NOAA/NCDC just published their State of the Climate Report for May 2013, and in it, are some claims about global temperature that look just plain wrong when compared to other global data sets.
They claim:
- The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for May 2013 tied with 1998 and 2005 as the third warmest on record, at 0.66°C (1.19°F) above the 20th century average of 14.8°C (58.6°F).
- The global land surface temperature was 1.11°C (2.00°F) above the 20th century average of 11.1°C (52.0°F), also the third warmest May on record. For the ocean, the May global sea surface temperature was 0.49°C (0.88°F) above the 20th century average of 16.3°C (61.3°F), tying with 2003 and 2009 as the fifth warmest May on record.
NOAA says that GHCN has tied for third warmest Global Temperature in 119 years, but that just doesn’t jibe with Dr. Roy Spencer’s UAH data.
UAH says 0.07°C for May. Source: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/06/uah-global-temperature-update-for-may-2013-0-07-deg-c/
The RSS temperature anomaly dataset is also much lower than NCDC is reporting:
Source: http://www.remss.com/data/msu/monthly_time_series/RSS_Monthly_MSU_AMSU_Channel_TTT_Anomalies_Ocean_v03_3.txt
UAH/RSS measure the lower troposphere, instead of the 2 meter surface temperature as done in GHCN by NCDC, and there usually a lower value for UAH/RSS than NCDC surface data for that reason, but the discrepancy usually isn’t this large.
NCDC’s claim also doesn’t jibe with the WeatherBell 2 meter global temperature reanalysis from Ryan Maue, which shows a anomaly value of -0.024C for the global average.
*Note: 2 meter reanalysis map above is for the entire month of May, with final run on May 31st, 2013. It is not for a single day as some suggest.
Even NASA GISS is lower according to their May monthly combined global data which comes in at +0.56°C compared to NCDC’s claimed value of 0.66°C
Source: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
I think one of two things has happened:
1. NCDC may have made some sort of processing error.
2. Due to the circumstantial lateness of the May NOAA SOTC report, this is one of those times where maybe many of the CLIMAT reports are lagging, and they don’t have much of a complete data set. If you watch the numbers after the month they claim, they always change later as more data comes in. Watching the data later may tell us.
One thing is clear, since GISS almost always reads higher than other datasets, including NOAA, and in this case NCDC’s claim is higher than any comparable dataset, it doesn’t seem believable. Perhaps a correction will be forthcoming.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
UAH and RSS are not measuring land temperatures, and generally do not correlate that well with land temperatures on a monthly basis (though they correlate pretty well annually). The discrepancy with GISS is a bit more interesting, though there are some methodological differences that can lead to different values (e.g. NCDC doesn’t interpolate nearly as much as GISS); I’ll download the latest GHCN data from the NCDC web site and see how many stations have reported so far.
REPLY: Zeke no need to lecture me on what I already know (and routinely publish about) about UAH/RSS and the lower troposphere. I’m simply pointing out large discrepancies, usually not that large. BTW the 2meter reanalysis temp from WeatherBell has been right on in many occasions, so I tend to trust it as a parallel metric to NCDC. It shows near zero, like UAH/RSS. – Anthony
As usual, Weather Undergrounds Jeff Masters has jumped on this one and like all the other exaggerated claims, you can bet good money he won’t issue any retractions or statements once the corrections are made (it doesn’t fit his agenda)
Is a correction where they change the numbers, but don’t mention they’ve been changed, really a correction? More of an alteration. Or down the memory hole.
It is no wonder we always have new “Record” highs. They just put out a press reliese making an unfounded claim, then change it later, so it is easy to have yet another “Record” next month.
Running a quick gridding process on GHCN monthly adjusted land data, I get May 2013 as the fourth hottest May on record for land. That said, there are only 2150 stations reporting so far, compared to ~2600 for most prior years. I’d suspect it might change a bit with more CLIMAT reports, but not that much. This excludes Oceans, but ocean data usually comes in pretty quickly relative to land station data, due to automated reporting from ARGO.
Zeke Hausfather says:
June 20, 2013 at 1:03 pm
Running a quick gridding process on GHCN monthly adjusted land data, I get May 2013 as the fourth hottest May on record for land.
Does that infer that it is the inclusion of the Ocean value that raises May Land and Ocean to third hottest? In which case Ocean would be a higher value than land
The UAH +0.08C is compiled from Land +0.15 and Ocean +0.03. Which is the opposite.
Reynolds records no change in SSTs April to May, whilst UAH shows a reduction +0.03 from +0
.20. Probably just the month by month variability of differing data sets?
Reanalysis. Be wary of anything with this term. Suggests, if figures don’t fit theory, reanalyse till they do.
Has the climate temperature fiddler James Hansen got a new job at NCDC?
It will not matter, the press release is out, the newspapers will print the story tomorrow, Global warming will be big news again.
Then NCDC will report the error in a press release on Saturday, no one will care and no correction will be published. Global warming will have made front page news again.
Or am I just too cynical?
Is there any way to compare these May temperatures on USHCN to the new more accurate USRCN observations?
No Roy, you are not too cynical ! This is the standard op procedure now, get the “flash” out, regardless of any truth or all fiction and then revise, if at all, later, knowing that the left of liberal media will ignore.
It’s a war now folks, stop taking knives to the gun fight !
