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
Well you see it’s simple thermodynamics coupled with turbulences, like when you boil some water and suddenly you see ice cristals appear in the pot due to chaotic temperature fluctuations. The temperature shifts simply become so violent that there’s chaotic temperature repulsion. Like we see now. Outside. Those anomalous masses of snow. They’re a fluke.
RobP (13:50:40) :
You’re missing nothing.
A litre of water in a pan at 100ºF contains a LOT more energy that a litre of air at the same temperature.
Unfortunately, the battleground has been set on temperature with no regard to things like humidity which can change energy content significantly. I won’t be celebrating if/when temperatures go down, it proves nothing.
My local climate, (North-East England), hasn’t changed much over the last 60 years that I know of. Anecdotally I can say over the last 100 years.
As far as I know, my micro-climate is still part of the planet Earth and I doubt anyone elses micro-climate has changed either. (Why should MY micro-climate be different to anyone elses?)
Sure, the climate has changed, but in both directions in my memory, why should this be considered abnormal? The overall change seems, (at the moment), to be minimal.
My one big hope is that warming is going to happen. Warm is good!
DaveE.
What global warming? As far as I can see even from the available scientific evidence (even if it’s corrupted) the world has not changed either way over the past 100+ years compared to longer term trends going back 100’s and 1000’s of years. If anything I find this surprising. I would have thought the climate would either have cooled or warmed a lot more than it already has. So, what’s all the fuss about? Are global warming alarmists on drugs or something?
RobP –
I think your question is spot on. Take a look at:
http://scienceofdoom.com/2009/12/19/is-climate-more-than-weather-is-weather-just-noise/
People keep talking about the year to year variation as “noise”. Noise is measurement error. Also I don’t think a storm or an unusually hot day at the beach is significant. That’s noise = weather.
But if the amount of heat in the earth’s climate system is lower at the end of the year than at the start there should be a reason.
Either we can’t measure properly or we don’t understand the physics behind climate well enough. Keith Trenberth, top IPCC scientist, raises this in a paper which is discussed in the blog post (above).
Looking at Roy’s plots at his site raises some questions. There he is using a 20 year average for calculating his anomaly at 14,000 ft (ch05). That would be consistent with the vertical axes in the plot above indicating 1979 to 1998.
But in looking at the track for 2009 against the 20 year anomaly, he appears to be using the 20 year average for each specific date of the previous 20 years (the yellow line). It would be nice to have the ‘zero’ line 20 year average plotted along with the constantly changing daily one.
Which then raises the question of how the ‘zero’ line is calculated in the plot above.
Pieter F (09:53:36) :
It might also help some visitors to MJK’s world to shift their focus from the silly idea that a couple of warm decades is proof that global warming ever existed in the first place.
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Especially taking UHI in to account.
Tilo Reber (14:33:19) :
So why not stop your babbling, Tom, and do an ENSO correction on the UAH data set since 1998, run a linear trend line through it, and show us what is really going on.
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I agree Tilo.
RobP (13:50:40)
I think you are correct to be interested about the meaning of the very noisy pattern of the anomalies, but it is not worrisome. Although it is a tremendous amount of energy when multiplied by 500 million square kilometers, it only takes about 3kWh to warm a square meter of atmosphere from sea level by one degree C. In a 730 hour average month, this only takes 4 Watts out of the 330 W average total solar insolation. So a reduction in cloud cover of a little over 1% would raise the air that degree in a single month.
So what we are looking at in these charts is really just an artifact of the cloud cover variations and exchanges to the ocean, which has the same heat capacity as the atmosphere in its top 2.5 meters.
I think the real meaning of these graphs and the graphs of regional anomalies is that 1 or 2 Watts of additional theoretical forcing from more GHG is NOT a catastrophe.
Peter Moliterno, P.E.
Odd, this bantering about of how Roy Spencer handled this data. So you say he manipulated data so it will show cooling instead of warming because he’s a cooling type of guy?
