RSS (Remote Sensing Systems of Santa Rosa, CA) RSS Microwave Sounder Unit (MSU) lower troposphere global temperature anomaly data for July 2008 was published today and has moved a bit above the zero anomaly line, with a value of 0.147°C for a positive change (∆T) of 0.112°C globally from June 2008.
RSS
2008 1 -0.070
2008 2 -0.002
2008 3 0.079
2008 4 0.080
2008 5 -0.083
2008 6 0.035
2008 7 0.147
I rather expected it to go up a bit, given that La Nina has diminsihed, plus the NH has a greater landmass than the SH, and we are in summer. But compared though to July 2007, at 0.363, it is still lower, down 0.216.
Click for larger image
Mike,
“As this is a direct process there should be no temperature lag.”
I think the answer is that, if the effect exists as postulated by Dr. Svensmark, it is not the ONLY thing affecting temperature. Just as CO2 increase or decrease is not the ONLY, nor the overwhelming, thing affecting temperature.
Another possibility is that the increased low altitude clouds (those are the ones that lower temps, increased Cirrus clouds would raise them) are mostly over the oceans, so the effect would not be on atmospheric temperatures , but on ocean heat content. A decrease in ocean heat content (which we have evidence is occurring since 2005) would have a delayed effect on atmospheric temperatures.
The climate system is a complex, non-linear, chaotic system (I often wonder if there are examples of linear chaotic systems, if not, the term non-linear is superfluous) so the effect of changing any one input will not necessarily be reflected immediately.
Counters
How many volcanoes? Evidence of these volcanoes? For 300+ years? Wow the earth was really heaving out some gas. Oh yea don’t volcanoes also produce CO2, where is that in the record?
Mike K. yea we are really blazing at .147 positive. The Earth wont cool in just a year or two it takes time since 70% of the surface is water. How long does it take for your coffee to cool down, especially the store bought type.
Mike Keep (09:16:01) :
Back to the July temperature anomoly, we now have a neutral ENSO and ‘coolphase’ PDO. The solar minimum is well established (one sunspot last month) so why is the temperature still above average? As I understand the theory, low sunspot activity allows more cosmic rays to enter the earths atmosphere forming more clouds by increased ion-induced aerosol nucleation, hence a cooling. As this is a direct process there should be no temperature lag.
Temperatures should be falling, but they are not, could there be another reason?
But temperatures are falling. Look at the following:
http://i34.tinypic.com/2dazo74.jpg
This graph plots the monthly seasonal difference for UAH (global) for the 12 months 2007:07 through 2008:06 (sorry, I don’t have the RSS data readily accessible, and the July data for UAH is not out yet). “Monthly seasonal difference” refers to a month in the current year compared to the same month a year previously. When this number is negative, it means that temperatures are falling, i.e. the temperature in the current month is lower than the temperature in the same month the year before. It has been negative for the past 10 months (through June). Don’t get confused here. The trend can be negative even if the anomaly is positive.
So, one could could argue that the theory you reference is currently being validated, i.e. we’re at a solar minimum, cosmic ray flux is high, and temperatures are trending downward. Personally, I think the jury is still way out on the Svensmark hypothesis, and that even if it ever becomes widely accepted, it isn’t going to explain short term correlations like we’re seeing here. Going back to what I just posted about persistence, the climate system is to complicated for easy answers like this. I do think the Sun is a primary driver of terrestrial climate, but its impact gets filtered through very complex ocean atmospheric processes that do lead to trends — or better, cycles — in temperature data.
Mike Keep (09:16:01) :
Hailstones are quite common in summer months and have nothing to do with cool ground temperatures. In the UK,especially the southern half this time of year always has three days of fine weather folloed by a thundery outbreak. Hailstorms are very common during thunderstorms.
Hi Mike
Not sure where the ground temperature bit came from in your post. I was referring to the heavens. I must admit that hail in the summer is not something I had noticed before observationally. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen, of course. From what I understand, hail the size of marbles is a very rare event in the UK, but is common in say, the US.
This must mean that either there is a lot of moisture in the air, the cumulus cloud went VERY high or it was very cold in the atmosphere. It’s just an observation I thought might be interesting as a “side show”.
counters,
re your comment “The LIA was caused by several things, but two important ones stick out. First, the LIA was a period of anomalously high amounts of volcanic activity.”, you should read Brian Fagan’s book, ” the Little Ice Age. The author – who by the way believes in the strong influence of CO2 on the climate – uses extensive historical data to describe climatic events that took place starting with the Medieval Warm Period and the onset of the LIA which he pinpoints at the seven weeks of non-stop rain that took place in 1315. He did not link it to any volcanic activity, at least not for that time. He did make a strong correlation to volcanic activities for the period 1812-1815, when 3 major volcanic eruptions took place, including the Mount Tambora eruption, which was one the largest ever recorded. That was in 1815 and resulted in what he calls ” The year without summer “. He also notes the strong correlation between cold periods and absence of sunspots, but does not go into any attempts to explain the correlation.
co2science has hundreds of studies, from all over the world indicating that the MWP was world wide.
