Both Lucia and Steve McIntyre beat me on this story, so I’ll defer to them. That’s what I get for going to dinner with relatives last night and sleeping in.
Below is a plot from McIntyre showing the RSS data compared to UAH MSU. Both are down significantly in June 2009 with UAH MSU at .001°C
RSS is down from 0.090C in May 2009 to 0.075C in June 2009
Steve McIntyre writes a little parody of the issue: RSS June – “Worse Than We Thought”
Lucia actually expected RSS to climb and has an analysis here
Even NCDC’s director Tom Karl has something to say about satellite data, read on.
Both of the datasets are available in raw form if you want t plot for yourself.
RSS (Remote Sensing Systems, Santa Rosa)
RSS data here (RSS Data Version 3.2)
UAH (University of Alabama, Huntsville)
Reference: UAH lower troposphere data
There had been some comments in the UAH thread earlier that May and June seem to have cycled lower in the UAH data set in recent years. It seems that RSS is following also.
I expect we’ll hear an announcement from NOAA/NCDC soon about it being the nth warmest June on record. They will of course cite surface data from stations like this one at the Atmospheric Sciences Department, University of Arizona at Tucson:
Here is a testimony in March 2009 before congress from NCDC’s director Tom Karl, where he complains about satellite data and the “adjustments” required:
It is important to note raw satellite data and rapidly produced weather products derived from satellite sensors are rarely useful for climate change studies. Rather, an ordered series of sophisticated technical processes, developed through decades of scientific achievement, are required to convert raw satellite sensor data into Climate Data Records (CDRs).
You mean “sophisticated technical processes” like these performed on raw surface temperature data at NCDC?
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Source: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/epubs/ndp/ushcn/ndp019.html
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It depends on what the meaning of ISS is . . .
Another primer on John Holdren,
http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=34198
Those that are not really concerned about the progressive movement and the direction it is moving the country should wake up and smell the hoses.
The weather is not climate is a fallacy kept alive by the IPCC in order to discourage any attempt to analyze the weather and its physical processes and translate real observed meteorological parameters into confirming or not the results of the models predicting warming. I am just paraphrasing Marcel Leroux who indeed analyzed meteorological data that demonstrate without ambiguity the non sense of the global warming scare.
More on Holdren at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Holdren
“In 1969, writing with Paul R. Ehrlich, Holdren claimed that, “if the population control measures are not initiated immediately, and effectively, all the technology man can bring to bear will not fend off the misery to come.”
In 1973 Holdren encouraged a decline in fertility to well below replacement in the United States, because “210 million now is too many and 280 million in 2040 is likely to be much too many”. Currently, the U.S. population is 306,876,000.”
With such a mental mindset, he should be happy if the planet rushes into another Glacial Period. That will get rid of 90% of the “misery to come”.
Adam from Kansas (18:38:39) :
One may want to look at this
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/amoarticlel.pdf
The interesting part is that there was an El-Nino within 12 months of the last four solar minimums and here it is happening again. It’s almost as if there’s an El Nino lying in wait after solar minimum arrives as of recent O.o
Very interesting observation. I think this is the excess heat stored below the mixed surface layers during a run of high solar cycles coming back out of the ocean when solar influence is at a low ebb.
Clearly the rise in mean global temperatures is man-made…by all the “Corrections” needed to get the “correct” result for their purpose.
Climate is just average weather over some period. And as Lubos Motl points above, the frequency of weather high and low records is just as valid a measure of climate as averages. In fact, high and low records should be a better measure because they will be less affected by the concrete parking lots and airconditioners that seem to affect the averages.
I believe Anthony and others use the ‘Weather not Climate’ slogan ironically.
A tip for those interested in following the battle of this years ice melt in the Arctic:
After very cold start of the melt season, the central Arctic sea is experiencing more ice than last year:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.1.html
This area is the area most important when it comes to the sep 2009 minimum.
Did Al Gore deserve the Nobel ‘Peace’ Prize? Discuss this on BBC Bloom:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/climatechange/2009/07/did_al_gore_and_the_ipcc_deser.html#comments
Adam from Kansas (18:06:50) :
If John Finn is correct then why does this NOAA page say we have had 715 Low Max Temps. when you include new records and ones that tied?
