Feb UAH global temperature anomaly goes slightly negative

can we have (or is theresomewhere) a direct comparison graph – equally scaled – with all (i.e, GISS, HAdcrut, CET, etc) the major various surface station datasets? and possibly also the SST data?
It would be interesting to note if the satellite data reflects/mirrors any of these datasets…..

I was expecting a plunge at least comparable with 2008 and 1999. In fact from the fanfare preceeding it, I was expecting at to be a real decent dip down comparable with the 1990’s. Seems to be shaping up as a damp squib.

And I’ve posted the preliminary February 2011 Sea Surface Temperature update:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2011/02/preliminary-february-2011-sst-anomaly.html

Always remember: with the warmists who post here, you cannot prove a negative.

I suppose two trillion dollar questions are;
a) Will it continue to drop, and
b) Will it go as low as the 1999/2000 reference?

1998 is such an outlier (recognizing that it is only 30 years of data) and the ramp up is so great, might there not be another source for this exceptional spike? I read something about a suspected gamma ray burst about a year ago but nothing since. Any information on this hypothesis or other suggestions why ’98 was such a large change in less than a year?
Bill

As the satellite also measures water content of the atmosphere, is there any planned effort to calculate the atmospheric enthalpy and thus its actual heat content, rather than a relatively meaningless temperature metric?

Could someone please explain how the PRTs are used in the derivation of a temperature value for the lower troposphere from detected microwaves?
Or, indeed, how the temperature values are derived at all?

Jay Currie says:
March 3, 2011 at 12:05 am
Cool.
In more ways than one.
Thanks for the update
Cool?? In what way? Despite a strong La Nina, deep solar minimum and negative PDO (or is it?) LT temperatures have only dropped to the average for the 1981-2010 period. Current temperatures are still above most of those recorded in the 1980s and 1990s – and only slightly down on temperatures recorded during the peak of the 1986/87 El Nino .
Unless there is another dip in temperatures this looks like being the warmest La Nina on record.

The temp may go up a little in March, or stay about the same again, but I expect it is likely to then continue down until June, to about -0.2 to -0.4 °C. If the ocean oscillations crowd is right, the trend over the next 10 years should be around a baseline of 0.1 °C, varying by only about -0.01 °C per year (invisible to the eye from year to year).
The AGW believers and luke-warmers are trying to negotiate a bailout for the credibility of climate science, but serious consideration should be given to the view that anyone still promulgating the current AGW consensus (or the “greenhouse effect”, or radiation transfer theory as currently applied in climate science) should be thrown out as incompetent. Let the bad science fail, don’t bail it out.

SO whatever weather-like happens now can not be related to “global warming”, since the planet is as warm/or cool as in 1980. Or..?

Kev-in-Uk says:
March 3, 2011 at 12:25 am

can we have (or is theresomewhere) a direct comparison graph – equally scaled – with all (i.e, GISS, HAdcrut, CET, etc) the major various surface station datasets? and possibly also the SST data?
It would be interesting to note if the satellite data reflects/mirrors any of these datasets…..

http://www.climate4you.com/ClimateReflections.htm#20080927:%20Reflections%20on%20the%20correlation%20between%20global%20temperature%20and%20atmospheric%20CO2

Gee, its the coldest its been since the last La Nina 3 years ago.

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John Finn says:
March 3, 2011 at 4:49 am
Cool?? In what way? Despite a strong La Nina, deep solar minimum and negative PDO (or is it?) LT temperatures have only dropped to the average for the 1981-2010 period.
****
“Deep solar minimum” has no effect, in my & some others’ opinions. IMO, Atlantic & Arctic oscillations do, and they’re not in their coldest modes by any means.

Nigel Harris,
I think you made a typo in your final paragraph.
In the penultimate paragraph you say that the trend over the last 13 years is not statistically distinguishable from zero.
The statement in the final paragraph should therefore be:
“any rational investigation of the available data is going to conclude that the earth is not warming”.