Bill Marsh
The temperatures are listed in degrees Kelvin. A Kelvin degree is the same size as a Celsius degree. The difference is that Kelvin = Celsius – 273.12. Thus 0 degrees K = “absolute zero”. Using Kelvin temperatures really simplifies a lot of scientific equations. Anyhow, I mentioned that a Kelvin degree is the same size as a Celsius degree. A Celsius degree = 1.8 Fahrenheit degrees. Thus 0.066 Kelvin (or Celsius) degree equals 0.066 * 1.8 = 0.1188 Fahrenheit degree, which rounds off to 0.12. The display must be targetted at an American audience.
Gack, quick reply during lunch break. Kelvin = Celsius *PLUS* 273.12
“Back to the July temperature anomoly, we now have a neutral ENSO and ‘coolphase’ PDO. The solar minimum is well established (one sunspot last month) so why is the temperature still above average?”
Above average is a subjective term. And, the earth’s oceans and atmsophere normall do not just lose huge amounts of heat energy over a one year period (At least I don’t want to be around for it it does). If the earth is 1 deg C warmer than it was in 1908, and July was say 0.4 deg warmer than the 30 year running average, it could still be cooling. The year over year, or decade to decade trends are what people are looking at. July 2008 could still be the XX warmest July since 1900, but it is cooler than say July 2003.
This kind of statistical monkey business was started by the Alarmists, in order to well… alarm people. I think it is much more interesting to follow the ENSO MEI. Short term trends are just that.
In my neck of the woods, we;ve had a classic La Nina Spring-Summer. Dry and moderately cool, and an occaisonal Northwest flow induced outbreak of severe weather.
Matt….
The 4 years cycle you see is pretty easy to explain, for the most part.
1985 was a La Nina and solar minimum.
1989 was a very strong La Nina.
1993 was the Pinatubo eruption (volcanic, so really separate from climate cycles).
1996 was La Nina and solar minimum.
2000 was strong La Nina.
2004 was a neutral ENSO year, so this is the one that is harder to explain, but you will note it also did not dip near as much as the others overall.
2008 was La Nina and solar minimum.
Anecdotal I know, but here in Adelaide, South Australia we had a July mean temp of 14.8C, half a degree below the mean long term temp of 15.3C.
The reasoning is that, with all this cloud cover,the highs aren’t as high, but at night, the lows aren’t as low.
Absolutely.
We had a very cool June here in MO. However, it was very humid and cloudy with record rainfall. I don’t beleive it ever broke 90 in June here, or maybe only one or two days, which is odd. We’ve only had a couple of 90 degree days in July, and one in August so far. The forecast for the rest of this week are high’s in the low 80’s with lows in the low 60’s, which is pretty uncommon for August here. However, for June, Climatology called it the 2nd warmest June ever, or something like that. I call BS. I would sure like to see a graph of only the daily highs, and then only the daily lows, and then the combination of the two into an average temperature. That would be interesting, and I think would cut through some of the BS.
Mike and co
Temperatures: Yes, as many has written, it takes time to shift global temperature.
Solar cycle 20 in the sixties. We saw a somewhat weak solar cycle, and all the way through the cycle the global temperatures had a falling tendensy.
I´ve seen Alarmists pointing out exactly that “we are now at the bottum of solar activity, so now it can only go up”. They might be surpriced the next years. Its the level of the whole cycle that should be compared to the other cycles. And so far the level is Maunder minimum like low.
As you know, there is a VERY strict connection between solar sycles and temperature the last 400 years, so i find it rather extraordinar that some people just thinks that this time there will be no such connection.
For what reason should there for the first time not be this connection?
Remember that the solar cycles historically is connected to temperature variances many times bigger that the 0,7 degrees celcius of warming in the 20´th century.
K.R. Frank
Now here’s something that was a pleasure to read. Let’s hope this trend picks up some super-heated steam.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4474202.ece
Concerning Arctic sea ice. Compare arctic sea temps:
8/7/2008
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/climo&hot.html
and
8/6/2007
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.8.6.2007.gif
Well maybe ya’ll right. 2007 in the Arctic regions looks redder than a Stalinist parade.
I understand that the sun’s output (measured at Earth) cycles by roughly a couple watts per square meter peak-to-valley.
A quick, simplistic calculation indicates it would take the Earth’s oceans rough order of magnitude well over 100 years to completely respond to a 2 watt per square meter change (assuming I did not screw up).
If that’s anywhere near right, the ocean temperature (and therefore Earth global temperature) is probably always behind the sun forcing in some sense — maybe a couple hundred years behind. Thus, the sun may have reached a genuine minimum of some sort during the little ice age and then picked up its output to new highs over a couple hundred years ago — and we are still adjusting to the new highs.
