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.
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.
Was wondering why in the UK this years record May snowfalls were melting so quickly – its the heat thats done it then !!!!
Obama is ready to start driving his green agenda. I believe that this report was generated to make his announcements more believable.
NCDC – Annual Global Mean Temperature Anomalies (17-Sep-2012, NOAA, National Climatic Data Center) already showed this surprising anomalies.
See http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cmb-faq/anomalies.php
The people here are too smart not to recognize that this was coordinated with the Obama attack on coal fired power plants. Maybe I have been around too long but to witness this kind of corruption from top to bottom in practically all the agencies is unprecedented. This is open warfare against the American consumer. No wonder our stock market crashed today.
Eliza – I put: cooling consensus “the economist”
into google and the article popped right up.
Even if this NOAA/NCDC 0.66°C did turn out to be correct, and given that temps have pretty much stabilized over the past 17 years, I don’t think it’s all that surprising that we might find the odd month that comes close to records set within that 17 years. I’m not even sure why alarmists would jump on this story because all it proves (if it turns out to be true) is that temperatures in the month of May tend to vary by fractions of degrees from year to year.
“Weather is climate. More specifically, aggregations of weather are climate. Means, averages, and distributions of daily weather comprise climate.”
From Actually, Weather Is Climate (William M. Briggs, Statistician & Consultant. Jan. 22, ’10)
See http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/actually-weather-is-climate/
Record highs and lows come and go, they all get aggregated and averaged.
The NOAA National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) Annual Global Mean Surface Temperature Anomalies over Land & Ocean database shows a 0.05°C cooling from 2005 to 2011.
See http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cmb-faq/anomalies.php
Roy UK says:
June 20, 2013 at 1:46 pm
It will not matter, the press release is out, the newspapers will print the story tomorrow, Global warming will be big news again….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That could backfire this time.
May was down right COLD here in mid NC and I am not the only one who noticed. Last week the corn was about ankle high with two to four leaves instead of over my head. Mid NC is not the only place corn went in very late and the late planting of the corn crop in the USA made the news.
Reuters: U.S. corn plantings bogged down by rain; freeze hits wheat
NOAA graph is pure junk as they show Ohio as neutral to above normal for May. Hmm I live in Ohio and it was a cold May and has been a cold June too. Air Conditioners being turned on has pretty much been non-existent so far in Ohio this year, I’ve had to turn the heat on a few times in May though. I know for a fact they have my area wrong, what say the rest of you.
June hasn’t been particularly hot either, Gail. It’s 77F outside in Durham at the moment — downright cool for late June. The high for the WEEK in Durham is forecast to be only 86F. Again, most years I would expect it to be near 90 every day by this time. The low temperatures are even more remarkable — it is supposed to go down to 59 tonight. A high in the low 80’s is cool for June. A low in the 50’s is very cool — even cold — for June.
Some of the other stuff Jeff Masters reported seems odd — extremely early snow melt in the NH for May, for example — that don’t jibe well with the latest ever ice melt in Alaska. It is consistent, however, with winter drought in e.g. Kansas.
But NC is not the world, of course. But it would be nice if one could trust the announcements of global temperature but this one sounds a bit sketchy given both RSS and UAH being unremarkable and even GISS running in lower. And third highest or not, AR5 itself isn’t showing the temperature trend for the 21st century as being anything but flat.
What is really interesting is equating this May with 1998 and the super El Nino pulse. The satellites put that pulse over 0.5 C warmer than the present. That seems very sketchy indeed — a bit too high to just be “noise” or late station reporting.
Odd.
rgb
The NCDC global temperature record is unreliable.
I downloaded the numbers just 5 days ago.
This is how much they have changed over those 5 days. Yes, the old temps are adjusted down and the newer temps are adjusted up.
http://s12.postimg.org/ns5tyq2fx/NCDC_Change_in_Last_5_Days.png
And it has been a systematic process which occurs at least every month (sometimes multiple times per month) since 1988. And there have been 304 months in that time period which, if they just upped the trend each month by 0.005C (as they have done in the last five days), that would be 1.52C of change over the time period. So yes, those tiny changes every month can add up to a very big number.
I agree with Jared. The “official” data do not support what we have experienced.
