There’s some really interesting things going on with global temperature. On one hand we have UAH and RSS which show Global Temperature anomalies near zero, while NCDC/NOAA and GISS (which derives from NCDC data with their own adjustments added) show large positive anomalies.
Joe D’Aleo at ICECAP writes:
Last month, NOAA had May 2009 to be the 4th warmest on record globally. Meanwhile NASA UAH MSU satellite assessment showed it was the 15th coldest May in the 31 years of its record. This divergence is not new and has been growing. Just a year ago, NOAA proclaimed June 2008 to be the 8th warmest for the globe in 129 years of record keeping. Meanwhile NASA satellites showed it was the 9th coldest June in the 30 years of its record.
Of course the obvious question “who’s right” will be the subject of many posts to come, but I wanted to get this out there for discussion. There’s some interesting things going on with the NCDC data.
The combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the second warmest on record in June, behind 2005, and tied with 2004 as the fifth warmest on record for the year-to-date (January-June) period. The global ocean had the warmest June on record. The ranks found in the tables below are based on records that began in 1880.
What is truly interesting about June (besides the wide discrepancy between global data sets) is the time period with which the onset of the warming occurred. Some say it has to do with El Nino developing in the Pacific. Perhaps, but the El Nino conditions we see now are not comparable to what we saw in 1998, yet we have global temperatures being reported that are comparable.
It is an interesting mystery, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out and what is discovered. Stay tuned for more on this topic.
Addendum: I should point out that there is a lag between surface and lower troposphere, so we’ll see what July says as LT is already shaping up a bit warmer at UAH. – Anthony
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David
July 16, 2009 8:54 pm
Why I tend to trust the satellites.
Coverage. It matters.
Frederick Michael
July 16, 2009 8:58 pm
As posters on other threads have already noted, the latest daily temps show recent jumps up in temp (check ch05). http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
The July numbers are sure to be higher — possibly as high as what NCDC said June was.
I’m puzzled.
rbateman
July 16, 2009 9:01 pm
Good grief, those in the UK must be all out diving in the Thames to escape the blistering heat. Poor Siberia, all ablaze with millions of sqare miles roasting in a merciless summer. No wonder Palin resigned…she’s beating feet to escape the frying pan Alaska has turned into. The Ukraine and the Steppes are fried to a crisp. My God, the so. half of Greenland is a blast furnace.
We’d better pitch in and send some relief, Hundreds of millions if not a billion people are going to wither and die in the 2009 Inferno.
gary gulrud
July 16, 2009 9:03 pm
[snip]
Philip_B
July 16, 2009 9:05 pm
Sea Surface Temperature is a meaningless metric. We don’t know what its relationship is to air temperature above the ocean, or the ocean temperature itself. Hence, it doesn’t tell us if the atmosphere is warming or if the ocean is warming.
It is only used so some highly questionable pre-satellite data such as sampling ocean temperature using buckets over the side of ships can be used to give a century long temperature record for the entire globe.
I really wish climate scientists would fess up to the fact we simply don’t know how much warmer the Earth has got over the last 100 years or even we can’t even be sure it has got warmer.
The truth? The truth is the alarmists have been smearing bad ground based data over more precise and temporally linked satellite data to obscure the cooling. It’s easy to do statistically as I show in this post: http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/9852
The point is a satellite operating for 3-6 years uses a single, calibrated and verifiable sensor to cover the globe making thousands of measurement points. A single sensor which can be checked against ground sensors which only measure the temperature for a distance of a few feet at best.
When you compare this measurement system in space to the compounding errors from thousands of uncalibrated, unverified, lower precision sensors spread thinly across the Earth’s surface it is clear what is going on. Ground based sensors cannot produce a global measurement with any accuracy under a degree if the error budget was being done correctly. Each sensor has an unmeasured error, which combines to create a huge error in ‘global temperature’.
A satellite sensor has a fixed error source that can be calibrated (self checked) many ways. There is only one error source, not thousands.
I mean, does anyone still do basic math anymore?
savethesharks
July 16, 2009 9:12 pm
Well said Robert.
Something is amiss. Data is being manipulated once again to fit someone’s agenda.
CHRIS
Norfolk, VA, USA
When police look for a criminal suspect, they need only provide 3 things to get a conviction:
Method.
