From Roy Spencer’s blog (h/t to Ron de Haan)
August 21st, 2009 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
Since NOAA has announced that their data show July 2009 global-average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) reaching a record high for the month of July, I thought I would take a look at what the combined AMSR-E & TMI instruments on NASA’s Aqua and TRMM satellites (respectively) had to say. I thought it might at least provide an independent sanity check since NOAA does not include these satellite data in their operational product.
The SSTs from AMSR-E are geographically the most complete record of global SSTs available since the instrument is a microwave radiometer and can measure the surface through most cloud conditions. AMSR-E (launched on Aqua in May 2002) provides truly global coverage, while the TMI (which was launched on TRMM in late 1997) does not, so the combined SST product produced by Frank Wentz’s Remote Sensing Systems provides complete global coverage only since the launch of Aqua (mid-2002). Through a cooperative project between RSS, NASA, and UAH, The digital data are available from the same (NASA Discover) website that our daily tropospheric temperatures are displayed, but for the SSTs you have to read the daily binary files and compute the anomalies yourself. I use FORTRAN for this, since it’s the only programming language I know.
As can be seen in the following plot of running 11 day average anomalies, July 2009 was indeed the warmest month during the relatively short Aqua satellite period of record, with the peak anomaly occurring about July 18.
The large and frequent swings in global average temperature are real, and result from changes in the rate at which water evaporates from the ocean surface. These variations are primarily driven by tropical Intraseasonal Oscillations, which change tropical-average surface winds by about 2 knots from lowest wind conditions to highest wind conditions.
As can be seen, the SSTs started to fall fast during the last week of July. If you are wondering what I think they will do in the coming months, well, that’s easy…I have no clue.
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As a layman, I understand only one thing here. If the global sea surface temperature data are reliable (which is subject to specialists’ opinion), in July 2009 the average sea surface temperature briefly (for couple of days) exceeded previous peaks observed since 2002. Since then it has sharply fallen to the much lower level. There are no reliable data registered before 2002 that could be compared with this set of data.
On the basis of this 7-years long set of supposedly reliable data, is it possible to make far-fetched conclusions about coral bleaching, Arctic ice melting, or decades-long global warming trend? Shouldn’t a self-respecting journalist limit his/her conclusions to the same period of time that is represented by the data being discussed?
High SST hasn’t stopped the re-freeze-up north of 80deg. The DMI on the right sidebar above shows a decisive plunge below freezing that is likely to deepen for the duration of the season to mid-May 2010 at least. The weather at Alert, Nunavut, Canada (82. 31N) is showing the same thing and there has been some new snow plus more in the forecast:
http://www.wunderground.com/global/stations/71082.html
And the weather at the “North Pole Cam” which has wandered to about 83N shows sub zero temps:
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/gallery_np_weatherdata.html
Wintry scene August 21st 2009: http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/npole/2009/images/noaa1-2009-0821-172433.jpg
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/gallery_np_weatherdata.html
Dip in the sea anyone?
crosspatch,
Hurricane Bill is moving up the coast right on top of the Gulf Stream this week. It would be very interesting to see the before and after SST’s to see how much surface heat was removed…
Anthony, sorry for the OT, but finally today we are at 700 total spotless days since 27 jannuary 2004:
http://209.85.129.132/translate_c?hl=it&sl=it&tl=en&u=http://daltonsminima.wordpress.com/2009/08/22/con-oggi-raggiungeremo-i-700-giorni-spotless-totali-da-inizio-minimo/&prev=hp&rurl=translate.google.it&usg=ALkJrhisc0DWz3pixaOTu29TGVmX0rETUw
“crosspatch (01:19:28) : said
So I had a thought today. (amazing, eh?)”
If your huricane hypothesis has any credence I will lay claim to it. If not I would like to point out I always thought it was a stupid idea 🙂
Hope someone will report whether Hurricane Bill provides any evidence of my (your) interesting idea.
tonyb
A couple of days ago the Weather Channel reported that the global SST was 10 degrees above “normal”. I wonder where they got that number.