Why do amercans think that the US is representative of the the rest of the world? The area of the US is ~2% of the total surface area of the earth.
“Don’t you see that the very fact that a zero anomaly is hailed t like that (for one month only) is a proof that it has become increasingly rare?”
Increasingly rare since when? Not since 1998.
Anyway, your argument can easily be turned around. Suppose we had a 1 month anomaly which reached 1998 levels. Would the warmists “hail” it? Many would, I imagine. Would that amount to a concession that such events are “rare”? Increasingly “rare”?
Another reason for the small spike in temperatures in early 2009 may be the recent reduction in air transport.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000/offset:-0.1/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/offset:-.2/trend
Global aviation trends are hard to find, but these stats from the Far East (monthly figures) show a rough 15% reduction in international traffic in 2009.
http://www.cad.gov.hk/english/p-through.htm
The contribution of contrails cannot be underestimated. If cosmic rays can create more high-level stratus and cool the planet, then so can 747s and A380s. Coming back across Europe yesterday, the entire sky was blanketed with spreading high stratus, with was all due to contrails.
However, if this is so, then the rise in air transport over the last 30 years has masked an even larger warming trend than we actually observed. Global temperatures may have been a degree or so higher, by now (but, of course, the cooling in recent years would also have been more marked).
.
“Antonio San (23:03:31) :
“The weather is not climate is a fallacy…”
The better way to look at this is that climate is normal weather. This is the traditional way of looking at climate, i.e. as weather averaged, or normalized, over some generally recognized period of time. Thus we have the WMO 30-year climatological “normals.” So I would say that any weather that falls within an accepted range around the normal is climate, also. And where there is a random element to variability, we expect a few occurrences outside the boundaries of what is considered normal, from time to time, without concluding that anything significant is taking place. So in this sense, all weather is just an expression of climate.
The real issue is whether climate is changing, and over what period of time, and to what degree, can we demonstrate that climate is changing. Given the wide range of natural variability in climate, we ought to be cautious about claiming to be able to extrapolate significant evidence of climate change based on just a few years of data.
As I write this, a simple test of the “climate change” hypothesis presents itself. The conventional climatological normal period of 30 years was not chosen without reason. It was chosen because it was thought long enough to smooth out natural, i.e. cyclical, but non-trending, variability. So, take the most recent 60 years of data, break it into two contiguous, non-overlapping 30 year periods, and do a test of means. Are they significantly different? If so, by how much, and in what direction? Given the range of natural volatility in climate data, I wouldn’t be surprised if the differences are not statistically significant. If they are, I would not think that the difference is on the order of magnitude to justify the catastrophic visions of the alarmist crowd.
Shall I crunch some numbers?
DR (21:12:27) :
@ur momisugly John Finn
Perhaps you should study Lubos Motl’s reply from a previous thread.
Why? In what way is it relevant to my post(s).
cherry picked from 1880
data source NCDC
presented by junk science
http://junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/NCDCabs1880.html
cherry picked from 1978
data source NCDC
presented by junk science
http://junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/NCDCabs.html
No anomalies just absolute temperatures
John Finn, what you fail to realize is that I, like most people, do not disagree that “temperatures” have “risen” over the past 150 years. First, this is good, otherwise it would be colder, which is bad – I live in Canada and can attest to that.
Second, this is due to long term cyclic variations in “global temperatures” not CO2. The CO2 cause is disproved by the current temperatures.
We must remember that the current cooling is just masking a warming trend, in the same way that the warming up to 1998 was masking a cooling trend.
snigger.
How about considering the whole of the graph:
There are many periods when temperatures have decreased by 0.3C year on year
1981
1983
1988
1991
1996
2004 (ignoring 1998)
2006
2009
Does this negate the FACT that over 1980 to 2009 there is still a +VE
slope to rate of change of temperature?
In 1991 did you all start drooling at the thought that GW had reversed? It must have been a shock to your system when in 1993 to 1996 the temperature drop was again made up!
