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
Paul K (10:47:20) says:
First off, this is not a “self-rated” site. Voting took place across the internet over an extended time period, and voting was open to everyone. There were numerous categories, “Best Science” being only one of many.
When all was said and done, WUWT soundly thrashed RC by 10 – 1 [and the year before another skeptic site, ClimateAudit, also trounced the censorship-prone RealClimate].
Paul K says he can’t believe the alarmist contingent is ‘intentionally doctoring the data.’:
Such sarcasm! I think Paul is just a bit naive. There is big money, and there are big egos involved in pushing AGW. Not all scientists are immune from the temptations of money and status — and it appears that those on the alarmist side are more susceptible to temptation than most. Why else would they run and hide out from neutral, moderated debates if they really believed what they’re trying to sell?
Paul K should read this account of the shenanigans that go on in the warmist camp. And Prof. Richard Lindzen’s account of the back room politics in the climate grant industry is well worth reading, too. Dr. Lindzen states:
Those revealing accounts might help Paul shed some of his charming naiveté.
Over 142 comments, and I still don’t understand your post Mr. Watts. The title says “GISS for June – way out there” with a poster for a Laurel and Hardy movie Way Out West. You begin the post with a discussion of the GLOBAL anomalies for GISS, UAH, and RSS. From this, I surmised the subject was the discrepancies in the monthly reports for global temperature anomalies.
But then there is a blinking graph of US temperature record for GISS. The intent of the graph seems to be that GISS adjusted the temperature record for the US. This is true, and a previous poster bluecrue provided links showing the really major adjustment occurred impacting data for the US. I simply wanted to point out that the global anomaly is very different than the US anomaly. You posted this back in reply:
“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”?
You lost me here. The 2% number simply points out the difference between the ‘US record’ and the ‘Global record’ that seemed to be the point of the post… i.e. The GISS reported global anomaly is WAY OUT THERE, and can be safely compared to joke like a Laurel and Hardy movie. I think putting the US record graph in the post, introduced an apple to orange comparison.
I can’t see how the previously disclosed adjustments in the GISS US temperature has much impact on the global anomaly. The data I have seen, doesn’t show much impact of the change in the US record on the global record, and you haven’t shown anything that indicates that the US changes significantly impacted the global record.
I came back, and posted links to analysis that shows the UAH monthly anomalies in May and June seem out of whack, and just possibly may be WAY OUT THERE.
Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy may in fact, be working at University of Alabama at Huntsville, and not at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
Warming caused by soot not CO2?
http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/warming-caused-soot-not-co2
Paul K (10:47:20) : Explain to me in a sound, logical, reasonable fashion why the GISS data, that in 1999 was deemed to be correct, has been adjusted in such a manner 10 years later and now it indicates a much stronger global warming trend than it would have if not adjusted?
This is what I and I suspect many others on this site are upset about.
Now let us just for drill turn the tables. What if you felt strongly about AGW and the data base was maintained by scientists who have publicly proclaimed, convinced their bosses (Congress and the President) and staked their careers & reputations on the belief that AGW is a false theory. How would you react if the historical data had been adjusted and it now indicates a cooling trend when prior to the adjustments such a trend was not as clear?
So it is that conservatives are evil and liberals are pure? That is pure bunk and if you don’t know it you haven’t been around the block enough times.
OldJim: Yes, 1998 was an unusual year. I think the difference you’re seeing there is that the satellite sources reacted far more strongly to the 1998 El Nino ‘spike’, which is producing an apparent downward trend to the present day if you start there. The surface sources seemed to react less strongly – is this just thermal mass? I’ve guessed this before but I’ve no idea if it has any physical reality…
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1997/to:1999/offset:-0.24/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997/to:1999/offset:-0.15/plot/uah/from:1997/to:1999/plot/rss/from:1997/to:1999
Note that here too the satellite peak is slightly later than the surface one.
I think ‘tallblokes’ graphs of SST vs satellite temperature are very compelling – so much so that I’m tempted to make a SWAG of UAH=+0.3 by September, and a crossover with GISS (adjusted for baselines) by the end of the year. Watch this space – or rather, this graph (dynamically updated):
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/last:12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/last:12/offset:-0.15/plot/gistemp/last:12/offset:-0.24/plot/uah/last:12/plot/rss/last:12
This is interesting, record low high temp. reports according to NOAA are not decreasing in number like you’d expect during a big run-up in global temperatures.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/records/index.php?ts=daily&elem=lomx&month=7&day=0&year=2009&submitted=Get+Records
This leads to two possibilities
1). Siberia is way above average again
2). We’re seeing a big run-up in low temperatures, not neccesarily high temps.
On number 2 it can make sense, if the high was 2 degrees below average and the low is 5 degrees above average, then technically the day was a bit above average and that showing in every location around the globe on average would clearly be seen as a significant jump in global temperatures. There’s also the possibility of Svensmark’s theory of cosmic ray cloud seeding helping this along, as low cloud cover will keep your high temperatures down, but keep your low temperatures up. So the increased low cloud cover is a shade by day and a blanket by night.
