NASA GISS has released their global temperature anomaly data for June 2009 and it is quite the surprise.
In both the UAH and RSS satellite data sets, global temperature anomaly went down in June. GISS went up, and is now the largest June anomaly since 1998, when we had the super El Nino.
Data source:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
Here are the June global temperature anomaly comparisons:
GISS .63C
RSS .075
UAH .001
The divergence between the satellite derived global temperature anomalies of UAH and RSS and the GISS land-ocean anomaly is the largest in recent memory.
But that isn’t the only oddity. Over on Lucia’s blog, the first commenter out of the gate, “Nylo” noticed something odd:
Nylo (Comment#16257) July 14th, 2009 at 11:14 pm
Regarding updates in past temperatures, this is not the most important change. Very noticeable is the fact that now 2007 is the second hottest year, having replaced 1998 in the statistics. This has been achieved by lowering the 1998 J-D average temperature anomaly to 0.56 , and raising the 2007 J-D average temperature anomaly to 0.57. Last month they were viceversa.
It is curious to me that such adjustments in GISS seem to occur in a way that enhances the present trend. Perhaps it is like a fine liqueur, aged to perfection.
Blink comparator of GISS USA temperature anomaly – click image if not blinking
Errata: SOI it is a little negative.
It sure is convenient the highest and most wide spread June temperature anomalies globally, are in the Antarctic, where we have the fewest temperature recording stations per square mile than anywhere on earth. In other words, the is no ‘real data’ on most of Antarctica, it is ‘extrapolated’. By comparison Antarctica with ice cover is about 5,000,000 sq mi., Europe is about 3,930,000 sq mi., and just a guess, but, I’m sure Europe has exponentially more stations to record temperature than Antarctica. That leaves a lot of room for incompetence in reporting the data.
“”” Flanagan (23:35:32) :
I think there could be some reason for this:
– Satellites don’t cover the poles very much, and the anomaly over the southern pole has been fairly large
http://www.climat-evolution.com/article-33431441.html “””
Now Flanagan, you really are grasping at straws; “satellites don’t cover the poles very much.”
On this planet earth in the 21st century orbital configuration; there couldn’t be any place more totally inconsequential to the computation of a “mean global temperature”; or some ersatz “anomaly” proxy for mean global temperature than the south pole. Second place on the list of total nonentities would be the north pole.
For a start, both places have what must be on average, the lowest atmospheric concentrration of total green house gases (including water vapor); and both places have just about the lowest average surface long wave infra-red radiation emittance anywhere on the planet; so their total contribution to “climate sensitivity” must be completely negligible.
From the point of view of the total sum of all the thermal processes going on on this planet, that can contribute to the value of the global mean temperature; even given the fact that it is quite impossible for us to measure that anyway; there’s nowhere that is of less significance than those two little polar circles that satellites cannot reach.
So no cigar on this one Flanagan.
Perhaps you can do some valuable indepoendent research for us Flanagan.
Why don’t you see if you can acquire the raw data that goes into that flakey GISS-ticulation above; and prepare two sets, one containing the south and north polar station contributions; and a second set without; and then take a GISS at them with a similar blink comparatir presentation so we can see the huge error caused by the lack of polar data.
Why don’t you do that for us Flanagan ?
Dave: the graph you referred to plots monthly data averaged into quarters – difficult to sea a 1-month delay in this case…
Here’s a blinker of 1999, 2001 and 2008, showing that the main difference is between 1999 and 2001, whereas the difference 2001 to 2008 is minimal. So the difference is indeed due to the inclusion of the adjustments SHAP, TOBS, etc in the USHCN data set.
Frank K. (05:02:14) :
Because the bias is still there in the past data.
Here’s your alleged “artifact … of GISTEMP”: blinker of GISTEMP and NOAA..
Lubos Motl (08:07:04) : How can that happen? When an El Nino occurs, heating of the air immediately above it should happen in a matter of hours. That air will do what air hotter than its surroundings always does: it will rise. When the Sun heats land, it does not take clouds a month to form, it takes a matter of hours.
What mechanism do you propose to account for the lag in tropospheric heating vs. surface heating?
What is the generally agreed on adjustment to GISS to account for the difference between base lines with the satellite data?