Huh. Short memories.
I remembering him having a question about Richard Lindzen’s ERBE data and that his own calculation showed a slight warming and that was different than Lindzen’s results.
He didn’t try to show cooling with that data.
Peter of Sydney (15:52:38) :
“What global warming? As far as I can see even from the available scientific evidence (even if it’s corrupted) the world has not changed either way over the past 100+ years compared to longer term trends going back 100’s and 1000’s of years. If anything I find this surprising. I would have thought the climate would either have cooled or warmed a lot more than it already has. So, what’s all the fuss about? Are global warming alarmists on drugs or something?”
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It seems to be some kind of steroid that locks them into a delusional power trip.
“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:”
This is somewhat evasive, Thermometers on board can not direcly measure surface temperature. There is obviously an algorithm being used to convert satellite measurements to surface temperature, and what some folks worry about is that the algorithm can be tweaked to give more “accurate’ temperatures by those who deem them too low.
Leif, I maintain there is no single, definite trend in the temperature data. If you want the world to believe there is one, and even a catastrophic increase, no less, then the burden of proof is on you.
The only correct way of putting it: if, by handpicking a smoothing averaging, or a “convenient” reference period reasonably long, I can come up with a graph that shows no significant temperature increase, then the DATA shows NO AGW-related increase trend! Sure, there *may* still be one brewing, but it’s not showing, so the AG warming is still a puzzling theory.
Maybe the choice of Spencer to use a 25-month right now is not entirely fair, but it’s legit. (The 98 El Nino is smoothed out, someone complained… but wait… well, that’s actually a GOOD reason to use a longer averaging base! To decrease the +/- by nino/nina.)
But you seem to ignore the paramount difference there is between plotting a slightly different moving average over a visible raw data graph that anyone can judge for himself (so that it’s more of a visual aid than anything else) and the nefarious trick of the original “hide the decline”, that implied tampering with the plot of a graph without telling it, to show perfect accordance between datasets that weren’t.
But what do I know, I’m a neophyte, right?
Peter of Sydney (15:52:38) :
What global warming? As far as I can see even from the available scientific evidence (even if it’s corrupted) the world has not changed either way over the past 100+ years compared to longer term trends going back 100’s and 1000’s of years. If anything I find this surprising. I would have thought the climate would either have cooled or warmed a lot more than it already has. So, what’s all the fuss about? Are global warming alarmists on drugs or something?
(IMHO) Root Cause Analysis as to why people continuously submit themselves to the “madness of crowds”…
Too many people are unable to distinguish between “perceived risk” and “real risk”, which inability is exploited for profit by scaremongers and insurance companies.
When people are able to make that distinction and collapse the gap between real and perceived risks they are able to make rational decisions about those risks. Without the distinction, people waste resources jumping at shadows.
Thanks to all who replied on the question of energy balance, but perhaps I misled you when using the term ‘worried” (blame my english english). I am certainly not worried about the climate, which will do its own sweet thing regardless of what I or Al Gore may pronounce, but I am worried that we are missing the point by focussing on the temperature as a single factor.
I think scienceofdoom (15:57:23) puts it a bit more clearly, but the point is that the energy apparently leaving and then re-entering the system is not accounted for in the models. If we accept that the variability in the temperature readings is not measurement error then we have to be able to explain where the energy is going (and coming back from).
Other comments in this thread have talked about the ocean as a heat (energy) sink and intuitively, this seems like a good place to be looking, but there seems even less data on ocean temperatures than atmospheric. I like the idea that you have to include RH into any temperature measurement, since it seems to me that this will affect the energy balance as well, but is anyone doing this?
The Trenberth “travesty” comment in the climategate emails sums it up for me, but on a bigger scale altogether. The travesty is that we have not yet properly accounted for all of the energy flows in the system, but some people are telling us that we can fine-tune our climate by fiddling with a trace gas!
