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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John Galt (11:28:34) :
So AWG exists solely as a some great conspiracy in an effort to….?
Smokey (12:15:19) :
My apologies. I sure thought that’s what you were implying.
Mr Lynn (12:23:59) :
You too agree with John that AWG is a means to…? Secretly? Some agenda of some sort? I saw a link from some fellow here that got a lot of praise…green-agenda.com or something like that. Really quite humorous.
“This hypothesis has been abundantly falsified, to the satisfaction of thousands of scientists and laymen here and elsewhere”
Not to me–I have not seen this abundant falsification you speak of. I’ve seen Smokey post a graph countless times of the last 10 years of temperature data, maybe that’s what you are talking about.
Smokey (18:47:35) :
“We already know that water vapor affects temperature. ”
But temperature also affect water vapor.
“Tell us, Joel, why is the planet’s temperature flat to declining, even as the harmless, beneficial trace gas CO2 continues to rise?”
An interesting read over at real climate. I know, a bunch of conspiracy, anti-science types there, but its a guest post talking about their recent publication. So not so anti-sciencey, grant-money graberish, or heck, their guest post author likely wants some grant money too. Can’t trust anyone who says the earth is warming….okay, too much sass there.
Read it.
Swanson, K.L. and A.A. Tsonis, 2009: Has the climate recently shifted? Geophysical Research Letters, 36, doi:10.1029/2008GL037022.
http://www.uwm.edu/~kswanson/publications/2008GL037022_all.pdf
But what do I know? I am just a rock loving geologist, not a climate scientist.
Ben
A sad story here. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8146995.stm. What is noticeable again is that the ‘experts’ have had their say….‘Experts blame climate change for the early arrival of intense cold which began in March’. Is it not enough for them that these poor children have died? I despair. I really do.
Well, it depends if you are open to the possibility that politicians have political plans. There is no conspiracy as such, in the sense of secrecy. What there is though, is an open vocal call for a global response to global problems, which is to say, the creation of a global governance. You can see it called for quite openly here:
http://www.worldforum.org/
Read that site, read the names, and see whether you agree with their vision. I would agree with their vision, except I think it is too complex a task for us at the moment. Too many parts of the world simply wouldn’t go with it. But being a global problem, global warming is emphasized.
Now, the world needs to unite for all sorts of reasons, as there are many global problems, like nuclear proliferation. So it makes sense to emphasize global warming, to start to build global governance, so that we can then begin to deal with other global problems. And if global warming happens to not be a real problem? Well politically we’re still trying to build some sort of global governance, and I can point you to religious quotations where it is indeed ethical to perpetrate a lie for the sake of something good. So it is not hard to believe, rather, it would be hard to believe that politicians are not doing this. After all, the whole world is at stake.
If I get the gist of that right, the temperature swings up and down come about because the climate is more sensitive to swings than previously thought, and this suggests that far from cooling being a sign that the climate is not running away, it could well be a sign that the climate is even more sensitive, and thus more prone to warming. Well, that’s a fine post-rationalised answer. We can all post-rationalise, we’re all very good at it. And that’s fine, I don’t mean to claim that it is only a made up answer, for everything we think is something we created or made up. Rather, it could well be true, but the problem is, how do we know if it is true?
How would you know if it true?
Check out these posts (and comment threads):
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/30/co2-temperatures-and-ice-ages/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/21/co2-does-not-drive-glacial-cycles/
/Mr Lynn
Izzere something, I am missing here ?
Check out; http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Atmospheric_Transmission.png
Okay don’t holler I know it’s a wikipedia reference.
Now cast your eye on the third line from the bottom which is labelled Methane; and note that the scale goes from 0.2 microns to 50 microns wave;ength range, which encompasses the entire of interest solar spectrum range, and earth surface emitted infra red radiation (well it would be nice to go past 100 microns).
So can somebody please explain to me, using those graphs, just exactly what is the physics that explains why Methane (CH4) is claimed to be 20 times as obnoxious as a GHG than CO2, carbon dioxide is ?
I can’t see where it has any effect at all in any meaningful partof the spectrum.
It will be telling to see the extent to which El Nino reverses this (if at all). That in and of itself will be a leading indicator regarding how deep the longer term cooling will go.
“. It’s hot down South, but colder than normal up North.”
Sorry but I am in the southeast (North Carolina) and it has not yet hit 95F. I do not have the AC on it is in the 70’s today) and oh yes I drive a BLACK pickup without AC and work outside so I notice when it is hot.
So far this summer we have had only 18 days over 90F and NONE over 95F
In 2008 we had 9 days between 90 and 94 and 11days 95F and over.
In 2004 (mid cycle 23) we had 24 days between 90 and 94 and 14 days 95F and over.
What is really interesting is 17 of those over ninety degree days were in May and we hit 98 twice compared to this year when the may high was 89 and only for one day.
Can someone tell me how that translates to North Carolina being HOTTER? Yes Yes I know its weather NOT climate…
Smokey says:
Why, have you missed the other 49 times that I have explained it? It is due to the characteristics of systems that have both an underlying (approximately) linear trend plus noise. Basically, it is for the very same reason that it is not at all unusual to find week-long periods here in Rochester in the spring when the temperature trend is negative even though we know that we have a very strong seasonal cycle and the seasonal “forcing” at that time is positive.
As Benjamin P. notes, there is also a recent paper by Swanson and Tsonis (and a guest post over at RealClimate by Swanson) that proposes a more complicated hypothesis, which still amounts to climate variability superimposed on the long term warming trend, but with a more multidecadal character…more along the lines of the PDO stuff that has been talked about a lot here…and on this basis predicts a “pause” in the warming. However, I am still skeptical that such an explanation is necessary as there is no real indication that approximately decade-long negative trends should be that unusual. See, for example, Easterling and Wehner http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/csi/images/GRL2009_ClimateWarming.pdf (who even show the existence of 15-year negative trends in a climate model forced with steadily increasing GHGs).
As for your continued use of the word “trace gas” presumably to imply that somehow a gas present at only ~4 parts in 10,000 couldn’t possibly have much effect, I will only remind you (yet again!) that ~99% of the atmosphere is made up of diatomic molecules that are essentially transparent to infrared radiation, so the remaining ~1% play a disproportionately large role in the radiative balance. Furthermore, the fact that the forcing of the IR-active gases depends approximately logarithmically on their concentration over a large range of concentrations also means that small amounts play a disproportionately large role.
George E. Smith (12:30:43) :
Izzere something, I am missing here ?
Check out; http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Atmospheric_Transmission.png
Okay don’t holler I know it’s a wikipedia reference.
Now cast your eye on the third line from the bottom which is labelled Methane; and note that the scale goes from 0.2 microns to 50 microns wave;ength range, which encompasses the entire of interest solar spectrum range, and earth surface emitted infra red radiation (well it would be nice to go past 100 microns).
So can somebody please explain to me, using those graphs, just exactly what is the physics that explains why Methane (CH4) is claimed to be 20 times as obnoxious as a GHG than CO2, carbon dioxide is ?
Not with those graphs George, they’re little more than cartoons and miss out key data (such as concentration).