“”” Lubos Motl (08:07:04) :
Well, I can imagine that the difference is due to the abruptly starting El Nino that manifests itself on the surface faster than in the troposphere. I do expect a pretty rapid warming to show up in the satellites within months.
At any rate, the 0.6 °C difference in the anomalies as measured by different teams show that the very existence of the “catastrophic” 20th century warming by 0.6 °C depends on the methodology and the precise definition of the “global mean temperature”.
We’re talking about nothing – something that is not statistically significant and whose very existence is a very subtle question for scholars, surely not a question that politicians or ordinary people should deal with. “””
Well Lubos, I’m in agreement with you that a lot depends on exactly what is “global mean temperature”; we know for sure that it is a very high number, because much of the earth’s core is at sun surface temperatures or higher; so the global mean temperature isn’t any +15 deg C. The only other rational description would be the global mean surface temperature; bearing in mind that the surface goes from some hundreds of metres below sea level to somewhat over 8000 metres above sea level. Anything else other than the actual surface would have to very ad hoc.
And from a purely practical point of view it is inherently impossible to correctly sample the earth surface in any way that conforms to the Nyquist Criterion in both space and time co-ordinates. Planet earth can correctly integrate all the energy fluxes everywhere continuously; and get the right answer; but WE cannot perform those same integrals, because we have no legitimate way of acquiring the data.
But quite apart from the impossibility of even measuring such a quantity; there isn’t any scientific validity (or value) in what ever answer one might come up with.
It certainly has no physical connection to the earth’s total energy balance relationship; that might relate to whether we are cooling or warming.
But the global mean temperature proxies, that we call “anomalies” like GISStemp, HADcrut, and there even more ersatz satellite versions, in UAH and RSS; well the first two anyway, do have some substance. There is an actual set of measuring stations that go into those two; and Anthony has shown us just how ersatz those places are.
But after all is said and done; GISStemp is simply a graphic plot of GISStemp; and it doesn’t have any real physical relationship to planet earth or its climate; or to anything else other than GISStemp. It’s a fictitious ritual of Dr Hansen.
So Hansen can do whatever he likes with the data; so long as he doesn’t try to hoodwink us in to believing it means anything more, than does the average number in the Manhattan Phone directory.
George
Jeff:
‘Could we start a campaign to educate Bill O’reilly on Fox News. He believes GISS and Jim Hansen. Glenn Beck has tried to explain what is going on, but Bill is six cookies short of a dozen. He repeated the GISS nonsense again, yesterday, July 14. His email is oreilly@foxnews.com‘
Jeff, I hit Bill Oreily twice on this mindset to no avail, and I commended Laura Ingraham once on her better position.
Bill’s a bright guy. I steered his e-mail readers to Monckton and this site. Eventually, the penny will drop with him, and he will be a most useful ally. He already is, in the sense that he doesn’t buy the Cap and tax idiocy, or the alleged driving of temperature by carbon dioxide, so he’s almost half way there.
Good grief… Could you make this any more confusing Anthony Watts?
You talk about global anomalies, and the difference between GISS and UAH for June, then you show a blinking graph of the GISS for the US only, instead of the global anomaly.
Wasn’t there an error admitted about a year or so ago for the GISS temperature record for the US, which in turn was corrected downward? The impact on the global record was insignificant. Isn’t this what your blinking graph of the US data shows? That most of the change is due to the before and after of that correction? And isn’t it true that a similar blinking graph of the global anomaly wouldn’t show any significant change?
Why didn’t you show the global anomaly in your blinking graph? Maybe it didn’t give the impression that you wanted to project to your readers?
REPLY:Good grief Paul K could you be any more transparent? Instead of deflecting with things not relevant, why not take the issue head on – do you think it is OK to adjust past data? That is the issue presented. Get upset about the fact that the blink comparator is for US data all you want. The real issue is data adjustment post facto
Here is another post on the issue.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/28/nasa-giss-adjustments-galore-rewriting-climate-history/
– Anthony
Dear All
Why doesn’t someone (not you, Flanagan) check the trends for all 4 data sets
since 1992. We know there was some disagreement before then, but since the early 1990s I think the trends have matched up quite well.
I’d prefer this to be someone who is sceptical of the GISS record but who actually knows what they are doing. If the trends are similar I’d suggest there’s nothing dodgy going on.
