The December 2009 and year 2009 University of Alabama at Huntsville lower tropospheric MSU temperature data is available. Thanks to Phillip Gentry and John Christy for alerting us to these figures]. I have several comments following the figures.
This data shows why the focus needs to be on the regional scale and that a global average is not of much use in describing weather that all of us experience.
The news media seem to continue to avoid this perspective. For example, in the article Snow, ice and the bigger picture
excerpts read
“Rather than seeking vindication or catastrophe in this cold snap, now is a good time to remind ourselves that weather, like death and taxes, will always be with us. Spectacular regional swings in temperature and precipitation, sometimes lasting for months, often emerge from the natural jostlings of atmosphere and ocean. By themselves, none of these prove or disprove a human role in climate change.”
“What’s different now is that climate change is shifting the odds towards record-hot summers and away from record-cold winters. The latter aren’t impossible; they’re just harder to get, like scoring a straight flush on one trip to Vegas and a royal flush the next.”
“If you’re craving a scapegoat for this winter, consider the Arctic oscillation. The AO is a measure of north-south differences in air pressure between the northern midlatitudes and polar regions. When the AO is positive, pressures are unusually high to the south and low to the north. This helps shuttle weather systems quickly across the Atlantic, often bringing warm, wet conditions to Europe. In the past month, however, the AO has dipped to astoundingly low levels – among the lowest observed in the past 60 years. This has gummed up the hemisphere’s usual west-to-east flow with huge “blocking highs” that route frigid air southward.”
“Handy as it is, the AO describes more than it explains. Forecasters still don’t know exactly what sends the AO into one mode or the other, just as the birth of an El Niño is easier to spot than to predict.”
See also the post at Dot Earth by Andy Revkin titled Cold Arctic Pressure Pattern Nearly Off Chart
The obvious response to these claims is that if we cannot predict weather features such as the Arctic oscillation or an El Niño under current climate, how can anyone credibly claim we have predictive skill decades into the future from both natural and human caused climate forcings? The short answer is that they cannot.
The article concludes with the text
“If this winter tells us anything, it’s that we’ll have to remain on guard for familiar weather risks as well as the evolving ones brought by climate change.”
This admission implicitly recognizes the focus on the reduction of vulnerability that we wrote about in our paper
Pielke Sr., R., K. Beven, G. Brasseur, J. Calvert, M. Chahine, R. Dickerson, D. Entekhabi, E. Foufoula-Georgiou, H. Gupta, V. Gupta, W. Krajewski, E. Philip Krider, W. K.M. Lau, J. McDonnell, W. Rossow, J. Schaake, J. Smith, S. Sorooshian, and E. Wood, 2009: Climate change: The need to consider human forcings besides greenhouse gases. Eos, Vol. 90, No. 45, 10 November 2009, 413. Copyright (2009) American Geophysical Union.
The media, policymakers and others should recognize this evidence of our incomplete understanding of the climate system. We will continue to have surprises such as we have seen this winter.
OT, The rss data for Dec is out now too. They dropped from 0.328 for November to 0.243 for December.
ftp://ftp.ssmi.com/msu/monthly_time_series/rss_monthly_msu_amsu_channel_tlt_anomalies_land_and_ocean_v03_2.txt
John M Reynolds
I don’t know if this has already been posted. If you have not seen it this is John Hirst the head of the UK Met Office being given hell by Andrew Neil on the BBC. Great fun. The guy is hopeless, has no credibility and is to say the least not at all convincing when claiming that the Met Office predicted the lack of warming since 1998.
John Peter (05:23:23):
clickA
clickB
clickC
clickD
clickE
Got plenty more if you’re still interested.
Smokey (05:49:08) :
Your plots are rather old. Here’s the up-to-date comparison:
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/811/ipccprojections.png
The IPCC record of prediction is considerably more accurate than yours.
“In any given year, …”
It’s not that random.
Even if they wish to continue believing in AGW, at a minimum-MINIMUM-the Warmists have to admit that things have not gone nearly the way they had predicted even a few years ago.
Even Jones and his cronies have admitted this. They just didn’t intent to do it publicly.
“The obvious response to these claims is that if we cannot predict weather features such as the Arctic oscillation or an El Niño under current climate”
Solar eclipses at low latitudes usually produce El-Nino so we will ‘very likely’ see La-Nina conditions in 2011 and 2012.
http://virakkraft.com/enso-solar-eclipse.png
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/5MCSE/5MCSE-Maps-10.pdf (20 MB)
@Stefan
>”But maybe I’m just ignorant. Is there anything about climate change theory that’s resulted in practical useful results yet?”
Yes, the Green goal of making energy so expensive that only the rich can afford it is almost within our grasp.
I love that Cim’s post got approved while 3 others were waiting. World-class moderation. The graphs are much appreciated Smokey.
[sorry, Ferg, the wordpress moderation tools gives me a list starting with newest first… -mikelorrey]
Bob Tisdale (03:14:03) :
Simply breaking the TLT anomaly data down into subsets (tropics and mid-to-high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere) can reveal the underlying causes of much of the rise in TLT anomalies:…
Great analysis Bob.
