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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Ron de Haan
July 17, 2009 9:29 am
AJStrata (09:03:34) :
“If you want to remove the ground station mess from the satellite data you begin with just the satellite data itself. The challenge there is how to handle the change over from one satellite to another, and the aging (drift) if the sensor.
My proposal would be to identify 3-6 well documented ground stations around the globe which have good performance and span all 31 years of the satellites. These are the statistical anchor points for the satellite drift and transitions. If, on average, these 6 stations indicate a life time change in Sat1’s sensor from +.5°C to +1.1°C we can adjust for sensor aging. If the same 6 stations detect Sat2’s bias dropping to +.3°C when it took over for Sat1 we can not only adjust for drift but transition.
The key is to only use a small number of ground reference points so you don’t add mountains of sensor errors from the ground.
Once you compute a satellite only plot for the last 31 years, then you can not only compare to NOAA and GISS, you can estimate their errors and biases – even regionally. You can show how each surface sensor performed against the satellites (one Sat or across satellite)
Turn the tables, use the satellites to question the ground sensor errors and calibration. It is, in fact, the proper method scientifically and statistically. Single spacecraft sensor with known and measured performance is the only way to check the performance of thousands of independent sensors with varying precision and health.
When you do this, the NOAA-GISS anomalies are no longer global warming, but data showing how bad the ground sensors are performing! Which is the how this should have been computed in the first place”.
Thanks to WUWT, Anthony’s Surface Station Project and AJStrata we find the road back to sanity.
Who is going to undertake this job and provide us with a non bias temp record?
If one compares NOAA’s maps for the LAND only versus the BLENDED (land + ocean) maps (at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2009/jun/global.html), one sees plenty of anomalies:
• There are many more dots (non-zero anomalies) on land in the BLENDED vs. the LAND only map.
• Greenland, for instance, went (by my count) from 3 red and 1 blue dot (in the LAND only map) to 16 red dots (no blues) in the BLENDED version.
• Look at the filling-in all over Sudan, Libya and Sub-Saharan Africa (Congo, Namibia, Kenya, etc.), the western portion of Australia, Siberia, Tibet, Xin Jiang, Myanmar between the two maps, not to mention Mexico, Central and South America. Sudan, for example, went from (perhaps) one red dot in the LAND version – that might actually be in Egypt – to all red dots in the BLENDED version. Also what happened to the blue dot that seems to be sitting in the Red Sea – what’s it doing in the LAND (only) map anyway? There’s no trace of that blue dot.
• There are other places where the blue dots were replaced by red or were shrunk – e.g., off the coast of Alaska and New York (?) and Boston (?).
• The red dots at the Antarctica, on the other hand seem to have disappeared (except) for a blue dot in the Peninsula, which was shrunk.
It seems that NOAA has developed a methodology to impute temperature anomalies where none exist – isn’t that what Trenberth said he was worried about?! In any case, any such methodology is based on models (algorithms) and assumptions. Anyone checked these out? One big assumption is that you can impute temperature anomalies (as opposed to temperatures) from locations that are miles away.
I wish they would only show temperature anomalies at actual measurement sites – including where the sea surface temp measurements have been made.
Jim
July 17, 2009 10:27 am
It is impossible to believe the data coming out of any organization that does not publish all raw data, computer code, and any other relevant material. After the incidents below, that goes quadruple.
I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir here, but if you haven’t already, go take a look at these. Look at the Hockey Stick and the Antarctic reconstructions articles. http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/
Also, an article about USHCN adjustments here: http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/06/how-the-us-temperature-record-is-adjusted/
And another stat. fairy duster, Rahmstorf: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6533
Indur,
All NOAA is doing is spreading their own errors around and claiming ground truth. The fact is as they ‘blend’ they increase their error bars, which would mean it could be warming or cooling – which if they were honest would mean they don’t know.
Jim
July 17, 2009 12:44 pm
The only thing these surface temp maps are good for are virtual toilet paper.
PJ
July 17, 2009 12:55 pm
In my opinion something is wrong with that map.
I live in Danmark and I spent a lot of time in Portugal.
In Danmark and North of Germany we had themperatures well above the average in June.
In Portugal we had the opposite. Cooler themperatures even than Danmark a below the average.
How can they show that map? Heat in the ocean? No way. In Portugal the waters were bellow the average and they still today. And the red dots are there, in that map.