TO: Doc. James Hansen
GISS, Columbia University
New York, NY
FROM: Robert H. Goddard (dec’d)
Dear Doc. Hansen,
In light of your fast and loose play with meteorological data, I request that you immediately remove my name from your Institute. Harping on this “global warming” business has nothing to do with rocketry or good science. You might consider replacing my name with, “Piltdown Institute for Space Studies.”
Thank you.
RHG
NOTE: Which makes for an unfortunate but apt acronym.
Next point, I applaud you for headlining the difference between UAH and GISS for June, as you did in May. Every year you trumpet the UAH data for May and June. Why?
Every year the UAH data show a substantial drop in May and June. There is a serious seasonal variability in the UAH data, and it seems to be getting worse. For some reason UAH shows a seasonal rise in the anomaly in February, and seasonal decline in the anomaly for May and June. This has been discussed at several blog sites, such as
http://deepclimate.org/2009/06/05/uah-annual-cycle-continues-in-2009/
Interestingly, the UAH data seems to show a much higher seasonal impact than RSS, which only shows a minor seasonal change. Something looks very fishy in the UAH reported data.
REPLY: “Every year you trumpet the UAH data for May and June. Why?”
Paul K lets see how well your argument holds up.
WUWT in May 2007 http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/05/ – no mention of UAH
WUWT in June 2007 http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/06/ – no mention of UAH
WUWT in May 2008 http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/05/ – UAH mentioned because of 4 to .5 degrees C cooler than May 2007 “seasonal anomaly”? Not likely since 2007 didn’t have the same issue.
WUWT in June 2008 http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/ – 1 mention of UAH, due to it being cooler than Hansens 20th anniversary, plus the largest 4 month drop in UAH since 1998
WUWT in May 2009 http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/ – 1 mention of UAH comparing it to RSS at the same time
WUWT in June 2009 http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/ – 1 mention of UAH pointing out the low anomaly near zero
But wait, let’s look at all the other months…if you’ll go through the archives, you’ll see that I mention UAH almost every month since early 2008. I also mention RSS. Trumpeting? Your reporting trend is non-existent, and you’d be the first to jump on me if I made such assumptions on something else without looking at all the data. You don’t like UAH, you don’t like what I report about it, we get it.
Christy offers some insight as to why UAH and RSS don’t always coincide:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/07/april-global-temperature-anomalies-rss-steady-uah-dropped-50/
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.
So the real question is, does UAH do a better job than RSS due to platform differences? Does UAH do a better job of representing the planetary temperature than GISS? From my perspective, seeing the issue with weather stations worldwide and the data they produce, and the high number of airports in GISTEMP, I think UAH is free of those biases. Is the “serious seasonal variability” real or an artifact? I don’t know, but I’ll put the question to Dr. Christy.
– Anthony
One example where the doctored GISS data kill the cooling argument:
Via Icecap.us
Jul 14, 2009
Say it ain’t so Joe!
I recently wrote a letter to Senator Joe Lieberman emploring him to vote no on the proposed cap and trade bill now before congress. Below is the letter that I received from the senators office.
June 25, 2009
Dear Mr. Horn:
Thank you for writing to me regarding your opposition to climate change legislation. I respectfully disagree with your position and view climate change as the most important environmental challenge of our time.Climate change is a very serious problem – not just for our environment, but for our economy and our national security, as well – and the way we produce and consume energy is making the problem worse. We need to pass legislation to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and transition to a clean energy economy. To do that, we will have to build a broad coalition.
To succeed, a bill will need diverse support, which means bringing everyone to the table and really listening to what they have to say. We have to sit down with the environmental community, the business community, and the scientific community. We have to talk to Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle about how best to address this crucial issue.
This could be a watershed moment. We have near scientific unanimity that humans are causing climate change, we have a Congress poised to take action, and we have a President pushing for progress. In his inaugural address, President Obama told us “each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.” He is absolutely right, and I look forward to working with the President to: (1) promote energy innovation so that we can produce and consume energy more cleanly and efficiently; (2) protect energy consumers from rising power prices; (3) prepare our communities to respond to the impacts of climate change; and (4) create jobs as we transition toward a clean energy economy. I also support including provisions in climate change legislation that would ensure a cap-and-trade system does not increase the deficit.Climate legislation should improve our environment and grow our economy at the same time. In these tough financial times, some have asked whether it makes sense to focus on the environment. The fact is, ignoring climate change until our economic situation improves will ultimately be far more expensive – and destructive – than taking steps to address it now.
Climate change does not just threaten our environment, it endangers our economy and national security, as well. Left unabated, its impacts will ravage coastlines and coastal communities, destroy large swaths of roadways and railways, and seriously degrade land resources and biodiversity. Additionally, climate-induced droughts will cause famine, threatening already scarce resources and further destabilizing developing nations that are unable to quickly adapt. Every day we fail to reform our energy habits, we guarantee the solution will be far more expensive; and if we wait much longer, there may be no solution. If we are able to pass climate change legislation this year, we will ensure the integrity of our environmental legacy for generations to come. I am working hard to make certain we move toward that important goal. As you may know, on April 17, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a preliminary finding that carbon dioxide emissions harm human health and welfare. Though the finding has not yet been finalized, if and when it is, EPA will be able to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. One option the agency will have for doing so will be to set reduction targets. I believe strongly that cap-and-trade would be the better approach. It allows businesses to comply with reduction targets in the most economically efficient way possible, which, in turn, helps keep American-made goods competitive and keeps energy prices down.
Thank you again for sharing your views and concerns with me. I hope you will continue to visit my website for updated news about my work on behalf of Connecticut and the nation. Please contact me if you have any additional questions or comments about our work in Congress.
Sincerely,
Joseph I. Lieberman, UNITED STATES SENATOR
JIL:vdh
I then wrote back to Senator Lieberman with the following.
Dear Senator Lieberman,
As a meteorologist and one who has studied this issue at great length I must respectfully disagree with nearly all of your points. I do agree that to succeed we must listen to all, the environmental and the business communities but especially the scientific. The science shows that there has been no warming for ten years. All data show this. We are in the eighth year of cooling, however carbon dioxide levels continue to rise. There has been no correlation between the two for ten years nor was there any correlation with temperature from the mid 1940’s to the late 1970’s when the global temperature data show decades of cooling.
I agree this could be a watershed moment but in the wrong direction for the United States and the world.
Mr. Obama was correct when he said “each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries”. But he was wrong when he said “and threaten our planet”.
All of your statements about future impacts on our world from human caused temperature rise are forecasts. I have made many thousands of forecasts in my life and I’ve learned that only by failing do you learn to walk the narrow and error filled road of prediction. Climate modelers are not forecasters. They have no real world experience in makeing predictions. They have never known what it is like to fail because their predictions won’t verify for 50 to 100 years. If there is no fear of failure there is not limit to what you will forecast. Computer models have many flaws that even the modelers will admit but they also create and maintain careers and funding. A climate model can be tweaked to give you the result you want or need.
I like this quote “If the facts change I will change my opinion, what do you do sir?”
Sincerely,
Art Horn
Unfortunately the senator never saw this email. For some reason when I tried to respond back to the email I received from Joe it was unable to get through and bounced back to me. I tried four times to resend my response but with no luck. It would appear that at least some of those in Washington are not interested in what the people have to say. I did send my letter to senator Lieberman through his website but I have had no indication if it actually got through or if he saw it, I doubt I will. We can only hope that the senate will have the wisdom to vote no on this bill that is nothing but a tax increase and will have negative effects on the nation and the world since we are it’s largest economy. See full PDF here.
This record at GISS will not stand and will be adjusted within the month. This has happened before and is usually a result of really sparse station and SST data that gets fleshed out more later.
This is not unusual, it was here on WUWT and I blogged it at a now closed UK site last year when a data point came out that was adjusted quietly later. So be patient and GISS will adjust because there is no way that this reading is correct no matter how warm the SST temperatures are, because we would be in the middle of a HUGE El Nino, and we are not, despite the cheerleading of Flanigan and others.
BTW Arctic Ice Extent has dipped below 2008..scary.. it is also above 2006 so I think we could have more ice than that year, amazing how you see anything you want.
“All of these are evident, as far as I can see. Except the second one is not quite accurate. Al Gore is actually REALLY fat. 😉
Don’t think of it as fat . . . think of it as Carbon Capture.
Ooops! That was supposed to say:
This is not a matter of divergence between different data sets. This is changes within a data set, changes being made by an advocate, changes not explained or documented.
