Last week I posted the University of Alabama, Huntsville (UAH) Microwave Sounder Unit (MSU) global temperature anomaly data for February 2008 with a note that it showed only a marginal increase from January 2008 data, and remained near zero.
The February 2008 global temperature anomaly data from RSS (Remote Sensing Systems of Santa Rosa, CA) is out, and is in good agreement with that. You can see it the raw RSS data yourself here
First here is UAH satellite derived temperature anomaly. For February 2008, it shows a slight rebound from the -0.046°C value of January 2008 to 0.016°C for a slight change (∆T) of .062°C upwards.
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Next we have the RSS satellite derived temperature anomaly. It also shows a slight rebound from the -0.080°C value of January 2008 to 0.007°C for a slight change (∆T) of .0.073°C upwards. The anomaly remains near zero as does the UAH data.
click for a larger image
It appears the La Niña in the Pacific and the solar minimum are continuing to affect temperatures globally, resulting in this cooler period for the last 13 months starting in January 2007.
click for a larger image
Below: A plot of sunspots showing our current position in the solar minimum. Note the uncertainty for the two projections of the next cycle 24.
I’ll plot the other metrics (GISS, HadCRUT) as soon as they are available.
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The link is my entire thread on GLOBAL WARMING at
http://john.a.davison.free.fr/
There you will find my unqualified endorsement of Tim Flannery, which is all that I was trying to do in the message that Anthony Watts has twice refused to present.
REPLY: Well it’s presented now, on your blog. Readers, please visit Mr. Davison’s blog if you wish to comment on it.
You sir are the bottom of the barrel.
“Readers, please visit Mr. Davison’s blog if you wish to comment on it.”
Thanks Anthony. Read it. I have no comment, other than John appears to be a little on the crazy side.
Sunspots: I was floored when I saw the statement in January after the reversed sunspot that they cycle was going “as predicted”. Say WHA?!?!? Oh, you mean the *revised* prediction you made after the 1st one in ’06 didn’t pan out.
Revisionist history is right everytime…
Not sure how to setup a mirror, or which data to archive really.
Anthony, I really appreciate the work you do and the kind of stuff you have to put up with as witnessed above.
I don’t buy the CRF argument to the extent that Shaviv purports. I’m pretty sure that it relies on the same spurious feedbacks and lags GHG warming does. But there’s comedy gold over at RealClimate.org.
These people, especially the commenters, have no shame.
Lucia, good question. I’ve always assumed the monthly analomaly was an anomaly from the monthly average of the base period. trying so see what difference it makes…
Lucia, do you have GISStemp monthly in a single vector from 1880 onwards? as opposed to the table they provide? I’m too lazy to write a conversion
Re: earlier comments
March 2008 is shaping up to be considerably warmer than either Jan or Feb.
See: http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/images/rnl/sfctmpmer_07a.rnl.html
much of the large warm area over Russia and Asia was below average in Jan and early Feb.
Good idea, Anthony that blog (previous) has strengthened my skepticism.
John, I think Tim Blair has humiliated Flannery because of the incorrect predictions of drought in Australia.
http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/yearn_for_warmening/
REPLY: Cut Flannery some slack, he’s a zoologist, not a climatologist. That sort of predictive failure would be bound to happen when you go form forecasting populations to precipitation.
Hi Francois,
I hear you about potential flaws in the reanalysis of snow cover over land areas. If there is a website that does a better job tracking snow cover over the northern hemisphere on a daily basis, then I’d like to see it.
It did pick up on the anomolously high snow cover in China this past winter. As you can see, it has disappeared. Therefore, it will not have an impact on March temperatures there.
FYI, Billings, Montana is 50 cm below normal in snowfall this past winter, so while you got dumped on, other places in North America keep getting missed. That is why I try to avoid local conditions when talking about changes in climate.
On the otherhand the NH ice extent to date is 500,000 sq km above what it was last year. March 2008 will be colder than March 2007.
ok. raise your pitiful paw if you have been clicking on the monthly
anomaly sources the past few days, you climate porn dogs.
After a few days of watching nothing happen, I began to crave a boring cricket match.
RSS is in order
‘March 2008 is shaping up to be considerably warmer than either Jan or Feb.’
I didn’t look at the link, but …. would that not be called ‘Spring’?
Regarding the failure of the next solar cycle to start on time: A number of years ago I found an interesting relationship between the opposition and conjunction cycle of Saturn and Jupiter and the solar cycle. It seemed that the two cycles would run in phase for 7 to 9 half cycles and then the solar cycle would “stretch” for a couple of cycles until the phase was reestablished. From the data it appeared a stretch cycle might be coming. Additionally, In the most recent Science News, it was reported that a nearby star with a small orbit large planet appeared to be flipping the stars magnetic field. My very badly rendered chart can be viewed at:
http://www.graystonelabs.com/solarcycle.html
Anthony,
You got mad props at Reason magazine.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/125300.html
REPLY: Thanks for the note.
Otter, that’s “anomaly wise”.
Interesting peice by Scafetta and West in Physics Today this month:
http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/opinion0308.pdf
Aaron, me and my fellow Cosmoclimatologists will try not to be offended by that smear. 🙂
Lucia, perhaps I’m wrong, but I thought the anomoly was using the same 1950-1980 or 1961-1990 base period GISS generally uses. If not, I’d think they’d be more clear about it. An average of all Januarys, Febs, etcs would be a very strange metric and I don’t see how it would be very useful (but then, perhaps that’s why they would supply it). The warm and cool parts of the year have some seasonality, but not much.
If they were to do such a thing, it would make much more sense to present a seperate trend analysis for each month seperately. And be much clearer in their description/methodology.
“I didn’t look at the link, but …. would that not be called ‘Spring’?”
That would, in the northern hemisphere. In the southern, it would be called autumn or fall, depending on the roots of the speaker. Globally, it should be called March.
Please don’t fall for the same fallacy as alarmists often do, when they just talk about the NH and forget to mention that there’s more to the Earth than that half.
Otter, it’s fall for the southern hemisphere.
But Flannery put himself in such a position, no one forced him there.
REPLY: Yes exactly
I believe that Lucia is correct in thinking that monthly anomalies are reported relative to baselines calculated for that month. This is explained at the foot of the GISS table, as follows:
“Best estimate for absolute global mean for 1951-1980 is 14C = 57.2F,
so add that to the temperature change if you want to use an absolute scale
(this note applies to global annual means only, J-D and D-N !)”
‘March 2008 is shaping up to be considerably warmer than either Jan or Feb.’
That’s a bold prediction with 20 days remaining in the month. For the record here in my part of the world (Illinois), we have had 11 days of below normal temperatures and are expecting a potential snowstorm (Ugh!) on Friday night into Saturday.
I can’t tell from that map if March will be warmer or not. For one thing, it doesn’t have SST data, so it’s only half (or really, 2/3rds) of the picture.
R John,
Given all of the adjustments that NOAA, GISS, and CRU do, you never know what they will spit out for March. 😉
To make it clear, I meant that the March 2008 ANOMOLY will be warmer than Jan and Feb. Feel free to make your own prediction and join the world of us Meteorologists.