That’s why we continue the fight, even though we often laugh. They falsely report rising temperatures until the next record cold/snow, then they claim the record cold/snow is due to the rising temperatures, caused by CO2.
So, get back to the battle, after you have stopped laughing.
I always find it laughable when they going on about the Global Temperature average.
If 14.5-15C is used as the Global Temp average, Then the Global average is unsustainable to healthy Human life.
We’re always told 16C is the minimum temperature for maintaining human health. And actually 18-21C is a recommended temp. 🙂
Does anyone have a comperable global map for UAH or RSS. It looks like Siberia is burning up in that map. I’d like to see if the Satellites have the same thing. I wonder if Yuri was reporting the temp next to his fireplace again?
Up-state NY has been witch-tit cold!!!!!!
Anthony,
Time for Private Sector to put out own Monthly State of the climate Numbers. The Rotten Apples are spoiling all government agencys. Started with one rotten Apple who is a billionaire now and sits on Apples Board.
Re the UAH number being “much less” than the NCDC number, we all know that they use different baselines, so the numbers can’t be compared like that, right?
Right?
Jack Mclaughlin says:
June 20, 2013 at 4:13 pm
The people here are too smart not to recognize that this was coordinated with the Obama attack on coal fired power plants. Maybe I have been around too long but to witness this kind of corruption from top to bottom in practically all the agencies is unprecedented. This is open warfare against the American consumer. No wonder our stock market crashed today.
Hmmmm, so our stock market crashed because of this, not because Bernanke announced the beginning of the end of quantitive easing, and it came out that China is having a hard time finding takers for their debt offerings. Really???????
Corruption in practically ALL the agencies – any evidence for that?
I did my summary and map on June 13. I found about the same temperature rise as GISS. The satellites went the other way, but that quite often happens.
There were then 3872 stations reporting, including SST cells (where the number never varies). That’s fairly normal. There is a map (June 13) here.
It is nice to think that somebody had some warm weather during May. As for us in Cheyenne, Wyoming, we had 15″ of snow on 1 May.
chrisd3 says:
June 20, 2013 at 7:02 pm
Re the UAH number being “much less” than the NCDC number, we all know that they use different baselines, so the numbers can’t be compared like that, right?
Right?
They do have different base lines, however there are other means of comparing things. The graph with UAH anomalies is one way. Another is to take each May anomaly of other sets and ask yourself where 2013 would rank if that anomaly would hold for the year. Above, I gave the anomalies for May for RSS, UAH, and GISS as follows: 0.139, 0.074 and 0.56 respectively. The rankings based on the May anomaly are, respectively: 14th, 13th, and 10th.
The article says: “The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for May 2013 tied with 1998 and 2005 as the third warmest on record”
So I fully agree that things “look just plain wrong when compared to other global data sets”
As we are fond of saying , correlation is not causation. But it is curious that The Puppet President is once again clanging the “climate change” alarm (and in Berlin, no less, where Angela Merkel has been faced with a power-supply crisis caused by a few decades of ‘green’ policies, causing people to devastate forests for wood to burn). Reports are this insane Watermelon administration is going after the coal industry with renewed vengeance, presumably to keep the Democrats’ eco-fascist base happy. They’ll probably keep the XL pipeline stopped, too.
If you’re in Massachusetts, please turn out for the Senate Special Election and vote against the execrable Ed Malarkey, Chief Alarmist in the US House of Representatives. Don’t let him get to the Senate!
/Mr Lynn
“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 ????
>> Steven Mosher says:
>> June 20, 2013 at 3:32 pm
>> err. no. they would not have a field day. I suspect you haven’t
>> studied philosophy of language
WRONG AGAIN MOSH
REPLY: or, just wait, and watch the number change, which is what I plan to do. We’ll talk then. – Anthony
###########
you might want to have a look at what tamino says. Basically he looks at the differences over time as I suggested. nothing remarkable about this month.
plus you made some other slips.. baseline? and Ryan’s chart is for a single day.
REPLY: I care not a whit what “Tamino” says, he’s too angry to bother reading. Ryan sent me that in email, representing it as monthly, I didn’t notice that is was a single day, but I think you may be making a mistake and conflating May31st as a day and month end run on that date. Note the title gives a RANGE from 00ZMay 1 to 18ZMay 31.
