Graph by Anthony (click for larger image) text by Dr. Roy Spencer from his blog here
May 2009 Global Temperature Update +0.04 deg. C
June 4th, 2009 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
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 0.090 0.124 0.056 -0.014
2009 5 0.043 0.043 0.043 -0.168
May 2009 saw another drop in the global average temperature anomaly, from +0.09 deg. C in April to +0.04 deg. C in May, originating mostly from the Northern Hemisphere and the tropics.
A reminder for those who are monitoring the daily progress of global-average temperatures here:
(1) Only use channel 5 (”ch05″), which is what we use for the lower troposphere and middle troposphere temperature products.
(2) Compare the current month to the same calendar month from the previous year (which is already plotted for you).
(3) The progress of daily temperatures should only be used as a rough guide for how the current month is shaping up because they come from the AMSU instrument on the NOAA-15 satellite, which has a substantial diurnal drift in the local time of the orbit. Our ‘official’ results presented above, in contrast, are from AMSU on NASA’s Aqua satellite, which carries extra fuel to keep it in a stable orbit. Therefore, there is no diurnal drift adjustment needed in our official product.
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New Scientist quotes Steig’s paper in an article about Antarctic ice. I guess NS didn’t get the memo re Steig is wrong. I don’t trust reconstructions by the Wizards of Oz anymore. Or maybe the approach should be “Distrust and Double-check.”
The AMSU 3,300 ft channel had me wondering initially how the heck the May anomaly could be so low…
…guess that shows how much I know.
Abosulte temperature measurements seem nearly impossible, but if you believe what RSS & UAH are saying…then May 2009 was no different than 1979.
Ubuntu (06:25:51) :
“NSDIC’s Dr Mark Serreze is carving WUWT a new one on Climate Progress. ”
Hardly surprising coming from one of Al Gore’s climate advisers…
http://newsrelease.uwaterloo.ca/news.php?id=5042
“Top climate change expert, Al Gore adviser, gives UW public talk on Arctic ice loss
WATERLOO, Ont. (Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2009) — One of North America’s leading experts on climate change, Mark Serreze, will give a public talk on the sharp loss of Arctic sea ice during a visit next week at the University of Waterloo.
One of Al Gore’s key environmental advisers, Serreze is the senior research scientist and Arctic specialist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, based at the University of Colorado in Boulder. ”
—
George DeBusk (08:11:28) :
Dave Middleton,
Where can I find the UAH Lower Tropospheric data separated by land and ocean? I have only seen global data and data segregated by latitude bands.
GHD
===============================================
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
Please Frank Mosher,Keith W. and everybody. The NOAA U.S. Records-Site is really helpful to keep in mind,that there is record cold and record warmth in the U.S. any given day. But funny enough even Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf,german power forward of the hockey team couldn`t resist to note in his website named KlimaLounge,that Potsdam/Germany had a record warm April,unprecedented in 114 years. If you are a layman like me,don`t dare to mention weather events like this.
An open letter to Gavin Schmidt; Gavin, this is a very civil blog compared to any other I have seen on this subject. Please join us in conversation so we can understand better where you are coming from and vice-versa. You have obviously worked very hard to achieve your standing in the scientific community. Would it be so difficult to overcome our differences and discuss the subject as civil people interested in the same subject, albeit differing viewpoints. By mending fences, we could go a long way to further the science . I have a suspicion that you probably read this blog every now and again, and I am hoping you will consider joining us to clarify some of the questions we have. You may have some questions for us as well. I am certain that Anthony and moderators would keep the discourse civil. Hoping to hear from you, ……………… David Ball
Flanagan (07:14:47) :
Hi everybody,
of course, the 100 degrees figure was just for fun. The thing is, for what I remember, that the fastest warming regions are around the poles (even if the temperatures do stay below 0 in most parts), so I’m not sure data based on everything-but-the-polar region is really the best choice. RSS should have similar problems. The French estimate is based on forecasting models for the polar regions, including boundary conditions known from other data set.
Gisstemp uses estimations from ice coverage, the French use models, which you tried to represent as data. Do you laugh when you post this intentionally misleading rubbish? From now on, I will. [Flanagan]=set on hilarious.