Roy Spencer said:
“As can be seen, the SSTs started to fall fast during the last week of July. If you are wondering what I think they will do in the coming months, well, that’s easy…I have no clue.”
But I do and you can check the argument for yourself at: http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/
Incidentally, ENSO 3.4 is a very poor guide to the change in global tropical temperature and therefore the temperature of the globe as a whole. Why spend a lot of money and effort trying to work out what drives the temperature in an unrepresentative section of the tropical Pacific? Its a complete red herring.
‘If the trade winds blow the ocean cools’ is not a new observation.
Looks to me like the southern ocean is largely back into negative territory. It is in the South that El Nino is manufactured.
The term “global SST” bothers me. The entire Earth? (at least the wet part) That’s a lot of water, some warmer, some colder. What is the footprint or measuring area? Obviously, some of it overlaps land, at least part of the time. Resolution better than 0.1 degree C (perhaps 0.01, just eyeballing the graph) seems just a bit over the top.
I suspect the signal/noise ratio is somewhat lower than the satellite operators will admit.
Alexander Feht: You wrote, “There are no reliable data registered before 2002 that could be compared with this set of data.”
How did you come to that conclusion? Satellite-based SST data has been available since Nov 1981. Here’s a link to my monthly update for July 2009.
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/08/july-2009-sst-anomaly-update.html
In addition to that, the Hadley Centre produces two long-term SST reconstruction datasets (HADSST and HADISST), and the NCDC has a few more that are available (ERSST.v2 and ERSST.v3b). But you have to keep in mind that those datasets are reconstructions and have more and more gaps in time and space between readings the further back in time one goes.
And the researchers at Hadley Centre and NCDC are continuously finding “anomalous” shifts in the data that they can’t explain so they make updates. Hadley Centre is working on one now to correct what they call a discontinuity in the data around 1945. Refer to “A large discontinuity in the mid-twentieth century in observed global-mean surface temperature”
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7195/abs/nature06982.html
And here’s an article about the paper:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/case-against-climate-change-discredited-by-study-835856.html
As you can see, they blame a change in sampling methods for the shift.
Curiously, (and unfortunately for the researchers because it shows a weakness in their conclusion) that same shift appears in Cloud Cover and Marine Air Temperature data.
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/03/large-1945-sst-discontinuity-also.html
It also appears, but inverted, in wind speed data:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/03/part-2-of-large-sst-discontinuity-also.html
So there is longer term data. You just have to know where they tweaked it and why.
So we have had the LOWEST SST ON RECORD!!!! and the HIGHEST SST ON RECORD!!! in about the last 18 months. Both anomalous by about the same margin. Doesn’t seem like anything to get worked up about, especially since the period of record is so short.
Unless, of course, you are suffering from a severe case of confirmation bias.
Interesting to see the interplay between the rate of oceanic energy release (slight El Nino) and the climate responses which appear to be quite rapid.
We seem to have a continuing development of polar cooling despite the current tendency towards El Nino conditions.
The mid latitude jets overall are still more equatorward than they were during the late 20th Century warming spell which may explain why Hurricane Bill is being drawn into the mid latitude jet stream rather than driving into the Gulf of Mexico.
Unless the air circulation systems move more poleward than they are at present then there will be no resumption of warming global air temperatures.
If we have had a background CO2 warming for the past decade which had been offset by the recent La Nina then this return towards warmer ocean surfaces ought to have had a stronger effect in mitigating the current polar cooling.
The big test will be whether or not the warmer ocean surfaces release enough energy to mitigate the development of large and intense cold areas over the northern continents this winter.
Note that warmer ocean surfaces involve a reducing ocean energy content unless the solar input is enough to replace the energy lost.
Warmer SSTs usually result in a cooling ocean bulk but a warmer air (for a time).
I just posted a new mystery that has emerged about these SST measurements…so far, I’m clueless as to what is going on:
http://drroyspencer.com
Totally off thread
WUWT that readers might want to go to the Radio 4 website for the listen again version of “Any Questions” for an exchange between Jonathan Porritt, a well know UK AGW alarmist and James Delingpole, who recent interviewd Plimer for the Spectator.