– Anthony
Marian says:
June 20, 2013 at 5:21 pm
We’re always told 16C is the minimum temperature for maintaining human health. And actually 18-21C is a recommended temp. 🙂
=========
naked human beings cannot produce enough energy to maintain their body temperature if the average temperature is less than 28C/86F. The only place on earth that has average temperatures this high year round are the tropical jungles.
22C/72F is the long term average temperature of the earth during its warmest periods. It is also the temperature human’s find most comfortable to heat their houses and the temperature at which trees try and maintain their leaves during photosynthesis.
Our current average temperatures are considerably lower than optimum for human beings. Without technology no human being can survive outside the the tropical jungles. Without the domestication of fire we would still be living in the jungles or extinct. And fire creates CO2.
We are now planning to create laws to ban the very thing that made human civilization possible. The Madness of Crowds.
Rex,
maybe you should have studied harder. it didnt take.
>> Steven Mosher says:
>> June 20, 2013 at 10:04 pm
>> Rex,
>> maybe you should have studied harder. it didnt take.
That’s your take on it. Actually, philosophy has not been my major
(pre-)occupation … for 44 years I have been in the business of collecting,
analysing, and interpreting survey data, and my conclusion is that
climate scientists are now challenging public health officials for the
title of …. well, words fail me, but they ‘aint complimentary.
@mosher see inline reply above, you made a mistake on the WeatherBell map.
Anthony Watts says:
June 20, 2013 at 10:51 pm
@mosher see inline reply above, you made a mistake on the WeatherBell map.
I can’t imagine him not noticing the smell from his feet 😛
Pissy Mentalist Syndrome (Waxing half moon, just a few days ago…)?
I so tire of the Menne et al. homogenization effort showing UP time after time after time. Soon, we will have to just use crops and plants to find what the temperature is outside.
Come on Mosh, stop beating on Rex for no good reason and dazzle us on how are we using data product NCEP CFSv2 wrong…
I saw that in M. Mann’s twitter feed yesterday (he triumphantly tagged it #WarmingContinues) and immediately thought that it must be wrong. It will be interesting to see what happens when more data arrives.
Do NDCD hold the record for false records?
I think that Anthony’s post has a bit of a bad wording that’s creating the confusion for Mosher and can be misinterpreted by someone with ill will like Tamino. It’s not the anomaly numbers for NCDC in comparison with UAH, RSS and GISS, but the change from April that is important. Both UAH and RSS have a decline, UAH minuscule (0,10->0,8) and RSS quite big one (0,219->0,139), GISS has a small rise (0,51->0,56), but NCDC has a big jump (0,5209->0,6603). I’m sure that’s what was meant. But Mosher’s point for seeing whether this difference is statistically and historically anomalous (I think it’s not) is still valid…
The Central England May was the 37th coldest out of 136 years.
I think that climate sciences inability to be able to ‘cross calibrate’ the satellite to the thermometer record, given that they are supposed to measuring the same source after all, is the elephant in the room.
GISS almost always reads higher than other dataset, otherwise know has the Hansen effect
Proposal – Forced Cross Calibration of Global temperature data series
It should be possible to force the various Global temperature data sources into alignment simply by adjusting their offsets and scales to determine a best fit over their whole overlap period, 1979 to today. They are supposed to be reporting the same thing after all, average global temperature as measured/estimated by them over that whole period of time. Using the corrective parameters derived from the above step, we can then back project/cross calibrate the thermometer data to create a satellite referenced temperature data series backwards in time, beyond the overlap period and out to the end of the thermometer record. An overlap period of 34 years for the records so far should be sufficient for reasonable accuracy in the parameter choices.
Methodology
Align OLS trends in the sources by using offset and scale factors (currently by trial and error). Using OLS trends over the whole period to determine parameter choice allows for the likely best fit, given the relatively short overlap time period. Also OLS trends have no implicit reference points so are ‘floating’ in this regard thus making them more amenable to cross calibration of this type.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/offset:-0.16/scale:0.86/trend/from:1979/plot/rss/trend/plot/uah/offset:0.1/trend/plot/best/from:1979/offset:-0.4/scale:0.5/trend
• BEST
Offset: -0.4
Scale: 0.5
• HADCrut4 Global mean
Offset: -0.16
Scale: 0.86
• RSS – No adjustment
• UAH
Offset: 0.1
Apply the cross calibration data so obtained to the thermometer based data sources backwards in time to obtain a satellite cross referenced temperature series.