Max: You asked, “Why does it show T = Departure from 79 to 89 and not 79 to 09”
I assume your 89 is a typo and it should read 98.
UAH uses the twenty years of 1979 to 1998 as their base years for anomalies.
“It may seem that if they could pass off FDR as a great president, Hitler as a conservative, the Tet Offensive as a grand victory for communism, and Barack Obama as qualified to run the country, there is absolutely no lie too preposterous for our liberal elite ruling class to ram down our throats. But even NBC ought to realize that it’s time to pull the plug on the global warming hoax. They can’t even totally suppress the ClimateGate emails that reveal the “crisis” as deliberate fraud; how are they going to hide . . . . .”
http://www.iloveco2.org/2010/01/global-warming-what-global-warming.html
. . . . . . the fact that it is COLD everywhere!
I do NOT believe for one minute that the (meaningless) global average temp is 0.28 degrees to the warm side of what they arbitrarily call “normal.” I don’t care what instruments they say they use, those instruments and the data they generate are only as good as the “scientists” upon whom we depend for that data and it’s interpretation. We have seen from Climategate that they are not to be trusted, and I don’t.
I’m not getting all of the complaints about a 25 month running average. The monthly data are plotted along with it, so nothing is being “hidden”. What’s the beef?
yonason:
“We have seen from Climategate that they are not to be trusted, and I don’t.”
Yonason, Roy has nothing to do with climategate. In fact, if any of the cliamtegate cabal saw Roy they would probably spit on him. Roy doesn’t support the idea that CO2 is a big problem. And from what I have seen of his work, I have no reason to distrust him.
tallbloke (09:45:17) :
My model says the oceans start emitting heat-energy when the sun drops below 40SSN. So the since the SSN was above this value for much of the C20th, there is a lot of extra heat built up in the ocean which has caused the big el nino’s as the sun’s high activity values have started to wane since 1992. These big el nino’s propped up the warmth for some time, but we are now starting to feel the effects of the quiescent sun more directly.
Couple of questions:
How long before the oceans’ reserve heat supply is depleted to the point
where it is no longer a factor?
Does the currentSSN-40SSN figure scale linerarly in effect?
ex. – currentSSN=10-40SSN = -30
so would a previousSSN=0-40SSN = -40, so the previous SSN cools 1.3 times as much as the currentSSN?
pft:
There is obviously an algorithm being used to convert satellite measurements to surface temperature, and what some folks worry about is that the algorithm can be tweaked to give more “accurate’ temperatures by those who deem them too low.
Roy Spencer is not an AGW alarmist pft. Those temperatures are the most accurate that he can produce. And you can bet that they are very close to correct. You have to accept that there was some warming in the 70s, 80s and 90s. It may have been more the result of ENSO and PDO than of CO2, but it nevertheless happened.
There is the appearance of a set of 8-year jumps in the global calculated temperature in the last 3 decades or so. With low nodes approximately in 1985, 1993, 2000 and 2008. Continuing a discussion on this from a previous thread, these might be linked to the 8 year climate heat time constant as calculated by (e.g.) Scafetta 2008:
http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/opinion0308.pdf
Another paper talked of 4 year and 8 year components of solar forced but heat time constant-constrained fluctuation. It does not take too much imagination to divide some of the above-mentioned 8-year jumps into two 4-year components (OK Pinatubo in 89).
Just 3 decades is of course a little short to make bold claims about such 8-year (or 4+4 year) jumps. But the temperature upswing from the low of 2008 up to now which has given the beleagured AGW camp false hope, would be the predicted uptick at the start of the latest 8-year jump.
As well as global (satellite) low atmosphere temps, sea sfc. temps and troposphere over oceans also show these 8 year jumps (e.g. http://www.climate4you.com ).