Something is wrong. I expected blue dots in Portugal and red dots in Danmark. Not the opposite.
It is impossible. That map is [snip].
RE: Jim (12:44:15) :
I agree on the toilet paper. There is a nice red dot in the UP of Michigan in their picture. From Accuweather website June 09 was 3.3F below average for the local airport (CMX). So far July 09 running 6.5F below average.
If this is what is like in the red dots, I feel for all of you unfortunate enough to be living near any of the big blue dots.
Climate Push gets personal!
Climate CZAR Carol Browner pushing the Climate Bill in person talking to every Senator in person. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25065.html
I bet she carries the latest NOAA data on her lap top making an Ass of all the deniers
Keep them calling before you have to study Russian or Chinese obligatory.
I think there is also a difference between NOAA map and their temperature figures.
Looking at the map, I would estimate an average anomaly of well over 1° Celsius, what doesn’t fit with theirglobal anomaly of 0.7°. Maybe the map is in Fahrenheit and labelled wrongly ? http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2009/jun/map-blended-mntp-200906-pg.gif
Jim
July 17, 2009 4:23 pm
I don’t know if tallbloke is still around, but I am trying to see a way that LT temps could lag SST by a month or more. I read where someone said that when the sea surface warms by the few degrees for ENSO and the Sun is in a low-activity state, that the sea begins to radiate away the heat. I guess it would be more accurate to say that the dynamic equilibrium gets out of balance temporarily and for a while more energy leaves the ocean at that point than enters it. At any rate, when this happens why is there such a lag to detect an increase in LT temps? Is the rate of heating so low that the temps increase very slowly?
These announcements are getting wackier every month. These bureaucrats must think we all all idiots. Here I am, wearing a heavy, long-sleeved shirt in the middle of July, for cripesake! And they are saying it’s record warmth? They’re having too many liquid lunches at the NOAA. They need to take away the gov’t credit cards and bring these people down to earth where the rest of us live.
Gail Combs
July 17, 2009 6:17 pm
rickM (08:43:44) :
“….Advocacy in science is very corrupt and I do accuse them of advocacy”
Rick, it is NOT Science. NOAA knows about the bad siting and bad calibration of the data gathering equipment and has done nothing over the years or even now to try and gather the best possible data. The entire department is therefore worthless. They are nothing more than a political boondoggle paying back their handlers and do not deserve to be called scientists. As soon as an individual starts fudging data to get management mandated results he is no longer doing SCIENCE what he is doing is FRAUD.
This is no different than the “scientists” in Russia chopping of rats tails to prove acquired characteristics become inherited and reporting success, only those poor fellows had the excuss that their very lives were on the line.
John F. Hultquist
July 17, 2009 6:49 pm
blending, smearing, averaging and so on
Thanks for all the technically precise language – it really helps. There is something termed the “mean” and the mean has a serious problem. It is skewed toward the extreme data values. So being equally precise as blending, smearing, etc., this issue seems to be much ado about very little.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
urederra (07:10:52) : “. . . either that or fine hail, it does (look) like something in between snow and hail, actually.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graupel
Maybe what you saw was “graupel.”
Robert Wood
July 18, 2009 1:20 am
What I notice is that the hottest parts are those areas with fewest thermometers
I see a big, red hot spot over Russia. Using the wrong month’s data again, are we?
John McDonald
July 18, 2009 8:19 am
The map shows Chad as being 4 to 5C hotter than average. That’s a bit like saying Hell is having a heat wave. So I checked out the temperature data on weather underground at the various reporting locations around Chad.
Apparently they have the same data disease James Hansen has:
For example, the Capital city of Ndjamena: June 15th was relatively chilly, but it’s average temp is inflated by 10F, a new high of 111F is also recorded (review the hourly data). June 14th, June 16th are also inflated. http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/FTTJ/2009/6/15/DailyHistory.html?req_city=NA&req_state=NA&req_statename=NA
In contrast, during the hotter part of the month June 1-8 the temperature recordings and averages at least match to a reasonable degree and seem to only be inflated by 1 to 2F.
The rest of the country has such poor temperature data it is really difficult to tell, with data being only taken in the morning, or afternoon, skipped, etc. however I can’t see the 8F increase when someone takes the time to record consistently. I think a +8F heat wave should be easy to spot. Does anyone know where the raw NOAA data comes from for the country of Chad? REPLY: see the front page of WUWT for the latest paper on surface temp in Africa from Christy – Anthony
Ron de Haan
July 18, 2009 8:45 am
I can’t stand the heat anymore.
