Global Oceanic Climate Update for August 2009

Many thanks Dr Spencer. Excellent data.
If we could add OHC (Ocean Heat Content), Solar Irradiance and LWR to these time series, we would get a comprehensive picture of the heat flows in the Earth’s climate system.
Who knows. Maybe it would show a GHG signature.

Somewhat on topic: OI.v2 Monthly SST anomaly update:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/09/august-2009-sst-anomaly-update.html
As you can see, the Global SST anomalies are nowhere close to the record levels in the OI.v2 data…
http://i31.tinypic.com/2wbui5v.png
…but the ERSST.v3b data is again in record monthly territory. Raw data here:
ftp://eclipse.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/ersstv3b/pdo/aravg.mon.ocean.90S.90N.asc
The Hadley Centre’s HADSST2 as of last month also was not at record highs (first column after date):
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadsst2/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/monthly
As soon as the Hadley Centre releases their August HADSST2 update, I’ll put together a post comparing the official NOAA ERSST.v3b data with the other two datasets. HADSST2 is not satellite based, so that excuse is not applicable.

Very interesting plots on the lag times and sequence.
If we accept at face value that, the sequence might be that at some low SST the winds essentially stop, or drop to a low enough threshold so that evaporative heat loss does not keep up with solar isolation heat gain. Then that changing heat balance, starts a gradual warming of the SST. That as the SST rises, water vapor and rainfall rise almost in step with it, with about a 0.5 – 1 month delay. Then all the others follow.
Now for a back test! Did that pattern and sequence occur during the 1998 SST peak?
Unfortunately, as mentioned in the original post, this data set only goes back to 2002, but can the necessary data be assembled from sources that were around during that time, perhaps satellite, and or buoy based data sets that report the three primary variables, SST, water vapor, and wind speed for the 1998 super El Nino area.
For example, was there a wind gyre formed over that area which had very low wind speeds, or maintained high enough humidity, without rain out, to effectively cut off evaporative cooling of the Sea Surface?
If the concept is correct, you would need to have a combination of two variables, both wind speed and prevailing humidity determine evaporative cooling of the surface.
Is there a wind pattern, barometric pressure system configuration or vertical lapse rate profile that would trap high humidity air near the surface in this area and prevent cloud formation and rain out?
Is that pattern stable (ie persists for weeks or months)?
Becalmed sailors stories lead me to believe the answer is yes.
Does that pattern result in low wind speeds or a captive cell of high humidity at the surface that cannot cool the ocean surface by evaporation?
If so, even at moderate to low wind conditions little if any evaporative cooling would happen if you had some sort of a cap on convection and mixing.
The effect is obvious for anyone who has experienced a hot muggy night where even though there is a breeze, it is so humid that it does not cool you off.
Larry

Dear Dr. Spencer
First of all thank you for all your efforts on this blog. It is really nice to see important people spending their time in the open space!
I take that opportunity to ask what are certainly very basic questions, but up to now I couldn’t find any clear information about it, certainly due to my lack of physics knowledge.
This is about remote measurements: what is in fact measuring the sensors in the satellites?
For SST I understand this is about microwave, but what about other measurements (wind, water vapor, rain) ?
And for the microwave measurement:
– why only the sea surface? and not land?
– how is it known it is actually the sea surface temperature (I saw the calibration, but hey, proxy reconstruction for past temperature uses calibration as well :))
– is it temperature of the first 10 cm of sea? 1 meter? temperature of the air on top of the surface?
I still have a box full of other questions of the same type, but that is certainly enough for now.
So if you could provide me with some hints, papers or books where I could find those explanation, I would really appreciate.
Of course anyone who has an answer is welcomed to answer as well 🙂
thank you in advance

So if the sun heats the water, and wind cools it, what creates the wind? If I remeber elementry school correctly, it is water evaporation wich is trigered by warm water (wich we now now is due to lack of wind). This all produces a nice feedback loop to keep everything in check. These are the kinds of things that will slowly add up and kill the warmies. Yah!

Seems like anomaly is quite unpopular; which suggests many of us here aren’t formally trained in “climatology”; which includes me; nor do I have formal training in Astrology.
I’d prefer to see data in SI units of course; but I’m perfectly ok with letting the climate science guys assign their special non-colloquial meaning to “anomaly”, and simply ignore my layman understanding of that word.
Likewise in Photometry; we don’t like to use the word “brightness” because it has a common everyday connotation that is unspecific enough to be useless in Photometry, so we use “Luminance” instead, as the Photometric analog of “Radiance”; which of course is measured in Watts per Steradian, per square metre. Lay persons are likely to use “Brightness” instead of Luminance, Luminous Intensity, Luminous emittance, Illuminance; all of which are quite different Photmetric quantities; they have neither the same dimensions nor units., so to lazily use brightness is to thoroughly confuse the reader.
So i’m happy to discard, my lay dictionary understanding of “anomaly” as meaning off base, or improper; but I would still rather see this brought into the mainstream of ordinary physics metrology.
It can get a lot worse; some physicists like to use a system of units which says that e = c = h (or maybe it’s “h bar” =h/2pi) = 1; works for them I guess.
Climate scientists could help their own cause, if they simply added to their graphs the SI value of the zero point of their anomaly data.
It doesn’t matter to me whether the base line is the 1960-2000 average value or whether it is the average from 1066 to 1776 ; just tell me the SI unit value.
As for all the curves that Roy Spencer (Dr) has posted here; notice that no cause and effect information is included; they are as Al Gore likes to say, clearly correlated, but that alone doesn’t tell us who did what to whom.
But I believe that these sorts of data graphs, and Frank Wentz et al’s paper “How Much More rain will Global Warming Bring ?” SCIENCE July 7/2007 make a powerful argument (along with the cloud graphs, which weren’t in that paper), that the oceanic water /cloud cycle is what is in robust feedback control of the earth’s temperature range; and it all doesn’t have much to do with CO2; it is entirely dictated by the physical and other properties of H2O and that weird 104 degree angle of the molecule.
George; waiting to celebrate the new ice season.

The only thing missing from the charts is how solar insolation varies with water vapor, rain, and/or cloud water. That might complete the cycle. As those three decrease, insolation increases and heats the sea surface.

Looking at the graphs, it occurs to me that a simple global scale climate model might have good predictive ability over a 6 to 12 month time scale and who knows, perhaps over longer timescales.
A climate model with good predictive ability 12 months out would create quite a stir.

Richard, See
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps. Note that the global temperature varies substantially over the course of a year. If the anomaly were based on the single yearly average, the January anomaly would always be negative and the July anomaly always positive. Each month has to be compared against its own average or the anomaly doesn’t make sense.
My point is essentially that the anomalies for each month have to be normalized in order for them to be compared to one another.