does not have a 30 day monthly period (though it appears the weather back East appears to be quite irritable). Comparing this January to a past January is nonsense. But we are human creatures all live with monthly calendars. So what to do? Present temperature anomalies just like Nino anomalies: IE a three month moving average. Jan-Feb-Mar, Feb-Mar-May, Mar-May-Jun, etc. Why it isn’t just stuns me.

The ‘this year’ – ‘last year (at this time)’ measurements act as a simple filter to null out annual periodicities. It is much like a one year moving average or one year moving sum except that is does not smooth out shorter period effects.
I recall one amateur meteorologist who kept track of the one year moving rainfall sum at his home. Once he charted a mid-year point where the one-year total rainfall was less than half the normal annual amount for this area. That fact was not evident in the normal year-to-date numbers issued by the weather bureau.

Steve, I did not say you are nonsensical or that your post was nonsense. Please don’t accuse me of words I did not say. I am simply repeating my opinion about how global temperature anomalies are reported. The habit of reporting same month anomaly is nonsense. The Earth does not care about Jan 1 through Jan 30. We would do better with a running 3-month average as that would take into account the fact that the Earth knows no such 30-day time tables. So I say again, it is nonsense to compare one month in one year with the same month in another year as if that helps us understand cause and effect, and trends. Maybe it is more important to compare this January with December or February a few years back, because the conditions were similar but Earth’s winter conditions were not between the exact dates. Do you see my point?

Pamela,
El Nino is normally a winter phenomena and peaks around January or February. The 1998 El Nino produced warmer anomalies than the 2010 El Nino, but they peaked in February.
The month does matter, which is the point of this article – the similar behavior to the previous El Nino of 2007.

Precisely.
The coldest and most severe Winter for Northern Hemisphere land areas
(North America, Europe, Russia, East Asia) in many, many decades.
Makes me wonder “what”(if anything) we ARE measuring.
ENSO is fading fast.
A massive drop in “Global” temps is inevitable this year.

I’m not saying to get rid of variation by smoothing it away, I am saying record the variations in an Earth sense, not a human sense. Steve, it is useful to talk about the El Nino winter temperature period of 98, 07, and the current one, as it relates to the El Nino three month running average (which is the way El Nino is recorded, not single month by single month). Are we seeing a warming temperature trend with each one? The only way to compare would be to use the temp anomaly 3-month running average, taking into account the temperature response delay we usually see, and determine if things are getting hotter. Saying that January 2010 is the hottest recorded January anomaly does not tell us if it is getting warmer due to CO2 causing increased long wave radiation making El Nino’s warmer. El Nino induced warm temps are perfect measures of increased long wave radiation from increasing greenhouse affect, is it not? So does it matter if the month is December, January, or February? No. What matters is if the El Nino warm peak is getting hotter.

wxtrendsguy,
Just post links. Here I’l do it for you.
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp1.html
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp2.html
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp3.html
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp4.html
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp5.html
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp6.html
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp7.html
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp8.html
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp9.html
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp10.html
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp11.html
Alaska, Brazil, parts of Australia and southern Africa have actually been running below normal.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/images/fnl/sfctmpmer_01a.fnl.anim.html

Land cools off much more rapidly than oceans do so I am not too concerned about the temporary direct greenhouse affect on land. Besides, the argument has been made that CO2 related heat is being stored in the oceans. I don’t think so. It has also been postulated that weather extremes will happen as a result of CO2. Again, I don’t think so. El Nino is far and away the stronger reason for weather and I want to show the correlation between SST conditions and the delayed but moderately predictable affects on global temps. To be clear, I am trying to state the case for the hydrologic/atmospheric cycle as the cause of temperature behavior and trends, short and long term, as opposed to CO2. Therefor, temperature needs to be analyzed and reported in the same way SST’s are in terms of El Nino/La Nina and other SST oscillations. If they were, we would not be dealing so much with ideas that the Sun is cooling the planet, or CO2 is heating it up. We instead would be learning about the real connections that make up our weather pattern variations. Once that is understood by the general public, a case can be made for or against man-made changes in weather pattern variations.

Pamela,
I’m not trying to solve the fundamentals of climate science in this article (or any other.) I’ll leave that to other people like yourself. I’m just saying that I expect to see a similar pattern in UAH temperatures as 2007 – for the same reasons as it happened in 2007.

