UAH satellite derived global anomaly out – up a bit

Like RSS, UAH lower troposphere global temperature anomaly also went up in November, which was to be expected:

2008 10 0.166

2008 11 0.254

More later…

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December 8, 2008 12:48 pm

I have one of those unanswerable questions. Can the last few years of low solar activity be biasing the UAH? Altitude transmission efficiency, etc.?

Jeff Alberts
December 8, 2008 12:51 pm

Uhhhh…try looking at Eastern Europe, Russia and Siberia.
It was very warm there.

And unseasonably cool in other places. Obviously it aint “global”.

Wondering Aloud
December 8, 2008 1:07 pm

November warm in the Western US? This doesn’t include anything East of the Rockies does it? On the warm in Siberia point I wonder if that’s true? Satellite photos seem to show snow cover very extensive, huge sections of Northern China have had lots of early snow. I am getting way to skeptical. whatever it is where you are I am freezing and it has been absolutely brutally cold where ever I am. Maybe I am having the same effect as Al Gore seems to.

Bruce
December 8, 2008 1:19 pm

Paul Clark

The linear trend over that time is 0.38K, or 0.13K/decade, 1.3K/century.

.13k per decade starting in the coldest year in the last 50.

Ed Scott
December 8, 2008 1:22 pm

Climate protesters demand swifter U.N. action
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE4B51H120081206?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews
POZNAN, Poland (Reuters) – Thousands of climate protesters, some dressed as polar bears, devils or penguins, demanded on Saturday swifter action from the United Nations to combat global warming.
Others carried pictures of seas inundating cities and villages, and the suited hand of a businessman squeezing the planet.
“It’s not a matter for negotiators, it’s a matter for politicians. They are the ones who have been blocking the whole process,” said Rae-Kwon Chung, South Korea’s climate change ambassador, adding that he was unaware of the event outside.
Yes, indeed, it is no longer a matter for science – the science is settled. The subject is no longer negotiable. It is now in the realm of political agreement (negotiation?) as to the best way to serve individual personal political interests, i.e., the maximization of personal wealth, under the guise of saving the planet for ALL of us.

Ed Scott
December 8, 2008 1:28 pm

November 2008 Update on Global Temperature – UAH
http://digitaldiatribes.wordpress.com/2008/11/13/november-2008-update-on-global-temperature-uah/
There certainly does seem to be somewhat of an upward tick from earlier in the year, but current temperatures are still tracking below year-ago levels. The current upward trend probably is related to a neutral ENSO value. Unless an El Nino is on the way, or there is more unwinding in average temperature affects from the diminishing La Nina, it appears that this is probably about the level we’re settling into, absent other effects. It will be interesting to see what future months hold if the ENSO effects stay neutral.

Paul Shanahan
December 8, 2008 1:28 pm

JimB (09:04:57) :
Why?…religion’s been doing this since the dawn of….well…religion.
JimB
Wasn’t that about 6000 years ago? 😀

OMR
December 8, 2008 1:58 pm

Chris:
“Interesting questions:
(1) why does the land appear to have warmed while the oceans have cooled?
(2) why does UAH show warming over the oceans (by 0.09C globally) while ocean surface temperatures have cooled?

