GISS (Goddard Institute of Space Studies) Surface Temperature Analysis (GISSTemp) released their monthly global temperature anomaly data for September 2008. Following is the monthly global ∆T from January to September 2008:
Year J F M A M J J A S
2007 85 61 59 64 55 53 53 55 50
2008 14 25 62 36 40 29 53 50 49
Here is a plot of the GISSTemp monthly anomaly since January 1979 (keeping in line with the time period displayed for UAH). I have added a simple 12-month moving average displayed in red.
For those astute readers of this blog, you will note how the addition of September data warmed our summer months:
GISS 2008 J F M A M J J A S
As of 8/08 14 25 60 42 40 28 50 39 ..
As of 9/08 14 25 62 36 40 29 53 50 49
In other words, when GISS closed the books on August, the summer average (JJA) was 0.39 C. Upon closing the books on September, the summer average increased to 0.44 C.
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They can hide the sea ice wherever they hid all that heat.
BarryW,
I’m a bit denser then you are – It took the Columbia to prove to me that NASA was just another gv’t institution where the inmates were in charge and the rocket scientists (and engineers) were long gone.
A sad commentary on our science, nation and educational system.
I wonder what the temperature of August 2008 was in September 2000.
I think I will take this mathematical approach when completing my tax forms this year. I could save myself a fortune: “sauce for the goose” and all that…
Why all this fuss about August temp going from 39 to 50?
The adjustments that are made are typically small corrections (see June or July) and can be in both directions (see April). But hey, it seems most people just do not “see” when temps are adjusted in a non-global-warming-conspiracy way.
Please stop being paranoid…
George you are making a basic error.
Ice on Greenland doesn’t displace any water so has no impact on sea levels. If you transfer that ice to the arctic then it floats on water a hence displaces its equivalent volume resulting in a sea level rise. Ice melting/forming in the arctic has no direct impact on sea levels, its only ice melting/forming on land masses that directly impact the sea level
Leif,
Agreed about the moving average phase shift. FWIW, WFT does it exactly as you suggest (and hence chops 6 months off each end):
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1979/mean:12/plot/gistemp/from:1979
Mike Bryant (20:10:38) :
“They can hide the sea ice wherever they hid all that heat.”
They’ll probably have to hide all the Antarctic ice now as well….
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
Flanagan, most of GIStemp corrections are upward in the recent past and downward in the firther past giving GIS temp a more pronounced positive slope.
http://www.climateaudit.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/gbl_yearly_changes.gif
Hiya folks,
Excellent article and excellent feedback. All of this hullaballoo is simply nothing more than that, and Flanagan, we’re not being paranoid. Besides, just because I’mparanoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get me! This Gaia-worship thing, let by the high priest Al Gore, is simply a way to milk more money out of us poor slobs.
Anybody take a look at the bailout package we US Citizens were so generous in implementing? There’s CARBON TAX issues in it; there are also paragraphs/sections on bailing out television/movie production companies, etc.
Looks like the greens are going to win, along with the rest of the “elected” masters (ahem).
Ciao.
Since the Greenland ice pack comes and goes (geological time scale), in retrospect it seems that flooding of coastal areas is inevitable. Not a disaster, more like a stock market “correction”. It will also move at a snail’s pace and allow plenty of time to move buildings inland as the level elevates. It won’t destroy anything. Moving city borders happens daily, usually outward but can be moved inland just as easily. Al Gore’s images of skyscrapers wading in sea water is just stupid.
Leif,
Here’s a plot with the 12 month ma centered, along with a smoothed trend line (using HP smoothing):
http://i36.tinypic.com/281ef06.jpg
Basil
Hummm,
A little OT but still in the ballpark I think…
Has anyone else laughed at those commercials touting hydrogen fueled vehicles (or LPG or NG or whatever “clean fuel”)?
Here’s the flunked giggle test for me. The announcer entones “And only pure water is the exhaust.”
I’m rolling on the floor.
On top of the fact that, if our astronomers are correct, hydrogen is truely “a fossel fuel” being the oldest element.
Ya know, there’s almost enough material in on of those commercials for a great stand-up comedy routine.
Mike
Isn’t it taxpayer’s money funding all these “math wizards?” Why should we tolerate such nonsense from well paid “scientists?”
GISS has become a passion play about a small bureacrat with a big ego, pretending to be a super hero. The idea that they are accurately presenting data, is the plot line, to keep funding for this little charade.
The problems with site installations, and UHI, both past and present, have rendered this “data” corrupted, and requires our hero to fix it, in a way that shows how evil our modern society has become.
So now it is a political tool, allowing the Chicken Littles of the world, a piece of sky to parade around to the horror of those who are easily fooled.
The real sham about hydrogen is that it’s most commonly sourced from natural gas, so there’s carbon desequestering tossed in.
I have seen a concept of using wind generated electricity to power hydrogen generation from water by electrolysis. If you got hydrogen by that method, you could reduce some of the wind variability issues on output, provide a portable “storage” method for excess power, and make the hydrogen-water cycle a closed loop.
