RSS global temperature anomaly takes a dive

Mr. Watts,
The Answer to this is simple.
1. Lack of sunspots
2. A negative decline in sunspots since 2003
3. Tim used too many tele-prompters, deflecting heat from hot air speeches
4. All the Greenies surrounded the Oil Men at a conference and yelled, “Red Rover, red Rover, we dare the Oil Men over. George Bushes to the rescue..
5. They moved all the gauges away from graves and turbo- prop engines.
Paul
REPLY: Humorous indeed, but on #5 I’ll point out this is satellite data, and last time I looked there were no BBQ’s or parking lots next to the satellite – Anthony

In 2nd sentence, “There’s been quit …” should read “quite” …

Roy Spencer reports this on a monthly basis. The drop is not unexpected. It is about what I was expecting. The big question is how low will it go and how long will it stay down. If natural systems tend to achieve or attempt to achieve equilibrium this El Niño to La Niña and then to neutral, maybe or maybe not will, I’m sure, provide example.

Can any muti-talented contributor find a similar sequence of circumstances from the historical record? This would be a great time to show how your favourite weighting of Solar Radiance, cosmic rays, cloudiness, magnetic anomaly, ocean oscillations and so on is able to predict the temperature movement with some accuracy. Any mix is allowed, even GHG’s.
The solar guys have done a pretty good job of forecasting, ‘this is going to be a Dalton Minimum…” or ‘Maunder Minimum…” with lines and trends and such.
So come on guys: How far? How fast? Where will it stop? What comes after?
[‘guys’ is a generic term referring equally to the male and female sub.s.]

Thanks Anthony. I used the RSS data in my recent article, “Climate stupidity, part 1”,
http://funwithgovernment.blogspot.com/2010/11/climate-stupidity-part-1.html
I have been challenging the top warmers in the Philippines like Oxfam, Greenpeace and WWF, to a public debate. Still zero reply from any of them. I use scientifc data of course, like the UAH and RSS data.

Just a few charts. I’ve averaged the RSS and UAH temps for these charts.
First, the Nino 3.4 Index against the RSS/UAH average for the Tropics. Pretty clear where we are going. Another -0.5C by Feb/March.
http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/6326/ensovsrssuahtropoct10.png
And then how the Tropics versus the Global temperatures have developed over time. Global should get close to Zero by March.
http://img585.imageshack.us/img585/4914/ensovsrssuahtropglobalo.png
And then the RSS/UAH average global temp versus Hadcrut3. Almost the same line so it easy to see where Hadcrut3 is going as well (GISS is another story).
http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/1508/rssuahversushadcrut3.png

I have been wondering if UAH should do a quality check. Its calculated temperature on Channel 5 does not seem to be consistent with what has been happening to SST. The two need not move in tandem necessarily, but the divergence has been persistent enough for me to wonder. Both UAH and RSS have needed to make noticeable adjustments in its calculations in the past when quality issues were suspected/uncovered.

Now what we need is a nice VE-5 or 6 eruption, Merapi, in Indonesia seems to be
heading for a big one -Got Coal?
No, I’m not wishing that, it’s just that Volcanism seems to be on the uptick as
temps are on the downtick

Just weather:
Darwin, Australia, had the lowest November temperature on record the other day. Also:
November records were broken in Batchelor, where it barely reached 25 degrees; Katherine, 25.6 degrees; Pirlangimpi, 27; Delamere, 25 and Wadeye, 28. Jabiru reached 28.6, equaling its November record.

Pamela Gray says:
November 4, 2010 at 8:13 pm
The heat begins escaping in the N. Hem. as the sun goes down, and the S. Hem. continues to stay cool.
I say we are headed for a repeat of the 1970’s cooling period for starters:
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml
And as long as the Sun stays in it’s semi-dormancy of low to very low solar activity, the bottom drops out when the Atlantic flips phase. In the meantime, it’s downhill to the Dalton as the Sunspot Activity slides under even 1901:
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/TempGr/uSC24vs13_14.GIF
Without getting long-winded, the Sun’s behavior is that of half-cycling (one side predominately blank) and well into SC24 and devoid of sharp upramp. Elevated Neutron Counts, low clouds, moved jet streams and shrunken outer atmosphere are on the menu.
Gobble, gobble.

Anyone know what the StDev on the dataset is?

Depending on the scale of the anger of the Gods, there might have to be a Mount Merapi (literally Mountain of Fire) cooling added to the temperature records.

