Readers may recall yesterday where I posted this stunning image of cold for Europe and Russia for mid December 2009 from the NASA NEO MODIS satellite imager.
Deadly Cold Across Europe and Russia
Click image above to enlarge or download large image (3 MB, JPEG) acquired December 11 – 18, 2009
In that story were links to additional images, and I’d planned to return to them for a comparison. Inspired by my posting, METSUL’s Alexandre Aguiar saved me the trouble. There’s an interesting comparison here between the surface anomaly done by weather stations (NASA GISS) and that of satellite measurement (NASA NEO MODIS) – Anthony
Guest post by Alexandre Aguiar, METSUL, Brazil
COMPARE THE TWO MAPS
NASA GISS on the left, NASA MODIS on the right
Here’s the same images but larger – click either image for full size:
South America: The vast majority of the continent is near average or below average in the NEO map, but according to GISS only the southern tip of the region is colder. The most striking difference is Northeast Brazil: colder in the NEO map and warmer at the GISS.
Africa: Most of the continent is colder than average in the NEO map, but in the GISS most of Africa is warmer than average.
Australia: The Western part of the country is colder than average in the NEO map, but the entire country is warmer in the GISS map.
Russia: Most of the country is colder than average in the NEO map, a much larger area of colder anomalies that presented in the GISS map.
India: Colder than average at NASA’s NEO website and warmer at NASA’s GISS map.
Middle East: Huge areas of the region (Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, Syria) are colder than average in the NEO map and average/warmer in the GISS map.
Europe: Near average or slightly above average in the NEO map and much above average in the GISS map.
Greenland: Entire region colder than average at NEO and much of the area warmer at GISS.
Same source (NASA), but very different maps !!!
Why:
At NEO, land surface maps show where Earth’s surface was warmer or cooler in the daytime than the average temperatures for the same week or month from 2000-2008. So, a land surface temperature anomaly map for November 2009 shows how that month’s average temperature was different from the average temperature for all Novembers between 2000 and 2008.
Conclusion
Despite being very warm compared to the long term averages (GISS, UAH, etc), November 2009 was colder in large areas of the planet if compared to this decade average.
See PDF here. December should be very interesting in the northern hemisphere.
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Stunning chartsmanship, as defined in the NumberWatch blog.
As well as the different anomaly bases, which make the graphs incompatible anyway, look at the colours used to indicate temperature differences,
The satellite graph measures from +20 to -20, and the blue really only changes hue strongly at around the -10 mark.
In comparison, GISS use strong reds from +2 upwards, and brown from +0.5. Both these colours are strong. In comparison, pastel shades are used going down, so you really only notice the blues at -2.
It was this kind of behaviour which made me suspicious 5 years ago. You know, if they had only kept everything above board, and responded politely to Steve McIntyre, they would probably still be terrifying us, raking in grants and have no effective opposition…
>Paul Martin (18:22:48) :
>I agree that we’re comparing apples with oranges here. We know November .
>(GISS map) was much warmer than the second half of December has been >(MODIS map), certainly in the northern hemisphere. A more useful comparison would be the mid-November data from MODIS, or the December data from GISS.
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Do you really think AW would make a mistake like that? Both maps are for November 2009; only the first graphic is for December. Check out Scandanavia in thwo satellite images – Nov = red, Dec = blue.
The Dec monthly sat image is not avialble yet.
O/T (but pertinent). This article was originally removed for reasons mentioned at the beginning of the article. The CRU emails will make it very difficult to try this again. We need to watch and see if they attempt to use legal action to remove it once again. Please read and comment. http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/18468
Its the Han Sen effect. I guess I can understand the lack of ocean if you have to use Argo. Its not been running for 10 years, but the sat network has been running for 40. I cut my teeth on the Nimbus E microwave spectrometer.
And a Happy New Year to all !!!
The difference is partly (maybe mostly) a resolution issue. The satellite map clearly shows many more closely spaced data points than the gridded GISS map that homogenizes and smears the station data.
David Ball (19:01:34) :
O/T (but pertinent). This article was originally removed for reasons mentioned at the beginning of the article. The CRU emails will make it very difficult to try this again. We need to watch and see if they attempt to use legal action to remove it once again. Please read and comment. http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/18468
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Nice article…
Oh the joy we shall have here in the US… the Blogosphere is a wonderful thing…
Once its out its out for good….
finally, it’s settled!! 🙂
a belated happy new year to some of you, and happy new year to those who still have it coming!
there is a storm coming, we’ll see whom survives.
Someone asked “what does Roy Spencer think?”. I can’t answer for him, but I hope that he would be honest and point out that the GISS map is baselined on 1951 – 1980 and shows anomalies for the entire month of November. The MODIS image is baselined on 2000 – 2008 and shows one week of data in the middle of December. Basically, this comparison is useless and sows confusion.
The comparison might be interesting if both the MODIS and GISS images were baselined on the same time period and used a similar color pallet to display their information. This post is so bad it isn’t even wrong.
