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 18, 2009 9:52 am
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Don’t miss this piece by James Lewis
Pajamas Media » It Is the Best of Times and the Worst of Times for Science
The sciences are now like Russia after Glastnost: Everybody can see a massive disaster ahead, but nobody wants to say it out loud. We are in that moment of shocked silence just before the bare-naked emperor becomes a target of universal laughter and ridicule. Well, this emperor is buck naked, just like the fairy tale.
As I’ve talked with scientific colleagues in private, they are quietly nodding, yes, yes, of course it’s all BS. Pure model-driven fantasy. Really lousy, deceptive, and fraudulent selection of the data. A gigantic slap in the face for NASA. A thousand greedy grant swingers all over the world. The media chasing scare stories, and fake “scientists” chasing the media. They fed each other lie after lie after lie. It was a very profitable partnership.
…
…the media are full of phony superstitions and the worst kind of pseudo-science. If this is the best of times, it is also the worst of times — with a fetid plague of fraud whipped up by the likes of Al Gore, who helped to put fanatics like James Hansen into power. Hansen is not a scientist. He is a zealot who uses math models to push his personal crusade.
…
As Professor Fred Singer and others have shown, none of the climate models can “retrodict” the solid data of the past. How could any decent scientist therefore claim to predict global temps in the distant future? Global warming was always a flaming fraud, and at some level a lot of scientists knew it. They just kept their heads down — to their everlasting shame.
Everybody outside the climate game just assumed the frauds must be telling the truth. All that modeling seemed to be somebody’s specialty, and you don’t arrogantly invade somebody’s specialty, do you? So the mounting fraud went unpunished for years and years, while politicians like Al Gore made sure the money went to feed the fraud.
…
My question is, what shall we do with the science frauds once everybody gets it? The rules are very clear. Science organizations and universities have strict regulations against fraud. Proven liars are fired, and if they have stolen money by deception, they should be held legally responsible to pay it back or go to jail.
Bernie Madoff is a small operator compared to James Hansen. Madoff just got 150 years. Hansen is still ranting against the plain evidence.
There are honest mistakes in science. On the frontiers of science everything looks vague and debatable for a while. But you don’t drop your standards so low that any con artist can get away with fraud. That’s what’s happened in climate modeling. It is therefore crucial to re-establish the credibility of science. That means firing the guilty, and if necessary, prosecuting them.
We’ll know that the sciences are on the road to health again when the biggest crooks are exposed and fired. Don’t expect it soon. But honest scientists should speak out, as many of them are beginning to do. Climate modeling has become a rubble-strewn disaster area, and historically, tainted fields are simply choked off and allowed to lie fallow for a generation or so before the first green shoots can grow again. Choke off the money, and the climate game will wither. All that accumulated expertise can be put to do something useful — like predicting the stock market or trying to beat the house in Vegas. http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2009/07/don-miss-this-piece-by-james-lewis.html
urederra
July 18, 2009 12:04 pm
Flanagan (07:49:52) :
uruderra: they are in the Vosges, not in the Alps and it’s raining, not snowing.
Yesterday, after battling through the cold and snow to Colmar to regain the green jersey, Hushovd roared at Peter Velits (Milram) for pipping him at the line.
Edward Mitchell
July 18, 2009 1:17 pm
According to the anomaly map, New Brunswick ((where I just vacationed)the locals are saying this year is just like last year, the summer that never was), seems to be 4°C above normal. According to the Environment Canada’s climate data, June 2009 was .68°C compared to the 1971-2000 time period, and .88°C for the 1961-1990 time period. This would also explain why the 1961-1990 time frame is commonly used, it was cooler then 1971-2000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111
Manfred
July 18, 2009 3:01 pm
Juraj V. (06:15:34) :
“I do not know which baseline is used here, but it doesn´t look as NOAA SST “all red” anomaly at all:”
they say “raw data from: the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).”
