Hot off the press from Dr. Roy Spencer. After being essentially zero last month, we have a jump to .410°C in July. This was not unexpected, as a El Nino has been developing.
July 2009 Global Temperature Update: +0.41 deg. C
August 5th, 2009
YR MON GLOBE NH SH TROPICS
2009 1 0.304 0.443 0.165 -0.036
2009 2 0.347 0.678 0.016 0.051
2009 3 0.206 0.310 0.103 -0.149
2009 4 0.090 0.124 0.056 -0.014
2009 5 0.045 0.046 0.044 -0.166
2009 6 0.003 0.031 -0.025 -0.003
2009 7 0.410 0.211 0.609 0.427
July 2009 experienced a large jump in global average tropospheric temperatures, from +0.00 deg. C in June to +0.41 deg. C in July, with the tropics and southern hemisphere showing the greatest warming.
NOTE: For those who are monitoring the daily progress of global-average temperatures here, we will be switching from NOAA-15 to Aqua AMSU in the next few weeks, which will provide more accurate tracking on a daily basis. We will be including both our lower troposphere (LT) and mid-tropospheric (MT) pre-processing of the data.
Lucia at the Blackboard has an analaysis of RSS, which came in higher this month also, at 0.392°C.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/rss-for-july-0392-c-graphs-to-follow/
This was expected, but not for reason given here. Regular readers here may not have realised that lower atmospheric temperatures were at all time highs throughout July, for some reason this never received the profile it should have on this blog, especially after the high surface temperatures recorded in June.
The reference to El Nino here shows very poor research and lack of understanding. The El Nino is starting to develop and could be significant later this NH autumn. At the moment it is correct to say that the threshold for El Nino conditions have been met but we are still a few months away from an El Nino event. These points have been discussed on this blog recently so why the sudden swing to stating an El Nino is causing rapid lower atmospheric temperature rises?
If the writer had done a little research instead of the throwaway El Nino remark, he would have noted where the atmospheric heat anomolies are sited. It is not just over tropical pacific areas, but equally tropical Atlantic and the Indian Ocean. Not typical at all of an El Nino (that is when one gets going!)
The biggest surprise is where the largest increases in lower atmospheric tempeatures are occuring, in sub Antarctica. This is especially evident from the Antarctic coast to Australia.
It has been previously noted on this blog that it is easy to be sceptical of global warming after a strong La Nina and La Nina conditions. It seems that you are now finding out how difficult the obverse is true. It is especially ironic this is happening during a prolonged solar minimum and a continuing -ve PDO when, by the sceptics arguments, the global temperatures should be falling!
Doesn’t take long does it! What a complete reversal from last month. Maybe you can blame these high temperatures on poorly based satellites or UHI….
That makes July 2009 the second warmest July on record.
It would be the warmest were if not “adjusted”.
You are wrong – Anthony – to claim this is to be expected as a consequence of El Nino. You know that 6 months ago we had La Nina and that it is too early for the atmosphere to respond to this El Nino event.
All bets on a strong El Nino by this winter are off. The pattern is completely against it and the cooling that is happening in the central Nino regions will overspread all regions within the next two weeks.
The El Nino is weak as of now and hasn’t moved.
Why do so many wait breathlessly each month for these numbers to come out?
Is it so you can jump on the “my side is now winning” wagon? I have watched this go back and forth for a while with each month’s numbers attempting to be used to validate a personal opinion of either it’s getting warmer or it’s getting colder. All this based on an arbitrary base line. Good grief!
Let’s see: 90 year snows in South America, rugged winter in Australia and South Aftrica, late spring and very cool summer in Canada, NE and Upper Midwest, Snow on the Tour de France in Switzerland and Bavaria…
so how is this to be expected?
Half of our July here in Pacific Northwest was cool and the 2nd half had a heat wave just like 1942.
I get it, it was those lava hot boiling sea cauldrons off of S. America and a few choice places. No summer in Alaska this year, no 90 degree temps. Haven’t heard of a Siberian Summer which is even rarer and surely to make headlines.