I am not sure that it is correct to speak of the ocean being heated by CO2 as CO2 is not an inherent source of heat.
As best I can determine, the contribution of CO2 to the greenhouse effect is on the order of one degree Celsius for each complete doubling of the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. This is equivalent to saying that the warming from the pre-industrial era, when the CO2 concentration was on the order of 280 ppm, is given by the following formula:
W=(1/Ln(2))*(Ln(CO2)-Ln(280)) where CO2 is the CO2 concentration in ppm.
Science Daily reports that a “10 percent drop in water vapor ten miles above Earth’s surface has had a big impact on global warming, say researchers in a study published online January 28 [2010] in the journal Science. The findings might help explain why global surface temperatures have not risen as fast in the last ten years as they did in the 1980s and 1990s.”

Pamela Gray (16:14:04) : Are you asking if the response of global temperatures to an El Nino event is greater now than it was decades ago? As far as I know there has not been a noticeable change. Now my question, whould there be one? That is, if anthropogenuc greenhouse gases were having an effect, should we see a greater global response now than we had in the past? Scientists assume the response has been linear, that the response to the 2007 event was the same as in 1997, 1982, 1972, etc. But should it be increasing with time?

Pamela Gray (14:04:18) :
These kinds of blog posts: our monthly “how cold/hot was it”, beg for a better way of analyzing temperature data. Once again and I will type slowly: The…Earth’s temperature machine…does…not…care…what…day/week/month…it…is. It does not have a 30 day monthly period (though it appears the weather back East appears to be quite irritable). Comparing this January to a past January is nonsense. But we are human creatures all live with monthly calendars. So what to do? Present temperature anomalies just like Nino anomalies: IE a three month moving average. Jan-Feb-Mar, Feb-Mar-May, Mar-May-Jun, etc. Why it isn’t just stuns me.
Fair enough, Pamela.
Nov-Dec-Jan for 2009-2010 is the warmest NDJ period in the UAH record.

Tom P,
Pond Inlet, Nunavut is near the center of the RSS January “hot spot” which drove the land average up. Temperatures in January averaged -22F in Pond Inlet.
http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/CYIO/2010/1/7/MonthlyHistory.html
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Pond+Inlet,+Nunavut&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&ie=UTF8&hl=en&hq=&hnear=Pond+Inlet,+Nunavut,+Canada&ll=70.377854,-82.617187&spn=86.201591,360&z=2
http://www.remss.com/data/msu/graphics/TLT/medium/global/ch_TLT_2010_01_anom_v03_2.png
Do you consider -22F to be warm?
Viljujsk, Russia is near the center of the RSS Russian cold spot, and averaged -29F in January.
http://www.wunderground.com/history/station/24641/2010/1/8/MonthlyHistory.html
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Viljujsk,+Russia&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&ie=UTF8&hl=en&hq=&hnear=Russian+Federation,+Sakha+Republic,+Vilyuyskiy+rayon,+Vilyuysk&ll=60.500525,162.421875&spn=51.983077,203.203125&z=3
What this shows is that the “global temperature average” can be a dodgy concept.

Steve Goddard (07:13:01) :
“What this shows is that the “global temperature average” can be a dodgy concept.”
It’s the anomaly that is important, not the absolute temperature. Of course there were plenty of very cold places in January, but on the whole the lower troposphere over the ocean, and especially the land, was considerably warmer than normal.
What’s dodgy here is you ability to comprehend this.

Tom P,
You said “on the whole the lower troposphere over the ocean, and especially the land, was considerably warmer than normal.”
Your statement is misleading. The “average” anomaly was above normal, due to a large area of warm water in the South Pacific and a large positive anomaly over the Canadian Arctic and Greenland. That tells you nothing about the distribution of temperature in the rest of the land areas. The AO has pushed cold air down south, making Canada less cold than their January average. To say that land “was considerably warmer than normal” is not accurate for much of the planet – where the land was actually considerably colder than normal.

Steve Goddard (07:40:24) :
John Finn,
The map you sent over is low resolution and smears in February data, but did confirm my assertion that Alaska and parts of Australia were below normal in January. The RSS January map confirms that Southern Africa was below normal in January. NCEP showed Brazil below normal in January, but RSS showed it slightly above.
There are bound to be some differences. The NCEP anomaly map represents the surface while RSS and UAH are measuring temperature in the lower troposphere. Incidentally what base period is NCEP using. It looks like 1966-1996 but I can’t make out the start year properly.