..and it looks qutie different: http://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/SeasonalClimateOutlook/SeaSurfaceTemperature/index.html
I don’t know, if NOAA averages are ok, even if we neglect their usual warming bias, but their graphic is obviously wrong, it doesn’t match their own averages, doesn’t match above graphic or the graphic from the australian land mass (which uses the same reference period), and all NOAA temperatures appear to be elevated by about the same amount.
Steven G
July 18, 2009 4:03 pm
Very convenient that this discrepancy is occurring now that Congress is voting on the climate change bill. Any guess which of the temperature metrics will be reported by the media?
This Quiet Sun
Published on July 17th, 2009
The Sun has gone back to blank after having had just one sunspot group that caused otherwise rational people to go off their heads…
Here’s the magnetogram of the Sun showing precisely nothing that presages any sunspot formation:
As a comparison, here is the sun image from the Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope at 304 ångstroms for today and near solar maximum in 2000 by way of comparison
Now its easy to see how quiet the Sun really is at the moment. The prominences are weak, the coronal holes are very small, the corona (the solar atmosphere) shrunken.
All of this can be seen to be normal behaviour for the Sun, except that this hiatus between Solar Cycle 23 finally winding down and the next cycle is unprecedented in nearly a hundred years. (By the way, the overuse of “unprecedented” by climate alarmists has me wincing at using it as a cliché)
Eventually the solar cycle must return. The question is whether solar scientists gain insight into the behaviour of the Sun by understanding why their models failed (see below). The result can only be better science. http://solarscience.auditblogs.com/2009/07/17/this-quiet-sun/
Roger Knights
July 19, 2009 9:39 pm
“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 believe this technique is how the warmists have managed to overawe non-scientists skeptics in politics and the media–with a barrage to canned “rebuttals of skeptical arguments.” The rebuttals to the rebuttals require deep involvement in the issue, so a skeptical scientist or two, or someone like Morano (sp?) should be present. Or Browner should consent to an eight-hour debate with such a skeptic, with the taped results made available online for senators to see.
Tyler
July 22, 2009 5:58 am
From NWS on Weather Underground this AM. No doubt NOAA’s July Map will show all of NY Yellow or Brown – well above normal, near record heat:
… Unusually cool July for Central Park…
For some perspective… here are the top ten coolest julys on record
since 1869 for Central Park in New York city:
coolest
avg. Temp. Year
70.7 1888
71.9 1884
72.1 1914
72.3 2000/1871
72.4 1891
72.6 1895
72.8 1902/1869
72.9 1956
73.1 1890
73.2 2001
Due to the unusually cool conditions thus far in July… here are
some interesting facts to note…
With an average daily temperature of 71.6… currently running 4.6
degrees below normal… this July is on track for the 2nd coolest
on record. Below average temperatures have occurred on 19 out of
21 days… with the other two days being normal. There have been
zero above normal days.
Central Park has only reached 85 degrees once this month… on the
17th… and has not yet reached 90 degrees this Summer. If this
continues through the end of the month… it will only be the
second time since 1869 that 90 degrees was not reached in June or
July. The only other time this occurred was 1996.
Adam Grey
July 22, 2009 8:46 am
Hadley just released their June 2009 value – 0.503C. This puts it in the same range as GISS and NCDC. So the conspiracy to fool the public is global. The UK Met Office is helping the US energy bill get passed….
But seriously, it would seem there is a technical reason for the discrepancy. I’ve seen many ideas around the web,.
Satellite measurements of the Lower Troposphere (what is being compared to surface record) is 8km deep to surface. Surface temps are just above the ground and SSTs. They’re measuring two different depths entirely, so the LT lag might have some influence.
GISS interpolates to include the poles – the whole globe. Hadley doesn’t. I don’t know about NCDC. UAH includes polar data, which are a bit buggered up by reading over the ice. This interference with spectral readings. RSS don’t do that (I think). They measure from ~82.5 north to ~70 south.
UAH has a large and persistent bump in their annual cycle – around June. This suggests a problem with algorithms rather than satellkite problems. We all know UAH has had massive adjustments in the past.