Output
Satellite referenced Historical Global temperature data series output
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/best/offset:-0.4/scale:0.5/plot/hadcrut4gl/offset:-0.16/scale:0.86/plot/rss/plot/uah/offset:0.1
Uncorrected OLS trends
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1979/trend/plot/rss/trend/plot/uah/trend/plot/best/from:1979/trend
Poor Chris above must have been living in the deep forest over the past year. Chicago politics is showing up everywhere…the IRS, the Justice Department, the State Department and of course the EPA and now NOAA. And now he wants to blame everything on poor Ben and the Chinese debt problems. You must have been watching Larry Kudlow.
RichardLH says: June 21, 2013 at 3:17 am
“Proposal – Forced Cross Calibration of Global temperature data series
It should be possible to force the various Global temperature data sources into alignment simply by adjusting their offsets and scales to determine a best fit over their whole overlap period, 1979 to today.”
You can just set them to a common anomaly period. I keep up a plot of recent indices on that basis here, for last 5 months and last 48 months.
In fact the surface indices are just a bit above where they were in February, and NOAA has not increased greatly from then. The difference is that it went down until April, then jumped back. The TLT indices have gone down continuously since Feb.
Nick Stokes says:
June 21, 2013 at 5:38 am
“RichardLH says: June 21, 2013 at 3:17 am
“Proposal – Forced Cross Calibration of Global temperature data series
It should be possible to force the various Global temperature data sources into alignment simply by adjusting their offsets and scales to determine a best fit over their whole overlap period, 1979 to today.”
You can just set them to a common anomaly period. I keep up a plot of recent indices on that basis here, for last 5 months and last 48 months.”
This was using the whole overlap period (the best data?) to provide the parameters rather than a sub-set.
And a ‘more likely to be accurate’ 🙂 presentation of historic temperature. Sort of reverse hockey stick.
Processing Steps
1. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/best/plot/hadcrut4gl/plot/uah/plot/rss
2. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1979/trend/plot/rss/trend/plot/uah/trend/plot/best/from:1979/trend
3. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/offset:-0.16/scale:0.86/trend/from:1979/plot/rss/trend/plot/uah/offset:0.1/trend/plot/best/from:1979/offset:-0.4/scale:0.5/trend
4. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/best/offset:-0.4/scale:0.5/plot/hadcrut4gl/offset:-0.16/scale:0.86/plot/rss/plot/uah/offset:0.1
In October 2009 no one seemed to mind that the UAH record for September anomalies had been broken by nearly 0.1C, after a 0.2C jump from the previous month, while GISS showed a paltry change of 0.04C between August and September and not a record-breaker.
There are largish differences (0.2 – 0.3C), between all data sets for neighbouring months from time to time, opposite in sign, and no need to reckon baselines. Even between RSS and UAH. 3rd highest anomaly for May NCDC? Storm in a teacup.
Year by year? The anomalies are well correlated, but UAH and RSS, as we know, have greater variability, especially month by month.
The differences in trend for the full period (from 1979) are pretty small – in the order of 3 hundredths of a degree per decade between NCDC, RSS, UAH, GISSHadCRUt3 and HadCRUt4. That’s < 0.3C/century difference. Is it really worth quibbling over?
The data is cooked by the Climate Liars to make it appear the planet is warming up. Reality is not cooperating with their silly climate models so they make things up. It’s fraud !
The global warming zealots will do and say anything to enact their political agenda. Please stop believing we are dealing with reasonable, sensible, moral people. We aren’t.
And whilst you are at it – why do these low frequency components of the various signal sources differ during the times they do?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/best/offset:-0.4/scale:0.5/mean:9/mean:12/mean:16/plot/hadcrut4gl/offset:-0.16/scale:0.86/mean:9/mean:12/mean:16/plot/rss/mean:9/mean:12/mean:16/plot/uah/offset:0.1/mean:9/mean:12/mean:16
I note that NCDC notes:
“Note: The data presented in this report are preliminary. Ranks and anomalies may change as more complete data are received and processed.”
Why even release preliminary information?
This isn’t the “State of the Climate” at all if it is based on incomplete data? Wait, and get it as accurate as can be, then make a “State of the Climate” declaration.