I have a theory/hypothesis, incompletely baked, but nonetheless a theory as to why this may occur.
Recently we’ve had ‘rapid’ build up of sea ice, in the NH, after the summer melt. For ice to form from liquid water a large amount of energy ( Latent heat of fusion ) needs to be removed from the liquid ie transported elsewhere. Some of this thermal energy will go into the surrounding water and some to the air.
When the ice is first forming and thin, I suspect that the air is the main recipient of this energy and thanks to its lower, than water, specific heat capacity will show a significant rise in temperature. Surface or near surface convection will result in an upward movement of energy. Air currents and prevailing wind will aid in the transport of this ‘lost’ energy.
As the ice thickens I’d guess that that increased insulation means that less energy is transferred to the air.
When frost forms (and I’ve seen plenty of that this last fortnight in shivering Scotland) I’m guessing that this sublimation (from water vapour to ice) also releases large amounts of energy to both host surfaces and the containing air.
If these mechanisms are broadly correct then when sub-zero areas first experience their seasonal cold snaps we could expect , initially, air temperatures to paradoxically rise. The area in question is indeed cooling – ie It is losing energy- but a major mechanism for the transport of this energy is by the surrounding air that thanks to its mobility and refusal to change state is correctly measured as being warmer. Perhaps (and I say this somewhat tongue in cheek) the first sign of Global Cooling is Global Warming – or at least for areas of the Globe that commonly experience temperatures below the freezing point of water (fresh or saline)
I think that the above may partly explain (1) above- although perhaps the word Land could be relaced by the word Air. I’ll leave question 2 for the time being – I kind of feel that the definition of ocean temperatures, never mind how it can be measured, is beyond me.
It is well known that when ice melts, latent heat energy is transported elsewhere and given the arguments above it may be surmised that heat is also released into the atmosphere as an area warms.
Logically, if my premises are correct, my conclusions are (when applied to ‘sub-zero’ areas (NH and SH) – other regions are excluded due to minimal water state changes :
(1) Ice formation is accompanied by initial warming by depletion of energy capital
(2) Ice creation is accompanied by enhanced warming by both depletion of energy capital and increased energy inflow ( that caused the melting in the first place)
and (3) Using increases in temperature for regions of the earth that exhibit predominantly ‘sub-zero’ temperatures – Latent/sublimation magnitudes- to be matched with more temperate climate temperature reductions (specific heat of ‘air’) is inconsistent with the law of Conservation of Energy!
When was the Law of Conservation Of Temperature discovered?
I’m sure that my thinking has to be flawed somewhere but for the life of me I can’t see it. Can anyone help an old baffled Scotsman.
>>>To Anthony – sorry about my seemingly angry rant last week about Ice-throwing wind-turbines- I didn’t mean it that way but, somehow, the mental imagery of ‘saving the planet’ green-machines raining down death and destruction got the better of me- it appealed to my Monty Python gland of humour! Apologies

Ed Scott
December 8, 2008 2:15 pm

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA – December 8, 2008 (OWSweather.com) Rare 50 year Arctic Blast Sets Sights On Southern California.
http://www.owsweather.com/pr120808a.html
“We are in a pre-1950 type pattern, “said Martin. “We know we are due for a winter storm sometime this year. The type we may be dealing with will be ranked up there with the known years before 1950, which set record low daytime temperatures into the forecast region. With this, may come low elevation snow.”
“Temperatures in Siberia, Russia will be -81 degrees this week, “said Martin. “With those type of temperatures the arctic air mass has to spill somewhere. Our answer of the exact track will become more clear this week. All residents in the mountain communities should prepare this week for very cold, winter weather, with snow.”

DR
December 8, 2008 2:58 pm

Heat wells up from the ocean deep, winds carry over land, surface warms. Heat again wells up from the oceans, winds carry over land, surface warms, and so on and so forth.
If ocean heat content does not continually increase, can it be expected for land surface temperature to continue to rise? How long does it take for oceans to release their heat to where the surface will continually cool?
What warms the oceans? What mitigates this heat from reaching the oceans? What actually keeps us warm, oceans or atmosphere?
So many questions.

Tom in Florida
December 8, 2008 3:06 pm

Personally I would like to see it warm up another 20 degrees in my area right now. Gulf temps in the low 60’s so no swimming, cold morning temps so I have to wear long pants and long sleeve shirts on the golf course, cold enough so I have to shut my windows at sundown. I actually had to put the heat on once or twice in the last couple of weeks. Can’t understand why everyone doesn’t know that warm is good, warm is good, warm is good.

December 8, 2008 3:11 pm

Chris: Personally, I wouldn’t be too concerned about month-to-month differences between UAH and HADSST data sets. As you said yourself, one is an estimate of SST while the other is of TLT over the oceans. Even the two sources of SST data, the Hadley Centre for HADSST and the NCDC for ERSST.v2, ERSST.v3, and OI.v2 SST can be different. They use different techniques to infill missing data. There are also differences between ERSST.v2, ERSST.v3, and OI.v2 SST versions from NCDC on a monthly basis. Large step changes in one, such as the change in HADSST after the 97/98 El Nino, that don’t appear in the other data sets should raise flags, though.