This article answers a question for those still confused about how O2 and N2 can absorb/emit energy, yet accomplish this without absorbing/emitting in the thermal IR spectrum. How would an individual O2 or N2 molecule cool off in a vacuum, if not by emitting photons in the thermal IR spectrum?
The article specifies that the satellites detect the temperature of O2 by taking readings in the microwave spectrum. Thus, O2 absorbs/emits in the microwave spectrum (which is directly adjacent to the thermal IR spectrum). It’s too bad that this wasn’t easily available with a Google search of “O2 absorption spectrum”. But if you change that to “O2 microwave absorption” you’ll get plenty of hits. As for N2, the only article I could find is behind a paywall. Radio band energy emission?
The physical chemists are right. A black body is an imaginary, ideal surface that can absorb/emit any wavelength. Individual atoms can only absorb/emit in specific quanta. The larger the variety of atoms in your object, the more it will approximate a black body. The more your object is composed of a single lighter element, the less it will approximate a black body (fewer orbiting electrons equals fewer possibilities in energy level changes).

I’m not sure what is the significance of a global temperature record of only 30 year duration. Even if 2011 turns out to be the hottest on record, the record is only 30 years long, it is not relevent. Planning to alter our entire global economy due to a 30 year trend is like changing our economy based on the stock market trend during the final .1 seconds before the closing bell rings. Three decades in earth years does not a trend make.

To someone who was there, 2010-2011 looks very much like 1975-1976. Most of February was warm in 1976. However, 1976 was the beginning of remarkably cold weather in most of the nation but especially in the midwest. In fact, 1977 through 1982 were the stuff of nightmare in the midwest. That is what I expect for the next five years.

In response to an earlier comment, deep solar minimum certainly does have an effect as does the strong La Nina. Given two marked ‘negative’ forcings the global temperatures have remained remarkably high. I wonder what other forcing might be at work here?

Juraj V. says:
March 3, 2011 at 5:48 am
SO whatever weather-like happens now can not be related to “global warming”, since the planet is as warm/or cool as in 1980. Or..?
/////////////////////////////////////////////////
Whilst this point is rather simplistic, whenever any one suggests to me that recent ‘extreme’ events are caused by global warming, this is the response that I give them. It is crazy to suggest that a warming of a few tenths of a degree C can have caused so called recent extrem events.

Nigel Harris says:
March 3, 2011 at 6:33 am
“….But for now, any rational investigation of the available data is going to conclude that the earth is warming. There’s nothing in UAH or any other data set that suggests otherwise.”
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
The interpretation of the graph is inherently subjective. However, my view of the graph is that if I were to draw a line through the graph, I would in fact draw two flat lenes, the first at about -0.16C level covering the period between 1979 and 1996 and a second flat line at about + 0.2C level covering the period between 2001 to date.
During these periods there does not appear to have been any statistical warming. There appears to have been a step change around the 1998 El Nino which released a lot of energy (heat) into the atmosphere.

Bon from the UK said
“I was expecting a plunge at least comparable with 2008 and 1999. In fact from the fanfare preceeding it, I was expecting at to be a real decent dip down comparable with the 1990′s. Seems to be shaping up as a damp squib.”
If you look at the data for 1999 there were months where temps bumped up before falling lower.
I dont know what will happen from here but I would NOT be amazed if it had a fall in March. Even if la-nina ends the subsequent warming has some lag of a few months..
My looking at the ocean ref page and the ENSO ref page ocean profiles makes me think La nina is about to weaken but again I am no expert so what would I know, I could be completely wrong.

Caleb says:
March 3, 2011 at 3:07 pm
John Finn says:
March 3, 2011 at 4:49 am
“…and only slightly down on temperatures recorded during the peak of the 1986/87 El Nino . ”
You have forgotten the cooling of that time. In 1982 El Chichon in Mexico put up even more ash than Pinatubo did in 1991. Check out this graph of Mauna Loa data at:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Mauna_Loa_atmospheric_transmission.png
In essence, the 1986/87 is bracketed by two major volcanic cooling events. Is it any wonder that world temperatures of that time were a bit subdued?
What do you think current temperatures would look like, if they were bracketed by volcanoes like El Chichon and Pinatubo?
1. El Chichon was in 1982. El Nino was in 1986/87. Stratospheric aerosols cleared long before then as your Mauna Loa link shows.
2. Pinatubo cannot possibly have had any effect on global temperatures in 1986/87.

