Here’s the plot from RSS – October is 0.282°C
The RSS (Remote Sensing Systems of Santa Rosa, CA) Microwave Sounder Unit (MSU) lower troposphere global temperature anomaly data for March 2009 was published yesterday and has dropped after peaking in January. The change from September with a value of 0.476°C to October’s 0.282°C is a (∆T) of -0.194°C.
Recent RSS anomalies
2009 01 0.322
2009 02 0.230
2009 03 0.172
2009 04 0.202
2009 05 0.090
2009 06 0.081
2009 07 0.388
2009 08 0.270
2009 09 0.476
2009 10 0.282
RSS (Remote Sensing Systems, Santa Rosa)
The RSS data is here (RSS Data Version 3.2)
A divergence developed in the Feb 09 data between RSS and UAH, and opposite in direction to boot. UAH was 0.347 and RSS was 0.230
I spoke with Dr. Roy Spencer at the ICCC09 conference (3/10) and asked him about the data divergence.
Here is what he had to say:
“I believe it has to do with the differences in how diurnal variation is tracked and adjusted for.” he said. I noted that Feburary was a month with large diurnal variations.
For that reason, UAH has been using data from the AQUA satellite MSU, and RSS to my knowledge does not, and makes an adjustment to account for it. I believe our data [UAH] is probably closer to the true anomaly temperature, and if I’m right, we’ll see the two datasets converge again when the diurnal variations are minimized.”
It certainly looks like the data sets are converged now, with a scant difference between UAH and RSS in October of .002°C and that Dr. Spencer was right.
Read the details on the October UAH data here.
I noticed the COI artic temperature just dipped back to the average after spending a couple of months well above average. Does the modest El Nino warm the Tropics and then the heat spread nothward warming the artic until it dissipates? It would be interesting to know if we can track the heat moving through the system in a similar way that we would track a storm system or current.
I’ll speculate that once we see the EL Nino fade we’ll see the anomoly back down to zero in the coming months. I say cool winter ahead.
The Met, like a broken record, predicted a warm winter:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6439469/Mild-winter-forecast-as-part-of-El-Nino-effect.html
Bill Tuttle (01:15:02) : “It must have been ridiculously cold all the time in the good old days…We had to trudge five miles to school through three-foot snowdrifts. And it was uphill, both ways…”
You forgot the bare feet, the broken glass, and the packs of ravenous weasels.
The Climate Engine
http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/the-climate-engine/
What follows is a general theory of natural climate variation supported by observation of the changing temperature of the atmosphere and the sea between 1948 and September 2009. This work suggests that strong warming after 1978 is an entirely natural phenomenon.
Between 1948 and 1976 the tropics and the globe as a whole was fairly stable in temperature with obvious cooling discernable in the decade prior to 1976. From 1977 through to 2000 the tropics and the globe warmed. By comparing data from the earlier period with that for the later period one can discern change in the atmosphere that resulted in more solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth causing it to warm.
Atmospheric conditions in the near earth environment are strongly influenced by the sun. The observed warming of the last decades of the twentieth century can be attributed to natural influences. There is no evidence of any warming signature due to the increased presence of so called ‘greenhouses gases’. It is suggested that the greenhouse hypothesis takes little cognizance of the manner in which the atmosphere actually functions. The atmosphere cools the planet but a change in its temperature causes a change in ice crystal density and the quantum of radiation reaching the surface.
Climatic models suggest that any greenhouse effect should be strongest in the tropical upper troposphere where water vapor is in higher concentration. In point of fact warming of the upper troposphere at the equator is less likely as the globe warms because the quantum of outgoing radiation diminishes as convection and de-compressive cooling is enhanced. It is in the subtropics that outgoing long wave radiation increases and in particular in the high pressure cells where the air is descending and warming and the sky tends to be cloud -free both in terms of liquid and ice crystal density. A water vapor feedback mechanism would require an increase in specific humidity levels in these high pressure areas. The reverse is observed. If a greenhouse effect were present it would be unamplified and tiny. Any warming tendency in these areas is more likely to be due to a loss of ice cloud density than a greenhouse effect.
If the Earth enters a period of cooling, as it has since 1998, it suggests that the natural factor is pre-eminent. If there is a strong relationship between ice cloud density and surface temperature it confirms the point that moisture in the upper troposphere cools rather than warms the planet and the basis of the greenhouse feedback mechanism is negated. Without a water vapor amplifier a change in so called ‘greenhouse gas’ levels can have little or no effect upon surface temperature.
Want as good a teleconnection as any to set up some coast to coast USA
pre-winter, winter action?
