This just doesn’t seem to add up given what we’ve seen from anecdotal weather information and satellite data. For example the UAH global temperature for the lower troposphere shows that the temperature in 2008 doesn’t get anywhere close to this claim made by NOAA:
The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for summer 2008 was 0.85 degrees F (0.47 degrees C) above the 20th century mean of 60.1 degrees F (15.6 degrees C).
From my perspective as surveyor of the USHCN network, and knowing firsthand just how corrupted the data measuring system is, I have a lot of trouble believing this claim. The satellite data says otherwise.
Here is NOAA’s Press Release today:
Contact: John Leslie FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
301-713-2087, ext. 174 Sept. 16, 2008
NOAA: Global Summer Temperature Was Ninth Warmest
Tenth Warmest August Since Records Began
The combined global average land and ocean surface temperature for summer 2008 was the ninth warmest since records began in 1880, and this August was the tenth warmest, according to an analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.
Summer (June – August) Highlights
- The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for summer 2008 was 0.85 degrees F (0.47 degrees C) above the 20th century mean of 60.1 degrees F (15.6 degrees C).
- Separately, the global land surface temperature for the summer was 1.12 degrees F (0.62 degrees C) above the 20th century mean of 56.9 degrees F (13.8 degrees C).
- The global ocean surface temperature for summer ranked ninth warmest on record and was 0.74 degrees F (0.41 degrees C) above the 20th century mean of 61.5 degrees F (16.4 degrees C).
August Highlights
- The August 2008 combined global land and ocean surface temperature was 0.79 degrees F (0.44 degrees C) above the 20th century mean of 60.1 degrees F (15.6 degrees C) and tied with 1995 for the tenth warmest August on record.
- The global land surface temperature for August was 0.88 degrees F (0.49 degrees C) above the 20th century mean of 56.9 degrees F (13.8 degrees C).
- The global ocean surface temperature for August was 0.77 degrees F (0.43 degrees C) above the 20th century mean of 61.4 degrees F (16.4 degrees C), which tied for seventh warmest August with 2001.
Other Highlights
- El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) neutral conditions continued in August, and are expected to last through the end of 2008, according to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.
- Arctic sea ice extent at the end of August was at its second lowest extent on record according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Sea ice declined by a record rate in August, decreasing by 950,000 square miles (2.47 million square kilometers) between Aug. 1 and Sept. 3. The current extent is 800,000 square miles (2.08 million square kilometers) below the 1979-2000 average.
- Tropical Storm Fay struck the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands between August 15 – 17, claiming 23 lives across the Caribbean. Hurricane Gustav affected the same countries August 24 – 31, claiming an estimated 95 lives in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Jamaica. Tropical Storm Kammuri struck southern China on August 6, bringing torrential rains to Hong Kong. Rain from Kammuri caused 120 deaths in northern Vietnam. On Aug. 20, Typhoon Nuri made landfall in the Philippines and killed seven people.
- In southern India, heavy monsoon rains killed 99 people, while in northern India flash flooding claimed 74 lives and left about 50,000 people homeless. Varanasi, India received 11.5 inches (292.1 mm) of rain in just 24 hours. Torrential downpours claimed 27 lives in northwestern Pakistan during the first week of August. In Laos, heavy monsoon rains raised the Mekong River to its highest recorded level of 44.88 feet (13.68 m). Also in August, extensive flooding affected China, Japan, Mexico, and Great Britain.
- On Aug. 17, Eyre in Western Australia registered a low temperature of -7.2 degrees C (19 degrees F), setting the record for the all-time lowest temperature for that Australian state, according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
- Severe storms over northern France on Aug. 4 spawned a tornado that killed three people in the town of Hautmont. Another tornado hit Mykanów, Poland, on Aug. 15, killing three and injuring 37.
- Moderate-to-severe drought impacted northern parts of China during August, according to the Beijing Climate Center. Below-average August rainfall over parts of eastern and southern Australia worsened drought conditions in those areas. Parts of southwest Australia experienced their lowest August rainfall since records began there in 1900.
NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.
On the Web:
NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov
NCDC August 2008 analysis: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2008/aug/aug08.html
– 30 –
BTW – earlier in the year they had a record sorhgum crop.
“NOAA Claims: Global Summer Temperature Was Ninth Warmest.” My observation: So what? Why should that be important? The reason: Global warming has been allowed to become synonymous with AGW through the [snip Propaganda] process. When global warming or warming or climate change is mentioned in the “news” we now understand that AGW is implied. A separation is required. AGW does not exist. Global warming/climate change is an ongoing process and is not amenable to human intervention.
