RSS global temperature anomaly makes a significant jump in January

Good for the planet. However, I’d have been more than happy to accept a nice cooling this year in the hopes of staving off this administrations aggressive ‘climate change’ policies that are about to be imposed upon the U.S.
The politicians only know one way to combat the’ problem’: Make coal, oil and gas so expensive that nobody can afford to use them.

Perhaps this is the result of the rather large SSW that occurred in Jan.??

Maybe its on crack. It was 7F here in western nc this morning 😛

Not quite on topic, but I was wondering – if CO2 increases on a parts per million basis, what is it crowding out. Is it crowding out other greenhouse gasses?

I think these brief spikes are to be expected. Like the very brief one in Jan 2007. It’s a bit early to say, but overall, there’s the appearance of having passed the crest of a hill occurring in 2004-2005.

Looks like Global Warming is back!
(waits for all the abuse!)

For those watching available global summary data, this January number is not a surprise. UAH will have a similar report — see http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps+002
Of interest to me will the explanation of how so many land temperatures can be so cold / cool with such a divergence in global tropospheric temperatures. John Christy has been quoted that this phenomenon has happened before in the presence of abundant tropical rainfall. There seems to be some gap in the explanation, and I am looking forward to hearing more.

I’ve read (somewhere) that global temps follow the SOI by about 6-9 months. As it turns out, the SOI was at it’s most negative about 8 months ago, and has gotten steadily more positive ever since.
I expect this to likely be the warmest month (anomaly wise) of the year, and it should be steadily cooler.

What am I missing here? How is this change “significant”? It’s only just a little more than 1 sd above the mean of the changes in RSS.

Chu: Alarmist in Chief
California farms, vineyards in peril from warming, U.S. energy secretary warns
Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press

“I don’t think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen,” says Nobel winner Steven Chu.
‘We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California,’ Steven Chu says. He sees education as a means to combat threat.

Dave (08:23:51) :
“Perhaps AGW theory has some legs. This appears to be quite a jump.
It must have been without any help from the UK, which has been cold as of late. Where in the world has all the warming occurred?”
Dave,
AGW theory has no legs.
It’s a hoax.
Read: Greenhouse Theory Disproved a Century Ago at http://www.icecap.us

Yes, the biggest change is in 60-82,5
Well, the cold arctic air that moved towards in US and western Europe had to be replaced by mild air…
Let’s see in June.
Even if I did not really like Archibald’s forcasting method (in a paper posted on icecap few weeks ago), I also think 2009 will not be a global warming year.

Inquirer: this UAH link shows near surface temps:
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps

DAV,
Which DC were you living in? I live near DC right outside the beltway in VA and Jan was about as cold overall as I’ve ever seen it since the 70s. True, Superbowl Sunday was warm (and was actually in February, but why quibble), but the entire month before was on average about 6-8 F BELOW the long term average of 44 for my zip code. In no way could I describe overall temps in January as ‘mild’, we had multiple days where the high temp did not breach 30 (14 degrees below ‘normal’).

Looking over that graph, it’s rather hard not to notice what usually happens after a lone spike.
Brace yourselves. This is going to be a bad one, and it’s not going to be tee shirts and flip-flop weather.

Warmer?
I think I will wait for Steve Mcintyre to sort this out.

Not that unexpected, since it seem that the ocean temps appear to have been above average for some time. Global sea temperature anomaly: http://earth.rice.edu/mtpe/hydro/hydrosphere/latest/avhrr_sst/avhrr_ssta.html. Does anyone know of a better site to get ocean temps?
alf

Dave (08:23:51) :
… Where in the world has all the warming occurred?
This Japanese site maps anomalies on a weekly basis, giving a good idea of it. Select ‘Element – Temperature anomaly’, then select various weeks –
http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/climate/synop.html
You can see that there are many areas that have had notable positive anomalies for various periods during the month. It gives a nice illustration of the variability of one region against another!

For those interested in SSWs – there is a neat 30-day animation of the recent SSW here
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal/temp10anim.shtml
This is temperatures at 10 mb (up in the Stratosphere – well above where most “weather” occurs
Not just the intensity, but the coverage of this event (over the pole) is impressive.

i just keep watching the “GLARINGLY BLANK” orange circle on the right side of this page……hmmm….

Globally, Jan and Fed are the warmest months of the year, presumably because the earth is closest to the sun then. These are UAH numbers for the average monthly anomaly from 1979 to now:
Mon Anomaly
1 0.095
2 0.099
3 0.080
4 0.069
5 0.037
6 0.025
7 0.038
8 0.044
9 0.068
10 0.077
11 0.082
12 0.063

If you’ll look over the graph you’ll find numerous examples of temperatures dropping, bottoming out and then around january (you have to think of it as a seasonal thing), spiking backup. It’s often the peak (or near it) until the next winter season spike. It even shows up during the infamous 1998 spike. Looking at past behavior I would expect it to drop off by .1C to .2C.

