The data is out for both RSS and UAH, and I’m presenting them both here. Click for full sized graphs.
RSS from Remote Sensing Systems of Santa Rosa, CA. RSS data here (RSS Data Version 3.2)
UAH from Dr. Roy Spencer, University of Alabama, Huntsville. Reference: UAH lower troposphere data
Since Dr. Spencer released the April UAH data first on his own blog, I’ll give him the honor of explaining the data and possible reason for divergence of the two data sets.UAH Data
YR MON GLOBE NH SH TROPICS
2009 1 0.304 0.443 0.165 -0.036
2009 2 0.347 0.678 0.016 0.051
2009 3 0.206 0.310 0.103 -0.149
2009 4 0.091 0.126 0.055 -0.010
Once again there is a rather large discrepancy between our monthly anomaly (+0.09 deg. C.) and that produced by Remote Sensing Systems (RSS, +0.20 deg. C). We (John Christy and I) believe the difference is due to some combination of three factors:
1) we calculate the anomalies from a wider latitude band, 84S to 84N whereas RSS stops at 70S, and Antarctica was cooler than average in April (so UAH picks it up).
2) The monthly anomaly is relative to the 1979-1998 base period, which for RSS had a colder mean period relative to April 2009 (i.e. their early Aprils in the 1979-1998 period were colder than ours.)
3) RSS is still using a NOAA satellite whose orbit continues to decay, leading to a sizeable diurnal drift adjustment. We are using AMSU data from only NASA’s Aqua satellite, whose orbit is maintained, and so no diurnal drift adjustment is needed. The largest diurnal effects occur during Northern Hemisphere spring, and I personally believe this is the largest contributor to the discrepancy between UAH and RSS.
UPDATE: Basil Copeland writes in comments.
And for those who are unhappy with either linear or 4 order polynomial trends, may I suggest Hodrick-Prescott smoothing?
http://i40.tinypic.com/30ngom0.jpg
I like to also keep track of the USA48 UAH anomalies:
The USA48 series appears flatter than the global series. That’s an illusion created by the differences in scale. The global series is not as volatile as the USA48, because it averages out all kinds of regional variation in climate around the globe. The scope of this averaging can be seen by plotting the two together, on the same scale:
http://i41.tinypic.com/2rw8bhw.jpg
The “Average Decadal Change Rate” shown on the chart is calculated as 120 times the average 1st difference of the smoothed trend lines, a number that should be fairly immune to any claims of cherry picking.
Frankly, I was surprised. E.g., on its own, the USA48 chart looks flatter. But it isn’t, really. In fact, it is steeper. Before anyone concludes that the high rate of growth for USA48 somehow demonstrates AGW, do keep in mind that during most of this time frame, the PDO was in a warm phase, and that the PDO warm phase has a strong influence on continental US temperatures.
“”” DJ (14:19:15) :
It is unclear whether RSS stops at 70N latitude as well. In any case, what reason do they give for neglecting between 70-84S?
The lower troposphere does not exist over the Antarctic. The UAH data is fictional extrapolated kilometers under ice. “””
The RSS graph says right on it -70 to +82.5, so that is pretty clear.
I gather from your second paragraph, that everyone takes MSL as the datum rather than the local land surface.
That would mean no lower troposphere over some other areas of the globe either. So how does the atmosphere know that there is land there or not.
Well to me, surface data is more important than atmospheric; after all humans generally live on the surface; or pretty near so; except in Coober Pedy.
Pamela Gray (06:34:37) :
“One thing I will have to say for CO2 theories is that it is understood that greenhouse affects are of a long-term nature and will not reflect in month to month data. Where I diverge on this statement alluding to the slow response of Earth’s atmosphere to CO2 is that I think it also takes a while for the Earth to respond to all sources of heating and cooling, with the possible exception of sudden intrusions of massive amounts of aerosols that stay suspended. Due to the seasonal nature of our atmosphere and the slow turning of our ocean conveyor belts, it takes a few seasonal/oscillating turns to buildup or release heat. The beating nature of the noise seems to follow this kind of natural oscillating method of cooling off and heating up”.
???????????????????????????????????????????????
From: http://www.biocab.org/Heat_Stored_by_Atmospheric_Gases.html#anchor_62
The problem with the AGW idea is that its proponents think that the Earth is isolated and that the heat engine only works on the surface of the ground. They fail to take into account that incoming heat from the Sun is transferred by conduction from surface to subsurface materials, which store heat until the incidence of direct solar radiation declines, explicitly during nighttime.