So, where did all this heat come from?
Ah, yes, hot GCR’s, that’s what it was.
It surely was NOT the lazy sun. The sun varies by less than .00x%, from all the tepid TSI debates.
Oceans burping off a load of hot water in a last hurrah before winter hits?
Adam (12:41:08) :
Thus, I don’t agree that the high July anomaly is “expected” just because El Nino is developing.
However it was to be expected because since switching to Aqua UAH monthly anomaly data shows a minimum in May/June followed by a rise in July. Any effects of ‘El Niño’ will just add on.
Humm, funny… after very deep and careful analysis (… humhumhrr… excel.. humherrhum… linear regression… hum..) southern ocean warm faster than southern land.
From a data point of view, are tropics included in northern and southern hemisphere or is it 3 different areas?
An 1/2 of 1 degree. Wow, I’m going to have to sweat this one out!
🙂 That is if you want to round it to the tenth degree!
So if this is to be believed, then why the switch to another satellite?
We have seen the blip before on satellites ready to kick the bucket.
Lots of satellites having problems. Maybe hackers got into the data stream and are playing cruel tricks, aided by nations wishing to play global cyber war.
Trick the West into lemming off of climate change cliff.
It just doesn’t make sense, doesn’t fit the ground reports of climate conditions. Too many cooler and cold areas across the globe.
Dr David Jones of Ferny Creek (15:40:16) : “That makes July 2009 the second warmest July on record.”
To which record do you refer?
And aren’t we supposed to be something like 0.88°–1.15°C warmer than the the 20th century benchmark (according to Hansen, et al.)?
Dr. Jone’s comment reminds me of Jacob Mack (13:20:51 in a previous thread) : “. . . interestingly enough the 1988 median predictions input by Jim Hansen were remarkably accurate.” Apparently not.
Normally temp lags enso by 7 months or so, so an ‘alarmist’ I wasn’t expecting any big increase in temps for a few months yet. But the decent in temp from a peak in Jan 2007 to the bottom in Jan 2008 happened with pretty much 0 lag from an El Nino peaking in early 2007, and la nina peaking in 2008, so the current ramp up could be due to the developing el nino. Or it could be something else. It isn’t CO2, because that only causes about 0.0015 degrees increase each month. Just like the previous short term cooling trend was not Co2, or the failure of Co2 to warm, but something else.
That makes July 2009 the second warmest July on record.
It would be the warmest were if not “adjusted”
I fail to see this. looks pretty middle of the road to me.
SonicFrog
The carping has been about the strong differences in trends by month in UAH data since 1998. They are a consequence of the merging of AMSU data to the MSU data record, as Dr. Christy pointed out, which proves to be difficult. The effect looks like this (5-year averages of anomaly by month)
http://i28.tinypic.com/14vu5vq.png
and is unique to the UAH data. Notice the fanning out of the different months after 1998 as compared to the very similar trends before 1998. It makes comparisons between individual months using UAH data difficult. If I understand Dr. Christy correctly, the annual trend (i.e. using full years) ought to be fine.
here comes the part everybody is gonna sum up all the cold parts. In the Netherlands July was 1.0 C warmer. July was also hot in Italy and Spain. If you add some cold in the States you get you 0.2 in the NH.
I am an Englishman who lives in Suffolk, (that’s in England). I am therefore sceptical of all enthusiasm. For the second year running my tomatoes are unwilling to ripen. We have more British Ladybirds (not the vile murderous Yankie Harlequin kind) and more Painted Lady butterflies than I’ve seen in years. Neither of the insects is tolerant of over-heated weather. I use the word ‘weather’ deliberately. Why don’t you all grow up?
Pieter F (16:10:32) :
Mike is 2 inches taller than Peter and Frank is 3 inches taller than John, therefore Frank is 3-2 = 1 inch taller than Mike …. or is he? That’s exactly the kind of reasoning you are doing if you compare UAH or RSS anomaly values straight to GISTEMP anomalies. UAH/RSS refer to the 1979-1998 period, GISTEMP to the 1951-1980 period. GISTEMP global average for the UAH/RSS base period is about 0.24°C, which you have to figure in for comparisons.