Neither the satellite nor the surface records are without problems. I think we can discount conspiracy theories and start thinking about technical reasons.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Don’t miss this piece by James Lewis
Pajamas Media » It Is the Best of Times and the Worst of Times for Science
The sciences are now like Russia after Glastnost: Everybody can see a massive disaster ahead, but nobody wants to say it out loud. We are in that moment of shocked silence just before the bare-naked emperor becomes a target of universal laughter and ridicule. Well, this emperor is buck naked, just like the fairy tale.
As I’ve talked with scientific colleagues in private, they are quietly nodding, yes, yes, of course it’s all BS. Pure model-driven fantasy. Really lousy, deceptive, and fraudulent selection of the data. A gigantic slap in the face for NASA. A thousand greedy grant swingers all over the world. The media chasing scare stories, and fake “scientists” chasing the media. They fed each other lie after lie after lie. It was a very profitable partnership.
…
…the media are full of phony superstitions and the worst kind of pseudo-science. If this is the best of times, it is also the worst of times — with a fetid plague of fraud whipped up by the likes of Al Gore, who helped to put fanatics like James Hansen into power. Hansen is not a scientist. He is a zealot who uses math models to push his personal crusade.
…
As Professor Fred Singer and others have shown, none of the climate models can “retrodict” the solid data of the past. How could any decent scientist therefore claim to predict global temps in the distant future? Global warming was always a flaming fraud, and at some level a lot of scientists knew it. They just kept their heads down — to their everlasting shame.
Everybody outside the climate game just assumed the frauds must be telling the truth. All that modeling seemed to be somebody’s specialty, and you don’t arrogantly invade somebody’s specialty, do you? So the mounting fraud went unpunished for years and years, while politicians like Al Gore made sure the money went to feed the fraud.
…
My question is, what shall we do with the science frauds once everybody gets it? The rules are very clear. Science organizations and universities have strict regulations against fraud. Proven liars are fired, and if they have stolen money by deception, they should be held legally responsible to pay it back or go to jail.
Bernie Madoff is a small operator compared to James Hansen. Madoff just got 150 years. Hansen is still ranting against the plain evidence.
There are honest mistakes in science. On the frontiers of science everything looks vague and debatable for a while. But you don’t drop your standards so low that any con artist can get away with fraud. That’s what’s happened in climate modeling. It is therefore crucial to re-establish the credibility of science. That means firing the guilty, and if necessary, prosecuting them.
We’ll know that the sciences are on the road to health again when the biggest crooks are exposed and fired. Don’t expect it soon. But honest scientists should speak out, as many of them are beginning to do. Climate modeling has become a rubble-strewn disaster area, and historically, tainted fields are simply choked off and allowed to lie fallow for a generation or so before the first green shoots can grow again. Choke off the money, and the climate game will wither. All that accumulated expertise can be put to do something useful — like predicting the stock market or trying to beat the house in Vegas.
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2009/07/don-miss-this-piece-by-james-lewis.html
Yeah, It was in The Vosges, but it was snowing. I was with my brother watching the TV and both of us made the same comment about the rain turning into snow when the riders were passing the summit.
Here is a link where they cite the snow at yesterday’s stage:
http://tour-de-france.velonews.com/article/95383/cavendish-relegated-for-dangerous-sprint
According to the anomaly map, New Brunswick ((where I just vacationed)the locals are saying this year is just like last year, the summer that never was), seems to be 4°C above normal. According to the Environment Canada’s climate data, June 2009 was .68°C compared to the 1971-2000 time period, and .88°C for the 1961-1990 time period. This would also explain why the 1961-1990 time frame is commonly used, it was cooler then 1971-2000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111
Juraj V. (06:15:34) :
“I do not know which baseline is used here, but it doesn´t look as NOAA SST “all red” anomaly at all:”
they say “raw data from: the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).”
