December 2009 UAH Global Temperature Update +0.28 Deg. C
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
The global-average lower tropospheric temperature anomaly fell back to the October level of +0.28 deg. C in December.
The tropics continue warm from El Nino conditions there, while the NH and SH extratropics anomalies cooled from last month. While the large amount of year-to-year variability in global temperatures seen in the above plot makes it difficult to provide meaningful statements about long-term temperature trends in the context of global warming, the running 25-month average suggests there has been no net warming in the last 11 years or so.
[NOTE: These satellite measurements are not calibrated to surface thermometer data in any way, but instead use on-board redundant precision platinum resistance thermometers carried on the satellite radiometers.]
YR MON GLOBE NH SH TROPICS
2009 1 +0.304 +0.443 +0.165 -0.036
2009 2 +0.347 +0.678 +0.016 +0.051
2009 3 +0.206 +0.310 +0.103 -0.149
2009 4 +0.090 +0.124 +0.056 -0.014
2009 5 +0.045 +0.046 +0.044 -0.166
2009 6 +0.003 +0.031 -0.025 -0.003
2009 7 +0.411 +0.212 +0.610 +0.427
2009 8 +0.229 +0.282 +0.177 +0.456
2009 9 +0.422 +0.549 +0.294 +0.511
2009 10 +0.286 +0.274 +0.297 +0.326
2009 11 +0.497 +0.422 +0.572 +0.495
2009 12 +0.280 +0.318 +0.242 +0.503
In the graph a “25 month running average” is used. I’d like to learn more about it.
“In statistics, a moving average, also called rolling average, rolling mean or running average, is a type of finite impulse response filter used to analyze a set of data points by creating a series of averages of different subsets of the full data set. Given a series of numbers, and a fixed subset size, the moving average can be obtained. The average of the first subset of numbers is calculated. The fixed subset is moved forward to the new subset of numbers, and its average is calculated. The process is repeated over the entire data series. The plot line connecting all the (fixed) averages is the moving average. Thus, a moving average is not a single number, but it is a set of numbers, each of which is the average of the corresponding subset of a larger set of data points. A moving average may also use unequal weights for each data value in the subset to emphasize particular values in the subset. A moving average is commonly used with time series data to smooth out short-term fluctuations and highlight longer-term trends or cycles. The threshold between short-term and long-term depends on the application, and the parameters of the moving average will be set accordingly.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_average
If you could, please describe the specific equation being used, any weights used, and how it’s useful (e.g. why 25 months rather than some other number) plus what information it can be used to obtain from the temperature data.
Also, where is the raw data obtained from? Which program is used to generate the graph? Is it open sourced? If so where can it be obtained from? If not, why isn’t it open sourced?
Thanks.
MJK:
My math says 2009 is the 7th warmest since 1979. I don’t think anyone is hiding that it is warmer than 2008. That’s gets a “Duh!” considering 2008 was a La Nina year, and 2009 was an El Nino year. In fact, I think it strengthens the argument of how much the global temperature is driven by natural causes (as in, the differnece between a La Nina and El Nino).
As for the decade, 2009 was middle of the road. 4 years were cooler, 5 years were warmer.
Meh…
Why do all these charts show temperature anomaly rather than just straight temperature? Every time I look at these charts I have to figure out what the “normal” period is that the anomaly is measured against, and it just confuses things.
Plus, the setting of the “normal” period seems like an excellent way to massage the numbers to show what you want, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t just providing the average temperature in question remove some of the potential for a misleading chart? Clearly I’m uniformed. Can someone help me out?
MJK (08:00:13) :
You wrote:
“It is intersting how Dr Spencer has shifted his running average from a 13 month running average to a new 25 month average.”
PUHHLEASE… Suppose you can find an n-month smoothing function that suggests via Mann-esque (Mannequin?) statistics a positive linear trend in the data this century. It’s still only weather isn’t it?
“It may help some visitors to this blog shift their focus from the silly idea that a couple of cold weeks in a northern winter is proof that GLOBAL warming has stopped.”
