Both RSS and UAH global temperature anomalies are out for Feb 09

“The only thing more puzzling today is Andy Revkin.”
In his piece (found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/science/earth/09climate.html?_r=1) Revkin says:
“John R. Christy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alabama who has long publicly questioned projections of dangerous global warming, most recently at a House committee hearing last month, said he had skipped both Heartland conferences to avoid the potential for “guilt by association.””
This is exactly what I advised you to do, Anthony. You are losing your independence by associating with all skeptics. Stick to the skeptics that have something to say about the science, stay away from the skeptics that us the AGW debate for political, personal or egotistical gain.
I do the same thing with environmentalists. I take the ones that have realistic things to say seriously, the greenies who use AGW to take us back to some anarchist or communist society devoid of all technology don’t get much of my attention.

Whatever way you look at it this is showing pretty massive cooling everywhere
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.3.9.2009.gif . La Nina is really getting strong once again at site 1 (beside Ecuador/Peru)
have a look at continents COLA site.. same thing exceptions Australia. Also Cryosphere today totally unreliable but not their fault satellite is way off for apprently part of 2008 and all of 2009. Curiously (For Leif) Sun just doesn’t want to take off. LOL There appears to be a discordancy between UAH (AMSU) data this year with last years data with same surface temps. One wondrers if ALL the satellite dat was not caused by one event (Cosmic ray burst at time (Dec-Jan2009 2008) ect?)

Willem de Rode (23:28:58)
why should temperatures behave like step functions ?
the system reacts slowly, it requires a string of many la ninas to gradually move the temperature down, rebuild ice and glaciers, just as the string of many el ninos did the opposite over the last 30 years.

Consider that last winter temperatures were extraordinary low worldwide, Jan-Feb 2009 is still colder than 2007 before, so the downward trend continues. I am curious whether Archibalds´s forecast for -0,4deg C anomaly for 2009 will come true.

Neven,
My advice to you is to stay away from the alarmists that us(e) the AGW debate for political, personal or egotistical gain. i.e. almost all of them.

As Bob mentioned, the Northern Hemisphere is being affected by the record Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW) event which occurred in mid-January.
This event has impacted the satellite lower troposphere temperature measurements.
Temps in the NH stratosphere jumped by up to 50C (no typo) in mid-January to the highest level ever recorded and now they have bounced back to the lowest levels ever recorded. [Essentially, heat just got redistributed in the atmosphere in an unusual but common way for the NH winter and there was no extra heat generated].
The Tropics and the Southern Hemisphere satellite temps are not showing much change at all and are roughly Zero anomaly right now.
The lower troposphere satellite temps measure up to about 400MB (25,000 feet) and the troposphere was affected more by this SSW than the surface was.
You can see the change in temps by atmospheric level and by time with this graph. [1050 MB is the surface and 0.4 MB is the very top of the atmosphere].
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_MEAN_JFM_NH_2009.gif
Or with this chart of the 10MB level.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/temperature/10mb9065.gif
Generally, these events produce (for the NH mid-latitudes only) a slight warming at the surface and in the lower troposphere during the event and then some cooling and other variations over the next 2 to 8 weeks.

I think we have gotten a bit off the logical track here, with our skepticism.
We have been given a PR present by Gaia these past 7years, maybe 10. Though I am grateful for this, and hope that the next two or three years keep up the good work, I do not lose sight that it is fortuitous PR, as the 30 year warming at the end of last century was fortuitous PR for CO2 alarmists.
The geologic truth, if we look at the 400.000 year ice core record http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok-ice-core-petit.png is that we are on a fluctuating flat top of +/- 1C, headed for the next ice drop, as surely as clock work. We are at a fortuitous wide flat top, about a degree C higher than the previous same width heat top, which was not very flat 100.000 years ago. The next drop is anybody’s computer program guess. If we go by the Dryas, it may be only three years away, or 10.000 according to some programs.
We should be counting our blessings and spending any excess moneys to plan as human societies for the next ice plunge. Hansen’s naive suggestion that we can put off the ice age by emitting greenhouse gases has already been negated by their inability to overcome the cold PDO. Maybe it will be mirrors in space, ( aluminize the moon) or underground cities, or… That is where creativity and money should be spent.

We need to reconstruct the whole temperature record going back the last two centuries first. I thoroughly believe that if we can account for the dimming effect of 19th century urban smog and then the developing UHI effect of the 20th century until present, then we’re going to see a temperature rise of less than half of the 0.6C that is currently banded about.
That would prove how insensitive the climate is to greenhouse gases and eliminate the alarmist rhetoric that has become divisive, unscientific and cult-like.
I’m currently watching the German film Die Welle (The Wave) and see so many parallels there with environmental activism and the way the Obama campaign and the media whipped up all that pre-election frenzy.
This mania has to end.

Neven (03:29:31) :
I guess you’re implying that Andrew Revkin is unbiased and sensible.
“…global warming’s skeptics are showing signs of internal rifts and weakening support.”
Really? This is only the image Revkin wishes to relay. He’s quite the wordsmith, isn’t he. In reality this is not what is happening. People on this side of the issue are pointing out how the science is not settled. Revkin sees this as “signs of internal rifts”.
Revkin also reported last year :
“Experts Confirm Open Water Circling Arctic”
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/confirmation-of-open-water-circling-north-pole/
However, this was not confirmed. Revkin put this in bold type anyway, “This is the first recorded occurrence of the Northwest Passage and Northern Sea Route both being open at the same time.” He didn’t chose to put the part where it was not confirmed in bold print. Do you bias in that, or no, Neven?
Andrew Revkin may be one of those environmentalists you want to distance yourself from Neven.

Just kidding here … Pierre Gosselin wrote “Ooops. Ignore my last comment. I was looking at UAH January temps.”
No worries Pierre … NASA does this all the time … ‘a month here a month there and soon we’re talking serious GW.’ ☺
Clive
PS… ditto what Allan MscR said … wind chill here in S Alberta is minus 34°C this morning … sheesh.

Neven (03:29:31) :
“The only thing more puzzling today is Andy Revkin.”
In his piece (found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/science/earth/09climate.html?_r=1) Revkin says:
“John R. Christy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alabama who has long publicly questioned projections of dangerous global warming, most recently at a House committee hearing last month, said he had skipped both Heartland conferences to avoid the potential for “guilt by association.””
This is exactly what I advised you to do, Anthony. You are losing your independence by associating with all skeptics. Stick to the skeptics that have something to say about the science, stay away from the skeptics that us the AGW debate for political, personal or egotistical gain.
I do the same thing with environmentalists. I take the ones that have realistic things to say seriously, the greenies who use AGW to take us back to some anarchist or communist society devoid of all technology don’t get much of my attention.

If not for political, personal or egotistical gain this debate over AGW would have never started. That’s all there is to it! Take away the politics and you have an hypothesis that is unproven (if not already falsified) by actual observation.