From the USA Today Weather Blog
This has been in my inbox for a couple of weeks, so on a fairly quiet day for weather, I thought I’d put this out there. John Christy of the University of Alabama-Huntsville reported earlier this month that the Earth’s climate change over the past 30 years has been rather uneven: It’s gotten much warmer in the Arctic and, at the same time, cooler in the Antarctic.
Christy and his colleague Roy Spencer, who are known in some quarters as global warming skeptics, use data from satellites to measure the temperature of the Earth. The more well-known NASA GISS and National Climatic Data Center data sets primarily measure surface temperatures.
Overall, Christy found that Earth’s atmosphere warmed an average of about about 0.72 degree F in the past 30 years, according to NOAA and NASA satellites. More than 80 percent of the globe warmed by some amount. However, while parts of the Arctic have warmed by as much as 4.6 degrees F in 30 years, Christy says that much of the Antarctic has cooled, with parts of the continent cooling as much as the Arctic has warmed (see map, above; click to enlarge).
“If you look at the 30-year graph of month-to-month temperature anomalies, the most obvious feature is the series of warmer-than-normal months that followed the major El Nino Pacific Ocean warming event of 1997-1998,” says Christy. “Right now we are coming out of one La Nina Pacific Ocean cooling event and we might be heading into another. It should be interesting over the next several years to see whether the post La Nina climate ‘re-sets’ to the cooler seasonal norms we saw before 1997 or the warmer levels seen since then,” he says.
He adds that most of the warming found in the satellite data has taken place since the beginning of the 1997-98 El Nino, and that Earth’s average temperature showed no detectable warming from December 1978 until the 1997 El Nino.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported yesterday that the USA “faces the possibility of much more rapid climate change by the end of the century than previous studies have suggested, according to a report led by the U.S. Geological Survey.”
I find the distortion created by the Mercator projection to always be interesting. The exaggeration takes on a world of its own (pun intended).
Could that be explained by soot falling on the snow and affecting the albedo?
Much more air pollution in the northern hemisphere than the southern.
Antartic cooling might come from an overall small solar magnetic cooling.
Just a hypothesis.
But, but, but….how can this be when Hansen has a brandy-new plot of Antarctica that shows it’s warmed….???
Posting this link to this set of comments as well… Here is the USGS report mentioned in the washingtonpost.com article:
http://downloads.climatescience.gov/sap/sap3-4/sap3-4-final-report-all.pdf
Why is it that the greatest change is where we don’t have many sensors, and even the statelites don’t cover the poles?
Interesting that a man I trust (Christy) is getting warming Arctic temperatures – but NOT in the very, very high reading from Siberia that Dr. Hansen keeps reporting!
Chruisty’s much lower readings, over a much wider area, show only a minor 0.4 degree increase in northern Canada. A small increase in Siberia – but certainly NOT Hansen’s “5 degree* increase” reported earlier.
” Perhaps the reporter converted a reported a (too-high) “2 degree C” increase from GISS into an even higher “5 degrees F” ?
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So, what in the climate models predicted – over a thirty-plus year trend, that Antarctica would be getting colder, that the tundra mud and Greenland is NOT melting, and that we’d have ten years of a cooling cycle?
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Only 3 sunspots in all of December. Still quiet today.
Note to self: Christy’s readings on the graph ARE in “degrees per decade”
Last June Brett Andersen of the Accuweather Global Warming blog posted this graphic of: “RSS temperature anomalies going back to 1979, taking into account the full data from 70S latitude to 80N latitude…”
http://global-warming.accuweather.com/brightnessrss-thumb.png
to which i replied “Global Warming Ain’t Global….Northern Half of the Northern Hemisphere”
http://global-warming.accuweather.com/2008/06/comparing_global_temperature_a.html
Does this add credence to the theory that high-altitude airliners – which fly predominantly in the northern hemisphere – are causing warming?
I believe I can explain why there is such a large discrepancy between the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere temps.
As I showed in my guest post of awhile ago, ocean circulation patterns can explain most of the variability. When you adjust this out, the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere are warming at almost exactly the same (low) rate.
The NH is affected more by the ENSO and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (from the northern Atlantic). The AMO had been cycling upward since about 1977 but seems to (perhaps) be trending down now.
http://img234.imageshack.us/img234/2853/amoanomalyrc3.png
While the SH is affected more by the Southern Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (the AMO’s counterpart in the southern Atlantic) and the ENSO’s impact is very low. The SAMO has been trending down since about 1975.
http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/8883/samoly0.png
When you use these ocean indices on the NH temps and then the SH temps, there is a very good explanation of the variability.
Here are the Hadcrut3 monthly NH and SH temp anomalies going back to 1871.
http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/2551/nhhadcrut3mo5.png
http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/3958/shhadcrut3tn9.png
Related to my previous post, I hadn’t realized that Singer authored the “airliner” theory of northern-hemispheric warming. based upon data from Christy and Spencer.
NEW ANALYSIS SHOWS AIR TRAFFIC INFLUENCE ON CLIMATE, CONFOUNDING IPCC GLOBAL WARMING ESTIMATES;
Interesting that there was no detectable warming from December 1978 until the 1997 El Nino. So for almost twenty years there was no climate change whatsoever. The change has been about .4C since the beginning of the ’97 El Nino. Wouldn’t this type of short term fluctuation be more correctly termed “weather”?