HORSE FEATHERS!!
Where do they come up with that stuff, when the world is in the grip of record cold?
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25001064-954,00.html
http://www.bradenton.com/news/local/story/1202357.html
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/winter/2009-02-02-ice-storm-recovery_N.htm
I was studying with a friend in college, and in several places she had drawn a pair of pliers. I asked why she did that, and she said it was to indicate that the only place the prof could have come up with that was to pull it out of his @**. We need to draw a whole lot of pliers on whatever we get from the warmers.
Natural variations, not AGW!
http://in.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idINTRE5133EX20090204

Re California’s water shortage and Dr. Chu….
Perhaps he has been reading WUWT? I posted comments on this in the past couple of days…
Interesting, though, that once again the pols’ solution is to spend money on reducing CO2, when what we need is desalination plants. Or a major water pipeline from the Mississippi over the continental divide into the Colorado river.
HELLO! You do not create fresh water by reducing CO2! Is anybody in
government listening?
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California

Bill Marsh (09:39:35) : Which DC were you living in? I live near DC right outside the beltway in VA and Jan was about as cold overall as I’ve ever seen it since the 70s. True, Superbowl Sunday was warm (and was actually in February, but why quibble), but the entire month before was on average about 6-8 F BELOW the long term average of 44 for my zip code. In no way could I describe overall temps in January as ‘mild’, we had multiple days where the high temp did not breach 30 (14 degrees below ‘normal’).
I live in the one that had mostly rain instead of snow in January.The only significant snow (meaning I had to shovel) was last week and that turned to rain then freezing rain that night and pretty much melted away the next day.
Yes there were a couple of nights in the 10’s but I only zipped up my jacket once. Christmas Day was around 50F (I even made a comment about it at CA). OK, Christmas was one week before January, but as you said, why quibble? My heating bills are nothing compared to this time last year despite a 72% price increase. Go figure.
Guess I live on the hot side of down. I’ve heard stories that Virginians are colder than Marylanders (despite the world famous Maryland Crabs). Perhaps WX is the basis? 🙂

realitycheck,
Ed Berry has a site that is quite interesting If you are not familiar with it this will get you there. He keeps close track of El-Nino/La-Nina conditions and their affect on weather. Including the recent SSW. http://weatherclimatelink.blogspot.com/

I’ve metioned this before but I might as well re-state the case. We had better hope there isn’t a pattern here because the one that matches most closely to what we see now, is end of 1997 into beginning ’98……….Yikes!!!!
So, this in not necessarily a short term spike at all – it could go all the way to1998 and beyond. The trend after all is even steeper than that of early ’98.
Ben

WORLD TOO HOT, MUST COOL DOWN
“Turtlefossil Scientists working in freezing arctic Canada have made a surprise discovery — the fossil of a tropical, freshwater, Asian turtle.”
http://blogs.usatoday.com/sciencefair/2009/02/tropical-turtle.html
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=1244125
http://www.livescience.com/environment/071030-tree-stumps.html

” Paddy (09:24:38) :
I hope everyone commenting will stop using weather and climate interchangeably. It only confuses the issues.”
Can we all agree on a definition of “Climate”? Please!
From E. Brit.:
“Condition of the atmosphere at a particular location over a long period of time (from one month to many millions of years, but generally 30 years). Climate is the sum of atmospheric elements (and their variations): solar radiation, temperature, humidity, clouds and precipitation (type, frequency, and amount), atmospheric pressure, and wind (speed and direction). To the nonspecialist, climate means expected or habitual weather at a particular place and time of year. To the specialist, climate also denotes the degree of variability of weather, and it includes not only the atmosphere but also the hydrosphere, lithosphere, biosphere, and such extraterrestrial factors as the sun. ”
What about dirt (earth) temperature? Earth’s core temperature?
So, it it 30 yr of weather or not? Well, is it? Are you feeling lucky today?

Well my power bill was more this jan than last and i’ve not made any changes to my home.I’ve got a strong feeling there are some errors on this page .

This little spike is climate, the previous dip was weather. I don’t know why you idiots can’t comprehend it.
Everybody knows that DC winters are usually famously cold. Compare to northern Maine, if you need a reference. Up until global warming, starting in 1980, ice fishing on the Patomic was a popular passtime.

I have a house in NH and the heating oil use is sky high.

The SW USA was in fact quite warm in January. Might have been enough to make a small dent.

Dell Hunt, Jackson, Michigan (11:07:12) :
Makes more sense than anything that’s come out of the Goracle’s orifice.

OT, re sea levels, related to AGW, warmer oceans expanding, glaciers and ice caps melting, and all that jazz.
As I remember both from personal experience and reading, when rivers flood there is a layer of silt or mud left on the low-lying lands. This silt helped to improve agriculture and slowly raised the height of the land. The slow rise of the sea was thereby mitigated, or cancelled out.
Could it be that modern man’s distaste for floods, and a penchant for river flood prevention via levees is at least partially responsible for the perils of sea level rise? Are we bringing this on ourselves?
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California
Where we had cooling-degree days in January, highly unusual.

TJA,
Have you looked at Great Lakes Ice data through January’s end?
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/app/WsvPrdCanQry.cfm?CanID=11080&Lang=eng
We’ve been ice fishing since the first week of December.
NOAA’s premiere forecasting models failed miserably.

Re: DAV’s claims about it being warm in January in D.C., here are the actual numbers:
http://www.weather.com/weather/monthly/USDC0001?month=-1
Here are the averages:
http://www.weather.com/weather/wxclimatology/daily/USDC0001?climoMonth=1

All I can say with total confidence is, “It wasn’t me guv, I never touched it, honest!”
Could be that SSW though.
DaveE.