Motive.
Opportunity.
Is 1.6 trillion dollars and control of the world’s energy supply motive?
Philip_B
July 16, 2009 9:16 pm
If sea surface temperature measure anything, it is the rate at which the vast quantities of heat absorbed by the oceans from sunlight are released to the atmosphere and then lost to space. That is, it measures the rate at which the Earth’s climate is cooling.
par5
July 16, 2009 9:19 pm
NCDC got a new blender?
AnonyMoose
July 16, 2009 9:21 pm
Temperatures are going up at airports due to people flying to warmer places. Apparently those places are all overseas.
Highly Skeptical
July 16, 2009 9:21 pm
I’m sorry but it seems to me that these totally whack claims coming from NOAA are not from qualified scientists or trained meteorologists – but from impostors. No serious scientist would make these claims in light of the contrary satellite data – unless they were “pretend” scientists. GISS wrote itself off ages ago. IMO
Strangely, we have run our air-condition just two days this year! And the forecast…
Friday, Jul 17
High: 74 °F RealFeel®: 75 °F
Saturday, Jul 18
High: 70 °F RealFeel®: 68 °F
Sunday, Jul 19
High: 75 °F RealFeel®: 76 °F
Normal?
AVERAGES
Hi 84°F
Lo 64°F
Where’s the global warming?
deadwood
July 16, 2009 9:27 pm
It is wearing really thin, but will it work long enough to get cap n trade and Copenhagen adopted?
timetochooseagain
July 16, 2009 9:32 pm
Tip on comparing surface and satellite data sets-I’ll assume you are using LT (MT is where the strongest signal should be, but LT is more tightly linked to surface temperature behavior)-first, for individual months, find the average anomaly over the period 1979-1998 in the surface data sets-this will give you the annual cycle and the base period average-take this out of the surface data. Now, either multiply the surface data by a factor of about 1.2 or divide the satellites by the same. If the data sets agree on the amount of warming, there should be no trend in the differences. I think you will tend to find that ain’t the case.
Glenn
July 16, 2009 9:34 pm
“Following her confirmation, Lubchenco declared that science would guide the agency and that she expects it to play a role in developing a green economy.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Lubchenco
From that I gather that Jane already believes developing a green economy is necessary and that NOAA will play a role in that development. The emphasis on science is somewhat diminished in this light; more likely this “development” will guide “science”.
Greybrd
July 16, 2009 9:36 pm
It probably doesn’t hurt that they knock the base period back to 1961-1990 which is only like, almost 20 years ago, before most of the warming that got everyone all hot and bothered. That includes around 20 years when there were cooler temperatures in the 60’s and 70’s.
If you go to NOAA’s site and type in any given city/state, then scroll to the bottom where it has climate information, climate data, past weather information, etc, then click on daily climate report, they use 1971-2000 as the “climate normal” period.
Lamont
July 16, 2009 9:37 pm
“What is truly interesting about June (besides the wide discrepancy between global data sets) is the time period with which the onset of the warming occurred. Some say it has to do with El Nino developing in the Pacific. Perhaps, but the El Nino conditions we see now are not comparable to what we saw in 1998, yet we have global temperatures being reported that are comparable.”
NEWSFLASH: Antony Watts discovers evidence of global warming…
Northern Plains Reader
July 16, 2009 9:41 pm
I wonder if we are comparing apples and oranges here in terms of anomolies?
The graphic calculated the anomolies based on 1961-1990 baseline, whereas the satalite record only starts in 1979. Wasn’t it colder globally between 1961 and 1979? So wouldn’t one expect the NOAA anamolies to be higher?
Was June 2009 the second warmest ever? The satelite data does put that into question.
David
July 16, 2009 9:42 pm
If the temperature anomaly is because of El Nino, how does that help the cause for those professing it is CO2?
Atmospheric warming happens after surface warming, is the gist of what is being put across to explain the difference. Isn’t that a direct contradiction to the models?
Gene Nemetz
July 16, 2009 9:44 pm
There is something very wrong here and I am beginning to think I should a lawyer to figure it out.
D. King
July 16, 2009 9:49 pm
Begins the ramp up to Copenhagen.