Mike86
>>”TerryS (02:11:26) :
George you are making a basic error.
Ice on Greenland doesn’t displace any water so has no impact on sea levels. If you transfer that ice to the arctic then it floats on water a hence displaces its equivalent volume resulting in a sea level rise. Ice melting/forming in the arctic has no direct impact on sea levels, its only ice melting/forming on land masses that directly impact the sea level “<<
Sorry TerryS, but it is you that are making a basic error. The whole concern with any Greenland ice melt, is that Greenland ice, like Antarctic ice, is presently sitting on land; but if it melts or breaks off and falls into the ocean, it increases the total mass of water contained in the ocean, and there is no way that doesn’t immediately raise the level.
Just try filling a glass with water, and then dropping a couple of ice cubes in it; it will overflow.
It is the floating sea ice; not the land ice, whose melting wouldn’t raise the ocean level. But even that has been misrepresented. In Jan 2005, “Physics Today” letters to the editor, I wrote a letter (actually sent June 2004) commenting on a book review of Spenser Weart’s book “The Discovery of Global Warming.”
In that letter which Weart pooh-poohed in a comment, I pointed out that when the floating sea ice melts, the sea level will not go up (Archimedes), but it will not stay the same either; it WILL go down.
And the reason it will go down is simple 8th grade high school science. The latent heat of freezing for water is 80 calories per gram, and when floating ice melts, the heat to melt it supplying that latent heat comes out of the water it is floating on; not out of the air which is a much weaker heat source. So when the sea ice melts it cools an astronomical amount of surrounding ocean water, which shrinks, so the level must go down. As I pointed out above sea water has no maximum density down to the freezing point (for salinity greater than 2.47% (3.5% is normal)); so cooling seawater always contracts. As I said Weart poohpoohed my suggestion.
In mid 2006, two years after I wrote my letter and 18 months after it was published, a British/Dutch team reported on ten years of measurements of the arctic ocean sea level made with a European polar satellite. Their results which they said they were highly confident of, showed the Arctic ocean sea level had been falling at 2 mm per year.
Kent’s comment that melting Greenland ice would flow into the Atlantic (and not the Arctic) is of interest; and I don’t know what those currents are. I have a query into a Greenland glaciologist now seeking some insight. I still think it is an interesting possibility; and thanks Kent, I did wonder about the currents; but assumed that the gulf stream would keep pushing water north, since surface water has to go north to cool and sink, to keep that circulation going.
This winter is going to be very interesting as far as sea ice goes.
OOoops !!!
Well I see a slight snag there triggered by TerryS comment; the typing hand was quicker than the brain.
When (if) the Greenland land ice falls into the sea and melts; IT DOES INCREASE THE OCEAN WATER MASS SO THE SEA LEVEL MUST GO UP.
Michael J. Bentley, do you have to squint your eyes until they bleed? Because I am squinting really hard and still don’t see the hockey stick. It hurts!
About the sea level and other lies from IPCC and Gore… refresh your memories with this article:
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results.html?artId=22430
I hit the wrong button there. So the sea level will go up if lots of Greenland or Antarctic land ice melts.
But there is the possibility that the Greenland melt woul transfer that fresh water to the Arctic ice pack and become floating sea ice (at an elevated sea level) and that increased Arctic ice would increase the albedo.
I have also wondered about the issue Kent raised about the open water in the arctic radiating faster than the ice, and cooling more. Open water must radiate almost like a black body with about 97% emissivity, and of course it is also warmer than the ice, so that should be true. There is also the evaporation cooling. The saturation vapor pressure over water and ice at the same temperature, is not very different; but assuming that sea ice is cooler on top than open water, there will be a slight evaporative cooling that exceeds the sublimation over the ice.
George
Nope, doesn’t look like a hockey stick to me.
Look again, the “toe” s pointing down.
I can see how putting out tentative numbers when more data is added could go up or down (and depending on the type and behavior of tentative data, usually do one or the other). I’m not so sure about the statisitical corrections. Both of those of course ignore the temperature samplings themselves and the methods by which the means are gathered and combined.
On the other hand, let’s not forget what August was, a mean of means of means of means of derived sampled global readings, and it only changed .11 Folks, we’re only talking about .11 And then we can ask the question; what type of margin of error does each month have?
More than .11 I’d guess.
But what about the trend? Well. I have a chart from 1945 up here, where I removed the persisting +.2 from 1959-present and another +.2 from 1992-present. So indeed, we have seen the anomaly sitting on a .4 platform for the last half “real climate” period of 30 years.
Rejoice!
Off topic. The current Arctic ice recovery.
http://solarcycle24com.proboards106.com/index.cgi?board=globalwarming&action=display&thread=12&page=13#2373
Graph link:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
It seems like the ice extent may reach a 7 year record any month if the global temperature stays low, at average 1980th temperatures. But 7 year record is only like …7 years ago and far below ice extent average since 1979, but the trend may be broken!
Ray, remember, you have to think you’re a hockey puck. Then everything looks like a hockey stick.