At nighttime, the heat stored by the subsurface materials is transferred by conduction towards the surface, which is colder than the unexposed materials below the surface. The heat transferred from the subsurface layers to the surface is then transported by the air by means of convection and warms up. The upwelling photon stream affects the directionality of the radiation emitted by the atmosphere driving it upwards, i.e. towards the upper atmospheric layers and, from there, towards deep space. This process is well described by the next formula:
FSH = -ρ (Cp) (CH) (v (z)) [T (z) – T (0)]
Where FSH is for Sensible Heat Flux, ρ is for density of air, Cp is specific heat capacity of air at constant pressure, CH is the heat transfer coefficient (≈ 0.0013), v (z) is the horizontal wind speed across z, T (z) is the temperature of air at 10 m of altitude, and T (0) is the temperature of the surface.
The “minus” sign means that heat is absorbed by the colder system. For example, the sensible heat flux for a region where the temperature of the surface is 300.15 K, the temperature of air is 293.15 K and the horizontal wind speed is 40 m/s, is 0.443 kJ s/m^2.
I want to make clear that this formula applies to both ocean and land heat transfer, although on land it is more appropriate introducing CD instead of CH. However, CD ≈ CH ≈ 0.0013.
The sensible heat flux (day and night) is directed upwards, that is, from the surface to the atmosphere (Peixoto & Oort. 1992. Page 233).
Concluding, atmospheric gases do not cause any warming of the surface given that induced emission prevails over spontaneous emission. During daytime, solar irradiance induces air molecules to emit photons towards the surface; however, the load of Short Wave Radiation (SWR) absorbed by molecules in the atmosphere is exceptionally low, while the load of Long Wave Radiation (LWR) emitted from the surface and absorbed by the atmosphere is high and so leads to an upwelling induced emission of photons which follows the outgoing trajectory of the photon stream, from lower atmospheric layers to higher atmospheric layers, and finally towards outer space. The warming effect (misnamed “the greenhouse effect”) of Earth is due to the oceans, the ground surface and subsurface materials. Atmospheric gases act only as conveyors of heat.
TOP OF PAGE ^^
11. FURTHER READING
Bakken, G. S., Gates, D. M., Strunk, Thomas H. and Kleiber, Max. Linearized Heat Transfer Relations in Biology. Science. Vol. 183; pp. 976-978. 8 March 1974.
Boyer, Rodney F. Conceptos de Bioquímica. 2000. International Thompson Editores, S. A. de C. V. México, D. F.
Haworth, M., Hesselbo, S. P., McElwain, J. C., Robinson, S. A., Brunt, J. W. Mid-Cretaceous pCO2 based on stomata of the extinct conifer Pseudofrenelopsis (Cheirolepidiaceae). Geology; September 2005; v. 33; no. 9; p. 749-752.
Manrique, José Ángel V. Transferencia de Calor. 2002. Oxford University Press. England.
Maoz, Dan. Astrophysics. 2007. Princeton University Press. Princeton, New Jersey.
McGrew, Jay L., Bamford, Frank L and Thomas R. Rehm. Marangoni Flow: An Additional Mechanism in Boiling Heat Transfer. Science. Vol. 153. No. 3740; pp. 1106 – 1107. 2 September 1966.
Modest, Michael F. Radiative Heat Transfer-Second Edition. 2003. Elsevier Science, USA and Academic Press, UK.
Peixoto, José P., Oort, Abraham H. 1992. Physics of Climate. Springer-Verlag New York Inc. New York.
Petit, J.R., J. Jouzel, D. Raynaud, N.I. Barkov, J.-M. Barnola, I. Basile, M. Benders, J. Chappellaz, M. Davis, G. Delayque, M. Delmotte, V.M. Kotlyakov, M. Legrand, V.Y. Lipenkov, C. Lorius, L. Pépin, C. Ritz, E. Saltzman, and M. Stievenard. Climate and Atmospheric History of the Past 420,000 Years from the Vostok Ice Core, Antarctica. Nature, Vol. 399, June 3, 1999 pp.429-43.
Pitts, Donald and Sissom, Leighton. Heat Transfer. 1998. McGraw-Hill.
Potter, Merle C. and Somerton, Craig W. Thermodynamics for Engineers. Mc Graw-Hill. 1993.
Schwartz, Stephen E. 2007. Heat Capacity, Time Constant, and Sensitivity of Earth’s Climate System. Journal of Geophysical Research. [Revised 2007-07-16]
Van Ness, H. C. Understanding Thermodynamics. 1969. McGraw-Hill, New York.
