The global surface temperature anomaly data from the UK Hadley Climate Research Unit (Temp anomaly is plotted below) has just been released, and it shows a significant drop in the global temperature anomaly in January 2008, to just 0.034°C, just slightly above zero.
This caps a full year of temperature drop from HadCRUT’s January 2007 value of 0.632°C
above data is HadCRUT3 column 2 which can be found here
description of the HadCRUT3 data file columns is here
The ∆T for the past 12 months is minus 0.595°C which is in line with other respected global temperature metrics that I have reported on in the past two weeks. RSS, UAH, and GISS global temperature sets all show sharp drops in the last year. We are in an extended solar minimum, we have a shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation to a cold state, and we are seeing arctic ice extents setting new records and rebounding from the summer melt.While weather is defined as such variability, the fact that so many things are in agreement on a global scale in such a short time span of one year should give us all pause for consideration.
UPDATE: see all 4 global temperature indexes compared in this next post
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So the “Mother of all El Ninos” ends not with a bang, but a BuBRrrrrr!
Hmm. That puts it colder than at any time since 1993, if I am reading that correctly. And the steepest 1-year drop on the chart. Nearly as large as the rise from 1997-1998, and even steeper.
I will be very interested to see the data on February.
I am also willing to entertain the notion that as the rise since 1979 has been exaggerated by heat-sink effect, likewise this drop may also be exaggerated by reverse heat-sink effect, as the effect “undoes” itself.
Wow. That’s a huge drop on that series. Coldest month in over 10 years it appears to me.
If it gets any warmer around here, we’ll all freeze to death…..
Now that you have 4 source of data ( rss,uah.giss.hatscrewd) the scrunity
applied will drive them toward consensus.
How about linkies to HadCRUT?
REPLY: Done, see post
what exactly is the global temp and how is it computed?
REPLY: You couldn’t ask and easy question first off? 😉
Start here:
http://climatesci.org/2008/02/08/an-error-in-the-construction-of-a-single-global-average-surface-temperature/
Well, we should have a contest for the first person to spot the “well, global warming is happening but it is being masked by the sun/moon/my chillblains” excuse offered by a warmenist.
[…] drops on all of the major well respected indicators. I have reported in the past two weeks that HadCRUT, RSS, UAH, and GISS global temperature sets all show sharp drops in the last […]
How about showing the full HadCRUT graph from 1860 onwards?
I think they also say that 2007 was the 8th warmest on record.
Check out the UK’s MET Offices web site for full (unbiased – no agenda) data on global warming.
REPLY: See the detailed post above this one where I provided the links to the full data set to HadCRUT, GISS, UAH, and RSS under each graph, and I also mentioned that I would be creating a new graph to merge all datasets into a similar scale, and there are links in the glossary page to all of those again, plus links to previous posts which have larger scale graphics. So please don’t accuse me of bias or agenda. The data speaks for what has occurred, there’s been a significant drop in the past year. If you don’t like that, there’s little I can do about it.
How interesting. In the Salt Lake City area we have had an abnormally cold and snowy winter and in my native Vancouver, they have received far more snow than is typical. It’s interesting how this “global cooling” can even be felt.
thanks for sharing!
I am so glad to see the temperature fall. But I am concerned about your words, referring to “other respected global temperature metrics” , implying respectability of RSS, UAH, and specifically GISS. It would be puzzling to refer to them respectable when they report falling temperatures, and then give at least the impression that they are all biased with errors implying not worthy of respect when the temperature is going up.
REPLY: Irregardless of their problems, they are respected by many. I respect the work they do, as it is significant, but at the same time I and others question aspects of the methodology. My goal is to help them become even more respectable.
Interesting to note that last year the CRU would include a year-to-date number in their annual graphs. They were more than happy to do this when we had an El Nino spike at the beginning of last year. Funny how this practice has not been continued this year now that the temperature have dropped! Just confirms how the dishonest the whole climate alarmist movement is!
Robert Wood’s prediction of ‘excuses’ from warmers may rather pre-empt what I was about to write, but I hope you can take this as a genuine question… I count myself sceptical of the grosser AGW claims and (as a computer scientist) take computer model results with plenty of salt (GIGO)… Hence this realtime data is fascinating and to my mind, the only really valid game in town.
However, to try to see both sides, I have been wondering: Is it still possible that a combination of PDO, solar minimum and a few other poorly understood chaotic influences is causing short-term (decadal) cooling, but there is still an underlying anthropogenic warming trend? Is there currently any way of empirically either demonstrating or refuting this, or do we just have to wait until (say) the next solar maximum and warm PDO?
I’m no statistician, but I remember (as through a glass, darkly) a little signal theory: Is it feasible to apply a low pass filter to the data to remove the decadal noise, or is the amount of data available simply too short? I see people doing 11-year running means to try to remove the solar cycle, but has anyone tried playing around directly in the frequency domain (Fourier transform)?
