Lucia beat me to a post on this, so I’ll give her the honor here. Interesting thing though, the delay of Hadley may have provided a better data presentation. – Anthony
Guest Post by Lucia from The Blackboard
Guess what? The much anticipated Hadley monthly surface temperature anomalies are now available. I always use the NH+SH simple average.
Guess what else? According to this metric, the global surface temperature anomaly September 2009 cooled relative to August 2009 dropping from0.548C to 0.457C. In contrast, GISSTemp, NOAA/NCDC, UAH and RSS all reported distinctly warmer anomalies in September relative to August. This divergence is a pit surprising– though I’d have to plough through numbers to see if this sort of mismatch is unprecedented in the record.
One of the interesting happenings this month was Hadley’s decision to delay processing because they considered the some data they received to be obviously wrong. We don’t have details on precisely what was wrong about it, but I noticed large blanked out areas on their map:
Figure 1: Missing temperatures in Africa.
The blanked out areas do seem to be surrounded by warm regions. Maybe the computed value for September’s monthly average will rise when that region reports data Hadley trusts. In the meantime, Hadley’s September temperature is low relative to the other metrics.
Since we anticipate October temperature will be reported soon, and I suspect some revisions for September, I’ll just show the trends based on reported temperatures since both 2000 and 2001, and also compare them anomalies to the multi-model mean anomalies from the AR4 climate models driven by the A1B SRES.
Figure 2: Trends since 2000 and 2001As you can see, EL Nino has caused temperatures to rise; the anomalies for individual months values are currently approaching the mean value projected by the models. As El Nino warms further, the observations for individual months may finally catch and surpass the models, as the do from time to time. However, it’s going to take sustained warming for the trends since either 2001 or 2000 to catch up with the projections. Will it happen? We’ll wait and see.
I left this comment on Lucia’s thread, which I will repeat here:
Lucia, I don’t think this is anything out of the ordinary to have so may data holes. Look at GISS for September:
Link to original at GISS is here
The trend of missing stations in GHCN continues. It appears that Hadley actually has more stations than GISS. Maybe the delay was to allow more trickle in of late reporters. – Anthony
I live in SE Michigan, and I’ll corroborate Bruce. To clarify on his report, the “wholly normal” month of september was the coolest since I moved her in Aug ’06. It most definitely was not 1-3 C above “normal.”
There’s something inherently strange about using a 1980-1999 baseline when talking about global temperature anomalies. Half my brain says the base is too big, the other half says it’s too small. It sometimes really seems we don’t have enough evidence/data to establish a “baseline” and we’re doing that Chicken Little thing again: In the absence of proof to the contrary -PANIC! Is the sky really falling? Is there really a temperature anomaly? Who said?
Michigan had it’s coldest summer in memory. September was almost normal, but this October was the first time since record keeping began in 1892 that Grand Rapids failed to reach 70 degrees for a high even once.
Bruce Hall.
I am about 600 miles WNW of you. The summer wasn’t and I saw an article that October was running 1.4 C below normal last week.
I may have been wrong on Septembers magnitude as I may have mixed Oct and Sept. (Yes I do have friends in Siberia) But there is no way it was above normal. I am pretty certain we haven’t had an above normal month in over a year. Saved the local municipalities a few bucks as municipal swimming pools have barely been open in two years.
sorry I don’t know what numpty is.
another example of biased science
to double check and delay the release of surprisingly low temperatures,
while upside errors are releaed immediately, unchecked and trumpeted out all over the media.
I operate a climate station for Environment Canada, just south of Calgary, Ab., and we were 3 C warmer than usual(20 years of data only). Oct however, was a complete reversal, and came in at -3.4 C below normal. Currently on pace to be .6 to .7 below normal for the year.
missed putting in Sept being 3.0 C above normal…in my previous post.
What is that weird round and very cold spot in the Pacific, close to the equator?
Pascvaks,
“There’s something inherently strange about using a 1980-1999 baseline when talking about global temperature anomalies”
HadCrut uses a 1961-1990 baseline. If they did use a 1980-1999 baseline, I imagine there would be negative anomalies every month, as the 80-99 baseline contains some of the warmest temps of the 20th Century.
@ur momisugly Wondering Aloud (11:58:28) :
Noun
numpty (plural numpties)
Singular
numpty
Plural
numpties
1. (pejorative) A person that embarrasses themselves by making a mistake based on ignorance.
From http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/numpty
John
It looks like Western Canada was indeed more than 5C warmer than normal.
