UAH Global Temperature – still in a holding pattern

Warmest July on record according to RSS, +.61C.
http://www.remss.com/data/msu/monthly_time_series/RSS_Monthly_MSU_AMSU_Channel_TLT_Anomalies_Land_and_Ocean_v03_2.txt

Thanks Anthony– I asked about when this would be released in a comment to the last entry. This is one of the few data sets that intererst me. It has a 32 year pedegree, it’s data and analysis functions are transparent and public so it is a reliable database. What does it tell us? The 13 month smoothing trendline for the last 15 years is about .2C higher than the first fiften years, and during the last 10 years UAH has flatlined at a .2C elevated level, excepting the variations caused by moderate El Ninos and La Ninas. What does that MEAN? Buggers me. But, I do know what it DOESN’T mean — there is no catastophic temperature increase result caused by the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. The IPCC and Hanson models have been ‘myth busted’, disproven, invalidated by this database, because atmosphere CO2 has increased more than those models assumed, but the precipitous temp increases they projected have not occurred. CO2 is a trace gas, and doubling the amount in the atmosphere will not have a material impact on temperature. Next case.

What is the reason for using a running 13-month average? I would have thought a running 12-month average was more suitable.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/08599200808100
In this propaganda piece, reporter Simon Shuster wonders if Russia’s stand on Global Warming has changed since the deadly forest fires and the heatwave. A few extracts are gems of ignorance and bias:
“But while overconsumption of vodka is a familiar scourge in Russia, extreme heat is not, and as the worst heat wave on record spawns wildfires that are destroying entire villages, Russian officials have made what for them is a startling admission: global warming is very real. ”
Shuster should go back to school and learn Koppel’s climate zones for a start: yes a simple geography course will remind him that the area of Russia that is experiencing the heatwave is in a continental climate known for strong contrasts, very cold winter and very hot summers. The same Shuster was no where to be seen when western Siberia experienced 3 months of -30C last winter…
“Two months before Copenhagen, state-owned Channel One television aired a documentary called The History of a Deception: Global Warming, which argued that the notion of man-made climate change was the result of an international media conspiracy. A month later, hackers sparked the so-called Climategate scandal by stealing e-mails from European climate researchers. The hacked e-mails, which were then used to support the arguments of global-warming skeptics, appeared to have been distributed through a server in the Siberian oil town of Tomsk, raising suspicion among some environmental activists of Russia’s involvement in the leak.”
Proof? Who cares Shuster would not be bothered…
“Broadly speaking, the Russian position has always been that climate change is an invention of the West to try to bring Russia to its knees,” says Vladimir Chuprov, director of the Greenpeace energy department in Moscow. ”
Here comes an unbiased source…
“Medvedev has not been the only person in Russia to link the ongoing heat wave to climate change. Alexei Lyakhov, head of Moscow’s meteorological center, tells TIME it is “clearly part of a global phenomenon” that is hitting Russia. “We have to start taking systemic measures of adaptation. It’s obvious now. Just like human beings at one point took steps to adapt to the Ice Age, we now have to adapt to this,” he says, citing cuts to carbon emissions as one of the necessary adaptations. ”
Yes it is called an El Nino year but our reporter writes in such a manner that the source is saying what he probably never said…
“Now that Medvedev is also acknowledging the effects of climate change, Russia’s official line on the subject could start to change, Chuprov says. But he warns that convincing the public of the threat from global warming may be difficult. “The status quo can change quickly in the minds of bureaucrats if the leadership gives the signal. But in the minds of the people, myths are much more difficult to uproot,” he says. ”
Again the last word is given to Greenpeace… but russians scientists are not gullible and know that they live in a continental climate, they also understand that high pressure agglutinations are at the source of the increasing contrast between seasons in contradiction with the global warming hysteria that Shusters and TIME in clear partnership with Greenpeace are flogging in the west.