This is the best we get from NASA/NCDC? Shameful.
Becase data can take months, even years to come in. A substantial number of stations report speedily, many around the world do not. The changes brought about by the inclusion of stations is not massive, so they give preliminary values within a month. Otherwise we could wait til 2015 for the 2013 May state of the climate. The caveat is all we need. We can always assess later if necessary.
“JohnWho says:es in
June 21, 2013 at 7:54 am
I note that NCDC notes:
“Note: The data presented in this report are preliminary. Ranks and anomalies may change as more complete data are received and processed.”
Why even release preliminary information?”
well for one reason folks here have complained about delays in releasing data as it comes in.
damned if they do. damned if they dont.
“Sven says:
June 21, 2013 at 2:22 am
I think that Anthony’s post has a bit of a bad wording that’s creating the confusion for Mosher and can be misinterpreted by someone with ill will like Tamino. It’s not the anomaly numbers alfor NCDC in comparison with UAH, RSS and GISS, but the change from April that is important. Both UAH and RSS have a decline, UAH minuscule (0,10->0,8) and RSS quite big one (0,219->0,139), GISS has a small rise (0,51->0,56), but NCDC has a big jump (0,5209->0,6603). I’m sure that’s what was meant. But Mosher’s point for seeing whether this difference is statistically and historically anomalous (I think it’s not) is still valid…”
###########
of course it is valid.
Is the jump Big? well, you can’t tell if its big unless you actually do the math and unless you actually wait for final data.
But folks on both sides want to make headlines and make issues where there are no real issues.
If you find something wrong with a monthly number chances are you made a mistake.
rgbatduke says:
June 20, 2013 at 5:18 pm
June hasn’t been particularly hot either, Gail. It’s 77F outside in Durham at the moment — downright cool for late June. The high for the WEEK in Durham is forecast to be only 86F. Again, most years I would expect it to be near 90 every day by this time. The low temperatures are even more remarkable — it is supposed to go down to 59 tonight….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It hit 56F this morning and I am ~ 40 miles due south of you. BRRRRrrrrr (What A/C? I have had the darn blankets on.)
Rex says:
June 20, 2013 at 10:39 pm
>> Steven Mosher says:
>> June 20, 2013 at 10:04 pm
>> Rex,
>> maybe you should have studied harder. it didnt take.
That’s your take on it. Actually, philosophy has not been my major
(pre-)occupation … for 44 years
###################
that’s obvious, look some people can do more than one thing, work in multiple fields and do well in many fields.
“REPLY: I care not a whit what “Tamino” says, he’s too angry to bother reading. Ryan sent me that in email, representing it as monthly, I didn’t notice that is was a single day, but I think you may be making a mistake and conflating May31st as a day and month end run on that date. Note the title gives a RANGE from 00ZMay 1 to 18ZMay 31.
– Anthony
######################
Question: did you rebaseline?
Comment: Ryan sent you something in mail. It might make sense to actually go to the source.
that is, if you want to do an audit of NCDC results its best to start by going directly to the sources. basically steve mcintyre’s approach. Go to the sources. Show people how they can do the same thing, empower them and multiply the army of auditors. That’s what this movement has been about. getting data and code into the hands of many people, readers smarter than us. with many eyes and many hands on the problem we get better answers.
For example, it would be great if ryan supplied tools to get his data directly. I’d support that.
REPLY: Nice mea culpa for your own mistake there Mosh. Unlike Tamino and others on the public dole, I run a business during the day and don’t often have the time to do all that work with every blog post. My points are qualitative comparisons, raising what I consider valid points in the time I have during my work day. Ryan responds to your “source” questions below. I have no reason to doubt his data since it comes from the same sources at NOAA, GHCN.
As for baselining, in a perfect world, GISS would give up their antiquated baseline, and we’d have all datasets using the same baseline. Also in a perfect world, we’d be seeing absolute temperature data plotted in parallel with anomalies. And in the most perfect world, we wouldn’t be mixing good data and bad data, along with leaving out missing data in the homogenization blender, and then serving up the puree to the public and calling it “records of 3rd warmest etc”, only to have the numbers changed later.
Let’s call that practice of making claims without all the data being in as “Claimatology” – Anthony
FTR (and maybe I missed it somewhere here) in what years were the 1st and 2nd hottest May’s on record?