“It may help some visitors to warmer blogs shift their focus from the silly idea that a couple of warm years in a late inter-glacial period is proof that GLOBAL warming has started.”
Why on earth do we all focus on the global average temperature anyway? It means nothing at all, almost nobody experiences it, and to those of us in the freezing N hemisphere at the moment, and those baking in Australia, it looks meaningless. Is it really a useful measure, either scientifically or politically?
Wouldn’t continent by continent or hemisphere by hemisphere patterns look more relevant?
MJK – a lay person, I was under the impression that it was “settled science” that we have had global warming ever since the end of the little ice age. Am I wrong? By the way, what is the ideal average world temperature, on a daily, monthly or yearly basis? And I don’t mean to be a bore but what is the ideal CO2 concentration in the atmosphere in ppm?
Well at least we see that this El nino has a very different look than that of the 1998 El Nino. I shutter to think what la nina will bring.
I also don’t understand what’s going on in Peru. Isn’t El Nino suppose to bring warm rain to South America’s dry western mountains? Very wierd. More discussion on that phenomenon would be much appreciated.
As a follow up this is what I was referring to:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/03/peru-mountain-farmers-winter-cold
[snip] during an El Nino year? BTW how did the idea that this was going to be an El Nino year come up? Maybe some climate models get it wrong or something? I know they predicted the 1998 one. Perhaps it was only predictable because it was such a huge event?
Q: Is this* the principle used by the AGWarmers?
> ” *the famous “principle of precaution”:
Is this sentence garbled?
“The principle means that no expense should be spared and no risk taken, however small, there is a possible danger to human life.”
…-
“Swine flu: France wants its money back
Swine flu, or rather the lack of it, has added to the winter woes of President Sarkozy. When we last visited the disease, a month ago, France was rushing to be vaccinated and the army had been called in to handle the crowds.
Now the H1N1 epidemic has turned out to be something of a dud and Sarkozy’s government is under fire for over-reaction. The French tax-payer has forked out nearly one billion euros for vaccines and other drugs but over 750 million’s worth seem unlikely to be used.
The explanation, as we saw last time, comes down to the famous “principle of precaution”. This is the excess of caution that governments have applied to public health since a series of scandals in which thousands died (HIV contaminated blood supplies in the 1980s, the 2003 heat-wave and so on).
The principle means that no expense should be spared and no risk taken, however small, there is a possible danger to human life. This led the government last summer to order 94 million doses of swine flu vaccine. That cost 712 million euros. Only five million shots have been used so far and the epidemic is fading. The state also bought 33 million doses of Tamiflu and Relenza, the anti-viral drugs. On top of that it ordered an astonishing one billion masks, few of which have been used. No other nation went as far as that. ”
http://timescorrespondents.typepad.com/charles_bremner/2010/01/swine-flu-france-wants-its-money-back.html
“David Segesta (07:40:23) :
Why use a 25 month running average?”
Same question.
Changing to a 25-month smooth will henceforth be known as “Roy’s trick to hide the increase” …
MJK — Any blind freddy reading the graph can see that it shows a warming trend every decade for the past three decades.
Thanks MJK for this Oz link. This helps me confirm in my mind that data in one region or data from one time period is meaningless scientifically outside of the proper global coverage and historical time series. I hope he will join the campaign for proper transparency of raw data and full diclosure of sampling protocols and data quality.
tallbloke (09:45:17) : You are right, but, here we are again discussing on temperatures, weather and climate, but knowing that (Pieter F (09:53:36) )…the AGW Movement is not about weather or climate. It is about Maurice Strong’s efforts to establish a global governance
If we should accept that project we would not hear anymore of “Global warming” or “climate change”, so what really troubles us is that we do not necessarily like drinking “kool-aid” or whatever we have not asked for.