Imagine how you would feel if your banker made ‘adjustments’ of this sort on your checking account.
Well, if it went in the same direction as GISS, I’d be all for it!!!!! 🙂
Mr. Watts: Good grief Paul K could you be any more transparent? Instead of deflecting with things not relevant, why not take the issue head on – do you think it is OK to adjust past data? That is the issue presented.
My response: I am happy I am transparent and therefore clear in what I posted. To answer your question: Yes, I think it is very important to adjust the data when an error is discovered. The GISS record for the US was adjusted for the period before 2001, as bluegrue discussed the post immediately preceding my post. In fact, even UAH data has been significantly corrected in the past. If I recall, the UAH data corrected even more substantially.
My point, is that the US is only about 2% of the global surface area, and the data you began the post with, was a comparison of the global temperature anomalies. The UAH global anomalies seems out of whack with other global trends, as shown in the link I posted to above. Check out the graph of anomaly trends by month at the link:
http://deepclimate.org/2009/06/05/uah-annual-cycle-continues-in-2009/
REPLY:” Yes, I think it is very important to adjust the data when an error is discovered.”
So it is OK to say, adjust temperature data from 1945 or 1960 or and number of points in previous years where the GISS data has been changed? Please explain then how GISS determines that data is in error? I’ve heard the 2% area argument a zillion times, still not impressed. The issue remains is it OK to adjust past measured data, and how is it justified that it is in “error”?
As for the UAH issue, I’ll put the question to Dr. Christy – A
The real deal behind the climate bill:
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/12921
John Finn: Your wish is my command…
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1992/offset:-0.15/mean:12/plot/gistemp/from:1992/offset:-0.24/mean:12/plot/uah/from:1992/mean:12/plot/rss/from:1992/mean:12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1992/offset:-0.15/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1992/offset:-0.24/trend/plot/uah/from:1992/trend/plot/rss/from:1992/trend
If you click on the “raw data” link you can get the actual trends:
Hadcrut: 0.019 K/yr
GISS: 0.023 K/yr
UAH: 0.020 K/yr
RSS: 0.020 K/yr
So yes, GISS is a bit higher, but it’s in the same ball-park.
The offsets that Flanagan used may have come from me: see http://www.woodfortrees.org/notes#baselines for an explanation.
I’m looking forward to testing this theory that the satellites will follow the surface in the next few months!
This “lag after spike” theory does have some ‘form’, at least recently:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/last:24/offset:-0.15/plot/gistemp/last:24/offset:-0.24/plot/uah/last:24/plot/rss/last:24
The surface and satellite data seemed to diverge similarly to now around March 2008, and returned to their usual approximate coherence in about September. Are other conditions (ENSO, etc.) similar now?
Preumably, the scientists who produce the data have proper degrees.
So did Bernie Madoff.
Look, if Hansen wasn’t saying skeptics should be tried for war crimes, comparing coal trains to Auschwitz, and getting himself arrested at coal plants then you would have a point. This is like putting Michael Moore in charge of the government’s economic data. Who ever expects radical zealots to be objective?
Paul K (09:30:59) :
The UAH global anomalies seems out of whack with other global trends, as shown in the link I posted to above.
Rubbish.
The UAH anomaly trend is in line with global SST trends as measured by HADcru. Which is exactly what you would expect given that the ocean controls the temperature of the atmosphere by virtue of the fact that it’s top 8 feet of seawater has as much heat capacity as the entire atmosphere above it.
I’ve been keeping track of GISS and their ‘legit’ adjustments since last December.
Time Frame of January 1998 through November 2008
0.0113 increase in temps with the release of data in December 2008
0.0123 increase in temps with the release of data in July of 2009
Every month I do this the warming from Jan 1998 – Nov 2008 gets bigger and bigger. When they release the August 2009 data the rate of increase of temps from Jan 1998 – Nov 2008 will grow again. This is not science, this is a FRAUD.
Yes, I think it is very important to adjust the data when an error is discovered.
It’s apparently only important to find errors that increase the trend, as we haven’t seen any adjustments for the myriad of problems noted at surfacestations.org. Apparently one only finds what one is looking for. Funny how that works out.
The U.S. is supposed to have the best dataset, so it’s relevant to post a graph of how “corrected” it was.