..and it looks qutie different:
http://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/SeasonalClimateOutlook/SeaSurfaceTemperature/index.html
I don’t know, if NOAA averages are ok, even if we neglect their usual warming bias, but their graphic is obviously wrong, it doesn’t match their own averages, doesn’t match above graphic or the graphic from the australian land mass (which uses the same reference period), and all NOAA temperatures appear to be elevated by about the same amount.
Very convenient that this discrepancy is occurring now that Congress is voting on the climate change bill. Any guess which of the temperature metrics will be reported by the media?
Again cold records will be blown to pieces in July:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2295625/posts
This Quiet Sun
Published on July 17th, 2009
The Sun has gone back to blank after having had just one sunspot group that caused otherwise rational people to go off their heads…
Here’s the magnetogram of the Sun showing precisely nothing that presages any sunspot formation:
As a comparison, here is the sun image from the Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope at 304 ångstroms for today and near solar maximum in 2000 by way of comparison
Now its easy to see how quiet the Sun really is at the moment. The prominences are weak, the coronal holes are very small, the corona (the solar atmosphere) shrunken.
All of this can be seen to be normal behaviour for the Sun, except that this hiatus between Solar Cycle 23 finally winding down and the next cycle is unprecedented in nearly a hundred years. (By the way, the overuse of “unprecedented” by climate alarmists has me wincing at using it as a cliché)
Eventually the solar cycle must return. The question is whether solar scientists gain insight into the behaviour of the Sun by understanding why their models failed (see below). The result can only be better science.
http://solarscience.auditblogs.com/2009/07/17/this-quiet-sun/
“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 believe this technique is how the warmists have managed to overawe non-scientists skeptics in politics and the media–with a barrage to canned “rebuttals of skeptical arguments.” The rebuttals to the rebuttals require deep involvement in the issue, so a skeptical scientist or two, or someone like Morano (sp?) should be present. Or Browner should consent to an eight-hour debate with such a skeptic, with the taped results made available online for senators to see.
From NWS on Weather Underground this AM. No doubt NOAA’s July Map will show all of NY Yellow or Brown – well above normal, near record heat:
… Unusually cool July for Central Park…
For some perspective… here are the top ten coolest julys on record
since 1869 for Central Park in New York city:
coolest
avg. Temp. Year
70.7 1888
71.9 1884
72.1 1914
72.3 2000/1871
72.4 1891
72.6 1895
72.8 1902/1869
72.9 1956
73.1 1890
73.2 2001
Due to the unusually cool conditions thus far in July… here are
some interesting facts to note…
With an average daily temperature of 71.6… currently running 4.6
degrees below normal… this July is on track for the 2nd coolest
on record. Below average temperatures have occurred on 19 out of
21 days… with the other two days being normal. There have been
zero above normal days.
Central Park has only reached 85 degrees once this month… on the
17th… and has not yet reached 90 degrees this Summer. If this
continues through the end of the month… it will only be the
second time since 1869 that 90 degrees was not reached in June or
July. The only other time this occurred was 1996.
Hadley just released their June 2009 value – 0.503C. This puts it in the same range as GISS and NCDC. So the conspiracy to fool the public is global. The UK Met Office is helping the US energy bill get passed….
But seriously, it would seem there is a technical reason for the discrepancy. I’ve seen many ideas around the web,.
Satellite measurements of the Lower Troposphere (what is being compared to surface record) is 8km deep to surface. Surface temps are just above the ground and SSTs. They’re measuring two different depths entirely, so the LT lag might have some influence.
GISS interpolates to include the poles – the whole globe. Hadley doesn’t. I don’t know about NCDC. UAH includes polar data, which are a bit buggered up by reading over the ice. This interference with spectral readings. RSS don’t do that (I think). They measure from ~82.5 north to ~70 south.
UAH has a large and persistent bump in their annual cycle – around June. This suggests a problem with algorithms rather than satellkite problems. We all know UAH has had massive adjustments in the past.
Neither the satellite nor the surface records are without problems. I think we can discount conspiracy theories and start thinking about technical reasons.