First July 17 in 53 years to reach no higher than Friday’s 70 degrees
Hudson Bay still filled with ice…!!!
By Tom Skilling
on July 17, 2009 10:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
What a summer! Many Chicago area residents are just shaking their heads — some pleased by the lack of heat, others disappointed at the failure of hot weather to gain a foothold here. Extremely rare mid-summer lake-effect rains were pouring down on sections of La Porte and Berrien Counties in Indiana and Michigan Friday evening — just the latest meteorological twist in a summer of topsy-turvy weather across the region.
July has slipped to the coolest to date here in 42 years — its 68.7 degree average temperature running nearly 5 degrees behind the long-term (138-year) average. Friday’s 70-degree high was the first time in 53 years a July 17 temperature failed to rise above 70 — you’d have to travel back to a 64-degree high 85 years ago to find a July 17 that was cooler. In Rockford, Friday’s 67-degree high broke the record for the date, becoming the coolest July 17 high on the books. The reading was Rockford’s fourth record-low daytime maximum to fall since June 30.
July’s average Chicago highs rank among the two lowest in 50 years at O’Hare
The average high for July’s first 17 days has been 77.5 degrees — the second coolest in the 50 years of O’Hare Airport weather records dating back to 1959. Only 1967’s 76.2-degree tally has been cooler. http://weblogs.wgntv.com/chicago-weather/tom-skilling-blog//
Still a good read: http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolar
In the mean time read on the web:
AGW/Climate Change, the World’s first cyberspace war.
And:
Common Sense is not so common (Voltaire)
AJStrata (09:03:34) :
“If you want to remove the ground station mess from the satellite data you begin with just the satellite data itself. The challenge there is how to handle the change over from one satellite to another, and the aging (drift) if the sensor.
My proposal would be to identify 3-6 well documented ground stations around the globe which have good performance and span all 31 years of the satellites. These are the statistical anchor points for the satellite drift and transitions. If, on average, these 6 stations indicate a life time change in Sat1’s sensor from +.5°C to +1.1°C we can adjust for sensor aging. If the same 6 stations detect Sat2’s bias dropping to +.3°C when it took over for Sat1 we can not only adjust for drift but transition.
The key is to only use a small number of ground reference points so you don’t add mountains of sensor errors from the ground.
Once you compute a satellite only plot for the last 31 years, then you can not only compare to NOAA and GISS, you can estimate their errors and biases – even regionally. You can show how each surface sensor performed against the satellites (one Sat or across satellite)
Turn the tables, use the satellites to question the ground sensor errors and calibration. It is, in fact, the proper method scientifically and statistically. Single spacecraft sensor with known and measured performance is the only way to check the performance of thousands of independent sensors with varying precision and health.
When you do this, the NOAA-GISS anomalies are no longer global warming, but data showing how bad the ground sensors are performing! Which is the how this should have been computed in the first place”.
Thanks to WUWT, Anthony’s Surface Station Project and AJStrata we find the road back to sanity.
Who is going to undertake this job and provide us with a non bias temp record?
Lamont is yet another the hacks trying to resuscitate the non-issue with the the UAH data.
Explain this:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2007JD008864.shtml
If one compares NOAA’s maps for the LAND only versus the BLENDED (land + ocean) maps (at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2009/jun/global.html), one sees plenty of anomalies:
• There are many more dots (non-zero anomalies) on land in the BLENDED vs. the LAND only map.
• Greenland, for instance, went (by my count) from 3 red and 1 blue dot (in the LAND only map) to 16 red dots (no blues) in the BLENDED version.
• Look at the filling-in all over Sudan, Libya and Sub-Saharan Africa (Congo, Namibia, Kenya, etc.), the western portion of Australia, Siberia, Tibet, Xin Jiang, Myanmar between the two maps, not to mention Mexico, Central and South America. Sudan, for example, went from (perhaps) one red dot in the LAND version – that might actually be in Egypt – to all red dots in the BLENDED version. Also what happened to the blue dot that seems to be sitting in the Red Sea – what’s it doing in the LAND (only) map anyway? There’s no trace of that blue dot.
• There are other places where the blue dots were replaced by red or were shrunk – e.g., off the coast of Alaska and New York (?) and Boston (?).