Allan M R MacRae:
“A little info please Alex – what was David’s prediction – about -0.3C or so?
I really don’t remember, but David was still much closer to reality than the IPCC’s catastrophic warming nonsense.”
Of course, here is the link: http://icecap.us/images/uploads/oftheMay2009UAHMSUGlobalTemperatureResult12thJanuary2009.pdf
He predicted 0.4 degrees below the average so he is 0.443 degrees off, which isn’t bad but this was merely a statistical analysis so 100% accuracy was not expected.
I somehow doubt temperatures will plummet after May 2009, because an El Nino is currently forming, but something tells me that the next La Nina will be a big one, 2010 perhaps? This is just a hunch though, probably won’t happen.
It seems likely that Spencer has made a typo since it’s unlikely that the SH & NH anomalies are identical.
Frank Mosher (07:58:05) :
Several people have criticized Archibald’s prediction. ” Those that are without sin cast the first stone”.
I agree, it is OK to be wrong. The problems only begin when one is not admitting to be wrong, like renaming GW to GC.
Does Flanagan think it is proper to extrapolate/interpolate surface station up to ~1250 km? Inquiring minds want to know….
Of course models which have 0 degrees latitude spatial coverage are always more reliable than satellite data 🙂
Flanagan: “I think one should be really careful then with the purely satelite-based anomalies. For example, the poles could be 100 degrees above average and the satelite would still indicate nothing.”
Do some basic math Flanagan – the area not covered by the satellites (above 82% of latitude) represents less than 1% of the global surface area. So what’s your point?
EXCUSE ME! But isn’t a +0.043C anomaly over a record period of 30 years equivalent to a century’s rise of 0.15C or more than 1/4 degree F? Isn’t anyone concerned? My God we are cooking ourselves to death and all you skeptics are making jokes. OH THE HUMANITY!
By the way Frank K, I haven’t observed any Arctic sea ice at Waterloo this year…could be a problem.
Claude Harvey (08:15:43) : Somehow, this one doesn’t look quite right. The chart in this post appears to be Spencer’s April chart. When I go to Spenser’s site, his May numbers are not yet posted. If you check out the real-time ASMU temp charts at various altitudes, they appear to show temperatures for May ‘09 higher than May ‘08. What am I missing here?
A reminder for those who are monitoring the daily progress of global-average temperatures here:
(1) Only use channel 5 (”ch05″), which is what we use for the lower troposphere and middle troposphere temperature products.
(2) Compare the current month to the same calendar month from the previous year (which is already plotted for you).
(3) The progress of daily temperatures should only be used as a rough guide for how the current month is shaping up because they come from the AMSU instrument on the NOAA-15 satellite, which has a substantial diurnal drift in the local time of the orbit. Our ‘official’ results presented above, in contrast, are from AMSU on NASA’s Aqua satellite, which carries extra fuel to keep it in a stable orbit. Therefore, there is no diurnal drift adjustment needed in our official product.
.
Weather it is an update or downdate, depends on what the meaning of is is, or zero.
.
Ozzie John (05:25:12) :
Not sure how the maths ae calculated here but can someone explain how the global average is 0.043 when the tropics are -0.168 and both NH & SH anomolies are 0.043.
Am I reading this correctly ?
=================================================
Yep. The tropics span both the NH and SH. What this implies is that the extratropical temperature anomaly will be greater than 0.043!
How is the zero level defined?
For UAH, it’s the 1979 – 2000 average. (NASA uses a 1950-1880 baseline.)
Does anyone know wether GISS and HadCrut take some polar staiton data into account?
NASA infers it (mostly from the Siberian Thought Criminal stations). That’s one reason why they run warmer than HadCRUT, which does not do this.
The satellites (pole-to-pole orbit) also have a hard time, as their sensors are oriented out the side and not the nose, which means they cover the full sweep better as the earth rotates, but can’t look directly down at the poles. Plus there are issues with microwave reflection off ice.
Any one concerned that all three metrics, G, SH, NH are the same? How likely is that?
– first, they indicate that the older temperature records may have been adjusted to increase the trend prior to 1979 by about 0.3C.
For the US, when you average the trends of all 1221 USHCN stations (weighting all equally), the results are +0.141C for raw, +0.314 for TOBS, +0.589 for FILNET.
evanmjones (09:36:43) : “‘How is the zero level defined?’