December 8, 2008 3:27 pm

Ed Scott: Regarding your 13:28:13 comment, you also have to consider the time lag between NINO3.4 SST anomalies and global temperature. The lag is in the neighborhood of 3 to 5 months. Using the OI.v2 SST data as reference, this year NINO3.4 SST anomalies rose to just about 0.1 deg C and ended that uptick in July. Then it took a downturn.
http://i35.tinypic.com/r88rib.jpg

Ed Scott
December 8, 2008 3:32 pm

Why sequester CO2 gas, which is good for agriculture, reforestation
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/6795
Why are we going to spend trillions of dollars sequestering CO2 to mitigate global atmospheric warming, while our empirically-tested temperature models (e.g., see “Greenhouse Gases and Greenhouse Effect”, published in the last issue of Environmental Geology, or “Cooling of Atmosphere Due to CO2 Emission”, published this year in Energy Sources Journal) shows that increasing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere causes cooling rather than warming?
In the dense earth’s troposphere, the heat from the Earth’s surface is mostly transferred by convection, approximately 67%. Radiation accounts for approximately 8%. Why is this important fact ignored by most scientists?
Also, why do peaks in the solar irradiation precede the peaks in the CO2 concentration in atmosphere? The answer is that as the temperature increases, CO2 evaporates from the ocean water, which is a great storehouse of CO2. Is the cause and effect reversed in the mind of many scientists? What is the common cause of “simultaneous” warming on Earth, Mars, Pluto and Jupiter? This is more than coincidence.
Any attempts to mitigate undesirable climate changes using restrictive regulations are doomed to failure because the global forces of nature are at least 4-5 orders of magnitude greater than the available human controls (e.g., see recently published, 2007, book by Elsevier Publishing Co. entitled :Global Warming and Global Cooling. Evolution of Climate on Earth”).
Unfortunately the “Global Warming” issue has become an emotionally-, politically-, and economically-motivated issue that has warped into a form of religious dogma founded on erroneous perceptual beliefs in the face of contradicting facts. Like a religion, it is becoming a sacred cow, impossible to touch.
There are 400,000,000 impossible to touch sacred cows in Dr. Pachaui’s India. The good doctor faces a dilemma: the conflict between the religion of global warming and a religion that reveres bovines. This is actually no problem for a confirmed hypocrite.

December 8, 2008 3:33 pm

Chris (10:03:34)
(2) why does UAH show warming over the oceans (by 0.09C globally) while ocean surface temperatures have cooled?
My guess is: more rain than usual over the oceans. The latent heat of the condensed water vapor is left in the lower troposphere and will eventually radiate into space.
To question (1): I am not too familiar with the Hadley data, are land surface temperatures for November out already?

Christian Bultmann
December 8, 2008 3:46 pm

Indeed it was quit warm here in the Canadian Prairies in October as well as in November.
The odd thing was GISS depicted the Prairies as normal or even below normal in the temperature representation on the globe for October meanwhile UAH had the Prairies warmer as measured by the local weather stations.
It will be interesting how GISS will report the temperatures for November.
On a side note Greenpeace had a global warming demonstration here yesterday and it happened to be the first day in a long time that temperatures dropped below average.

RH
December 8, 2008 3:47 pm

Siberia hasn’t been warm through November. I have been looking at it everyday. Much colder than Canada’s North. Right now Ojmjakon, Russia is -53C. European Russia was warm in November, but I won’t believe that Siberia was warm. What are HadCRUT and GISS using for historic Siberian weather data? I don’t believe they have any and are making it up. I haven’t kept a record but it seems to me that Asia has had snow cover since sometime in October down to 50 degrees North latitude. http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims_gif/DATA/ see cursnow.gif.

Ed Scott
December 8, 2008 3:48 pm

Bob Tisdale
Bob, I cannot claim such expertise as is implied by the words. This was a conclusion at the end of the blog by The Diatribe Guy, Joe: http://digitaldiatribes.wordpress.com/learn-about-joe/

R John
December 8, 2008 4:33 pm

Of course, the NCDC predicts that a large area of the midwest / plains will see above normal temperatures for the Dec – Feb period. Note also that it predicts no one should see much below temperatures.
http://www.weather.gov/climate/l3mto.php
I am planning to follow a few cities in the 50% chances to see how their prediction, which they NEVER explain, turn out.