Per the graph, temperature seemed to be constant (i.e. oscillated around 0 anomaly) until circa 1998 to 2002 when it “stepped up” to oscillate around 0.25 (visually). That net change was about 0.1deg/decade.
A valuable analysis of glacier melt back just presented by “Open Mind” indicates a “step function” change in the rate of change of glacier mass. I think, Open Mind’s finding confirms a “step upward change” (circa 2002) in temperature (as opposed to a more continuous/steady change).
Looking at the graph, if temperatures after this peak behave like previous ones in the 80s and early 90s, we may be in a “step down” of about 0.15 (to a new “equilibrium” of 0.1 anomaly). Giving a net temperature change over the satellite data period of about 0.1 in 30 years — 0.033deg/decade. Only time will tell.

Some posters seem surprised by this month’s anomaly, to the extent of raising suspicion over the data (odd that satellite data is considered gold standard here when it lags surface data. Nobody want s to question UAH/RSS adjustments when they’re having a pop at Hansen!). Of course, if you’d been only a reader of this blog through the winter, with all its stories of how cold it has been here or there, then you might have missed the fact that it’s simultaneously been warm here, there and beyond. The US is not a good proxy for global temperature, far less particular parts of the US. Confirmation bias astounded by reality, I’d say.

TO: DAV
“The January temps in the DC area have been what can only be described as mild for January..”??????
DC averaged about 3 degrees cooler than normal in January [va. and md. 2degrees cooler]
http://www.accuweather.com/us/dc/washington/20500/forecast-climo.asp?partner=accuweather&traveler=0&zipChg=1&metric=0&mnYr=1/1/2009
I live near Fairfax city.

Re January temperatures relative to averages and extremes:
There is an interesting graph (chart? visual aid?) from NOAA that shows this. There are also annual charts for the past couple of years. I cannot discover how to change the “station” to display other locations around the country.
Chart is here.
Roger E. Sowell

Dave Andrews (13:01:54) :
Simon Evans,
Thanks for the link to the Japanese site, as you say “You can see that there are many areas that have had notable positive anomalies for various periods during the month. It gives a nice illustration of the variability of one region against another!”
My question is this, the variability of one region against another is there all year round so how is it REALLY possible to derive a GMST without introducing compromises that jeopardise the fogure you are looking for?
I’m not sure that I can answer the question to your satisfaction. My best approach would be to say that we should have less confidence in the ‘significance’ of immediate variation and look to the longer view. Speaking as a ‘warmist’, I’d say my concern is with what happens regionally far more than with the ‘average effect’ of a globally averaged temperature change. We know, of course, that many areas of the globe are subject to considerable weather variation, but it’s in those places where there is little climate headroom that the consequences of any further warming will be felt first and, potentially, felt most severely.
I don’t think that either the surface or the satellite record is ‘perfect’, that’s obvious. I think trend is significant rather than absolute measurement. In other words, we could say that the records are biased either negatively or positively, but so long as they maintain that bias the trend is still meaningful. It might have been better for USHCN not to have corrected for bias, since it made precious little difference to the global record yet has provided endless fodder for criticism!

My quick figures came out to a minus 3.5f for washington janruary temps.

I am sure it has but, has the 1998 jump been throughly vetted from multiply sources and they all correlate. And not just some “hot books” that can not be correlated other than the source said that is the numbers.

Greenhouse Theory Disproved a Century Ago
http://globalwarmingnot.blogtownhall.com/2009/02/03/greenhouse_theory_disproved_a_century_ago.thtml
The claim that carbon dioxide (CO2) can increase air temperatures by “trapping” infrared radiation (IR) ignores the fact that in 1909 physicist R.W. Wood disproved the popular 19th Century thesis that greenhouses stayed warm by trapping IR. Unfortunately, many people who claim to be scientists are unaware of Wood’s experiment which was originally published in the Philosophical magazine , 1909, vol 17, p319-320. Wood was an expert on IR. His accomplishments included inventing both IR and UV (ultraviolet) photography.

There seems to be a large dip every eight-nine years (with a somewhat smaller one shifted 4 years from that one). Those two periods are very significant in a power spectrum of these data, meaning the thing should flatten around 0.4 C in the next 4 years, then dip a little rise again and then fall to slightly negative eight years from now.
Overall no significant trend but simply a jump after 1998, with what looks like a periodic pattern in these ~30 years.

Is John Finn somewhere around?
Last year, November, on the Aussie blog, he did ask about temperatures from the entry into the Dalton Minimum.
I did provide there some datas from 1806-1814 from German records.
And a url for more data from Germany, Switzerland, Austria.
I hope he’ll see them.

It’s that time of month again, when the RSS & UAH data come out and I have to remind myself that this isn’t a measure of the temp at the ground but of the well mixed air well up from the surface {no burn barrels or barbeques no mess with}.
When I look at the temps at the 1 & especially 4.4 km alt, it seems that the early month started pretty close to last year’s values (see: http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/ ) until the impact of the SSW hit. So far it looks like the lower tropo temps are recovering, so next month’s anomaly probably won’t be quite so strong.

Ed Scott (14:17:48) :
Greenhouse Theory Disproved a Century Ago
http://globalwarmingnot.blogtownhall.com/2009/02/03/greenhouse_theory_disproved_a_century_ago.thtml
The claim that carbon dioxide (CO2) can increase air temperatures by “trapping” infrared radiation (IR) ignores the fact that in 1909 physicist R.W. Wood disproved the popular 19th Century thesis that greenhouses stayed warm by trapping IR. Unfortunately, many people who claim to be scientists are unaware of Wood’s experiment which was originally published in the Philosophical magazine , 1909, vol 17, p319-320. Wood was an expert on IR. His accomplishments included inventing both IR and UV (ultraviolet) photography.
Ed, no scientist actually thinks the atmosphere acts like a glazed greenhouse. The ‘greenhouse effect’ is a very poor description of what is meant, but we’re stuck with it now. Please take it as a given that whenever anyone refers to ‘greenhouse’ in this context they don’t actually mean it’s like a greenhouse!

realitycheck (10:02:49) :
For those interested in SSWs – there is a 30-day animation of the recent SSW here
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal/temp10anim.shtml
This is an amazing thing to witness. If I am reading this correctly, we see a 10-15 C swing in temperatures for the entire arctic region in about 10 days. But even more so is that it appears that the rest of the world is cooling during the same period.
Am I reading this correctly, and everything south of the arctic is cooling … like a counter balance ?. Is this common ?, and what is the mechanism ?.
Bill Illis (10:34:49) :
Sometimes these events produce warming at the pole but very cold conditions in the middle latitudes 2 weeks to 8 weeks after the initial event.
Is there information on this available somewhere ?.
Thanks in advance

I really want the AGW’ers to be correct with their estimate/hypothesis/prediction that the world, that directly affects me, will become warmer. The climate/weather status-quo has been pretty miserable in Scotland for the last couple of years – Positive temperature anomalies sound pretty darned good to me as I freeze my MacButt off in the draughty ancestral home!
Assuming that an unchanging climate is delusional we have, temperature-wise, only two options- It get’s warmer- it get’s colder! A mere toss of the coin!
As much as I admire the reasoned arguments as to why CO2 is/or isn’t the villain I always come back to the totally selfish argument that asks ‘Is your b*m warm enough yet?”

I was surprised that Icecap ran with this because I think we all agree that the greenhouse analogy is inadequte.
I prefer my own Hot Water Bottle Effect and the concept of a delay in the transmission of energy through the air and oceans:
http://co2sceptics.com/news.php?id=1487
In my mind the issue is boiling down to the simple question as to whether a change in the composition of the air alone can have any effect on the whole system when the oceans are so much more substantial than the air.
I think that the dominance of the oceans is such that energy budget changes in the air alone are just bounced out of the system by a change in the air circulation.
We shall see.

Simon Evans
I am not sure where you derive the information that no scientist(s) believe the “greenhouse” effect while it is still being taught and perpetuated. Some teachers are qualified scientists. Would a scientist convey knowledge that is known to be incorrect? The proper nomenclature might be atmospheric effect and that effect seems to be poorly understood with respect to the trace atmospheric gases (TAG). We are not stuck with term the “greenhouse” just a reticence to go against the grain and correctly define it.
————————————————————-
The Truth Is Out There (familiar X-File phrase) but the IPCC scientists cannot read, or read with understanding commensurate with their education.
————————————————————-
Perpetual motion and repeal of the second law of thermodynamics have been achieved by the IPCC scientists and Gavin Schmidt of NASA.
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/FAQ.html
If people are gullible enough to believe such a scenario, and apparently millions do, they deserve what’s coming down the road at them. Yet this is what even many climate skeptics call “the basic science.”
Substitute glass for that layer of “greenhouse gases.” Like them, glass is also transparent to visible light but largely opaque to what’s called thermal infrared. Direct a radiant heater at a glass pane, then. According to greenhouse physics, you now have the equivalent of two radiant heaters because the glass will absorb, say, 500 W/sqm from the heater and emit that to the surroundings but also radiate 500 W/sqm in the other direction, back to the heater. 1000 Watts per square meter in all.
This is what Schreuder means by counting energy twice. But in fact it’s more. Because remember that the radiant heater will be heated by its own re-directed energy and thereby emit even more energy — which the glass will absorb and double, which will heat the heater more… It’s a perpetual motion machine, just as he says.
That such a childish fantasy threatens to destroy western civilization is incredible, but that’s exactly the case.
“…the IPCC and other authorities commit the same error that most people do. Presupposing that space is incredibly cold, they surmise that the earth must be kept warm by an atmospheric blanket which inhibits the radiant energy emitted to space – an outmoded conjecture disproved by satellite observations. Despite evidence to the contrary, then, belief in “the greenhouse effect” persists, for people feel that earth needs to be isolated from the “coldness” of empty space.
Yet the earth is actually enclosed in a perfect thermal insulator, the vacuum of space itself. Short of installing a gigantic mirror around our planet, nothing but space can preserve the earth’s temperature longer.
Thus the value of understanding how a thermos works.
“Really new trails are rarely blazed in the great academies.
The confining walls of conformist dogma are too dominating.
To think originally, you must go forth into the wilderness.”
S. Warren Carey

OT, but there’s what looks to me like a very interesting post claiming that in 1909 physicist R.W. Wood disproved the popular 19th Century thesis that greenhouses stayed warm by trapping IR. Any room for a post to discuss this Anthony?
To others, if you’ve read this and are dying to comment: please don’t derail this thread, post on our forum instead.

Meant to add, h/t ICECAP

DaveE (15:23:25) :
“Ed, no scientist actually thinks the atmosphere acts like a glazed greenhouse. The ‘greenhouse effect’ is a very poor description of what is meant, but we’re stuck with it now. Please take it as a given that whenever anyone refers to ‘greenhouse’ in this context they don’t actually mean it’s like a greenhouse!”
Except warmers do.
Trapping of IR is not a big contributor to warming.
The main conveyor of surface heat loss is convection & they try to hide this.
What? Where has anyone tried “to hide this”? I genuinely don’t know what you’re talking about.
It’s elementary that a ‘real’ greenhouse warms up primarily because of the prevention of convection. Hot air rises unless it’s prevented from doing so!
I think maybe a separate thread, as suggested above, is a good idea – I don’t want to derail this thread either.

Ed Scott (15:17:38) :
Yet the earth is actually enclosed in a perfect thermal insulator, the vacuum of space itself. Short of installing a gigantic mirror around our planet, nothing but space can preserve the earth’s temperature longer.
Thus the value of understanding how a thermos works.
Might I suggest that you check out the distinction between conduction and radiation?

I noticed the tiny legend in the top left corner. It appears that it excludes almost the entire continent of Antarctica. So if we have cooling in Antarctica and it is not factored in how can anyone say “global” temps have risen?

DR (12:06:38) :
Correlation is not causation, however causation must have correlation.
Nice jingle. And, it is fair to say that many discoveries of causes started off as mere correlations. Observation of correlation leads to testing of alternative causal models, and hence new discoveries about what actually *does* or *does not* cause observed phenomenon are produced. The solar theorists will have the last laugh. I just finished Svensmark’s book — http://www.amazon.com/Chilling-Stars-Theory-Climate-Change/dp/1840468157.
Well worth a read if anyone wants an alternative to AGW that has some substance to .

Space is a perfect THERMAL insulator, radiation is a different matter & I agree with Simon that there should be somewhere on the site this can be discussed.
DaveE.

I worded that wrongly.
Space is a perfect conducive insulator.
DaveE.

@Ed (a simple old carpenter) (16:17:57)
No. That’s why the ground can frost or freeze on clear windless nights when the temperature is above 32degF. That’s due to heat loss at the surface due to radiation. (note that the atmospheric co2 has no effect on that heat loss, but moisture in the form of clouds, fog [and probably even high humidity?] do.) There is no convection in space, of course, because there is nothing to transfer heat to by contact.

Rob S (14:59:31) :
Yes you are reading the magnitude correctly. Remember this is at 10 mb and as manse 42 posted – a 100C swing up there probably only generates a 1C move lower down in the much denser troposphere .
At that altitude – you are correct – temperatures over the tropical sector are cooling as the SSW unfolds (remember the map projection here makes the Artic look bigger in area than it actually is). Think of it as conservation of energy and momentum – while an SSW event is characterised by a change in temperature it is also accompanied by the development of an upper-level ridge near the pole (technically a weaking of the polar vortex) – this means that instead of encountering the 10 mb surface at an altitude of say 50 km it might now be at an altitude of 70 km. That is, the thickness of the atmosphere over the pole is now thicker than “normal”.
Think of this ridging in the upper atmosphere like a tidal force – if the atmosphere is thickened at the pole, it has to thin elsewhere (over the tropics in this case – which of course leds to a relative cooling (at 10 mb) in those areas.
It is then that upper-level ridge which propagates down through the stratosphere into the troposphere to form the negative AO (essentially a strong ridge between about 500 mb and 1000 mb over the pole) – thats what you are seeing here.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/hgt.ao.cdas.gif
Intense surface high pressures are generated under that ridge and the ridge itself forces those “Artic Highs” southwards into the mid-latitudes. The polar regions at the surface are slightly warmer (probably by less than 1C), but the mid-latitudes experience strong cold shots (like the Siberian High that impacted Europe recently and the Artic High currently moving into the Southeast U.S.)
As Bill Illis (10:34:49) notes there is a lag between the SSW and the cold outbreak – this is because it takes time for the upper-level ridge to propogate down, to form the negative AO and the strong surface highs and for those highs to then slide southwards.
For published research in this area see any of these papers:
http://www.nwra.com/resumes/baldwin/pubs/Thompsonetal_2002.pdf
http://center.stelab.nagoya-u.ac.jp/cawses2005/PDF/yamazaki_koji.pdf
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~dennis/LimpasuvanetalVortexJC_04.pdf
http://www.springerlink.com/content/q00184710773q322/
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0442%282002%29015%3C0781%3ADPTAIT%3E2.0.CO%3B2
Hope this helps

Reed Coray (09:13:19) wrote: How did we get in this lose-lose situation?
Well put, Reed, and fully endorsed… but that sentiment of mine has little value without a positive concept of how to change things; and I cannot come up with even the glimmer of an idea for doing that.
Nevertheless, even your simply expressing it as you have is most certainly of value.

When cold drops down from the north, what replaces it?

Somewhat OT, but … now the warmists have another argument against higher temperatures: Monster Snakes!
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,487885,00.html

The researchers calculated that in order to support the slithering giant, its tropical habitat would have needed a temperature of about 86 to 93 degrees Fahrenheit (30 to 34 degrees Celsius).
“Tropical ecosystems of South America were surprisingly different 60 million years ago,” said Jonathan Bloch, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Florida, Florida Museum of Natural History, who worked with Head on the snake study. “It was a rainforest, like today, but it was even hotter and the cold-blooded reptiles were all substantially larger. The result was, among other things, the largest snakes the world has ever seen … and hopefully ever will.”

TJA (12:10:47) :
PaulHClark (12:45:36) :
My sincere apologies TJA I had missed the joke – it had been a long day in the UK snow!

Before to get too cranky – on both, RSS and UAH,
let’s simply wait for the Febuary values.
And if February doesn’t give us what we want we can always wait for March.

AMSU has stopped declining and is going up again. Though too early to tell, of course, but it might predict a warm year again
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/

Stephen Thurston (20:08:06) :
“When cold drops down from the north, what replaces it?”
Hoards of starving polar bears
sarc off
Seriously: if the AO remains negative (which it probably will for a few weeks with this event) then Artic Highs will continue to be generated at the high latitudes (it will remain a little warmer than normal up there and those Highs will continue to be transported southwards. If the AO “neutralizes” this process will wind down. IF the AO then trends positive, then temperatures at the pole will get colder and we will warm up in the mid-latitudes.
On this RSS data point for January, I am tired of the discussion on the significance of this here. This spike has as much signficance as the 10 year cooling trend before it or the 50 year warming trend before that. NONE
A one-dimensional curve depicted global average temperature over the past (whatever that is) 30 years or so tells you as much about the “climate” as a an out-of-focus still photograph tells you about the dynamics of a Formula 1 race car.

So indeed there must be some places on the Earth that were significantly warmer than average .
And this time it is sure , it is not Siberia because the exceptionnal cold in Europe was offered us courtesy a high pressure by Denmark that channeled the Siberian air right to the whole of western Europe .
I’n not sure of the logic behind this argument. Even if Siberia was anomalously it would still be a good deal colder than Western Europe, so any weather which comes from Siberia would produce very cold weather in the UK and France. In fact there is an argument that given the current atmospheric conditions the UK should be much colder than it is currently. And I have to say, compared with 1963 and other similar winters, it’s still not that cold.

Funny how we all jump on monthly data points. Today’s data will be harped by side AGW, tomorrow’s by Side SKEPTIC.
Can we bring it back to a worthy discussion. What about discussing the concept of temperature. If my thermo introduction is correct it is an indirect measure of heat content.
OK, given that step back and look at big picture:
Sun is source of heat.
ICE Ages: they come and go.
This means relative heat of earth goes up and down
The only explanation for pre inductrial variation is what?
DUH!!!

realityCheck:
On this RSS data point for January, I am tired of the discussion on the significance of this here. This spike has as much signficance as the 10 year cooling trend before it or the 50 year warming trend before that. NONE
I was hoping the author of this post would explain why he thought the change was “significant” and now you’re tired of the discussion! I guess I’ll just go out and play in the snow.

Paul Clark: “This last reading is an almost perfect return to trend (0.16K/decade). It was the downwards spike of the last couple of years that was off trend.”
Depends on what trend you’re looking at:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/plot/rss/from:1998/to:2009/trend
“A trend is a trend until its end!”

That’s really weird. Here in southeastern Michigan its been very cold this winter. January was about 5 degrees F colder than normal. From news reports it seems much of the rest of the country had similar cold weather.
On a somewhat different topic our governor has announced that she wants a moratorium on construction of new coal fired power plants. She refers to coal as “imported”. The article later states the coal is imported from other states. That’s a bizarre use of the word imported. It’s like saying other states “import” their cars from Michigan. According to my dictionary “imported” means brought in from another country. My comment to the governor is that oil which powers the cars we build is mostly imported from other countries. Coal which powers our electricity generating plants is not imported. We have an abundance of it right here in the USA.
The governor wants to build alternative energy plants using solar and wind. How well will solar work here in Michigan where we can go for a week at a time without seeing the sun? And how many windmill will be spoiling the scenic coast of Lake Michigan to take advantage of the winds there. And where will we get electricity when the wind is not blowing?
During the last gubernatorial campaign the governor enthusiastically described how things would improve under her leadership. She said; “And in five years you are going to be blown away.” Well here we are… blown away!

“There was some slowdown in these winds over the past three weeks but they are all well above normal now.”
Whew, Gaia is being very, very good to me.

“I read somewhere that “space” does not have a temperature because it is void. Am I right on this?”
The space outside the Earth magnetosphere is not a void. The solar wind flows through there. The typical temperature of the solar wind around the Earth is 100,000 K. The thing is that particle density is so low that collisions between particles are not the way to reach thermal equilibrium. There’s also a much colder flow of neutral gas from the interstellar medium (and that one dominates the particle density after Jupiter’s orbit).

I have noticed some scepticism about AGW on this site, and talk of a political agenda at the IPCC. Whilst to lay people it is unclear how miniscule changes in the composition of the atmosphere by a few molecules of C02 in 100,000 of atmosphere can cause catastrophic warming of our planet this is because we do not understand the maths behind radiative forcing and the ‘al gore ‘ithms’ behind the brilliant climate models, produced by some of the finest minds money can buy. This month’s increase in RSS is enough to convince me that AGW is real – we all have our tipping points. It is best to leave this stuff to the experts who really do understand the complexities of climate science and the maths behind RF before coming to their considered judgements – Al Gore, Madonna, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Snoop Dogg, Bon Jovi, Foo Fighters, Lenny Kravitz, Sheryl Crow and the Black Eyed Peas.
[/sarc]

“the brilliant climate models, produced by some of the finest minds money can buy.”
Indeed, their reflected luminence frequents WUWT in the beneficent personages of acolytes to their most sacred offices.

Today in Toronto this morning it was -20C without the windchill. Don’t even ask what it felt like with the light breeze. I spoke with my dad today who is wintering in North Miami Beach and he said it had gone down to 38F. I hear that the jet stream has bent so far down that Florida is getting quite cold weather. On top of our ridiculously cold winter right across Canada and much of the USA is news this week of record breaking high temps in parts of Australia. Then we know that La Nina has been reborn and so what sort of a summer do we expect up here? Extremes are the norm?

gary gulrud
Cali, its time to spend some of your bounty on desalinization. Oh, run out of bounty?. Listen up, if you come around here with your buckets in hand, we’ll “blow your head clean off”.
————————————————————-
I was gainfully employed and working in the San Diego area referred to as Point Loma during the construction and initial use of a Westinghouse flash distillation plant used as a government (federal) demonstration project. When the relatively pure water from the plant was introduced into the water system, it dissolved the years of mineral deposits in the pipes and leaks began appearing everywhere. They solved the problem by decreasing the purity of the water. The use of the plant for water in the San Diego area was cut short when Castro cut the water supply to Gitmo. In record time, the Navy packed up the plant and moved it to Gitmo.
We lived in Santee, a community of 10,000 population at the time, east of San Diego, The water supply for Santee was water reclaimed from sewage. It sounds repulsive, but the water tested to be the purest in San Diego County.
I have never heard of any follow-on projects to take advantage of the lessons learned in either of the above pilot projects. My conclusion is that, true to form, government does not reward success.
We Californians will not come with buckets in hand, we will send the feds to do the dirty work. It’s the American way.

“We Californians will not come with buckets in hand, we will send the feds to do the dirty work. It’s the American way.”
I don’t expect to survive the exchange, but do find it a likely start to the hostilities.

David S (08:42:43) :
“How well will solar work here in Michigan where we can go for a week at a time without seeing the sun?”
FWIW, passive solar for heating and air conditioning in Michigan’s homes is very workable from the engineering point of view. Sunlight from a clear sky is unnecessary. Overcast skies still transmit enough energy to heat a home quite well. Snow on the ground actually improves the efficiency and can provide more energy than a home in the Southwest desert.
Problems to be overcome are good design and construction, higher initial building costs, and higher property taxes. Larger homes produce more useful passive heating and air conditioning, while current poperty tax schemes penalize.
Off-grid active solar power is technically feasible in Michigan; but it is still a very expensive souce of electricity, prohibitively so for most folks.

La Niña
El Niño
Gonna see fewer of the latter than the former over the course of the negative PDO.
No matter what you call it, we still had us the coldest day in four years here in WNY. And the over-the-hill hippies conducting a global warming teach-in {or whatever they’re calling that silly event} appeared on the local news to warn that such extreme events will be more common in the future as a result of global warming. Never mind that just as the climate has always been changing, so have there always been extreme weather events.

DAV,
Washington DC area was well below normal in January 2009, not well above normal. January temperature was -3.3F below normal.
http://www.weather.gov/climate/index.php?wfo=lwx
PS, the highest temperature was 51F not 60+F as you claim. Just the facts. Sorry.

Bob Tisdale, I went to your web site that has all the temp data categorized by area. Regarding SST data, has anyone tried to see if there is a traveling wave of cold/warm current around the globe in this data? Meaning that if a spike either way shows up in one graph, it should show up in the next current-connected graph somewhat later.

Bill Illis (16:43:44) :
I don’t like being boxed in by technical definitions. This is a La Nina and it has been since early December.

With all due respects your likes or dislikes are irrelevant. By any definition there has not been a La Nina this southern hemisphere summer, nor is there likely to be one. I suggest you refer to the discussion we had on this blog last month .
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/20/its-official-la-nina-is-back/

The graph at the top of this page seems at odds with our experiences in a good part of the Northern hemisphere so can only assume the cold we are enduring is more than offset by high temperatures in the southern hemisphere.
No – there have been plenty of warmer than average regions in the NH, most of Russia and Asia , for example. These blogs give a distorted view because they are dominated by posters from the UK and the US.

Mary Hinge (01:58:15) :
Bill Illis (16:43:44) :
I don’t like being boxed in by technical definitions. This is a La Nina and it has been since early December.
With all due respects your likes or dislikes are irrelevant. By any definition there has not been a La Nina this southern hemisphere summer, nor is there likely to be one.
I actually agree with Mary on this one, a technical definition is entirely appropriate. Without effective and workable definitions – communication is impossible.
By Definition we are not “actually” in a La Nina, however we do seem to be skating right next to one and for quite some time now.
The PDO in a cool phase by itself produces some effects that are similar to, or like, La Nina effects.
A cool PDO could be likened to a soft La Nina running for 30 years. Hence California had better do something about securing it’s water supply or risk running out.

Why is it always “warmer than normal” in Siberia? Is this a surface thing? If it is, doesn’t it make you wonder about the baseline? Or is “global warming” localized there?
I read somewhere that during the Soviet era, if they exaggerated the low temps, they got more diesel fuel. Does anybody remember this?

John Finn
I’m making no point here but I was googling for China and came across these astonishing pictures of their ice festival. Whatever side of the fence we are on let’s hope this sort of event will continue.
http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/2009/02/02/color-inspiration-2009-harbin-ice-snow-festival/
TonyB

It is of course hard to argue with the broad scientific expertise of the Black Eyed Peas, I may have to reconsider.
Mary Hinge, it appears that you are desperate on this one, I don’t really disagree with you but maybe you should complain to NOAA? They’re the ones calling it La Nina.
I think we should investigate about Siberia TJA, I have heard that exaggerating the low temperatures was a Soviet era way to increase fuel allotments. (Yes I heard it here but I also heard that in Ulan Ude and various other places more than a decade ago.) With their horrible central heating systems and leaky crummy construction I suspest it was needed to survive.

“No – there have been plenty of warmer than average regions in the NH, most of Russia and Asia , for example”
John,
We are talking of anomalies here. The warm anomalies in Siberia, and East Asia had to be strong enough not only to offset NAmerican and NW Europe cooling, but obliterate them.

Expect to see an even bigger spike, temperatures right accross southern Australia, a vast area, have gone through the roof with weeks of 45 degrees and higher, given that the long term average temperature for this time of year is about 26 degrees you get to see the picture.

Wondering Aloud
I anticipated when you read my list of luminaries more carefully you would be won over. Leonardo DiCaprio also has an impressive CV in the ‘saving the planet’ [from C02 presumably] domain.
To quote him eminence “It’s not about imposing a certain belief system or a way of life on people in any economic background. It’s about just being aware of this issue – that’s the most important thing – and really trying to say, ‘Next time I vote, next time I buy something, I’m just going to be aware of what’s really going on.’ ”
That’s all pretty clear – I think he’s talking about radiative forcing. Quite a cogent argument I thought.

realitycheck (19:05:15) 4-02-2009
Thank you for the links to the papers fascinating reading.
This seems to be a large SSW (potentially a record or near record?) – after reading Ed Berry’s comments – do you think this could be significant for temperatures in the NH over the next several weeks?

@TIM(17:27:49) : just the facts
Just for reference, here’s the NWS noon report 2009-02-07. Note that DC is reporting 44 degrees at National while the rest of the area is 50 or above. The thermometer outside my house reported 55. BTW: Quantico is reporting 65! Maybe that’s because of all the hot babes the FBI has been hiring if TV shows are any guide. Not in my snapshot but BWI is reporting 48.
Just the facts.

I think many on this blog have fallen into the same trap as the Alarmists. Getting excited about monthly or annual trends is not where it is at. The 30 year trend is up, but the 5 year trend is down to neutral. Even without La Nina, global temperatures pretty much slowed thier rapid rise despite continued increases in GHG concentrations.
Here’s what we do know:
After the intense 1997-2000 ENSO event, the Central Pacific remained El Ninoesque from 2001-2007. The 2006-2007 El Nino was weak and short lived. On its heels, ENSO went neutral, and in late 2008 a moderate La Nina formed, follwed by another one in Dec 2009. According to NOAA, the PDO went negative in early 2008. This appears to have broken a 30 year cycle of El Nino dominated climate.
Since 1995, the AMO has been positive, and will probably remain so for at least another 5 years. The rapid increase in NH temps since 1988 can be correlated-at least on the surface- to a synchronization of the positive phases of the PDO and AMO. The Oceans cannot just exhaust 30 years of excessive heat energy in a year. El Ninos will continue to occur. The oceans can determine synopitc patterns in strange ways. La Ninas usually mean the formation of a stubborn winter time 4-Corners high pressure. This means way above winter time temps for the Far West with accompanying low precip. A cooling Pacific and a warm Atlantic usually spell trouble for the lower Mississippi Vallies and Southern Plains (dry, warm weather. For Europe one also has to take into account a combination of the NAO and AMO and not just ENSO. For Austrailia, the South IO (a large portion of the Walker Cell) determines much of thier precip patterns.
One thing that cannot be ignored is the 30 year divergence of NH and SH temps. Is it the NH diverging from the SH, or the other way around. No one really knows. Perhaps the NH and SH normally diverge; perhaps one follows the other, as what occured in the late 40s when the SH first cooled followed by the SH later in the 50s. We really don’t know.
The spike in January in a way doesn’t surprise me. An El Nino is expected to form by Autumn 2009. The Pacific still has plenty of excess heat energy as observed by continued Artic ice melt. And no, the warm Siberian anomalies do not mean that the tundra is thawing. As a few have posted already, a +8 deg C means that the median Siberian temperature is -25 deg C, not -33 deg C.
One last note, it would be interesting to see the year-to-year change in the RSS/UAH temps. It could be surprising.

temperatures right accross southern Australia, a vast area, have gone through the roof with weeks of 45 degrees
It’s misleading to describe the affected area as ‘vast’. It’s just Victoria and part of South Australia.
By way of comparison, Western Australia which is about 15 times larger than Victoria has had an average summer, and Queensland which is about 8 times larger than Victoria, has had an unusually cool summer.
You can see in the January max temperature plot (annoyingly BoM doesn’t provide a mean temp anomaly plot) that the colder areas in the north are larger and relatively much cooler than warmer areas in the south (Victoria). Febuary to date has been more of the same.
Overall, this is likely a cooler than average summer in Oz. Again, annoyingly the BoM doesn’t publish Australia wide average data.
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/temp_maps.cgi?variable=maxanom&area=nat&period=month&time=latest

“UAH Jan temperature anomaly ‘plunges’ to +0.31. I think global cooling might be over.”
I readily admit to being baffled by this RSS average and La Nina weakness but I find your analyses only a little more reliable than those of Jimbo or Al. A stopped clock is correct twice daily.

Title of this article = “Global RSS temperature makes a significant jump in January”, with a graph showing it come from a lower base shortly before.
In other words, you’ve spotted “weather”. Keep waiting over the next 10-30 years and beyond and then you’ll see “climate”. As we already have seen warming over the past 30 years.
Unfortunately too many of your amateur correspondents confuse “weather” with “climate”. Another batch of armchair experts confuse weather with climate in another way, as demonstrated by the following typical example “gee it’s cold here in Smalltown now, so therefore I don’t trust the global averaged temperature anomaly one bit”.
Errors in logic both times. I’d suggest the “experts” go an do a bit of study on climatology first, rather than coming to a blog to demonstrate a type of mental vacuum-effect.