Hi Anthony, the proof you require is from two sources
First the the equation for “absorbance” for gasses
A = -ln ( I’ / I )
A = absorbance
ln = log base 2
I = intensity of light at start of path
I’ = intensity of light at end of path
This is common knowledge and can be clearly seen in wiki under the Beer lambert law.
As you can see absorbance is the log of the change in intensity.
The intensity is the power, the unit of power is watts.
IPCC have misinterpreted absorbance as the change intensity rather than the negative log of changes of intensity.
The measurable effect is demonstrated in this paper
http://www.warwickhughes.com/papers/barrett_ee05.pdf
The beer lambert law when expressed as concentration vs % absorption
http://robjmitchell.smugmug.com/photos/373715566_bTzfL-M.gif
The cool cloudy summer in southern Ontario has pointed out a major flaw with my pool’s solar heater. When the sun doesn’t shine the solar heater won’t work. 🙂 Consequently I have had to use the gas heater more often. If it stays like this I will have to double the size of the solar panels or with Carbon Trading a much thinner wallet if I have to resort to the gas heater. Both the NOAA and the GISS are nuts if they think it was anywhere near warm this summer.
FYI – looks like the CA server is knocked out again.
REPLY: Its our entire system, major cloud network outage here all the way to San Jose, CA uses my DNS server. -Anthony
My students know that I, and my Physics teaching colleague, are very sceptical about AGW, as is the Economics / Business Studies teacher. We have even put doubt into the minds of the geography department (I hope). The biofuel debacle shook a lot of faith in “simple solutions”.
We do assemblies on the topic. Even so, you always get the consensus argument thrown back at you. The IPCC has attained unimpeachable status (like the UN) because people believe it is impartial and trying to do the best with no bad motive. They believe the IPCC is a large group of the world’s best scientists seeking truth, and they believe that the media press releases are a true reflection of the reports in the IPCC documents and that this must be the definitive conclusion. They cannot believe that anyone would deliberately twist an argument.
Oddly enough there is a lot of bad feeling about sceptics as a consequence of this. Why would anyone question motives and consensus? They must have an ulterior motive… aka Big Business etc.
They are willing to ascribe ill will to sceptics in a way they never do towards the IPCC contributors / summarisers.
Schoolteachers in the UK are extremely prone to any “left” / “green” issue. I cannot see any way that the situation will change. There will be no change of approach in schools. Too much has been invested in terms of credibilty to start questioning now.
RobJM:
Whatever you’ve found, the use of Beer’s fails for other reasons as well. The law was developed to determine a signal’s attenuation passing thru a fluid, i.e., the fluid’s absorptance attenuated the signal. This has nothing to do with the absorptivity of a photon of given wavelength by a molecule–in the case of GHGs, at a given pressure and temperature.
The goal of Beer’s is to relate the percentage of the signal passed to the cross-sectional area of the absorbing fluid. This is seldom attempted, however, and a term ‘optical depth’ is used which for the depth of the atmosphere, e.g., giving an absorptance of about 0.7 for IR at 15um. In fact, at sea level, the signal is ‘absorbed’ within a few 100 meters. A small fraction of the signal is instantly re-emitted and, if the signal is continuous, a wavefront is maintained (think radiosonde). The logrithmic decay of the signal follows with increasing depth.
The real problem comes with the faulty application of Kirchoff’s law: For bodies in thermal equilibrium, the energy absorbed equals that emitted. But the atmosphere is never in thermal equilibrium, we know this because its temperature changes in the presence of OLR!
Most of the IR energy absorbed by GHGs, all but the small fraction instantly re-emitted, is shared with the molecule’s neighbors by collision. The excited GHG molecule immediately returns to its ‘base’ state, the average kinetic energy of the mixed gas in which it resides.
The energy absorbed by the GHG is therefore free to far exceed that emitted.
This, of course, is not the case with Kirchoff’s cavity, a plane-solid construction. There the solid’s lattice transmits the kinetic energy around the wafer-thin perimeter of the cavity at a substantial fraction of the speed of light. Any absorbed energy is balanced ‘instantly’ with a corresponding emission.
Only at high pressure and temperature, e.g., the sun’s surface, do we say the emission of a gas equals its absorption.
To LeeW
You paint a bleak picture. The fact is, all that training in the schools and media hype is just that. There is a certin percentage of the population that will always believe what they are told. There is also another section that will never believe what they are told. You run the gamut from sheep to hardcore conspiracy theorists. Everyone else falls into the middle.
If the general public was so impressionable, we would all be extinct. The scientific method is not filled with opinion. It is tainted with preconceptions and bias buy by a logical approach and peer revue science is able to weed out the facts in general. Those whom ignore the facts eventually fail.