The Northern hemisphere warming while the southern cools suggests to me the possibillity of some kind of a long term climatic trend based on subtle changes in the earths orbit. I seem to remember reading somewhere that in the Northern hemisphere summer the Earth is further from the sun than during the southern hemisphere summer. On the other hand, the southern hemisphere is mostly ocean wheras the nothern land.
Anyone know how to work this out??
no detectable warming from December 1978 until the 1997 El Nino.
Now, through which month of 1997 did Christy plot his data to come to a statement like that, where we know that UAH does not produce proper surface temperature data. I started off from Dec 1978 through Jan 1997 and added 1 month of that year, but all trendlines show a near 0.1C LT increase.
Curiously, if he limits GW to have taken place after 1997, we get +0.227C for 1998-2008 and if excluding “that” 1998, we get +0.198C per his data. Now that is 0.2C / decade after all LoL
To previous post: added 1 months at a time from Jan-1997 through dec-1997!
The linked paper asks:
“How can a distinct warming so often be reported for the Arctic areas when the temperature observations indicate variations but no consistent trend?”
http://ambio.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1639%2F0044-7447(2005)034%5B0263%3ARGWAAO%5D2.0.CO%3B2&ct=1
Yeah but hey, it was predicted by the models with a suitable level of confidence, therefore uneven climate change is DEFINITE proof of catastrophic climate change, therefore we should shut down all industry and kill 90% of our population.
The lack of warming detected from December 1978 to the 1997 El Nino seems to be in direct contradiction of the work cited in the post below.
Could not the Arctic warming that has been observed be a function of the China Syndrome. China has been ramping up Power production, based on coal. Their particulate control is exceedingly poor. How much has been depositing on the Arctic and changing the albedo, and hence reflection of short wave radiation. Getting reliable figures out of China but it would not be ridiculous to talk of increases of power outputs of 20% p.a.. Maybe we should teach them how to use electrostatic precipitaters properly.
As we are now finding out, it was much nicer to live where it’s warm.
Correct me if i’m wrong but isn’t the alarmist’s argument against the MWP that it was not a global event but local? So if artic is warming and the anartic cooling doesn’t this require some kind of concession from the alarmists?
I wish people would study Dynamical Systems a bit more, at least until they have a simple understanding of “strange attractors” and how they affect the flow of solutions to a complex dynamical equation. All of this centers on Lorenz’s “Butterfly Effect”..the only thing is that on a large scale, the butterfly is massive bodies of water created by man (much less localized artificial population centers like LA).
If you are at all familiar with “Lake Effect Snow” and the tear-like pattern it seems to make behind the “attractor” you can see where I am going with this.
Look for a moment at the huge evaporative system called the Coulee:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hydroelectric_dams_on_the_Columbia_River
Then visualize the immense “repeller” we placed in the direct path of major storm flow from the Gulf of Alaska, over Seattle, toward the Rockies…
I’m going to assert that the creation of Lake Mead changed the “initial conditions” on the earth’s dynamical system. The system settled down, and along came Aswan….then Itaipú and 3 Gorges…and, of course, there was the Grand Coulee. Take a look at this map and imagine the immense change of air flow behind this system..another “repeller,” or “strange attractor.” Another change in the “initial conditions,” another butterfly-effect.
So certainly the system is reacting “Unevenly.” Then toss in the incredible decrease in solar effects…I venture to bet a significant amount of worthless dollars on the fact that this bell “ain’t gonna stop ringing for one LONG time, and NO one has an equation for it’s perturbations.” And, for that matter, factor in ocean heating variations that may well create the Nino’s via ocean bottom magma…
Kind of reminds me of the work Hari Seldon did trying to formalize Psychohistory, and how immense the matrix became as people over the centuries added strange attractors and other anomalies to the solution.
“He adds that most of the warming found in the satellite data has taken place since the beginning of the 1997-98 El Nino, and that Earth’s average temperature showed no detectable warming from December 1978 until the 1997 El Nino”
More data that fails to show a correlation between increasing atmospheric CO2 levels and temperature.
Having a 19 year long period failing to show any change in temperatures, should take a lot of explaining away.
I’ve a suspicion that the Church of the AGW will simply ignore it.
Anthony: I posted a video at my website a week or so ago that illustrated the lingering effects of the 1997/98 El Nino on the East Indian and West Pacific Oceans. It runs just under five minutes, but it goes quickly. I used a sea surface height video from JPL to aid the visuals. The post also includes the graphs (without comments) used in the video.
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/12/lingering-effects-of-199798-el-nino.html
For those with age-imposed vision problems like me, there’s also a YouTube version that can be expanded to full screen.
Question?
Why did the NSIDC website have ice formation in the Arctic flat-line during mid-December and then, magically, align perfectly with the 2007-2008 data? It seems rather beyond the range of probability that Arctic ice stopped forming for the two darkest weeks in the Arctic. Coastal community temps for the period were well below zero – mostly in the -15 to -20C range. Granted, there could have been a massive incursion of relatively warm waters from the Gulf Stream, but I do not see how that would create a flat line, given additional freezing in other areas of the Arctic. And info would be appreciated.
http://www.nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png