Thanks Jared,
I appreciate that perspective.
So I’m seeing ~12 year solar cycle. I guess what is striking to me is why 4 years is the relative period of oscilation. What’s regular is the oscilation, almost never static, almost never 3 straight years of rise or fall (admittedly, the 00s is an abnormality). I’ll have to look at other records to go back in time, maybe I’m reading too much into it.
Nonetheless, I look at these numbers and think “these troughs never last” and that our temp will be headed back up by next year, unless the sun has truly gone ‘Maunder’ on us (the opposit of “postal” I suppose).
Matt
Who knew watching grass grow could become a sport?
I think Vegas is behind the curve here…
Walter,
Thanks, it is very confusing to show the readings in one scale and quote the difference in another.
I’m an American, but I would prefer the Celsius myself.
Walter,
Svensmark’s hypothesis, at least the aspect that postulates that high energy particles (and thus Muons generated from GCR collisions in the atmosphere) are the ‘spark’ behind formation of CCD (Cloud condensation nuclei) is going to be tested at CERN in the CLOUD project. While Dr Svensmark believes he has already verified this effect on his own, CLOUD will provide a more rigorous verification.
If this is verified, then the remaining work is looking for the signal in the past, something that researchers have presented evidence for and against.
Personally I think this is the mechanism that controls temperature more so than CO2 level, but that remains merely an opinion.
http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/Research/CLOUD-en.html
Anthony,
somwhow toff topic here – but I forgot to save the email-address from this
great ‘woodfortrees’ guy. I would like to ask, if there is apossibility to add the
Pacific Warm Water Volume to his list of displayable datas, see:
I like the comparison of this datas to the AMSU global maritime temperature anomalies. It does really explain why ’98 was such warm – the pacific lost about 25% of its energy stored in warm water and provided it to the atmosphere.
Hi Paul,
“Not sure where the ground temperature bit came from in your post. I was referring to the heavens.”
Sorry, my mistake. Read it as ‘over there’, how I refer to blighty from the dampness of the Emerals Isle!
External forcings does not mean extra-terrestrial.
I never claimed otherwise.
Anyway, while there are obvious differences between the climate and financial markets, there are also some important similarities. Most importantly, it’s not too hard to create a financial market model which “predicts” past market behavior and fool yourself into thinking that your model will predict the future. It looks to me like the same mistake is being made in climate modeling.
On the other hand, the atmosphere is chaotic because we do not have a full understanding of it and its influences
This statement betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of chaotic systems.
dreamin (08:31:35) : quoting someone: “Simply eyeballing the temperature vs year graphs indicates a “cycling”. And, by the look of it, we’ve been near a “local minimum” — so an upturn just about now is not unexpected.
And responding: I disagree. Take a look at a stock market graph over a time period of about a year. It’s easy to think that there are predictable cycles, but there are not.
There are predictable cycles in weather over a year. I’d bet my house that, in the NH, August will be warmer than February. Not sure what you mean by “persistence” but there is definite autocorrelation, not only from year to year, but a warmer than average JAN is likely to be followed by a warmer than average FEB.
Likewise, there appear to be longer climate cycles one of them around 30 years and another around 70 years. The 70 year cycle seems to have a lot of influence in the NW weather along the Pacific coast (I’m pulling this out of memory; there was a seminar presentation provided on the Monckton’s DVD).
The UAH graphs are for global temperatures which should pretty much even out. One exception is that during part of the year, the Earth is closer to the sun. So happens that is during the NH winter months. Winter is approx 4-5 days shorter than summer in the NH because the orbital speed is also greater during this time. I don’t know what that means in terms of temperatures.
Anyway, the upturn in June may not have been all that predictable.
——
dreamin (14:27:56): it’s not too hard to create a financial market model which “predicts” past market behavior and fool yourself into thinking that your model will predict the future. It looks to me like the same mistake is being made in climate modeling.
Amen to that. I think it’s a major downfall of the GCM’s. I believe they are too detailed: a lot like trying to predict river flow by modeling the dynamics of each water molecule. They are also incomplete (e.g. lack substantial modelling of clouds). Like trying to model river flow but neglecting precipitation.
counters: “On the other hand, the atmosphere is chaotic because we do not have a full understanding of it and its influences”
dreamin: This statement betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of chaotic systems.”
I don’t normally agree with counters but understand that chaotic has a colloquial meaning that equates to unpredictable or random. In the sense that he meant, it’s a fair and accurate characterization.
I, too, firmly believe that randomness, in general and of weather specifically, is only apparent. It’s our lack of understanding of the physics and physical parameters that lead to the appearance of random response. If this were not true then most scientific investigation would be pointless.
Economic systems (stock prices, e.g.) are less likely to be characterized and parameterized any time in the near future as physical systems are because they are driven in part by human psychology on which we only have a vague handle.
The two things, weather and stock indices, resemble each other superficially but have ultimately and sufficiently different drivers that make comparisons between them less useful.