I don’t think the whole thing is so hopeless. History shows you can feed people BS only so long as they can tolerate the taste. The higher the Pied Pipers of AGW fly, the harder that will land.
It is quite definitely the warmest 2008 we’ve ever had.
Global land and sea had the 9th warmest summer season on record, and August was the 10th warmest month.
The contiguous United States had the 22nd warmest summer season on record and August was the 39th warmest month.
The placement of the warmer areas seems to have become a sort of global shell game. Where people live and are paying attention, the temperatures at least must be close to reality. Where there are fewer observers, the temperatures can be bumped a little more. Fortunately, as satellites become more and more ubiquitous, the hiding places are becoming harder and harder to find.
Looking forward to the graphics coming from the AIRS team in a couple weeks.
Could it be that there is some thing wrong with the algorithm?
Everybody knows that it never happened before.
Richard North is correct. This is the warmest 2008 in the history of the entire world.
Hopkins, LeeW etal…
Thinking back on my checkered history as a student – back when “duck and cover” was king and the continents didn’t move. The teachers I learned most from were passionate about their subject – and usually questioned set philosophy.
Math teachers were the worst, droning on about binomials and solving for X and such. Then in college I got an (bonehead math) instructor who was excited about math and its uses – Just one example.
The point is this. Keep at it and stay passionate because at some point those “average” kids who go along with everything because they don’t have enough information to swim against the tide will get it. Then they will join the crowd at Anthony’s site – always better late than never.
It is very strange that this record is so at odds with most peoples feelings about this years temperatures on the ‘ground’.
Obviously, like most people here, I have only limited direct experience of global temperatures in 2008. I have experience of two countries other than the UK this year. In all three countries the weather this year has been amongst the coldest and wettest in recent memory.
I read about more countries and areas on this site ( not completely unbiased I must admit but seem consistent) and wonder where are all these other countries and areas which have had a really hot year to produce this anomoly?
Alan
Real droughts in Australia result in wheat crops of approx 9 to 10 million tons.
20 million Tons, while not a bumper crop is still a reasonable crop.
Our wheat fields are spread across the southern states and have a wide variance of results.
Water moisture in the ground is still an issue – we have had a period of extended drought.
We have also had floods. In a country as big as Australia, you can have floods and droughts at the same time – just in different areas.
Richard North – and the wttest and cloudiest 2008 EVER!
Indeed the coldest 2008 this century.
Matt:
I was in Southern Ontario in July and Toronto was wet and cool (for TO) at 75 degrees F (24C) for the three days I was there. In Ottawa it was even cooler at about 65 to 70C and in Muskoka it was positively chilly.
This was during the last two weeks of July when Toronto is generally in range of 80 to 95F, with Ottawa about the same.
I live out west now and found the temps comparable to nice PNW summer where temperatures only exceed 80F for maybe 10 to 15 days per summer. How lucky for you.
Robert Wood –
How profound!
An interesting link involving current events, Hansen, Gore
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/political-climate.
I track temperatures from Huntley Montana. The summer has been warm. Our average temperature for the summer ranks 61 out of 103 summers. The average monthly temperature for the year thru August ranks 43 out of 103 years and September is about 10 degrees below average. 2008 will definitely be below normal this year.
s’cuse me???? With No Child Left Behind teachers are ENTIRELY focused on reading, writing and math. Science and Social Studies get shortened. Music has come to a dead end except for singing dittys. PE is shortened to 2 days a week. Art? What is that? Shop and Home Economics? Haven’t used the kitchen room in YEARS!
Reading and math fluency is King! The school day is divided up after 90 minutes of reading, writing, and math EACH are taken care of. You do the math. Trust me, no one, NO ONE, has time to talk about climate change. Federal dollars only care about reading and math scores. Nothing else. A state diploma depends on passing scores (generally at the 9th grade level or above), in reading, writing, and math. Federal, state, and district dollars don’t give a rat’s ass about science, art, music, or history.
Before you spout off about teachers, spend a month teaching. Otherwise you don’t have a clue.
REPLY: Having been a local school trustee and seeing this first hand, I’ll back up everything Pamela has written. – Anthony
As an anecdotal observation, this year has been the CLOUDIEST year in all my 27 years in Ottawa. Foreign particles, anyone?
hyonmin (17:46:10) :
This is what will end the AGW parade. Money has a way of cutting through all the bullhockey(stick) and revealing the truth. Go ahead, invest in all the AGW schemes and watch your money disappear.
Hyonmin:
An interesting link involving current events, Hansen, Gore
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/political-climate.
So, the market melt-down was the result of global warming!
“Oh, almighty Gore, please forgive me for my credulous belief in Natural Cycles”
If you wish to view Richard North’s other work, visit EUreferndum.