By Dr. Roy Spencer
Despite cooling in the tropics, the global average lower tropospheric temperature anomaly has stubbornly refused to follow suit: +0.60 deg. C for September, 2010.
Since the daily global average sea surface temperature anomalies on our NASA Discover web page have now cooled to well below the 2002-2010 average, there remains a rather large discrepancy between these two measures. Without digging into the regional differences in the two datasets, I currently have no explanation for this.
For those following the race for warmest year in the satellite tropospheric temperature record (which began in 1979), 2010 is slowly approaching the record warm year of 1998. Here are the 1998 and 2010 averages for Julian Days 1 through 273:
1998 +0.590
2010 +0.553
YR MON GLOBE NH SH TROPICS 2009 1 0.251 0.472 0.030 -0.068 2009 2 0.247 0.565 -0.071 -0.045 2009 3 0.191 0.324 0.058 -0.159 2009 4 0.162 0.315 0.008 0.012 2009 5 0.139 0.161 0.118 -0.059 2009 6 0.041 -0.021 0.103 0.105 2009 7 0.429 0.190 0.668 0.506 2009 8 0.242 0.236 0.248 0.406 2009 9 0.505 0.597 0.413 0.594 2009 10 0.362 0.332 0.393 0.383 2009 11 0.498 0.453 0.543 0.479 2009 12 0.284 0.358 0.211 0.506 2010 1 0.648 0.860 0.436 0.681 2010 2 0.603 0.720 0.486 0.791 2010 3 0.653 0.850 0.455 0.726 2010 4 0.501 0.799 0.203 0.633 2010 5 0.534 0.775 0.292 0.708 2010 6 0.436 0.550 0.323 0.476 2010 7 0.489 0.635 0.342 0.420 2010 8 0.511 0.674 0.347 0.364 2010 9 0.603 0.556 0.651 0.284
[NOTE: These satellite measurements are not calibrated to surface thermometer data in any way, but instead use on-board redundant precision platinum resistance thermometers (PRTs) carried on the satellite radiometers. The PRT’s are individually calibrated in a laboratory before being installed in the instruments.]
Meanwhile, Sea Surface Temperatures Continue to Fall
Since I just provided the September 2010 global tropospheric temperature update, I decided it was time to update the global SST data record from the AMSR-E instrument flying on Aqua.
The following plot, updated through yesterday (October 4, 2010) shows that both the global average SST, and the Nino3.4 region average from the tropical E. Pacific, continue to cool.
(click on the plot for the full-size, undistorted version. Note that the global values have been multiplied by 10 for easier intercomparison with Nino3.4)
Past experience (and radiative-convective equilibrium) dictates that the global tropospheric temperature, still riding high at +0.60 deg. C for September, must cool in response to the cool ocean conditions.
But given Mother Nature’s sense of humor, I’ve given up predicting when that might occur. 
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…can I get in before Mr Gates to say its CO2……..?
“But given Mother Nature’s sense of humor, I’ve given up predicting when that might occur. ”
i can wholly sympathise.
Good read, thanks.
Could this be the result of residual water vapour ( created by the latest El Nino) in that portion of the atmosphere?
I currently have no explanation for this.
More temperature=More alms for the GW church. That’s i it!
BTW Al Gore will be preaching next Oct.13th. in Lima, Peru, South America….It seems that unbelievers have lately increased too much in the US for him to preach there, and times are hard ya know..gotto work… energy bills keeps on increasing.
Does the Naitonal Data Buoy Center (NDBC) SST data comparisons offer any clues?
BTW, one of the buoys near Honolulu is reporting a tsunami event.
How tightly connected are tropospheric temperature and surface temperature measurements? (in terms of energy and time)
Temperature and heat are not the same thing. We should be more concerned with the relative changes in heat (energy). Since water has a much higher heat capacity than the atmosphere, most of this is happening in the oceans.
Groan – what’s the carbon footprint for beer?
The time frame you’ve chosen skews the Southern hemisphere warmer because it predominately represents Summer and the end of the last El Nino?
[REPLY – I doubt it. it’s compared with all the other Septembers. and El Nino has been gone for a while. ~ Evan]
Isn’t this completely logical? If you have a body of energy if one part cools the other part warms. Just displacement. The energy has to go some where.
[REPLY – Not in this case. La Nina results (eventually) in cooler air temperatures. The cooler ocean surface is an increase of upwelling of cooler water from the (slightly) deeper ocean. It didn’t get cooler, it was cool in the first place. ~ Evan]
“Since the daily global average sea surface temperature anomalies on our NASA Discover web page have now cooled to well below the 2002-2010 average, there remains a rather large discrepancy between these two measures. Without digging into the regional differences in the two datasets, I currently have no explanation for this. ”
Indeed, there may be an explanation, but it’s a very odd one.