Tom in Florida @15:59:04 ,
I sympathize with you, but it’s just a fun pass-time, like looking for Sun spots and sea ice coverage.
Not much heat here http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal/temp10anim.shtml
or here http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
???
All:
Large month-to-month changes in tropospheric temperature are likely to be dominated by non-radiative transfers of heat, that is, changes in the rate at which convection transfers heat from the surface to the atmosphere. Since June surface temperatures were so high, the July warming of the troposphere might just be reflecting that temporary increase in heat transfer. In the tropics, intraseasonal oscillations are the largest source of this variability.
In daily satellite data we find from global ocean averages that SSTs tend to peak 2 weeks before tropospheric temperature, then a minimum in SST is observed two weeks after that. This lag in convective heat transfer is something that the climate models don’t do very well (I’ve been analyzing it in the IPCC models), but it’s not clear what that might mean in terms of long-term climate change.
HopeForWarming (14:51:01)
Western Canada was hot.
@Mary Hinge
“…Doesn’t take long does it! What a complete reversal from last month.”
Mary – you are making a very valid point. I am skeptic, but I agree with you about the cherry picking nature of too many advocates on both sides.
I think the earth is warming up. It had been doing so for about 200 years and may continue to do so. Dr. Roy wrote an excellent entry on the “Natural Climate Cycle” and its deniers. The deniers exists on both sides of the debate. Some AGW proponents claim that if the earth is warming up it must by because of human actions. The core AGW skeptics claim the temperature is stable and there is no warm-up at all. Both are wrong.
The earth is warming up as a long term trend (100+ years). This is pretty much a fact. But by how much?
Anthony and others here raised valid concerns about the reliability of the measurements of the surface temperatures and the adjustments to the GISS surface temp data. I share the concerns that the adjustments are one directional and are artificially inflating the GISS reported temperatures over time, raising the level of alarm and urgency about GW. But even without those adjustments, I believe the earth is warming, just at a lesser rate than that reported on GISS.
We need to stay consistent. If we think that UAH and RSS were good for previous months, we should accept them even if they go “the wrong direction”. As a skeptic, I am not offended by evidence that the earth is warming up. As Dr. Roy said, it is part of a long term natural climate cycle. I also accept the UHS based data as an indicator of the true long term trend, un-tempered by politician-scientists.
And as I understand it, that long term trend seems to be about 1.5 degree/century. Not very scary, and not worthy of the AGW scare. And of course, I really doubt that this natural warming is driven by our CO2 emissions with so much mounting evidence to the contrary.
As a skeptics, let’s not try to argue that the earth does not warm up at all. Such a extreme claim undermines the credibility of the skeptics and is inconsistent with the our central claim of the natural climate cycles. Instead, we should continue to argue the magnitude of the warm-up (and accept UAH as a leading reliable indicator) and the argue the natural processes behind the warm up.
Garrett. Good points. The much publicized El Nino, so far, has not developed at the speed the “models” anticipated. The warm water seems to have nearly run it”s course as seen here.http://www.bom.gov.au/bmrc/ocean/results/ocean_anals/SEQ_Equator/2009/Aug.gif
Pretty radical jump for the SH. Just looking back through the record for the SH, that must be the biggest one month change. Tropics jump up is similar to the start of the 1998 nino episode. NH makes radical changes pretty regular because of all the land.
So Roy, where were the “hot spots” that made this 0.4C jump?
Like the guy in the UK, a lot of people around here (No. Ca) are having trouble getting thier garden crop to ripen. If it were hot like previous summers, I’d have 2 dozen pumpkins by now. I got one. For every place I know of that had a heat wave, there were 2 or 3 that were 10-20 degrees below average.
Where’s the heat?
Are you certain this is not another satellite decay on the way to failure?
When all is said and done I think the earth will still be in a general cooling trend for some time to come.