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
Bill Marsh
On CERN, a more extensive exposition on cosmic rays:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0804/0804.1938v1.pdf
Looking at the chart, global temps are about the same range as they were when we had La Ninas just before and after the big El Nino of 1998. And if were are in for more La Ninas, then we can expect more subdued global temps.(depending on referenced metric)
ENSO reference in PDF(updated on Mondays).
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf
For those of you interested, my alternate theory of climate change (to the forcings model).
The Earth’s climate is dominated by water feedbacks, specifically water phase changes, over hours to days – evaporation, clouds, rain/snow. Overall, it is in dynamic equilibrium.
Forcings operate over years to decades.
So, water feedbacks swamp changes in forcings over very short timescales. Which leaves us with the question, How do warm and cold periods such as the MWP and LIA occur?
The answer is that the primary influences on our climate are factors that affect phase changes of water. Svensmark’s GCR forming clouds. Soot and particulates causing ice and snow to melt. And aerosols and particulates seeding cloud formation.
This is due to the very different effects of water in it’s different phases. Ice/snow = strong cooling from increased albedo. Water vapour = strong warming due to GH effect. Liquid water as clouds = mostly cooling effect.
You can see the effect of the water vapour/clouds phase change feedback in the diurnal temperature range of humid versus dry places. In the humid tropics diurnal range is small, perhaps 5C. In the dry tropics diurnal range is large, up around 25C. The more water there is the bigger the feedback.
“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.” DAV
I thought chaos theory and quantum theory pretty much told us we would have limits on how far we could predict in the future. Einstein famously said that “God does not play dice with the Universe” but could not prove otherwise.
Science is not pointless but it has its limits and it is good to recognize those.
Counters
‘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. The eruption of volcanoes has two effects:’
Sorry to bust your bubble, but you are wrong about volcanic activity. we where coming out of the LIA when volcanic activity increased.
http://www.longrangeweather.com/global_temperatures.htm
To add to the decrease of incoming radiation, the sun also underwent the “Maunder Minimum.” Although there really isn’t a physical mechanism which has connected sunspots to a cooling sun, it is a highly popular hypothesis, and the LIA and especially its peak minimum highly correlate to the maunder minimum.
So that leaves a correlation to the sun.
Watts up with that “W” on the end of the graph? And the “A” before it?
KlausB: My e-mail is on the site linked above (trivially hidden to avoid spam). For new datasets I need an easy-to-read monthly data file which is kept up to date by the provider, plus academic refs etc.
BTW, you might be interested to know that I just added HADSST2 sea surface temperatures…
Cheers
Paul
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.
In my opinion, if that poster had meant “unpredictable,” then he or she should have said so. Instead, he or she used the phrase “chaotic systems,” which is not quite the same thing. A chaotic system has the property of being sensitive to initial conditions. Thus it remains unpredictable even if the underlying physical properties of the system are well understood.
In any event, as far as I know, it’s an open question as to whether the climate is chaotic on a 50 to 100 year time frame. If a butterfly can cause a storm, can we rule out the possibility of a butterfly causing a little ice age?
I thought chaos theory and quantum theory pretty much told us we would have limits on how far we could predict in the future. Einstein famously said that “God does not play dice with the Universe” but could not prove otherwise.
Science is not pointless but it has its limits and it is good to recognize those.
I agree, and it’s troubling to me the way people throw around phrases like “chaotic system” without really knowing what they are talking about.
Why is it possible to predict an eclipse? Because a small error in the measurement of the positions and motions of sun, earth, and moon results in only a small error in predicting their positions at or around the time of the next eclipse.
In a chaotic system, these uncertainties have a tendency to multiply, giving results that are difficult or impossible to predict even if one understands the interactions of the system’s elements.
UAH’s out: 0.06!!
And the UAH winner is (2008 7 0.048) up from -0.114 in July.
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2
John M Reynolds
UAH is out for July. .048 global anomaly.
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2
As I look at the UAH monthly mean data from 1979, something strikes me. The whole thing pretty much averages out to zero. In, fact almost every month in the record would be rounded to zero, except for some months in 1998. Has anyone else made this observation? Can anyone here even PERCEIVE these differences? I might be making too much of this, but in my view this seems to be much ado about nothing.
Adapting to Zero Climate Change,
Mike Bryant
PS I would like to see this data set rounded to nearest whole number.
REPLY: Mike eyeballing doesn’t reveal the trends all that well. There is a decadal trend of 0.130 degrees in the global data. – Anthony
[…] RSS July Global Temperature Anomaly – up a bit […]
counters — “Note that the MWP is not really considered to be a period of global warmth; its effects were most profound in the North Atlantic, and there is not definitive evidence that it occurred to the same extent globally.”
The only way you can get here is to buy into MBH99 or Ammann and Wahl’s defence against M&M05’s proof of MBH99 being wrong. Otherwise the literature is rife with examples showing that MWP was in fact global.
Given that MBH99 is completely and utterly discredited to the point that even the IPCC on AR4 no longer used the hockey stick, yours seems a very curious and telling comment; it’s as if you start with MBH99 and go from there.
The MWP was global. Period. MBH99 was wrong, and they lied. Period.
Again, what’s the difference between http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2 and
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
REPLY: Fred just FYI, I’m a bit busy today, I can’t always drop everything to research and answer a question. I hope that others can answer for you.
– Anthony
Understood. My apologies if it seemed that way.
Below is a note in UAH’s Global Temperature Reports (not released for July yet) eg. http://climate.uah.edu/june2008.htm
“The processed temperature data is available on-line at:
vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt”
Fred Nieuwenhuis
The 5.2 seems to summarize everything Big Picture style whereas the other table seems to break stuff down into data by region/type.
randomengineer,
Agreed. However, you would expect the Global temperature column to agree in both charts. But they don’t, even with rounding up/down into consideration.
The MWP was global. Period. MBH99 was wrong, and they lied. Period.
I think you are probably right, but if we assume for the sake of argument that it was limited to the Northern Hemisphere, there still remains the question: What (if anything) caused it?
According to Co2 science there is evidence of the MWP in both hemispheres.
http://co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
Medieval Warm Period Project
The real question is what caused the drop in “temperature” from the MWP to the LIA.
Sun spots, or rather the lack there of.