George E. Smith
December 8, 2008 4:54 pm

“” DR (14:58:00) :
What warms the oceans? What mitigates this heat from reaching the oceans? What actually keeps us warm, oceans or atmosphere? “”
73% of the earth’s surface is water mostly oceans. Water reflects 2% of the normal incident sunlight, actually out to about 53% from normal, (Fresnel reflection) and then it increases as the angle increases, so overall, the surface reflects about 3% of incident solar radiation, back out into space. The remaining 97% propagates into the water, with the highest energy blue green near the solar spectrum peak going deepest, and shorter and longer wavelengths being absorbed shallower; but ultimately something absorbs all of that 97% except in shallow waters where bottom reflections let some out again. That energy is deposited tens to hundreds of meters below the surface, and warms the local water, causing a convective drive back towards the surface. Of course severe weather will stir things up and interfere with this pattern. some of the heat will conduct to deeper waters; but generally convection trumps conduction (think of your car’s engine cooling system)
In addition infrared thermal radiation from the atmosphere, including GHG and clouds strikes the suarface and once again about 73% of that is going to hit water, and be absorbeds in the top ten microns, unlike the soar radiation which goes deep. That generally results in the prompt evaporation of moisture into the atmosphere.
On land, the solar radiation capture is not as efficient as over water, and some tens of percent is reflected even from things like rocks, and it can be 40% off vegetation.
The solid ground typically gets a lot hotter than the ocean surface so the infrared radiation from land can be more than from the ocean, except the ocean never gets colder than a few degrees below zero (C) whereas the land can get down to -90 C.
Most of the cooling of the planet takes place in broad daylight; not at night, because conduction, convection, evaporation and radiation are all much more efficient whent eh source temperature is higher which is under the noonday sun.
Urban heat islands of the concrete and asphalt kind, are also among the more efficient cooling surfaces.
Your car’s engine wouldn’t cool anywhere near as well as it does, if it wasn’t pressurised to raise the temperature, which makes the radiator work much more efficiently. The polar regions are too cold to be efficient cooling systems, and the infrared radiant emittance can be a factor of 12 less than what it is in the hottest deserts.

Pamela Gray
December 8, 2008 5:35 pm

Well I’ll be darned. NWS is predicting freezing pipes. That’s new. This weekend Washington, Idaho, and Oregon, and beyond will be hit with an Arctic cold front that has precip in it. They are warning us to prepare exposed pipes and be prepared to drive in accumulated snow. It’s about time (like where the hell were they over this last weekend?). They are also forcasting snow on the Columbia basin floor. Places with snow on the ground could see below 0 F at night. Maybe they are beginning to think “cooler”?

Joe Black
December 8, 2008 5:44 pm

Ed Scott (15:32:49)
“There are 400,000,000 impossible to touch sacred cows in Dr. Pachaui’s India”
Holy Cow! (hand slaps forehead), I had not checked to see if that is a forcing input in the Climate Models.
R John (16:33:36):
“…their prediction, which they NEVER explain…..”
Maybe you should consider hiring a proctologist with a flashlight to examine their processes.

Robert Wood
December 8, 2008 6:01 pm

Tom in Florida (15:06:24) :
A Warm Planet Is A Happy Planet.

Jeff Alberts
December 8, 2008 6:02 pm

Of course, the NCDC predicts that a large area of the midwest / plains will see above normal temperatures for the Dec – Feb period. Note also that it predicts no one should see much below temperatures.

Which is why it was 12f on Friday in Kansas City, KS. Above normal. Riiight.

John Downunder
December 8, 2008 6:03 pm

It will be interesting to see how the current strong La Nina event effects temperature over the next 6-12 months. My guess is we will see temperatures fall to below the LTA for 1st half of 2009 as there is usually a delay between the SOI and associated temperature impact as we saw in early 2008.
Also, I’m still waiting for some comments (Mr Watts) regarding the drop in the Planetary AP index for November. I’ve never seen the index so low before. For me, this is the stand-out from all November data since I was expecting a slight increase with Solar Cycle-24 becoming more active.
Cosmic Ray implications ?
It looks very likely !