January 2008 was an exceptional month for our planet, with a significant cooling, especially since January 2007 started out well above normal.
January 2008 capped a 12 month period of global temperature 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 year.
Also see the recent post on what the last 10 years looks like with the same four metrics – 3 of four show a flat trendline.
Here are the 4 major temperature metrics compared top to bottom, with the most recently released at the top:
UK’s Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature anomaly (HadCRUT) Dr. Phil Jones:
Reference: above data is HadCRUT3 column 2 which can be found here
description of the HadCRUT3 data file columns is here
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) Dr. James Hansen:
Reference: GISS dataset temperature index data
University of Alabama, Huntsville (UAH) Dr. John Christy:
Reference: UAH lower troposphere data
Remote Sensing Systems of Santa Rosa, CA (RSS):
Reference: RSS data here (RSS Data Version 3.1)
The purpose of this summary is to make it easy for everyone to compare the last 4 postings I’ve made on this subject.
I realize that not all the graphs are of the same scale, so my next task will be to run a combined graphic of all the data-sets on identical amplitude and time scales to show the agreements or differences such a graph would illustrate.
UPDATE: that comparison has been done here
Here is a quick comparison and average of ∆T for all metrics shown above:
| Source: | Global ∆T °C |
| HadCRUT |
– 0.595 |
| GISS | – 0.750 |
| UAH | – 0.588 |
| RSS | – 0.629 |
| Average: | – 0.6405°C |
For all four metrics the global average ∆T for January 2007 to January 2008 is: – 0.6405°C
This represents an average between the two lower troposphere satellite metrics (RSS and UAH) and the two land-ocean metrics (GISS and HadCRUT). While some may argue that they are not compatible data-sets, since they are derived by different methods (Satellite -Microwave Sounder Unit and direct surface temperature measurements) I would argue that the average of these four metrics is a measure of temperature, nearest where we live, the surface and near surface atmosphere.
UPDATE AND CAVEAT:
The website DailyTech has an article citing this blog entry as a reference, and their story got picked up by the Drudge report, resulting in a wide distribution. In the DailyTech article there is a paragraph:
“Anthony Watts compiled the results of all the sources. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C — a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year time. For all sources, it’s the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.”
I wish to state for the record, that this statement is not mine: “–a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years”
There has been no “erasure”. This is an anomaly with a large magnitude, and it coincides with other anecdotal weather evidence. It is curious, it is unusual, it is large, it is unexpected, but it does not “erase” anything. I suggested a correction to DailyTech and they have graciously complied.
UPDATE #2 see this post from Dr. John R. Christy on the issue.
UPDATE #3 see the post on what the last 10 years looks like with the same four metrics – 3 of four show a flat trendline.
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I wish all of you would get an education before blabbering like hyenas on an issue you know nothing about. I’m not committed either way on the global warming debate, but to see people hysterical about a one year trend, when longer term trends (e.g., longer than decadal oscillations) clearly show warming, is laughable. Please get a clue.
Oh yeah, “snow” in san diego, baghdad, or madrid, doesn’t mean global warming is a myth. I know its hard for you genius’s to understand this, but this can be caused by larger amplitude of the polar jet, or more moisture in the atmosphere. Why aren’t we seeing record low temperatures anymore??? We have plenty of record high temperatures every year now. Cold air outbreaks are more short lived, You don’t see blobs of -10,-20,-30 degree high temperatures in the midwest like you could prior to 1995. These facts are making your head spin, I will stop now.
Duh, thanks, Jack.
FYI, hyenas are incapable of blabbering about issues. I would think your edumacation would have provided that information. People who think they know everything do, however. Us? We’re still looking for answers, we always will. It’s fine for you to believe we know all there is to know about global or even regional climates, but don’t preach to us.
Jack
International Falls, Minnesota just set a RECORD LOW of -40F (Also -40C)
It looks like the earth global temperatures were lower this year. The “librul media” is not saying that we have human factors causing global warming. The overwhelming consensus of “professional skeptics” (scientists) using legitimate methods (not faith based) say that this is a serious and perhaps catastrophic problem. These findings are supported by the world community.