Wagner, Friederike, Bohncke, Sjoerd J. P., Dilcher, David L., Kürschner, Wolfram M., Geel, Bas van, Visscher, Henk. Century-Scale Shifts in Early Holocene Atmospheric CO2 Concentration. Science; 18 June 1999: Vol. 284. No. 5422, pp. 1971 – 1973
Wagner, F., Aaby, B., and Visscher, H. Rapid atmospheric CO2 changes associated with the 8,200-years-B.P. cooling event. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. September 17, 2002; vol. 99; no. 19; pp. 12011-12014.
Wilson, Jerry D. College Physics-2nd Edition; Prentice Hall Inc. 1994.
http://www.uah.edu/News/newsread.php?newsID=210 (Last reading on 25 August 2007)
http://www.atmos.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2 (Last reading on 25 August 2007)
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/papers/bams99/ (Last reading on 25 August 2007)
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton_papers/greenhouse_warming_what_greenhouse_warming_.html
(Last reading on 25 August 2007)
http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf (Last reading on 25 August 2007)
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20011212methane.html (Last reading on 25 August 2007)
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“No such thing of course is possible in the case of these temperature anomaly data sets; since they do not in fact fit any real math function, since the system being observed is far too complex and chaotic.”
I do not share your pessimism, obviously. The series are not entirely chaotic, or random. There are some periodicities in the various series observable with spectrum analysis, or periodograms. Smoothing, and then differencing, reveals these periods, or cycles, in the time domain.
I’ll more to say about that in the future. 😉
Basil
DJ – please can you provide some evidence for this statement and explain what you mean by the assertion regarding “extrapolation”?:
“This is important as ozone depletion is cooling the Antarctic mid/upper troposphere and stratosphere. Extrapolate this and you’ll get persistent fake cooling.”
All:
If you are monitoring the daily data at our Discover web page, to get the best idea of how the monthly anomaly will end up you should monitor ONLY channel 5, and compare the current month with the same month from ONLY the previous year.
The difference between the two months, one year apart, will then be only an approximation of the year-to-year difference in anomalies. This is because the Discover data are only from the AMSU on NOAA-15, while our official UAH product trends & interannual variability are from the AMSU on the Aqua satellite. Aqua is kept in a stable orbit, and so has no issues with orbital decay and diurnal drift corrections. That’s why we use only it, and no NOAA satellites (which all have drifting orbits), for trends.
We then use NOAA-15 for the geographic patterns of the anomalies, and constrain the NOAA-15 anomalies in zonal bands to be equal to those from Aqua. I need to spend a week at some point making limb correction equations for the Aqua AMSU, too, so that we can use it to help out on getting the spatial patterns. If you check the daily imagery for channel 5 at the Discover web site, you will see they have great fidelity and few artifacts, so we trust the monthly regional patterns the come from NOAA-15. My only concern is that the diurnal drift in NOAA-15 is probably causing a spurious component of the land-sea temperature differences.
Re: Roy Spencer (17:25:35) :
Dr. Spencer, thank you for this clarification. This makes sense.
Curiosity question: Why is it that the data from the NOAA satellites seems to degrade so quickly, often from the very beginning, but the AQUA satellite is so stable? Is it due to a difference in satellite technology or orbital positions or something else? The NOAA-## series of satellites seems rather cr*ppy in comparison to AQUA.
Joseph:
All satellites at the altitude of these satellites (700 km for Aqua, 830 to 850 km for the NOAA sats) experience a slight amount of atmospheric drag. This causes them to slowly fall towards the Earth over a period of years, which then changes the orbital characteristics. The orbit will not longer be sun-synchronous, as was originally intended, but will slowly drift through the clock hours.
The NOAA operational satellites did not carry extra fuel to keep them in the same orbit…the newer NASA satellites (Terra, Aqua, etc.) do. There are periodic orbital altitude and inclination maneuvers to keep them in a pretty constant orbit.
All of the major problems we have experienced in putting together a stable long term temperature record have stemmed directly or indirectly from orbital decay. The Aqua satellite data started in mid-2002, and hopefully we will never have to deal with those problems again.
Re: Roy Spencer (17:59:23)
Thank you for your response, Dr. Spencer. How long might the AQUA satellite last, before it needs to be replaced?
Those of you complaining and saying “something is wrong” because UAH dropped sharply this month and RSS stayed steady…did ya miss February? That month, RSS dropped sharply but UAH rose. Where were the accusations against UAH then?
Drop the bias…RSS and UAH may not match up perfectly month to month, but year to year they are generally pretty close.
Dr Spencer, Thanks for the clarifications above.