We know too that there have been guys, out there, who adjusted satellites in order to make diverge TSI with earth temperatures, etc.,etc. and who passionately defend their “hockey sticks” or whatever, from the deepest of their inner beings (their pockets), but truth, as cold sea currents, unexpectedly surface letting us know who are the ones society needs to get rid of in order to rearrange itself according to ethical principles and make earth a place worth living for decent people. Times of changes indeed.
Wind Power.
And don’t expect wind power to keep you warm when we get these cold events. This is a record of the wind speeds in the Irish Sea (where many of the UK’s windelecs reside) for the last 7 days (when it was bitterly cold).
http://coastobs.pol.ac.uk/cobs/met/hilbre/getimage.php?code=5&span=2
Any wind speeds below 5kts will not produce any appreciable power. So with Gordon Brown’s new push for wind power, we would all be freezing and dying by the thousand.
Are these politicians just stupid or deliberately evil??
.
George E. Smith (09:47:14) :
Personally I like Pt100 for it linearity & as you say, it’s pretty indestructible.
I always seem to get laughed down over this one. Without a minimum of temp & RH, we learn nothing about atmospheric energy.
DaveE.
I’m in FL and it dropped down to the 30’s last night.
Oh that’s an easy one to answer: “If it hadn’t been for these anomalous 30 years of temperature decline, it would have been even worse than we thought!”
All these oscillating weather sources don’t dance to the same drummer. I would imagine, in a thought experiment, that some are long regular oscillations with larger regular phases, some are regularly shorter, and some are chaotically shorter. I could go on with this thought experiment and mix/match the ocsillation variables. I could also, in my thought experiment, imagine that certain oscillations catch each other when they happen together and force a long spell of hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or windy conditions.
This has come to mind once I began studying the Arctic Oscillation together with the AMO, PDO, El Nino, and jet stream. I can imagine a period of cold wet conditions bringing lots of snow to glaciers and freezing up rivers and streams, followed by incredibly frigid weather damming up larger rivers that together continues to build a mini-ice age, followed by warming.
I went to Google and looked at the satellite topographical map of my ranch. At 3500 feet up, I am sitting right in the middle of what looks like a vast shallow lake below a gouged out terminal moraine. Wonder how many times it happened.
I calculated the right UAH December 2009 temperature anomaly already on December 19th – exactly 0.28 °¨C. See
http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/12/uah-msu-temperatures-for-2009-and.html
See also
http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/12/no-statistically-significant-warming.html
DirkH (08:17:50) :
Look at this entry in the BBC’s Richard Black’s blog:
He noticed that the AO went negative. He doesn’t even try to give it much of an AGW spin.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2010/01/arctic_conditions_arctic_cause.html
———————————————————
Somehow, I don’t think that Richard Black got his 3-month AO index diagram from the NOAA. (if he even knows what that is)
Much easier to have found and bookmarked
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/28/the-arctic-oscillation-index-goes-strongly-negative/#more-14605
Perhaps he’s climbed to the top of the fence.
This is a central Pacific centered El Nino versus the 98 El Nino that was Eastern Pacific; this shifts the Aleutian low farther west and leaves a ridge over the west coast.
Can I just be sure? The anomaly is with respect to a 79-98 average which is itself calculated entirely from satellite measurements that are entirely independent of any surface instrument. Yes? So I may conclude that Dr Spencer now has a 30 year run of satellite measurements that make no use whatever of surface instruments. (30 years seems to be something of a magic number for climate people.) Anyway, my compliments to Dr Spencer for plotting the moving averages without using “padding” to give the appearance of their spanning the whole period – that “padding” trick always seemed to me to imply that the “Team” were not workers of the highest standards of integrity or competence.
There might be a slight warming here over the 30-year period. And a slight cooling over the last decade.
But there is nothing dramatic here. There is no skyrocketing, no accelleration.
This is climate behaving as climate normally does.
Case closed.
OT Iain Dale’s readers have a guess at why the Head of the Met Office got a 25% pay rise 😀
http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2010/01/challenge-of-day.html
His blog got 1m readers last year.