Ironically some might want a large eruption to cover up the current cooling trend with another eruption so they can just claim that “warming is delayed due to another volcano”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Merapi
Mount Merapi joins yet another volcano getting angry: http://pathstoknowledge.net/2009/12/21/mount-mayon-gets-ready-to-blow-and-potentially-cool-the-planet-depending-on-the-size-of-the-erruption.

‘Tis a pity that we can’t determine the actual temperature of the air itself.
I have a reasonable degree of confidence in the temps of surface ocean water now, with data from buoys, but there is a whole lot of hot air in proxies, seems to me.

Blimey!! you guys will need hospitalisation if it ever gets down near the mean again.

It looks like the last HadCrut3 land and marine global anomaly data was showing the same trend:

APR 2010   0.579
MAY 2010   0.511
JUN 2010   0.533
JUL 2010   0.534
AUG 2010   0.475
SEP 2010   0.391

@pwl, it does not matter. All RSS is is a radio receiver that receives signals at the low end of the O2 absorption band around 50 Ghz. About the only thing that matter is the temperature of the “cold load” but this has been mastered for over 40 years.

Anything in the Argo data?

All things considered it should keep going down, especially as SSTs plummet (see Roy Spencers site). Also is there any data on cloudiness as here in the east coast of Oz we now have bleak weather nearly every day (average daily sunshine is running at least an hour below average atm) – it’s starting to feel like London (and this is in Sydney not Melbourne) and they reckon this sort of weather will be around till after christmas at least. SOI is still quite high (around +20 for 4 months now). I think we are in a regime change (this is what a cold PDO and the 1960s was like), with the added impact of a cold sun and yet to be impacted by increasing volcanism. Indonesia now has over 20 volcanoes on increased alert levels.

5/11/2010 sydney australia still have the heater on below avg temp all over nsw some snow fell on the alps queensland coldest temp since 1949 . my tomatoes have stopped growing ,rain and cloudy days for the past months it looks like a wet cold summer in australia could some body tell Al Gore to up the thermostat please .and our govt is going to bugger up australia with a carbon tax. If there brains where made of dynamite thay would would not have enought to blow there hat off

At the GISS Surface Temperature Analysis site, I’ve been checking some surface stations originally identified by the late John Daly as known to be rural, properly supervised, having continuous consistent data and set in a climatically strategic location. Most are showing significant falls ranging between 1.2 and 3 degrees over the last 5-7 years and the trend is definitely down. Some examples are Valentia, Ireland; Tiree, UK; Tromo, Norway; Korf, Russia; Akureyri, Iceland; Cold Bay, Alaska; Nome, Alaska; Cedar Lake, Washington; Eagle Pass, Texas; Punta Arenas, Chile; Kauai, Hawaii; Geraldton, Australia; Vostok, Antarctica; Mawson, Antarctica and many more.
These are in the Appendix to John’s excellent 10th May 2000 article “What’s Wrong With The Surface Record” at http://www.john-daly.com/ges/surftmp/surftemp.htm
The GISS map is clickable and easy to use. Check them out and perhaps have a look at similar long-term reliable stations in your own area of the world.

HR;
I compared RSS with UAH and GISS and HADCRUT and NCDC using the KNMI climate explorer. It’s quite amazing. In terms of anomoly the spread over the different data sets is now about 0.5oC>>
This may possibly be the only field of science where modern technology provides the means for ever increasing precision, and yet the major measurement systems diverge. In every other field of science, as the various research approaches each close in on the right answer, they have no option but to converge. There must be some trick to getting rid of this divergence problem seemingly caused by declining precision somehow hidden in one or more of the datasets.

