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)
“John in Lac du Bonnet “: could you please make a tuny url for the link you posted? I cannot get it to work
Thanks
Jack
realitycheck (03:40:05) :
Warm air from a) further south (jet stream to pole) or b) air from higher in the atmosphere (that itself comes from further south but has been modified along the way).
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.
Oooo! I like it! (Though the way the data are processed it’s more like ‘the average of all the pixels of a movie of a Formula 1 race with many cars’…)
And coming around the corner the pixel is exactly 2 bits cooler, now in the straightaway it is 1 bit warmer, heading into the back stretch, the pixel has been holding steady at Neutral Grey 18%: It’s a photo finish!
“there is no El Nina at present.”
Don’t ‘spose they habla where your at, but ‘La’, for ‘the’ baby(girl). As we trust you are aware “El Nino” refers to the usual Christmas arrival of flipside.
Mary Hinge (13:52:36) :
Bill Illis (05:55:18) :
La Nina has waned a little lately….
To correct you Bill, there is no El Nina at present.
Nor will there ever be…
“E with O and A with A” …
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.
Actually it’s the only contributor to warming!
The main conveyor of surface heat loss is convection & they try to hide this.
It’s actually a rather minor contributor to surface heat loss but does help to redistribute the heat.
DaveE.
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.
Mary Hinge:
I don’t like being boxed in by technical definitions. This is a La Nina and it has been since early December.
Nino1+2 Nino3 Nino34 Nino4
Week SST SSTA SST SSTA SST SSTA SST SSTA
26NOV2008 21.2-0.9 24.6-0.4 26.1-0.4 27.9-0.4
03DEC2008 21.4-0.9 24.8-0.3 26.0-0.5 27.9-0.4
10DEC2008 22.1-0.4 24.6-0.4 25.8-0.7 27.7-0.5
17DEC2008 22.6-0.3 24.6-0.5 25.8-0.7 27.7-0.6
24DEC2008 22.8-0.5 24.5-0.7 25.6-0.9 27.5-0.7
31DEC2008 23.3-0.3 24.4-0.9 25.4-1.1 27.5-0.7
07JAN2009 23.4-0.6 24.5-0.9 25.4-1.1 27.4-0.8
14JAN2009 24.0-0.3 24.8-0.8 25.4-1.1 27.4-0.7
21JAN2009 25.3 0.5 25.5-0.2 25.8-0.8 27.4-0.7
28JAN2009 25.3 0.2 25.5-0.4 25.7-0.9 27.3-0.8
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.
Retired Engineer says:
I think it is probably more accurate to say the analogy is imperfect. Roughly speaking, the CO2 does trap heat that would otherwise be radiated back out into space. It doesn’t do this in the same way that a greenhouse does, since that mainly works by preventing convective losses, not radiative losses.
Here, by the way, is a website of retired meteorologist who is a stickler for getting the pedagogy correct: http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/Bad/BadGreenhouse.html He doesn’t like the “trap heat” statement either and prefers his simple and elegant statement of how the greenhouse effect works (“The surface of the Earth is warmer than it would be in the absence of an atmosphere because it receives energy from two sources: the Sun and the atmosphere”), but he is wise enough to know that this is really just an issue of pedagogy and not a fundamental disagreement on the science.
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.
PDO Index, Year 2008 by month
-1.00 -0.77 -0.71 -1.52 -1.37 -1.34 -1.67 -1.70 -1.55 -1.76 -1.25 -0.87
2008 Year Average -1.29
PDO Index, Yearly 1900 to 2008
PDO 0.45 -0.13 0.77 0.16 -0.25 0.64 0.49 0.12 0.38 -0.12 -0.08 -0.16 0.15 0.57 0.16 0.18 -0.51 -0.43 -0.14 -0.10 -0.91 -0.10 -0.20 0.48 0.14 0.19 1.16 0.14 0.16 0.40 -0.10 0.74 -0.02 -0.68 1.18 0.80 1.73 0.32 0.16 0.07 1.77 1.99 0.47 0.11 -0.13 -0.19 -0.58 0.50 -0.87 -1.23 -1.81 -0.77 -0.87 -0.16 -0.29 -1.95 -1.80 0.23 0.64 -0.03 0.06 -0.82 -1.16 -0.69 -0.77 -0.31 -0.46 -0.73 -0.40 -0.10 -0.40 -1.29 -0.92 -0.80 -0.34 -1.10 0.01 0.23 0.24 0.34 0.60 0.92 0.11 1.65 0.84 0.45 1.24 1.82 0.53 -0.18 -0.36 -0.42 0.93 1.42 -0.15 0.64 0.64 1.46 0.25 -1.06 -0.59 -0.56 0.22 0.97 0.35 0.38 0.19 -0.20 -1.29
Data Source, monthly PDO Index
http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/PDO.latest
For more details, see:
Zhang, Y., J.M. Wallace, D.S. Battisti, 1997:
ENSO-like interdecadal variability: 1900-93. J. Climate, 10, 1004-1020.
Mantua, N.J. and S.R. Hare, Y. Zhang, J.M. Wallace, and R.C. Francis,1997:
A Pacific interdecadal climate oscillation with impacts on salmon
production. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 78,
pp. 1069-1079.
(available via the internet at url:
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~mantua/abst.PDO.html)
Data sources for this index are:
UKMO Historical SST data set for 1900-81;
Reynold’s Optimally Interpolated SST (V1) for January 1982-Dec 2001)
*** OI SST Version 2 (V2) beginning January 2002 –
Note in the last 109 years, only 1950, 1955 and 1956 had lower average annual PDO Indices than 2008.
Regards, Allan
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.
Is there a similar set of graphs available which which show the Northern and Southerrn Hemisphere anomalies separately?
tonyB
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.
Roger Sowell (10:50:50) :
HELLO! You do not create fresh water by reducing CO2! Is anybody in
government listening?
Hi Roger – they (politicians) do seem to be very well insulated from reality…
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.
Whoops italics everywhere.
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
Point taken. However Russia seems to have had a ‘warm’ December a cold January and extremely low temperatures for the coming period.
TonyB
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
Nigel Crew
Many of the posters on this site are the “experts”, as far as I can tell very many of us at least have graduate degrees in related fields. If you think this is just wild speculating I believe you are mistaken.
The idea that the IPCC or the even more extreme views of people like Al Gore or James Hanson are from the “experts who know” is a myth. Even the scientists involved in writting the science portion of the IPCC reports do not generally agree with the conclusions or policy recommendations of those reports. Lead authors of the last two IPCC reports at least have very publicly disagreed with the conclusions and recommendations.
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.
Pamela,
Many of these warm/cold pools are just representations of much more complex sub-surface oceanic circulations. We can track Kelvin and Rossby waves on the surface -esp how they pertain to ENSO. But the real action is occuring below the surface, and unfortunately there is still much we don’t understand.
What is quite fascinating about the Jan 2009 temp spike is that it occured during a weak La Nina, and during 2 prolonged periods of NH polar outbreaks. Where did the extra heat energy come from?
“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.
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.
I know we’re talking about anomalies. That’s exactly the point. If the mean temperature for a region is -25 but the actual temperature is -15 it’s still cold but the anomaly is +10. Though I’m not sure it’s Siberia which has had the warmest anomalies, but I’ll look again when the UAH anomaly map is released.