The Arctic, the North Atlantic, and the Pacific North American Oscillations all forecast to either go or trend negative:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao.shtml
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/nao.shtml
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/pna.shtml
Haha….as usual the NAO is the most stubborn to resist, evidenced by that Monsters vs. Aliens giant blob of anticyclone over the SW Atlantic that keeps springing up.
The latest balmy GFS run sure reflects this ho hum as well, as well as the fire-hose jet flooding the country with Pacific Air.
Which will win the battle this month? The cold or the warm?
In time….the cold will ooze south, a heavy, (and rather slow) but unstoppable monstrosity.
I am really hoping for some coast to coast cold this year as I want to see good snowpack for the Olympics and some good snowstorms to greet AL GORE wherever he speaks!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Bill Tuttle (01:15:02:) and others:
We didn’t have to walk five miles through snowdrifts to get home – we didn’t have a home. We had to sleep on’t factory floor and eat oily rags. We were lucky…..
Anthony/Moderators
There appears to be a month issue in this article, i.e.:
“The RSS (Remote Sensing Systems of Santa Rosa, CA) Microwave Sounder Unit (MSU) lower troposphere global temperature anomaly data for March 2009 was published yesterday and has dropped after peaking in January. ”
March should be October and January should be September?
Bill Tuttle (01:15:02) : “It must have been ridiculously cold all the time in the good old days…We had to trudge five miles to school through three-foot snowdrifts. And it was uphill, both ways…”
Yes, but you always were late.
I just posted the October OI.v2 SST anomaly update:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/11/october-2009-sst-anomaly-update.html
Here’s the overview:
Global SST anomalies rose 0.047 deg C between September and October, with all but the Arctic and Southern Oceans showing increases. The equatorial Pacific is now showing signs of moderate El Nino conditions (Monthly NINO3.4 SST Anomaly = +1.04 deg C and Weekly NINO3.4 SST Anomaly = +1.66 deg C). Monthly NINO3.4 SST anomalies rose +0.208 in October, while the weekly data shows NINO3.4 SST anomalies have been increasing rapidly over the past few weeks.
BernieL
The link to 4 corners is usual propaganda.Funny quote from Tuckey
REPORTER: Mr Tuckey…
WILSON TUCKEY, LIBERAL MP, WA: Leave me will you, I’m going to the toilet.
BOB CARTER: I don’t have a message. I’m a scientist. I work in the area of climate change. And as a scientist I don’t have an opinion, I don’t have a political view.
SARAH FERGUSON: For someone without a political view, Carter comes across as a political activist.
Transcript
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2009/s2737676.htm
“Quite a part of the rise since 1979 is already eradicated.”
Yes, and once that heat is “lost” it must build back up again. It isn’t hiding in a cave somewhere being “masked” by something, it is just flat gone; radiated into space.
But I would caution that with the caveat that regional ocean differences can have a large impact on the “global average” such as a large el nino. You can see the large impact in the graph from one such event in the past.
The problem with “global averages” is that they can be misleading. Imagine you have a room with 20 people and the mean height of the occupants is 6 feet. Now take one person out, put in a different person who is 7.5 feet tall. Now the “average height” just went up but 19 of those people are still exactly the same height as they were before. They didn’t change but the “global height” went up.
The reporting of global averages misleads people into thinking that the temperature where they live (no matter where they live) has risen when that may not be the case at all. Then add the problem of removing rural stations from the reporting grid (in this analogy, remove all people from the room under 6 feet tall) and you have an increasing “global mean” that does not reflect any actual change in temperature. In the case of the analogy, removing all of the people under 6 feet tall raises the “global mean height” but nobody is any taller than they were before.
Removing rural stations from the global average increases that average value but no station is any warmer than it was before. It is misleading.
The mean temperature of the continental US has dropped at a rate of almost 1 degree/decade over the past 11 years. That is using a network that has remained (relatively) static over that period. Other networks have seen a reduction of rural reporting stations over that time, particularly in South America and Africa.
Man made globl warming is a Democrat control and Tax mechanism. We have Brown and Cameron capable of pumping out so much hot our economu is in melt down
That’s probably quite correct. I don’t imagine the oceans absorb much heat from the atmosphere. I guess the transfer is the other way around.
It is? Call me an idjeet, but wouldn’t be anomaly be ~zero in this case? (notwithstanding the fact that given the accuracy with which we can measure these things, 0.282 is ~0!).
Yes I always hated those weasel attacks but at least they did not come out much when the wind was blowing 60 mph (a head wind in both directions).