Porritt made sevral outrageous statements suugesting that the like so of Delingpole were lying and actually got away with a 7 metre SLR that JP did not counter. JP also under the delusion that the UK media publish lies about CC when 99% of them, with BBC in the van, recylcling the usual AGW tosh.
JP mentioned the 30,000 scientists who has signed Oregon which left Dimbleby incredulous. Usual retort that they weren’t all climate scientists. But then neither is Porrit.
Cheers
Paul
My first guess is that your satellites have picked up a patch of warm water, somewhere, sometime, where the the other guys didn’t have measurements.
Nogw (17:37:12) :
“That´s awesome, 0.2 degrees!!! Who in the world can feel such a nano temperature difference.”
Debbie Stabenow!, our crack Senator from the state of Michigan. No instrumentation or pesky calibration required!
http://motorcitytimes.com/mct/debbie-stabenow-can-feel-global-warming-when-she-is-flying/
SST is just one part of a big, complicated puzzle. The emphasis by some on SST while leaving out other facets of global climate, like, for example, what Arctic ice is doing, makes me feel, once again, there is a bias on the alarm side of the global warming issue.
The North Pole ‘ice free in five years’, and being in a ‘death spiral’, predictions are not panning out. North Pole ice is in a growing trend. But that is not headlined in the media. Instead, a temperature reading from part of one month is.
They ‘strain out a gnat and swallow a camel’. The gnats are getting shorter lived all the time while the camels are getting bigger.
You had huge numbers for So. Extent, land (especially,) an Ocean; and, also, SH, land (again, especially,) and Ocean. Might want to look, there.
Speaking of that North Pole (Arctic) ice, the DMi graph is getting even more interesting. I would like to see an update from those who are predicting an ice free North Pole….
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
reply: WE HAD ONE A COUPLE OF DAYS AGO SEE HERE
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/18/nsidc-on-arctic-ice-it-is-now-unlikely-that-2009-will-see-a-record-low-extent/
Re Radio 4
Bad typing
Porritt made several outrageous statements suugesting that the likes of Delingpole were lying and actually got away with a 7 metre SLR that JD did not counter. JP also under the delusion that the UK media publish lies about CC when 99% of them, with BBC in the van, recycling the usual AGW tosh.
Regards
Paul
And so goes the debate on a subject that is so controversial that politics has made a place for itself in science and global control. How long are the real cycles and how far apart?
Roy Spencer (09:19:13) :
I just posted a new mystery that has emerged about these SST measurements…so far, I’m clueless as to what is going on:
Dr. Spencer, thank you for your refreshingly honest and humble insights.
according to my reading of Dr Spencer’s Graph above, Dec 2007 is a record low SST ( highly significant in my opinion! )
crosspatch (01:19:28) wrote:
Do seasons where storms track along the gulf stream cause a reduction in heat delivery to Northern latitudes and result in lower temperatures and greater ice pack? Do years where storms track mainly into the gulf only briefly crossing the gulf stream result in warmer arctic conditions?
Crosspatch-
I don’t know if this information is relevant to your question, but…..I have read more than once that it is NOT the Gulf Stream that keeps northern Europe milder than it would otherwise be that far north. The warming was creditted to the temperature of the air, which was kept ‘warm” by the Atlantic. The explanation was that N. Europe has a “maritime” climate, like that of British Columbia (and even southern Alaska), where it is milder air that keeps the climate mild.
IanM
reply: WE HAD ONE A COUPLE OF DAYS AGO SEE HERE
Opps, you’re right. I remember now.
Ron de Haan (03:12:27)
Dave, you not only beat me by two hours, you can also prove it.
The science is settled.
Ron, you’ve once again demonstrated that WUWT is populated by people with more scientific integrity than any of its competition. I see Anthony has still not updated his h/t though, I may have to be in touch with my attorney. Given the irony challenged state of the scientific types around here, I will hasten to add, in the words of one my childhood favorites, Foghorn Leghorn, “That’s a joke, son”.