For UAH, it’s the 1979 – 2000 average. (NASA uses a 1950-1880 baseline.)”
That wouldn’t surprise me at all.
I don’t know how important David Archibald is in the Global Warming discussion, but he predicted an anomaly of -0.4 degrees C for the May 2009 UAH MSU Global Temperature Result here: http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=197
It goes to show that it’s not that easy to do short-term predictions. Did David Archibald predict anything else lately?
We have ENSO neutral conditions or an El Niño coming on. If temps stay relatively low the coming year and a half I’ll probably become less of the warmist I am today. We’ll just have to wait and see. First thing on the agenda is minimal Arctic sea ice extent.
What I found very interesting is that if you go to NCDC here and in the “Period” pull down select “Most Recent 12-Month Period” (you will have to scroll the list down, it is the last option) and change “First Year To Display” to something fairly recent … say 10 years or so ago … just to get rid of a lot of the clutter … I selected 1999 as the start year … you see that the climate from the June through May for the past three years, climate in North America has been a nice, stable, steady drop in temperature.
If you display all the data going back to 1895, it looks like the past 3 years have been one of the most even periods in the record with the exception of the post-1940 cooling. No bouncing up and down.
If you display data since 1999 you get:
and you discover that the most recent 12-month period is the second coolest since 1999.
Now a .74 degree/decade cooling is pretty significant. If that were to continue for another 10 to 20 years, we would see ourselves back in another LIA situation.
Another note on the NCDC graphs, the coolest 12-month period of the past 10 years was in 2001 but is bracketed by much warmer years before and after. What we have seen here is three consecutive cooling years. NOTE that these temperatures are North American land observations only and probably more a reflection of jet stream changes than any global climate.
Thank you so much for the link to the “Daily Earth Temperatures from Satellites” page. The temperature graphs are really fascinating (well for me anyway).
The 1999 temperatures at 135,000 Feet (CH14) seem to display a strong solar driven signature. The January temperature starts around 251 Kelvin and then DROPS as the Earth moves away from the sun to 248.5 Kelvin.
However, when we get down to 14,000 Feet (CH5) the pattern is reversed.
The January temperature starts around 252 Kelvin and then RISES as the Earth moves away from the sun to 254.0 Kelvin.
This contradiction in the trends just underlines the complexities of climate…
I am amazed there appears to be only one degree difference in January temperatures between 14,000 and 135,000 Feet… And I am amazed at how little I know…
I am also really amazed that we are reporting the Global Temperature Anomaly based upon the temperatures at 14,000 Feet… No doubt there are good reasons for this but I was expecting something with its feet firmly on the ground… The 14,000 feet temperature range of -21.5 to -19.5 Centigrade does not seem to reflect many peoples experience of temperatures on earth.
So excuse my ignorance but don’t we have our head in the clouds (literally) when we look at these numbers?
A note about black helicopters.
If you read the book Blackhawk Down you learn quite a bit about the black
helicopter method of operation, at least during the 1990s. Come in fast,
deploy quick-rope, drop operators, back off 300 yards and hover, wait
for ground team to give the OK, then leave at high speed.
This method of operation was not developed, or practiced, in a vacuum.
Rather, it was practiced where it could be practiced. One of those practice
sites was Centennial Park in Santa Ana Ca. Near Pendelton, El Toro,
Seal Beach NWS, Los Alimitos, and directly on a helicopter fly path, the
Santa Ana River Flyway, Centennial is a really good “target”.
On suitable moonless nights, battle groups would load from a carrier
off the coast, fly in and practice the drop, hover and exit. My house
happens to be 300 yards from Centennial Park, and we have the tallest
tree around. The tree was used as a landmark.
There is nothing quite like having a pair of Blackhawk helicopters park
over your house at night at 200 feet. They are very loud and mostly
invisible.
I do not have a tinfoil hat, but I have personally experienced the black
helicopter problem. This was a Clinton-era problem. Once or twice
I thought about emptying a few clips from my M1 into the bottom of
a Blackhawk. I refrained from doing so, but those copters were violating
so many laws, policies and procedures I lost count.