One interesting thing about these jumps is where they land – the temp (anomaly difference) between the low nodes at the start and end of each jump. So far:
1977-1985 (guess from extrapolation): no change or slight decrease
1985-1993: slight increase
1993-2000: big increase
2000-2008: slight increase
The sort of question you might get in an IQ test would be, how should the next 2-3 jumps go? My answer would be:
2008-2016: no change or slight decrease
2016-2024: big decrease
2024-2031: small decrease
This of course assumes a monotonous oscillation of global temps. However if a longer term oscillation were to come into play, a more abrupt fall of temps could occur in the next two decades. If a temperature decline steeper than this were to happen in the next decade, and if this decline were to continue without slowing out to 2030 and beyond, it would become hard to hide; then all bets would be off.
One can speculate that these 8 year jumps represent periodic pulses of heat input from deeper ocean to sea surface. At http://www.climate4you.com under the ocean link, the last item is yearly change in sea level, from 1995 only. This shows corresponding but 4 year jumps (1999-2000 – 2004 – 2008) and with an overall strong downward trend. Could this indicate a recent and current secular fall in heat input to upper ocean and atmosphere with consequent steady global temperature decrease?
To answer a couple of Q’s here, from my limited understanding:
The ‘anomaly’ is shown presumably because we are not sure of any base point. What we can measure id the difference (anomaly) instead.
Taking the 79 to 98 average as our baseline in this instance seem a fairly obvious thing to do. This is the first 20 years, and we want to compare to that. I guess taking the first decade may have been acceptable to. Given what seems to happen in 93/4 I am not sure it would be very different.
Taking a 25 month mean also seems sensible. It smooth out the 12 month cycle to some extent I’d assume. If anyone could try it with an 11 year smoothing it may be interesting, but eyeballing it, I don’t think terribly different.
Regardless of what his motive may have been, Spencer changed the rules of his own game by changing the rolling average calculation for his breathlessly awaited monthly chart. One of the criticisms of the AGW crowd has been that they change the rules of the game each time the old rules produce something they don’t like and leave us comparing apples with oranges. If for no other reason, I think Spencer exhibited a serious lapse in judgment by changing his established convention. It certainly raised my suspicious hackles sufficiently to go back and check the AMSU-A data he purports to use. The charts for 14,000 feet clearly show that from the summer temperature peak of 2009 forward, the 2009 chart exceeds the temperature of any year on the AMSU-A record both in absolute terms and in deviation from the 20-year average, 1998 included.
I’m a confirmed skeptic and I can certainly read my own thermometer and follow weather reports, so this criticism should not be interpreted as coming from “the enemy camp of the brainwashed”. However, if you wish to hang your hat on the satellite readings at 14,000 feet, you should not fudge things when the satellites embarrass. I think Spencer fudged.
CH
Across the Chunnel: AGW say, Veni, Vidi, Vici.
AGW/Gaia’s “Daisy” chain: EUrope, UK, France, Germany, Belgiummm, Copenhopenchangen, etc.
BTW, Liberal Iffy is in Provence, France, sipping ice whine.
“And with a new low-pressure system — rather incongruously dubbed “Daisy” — set to move in”.
…-
“Brrrrr!
More Snow Coming for Already Frigid Europe
It has already been an unusually cold winter across much of Europe. But more snow is on the way in the coming days, and there’s no end to the big chill in sight.
The irony was difficult to ignore. As world leaders gathered in Copenhagen in early December for what turned out to be a failed attempt to agree on a worldwide plan to combat global warming, temperatures outside the conference were bitterly cold. Delegates from equatorial countries were shivering under multiple layers, and even those from northern Europe had a hard time staying warm.
Now, almost three weeks after the conference ended in fiasco, Europe continues to be in the grips of frosty and snowy weather. And with a new low-pressure system — rather incongruously dubbed “Daisy” — set to move in over the weekend, much of Central Europe could soon be buried in a new layer of snow.”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,670188,00.html
…-
“Y2Kyoto: Daily Driver
Dear Britain,
Now you know.
Yours truly,
Saskatchewan”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi