RSS Data Source is here
The RSS (Remote Sensing Systems of Santa Rosa, CA) Microwave Sounder Unit (MSU) lower troposphere global temperature anomaly data for January 2009 was published yesterday and has risen significantly. This is the new data version, 3.2 which changed in October. The change from December with a value of 0.174°C to January’s 0.322°C is a (∆T) of +0.148°C.
RSS
2008 1 -0.070
2008 2 -0.002
2008 3 0.079
2008 4 0.080
2008 5 -0.083
2008 6 0.035
2008 7 0.147
2008 8 0.146
2008 9 0.241 (V3.1)
2008 10 0.181 (V3.2)
2008 11 0.216 (V3.2)
2008 12 0.174 (V3.2)
2009 01 0.322 (V3.2)
Well, Ed Scott, anm itneresting question. I think the temperature of teh Universe is about 2-3 Kelvin; pretty much zero.
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 .
Ed (a simple old carpenter) (16:17:57) :
I read somewhere that “space” does not have a temperature because it is void.
Am I right on this?
That is correct (insofar as space is actually void). However, heat radiates through space – otherwise we would never get any heat from the sun! The idea that space is a a “perfect thermal insulator” is, I am afraid, complete nonsense.
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.
Ed (a simple old carpenter)
According to scientists, the void of space has a temperature of 2.7 degrees Kelvin. This is said to be due to the background radiation from the big bang.
The temperature of space within the Sun’s atmosphere is naturally of interest to NASA. Here is a video clip that informs on the temperature and other space environment concerns within the Sun’s atmosphere.
http://www.nasa.gov/mov/217387main_079_Space_Environment.mov
I worded that wrongly.
Space is a perfect conducive insulator.
DaveE.
I believe that the COBE satellite established that the lowest temperature in space is 2.7K. Astronauts during space walks are exposed to wide swings in temperature even though they are in mostly the vacuum of space.
@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.
Simon Evans
Might I suggest that you check out the distinction between conduction and radiation?
——————————————
Humans, at normal body temperature, radiate most strongly in the infrared at a wavelength of about 10 nm. Radiation from Earth is centered at about 11 nm. Not too surprising, since the frequency of the radiation is dependent upon the body’s temperature.
The vacuum bottle prevents heat transfer by conduction/convection.
It should be noted that convection does not occur in a perfect vacuum due to the lack of media to transmit heat. This mode of heat transfer does not occur in space where there is no atmosphere in the surroundings of the system to be analyzed. It only occurs where gases are present.
Everything above absolute zero radiates energy.
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
I have a really hard time believing Jan was warmer in the US. Everybody I’ve talked to seems to be having a colder than usual January. Here in Chicago, it’s the 10th coldest on record.
http://blogs.trb.com/news/weather/weblog/wgnweather/2009/01/10th_coldest_january_closes_wi.html
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.
Really hope this is not OT…
South eastern Australia has been sweltering through a rather uncomfortable heat-wave for about 2 weeks now. Today it was announced that a new study has found that:
“Australia’s severe drought is being driven by temperature fluctuations in the Indian Ocean”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/05/2482667.htm
The conclusion to the article states:
‘The researchers have yet to determine whether the IOD trends are linked to climate change.
But they say the severity of the most recent drought is partly due to higher temperatures.
Dr England says the record-breaking heatwave experienced in recent weeks in south-east Australia is not in itself a sign of climate change, but due to a blocking high pressure system over the Tasman Sea, which is a natural meteorological event.
“But obviously with the planet already about a degree [Celsius] warmer than its background state then any heat wave you get is then going to be that much worse in a warmer world,” he said.
Good to see their admission of a natural meteorological event and not a fingerprint of global warming as our Climate Change Minister Penny Wong announced. However, as with most of these studies (I’m thinking of the recent study attempting to link the lack of coral growth rates in the Great Barrier Reef) to AGW, the authors seem determined to link their findings to AGW…
…”Its background state”???
When cold drops down from the north, what replaces it?
I’m still looking for evidence that manmade co2 has the power to change climate. Warming in one month is the evidence? What about all the months when the temps go down? Where’s the evidence then? Looking at the graph I can see temps go up and down all the time. Yawn. 😉
Somewhat OT, but … now the warmists have another argument against higher temperatures: Monster Snakes!
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,487885,00.html
This looks dodgy to me. Suppose I go out now and find my thermometer in the pond indicates 10C when there’s snow lying around. The first thing you should do with what looks like a discordant result is check your equipement. The second is to ask yourself the question: does this result make sense? If it doesn’t, and this one doesn’t, redo your experiment and be even more careful than you were before. Only publish when you have reproduced it once or twice, and even then you may find you were looking at a fluke. That’s how experimental data are. So lets see what they come up with for February and March, which ,looking outside, promise to be pretty cool as well in the Northern hemisphere.
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!
A data pedant writes (rather belatedly, timezones and snow have not helped):
“DAV: Note that we are talking +0.322 (around 0.5F) above January 29 years ago.”
Actually the anomaly for RSS is from the average of all January temperatures from 1979 to 1998 (20 years).
For interest, here’s RSS with its overall trend:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/plot/rss/trend
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.
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.
As Ian pointed out above, Southern Australia has had extremely high temperatures during January. However the mean temperature anomaly (based on land surface observations) released by the Australian Met Bureau a few days ago has the anomaly for January at +0.36C. The warmth in the south of Autralia was offset by cold anomalies in the north of the country.
That makes it the 23rd warmest January since 1950 (or the 38th coldest) and way down from last year’s (2008) January anomaly of +1.23C
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/
The january in France (and most western Europe) was exceptionnaly cold .
The difference to the average 1971 – 2000 was around – 2°C .
In Paris it has even been much worse , it was colder than the average january by 3°C (!)
Minimum temperatures in the morning by – 9°C , snow and ice holding for several days is something that is extremely rare .
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 .
It might be that the warmer and wetter atlantic air went to northern Norvegia instead of western Europe but we’d need a norvegian here to say if january was very significantly warmer than average there .
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.
Tom Vonk:
here in sweden, january was warmer than usual (which it usually is nowadays) especially in the northern parts. Its been quite a while since we saw a cold winter here. (Lots of snow in the north anyway but temperatures are mild.)
Feb so far looking more “normal”.