We should keep a top ten list of the
scariest scenarios.
Gary
July 16, 2009 9:50 pm
Well, I can’t wait to see July! It’s getting scary here in Northern Arkansas. My thermometer shows 64 and dropping. The low was changed to reflect 67. We’re already below that and dropping. The forcast lows for the next three days ARE IN THE FIFTIES! Plus it’s raining every day. Some of the storms have been horrific with lightning strikes much more than 60 per second and lasting for hours like that. I’m serious. The strom last night was so bad that I didn’t sleep at all. The strikes were all around my house. Getting a storm in July is normal, but usually they’re “squawl lines” that push on past fairly quickly. The storms the last few nights are nothing like that. They last for hours with massive lightning. In fact, I was laying in bed tyring to count the strikes lighting up the room. It was impossible. They came too quickly.
Cold air meets warm Summer Gulf air. Nightmare storms. I don’t have cable. Are they reporting on this? Seriously… Are they? I’m 40 years old and a 6th generation Arkansasn. I was scared last night. I was listening for tornadoes for more than 4 hours. This is the second massive storm this week.
Sorry, weather isn’t climate. But the weather here is strange and strangely cool.
Ron de Haan
July 16, 2009 9:50 pm
Repeat after me: Climate Bill, Climate Bill, Climate Bill
jony
July 16, 2009 9:50 pm
Andy, have you ever been right on any topic regarding climate?
Why I tend to trust the satellites.
Coverage. It matters.
As posters on other threads have already noted, the latest daily temps show recent jumps up in temp (check ch05).
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
The July numbers are sure to be higher — possibly as high as what NCDC said June was.
I’m puzzled.
Good grief, those in the UK must be all out diving in the Thames to escape the blistering heat. Poor Siberia, all ablaze with millions of sqare miles roasting in a merciless summer. No wonder Palin resigned…she’s beating feet to escape the frying pan Alaska has turned into. The Ukraine and the Steppes are fried to a crisp. My God, the so. half of Greenland is a blast furnace.
We’d better pitch in and send some relief, Hundreds of millions if not a billion people are going to wither and die in the 2009 Inferno.
[snip]
Sea Surface Temperature is a meaningless metric. We don’t know what its relationship is to air temperature above the ocean, or the ocean temperature itself. Hence, it doesn’t tell us if the atmosphere is warming or if the ocean is warming.
It is only used so some highly questionable pre-satellite data such as sampling ocean temperature using buckets over the side of ships can be used to give a century long temperature record for the entire globe.
I really wish climate scientists would fess up to the fact we simply don’t know how much warmer the Earth has got over the last 100 years or even we can’t even be sure it has got warmer.
The truth? The truth is the alarmists have been smearing bad ground based data over more precise and temporally linked satellite data to obscure the cooling. It’s easy to do statistically as I show in this post:
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/9852
The point is a satellite operating for 3-6 years uses a single, calibrated and verifiable sensor to cover the globe making thousands of measurement points. A single sensor which can be checked against ground sensors which only measure the temperature for a distance of a few feet at best.
When you compare this measurement system in space to the compounding errors from thousands of uncalibrated, unverified, lower precision sensors spread thinly across the Earth’s surface it is clear what is going on. Ground based sensors cannot produce a global measurement with any accuracy under a degree if the error budget was being done correctly. Each sensor has an unmeasured error, which combines to create a huge error in ‘global temperature’.
A satellite sensor has a fixed error source that can be calibrated (self checked) many ways. There is only one error source, not thousands.
I mean, does anyone still do basic math anymore?
Well said Robert.
Something is amiss. Data is being manipulated once again to fit someone’s agenda.
CHRIS
Norfolk, VA, USA
When police look for a criminal suspect, they need only provide 3 things to get a conviction:
Method.
Motive.
Opportunity.
Is 1.6 trillion dollars and control of the world’s energy supply motive?
If sea surface temperature measure anything, it is the rate at which the vast quantities of heat absorbed by the oceans from sunlight are released to the atmosphere and then lost to space. That is, it measures the rate at which the Earth’s climate is cooling.
NCDC got a new blender?
Temperatures are going up at airports due to people flying to warmer places. Apparently those places are all overseas.