Yup, we had a cool year. Thank you , God. Please give us a few more chances to get this planet back the way you gave it to us ok? We promise not to f*ck it up again.
Will Al give back his prize now? Will the media apologize? Probably not. I hope this at least puts an end to the socialists HORRIBLE cap and trade plans.
Thanks for that gnarley concert last year Al Gore. That really did the trick!!
As you were…
Are these the same scientists that can’t give me an accurate five day forecast that are telling me they can accurtately account for all of the variables involved in climatic change? Am I that far off in saying that the number factor in short term climate change is a change in oceanic currents brought about by plate tectonics? If so, since when has man ever really had a handle on how, when, or why these events occur?
Ya es oficial: enfríamiento global
Para los científicos, claro. Los políticos y los ecomarxistas seguirán dándonos la tabarra con el calentamiento global, el cambio climático y el calor que hace en Tarifa.
Tanto Hadley, NASA’s GISS, UAH como RSS, los cuatro centros principales de…
Given that global warming is real according to overwhelming scientific consensus, and given that humans play a significan role in causing global warming, what steps should we take to reduce the problems caused by the increases that virtually all (reputable) scientists agree are going to happen in the coming years? Is it wise to look at a single year and base our future on that? Is it wise to ignore the consensus of climate science? There will always be fringe sites that worry about the socialists destroying the earth. Is it reasonable to say that fossil fuels are a finite resource and look now for alternatives? Or is it better to just hope for the best and continue to throw dung on those evil socialists?
Thank you , God. Please give us a few more chances to get this planet back the way you gave it to us ok? We promise not to f*ck it up again.
Well, speaking as a liberal atheist, I wouldn’t wish the world we Current Apes evolved out of [100,000ya] on my worst enemies (not being a fan of ice ages–I LIKE my mid-Holocene!).
Not to worry, though. Your fears are a bit out of date. The environment was (totally) saved by the internal combustion engine around a hundred years ago. Before that, man was very hard on old terra firma. (Europe used to be one big forest before we busy pre-BigOil beavers went and chopped it up and burned it down.)
And I’d hate to lose the wealth that “getting this planet back” would entail. In order to give away (and invest) large $chunks to save the world, you have to create it in the first place. Liberalism is a lot of things, but one thing it ain’t is cheap! It requires $$$. The “Kyoto cost” in human life and welfare would be awfully steep in humanitarian terms.
Given that global warming is real according to overwhelming scientific consensus, and given that humans play a significan role in causing global warming, what steps should we take to reduce the problems caused by the increases that virtually all (reputable) scientists agree are going to happen in the coming years?
I believe it’s real. I agree man has had an impact (but not particularly significant). I dispute the degree alleged, as do a lot of reputable scientists. (I think it’s exaggerated about twofold.) I think the PDO/AMO is the primary driver and the rest is spurious measurement error and “adjustment”. I hope to all heck we can avoid a solar minimum. And the PDO is due for a cooling phase, anyway.
I think by far the most effective means we have to combat it (if severe) is to develop economically as quickly as we possibly can. If AGW is as big a threat as some say, I believe it would be suicide-terracide to restrict development or growth in any way.
In that case (which I seriously doubt, but will stipulate), the only prayer we have is to “overtake” the crisis economically and technologically, which, given current trends, we will.
Is it reasonable to say that fossil fuels are a finite resource and look now for alternatives?
Depends entirely on the cost. (P.S., cost includes not only wealth spent, but wealth never created.)
We will leave fossil fuels in the dust–long–before we are anywhere near out of it (or even short of it). We have been discovering oil faster than we have been using it ever since we popped the cork in Pennsylvania in 1859. We have nearly twice the potential reserve we had thirty years ago.
But if we murder our wealth by restricting use, we will be that much less likely to get there. We will also be that much less likely to be able to deal with any real environmental/climate crisis if it occurs.
If AGW is real and serious, we can’t dodge it–we haven’t the means. Even the IPCC says Kyoto can’t do us down more than 0.2C. If it IS real, our best chance by far is to outrun it. In which case, please don’t vote to hobble us in the name of winning the race!