Ron de Haan (12:04:37) :
The link you gave perhaps deserves a post here…in fun category, in special the graph which shows “Hansen’s scenario vs.actual temperatures”
BTW Scenario meaning:
1. An outline of the plot of a dramatic or literary work.
2.
a. An outline for a screenplay.
b. A treatment for a screenplay.
c. A screenplay
woodfortrees (Paul Clark) (12:09:40) :
OldJim: Yes, 1998 was an unusual year. I think the difference you’re seeing there is that the satellite sources reacted far more strongly to the 1998 El Nino ’spike’, which is producing an apparent downward trend to the present day if you start there. The surface sources seemed to react less strongly – is this just thermal mass? I’ve guessed this before but I’ve no idea if it has any physical reality…
Paul, several factors. The ’98 el nino put a heck of a lot of humid water vapour laden air into the atmosphere. This would have been heated both by the oceans from below and to some extent by sunlight directly, though sunlight passes mostly straight through and warms the sea below. The air has a lot less specific heat capacity than the ocean, so heats up to a higher temperature more than the sea does for the same energy input.
A lot of the heat released into the atmosphere came from a region called the Pacific Warm Pool, a subsurface body of warm water hidden from surface measurements which had been gathering energy from the strong run of solar cycles, and releasing it in el nino events. The water vapour laden atmosphere above that area restricted the escape of heat to space in a big way. Co2 allegedly causes a restiction on outgoing longwave radiation of 1.7W/m2. The OLR above the nino 3.4 area where the warm pool is dived by 60Wm2 during the el nino. Water vapour kicks ass.
http://i25.tinypic.com/2035ed.png and see Bob Tisdales blog for more in depth stuff.
Thanks again and again for your site.
Can we have a sea level change series? Pretty please with honey on.
Paul K (11:47:53) :
I came back, and posted links to analysis that shows the UAH monthly anomalies in May and June seem out of whack, and just possibly may be WAY OUT THERE.
Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy may in fact, be working at University of Alabama at Huntsville, and not at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
I see you chose to ignore my explanation to your question then, [snip]
Pamela Gray:
TSI is only a small part of the solar influence. Research following on Svensmark (1998) suggests strong correlation between solar activity, terrestrial cloud cover, and temperature record. But you must know that already; why do you (like the IPCC) dwell exclusively on TSI?
Flanagan (23:35:32) : “It would not be surprising then to have some delay between the two if the surface heats (the air must go up).”
Can you explain why heat from the ocean ‘must go up’, but not heat from CO2?
Aww, come on moderator. You’ve made it look like I called Paul K a rude name, which I didn’t.
Accuweather is forecasting a miserable and cold Winter for the southern US and the Atlantic Seaboard this Winter, but then again you can say what do they know, they said it would get all the way to 97 degrees here in Wichita today and the highest it got (which was in the morning) was 84-87. Intellicast is going to be a lot more accurate in the case of today.
This is like May when NE Oregon was under frost warnings. We had frost warnings in June and now in July we are having record lows being recorded all over the place, lows that will stop many veggie plants dead in their tracks (IE below 50 degrees), such as pumpkin, tomato, watermelon, etc. But apparently the NOAA sensors that are out here shivering in the cold are not used in GISS? Too rural?
The upper NW states are very sensitive to PDO affects and demonstrate closely tied behavior to natural drivers. And right now, the cold is driving many crops right into the ground. I am thinking we should be figuring out a way to capture CO2 from CO2 sources and ship it out to NE Oregon so we can WARM UP!!!!
Thomas, the energy available and the cyclic % change of TSI is far greater than any other solar variable. The TSI mechanism is also theorized and can be calculated, not just hypothesized. The equation is even included in IPCC models. The other sources of solar drivers have only been hypothesized and so far have not been demonstrated, repeatable or verifiable using sound scientific research methods. Until they are, considering these other drivers as more plausible than TSI is unsubstantiated at best, and worse than the notion that human emitted CO2 will cause runaway warming.
Thomas, I haven’t found any data that suggests or demonstrates such correlations. In fact, the graphs I have seen and the articles I have read show no substantial correlations.
Dear Jim,
your question what is the mechanism behind the surface-to-troposphere lag I mentioned is an interesting one. On one hand, it can be a reason to abandon the idea about the lag.
On the other hand, I can imagine a lot of processes that slow such things down, mostly things related to turbulence. Much like El Nino always seems to propagate from the Western coast of South America to the West, it may be propagating upwards.
The speed of winds in the vertical direction is arguably much slower than in the horizontal direction, which makes these signals vertical propagation much slower, too.
But the ratio of the vertical and horizontal speeds needed to get a sensible lag seems sensible to me. In other words, I want to say that you should ask the very same question about the horizontal propagation: why it takes months for the El Nino to propagate from the typical source near South America to the West?