I would not like to predict what is going to happen over the next few years from lookng at this plot:
http://www.climateaudit.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/glb_satellite_2009-06.gif
The only safe thing to say is that over the life of the plot there is a positive temperature trend.
A word about anomaly graphs:
Theses are done to partially to present plots on the same vertical scale for comparison . (A plot of siberian actual temperatures and actual temperatures from Cairo Would contain similar info but would need a scale which will not be capable of showing variations of 1degC
Whether the averaging period is over 1961 to 1990 or 1981 to 2010 just changes the FALSE zero. The current temp is now average for the period over which the average is taken. BUT all one is interested in is – IS THERE A TREND?
If the anomaly plot is correctly made it should be creating an average for jan 1 in year 1,2,3….,29,30 and comparing the jan 1st temperature of the date in question to this average.This is repeated for each day in turn (what about leap years!?). This removes seasonal bias. Simply taking an average of 30 years of daily records throws much information away.
A question raised above – How do you handle the 365.25 seasonal year?
Re Lubos Motl’s excellent Weather vs Climate exposition:
See: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090710/us_nm/us_blight_usa
You might be able to adjust the GISS temps up, but that doesn’t prevent a Fungus that likes cool weather from spreading.
“Late blight has never occurred this early and this widespread in the United States,” said Meg McGrath, a plant pathologist at Cornell University’s extension center in Riverhead, New York.
She said the fungal disease, spread by spores carried in the air, has made its way into the garden centers of large retail chains in the Northeastern United States.
“Wal-mart, Home Depot, Sears, Kmart and Lowe’s are some of the stores the plants have been seen in,” McGrath said in a telephone interview.
The disease, known officially as Phytophthora infestans, causes large mold-ringed olive-green or brown spots on plant leaves, blackened stems, and can quickly wipe out weeks of tender care in a home garden.
McGrath said in her 21 years of research, she has only seen five outbreaks in the United States. The destructive disease can spread rapidly in cooler, moist weather, infecting an entire field within days.
Arthur
“It is important to note raw satellite data and rapidly produced weather products derived from satellite sensors are rarely useful for climate change studies. Rather, an ordered series of sophisticated technical processes, developed through decades of scientific achievement, are required to convert raw satellite sensor data into Climate Data Records (CDRs).”
This statement makes me suspicious…
Can’t stop laughing about the “climate” station. Funniest thing I’ve seen in years. Still, most of the countryside within 100 miles of Tucson looks like concrete.
Why do amercans think that the US is representative of the the rest of the world? The area of the US is ~2% of the total surface area of the earth.
Because if it is changing here to modes that are harsh on existence, it is most likely doing the very same thing in other parts of the world.
There isn’t any consolation prize for who gets fried, who gets the frosts, who gets flooded out and who gets dried into leather. The lucky few live in the zero-areas in between the harsh reality of changing climates around the baseline.
The minimalist approach is to declare all is well, pointing out the miniscule rise or fall of the baseline global average.
The alarmist points to the Arctic Sea Ice and picks out some anomalies and declares the whole globe in runaway melting.
The realist sees whole regions flip-flopping in directions that make life harder.
We must remember that the current cooling is just masking a warming trend, in the same way that the warming up to 1998 was masking a cooling trend.
In the same way that we must remember that the last 150, 200, 400, 800, 2000 etc years have seen bigger changes come and go.
So how’s about dropping the pretense of “all inclusive” blinders only the agenda window of time is right for you. Knuckle down and get to figuring out which period is in charge for how long at the present time.
When the current agenda predicts a trend based on it’s teacher’s pet time slice falls on it’s collective face, it means that you got the wrong time-slice.
Back up by a factor of 10 or more.
If your models won’t let you do that, back up and format the hard drive.
Global warming/Climate Change/The Greenhouse Effect/Global Cooling. Which is it these days? I’m become more suspicious that its a bunch of propaganda.
“Maybe there are neccesarily not higher high temps. But higher low temps?’;
Looking at some good local temps, this appears to be exactly what is happening. Even some of the AGW proponents have started to acknowledge this. They still think it’s catastrophic, though, while I have a hard time seeing why it matters hardly at all.