Tom P,
Very few people will remember January, 2010 as being record heat, but many will remember it as being near record cold and snow.
The RSS and UAH January land anomalies are heavily skewed by the Canadian Arctic reading at 14,400 feet. If you look at the UAH near surface layer CH4, you will see that the anomalies are much smaller. Likewise, the ground based thermometer readings in the Canadian Arctic also show a different story.
http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/CYIO/2010/1/7/MonthlyHistory.html
Note that Pond Inlet, Nunavut (near the center of the RSS hotspot) spent half of the month far below normal.
A deeply negative AO means warm air in the upper atmosphere over the Arctic. It is essentially an inversion. The high January satellite anomaly indicates to me that measuring land temperatures at 14,400 feet has some serious limitations.
http://nsidc.org/arcticmet/patterns/arctic_oscillation.html
My guess is that GISS will not show such a large January spike, just like it didn’t in 1998.

“Steve Goddard (10:32:40) :
At the center of the RSS hot spot:
Iqaluit: ‘Cold enough to freeze a can of 10W30′
[…]
The G7 finance ministers appear to be more concerned – even alarmed – at the prospect of being fed raw seal meat, being eaten by polar bears, and of course braving the Nunavut capital’s freezing temperatures.”
No pina colada, samba dancers and enchiladas there by now? I’m relieved. Maybe there is still a glimmer of hope for humanity.

Paul Vaughan (13:57:34) :
How do you explain the regularity of the QBO? and of polar motion? and what of spatial autocorrelation? Surely all “chaos”. (sarcasm)
Perhaps your confusing chaos with randomness, Paul. Deterministic chaos does have structure and order, but is unpredictable. That’s why instead of regular cycles which happen on the same timings, with the same magnitude, in climate we get quasi-cycles, like the atmospheres Quasi-Biennial Oscillation, and the polar motion is made up by two quasi-periodic components and a gradual ‘drift’.

Steve Goddard (16:15:50) :
I’m willing to bet that 2010 is likely to be one of the warmest years recorded, if not the warmest. That’s hardly agreeing with your prediction of UAH temperatures. And I think the composition of the atmosphere would certainly play an important part in that warming.

Warmest year on record, according to some.

Second cold snap set to sweep across Britain with more snow and ice
Snow and ice is set to sweep Britain this week, with temperatures plummeting below freezing as the coldest winter for more 30 years tightens its grip.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/7182802/Second-cold-snap-set-to-sweep-across-Britain-with-more-snow-and-ice.html

Steve Goddard (19:49:01) :
Intrade were offering 32% that 2010 will be warmer than 2009. What are you offering?

Steve Goddard (06:09:49) :
1998 was quite an exceptional El Niño year. But with the latest ONI coming out at 1.8 plus the background of a warming trend, 2010 looks like it has the capability of being even hotter.
But I’ll stick to betting with people who, unlike you, are willing to put their money where there mouth is.

Steve Goddard (12:29:57) :
“…so apparently you don’t have a lot of confidence in your prediction that 2010 will be the warmest.”
Not at all – unlike you I’ve got some real money riding on this year’s UAH temperature.

Steve Goddard (14:41:59) :
It’s against some foolish sceptic who actually believed 2008 was the start of a downward trend in temperatures. He lost last year.
I can’t imagine where he got the idea that the Earth was cooling…

“something like capacitor discharge in an RC circuit”
Perhaps your thinking of a LC circuit.
It has more kick. the RC combo has no “inertia” like the
LC pair does.
I know your talking metaphorically, but …
As the capacitor (dis)charges either thru or in parallel
with the inductor a mag field builds storing energy in the
field around the inductor.
As the charge in the capacitor reaches peak or zero the
collapsing field of the inductor continues to drive current.
such a “tank” circuit would ring forever if it wasnt for
the resistive and stray magnetic coupling losses (toroids
are better).
its an apt metaphor anyway, you can add the notion of
harmonics and/or modulation into the mix.
On a old school Ampl Modulated transmitter, the peak power
at 100% is four times the carrier power.
As for the notion of harmonics, when the two waveforms briefly sync, the peak/valley moves from the difference to the sum of both.

Ok that didn’t work..
Try this link…someone let me know if they are able to see the map…just interested in finding out if it works.

Aghh one more mistake in my explanation..its actually a 30 year normal from 1980 to 2009.
If I use this data, Jan 2010 was the 3rd warmest since 1993 (when my history begins) with a temperature of 55.32 F. The warmest January was 2007 with a temperature of 55.64 F. January 1998 was actually in the middle of the pack with a temperature of 54.90 F. 54.8 F is my 30 year normal from 1980 to 2009.