REPLY: It is certainly possible that an underlying trend exists. I’ve never said that GW does not exist, but the the human contribution cannot be precisely measured and that our temperature measurement systems likely have a bias, which is why I started the surfacestations.org project. It is also possible that we fully don’t understand the sun-earth relationship and that TSI is not the full effect.
Practically all the facts are on the side of GW “skeptics”. Now it appears that the current climate conditions and temperature data is pointing to a colder rather than warmer planet. What will it take to convince the AGW alarmists that they might be wrong? I suspect it won’t be easy, because they are so entrenched and have many interests to protect. It’s not being reported much yet in the media, but there is a growing army of “skeptics” who will sooner or later be heard. It will be interesting how this all plays out.
Fine to see the AGW theory being debunked but cooling? Have a heart, I have vegetables to raise and the last decade or so has been great in this cold forsaken place.
Paul,
Check out Williams Briggs webpage. http://wmbriggs.com/ He did some work on RSS satellite data using wavelets with interesting results (but didn’t draw any conclusions from them).
Hi Anthony,
Saw your post over at Accuweather blog; nice rebuttal. If you’re interested, here was another smartass attack by poster Steve Bloom (slightly edited) that may warrant a response from you :
“Watts comprehensively and intentionally misrepresented the nature of the CRN ratings. That you are so ready to believe him says more about you than him. But anyway, the proof is in the pudding: Let’s see the calculations that went into those error estimates. Let’s see even a reference in the linked document to such calculations. Instead, what we have is this statement at the bottom of page 6: “The errors for the different classes are estimated values.”
BTW, did Baker ever tell Watts that the CRN ratings should be applied to the USHCN? No. Thy’re happy to have the photos, but the rating bit is useless. How do I know this? Beacuse last summer I picked up the phone and called him at his listed number on the CRN site. Don’t you find it curious that Watts never did that with Baker or (as far as I know) anyone else at NOAA, leaving any interactions to some chance encounters? If not then you’re astonishingly naive.”
Keep up the great work !
GW
The Warmists won’t miss a beat in rationalizing away the cooling temps. They will claim this was predicted in their models and is a signal of global warming caused by nasty man. They will not miss a beat. You already see it in their explanations of what is happening in China.
They probably will also claim that the Kyota Protocol is working and starting to rein in temperatures. These are not rational people and they have not need to try and portray their science in a rational manner. This is about power and control and they will not give up that end easily, especially when they sense they were so close to having it all.
“The Warmists won’t miss a beat in rationalizing away the cooling temps. They will claim this was predicted in their models and is a signal of global warming caused by nasty man.”
Of course it fits the model!
The model:
X = Global Warming
Everything = X
Everything = Anything
X (Everything and Anything) proves X (Global Warming)
So shut up and go away.
Evan,
Your model is right on. How can so many people worldwide go so bonkers?
Global warming is caused by everything … ignorance, the most expensive commodity produced by mankind.
I have asked a simple question of those I meet who espouse AGW — How do you know? After a long blank stare, they respond with something like “I saw it on TV” or Al Gore told me. I then follow it up with a repeat, “how do YOU know”. Usually they walk off at this point.
Most people don’t have a clue about most things science, they just parrot the latest rumor heard on TV. Makes them easy targets.
I’m no scientist but play the stock market and here are a couple of observations:
1. the HadCRUT graph displayed above has a clear trend, and it’s positive
2. taking a small,12 month, sample is meaningless unless you’re trying to sell something aganst a trend.
Cheers
Actually Johnny R is correct. But, global warming hysterics
tend to use the latest temperature blip as proof that global
warming is caused by humanity, so it is excusable that the
skeptics have adopted the same tactic.
Using the trend is more correct, and here the trend is for
the decadal temperature trend to rise much too slowly to give much
comfort to those who assert that CO2 is the major driver in
recent temperature shifts.
I have traded stocks, options, currencies, and many commodities. I’m not basing my opinion on the chart above. It’s only one tiny bit of data in the GW picture. If you will thoroughly investigate trends over long periods (1000s of years, it becomes apparent that the small increase (less than 1 degee C) in GT during the last 125 years or so is well within normal variations. The current GT is about 1.5 degrees C below what it was about 1000 years ago. Also, You need to know that GT correlates very well with solar activity and hardly at all with CO2.
“How can so many people worldwide go so bonkers?”
One bestseller.
Johnny R is not correct, well not exactly. It depends on T0 and TF , the starting and final timepoint you average over. T0 could be 200,000 years ago. I prefer to look at things over decades to see a trend. So why not start 1998 and finish the end of 2008? For sure the chicken little warmers held up 1998 as proof for AGW. So why not go from El Nino and go to La Nina? If you look over the last ten years the trend is negative.