I have downloaded and compared every Unisys image Anomaly & Data for the last 2 months.
The Anomaly moves and is cooling, but the Data image seems to be nearly frozen.
It is as if the Data image being presented has not been updated, but the Anomaly has.
Somebody has computed the Anomaly, but thrown the Data away.
Holy Anomalymometers, Dr. Spencer, the Thermometer is now in the museum of climatology modeling.
> Isn’t this completely logical? If you have a body of energy if one part cools the other
> part warms. Just displacement. The energy has to go some where.
Yes, but eventually they should reach equilibrium and have the same temperature, unless there is a _forcing_ that disturbs equilibrium. That’s what Dr. Spencer is looking for. I’m sure he’ll find it. The important issue in this search is to consider all of the feasible radiative forcings, yes even GHG’s and insolation.
😐
SST dropping, LT rising; it means a temperature crash is coming in the next six months. Check the current SOI.
Average SOI for last 30 days: 24.8
Average SOI for last 90 days: 21.6
Daily contribution to SOI calculation: 26.4
Why not mention that this is actually a RECORD anomaly for september in the whole dataset? Also, the 13-month running average sets a new record high.
Despite these two remarkable (but strangely overlooked) feats, the words “cooler” and “cooling” are used again and again in Dr Spencer’s post. [snip -personal attack]
Soo-I would predict a blizzard in Lima, Peru, on the 13th?
Where can information be found regarding cloud cover and its variation? How does the shift in PDO affect average cloud cover over land vs water?
“Without digging into the regional differences in the two datasets, I currently have no explanation for this.”
Is there a plot of the un-smoothed measurements at much finer resolution (e.g. daily). I’d like to see if these show a nice transition across the month. If they are highly variable from sample-to-sample, it would tend to support my concern that the trend is distorted by (spatial) aliasing and there would be no point in trying to interpret aliased data.
Does anybody have a plot of the dailyt data?
Dr. Spenser,
Your AMSU temperature trends from NOAA-15 show consistantly lower temps since early June as compared to 2009. I would guess that September should be in the +.4 to .5 range. How is this different from what is displayed here?
rbateman says: “I have downloaded and compared every Unisys image Anomaly & Data for the last 2 months.”
The weekly animation from Unisys shows variability for the past two months, as you said:
http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom_loop.gif
But the NCDC’s OI.v2 SST data has finally decided to drop globally:
http://i53.tinypic.com/14jc4gg.jpg
The drop is tough to pick up in the map animation.
It also seems that the running 13-month average has reached a new high. Little wonder with the hottest September in satellite record. Perhaps an active sun is to blame, who knows. However, what goes up must come down. I’m already looking forward to the cooling that’s been predicted for some time.
Southern hemisphere up by 0.31?
Enneagram says:
October 5, 2010 at 8:23 am
‘BTW Al Gore will be preaching next Oct.13th. in Lima, Peru, South America’
Hasn’t he realised how cold it was down there over their winter? Tough gig eh? One can hope the bum’s rush awaits him when he tells them how hot things are getting.
There was this theory that the satellite measurements might react a bit strongly to El Niño/La Niña events. This was my impression too (see the graph, also outside the monster Niño peak of 1998).
Is this connection starting to break, or is it too soon to conclude this? If it is so, could the change have been introduced by recent adjustments to the measurement methodology?
Teasing out the numbers, there is a very large increase in the SH anomaly from August to September. Given that this is winter in the SH, does this represent an increase in the absolute temperature (as the mean would also be increasing from August to September)?
I can easily see that monthly changes in the anomaly can be the result of comparing a stable absolute to a moving average, but in this case, that doesn’t apply. A jump of >0.3 C in absolute terms in one month represents a massive transfer of energy from somewhere. As mentioned above, transfer from the ocean is the only option as it is the only source large enough for this.
A few days/weeks ago, Anthony had a posting showing the cooling of the SST after passage of hurricanes, but this was in the tropics/north Atlantic. Does anyone know if there has been similar activity in the SH?
I would have expected an increase in NH and tropical tropospheric temps to go along with the energy transfer from hurricane activity (and subsequent drop in SST), although this may have happened in absolute terms since the drop seen this month is the anomaly (not the absolute).
Need to keep remembering that the anomaly is only relative to the mean and it is not the absolute when it comes to trying to understand the energy transfers.