“Jason says:
August 3, 2010 at 8:20 am
Warmest July on record according to RSS, +.61C.”
Warmest July on record according to UAH is July 1998, +0.52°C

It’s still summer in the northern hemisphere and lots of land mass to still absorb heat. The “Big Dip” will come this winter as the southern hemisphere is colder than normal and due to the lesser land mass won’t absorb much solar radiation…. anyway, this is how I see it.

So now we can be quite sure that March 2010 was the peak, and we can calculate (according to Goddard’s crest-to-crest principle) a somewhat meaningful trend from February 1998 to March 2010. Result: No significant warming during the last 12 years.
You might also notice that each trough keeps getting higher and higher.
It is also false to say there has been no significant warming in the past 12 years. It might look that way drawing a straight line with deceiving month to month variations, but the average of the decade 2000-2010 is hotter than all other recorded decades before it.
Take a look at that graph, see where temperature has been from 1990-2000, and then from 2000-2010 and then say again with a straight face that there has been no significant warming in the past 12 years.

mjk says: August 3, 2010 at 9:23 am “. . . Global temparatures “remain high” ”
I guess it depends on the definition of “global temperatures.” Can Lower Troposphere temps alone represent the global average?
The global oceans (60°N–6-°S) SST anomaly is at 0.4°C (down from 2°C) while the tropical focus (5°N–5°S) is –1.5°C and the high Arctic mean (80°N+) is around –0.8.
Meanwhile, here in the Bay Area, this summer has been distinctly cooler with several new record lows.
When we look at the really big picture on balance, is the trend towards record highs or trending cooler?

This good Earth has managed to heat itself up from the deep-freezers of 20 x 110,000-year-long glaciations in a row, interrupted only by meager 12.000 warming intervals (the latest one of which is sceduled to end next Wednesday, btw…) .
This good Earth has managed to keep it’s biospere intact under a CO2-flushed sky, with CO2-levels ranging five-times as high as today, when life on Earth didn’t suffer, but FLOURISHED and bloomed to hence unprecedented levels.
This good Earth has seen everything from Snowball Earth to a bathtub-hot Arctic Ocean and steaming jungles on Antarctica – and STILL has managed to stay inhabitable all by itself for BILLIONS of years without human interference, whatsoever.
All that – and we are still here – biped apes, just escaped from the darkness of the middle ages, and still playing Gods (“Prometheus Delusion” – anyone?).
So why is anybody bragging about 0.2 or 0.5 degrees of alleged higher average global temps – while WUWT, in concert with other, properly investigating sites, has proven time and again, that – due to UHI and misinterpreted airport-weather boots, to name but a few – there simply IS NO reliable database from which to draw ANY reliable conclusion to assess, if there’s a Global Warming to ANY degree going on at all – or not.
All that boils down to one single word, containing all the wisdom of all the actual UN-IPCC, GISS- and whatever-scientists combined:
“QUACK!”

” The fan man says:
August 3, 2010 at 9:58 am
It is also false to say there has been no significant warming in the past 12 years. It might look that way drawing a straight line with deceiving month to month variations, but the average of the decade 2000-2010 is hotter than all other recorded decades before it.
Take a look at that graph, see where temperature has been from 1990-2000, and then from 2000-2010 and then say again with a straight face that there has been no significant warming in the past 12 years.”
The last 12 years go from 1998 to 2010, so you should forget about 1990-1998 (or 2000 to 2010, we are talking peak to peak here).
The linear trend from February 1998 to March 2010 of UAH monthly data is +0.0003°C per month. The prognosis from IPCC is +0.2 to 0.5 °C per decade. And the whole El Niño-year 2010 will probably even be cooler than the whole El Niño-year 1998, and certainly not 0.2°C or more warmer.
So on what do you base your opinion that it got significantly warmer during the last 12 years?

Can anyone explain why Spencer’s graph doesn’t show the 13 month running average (red line) after the beginning of 2010? To my inexperienced eye, it would appear that if graphed, the 13 month running average, to date, would equal or exceed that for mid 1998, during the “super” El Nino.