One interesting thing I have been thinking about the last few days. Given that there is still lots of open water in the Arcitc, would it be fair to say that the earth is dumping a lot of heat to space from that open water right now? If it was frozen over the net heat flow would be significantly lower. I am assuming that ocean currents are still carrying warm water well up north to keep that water clear at prevailing air temps. If so the heat input to accomplish that would have to be quite substantial, and now that the sun angles are very low the difference in albedo between open water and ice would not be all that significant, given surface reflection off the water at low angles of incidence.
The effects of Ida sucking heat out of the Caribbean ocean and the North Atlantic this late in the season, will also lead to cooler SST’s along the gulf and Atlantic coasts as we enter winter. I wonder if anyone has some historical examples of the weather that followed in the eastern U.S. following seasons where we had late season tropical storms/hurricanes like Ida. Hurricane Ida is already starting to weaken due to low SST’s and has dropped to a cat 1 last I looked.
Larry
Well whatever. All one has to do is look at what the temperatures are doing in eastern europe/russia. brrrrrrrr
crosspatch (08:56:27) :
As always…great insight and bulletproof words.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Bill Tuttle (01:15:02) : “It must have been ridiculously cold all the time in the good old days…We had to trudge five miles to school through three-foot snowdrifts. And it was uphill, both ways…”
Very much like my upbringing . . . of course you were lucky. We had to crawl through six feet drifts, start work before we got out of bed and had cold poison for lunch.
You tell that to kids these days and no one believes you . . .
jorgekafkazar (07:26:09) :
Bill Tuttle (01:15:02) : “It must have been ridiculously cold all the time in the good old days…We had to trudge five miles to school through three-foot snowdrifts. And it was uphill, both ways…”
You forgot the bare feet, the broken glass, and the packs of ravenous weasels.
And you forgot that was trudging backwards against a 35 MPH wind, blowing snow, and ground (b)lizards not weasels.
I am not so sure it is clouds formed by cosmic rays that keep the oceans from warming from a steady Sun beam. I think the operative word here is “and”. If the winds kick up, salt water spray is in the air. Evaporation may be heightened at the beginning. Water vapor forms. Clouds form. The Sun’s rays are deflected. Very little warming happens under the skin of the ocean. Temps cool. As long as the wind keeps the oceans churning around the equatorial belt, these conditions, or at least some of them, should persist, leading to further cooling. When the winds die down, the doldrums set it. The Sun’s rays are no longer reflected and are thus allowed to penetrate deeply into a calm ocean surface. Things heat up. Cosmic rays may be involved but I question to what degree. As I question anthropogenic CO2 and methane. And sunspot numbers, and flares. I think the variable Earth is quite capable of burying these smaller sources of heating up or cooling down. Relatively speaking regarding natural forcing up or down, I think external sources of variability are small, very small, compared to internal sources of variability.
Bill Tuttle (01:15:02) & others — three-foot snow
My mother would make the same statement when one of the kids would complain about the cold or the snow. How she got through such deep snow when she was only 3 feet tall was always a puzzle. She often bundled us up so much we dared not fall over or we couldn’t get up without help.
Meanwhile, to “what does it take to get a negative anomoly?”:
After a certain age the current temperature extreme only reminds you of an earlier one – it is not something new.
Anthony, where has the ‘tips and ideas’ gone?
Have you seen the Indian report about the Himalayan glaciers?
http://moef.nic.in/downloads/public-information/MoEF Discussion Paper _him.pdf
Vincent (03:51:22) UAH and RSS ?
Roy Spencer wrote about the differences in a blog on his site a few months ago. My simple search of his site did not yield anything but if you do a Google search with “difference between UAH and RSS” you will find several comments.
Bill Tuttle (01:15:02)
We had bears on the way to school where I grew up… Until the Weasels ate them
I think Pen Hadow endured much more than you lot in search of an education. And he hasn’t learned yet.
Actually, it would be interesting to do a statistical analysis to see how much memory global surface temperatures have.
For example, it’s been shown that stock prices are essentially memoryless. If a stock closes at $20 today, you can make a decent guess about it’s price tomorrow. But that guess will not be any better if you know that the stock was trading at $19 yesterday and $18 the day before.
My instinct is that global surface temperatures are a good deal more memoryless than most folks give credit for.
I have been comparing this El Nino to previous El Nino’s, especially the big one. If I were a ship with sails as my only mode of movement, I would have been stuck in the doldrums from 1997 to fall of 98. The amount of ocean heating created quite a thick belt of equatorial warm water that just sat there. But once the trade winds picked up, man did they blow, and the water was friggin COLD under that warm surface that was blown away. Under the present El Nino, some east to west wind is still blowing. Which is why we aren’t getting that thick equatorial band of warm water we got previously in the 97-98 El Nino.