I’m sorry but it seems to me that these totally whack claims coming from NOAA are not from qualified scientists or trained meteorologists – but from impostors. No serious scientist would make these claims in light of the contrary satellite data – unless they were “pretend” scientists. GISS wrote itself off ages ago. IMO
Strangely, we have run our air-condition just two days this year! And the forecast…
Friday, Jul 17
High: 74 °F RealFeel®: 75 °F
Saturday, Jul 18
High: 70 °F RealFeel®: 68 °F
Sunday, Jul 19
High: 75 °F RealFeel®: 76 °F
Normal?
AVERAGES
Hi 84°F
Lo 64°F
Where’s the global warming?
It is wearing really thin, but will it work long enough to get cap n trade and Copenhagen adopted?
Tip on comparing surface and satellite data sets-I’ll assume you are using LT (MT is where the strongest signal should be, but LT is more tightly linked to surface temperature behavior)-first, for individual months, find the average anomaly over the period 1979-1998 in the surface data sets-this will give you the annual cycle and the base period average-take this out of the surface data. Now, either multiply the surface data by a factor of about 1.2 or divide the satellites by the same. If the data sets agree on the amount of warming, there should be no trend in the differences. I think you will tend to find that ain’t the case.
“Following her confirmation, Lubchenco declared that science would guide the agency and that she expects it to play a role in developing a green economy.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Lubchenco
From that I gather that Jane already believes developing a green economy is necessary and that NOAA will play a role in that development. The emphasis on science is somewhat diminished in this light; more likely this “development” will guide “science”.
It probably doesn’t hurt that they knock the base period back to 1961-1990 which is only like, almost 20 years ago, before most of the warming that got everyone all hot and bothered. That includes around 20 years when there were cooler temperatures in the 60’s and 70’s.
If you go to NOAA’s site and type in any given city/state, then scroll to the bottom where it has climate information, climate data, past weather information, etc, then click on daily climate report, they use 1971-2000 as the “climate normal” period.
“What is truly interesting about June (besides the wide discrepancy between global data sets) is the time period with which the onset of the warming occurred. Some say it has to do with El Nino developing in the Pacific. Perhaps, but the El Nino conditions we see now are not comparable to what we saw in 1998, yet we have global temperatures being reported that are comparable.”
NEWSFLASH: Antony Watts discovers evidence of global warming…
I wonder if we are comparing apples and oranges here in terms of anomolies?
The graphic calculated the anomolies based on 1961-1990 baseline, whereas the satalite record only starts in 1979. Wasn’t it colder globally between 1961 and 1979? So wouldn’t one expect the NOAA anamolies to be higher?
Was June 2009 the second warmest ever? The satelite data does put that into question.
If the temperature anomaly is because of El Nino, how does that help the cause for those professing it is CO2?
Atmospheric warming happens after surface warming, is the gist of what is being put across to explain the difference. Isn’t that a direct contradiction to the models?
There is something very wrong here and I am beginning to think I should a lawyer to figure it out.
Begins the ramp up to Copenhagen.
We should keep a top ten list of the
scariest scenarios.
Well, I can’t wait to see July! It’s getting scary here in Northern Arkansas. My thermometer shows 64 and dropping. The low was changed to reflect 67. We’re already below that and dropping. The forcast lows for the next three days ARE IN THE FIFTIES! Plus it’s raining every day. Some of the storms have been horrific with lightning strikes much more than 60 per second and lasting for hours like that. I’m serious. The strom last night was so bad that I didn’t sleep at all. The strikes were all around my house. Getting a storm in July is normal, but usually they’re “squawl lines” that push on past fairly quickly. The storms the last few nights are nothing like that. They last for hours with massive lightning. In fact, I was laying in bed tyring to count the strikes lighting up the room. It was impossible. They came too quickly.
Cold air meets warm Summer Gulf air. Nightmare storms. I don’t have cable. Are they reporting on this? Seriously… Are they? I’m 40 years old and a 6th generation Arkansasn. I was scared last night. I was listening for tornadoes for more than 4 hours. This is the second massive storm this week.
Sorry, weather isn’t climate. But the weather here is strange and strangely cool.
Repeat after me: Climate Bill, Climate Bill, Climate Bill
Andy, have you ever been right on any topic regarding climate?