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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Great Pierre Gosselin, just great. You really cheered me up >-#
Actually, only the Northern Hemisphere now has a significant trend over the past 29 years.
Also, Philip B., if you look at the data, there seems to be no such thing as a lag between tropical warming and NH warming. They go hand in hand, and, contrary to what I thought, temperature excursions are larger in the tropics. Maybe Anthony can comment.
REPLY: The northern hemispshere has the lions share of weather stations and population growth.
As my surfacestations.org project has pointed out, weather stations proximity to population growth, artificial heats sources has increased dramatically. – Anthony
The May 08 UAH MSU Global SST is -0.28 deg C. That’s the lowest value since March 1993. Excuse my scribblings on the graph.
http://i29.tinypic.com/2uypuyw.jpg
Since its post 97/98 El Nino high (January 2005) of 0.51 deg C, global has dropped 0.79 deg C. It took only 40 months.
Yet the average ONI value for Jan 2005 to April 08 is -0.065 deg C, fundamentally a break even with respect to global SST. Since July 05, the AMO has dropped 0.41 deg C. Assuming the North Atlantic represents 15% of the global ocean area, the maximum AMO contribution can only be 15% of 0.41 deg C or 0.0615 deg C. Since May 2005, the PDO has dropped significantly, 3.38 deg C, but the problem with PDO data is that it’s standardized. Only the keepers of the data know what the actual values are, and they aren’t talking. But let’s assume that 3.38 deg C is the actual drop in temperature in the North Pacific, north of 20N, and let’s also assume that that area represents 15% of the global ocean area. (0 to 20N is a big chunk of the North Pacific.) 15% of 3.38 deg C is 0.5 deg C. Subtracting the contributions of the AMO and PDO from the total decline that still leaves 0.23 deg C unaccounted for.
Something else’s driving down ocean temperatures, but we’ve recently been advised it’s not the sun.
Lennart,
Since Solar Cycle length is not uniform (Cycle 23 is over 12 years and still going, Cycle 21 10.4, Cycle 22 9.6) I do not see how you can use the same month in a particular year as the same point in solar cycles, clearly it isn’t.
I don’t see any evidence for your claim the Cycle 24 will ‘probably’ be strong. In fact, the opposite may be true since most of the time the cycle following an elongated solar cycle is weak.
Nor can you pinpoint the peak of Cycle 24 (which hasn’t started and is 2 years over due) or Cycle 25 at this time.
Anthony, can you provide a news clip supporting your statement of delayed northern hemisphere snow melt? I don’t know if the graphic that you posted is normal melt or not.
REPLY: I’ve seen a couple, I’ll see if I can find them.
Bill: Sorry, that should say September 1986, I miswrote. The data point is correct though, it’s from September 1986. May 2008 may in fact not be the minima, the solar cycle hasn’t turned yet.
“I don’t see any evidence for your claim the Cycle 24 will ‘probably’ be strong.”
No, but this is what NASA and other solar scientists claim. But maybe their science is “alarmist” too? 🙂
The lack of any significant volcanic activity makes the current downturn much more significant than other low points since 1979.
Still, it will take at least one more year to turn around the media and even more to wake up the politicians.
Lieberman-Warner may not succeed this time around, but will likely be successful if re-introduced next year. If it does pass and is approved by President Bush, it will take a decade or more to undo – regardless of trends.
masstexodus:
Ice went out about 3 weeks late up here. This week we have clouds and showers forecast with our third excursion into the 80’s on Sat. Last June was hot and dry, but then our local climate changed back to late 40’s and early 50’s weather (or so I’m led to believe). We had freezes up north 2 or 3 times last week.
Minnesota the way we remember it: 9 months of winter, followed by 3 months of rough sledding.
Meanwhile, western Europe, or at least Belgium, seems to be in a “warm island”. At the Royal Meteorological Institute at Uccle, near Brussels, May 2008 was the warmest May since the observations began in 1901.
Lennart
This is part of the statement released by NOAA
As you can see they don’t appear to be able to agree between themselves what cycle 24 will be like.
Francois,
It’s my humble opinion that vastly all of the temperature increase in the NH over the last 30 years is due to less sulfates (thus, less dimming of the sun). Approx. 85% of all sulfates originate in the NH. Plot the anomalies of NH versus SH (with either RSS or UAH monthly data). You will see that the 12-month running means split into two around the mid-90’s. Since then, there is a gap between the NH and SH anamolies. Question: why were these anamolies on top of each for the first 15 years, and then suddenly spread apart? Answer: less sulfate pollution in the America, Europe, and Former Soviet Union. To me, it seems obvious looking at the data.
Bill,
For your information, since January and I also feels that it might be stronger. I also agree the following Solar Cycle might be longer and recent trends indicates that for Solar Flares, we should expect an even stronger Flare for solar cycle 24. As for why the cycle is longer, i think that the next solar polarity switch ought to occur at roughly equal period. But still i could be wrong.