” Bill Marsh says:
August 3, 2010 at 9:47 am
I must not understand the relationship between the daily ASU sat temps and the UAH.
I tend to read the daily ASU temps, well, daily and every day this month has been in the range of .2 – .33F lower than corresponding days in July of 2009 and it was about .25F lower than all of June. I was a little surprised that the UAH actually increased from June to July.”
Are you talking about AQUA ch 5? In that case you missed the minus sign (“data as text” shows temperatures in K, currently around 254K).

I think that most datasets show that there was a cooling period beween 1945 and 1979. We did not have satellite data then so we cannot compare like with like but from the surface data we have a cooling of 0.4C. However during the period of 1979 to 2010 we have both data sets, with the surface data suggesting a warming of 0.8C whilst the satellite data gives 0.6C. Although we cannot compare the satellite and surface measures in absolute terms the increases should be comparable. From the previous post from Mckitrick the surface data is highly suspect so the 0.6C figure is more likely to be correct. This suggests that both the 0.4C cooling and 0.8C warming figures from the surface data sets are most likely in error by +0.2 as a result of false corrections, UHI/land use effects etc. This suggests that the real cooling between 1945 and 1979 was 0.6C and the warming between 1979 and 2010 was 0.6C. Strange as it may seem the 30 year period before 1945 also had a warming of at least 0.6C. This looks more like an oscillation than a trend.

Phil. says:
August 3, 2010 at 9:36 am
(…)
And yet this July was the hottest month recorded for the troposphere since 1979.
—–Reply
Then somebody forgot to notify my tomatoes. You may think I’m joking, but I’m not. Just happens the last time I raised tomatoes was 10 years ago, and I raised a splendid crop–several bushels. This year I have 20 of the most beautiful plants, most in the 3-4 foot range and going strong (thanks, CO2!). I’ve fertilized and watered them much like I did those of a decade ago, but here’s the problem–precious few tomatoes, and just 6 weeks from now frost will be a significant factor in my area.
Why no tomatoes?
Well, I looked it up on the Internet and found there are several factors, but one of the most pertinent (especially in my case) is the night-time temperature. See, tomatoes have difficulty producing fruit until the night-time lows consistently exceed 55 degrees F. So I looked at the month of July just past and for my location in Idaho, there was just one nighttime low higher than 55–it was actually 58 that night. There were three nights at 55, and all the rest were lower than that–some significantly so (one nighttime low was only 42 degrees). June was even worse (it froze the morning of the 18th of June, requiring that I replace all plants).
So you can ballyhoo about global warming all you want, but I agree with Michael Schaefer and his comment that life FLOURISHED (root word there is “flower”, in line with my gardening woes) when the earth was warmer. Or are there folks that simply don’t want me to enjoy tomatoes from my garden?

It may be hot in Russia but after a nice and warm June ( A few days tipping the 30 C mark ) it has been below average ever since. After a very cold winter i was hoping for a decent summer. Unfortunately the beautiful summers with two, three or more heat waves ( 5 days in a row over 25 C with in them two over 30 C ) have been a while ago.

o/t but a must read. In todays london Times, a story about a giant water pocket under a glacier called “tete-rousse ” on mount blanc in France. its on page 25, in the world news section. To condense the story it is saying that if it bursts, lots of life and property will be lost. It says it last burst in 1892 killing at least 175 people. Here is the money quote, and i will copy the last paragraph in full.
MrVincent said that the most likley explanation for the formation of the pocket was a period of particularly cold temperatures within the glacier, freezing the waters escape routes. THIS MAY BE THE RESULT OF GLOBAL WARMING, WHICH HAS REDUCED THE SNOW COVERING ON THE GLACIER AND EXPOSED IT TO THE COLD. This report was filed by Adam Sage – Paris. So what was the cause in 1892?

