Confirming what many of us have already noted from the anecdotal evidence coming in of a much cooler than normal May, such as late spring snows as far south as Arizona, extended skiing in Colorado, and delays in snow cover melting, (here and here), the University of Alabama, Huntsville (UAH) published their satellite derived Advanced Microwave Sounder Unit data set of the Lower Troposphere for May 2008.
It is significantly colder globally, colder even than the significant drop to -0.046°C seen in January 2008.
The global ∆T from April to May 2008 was -.195°C
UAH
2008 1 -0.046
2008 2 0.020
2008 3 0.094
2008 4 0.015
2008 5 -0.180
Compared to the May 2007 value of 0.199°C we find a 12 month ∆T is -.379°C.
But even more impressive is the change since the last big peak in global temperature in January 2007 at 0.594°C, giving a 16 month ∆T of -0.774°C which is equal in magnitude to the generally agreed upon “global warming signal” of the last 100 years.
Click for a larger image
Reference: UAH lower troposphere data
I’m betting that RSS (expected soon) will also be below the zero anomaly line, since it tends to agree well with UAH. HadCRUT will likely show a significant drop, I’m going to make a SWAG and say it will end up around 0.05 to -0.15°C. GISS; I’m not going to try a SWAG, as it could be anything. Of course anomalies can change to positive on the next El Nino, but this one seems to be deepening.
Update 06/05/08: Per MattN’s suggestion, changed link above for snow melt to news stories from previous link to National Snow and Ice Center
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Cannot find ‘SWAG’ in the glossary, Anthony…
REPLY: SWAG – Scientific Wild Ass Guess
And June isn’t looking much warmer here in my part of California. We might hit “normal” temps for this time of year two days this week, if we are lucky. The long range forecast doesn’t show us going much above “normal” until the 11th.
Oh I know a couple…
It’s an acronym not a word – one meaning is for Stuff We All Get – generally referring to trade show type goodies.
The other is Simple/Scientific/Silly Wild Approximate (or another A word) Guess – which is what I suspect Anthony is referring to.
For all the AWarmists who claim 10 years of no net warming doesn’t prove anything… go to the UAH data at http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2 and note the 8th column (12 month running mean).
– 12 months ending May 2008 is +0.116
– 12 months ending January 1988 is +0.121
*OVER 20 YEARS WITH NO NET WARMING. I REPEAT, OVER 20 YEARS WITH NO NET WARMING*.
I knew it (boasting) sorry can’t help myself (see previous rex posts).. but of anyone can follow the trend by looking at the graphs. Looks like June may be scarier… because it would to take a steep up notch to catch up with mean at this stage.
And the trend 1979-present has finally dropped to 0.13. Yay.
And its the coldest month in the record since April 1997! And the coldest May since 1992!
At least we are lucky with the weather here in Sweden. For 5 days we have had temperatures around 25-30 degrees. And the forecast tells us that it will continue. We have even had warmer weather here in stockholm than Barcelona in Spain :D. The monhly anormaly since january is like +1,5 C.
LOCAL warming anyone?
[…] speaking of inconvenient truths, it is getting colder. Confirming what many of us have already noted from the anecdotal evidence coming in of a much […]
Hi Anthony,
Based on UAH LT temperature data from ~1980 to end April 2008 and pre-1980 ST data from Hadcrut3, I recently stated that there was no net global warming since ~1940, in spite of an almost 800% increase in humanmade CO2 emissions.
The May 2008 decline of an additional ~0.2C in the UAH global average LT temperature further reinforces this conclusion.
Furthermore, it is clear that CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales, from ice core data spanning thousands of years to sub-decadal trends.
This data consistently suggests that the sensitivity of global temperature to increased atmospheric CO2 is near-zero, and there is no human-made catastrophic global warming crisis.
Please see
http://www.iberica2000.org/Es/Articulo.asp?Id=3774
Best regards, Allan
Yeah Anthony, no need to SWAG at GISS because Hansen will probably doctor it anyway. All this cooling doesn’t fit the party line.
This is a disaster for the world …. scientific community.
SWAG?
Must be some new scientific designation or something.
Again I’d like to warn against anecdotal data:
1. Here in Central Europe and Scandinavia it’s been really warm.
2. The same can be said for big swaths of Siberia.
Are the UAH results alarming? Looks to me like global temps have been pretty much flat over the last 30 years.
Politically I’m already speculating for the next 2 years. The UAH results will certainly spook Gore and the AGW activists. They’ve run out of time, and know they’ll have to move super fast to install their new regime.
1. Obama will win by a land slide in November.
2. The Democrats will also gain seat in both houses.
3. Gore will get a key energy and environmental post in Obama’s Admin.
4. Obama will sign Kyoto immediately after innauguration
5. He will do the same for carbon cap and trade.
6. An El Nino will pop up next year.
7. Temps will rebound.
8. UAH, RSS will be defunded
9. FoxNews will pull a Scott McClellan
10. GISS and HadCrut will release alarming warming data in 2009 and 2010.
11. But by the next election period in 2010, global temps will have in reality plummeted another 0.5°C, inflation will be near double digit, and unemployment will be rising rapidly.
Go to http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ and compare the ice cover in the Arctic for todays date with a hot year such as 1998 and you’ll see little difference!
Stuff We All Get
Also interpreted as Soft Ware and Gifts–still tradeshow usage
Although I always insisted on Stuff We All Get in arguments.
Apparently it’s going to be hot here in Ottawa on Saturday. That’ll get the AGW ccrowd hortling. Otherwise, incredible 100% continual cloud cover and rain.
Coldest May since 1992. 4th coldest on record since measurements began in 1979.
Just sayin’….
I find it neat to see a multi-year sawtooth trend in the mid-1980’s that lasted until the ’98 el Nino.
And yet the AGWarmiots will soldier on bravely, with a trembly voice, saying “the warming is currently on hiatus, having gone into hiding deep in the oceans”. The warming trend is still there, they will say (and are saying), just is being masked by a short-term natural (gasp!) variation. Then, they will point to any and all “extreme” weather, and say, “see, this is unprecedented, and is the result of the hidden man-made GW.” And, they’ll add, “when the warming does resume, it will do so with a vengeance so we need to stop all this C02 pollution now, before it’s too late.” AGW religion is resilient, if nothing else.
Anthony, I would guess that Electrical engineers use the term swag probably more then any other profession. We will admit flat out that we really don’t know–unlike Climate scientists I think.—IMHO
[…] Global temperature is clearly moving down as sea level, stratospheric temperatures and other long term integrators of global temperatures suggest. I will have more to say about the Rahmstorf et.al. (Science Brevia, 4 May 2007, p709 [1]) view that the climate “may be responding more quickly to climate change than our current generation of models indicates”, and its use as the sole source for the Interim Report of the Garnaut Review to advocate prompt and extreme action on carbon emissions (Section 2.4 Consequences of Climate Change, Observed Climate Change). Meanwhile, “Houston, we seem to have another problem.” Hat tip to Anthony Watts […]
The tropics are the “coldest since records began”.
Wouldn’t that be considered unprecedented? 🙂
I’m making a SWAG that the GISS from Dr Hansen will show record warming.
The UAH anomoly for the tropics have been decreasing since Nov 2007:
-0.052, -0.179, -0.212, -0.325, -0.489, -0.532, -0.579
And it has been negative since Oct 2007.
John M Reynolds