May I ask: are there any plans to continue providing the diagrams and commentary that used to be posted to http://climate.uah.edu ?
If the NOAA satallites have decaying orbits, I wonder if that means the NOAA SST data is somewhat innacurate as well, after all that data is on a NOAA website.
The differences seem small to me, the month-to-month deltas seem to have a random variance. While RSS may well have a degrading orbit, it seems adequately adjusted for. I keep an eye on this relative to Bill Illis (05:14:50) of where the AGW hypothesis say we should be. If each of the data sets are averaged for the past two years, UAH=.135C, RSS=.169C, not a big difference. Further averaging those two=.152C. If the past two years are indicative of the change for the past thirty years we’re looking at .51C/century, not a big deal. Overall, the temps change +/-.2C all the time, and the changes over the past thirty years hardly seem like a trend to bet anything on. Even going back to the 2001-7 period and averaging a couple of years would still give less than 1C/century change by eyeball. Thanks Dr. Spenser and Anthony.
“Bill Illis (05:14:50) : Global warming theory says these numbers should have increased by about 0.6C over this period.”
I think that’s why they call it “climate change” now because that ‘climate’ ‘changed’. 😉
Those of you complaining and saying “something is wrong” because UAH dropped sharply this month and RSS stayed steady…did ya miss February? That month, RSS dropped sharply but UAH rose. Where were the accusations against UAH then?
Stop being so sensitive – no-one’s making accusations. The UAH anomalies have been a bit more “variable” than the RSS anomalies in recent months, it’s perfectly reasonable to be curious about that.
Re: trend lines
Any trend line or smoothing algorithm that assumes that the trend value at t=Tn (now) is dependent on Tn+1 (future) is fundamentally un-physical and thus meaningless from a scientific perspective
The same goes for algorithms that imply that the trend value at t=Tn changes at times after t=Tn.
The above disqualifies e.g. Hodrick-Prescott.
So, in the absense of physical models, a LP IIR filter seems to be the best, and most scientifically honest, method to show any underlying long term trend.
One can then suppress signals of shorter wavelength (e.g. shorter than 1/6/12/whatever years) and thus only see the longer wavelength signals (i.e. the “trend”), which then might be interpreted as the variations in energy content in the total system, without the insignificant shorter term disturbances.
(Of course this, like with all methods, is sensitive to garbage data. Does anyone really think it makes sense to state the global mean temperatures with an accuracy of 1/1000 degree?)
Re George Smith:
“The sea water cannot freeze until it gets down to the freezing point temperature, and also until the latent heat of freezing is removed as well; and the only place for it to go, is into the atmosphere, and out into space.
So the freezing doesn’t raise the air temperature; the colder air sucks out the excess thermal energy so that freezing can occur.
I don’t believe anybody ever observed the air temperature to rise while the ocean freezes.”
I agree with you when it comes to sea water freezing, but what about snow landing on Antarctica and building up there? If the snow landed instead in the ocean or on land and melted, it would absorb heat. By not doing so it effectively raises the temperature of the rest of the planet.
Where is the error in the logic?
Andrew above – Not sure if this helps but where has the snow come from?
It seems a hard concept to grasp that as ice accumulates in antarctica it warms the air. Try this though. As the ice thaws, does it not cool the air, sucking heat energy from the air to make the ice-water transition? That’s how my cooler works anyway. A little ice ‘cools’ a lot more air (or diet coke) better than the same amount of water because it takes a lot of heat to make the thawing transition. So if melting ice cools the air, then the exact thermodynamicly opposite process must heat the air. Putting it another way, if the atmosphere was to heat up enough to start melting Antarctica, that thawing process will suck a lot of heat out of the air and act as a buffer to global temp rise.
MattE (03:19:24)
Methinks you might want to consider the Second Law of Thermodynamics in the ice melting analysis.
John Finn-
Wasn’t being sensitive, just pointing out the hypocrisy displayed by some of the comments here. Things even out over time, but those with a bias are looking skeptically at UAH anomalies now…even though a couple months ago they were running warmer than everyone else. Go figure.
I think it’s perfectly reasonable to point out that in February, there was an equally large divergence between RSS and UAH, but in the opposite direction.
slowtofollow & MattE
The snow can come from anywhere; it’s simply a change of wind direction. If it lands in the sea and melts it absorbs back the heat it gave up when it froze.
If it’s building up on Antarctica then it isn’t thawing and isn’t absorbing heat back, so the effect is one of warming.
Imagine putting a refrigerator in a room, warm, then turning it on. The insides get cold, but it puts heat into the room from the convector panel on the back. There is no NETT heat change, but people in the room are warmer.