This motion is much slower than the winds themselves. It is a pattern that is propagating. One must distinguish very many different speeds there. For example, the signals in the wires propagate nearly by the speed of light – but the electrons only move by inches per second in the wall! 😉
I don’t have full calculations of all speeds of patterns of all kinds. Do you? At any rate, if you indicate that every pattern moves by the same speed as the wind itself, I think that you’re demonstrably wrong.
Best wishes
Lubos
Certainly David!
heat from oceans heats the lower layers of the atmosphere, creating a “heavy-over-light” situation which is unstable, in terms of fluid dynamics. It’s like having sirup on top of water (sort of). This heating by below will cause convection and hence movement of warm air upwards – try to look for Bénard cells :0)
Heating by the top does not cause such type of instabilities (there’s no double diffusion efect in the atmosphere).
Living in Canada where the winter temperatures often hover around the freezing point, I often laugh when I hear a clueless radio or television reporter say “Yesterday, the high was only 1 degree Celsius. Today, the the high will be 2 degrees Celsius. So, it will be twice as warm today as it was yesterday.” (It doesn’t have the same effect if you use Fahrenheit.) In the case of Paul K., I can’t tell if he is mathematically and scientifically challenged like the clueless reporters, or whether he is just being intellectually dishonest when he attempts to demonstrate that the differences in the June anomalies are not so unusual by saying ” The average UAH anomaly for May over the period 1979-2008 was 0.07, whereas NASA, HadCru, NOAA, and RSS show an average anomaly of 0.14. So these temp records show May anomalies roughly double the UAH reported anomaly.
For June anomalies, UAH shows an average about 0.09, and the others range from 0.14 to 0.17. Again the UAH report seems out of whack with the others.” Paul, to help you with the math (assuming that you are honestly challenged and not dishonest), the difference between .07 and .14 is .07 – a very small difference. The fact that .14 is double .07 is absolutely irrelevant. The difference between .09 and a range of .14 to .17 is .05 to .08 – again, a very small difference. Meanwhile, with reference to these new June numbers, the difference between .075 and .63 is .555 – relatively, a very large number indeed. The difference between .001 and .630 is .629 – an even larger number. In fact, if you want to use your preposterous method of analysis, .630 is six hundred and thirty times as large as .001.
Flanagan,
in my perspective had a valid point, with the el nino issue.
However, the same people typically discuss la nina events with data adjusted downwards for the cooling effect, and the without these, we have arrived close to a satellite anomaly of 0.0°.
He also fails to acknowledge the other component of the divergence of GISS from satellite data in recent years – the so called “GISS” data corrections.
Of course the effects look smaller in trends on larger timesscales but this is just a plump strategy to hide an increase of approx. 0.2° of recent GISS data. This data outlet has obviously not solved the many issues leading to a overstated temperature anomaly reported on this page, what appears to be rather impossible, even if they wanted, with their budget of just 0.25 man-years.
However, the same people typically discuss la nina events with data adjusted UPWARDS for the cooling effect
@woodfortrees (Paul Clark) (12:09:40) :
You may be correct about the satellite effect but the odd thing is that it is only GISS which is odd – Hadcrut3 is about the same as RSS and UAC.
Also changing the start date from 1998 to 1999, 2000 and then 2001 all show that the GISS trend is significantly different to Hadcrut3, RSS and UAH
Now I know that trend lines over such a small timescale are a bit silly but it does tend to show that, for some reason, GISS is not following the other 3 metrics.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/offset:-0.15/mean:12/plot/gistemp/from:2001/offset:-0.24/mean:12/plot/uah/from:2001/mean:12/plot/rss/from:2001/mean:12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/offset:-0.15/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2001/offset:-0.24/trend/plot/uah/from:2001/trend/plot/rss/from:2001/trend
I like this one.
<http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1996/to:2010/plot/gistemp/from:1996/to:2010/plot/uah/from:1996/to:2010/plot/rss/from:1996/to:2010
Note the series which is consistently just high enough to give a figleaf of cover to self serving politicians BS claim that such and such year is the “hottest year ever”, “second hottest year ever”, “third hottest year ever” and so on. Note that the two sat series track consistently true, while the surface stations meander in a haphazard fashion puctuated with esspecially wide divergences on those dates when we know WUWT and CA caught GISS padding the numbers. Notice the GISS “hump” for the occasion of Al Gore’s AIT premier, and awards ceremonys.
And see the extraordinary jump of the green line at the end. Even Hadley is blushing.
Shut up and pay your energy tax!!!!!!!!1
Pamela Gray (13:17:54) :
This is like May when NE Oregon was under frost warnings. We had frost warnings in June and now in July we are having record lows being recorded all over the place, lows that will stop many veggie plants dead in their tracks (IE below 50 degrees), such as pumpkin, tomato, watermelon, etc. But apparently the NOAA sensors that are out here shivering in the cold are not used in GISS? Too rural?
Yup. Natural thermometers don’t lie.