Pat states above….’12 fires a year from 1955 to 1985′
I love it. He’s refering to local history, to the testimony of our older citizens, to easily checked records and reports, in local press for example.
I think we have the CAGW mob by the nuts on the science. They get that “rabbit in the headlights” look when they come up against someone with a basic grasp of physics and simply become abusive when challenged on that front.
But what about ‘history’?
I often ask warmists what they know about Greenland? And on one great occasion I was close to the internet when someone told me that stories about Greenland being warmer a thousand years ago than it is today were part of the ‘disinformation’ being put about by oil companies!
It was great joy that I took him to the Danish National Museum website and watched as he read and little flickers of doubt moved across his face.
I gently moved him on to the North West Passage and asked him why so many European Explorers sought it and why it was described a ‘legendary’ ?
I couldn’ t say I ‘turned’ him but simply by showing him information from such authoratitive sources that deflated the CAGW scare, I think I might have set him on the path to knowledge.
In recent times gathering knowledge has become the domain of professional scientists. And after they have interpreted that knowledge it is presented it to us via their friends in the media. I think they egg each other on.
Perhaps we should learn to trust our own eyes for a change. For instance the next time you’re flying in a jet check the temperature outside the cabin… minus thirty degrees or thereabouts. Hmnn doesn’t sound like there’s an invisible pane of glass trapping heat in the atmosphere after all.
Let’s look into our own history which is a rich source of information: talk to our older relatives and friends, check local newspaper records, literature, fiction even.
What about archeology, how did all those people manage to live in the Scottish Highlands, what happened to Timbuctoo, Ur, Angkor Watt, or Machu Picchu?
Let’s break away from the dreadful anal boxed in arguments that they endlessly recycle based on the very shakey premise of their pseudo science and look out the window, or look in your wardrobe, rely on your own powers of observation gather your own intelligence.
Ask any ninety year old farmer if he believes in global warming!
Ask any lifelong fisherman if he thinks the sea level is rising or the weather is different.
I remember a sit-com character, a hypochondriac who went around with a thermometer in his mouth constantly horrified by the readings he was getting. Warmists are a bit like that. The earth’s temperature is more closely and consistently measured now than it ever has been before and yet it still doesn’t seem to be increasing rapidly out of trend…if anything it’s cooling and that’s using their own data!
Scientifically we’ve won the argument. We now need to remind people of the climate’s fascinating and complex rythms: Dickensian Christmases, Edwardian Summers. The Dust Bowl era, the Summer of Love! Let’s ditch the guilt and enjoy our beautiful planet.
I recommend that anyone who is really worried about global warming watch the trend over the next thirty to forty years and then make their minds up.

Thanks charles, that was a beautiful piece of writing, surely you should write a book. I have almost given up trying to make people see the other side of the global warming coin, but it seems to be a view deeply held and akin to a religion or indoctrination. still I can’t help trying to promote discussion. please keep writing.
(don’t tell me, you have written a book…if so do let me know)

East coast Aussies who, by need or habit, observe more than bare numbers in regard to weather, would have noticed a new trend beginning in ’07 which, regardless of El Nino and a very mild winter in ’09, is persisting. Namely, winds are more southerly and easterly in origin. The inland westerlies which dominated spring and late winter for decades are far less frequent. And, as I know from watching my bamboo so closely at this time of year, last year’s El Nino did not bring with it the expected drought and severe westerlies. There was a lack of storms, and consequently valuable nitrogen, but no final lack of rain. The great dust-storm of ’09 came in on a westerly, but the dust was due to inland rains and siltation, and the westerlies could not be compared to what I experienced here in past decades. Thunder in winter was once freakish, but we’ve had it four winters running.
It’s back to the fifties – almost. The only piece missing is the daily “southerly-busters” through summer. Stay tuned.
I’d like to break one of those “records” that the climate crew love so much, and start my very first fire in November. Trouble is…all my kindling is as wet as the Sydney Cricket Ground.

charles nelson says: (November 5, 2010 at 1:14 am) I recommend that anyone who is really worried about global warming watch the trend over the next thirty to forty years and then make their minds up.
Like, ah… get the grandchildren to communicate this information to me “on the other side”, Charles? (Even though I am not even vaguely worried.)

If the average of the November 2010 and December 2010 anomalies will be below 0.525 °C, and given the much lower October reading, I guess that it will be, then 2010 will be cooler than 1998 according to RSS AMSU.

@Kington:
“That is the safety net for the careers of CAGW promoters is it not? By the time it is unquestionably clear due to actual conditions decades from now their careers will have ended. ”
Excellent point. With all the uncertainty in the data sources (RSS, GISS, UAH etc) it’s a lot like trying to predict heads or tails while the coin is still in the air.
But, because of the eco-fascists, it’s clear that free nations can’t afford to wait until the coin finally lands (in a few decades).

mosomoso says:
November 5, 2010 at 2:00 am
yes – my local farmers reckon it’s more like it used to be back in the 50s 60s.
Tonight I had a heater on, this time last year I was using the aircon during the day with 36C+ temps.

Crispin in Waterloo says:
November 4, 2010 at 8:00 pm
“Can any muti-talented contributor find a similar sequence of circumstances from the historical record? This would be a great time to show how your favourite weighting of Solar Radiance, cosmic rays, cloudiness, magnetic anomaly, ocean oscillations and so on is able to predict the temperature movement with some accuracy. Any mix is allowed, even GHG’s.”
Please do not dignify this exercise by using the terminology of science. You are talking about pattern matching on graphs, not prediction. Prediction requires at least one reasonably well confirmed hypothesis and some statement of initial conditions. At this time, so called climate science has neither.