This is but one of a number of leading indicators, all of them now trending the wrong way for improved quality of life / economic conditions / geopolitical stability.
Some people whistle past the grave yard. Some do not.
Re: Lennart
It is true that global temps were lower at their lowest points during the last two minimums…however, keep in mind that the May 2008 12 month mean does not reflect the low point of this cycle yet. Assuming for argument’s sake that temperature’s rise slowly from here on out and solar cycle 24 gets going soon, the lowest 12 month mean will likely come in 3-5 months. It will be significantly lower than the .116 where we sit now. Consider that January, February, March, April and now may were all colder than that.
If the Jan-May average continues for another couple months, the 12 month mean is just about guaranteed to fall near 0. There, in my opinion, is a very good chance it could fall lower than it did in 1996.
Anthony, your Blog was picked up again:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=53de09dc-802a-23ad-4ec4-c8accd44a47d
REPLY: I hate it when that happens.
The last Hansen publication I saw used uncorrected land data that had been debunked in 2005. He must have gotten his degree with partial credit.
Lennart,
True, but aren’t these the same guys who predicted that cycle 23 would end in Sept 2006 :-)?
[…] by Anthony Watts, Watts Up With That?, June 4, 2008 [here] […]
The Texas power grid was threatened when the energy company was paid out $35 B in 2006(?) to go private in return for a committment to take 9-10 coal fire generators off the drawing board. Get ready for worse.
Geostatistic temperatures are regionalised variable and never should be other than local.
@rex
The picture is right. I live in north Germany and it has been warm. The German media, which are universal in their AGW belief, have been pretty much saying the whole world has been gettin warmer.
But Germans returning from their vacations in Spain are astonished that it has been so cold in Spain.
@Pierre Gosselin
that’s what I discovered last year and seems to be the same thing this year: while northern europe and scandinavia seem to be unusually warm the mediterrean bassin is rather cold, spain, italy etc.
Is this a pattern?
Pierre,
Well, you know because Al said, “The planet has a fever”, therefore it must.
Still, I am in agreement with Dr Pielke, who maintains that the best metric for ‘global climate change’ is not atmospheric temperature at 6′ altitude, but Ocean Heat Content. Argos shows a slight cooling of the oceans since 2003, hence no global warming since that time.
Chris
It has been a mild May this year in England. In fact I’m sure it was warmer in March when I was up in Scotland near Inverness. For the past decade or more it has been getting warmer where I live but this trend has changed. It had got to the point where you could not even expect a frost over December. We had a mild but cool winter, but snow did turn up in April. Have not seen that for years. I kept my heating on until May which is unusual. GB as an Island might be getting milder weather still than europe (at a guess). Particles or aerosols is something I considered since the heat waves in Europe. The air is cleaner over europe hence the deaths in 2003 from heat stroke. It makes you wonder what effect the dirt over China and India is having.
Basil,
I wish I could share your optimism, but Obama will be a shoe in. McCain is just old mouldy bread – and aint got a snowball’s chance in global-warming hell. To keep my last post short, I actually left out the scariest real possibility, and it’s a real one:
*** The dissident US media (i.e. Talk Radio, Skeptic blogs and FoxNews) are in for some real rough times in 09 ***
How do I know this? The Left Wing of the Democrats have been coordinating and acting in concert with the European Socialists and Greens.
The media here have been taken over by greeny elitists and are universal in their AGW belief – there’s no dissenting media here.
Public opinion in Germany for example is universal when it comes to AGW. The Democrat Left in the States envy the media domination here in Europe, and see the success just by looking at European public opinion. They will surely move to replicate it.
Good examples of the power of the indoctrinating media here:
1. A huge number of Europeans believe that the moon-landing was very likely staged in Hollywood, and never really happened.
2. The same is true about the US government masterminding 9/11.
3. 90+% of Germans believe in a looming climate catastrophe.
4. The media here has already made Obama into a Messiah-like star.
The citizens here have not been more misled since the days of Adolph Hitler and Josef Goebbels. Was there any mention here of the latest satellite data? Of course not.
Such media power is surely admired by left wing socialists intent on driving a radical tax and control agenda. I know many here will think I’m way off on this – but you’ll see.
There’s only one problem with their scheme though, and you hit it smack on the head. These socialists are surely going to overreach bigtime, and then there’s going to be a huge economic and public backlash.
Already we are seeing a MONSTER IFLATION CYCLE beginning to take hold…all due to needlessy high energy costs.
Inflation is like toothpaste – once it’s out of the tube, it’s real hard to put it back in. And as you have alluded to, Carter was beaten by double digit inflation and unemployment.
I see sunny days ahead, but only after a really bad Category 4 storm.
How many Northern Europeans actually check to see what the temperature is in other parts of the world?
As far as they’re all concerned: it’s unnaturally warm, and something is really wrong! Shoot, the media is not informing them about UAH MSU.
It’s going to get real nasty.
But they’ll overreach.