(It is extremely rare for a region to be that much over for a whole month – I guess noone noticed since there was no summer before September – it must have just seemed like summer finally arrived).
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/global_monitoring/temperature/wcanada_90temp.shtml
john ratcliffe (13:15:03) :
@ur momisugly Wondering Aloud (11:58:28) :
Noun
numpty (plural numpties)
Singular
numpty
Plural
numpties
1. (pejorative) A person that embarrasses themselves by making a mistake based on ignorance.
Numpetry (noun)
1) Activity engaged in by numpties, evidential of their status.
Anecdotally, the ‘indian summer’ has drawn to a close in northern England, temps are back to seasonal average.
But personally I reckon we’ve had quite a warm end to the ‘barbecue’ summer, the effects of the ENSO are far reaching.
When will we hear the siren call, from politicians emboldened with these figures;
“temperatures are showing new signs of increase”
And never a mention of the La Nina.
I still view the Hadcrut figs with a very great and deep unease – it should not be this way, why don’t they employ Steve McIntyre and then I could trust them.
By September standards we had a pleasant and warm September here in Minnesota. As to May-August, as one friend observed, “I hope summer falls on a weekend next year.”
You can compare to the Bom data here although they provide min & max anomallies
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/temp_maps.cgi?variable=minanom&area=nat&period=month&time=history&steps=1
Where we are, we had an abnormally normal summer, quietly average.
“It’s quiet, Jeb.”
“Too quiet, Hank.”
All the data holes are in the hottest places. That is not random. It is as though the cold readings were screened out, leaving only the hottest readings. Cynical I know, but why are all the holes just where the temps are hottest?
NOAA Reports 3rd coldest October since 1895
Inconvenient Truths about Continental USA Temperatures:
2009 – 3rd coldest October since 1895!
2009 – October was 4F COLDER than the 1901-2000 average!
YTD 2009 – ONLY 0.17F warmer than the 1901-2000 average!
YTD 1998 to 2009 – A cooling trend of -1.05F per decade!
http://sbvor.blogspot.com/2009/11/noaa-reports-3rd-coldest-october-since.html
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_cHhMa7ARDDg/SvHTbMHbzCI/AAAAAAAABQg/PsYtLGN1CVo/s1600-h/Cooling_Oct_1895_2009.jpg
REPLY: This is what their database says, I’m waiting for the “official” press release from NOAA before I write anything about this. Should be interesting. – A
When it comes to ENSO the daily SOI is positive again today (first time since October 7th).
http://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/SeasonalClimateOutlook/SouthernOscillationIndex/30DaySOIValues/
Perhaps the alleged predictions of El Nino fizzling out before the model predictions aren’t that far fetched after all?
Why is there a blue bullethole in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific surrounded by warming seas on all sides?
Did Easter Island or the Galapagos buck the trend mysteriously?
“Anecdotally, the ‘indian summer’ has drawn to a close in northern England, temps are back to seasonal average.”
Some of the more PC folks here in the media are now saying “Aboriginal Summer” or First Nations Summer”
And I thought they couldn’t get any sillier.
Jeff in Ctown (Canada) (08:55:50) :
So what constitutes “melting hot” in Canada?
In Saskatchewan Provence we see that from end June to near end September, Saskatoon was averaging a daily blistering 70F.
(see “past year” here)
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=saskatoon++TEMPERATURE
Further investigation there shows that Montreal edged up to 80F briefly in about mid September.
Note that thoe temps from Wolfram seem to often be from airports, which are probably heat islands, with the real temps almost certainly measurably lower, if anyone would actually measure them.
Yes, I know two cities aren’t a representative sample, but every time I pick a city at random, it’s invariable acutely usual.
Bill Illis (14:19:17) :
It looks like Western Canada was indeed more than 5C warmer than normal.
On the west coast (Fraser Valley) it was a very dry summer, almost bone dry. September was unusually dry too, dry and sunny. You must have heard about all the fires we had here in BC.
When you put dry and sunny together here, it gets warm. As you can imagine, the majority of past Septembers were humid/damp and in those conditions the moisture will absorb the heat and not much will manage to get to the ground. So, without a swiss cheese temperature map I could tell that it was warmer than usual… but very dry also.
Maybe they should ask Steig to use his technique of creating temperature data where none exists in order to fill the gaps in the map. I heard he is pretty good at it. <:D
GISS is not the only one that constantly changes temp data. For several months now Hadley has as well, nearly all upward. There’s that “top 5 warmest on record” prediction looming…..
October was a record low here in NZ as well, officially coldest since 1945.