• The red dots at the Antarctica, on the other hand seem to have disappeared (except) for a blue dot in the Peninsula, which was shrunk.
It seems that NOAA has developed a methodology to impute temperature anomalies where none exist – isn’t that what Trenberth said he was worried about?! In any case, any such methodology is based on models (algorithms) and assumptions. Anyone checked these out? One big assumption is that you can impute temperature anomalies (as opposed to temperatures) from locations that are miles away.
I wish they would only show temperature anomalies at actual measurement sites – including where the sea surface temp measurements have been made.
It is impossible to believe the data coming out of any organization that does not publish all raw data, computer code, and any other relevant material. After the incidents below, that goes quadruple.
I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir here, but if you haven’t already, go take a look at these. Look at the Hockey Stick and the Antarctic reconstructions articles.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/
Also, an article about USHCN adjustments here:
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/06/how-the-us-temperature-record-is-adjusted/
And another stat. fairy duster, Rahmstorf:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6533
Here is a map of SS and how they have disappeared lately …
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2711
Indur,
All NOAA is doing is spreading their own errors around and claiming ground truth. The fact is as they ‘blend’ they increase their error bars, which would mean it could be warming or cooling – which if they were honest would mean they don’t know.
The only thing these surface temp maps are good for are virtual toilet paper.
In my opinion something is wrong with that map.
I live in Danmark and I spent a lot of time in Portugal.
In Danmark and North of Germany we had themperatures well above the average in June.
In Portugal we had the opposite. Cooler themperatures even than Danmark a below the average.
How can they show that map? Heat in the ocean? No way. In Portugal the waters were bellow the average and they still today. And the red dots are there, in that map.
Something is wrong. I expected blue dots in Portugal and red dots in Danmark. Not the opposite.
It is impossible. That map is [snip].
“The best days of Summer at Minneapolis”
http://www.startribune.com/local/stpaul/51021822.html?elr=KArksi8cyaiUeyD8_o8cyaiUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUU
But not this year as a 1939 cold record is broken.
I am hardly curious to see how NOAA will turn these kind of events into a heat wave.
Do they really think we are that stupid?
RE: Jim (12:44:15) :
I agree on the toilet paper. There is a nice red dot in the UP of Michigan in their picture. From Accuweather website June 09 was 3.3F below average for the local airport (CMX). So far July 09 running 6.5F below average.
If this is what is like in the red dots, I feel for all of you unfortunate enough to be living near any of the big blue dots.
Opinion I can agree with:
Liars and the Global Warming Lies They’re Telling
By Alan Caruba
http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2009/07/liars-and-global-warming-lies-theyre.html
Climate Push gets personal!
Climate CZAR Carol Browner pushing the Climate Bill in person talking to every Senator in person.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25065.html
I bet she carries the latest NOAA data on her lap top making an Ass of all the deniers
Keep them calling before you have to study Russian or Chinese obligatory.
why are NOAA’s temperatures for australia 0.5° to 1.0° higher in average than the (maximum temp) data from the australian bureau of meteorology (and even 1.0° to 1.5° higher compared to the min temp anaomaly) ?
Did they add a new kopenhagen correction T = T + 1.0 ?
ftp://ftp.bom.gov.au/anon/home/ncc/www/temperature/maxanom/month/colour/latest.gif
ftp://ftp.bom.gov.au/anon/home/ncc/www/temperature/minanom/month/colour/latest.gif
I think there is also a difference between NOAA map and their temperature figures.
Looking at the map, I would estimate an average anomaly of well over 1° Celsius, what doesn’t fit with theirglobal anomaly of 0.7°. Maybe the map is in Fahrenheit and labelled wrongly ?
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2009/jun/map-blended-mntp-200906-pg.gif
I don’t know if tallbloke is still around, but I am trying to see a way that LT temps could lag SST by a month or more. I read where someone said that when the sea surface warms by the few degrees for ENSO and the Sun is in a low-activity state, that the sea begins to radiate away the heat. I guess it would be more accurate to say that the dynamic equilibrium gets out of balance temporarily and for a while more energy leaves the ocean at that point than enters it. At any rate, when this happens why is there such a lag to detect an increase in LT temps? Is the rate of heating so low that the temps increase very slowly?