I thought the same thing. I usually catch first wind the report has been released from Dr. Master’s blog at the weather underground. He always shows the NASA and NOAA numbers (and usually plays up whichever showed warmers coincidentally). Anyway, I’ve never notcied the NASA and NOAA ‘ranks’ being this far apart. Usually, it’s 3rd-5th warmest or 5th-6th -warmest – along those lines. But, I’ve never seen anything near as wide as 3rd-10th.
Speaking on the state of the climate report. What is up with the quartiles picture?
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/map-percentile-mntp/201305.gif
I think it is relatively new this year. It always seems to show much warmer temperatures than the direct anomalies picture:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/map-blended-mntp/201305.gif
Places that are light blue on the anomaly picture are white – near normal on the quartile picture, while light red is almost always ‘above normal’ or ‘much above normal.’ Dark blue is usually the first level of ‘cooler than average’ when medium-dark red is ‘much above normal’ or ‘record warmth.’
I get the two pictures are measuring different things, but I consistently see a somewhat more even mix of red and blue on the anomaly picture, and then a flood of red on the quartile picture. I just can’t seem to wrap my head around how this is the case.
Looks like finally MSM has decided to become quite skeptical and me thinks the beginning of angry as they are realizing how they have been taken in by the AGW scam
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/06/climate-change
I would say this is quite big re changing mainstream minds about AGWJudith Curry publisheda piece on it just now
So you deny that completely contradictory numbers can all be true at the same time in this new age of postmodern datasets? DENIER! DENIER! DENIER!!!
Contradiction is Correlation! It’s so obvious!!!
tied with 1998 and 2005 as the third warmest on record…
so, that just says that May temps have been the same for the past 15 years
and that there were two others that were higher……third
I suspect that the fact that Obama is getting ready to announce a bunch of new climate “initiatives” had a lot to do with the fact that the “reported” temperature jumped so much.
It appears past and present planetary temperature is adjustable to fit the message.
NCDC adjustments to from May 2008 to April 2013 of the January 1915 and January 2000 temperature.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/NCDC%20Jan1915%20and%20Jan2000.gif
It seems to be logical that the NCDC May temperature anomaly should be roughly offset the same amount to UAH as other months. (i.e. the offset should not vary month by month).
If that is the case then NCDC May, 2013 would not be the 3rd highest, as the UAH May, 2013 temperature anomalies is the 14th highest or 11th highest if one ignores three other May temperature anomalies in the UAH data set that are only slightly higher than UAH May, 2013.
For RSS, the TTT was published instead of the TLT as was done for UAH. For the TLT for RSS, see:
ftp://ftp.ssmi.com/msu/monthly_time_series/rss_monthly_msu_amsu_channel_tlt_anomalies_land_and_ocean_v03_3.txt
For RSS, the first 5 months are 0.441, 0.194, 0.204, 0.219 and 0.139. The average is 0.239 and 2013 would rank 8th if it stayed this way.
For UAH, the first 5 months are 0.504, 0.175, 0.183, 0.103 and 0.074. The average is 0.208 and 2013 would rank 6th if it stayed this way.
For GISS, the first 5 months are 0.62, 0.53, 0.60, 0.51 and 0.56. The average is 0.56 and 2013 would rank 10th if it stayed this way.
I smell something fishy and Obama Amin. may have had
NCDC’s put out false #’s????
White House Preps Carbon Tax – Let’s Call It ‘ObamaAir’
http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2013/06/20/white-house-preps-carbon-tax-lets-call-it-obamaair/
Yes, there will be a correction. But not until after the headlines have had their impact and the correction will be unnoticed.
I now have no doubt that Google is pushing pro AGW 100% if you type “global warming” They are ALL AGW storise and if you type “A cooling consensus economist”: it simply does not appear anywhere those 20 guys at google are working real hard at the moment. Im sure the team + other warmists in the Gov is pressuring them. Its called censorship
>> Zeke Hausfather says:
>> Running a quick gridding process on GHCN monthly adjusted land
>> data, I get May 2013 as the fourth hottest May on record for land.
A philosopher of language would have a field day with this and suchlike.
Hottest ???? Wjhat’s HOT about 15 degrees ????
The first thing to do would be to compare the distribution of the various delta’s between the various estimates.
Let’s put it this way. The typical error for UAH, RSS, GISS and CRU are not small.
lets say it was .1C. over the course of 30 years ( 1800 months of data ) you are going to find
months where the series differ, maybe by as much or more than this amount. somebody can go have a look.
In other words. This kind of difference hasnt been shown to be surprising. lets say with
1800 months of satellite data I fully expect to get a number of months where the comparsion between the land and troposphere is large. If this was systematic there would be another issue.
So.
1. Show that the difference is interesting or statistically interesting.
2. If it is, then you have something to investigate.
Otherwise, boring.
REPLY: or, just wait, and watch the number change, which is what I plan to do. We’ll talk then. – Anthony
“Rex says:
June 20, 2013 at 3:27 pm
>> Zeke Hausfather says:
>> Running a quick gridding process on GHCN monthly adjusted land
>> data, I get May 2013 as the fourth hottest May on record for land.
A philosopher of language would have a field day with this and suchlike.
Hottest ???? Wjhat’s HOT about 15 degrees ????
##########################
err. no. they would not have a field day. I suspect you haven’t studied philosophy of language
Remember. NCDC and NOAA have for many years been the biggest perpetrator of false AGU warming! That “agenda” has not changed.