Realizing this is only 31 years of data, but there is an obvious step change around late ’97/early ’98. Eye balling the period of ’79-’97 and you get an apparent mean of -0.15 (my best guess). Now look at the ’98-‘2010 data and I see a mean of +0.22, a step change of +0.37 approx.
Step changes indicate that an additional input occurred, not the gradual warming projected by the AGW camp. This happened in the second half of Solar Cycle 23, which was the biggest of three close together and intense Solar Cycles. We saw the PDO go negative in ’02 and the AMO is supposedly swinging to negative now. These should have resulted in more cooling than are seeing in the satellite data, even accounting for the thermal lag from Earth’s oceans. I believe that some external source of energy other than our Sun’s raised the mean temp of the Earth and is finally gradually dissipating. Any comments, ideas or suggestions as to the source of this step change? Again, a gamma ray burst might be the cause.
Bill

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Sunspot says:
March 3, 2011 at 12:30 pm
Beng
I think you mean that you and others are hoping that there is no correlation between Solar Minimums and colder temperatures. We certainly cannot rely on the junk data from NASA GISS.
****
No, I’m not hoping anything, just what I observe from Leif S’s very extensive & detailed work on this subject. I’ll agree that it isn’t settled yet.

To those who have posted links to my initial query – thank you. I have added them to be viewed more thoroughly later.

“Dermot O’Logical says:
March 3, 2011 at 2:50 am
If I may ask two honest questions of AGW proponents.
For how long would the UAH anomaly need to be at or below zero for you to accept that the AGW theory is incorrect?
How low would the UAH anomaly need to be for you to accept that the AGW theory is incorrect?”
I am not an AGW proponent, but talked to one about a year ago. We discussed Phil Jones’ answers from the February, 2010 interview regarding the past 8 years (cooling by 0.12 C per decade) and the past 15 years (warming by 0.12 C per decade). He said he did not pay much attention to anything 8 years or less but 15 years was somewhat significant. He was also extremely upset with newspapers simply giving the headline “No warming for 15 years” without mentioning the other detail about the significance.
So in terms of the questions raised above, I would say the questions need to be modified slightly to read as follows: If the UAH anomaly averages 0 until the end of October, 2011, would it be the case that one could say that the significance level of warming over the last 15 years is less than 50%, or that the significance level of no change over the last 15 years is more than 50%? (As you may guess, I chose October since that is just before the next big conference in South Africa.) I know the experts at WUWT can wordsmith my questions much better. I do have one question of the statistics experts here. If an average of 0 over the next 8 months does not allow that statement to be made, what would the average anomaly have to be over the next 8 months so we can say there is less than a 50% chance of warming over the last 15 years?

Caleb says:
March 4, 2011 at 6:40 pm
I’m not sure what your point is. I commented that current LT temperatures – during a La Nina AND a weak solar cycle – were only slightly lower than LT temperatures during the 1986/87 El Nino when the sun was particularly active. Now we know that ENSO events (El Nino/La Nina) can affect global temperatures by up to 0.5 deg. This suggests
1. Solar activity is a bit part player in climate change. This is something we know already since the sun’s output does not change sufficiently to explain the changes.
2. Some other factor apart from the known factors such as ENSO is causing warming.
You mentioned that Pinatubo and El Chichon may be a factor in the lower 1986/87 temperatures. I responded by saying that stratospheric aerosols had cleared by the mid-1980s and that Pinatubo could no possibley have affected the 1986/87 temepratures. Perhaps you think it could. You might not be alone here. After all, a number of people seem to think that a solar cycle which didn’t get underway until 1964 was responsible for post-1940 cooling.
That, like your suggestion that the 1991 Pinatubo eruption somehow caused coolings ~5 year earlier, would be “remarkable”.
[Change your tone – lose the sarcasm – or your next comment will be snipped. The other commenter may be in error, but you can at least be more civil ~jove, mod]

Bear in mind that Dr Spencer recently moved the anomaly ‘zero reference’ up by about 0.1C
– the anomaly used to reference to the average for 1979 – 2000, and now it’s referenced to the 1970 – 2010 average.
– and since the temperature of the period 2000 – 2010 were generally higher than peceding 20 years, this (re-calibrating the anomaly zero reference) has had the effect of bringing all the anomalies down by 0.1C
– so, if Dr Spencer had still been using the zero point he was using last year, then last month’s anomoly would have would have been about +0.1C.
– and so the headline wouldn’t have been quite so eye-catching.