Plenty of snow in Argentina today:
http://www.clarin.com/sociedad/nieve-ola_de_frio_0_310169183.html
http://www.lmcordoba.com.ar/nota.php?ni=24320
Weather, climate or Watt, I mean, what?

stevengoddard says:
August 3, 2010 at 12:41 pm
“Even if he gets away with pushing the current year o.01 degrees over 1998 – he is still missing his own forecast by a factor of fifty.”
Hey Steve, how is your forecast for 2010 low in arctic ice extent shaping up?
MJK

Speaking of oceans, the area just north of Iceland is doing a bit of “shake rattle and roll” It is getting earthquakes with a magnitude over 3 (green star) the last couple of times I checked. http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/

Gail Combs says:
August 3, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Is any of those stars near the Katla volcano?….just to buy more popcorn 🙂

Tenuc says:
August 3, 2010 at 12:27 pm
Phil, you should know better. This is weather, not climate, and has no bearing on the future trajectory of oscillating weather regimes. Also, don’t be too keen to rely on satellite data, which use algorithms to translate the raw data to temperature anomalies based on historic patterns, many of which no longer apply.
___
Those ‘historic patterns’ in the satellite adjustment algorithms, just wish we could definitively find if there is some upward trend built in to those patterns used in the algorithms, for as time passes it seems it must be so. The satellite temps are tracking UHI influenced surface temps too closely for this not to be true since satellites should not see or record the UHI component affecting only a small percentage of just the land area.

The fan man says:
August 3, 2010 at 9:58 am
but the average of the decade 2000-2010 is hotter than all other recorded decades before it.
==========================================================
Hotter!! ROTFL
Say that again with a straight face.
You’re not even talking one whole degree!

NK says:
August 3, 2010 at 8:36 am
there is no catastophic temperature increase result caused by the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Because of the cooling feedback of H2O from rising co2 there could actually be cooling. The climate models that go on and on about warming from co2 do not take H2O into account well.

Reginald Newell, MIT, NASA, IAMAP, “a meteorologist whose research concentrated on global air pollution and on the energy”
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2003/newell.html
Said increasing co2 probably causes cooling:

Roy Spencer on negative feedback from H2O
Part 2, 8:52 video

“It is amusing seeing Hansen clawing to push 2010 a few hundredths over 1998.
According to his scenario B, 2010 should be more than half a degree warmer than 1998. Even if he gets away with pushing the current year o.01 degrees over 1998 – he is still missing his own forecast by a factor of fifty.”
-Goddard
He who wrote Austin Powers’ stories had Hansen in mind when he depicted Dr. Evil.

Enneagram says:
August 3, 2010 at 2:35 pm
Gail Combs says:
August 3, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Is any of those stars near the Katla volcano?….just to buy more popcorn 🙂
___________________________________
No opposite end of Iceland. This looks like possible rumblings of a volcanic sea mount so it could be very interesting depending on how deep the water is.
ere is the eruption of another sea mount. http://www.barking-moonbat.com/index.php/weblog/more_bothersome_volcanoes/

Not surprising?
Two years ago we had the same predictions of plummeting temperatures here. Yet despite a weak El Nino being well and truly finished along with two years of much lower than normal solar activity, global temperatures are still on the rise and many people are still in denial about it. When are people going to learn that cherry picking a few places that are cooler (or warmer) is completely irrelevant? It looks like all the money spent by fossil fuel companies on propaganda, instead of things like safety precautions in off-shore drilling, has had the desired effect.

Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
August 3, 2010 at 6:37 pm
The earth has been cooling since 1998. Yet you want the reader to infer that it is warming.
Have you got any evidence at all that this is true. Even WUWT posted a graph recently which showed that the OLS trends for all 4 main datasets were positive since 1998.
http://climateinsiders.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/trend.png
This, remember, is during a period when solar activity has declined significantly and, according to Easterbrook, the PDO has shifted (since 1999) to a cool phase. The only reason temperatures peaked higher in 1998 was because the 1997/98 El Nino was considerably stronger than the recent one.