The NCEP CDASv2 “reanalysis” data assimilation is comparable to state-of-the-art NCEP GFS T574 analysis. Since all obs including satellite, in situ, marine, etc. are included in the reanalysis, it is not independent but an optimal fit to the obs. The CFSR-extension reanalysis grid is 1760×880 and available hourly. I use the 6-hr chunks since I am not buying stock in 1981-2010 hourly climatologies (model data assimilation cycle window is 6-hourly).
I’m fairly adept at using NWP products, btw.
Other temperature data is on my temperature page here: http://models.weatherbell.com/temperature.php
The error-bar or uncertainty on recent global surface (or 2-meter) temperatures should be quite small across a wide-variety of data sources including in-situ obs, satellite, and numerical weather prediction (e.g. 3D-Var, 4D-Var). For a monthly value, I’d say 0.1°C is “close”.
“As for baselining, in a perfect world, GISS would give up their antiquated baseline, and we’d have all datasets using the same baseline. Also in a perfect world, we’d be seeing absolute temperature data plotted in parallel with anomalies”
In a perfect world, the U.S. would go metric…
It naturally follows that 0 C is colder than 10 F, right?
In a perfect world,
… Real statisticians and forensic mathematicians would be sent into the NCDC to clean up all the distortion they have created.
1st is 2010, 2nd is 2012.
Data here.
The GISS temperature change from April to May was positive in sign, like NOAA/NCDC, but unlike the rapid drop seen in the MSU products. Perhaps part of the issue is the different quantities that surface and satellites measure?
The jump is bigger for NOAA/NCDC (but not bigger than other monthly temp changes – for any of the data sets), but there is bound to be more than one reason for the difference.
It seems that at least part of the difference between GISS and NOAA for May is due to the difference in coverage of the Antarctic as shown on these maps:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/map-blended-mntp/201305.gif
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/nmaps.cgi?year_last=2013&month_last=5&sat=4&sst=3&type=anoms&mean_gen=05&year1=2013&year2=2013&base1=1981&base2=2010&radius=1200&pol=reg
The NCDC/NOAA SH anomaly increased in May, while those for GISS/RSS/UAH all fell.
Apparently NCDC/NOAA augment their coverage of the Antarctic using reports from SCAR.
This would tend to make NCDC/NOAA SH anomalies higher than GISS when the antarctic is relatively cold and lower when it is relatively warm.
To repeat:
JohnWho says:
June 21, 2013 at 7:54 am
I note that NCDC notes:
“Note: The data presented in this report are preliminary. Ranks and anomalies may change as more complete data are received and processed.”
Why even release preliminary information?
Thanks to those who responded.
My take is the reason they release preliminary information is that it enables them to say/show what they want to say/show. Then when the complete data comes in that shows what is really happening, the updated information gets much less publicity.
What they should be saying when the release the preliminary data is:
“Note: The data presented in this report are preliminary. Ranks and anomalies may change as more complete data are received and processed.”
and then nothing else. Don’t release a “State of the Climate” report until the data is complete.
Consider a local municipality traffic report by a TV station: they say that traffic is moving along smoothly, but they don’t have reports from all areas. Then, 30 minutes later after they get all the reporting positions, they report major tie-ups that have been going on for over an hour along certain roads, and overall traffic in the city is somewhat slower than normal.
C’mon man – anyone acting on the first report of smoothly moving traffic will not be happy when they are late for work due to the major slowdowns.
GISS actually has two good arguments for not sliding the baseline in time. The first is that this makes it possible to look at all of their published papers without correcting for the sliding baseline. The second is that the global temperature in the period from 1951 to 1980 was relatively flat.
The argument for sliding the baseline forward in time is that it provides a more direct comparisson for immediate (relatively) changes. Opinions differ.
John W, there is good enough coverage in the stations which report in a timely manner that a large change for any month would occur when the later stations come in. Your example would apply if there were significant areas where there were no stations that reported quickly (e.g. the missing traffic reporters). Eli notes that with cell phones traffic tie ups are rapidly reported, as with reporting using the internet.
You could have a discussion about eliminating the late reporting stations so as to have a more timely final version if there was good enough coverage.
If the phenomenon only appears after heavy data manipulation, perhaps manipulation of the data is the only phenomenon.