Current weather: London-Gatwick
Fri 01 Jan 02:50
1°C / 33°F
light snow showers
http://www.weatheronline.co.uk//cgi-bin/aktframe?TYP=wetter&ART=tabelle&RUBRIK=akt&JJ=xxxx&MM=12&TT=29&TIME=1600&KEY=UK&LANG=en&SORT=2&INT=06
“Mariss Freimanis (18:38:12) :
About the “31 Dec: ScienceDaily: No Rise of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Fraction in Past 160 Years, New Research Finds” CO2 vs. time graph. There is a bump in CO2 starting about 1935 and ending at 1945. Coincidentally that time span straddles WWII. A lot of industry ramped up ‘35 and and a lot of the product of that industry was used to blow up and burn things down in the ensuing 10 years. Any correlation? The steep 1945 negative slope may give some indication how quickly the resulting CO2 was reabsorbed.”
That could be consistent with the results collected by Ernst-Georg Beck:
http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/
and with Segalstaad’s results about the longevity of CO2. I think the only ones who wouldn’t believe it a bit are everyone involved with the IPCC.
I think it’s time for an immediate and aggressive investigation of NASA’s GISS temperature measurement, adjustment and reporting methodology. The GISS temperature data is the basis for huge proposed tax increases and government expenditures. The data is being provided by a US government entity and its veracity has been called into question. There is clear and compelling case for a Senate investigation.
Senator James Inhoff should read this article. I sent a link and a request for Senate investigation through his Senate website:http://inhofe.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.ContactForm
but we should also contact him directly. Can anyone email him a link to this article?
Senator James Inhoff, what can we do to help you initiate a Senate investigation of NASA’s GISS temperature measurement, adjustment and reporting methodology?
John Finn (17:14:53) : Hang on a minute The GISS anomaly map is for the month of November whereas the MODIS map is for ONE week (11th-18th) in December. This is not a fair comparison. Leaving aside the fact that the anomaly base periods are completely different should we not at least wait until GISS release their December figures before making any comment.
You are right. We cannot compare the GISS anomaly of November 2009 with the MODIS anomaly for 1 week in December 2009 (11th-18th).
However this is the MODIS anomaly for November. It still looks a lot different from the GISS anomaly for November 2009.
http://neo.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/Search.html?group=67
NE Brazil, India, Russia, Central Asia, Western Australia, NW North America, North Central US, Japan
In fact the map above (in the comparison) does seem to be the MODIS November anomaly map
At a glance, the GISS seems horribly biased towards showing warmer anomalies. Why? If you look at the two poles, where they have, by far, the least stations, it shows incredible warming. Their calculations to extrapolate the data to surrounding areas is obviously flawed.
Getting the baselines one the same scale would still be helpful.
It might also point out that using the warmest decade on record for the baseline is likely to lead to some areas which show up as cooler than normal. They could still be quite warm in the scheme of things.
The very strong warming shown by GISS above 80 degrees North, between 0 and East to -120 degrees, is interesting.
There is only one Russian station I can find in this area, “Polar GMO” 20046 at 80 deg 37 min. It shows no warming from a continuous record from 1958 to 1993, then lots of discontinuities and just three slight warming years 2000, 2005, 2006.
http://aisori.meteo.ru/climate
I would like to see the MODIS map overlain with cloud cover %.
In the far north, one could easily get a large winter anomaly between areas exposed to clear and cold conditions vs overcast and precipitating conditions.
davidc (17:44:54) :
I’m in the red blob in the GISS map (+2 to 4C) in South Eastern Australia. It’s 22C here now, well below normal for this time of year.
I’m in the red blob too, in Melbourne.
Max today about 22C. Cool compared to yesterdays 36C, but quite normal for this time of year. In fact, in December2009, Melbourne had twelve days where the maximum temperature did not exceed 23C. December 2008 had 19 days where the maximum did not exceed 23C.
Average maximum for December 2009 was 25.9C compared to long term average of 24.3C. Average minimums are 14.7C and 12.9C respectively.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/dwo/200912/html/IDCJDW3050.200912.shtml
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_086071.shtml
Why are you so desperate to convince yourself 22C is unusually cold for this time of year, when the data reveals that it is neither cold, nor unusual?
Why are people looking at mercator maps? Primary school kids know that land surface is grossly distorted the further you move from the equator. Maybe it looks cool and scary to see all that red on the tops and bottoms. A camp fire becomes the size of a forest blaze and Ice cube looks like an iceberg. Why are people using 16th century navigation aids. A computer generated globe is easy to produce.
TeresaV (17:15:58) :
Of course NOAA/GISS has made the data set sparse by tossing large #’s of surface met stations for no good reasons
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No, not true. There was a very good reason.
Always remember, James Hansen is an environmental activist with a personal agenda which he makes no efforts to hide.
Andrew30 (17:22:42) :
LOL!
Your comment was funny Andrew!
old construction worker (18:21:45) :
Doesn’t Griss do that auto-kinetic, tale-transcontinental portation that tripulated anomalies between New York City and San Diego, hinged in Kansas City, and if that’s out of whack, then they auto-correlate Seattle to Miami temperature trick?
No, that was MBH98.
.
And a happier new decade to all !
Henry chance (17:29:21) :
Say it isn’t so. James Hansen claims to be soo very busy. It is hard work to adjust numbers and tweek the data.
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With how much cooling is happening in the earth “tweek” isn’t enough. It’s sore thumb territory now.
James Hansen, the mad scientist at his computer.