” Phil. says:
August 3, 2010 at 9:36 am
And yet this July was the hottest month recorded for the troposphere since 1979.”
For some reason Phil. does not want to say where he got this information from. It cannot be AQUA ch5, since even simpletons know the difference between “troposphere” (something rather complicated) and the 600hPa-layer (something rather simple). But who publishes the temperature of the troposphere that fast?

Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
August 3, 2010 at 10:04 pm
markinaustin says:
August 3, 2010 at 8:11 pm
it seems a bit doubleminded to say it has cooled since 1998 when we are picking a spike year.
….It probably makes more sense to take a longer time period, say 1000 years. and clearly there has been cooling since then.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_S5dFdpF6xm0/Sw1zpDmVKII/AAAAAAAAAvw/aNNJgsf4Q6s/s1600/medieval-warm-period-little-ice-age-chart.jpg
______________________________________________________________________
That is exactly what this paper did. It looked at the entire Holecene in the Arctic:
Temperature and precipitation history of the Arctic
“..Solar energy reached a summer maximum (9% higher than at present) ca 11 ka ago and has been decreasing since then, primarily in response to the precession of the equinoxes. The extra energy elevated early Holocene summer temperatures throughout the Arctic 1-3° C above 20th century averages, enough to completely melt many small glaciers throughout the Arctic, although the Greenland Ice Sheet was only slightly smaller than at present… As summer solar energy decreased in the second half of the Holocene, glaciers reestablished or advanced, sea ice expanded, and the flow of warm Atlantic water into the Arctic Ocean diminished. Late Holocene cooling reached its nadir during the Little Ice Age (about 1250-1850 AD), when sun-blocking volcanic eruptions and perhaps other causes added to the orbital cooling, allowing most Arctic glaciers to reach their maximum Holocene extent…”
This paper also agrees that we are at the point in the earth’s Milankovitch cycle that should usher in an ice age. The biggest question of course is why we are not covered in ice yet.
Lesson from the past: present insolation minimum holds potential for glacial inception (2007)
“Because the intensities of the 397 ka BP and present insolation minima are very similar, we conclude that under natural boundary conditions the present insolation minimum holds the potential to terminate the Holocene interglacial. Our findings support the Ruddiman hypothesis [Ruddiman, W., 2003. The Anthropogenic Greenhouse Era began thousands of years ago. Climate Change 61, 261–293], which proposes that early anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission prevented the inception of a glacial that would otherwise already have started….”
Orthodox Climate Scientists assume “early anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission prevented the inception of a glacial that would otherwise already have started… The biggest problem with this part of the CAGW theory, is it assumes no changes in the energy from the sun as received by the earth. However during the 20th century the sun has been very active according to this paper and NASA This is no longer true as we enter the new century according to the Solar Dynamics Observatory Mission News
Therefore actual data shows the earth is gradually headed downhill towards another glaciation, the only question is when and how. A quiet sun, cool ocean phases and a major volcanic eruption would be my guess as the trigger point. CO2 warming can not counteract the combined effects of the other big three. As the oceans cool the rate of CO2 absorption will increase.
Abrupt Climate Change: Should We Be Worried? – Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
“Most of the studies and debates on potential climate change, along with its ecological and economic impacts, have focused on the ongoing buildup of industrial greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and a gradual increase in global temperatures. This line of thinking, however, fails to consider another potentially disruptive climate scenario. It ignores recent and rapidly advancing evidence that Earth’s climate repeatedly has shifted abruptly and dramatically in the past, and is capable of doing so in the future.
Fossil evidence clearly demonstrates that Earthvs climate can shift gears within a decade….
But the concept remains little known and scarcely appreciated in the wider community of scientists, economists, policy makers, and world political and business leaders. Thus, world leaders may be planning for climate scenarios of global warming that are opposite to what might actually occur…“
As far as I am concerned neglecting change towards a COOLING world is down right criminal negligence – my biggest gripe with CAGW.
We are so busy watching the yapping little poodle we can not see the mammoth that just walked into the room.