Andrew Chantrill
Your example is not a closed system, the energy to power the refrigerator must come from somewhere and thus cause additional heating. If you were talking about a hypothetical 100% efficient heat pump, then your example has some meaning, although I’m not going to step into this.
Andrew Chantrill (14:48:05)
So what is the “snow” in this analogy?
I have just decided to educate myself on this topic 1st hand. Funny how the prospect of a multi thousand $$$ increase in gas, heating, oil etc bills from a carbon based tax system will focus one’s attention. Having read all of the above posts, and being a simple (albeit well educated) guy, several truisms seem to be apparent to me.
First, the various climate data all seem to measure different things and/or use different measurement methodologies. This is important because of inherent study design limitations. No one can reach a single definitive scientific conclusion (at least in terms of multiple teams being able to manipulate the same datum and achieve the same result).
2) That said, it seems pretty clear that global temperatures have been on a slight (at most) rate of increase over the last 30 years. More importantly (and in context with my comments below), the observed temperatures seem (by all accounts) well below the predicted levels spit out by various models. Only in the realm of emotionally driven / pseudo religious “movements” do you get away with continuing the “cause” when every time go your predictive limb gets chopped off.
3). The last 30 years or so worth of data observations seem to require some context. I agree with the comments about not extrapolating trend lines and other related geek comments. More than that (and I know all you Ph.D. loving freaks will rip on me, but that’s OK): I cannot help but wonder what the nature of the debate would be if the precious data set started in 1998…. suffice it to say I am confident we would be hearing (again) about “global cooling” (the 1st being college in the early 80s). In a similar vein, I was assured over the years that “we” were all going to die from 1) starvation, 2) swine flu 3) AIDs 4) moral corruption, 5) etc. I am not an idiot and I realize we are warming up as we come out of the last ice age. However, the bigger point here is the complexity of the system folks are trying to measure and analyze. Oh how sweet the seduction is – pretending to predict (let alone even understand) the global / universal climate. Want to know what takes real emotional and intellectual fortitude? As this really cute 29 year old pharma rep told me in the bar one night…. “I have finally gotten old enough to realize that I don’t know [snip] and you know what – I am OK with that!”
Which brings me to #4 – some of the dismissive rhetoric by posts that seem to be pre-disposed to 1 accept global warming, and how they wrap it in pseudo-science. Take the last posts about ice forming / melting and how this warms / cools the planet. Correct me if the law of physics has been revoked (which is possible, given all the bad things I did on the 70s 80s & 90s).. oh who am I kidding, also the 2000s. That said, I think E still = M*C squared. In other words, energy is neither created nor destroyed, it only changes form. So, all this nonsense about snow, ice and melting is a bunch of hooey (a technical term). What is obviously much more important is the El Sol… how much energy stays within our eco-sphere and how much goes back into space. When we get to this level of intellectual consideration, who among us has any real idea of what is going on and what is important and/or unimportant in explaining stuff. I personally would never deign to say the polar regions were “chump change” (unless I was pre-disposed to a point of view).
Finally (and no doubt thankfully to all of you): Where is any of the usual social science stuff… you know, cost benefit analysis, etc. . I found it really telling when the press, a few months ago, started saying (with drool down their chin – oops, I sorry, it was a tinlge up their leg) “how important it is that the 1st studies have been done that show that there are real costs to doing nothing.” How sad and pathetic the once proud profession of journalism has become! At the risk of sounding like Dennis Miller, let me say this: I really don;t give a crap about some latte sipping limousine liberal in Malibu whose house slides into the sea. And as far as the poor schlub living in boongo boongo whose tiki hut is going to go underwater, I say this: have O’Bame add another $10,000 to my great childrens’ tax bill, what the he*l do I care!
Cannot wait to hear what the people who post on this site think of me… I am sure I will be painted as an ignorant, sexist, bigoted [snip]. LOL
Reply: No implied profanity either ~ charles the moderator
Jared (12:11:10) :
“… it’s perfectly reasonable to point out that in February, there was an equally large divergence between RSS and UAH, but in the opposite direction.”
Of course it’s reasonable. I can speak only for myself, but I really do not have any bias. In February there was actually not only divergence between RSS and UAH, but UAH was clearly the “odd one” also compared to HadCrut and GISS. We’ll see pretty soon, as HadCrut and GISS will come out in a week or so, whether it’s RSS or UAH that is behaving strangely.
Anywayn the anomaly is much larger than last year, same time. Must be the 7th warmest ever or so…