Might be a cold winter coming to south central Texas too. This morning was the second frost of the fall season which is rather early. Our falls are more like Toronto summers. Speaking of Toronto – snow flurries for y’all on the morrow.

Re discrepancy between RSS and UAH: didn’t we have a post not long ago that illustrated a lag with lower Tropo (UAH) temps. UAH is going down baby.

To: sHx & morgo:
Wow. Cold-weather gear and heat still needed in the Southern Hemisphere late spring? Amazing. Sydney’s at latitude 34 degrees South; for us Northern Hemisphere types, this would be equivalent to the 5th of May in Wilmington, North Carolina having the same conditions you describe.

phlogiston: Sorry, didn’t read your entire comment.
You wrote, “La Nina features strong east Pacific cold water upwelling while in El Nino cycles this upwelling is greatly reduced.”
The upwelling in the eastern equatorial Pacific is eliminated during an El Nino. Trade winds slacken to intiate the El Nino, and during the El Nino, the trade winds reverse.
You asked, “For instance – could the cold water upwelling in the east Pacific in a La Nina cool the air over the east Pacific – increasing its density – and in turn fuelling the trade winds that further drive the upwelling. ”
And looking at the other side of the Pacific, (because it’s easier for me to think on that side), the increased trade winds during the La Nina drive more warm water to the Pacific Warm Pool, increasing convection there, increasing the inflow of air, increasing the trade winds, which would increase the upwelling in the east. Walker Circulation.
The ocean and atmosphere are coupled in this way, but the positive feedbacks reach a point of…saturation (?) for lack of a better word.

Nothing out of the ordinary when going from El Nino to La Nina.

Don’t worry… they’ll come up with another ‘correction’ shortly….

I’ve now done the work on both dataset and in the process made a discovery.
Both datasets, rss/uah have a time offset to do with annual cycle and harmonics. This is mad. Guessing, it is to do with the quantised orbital period.
Allowing this to be taken into account produces a better result, but I am nervous without knowing what is going on.
The compensated figures for October 2010
RSS +0.279
UAH +0.306
Plot here.
http://daedalearth.wordpress.com/

I don’t know why you are making such a big deal about one month’s figure – all you have to do is look at the graph and you see changes of that magnitude, or greater, several times in the past 30 years. Also all you have to do is look and see that the graph starts at -0.2 in 1979 and is currently at +0.3 – so what cooling is this that is happening?

R. Gates says:
November 5, 2010 at 11:48 am
Nothing out of the ordinary when going from El Nino to La Nina.
———————————-
What you fail to realize is that, yes, there is a normal up and down from El Nino to La Nina.
And therefore we can undo these ups and downs – take them out – and there is quite a bit of consistency in how the temperatures respond to an El Nino, La Nina so it is not difficult to do.
And then … we can see how much global warming has actually occurred without having that being obscurred by the ENSO cycle.
And then we find out, there is far less warming than predicted by the theory and by the models – less than half of that expected.
We can check Lacis / Schmidt’s assertion that CO2 controls nearly the entire greenhouse effect (something I noticed the first time I charted up the theory’s predictions) and we find out that, so far, CO2 is controlling only about 30% of the greenhouse effect – not 85%.
And we then understand why Hansen plays-up the temperature trend when it is rising due to an El Nino – effectively allowing global warming to take credit for what the El Nino normally does. We also see that the pro-AGW set then downplays any reduction that occurs from a La Nina.
Objective scientific-minded people notice these things and start to lose trust in a field which insists that we just trust them – you shouldn’t check our results – that makes you against science. And objective, scientific-mided people continue to move toward the other side every time they see this.

Don B says:
November 5, 2010 at 4:40 am
Their predictions were miles out. In the beginning, Hathaway and team forecast the most violent and active SC ever ever. Since then they have steadily reduced it to where it is now and it is still running below their average forecast. We will see how it turns out, won’t we. Hathaway kept saying there’s nothing unusual to see here, move along. Oh how wrong can you be, and still call yourself an expert?

Bob Tisdale
Nov 5, 9:42 am
Thanks for the explanation, I’ll have to read up on Walker circulation. I had always thought of ENSO as an south-east Pacific phenomenon, it looks like the west Pacific plays an equally important role.

The volcanoes that are popping off all over of late can’t be helping things either.