Tree rings up here at 9200 ft in Colorado show sudden increases in size–then trail off into ever increasing dry periods. (rings get ever more narrow like up to now) Looking at the rings–I asked what Denver was like in 1946–reply “only the streetcars could move with boards on their fronts”. I do truly hope that the enormous drift of snow on the norths side of my dome will have melted away by this fall.
I found it interesting that on some sites, the cry immediately went from global warming to climate change. The simple reason is there is too much money that can be made from scientific uncertainty. 25 years ago it was the coming ice age, 10 years ago the coastal plains would soon be underwater, now what?
A temporary drop in temperature is to be expected when both poles are melting. It takes 80 calories per gram just to change ice to water at 0 C. That energy has to come from somewhere. The overall trends in global temperature continue upward in rough parallel with CO2 atmospheric levels, an increase in global precipitation, the recession of the glaciers, an increase in violent weather, all of whch changes are occurring more rapidly than at any other time in the history of the planet. Those that ignore these trends are fools.
Here is a perfect example –
http://www.iscid.org/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=6&t=000370&p=80#001189
“Mankind fiddles while earth burns.”
John A. Davison
Maybe we should pour tons of co2 in the atmosphere to warm it up?
Weather is not climate change, but there is surely enough long-term evidence to downplay the role of CO2 in the warming debate before our politicians and the UN kill the global economy. There are no viable practicable alternatives to fossil fuels as sources of energy in the next 10 years ( nuclear plants take time to build, and Harry Reid is still alive) but there will be a limit to what the public is willing to pay for gasoline. Necessity is the mother of invention. Let’s hope the upcoming “Heartland” meeting in N.Y. gets some good publicity and common sense prevails in our energy policies.
dailytech has simply replaced the language with “Twelve-month long drop in world temperatures wipes out a century of warming”
http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Monitors+Report+Worldwide+Global+Cooling/article10866.htm
Please GOD use this infomation to shut that mad man Gore up.
No, but climate is defined as the accumulation of weather over time, so the two are joined at the hip.
all of whch changes are occurring more rapidly than at any other time in the history of the planet.
I doubt that. For that matter, those changes are occurring less rapidly in the last decade than the previous two.
And now we’ve had a very precipitous cooling. A century’s warming worth of giveback in a year. So far. “More rapidly than at any other time in the history of the”–well, since we’ve been paying close attention and measuring it with satellites, I guess.
When it comes to climate, I suspect we don’t know as much as we suspect we know. I’d hate to shut down modernity on a hunch. Especially as the further progress of modernity is the only thing that will solve anything if serious warming–or cooling–is down the pike.
Those that ignore these trends are fools.
What about those who miscalculate them?
and the UN kill the global economy.
If the west is too weak-kneed, I hope at least India and China will tell the UN where to stuff it. No point in theim starving just becuase we feel a need(less) to shoot ourselves in the foot. (They have their children to think of.)
It seems apparent that no matter how often or thoroughly basic tenants of AGW theory fail when tested empirically, or how inadequetly the theory fails to explain observed natural phenomena, this theory somehow remains current, when such similar refutation of any other theory would relegate it to the dustbin of history. While AGW theory demands that atmospheric temperatures at both poles will rise first and most at surface level, and temperatures in the lower-troposphere will rise 3-4 times as much as surface levels because that sector of the atmosphere is where theory requires the inordinate capture of reflected radiation by GHGs, such measured temperatures uniformly fail to comply with theory. Now the Alarmists are confronted with the uncomfortable facts that temperatures in the Antarctic have been cooling overall for years, that lower-tropospheric measures are static when they should have been rising steadily, and surface temperatures have remained static (and dropping recently more steeply than any temperature has ever changed up or down before) in the last decade, while CO2 levels rise, and cannot explain such observations within their own theory.
Global Warming
By S. C. Yednock Jr.
I long for what the summer brings,
Swim suit clad athletic young things,
Cavorting about a net and a ball,
I’m tired of ice and snow and all.
So humor me in my chagrin
And let our relief begin.
Spray and spread the aerosol
And let’s pollute this big blue ball.
Remove all control devices,
CO2 will melt our ices.
The green house will soon be forming
And we can ENJOY our global warming
No major cooling reported by NASA here
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007/
What is the sun explodes?