These announcements are getting wackier every month. These bureaucrats must think we all all idiots. Here I am, wearing a heavy, long-sleeved shirt in the middle of July, for cripesake! And they are saying it’s record warmth? They’re having too many liquid lunches at the NOAA. They need to take away the gov’t credit cards and bring these people down to earth where the rest of us live.
rickM (08:43:44) :
“….Advocacy in science is very corrupt and I do accuse them of advocacy”
Rick, it is NOT Science. NOAA knows about the bad siting and bad calibration of the data gathering equipment and has done nothing over the years or even now to try and gather the best possible data. The entire department is therefore worthless. They are nothing more than a political boondoggle paying back their handlers and do not deserve to be called scientists. As soon as an individual starts fudging data to get management mandated results he is no longer doing SCIENCE what he is doing is FRAUD.
This is no different than the “scientists” in Russia chopping of rats tails to prove acquired characteristics become inherited and reporting success, only those poor fellows had the excuss that their very lives were on the line.
blending, smearing, averaging and so on
Thanks for all the technically precise language – it really helps. There is something termed the “mean” and the mean has a serious problem. It is skewed toward the extreme data values. So being equally precise as blending, smearing, etc., this issue seems to be much ado about very little.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
urederra (07:10:52) : “. . . either that or fine hail, it does (look) like something in between snow and hail, actually.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graupel
Maybe what you saw was “graupel.”
What I notice is that the hottest parts are those areas with fewest thermometers
I do not know which baseline is used here, but it doesn´t look as NOAA SST “all red” anomaly at all: http://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/SeasonalClimateOutlook/SeaSurfaceTemperature/HiddenArea/LatestSSTMap.gif
I see a big, red hot spot over Russia. Using the wrong month’s data again, are we?
The map shows Chad as being 4 to 5C hotter than average. That’s a bit like saying Hell is having a heat wave. So I checked out the temperature data on weather underground at the various reporting locations around Chad.
Apparently they have the same data disease James Hansen has:
For example, the Capital city of Ndjamena: June 15th was relatively chilly, but it’s average temp is inflated by 10F, a new high of 111F is also recorded (review the hourly data). June 14th, June 16th are also inflated.
http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/FTTJ/2009/6/15/DailyHistory.html?req_city=NA&req_state=NA&req_statename=NA
In contrast, during the hotter part of the month June 1-8 the temperature recordings and averages at least match to a reasonable degree and seem to only be inflated by 1 to 2F.
The rest of the country has such poor temperature data it is really difficult to tell, with data being only taken in the morning, or afternoon, skipped, etc. however I can’t see the 8F increase when someone takes the time to record consistently. I think a +8F heat wave should be easy to spot. Does anyone know where the raw NOAA data comes from for the country of Chad?
REPLY: see the front page of WUWT for the latest paper on surface temp in Africa from Christy – Anthony
I can’t stand the heat anymore.
First July 17 in 53 years to reach no higher than Friday’s 70 degrees
Hudson Bay still filled with ice…!!!
By Tom Skilling
on July 17, 2009 10:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
What a summer! Many Chicago area residents are just shaking their heads — some pleased by the lack of heat, others disappointed at the failure of hot weather to gain a foothold here. Extremely rare mid-summer lake-effect rains were pouring down on sections of La Porte and Berrien Counties in Indiana and Michigan Friday evening — just the latest meteorological twist in a summer of topsy-turvy weather across the region.
July has slipped to the coolest to date here in 42 years — its 68.7 degree average temperature running nearly 5 degrees behind the long-term (138-year) average. Friday’s 70-degree high was the first time in 53 years a July 17 temperature failed to rise above 70 — you’d have to travel back to a 64-degree high 85 years ago to find a July 17 that was cooler. In Rockford, Friday’s 67-degree high broke the record for the date, becoming the coolest July 17 high on the books. The reading was Rockford’s fourth record-low daytime maximum to fall since June 30.
July’s average Chicago highs rank among the two lowest in 50 years at O’Hare
The average high for July’s first 17 days has been 77.5 degrees — the second coolest in the 50 years of O’Hare Airport weather records dating back to 1959. Only 1967’s 76.2-degree tally has been cooler.
http://weblogs.wgntv.com/chicago-weather/tom-skilling-blog//
Killer cold snap (-22 Celsius) hits Argentina, snow in Buenos Aires
http://climateresearchnews.com/2009/07/killer-cold-snap-grips-south-america/
Still a good read:
http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolar
In the mean time read on the web:
AGW/Climate Change, the World’s first cyberspace war.
And:
Common Sense is not so common (Voltaire)