Peter of Syndey (04:12:04) :
The one surprise that will shock every AGW believer will be when the global temperatures fail to rise as predicted by even the mildest IPCC computer models. What then? …”
Patrick Davis (05:06:04) :
The decline will be hidden. Not sure how they will stop millions of people rioting…interesting times ahead.”
I just realized as I commented on another article here at WUWT, that they are not worried about hiding the future decline in world temperatures because another very real crisis is being orchestrated. This one is going to get everyone’s attention. It is rising food costs and famine. Worldwide “harmonized” regulations for farming (HACCP) will push independent farmers off their land causing increasing food riots, starvation and will spread to food shortages in first world countries. Of course it means mega profits for the food cartels too. Who the heck is going to care about “Global Warming” and the weather when they can not feed their families or get a job?
To date there have been six bills introduced to the US Congress for implementing this idiocy. The USA 20 years ago was responsible for over 50% of the global grain trade. Since 1990 the U.S. share has fluctuated between 25 and 30 percent. As a farmer I would grow crops for bio-fuel only to evade all those regulations and I am sure I am not alone.
For more info see the last comment at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/08/high-fire-danger-in-south-australia-as-temperatures-soar/
The biggest thing that I note when I see a map with the warm at the poles is the projection. There was a long post about this a year or two ago either here or at CA. Flat projections make the poles look huge, even though they are quite small.
Tom P (05:57:44) :
Smokey (05:49:08) :
Your plots are rather old. Here’s the up-to-date comparison:
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/811/ipccprojections.png
The IPCC record of prediction is considerably more accurate than yours.
REPLY:
Of course the UPDATED IPCC “predictions” are going to be better. If I line fit to the current data and then fudge the new data I can do great “predictions” too.
http://i31.tinypic.com/2149sg0.gif
Arctic warming in a little bit of perspective
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/icrutem3_hadsst2_0-360E_66-90N_na.png
Check as it is going down again. Remember, that Arctic should show most warming because of CO2 because low humidity there. There is barely any rise compared to 40ties, temperature following AMO.
Tom P (05:57:44) :
Smokey (05:49:08) :
Your plots are rather old. Here’s the up-to-date comparison:
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/811/ipccprojections.png
The IPCC record of prediction is considerably more accurate than yours.
Eurasia is our friend. We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.
OT In the Times [UK] today there is a classic warming rant..even revisiting the reversal of the gulfstream …this ‘comment’ is ludicrous..the MSM has a long way to go unfortunately!
And this from today’s Columbus Dispatch (by AP reporter Malcom Ritter)…When questioned about the unusually cold weather the northern hemisphere is experiencing lately, scientist (and AGW supporter) Gerald Meehl provided the old It’s-not-climate-it’s-weather response:
“It’s part of natural variability,” said Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. With global warming, he said, “we’ll still have record cold temperatures. We’ll just have fewer of them.”
Is Mr. Meehl not aware of the number of record cold temperatures that have popped up recently? I’d hazard a guess and say we’ve been experiencing many MORE record cold temperatures than fewer (and I don’t have an advanced degree in meteorology).
I think it will be awhile before any real comparison of IPCC projections is meaningful. Look at June and July 2009. In a single month we went from way below to very near the projections. When month to month variation is this large I don’t see any practical sense in making comparisons. It can always be cherry picked to show whatever one wants.
“This has gummed up the hemisphere’s usual west-to-east flow with huge “blocking highs” that route frigid air southward.”
The large high pressure regions should also allow the surface of the Artic to view deep space and with no Solar input, this will cause accelerated cooling.
TerrySkinner:
Thank you for the BBC video post! I believe Andrew Neil is my new favorite television interviewer!
Made the same mistake 3 years ago.
This is NOT a Mercator projection. This is a “Latitude/Longitude”
plot. Note the size of Greenland compared to Africa. It is about 1/5 the size of Africa, which is abbout right.
Made the same mistake when I did the Out Going Long Wave analysis, having to convert colored pixels to numerical values, 3 years ago. (Before NEO put out the convinient Java analyzers.)
Note that the cooling occurs over the large northern hemisphere landmasses. This would be the expected pattern as the oceans take much longer to change temperature.
Note the size of Greenland compared to Africa. It is about 1/5 the size of Africa, which is abbout right.
Greenland = 2.2 million sq km
Africa – 30.2 million sq km = 14 x Greenland
Apparently it’s presently colder in America than both poles, according to this http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread533082/pg1
“Spectacular regional swings in temperature and precipitation, sometimes lasting for months, often emerge from the natural jostlings of atmosphere and ocean. By themselves, none of these prove or disprove a human role in climate change.”
What is the likelihood that they would make this statement if we had an extremely hot summer?
geronimo (03:47:06) :
Do you know Stephen that I was thinking the same thing about 1976 when the Met Office announced that 2009 is going to be the hottest year on record. It doesn’t seem credible, I believe the Met Office is so entrenched in the business of proving AGW that it has lost all sense of integrity. Hadley should be closed down.
According to the BBC, the Met Office’s predictions have been correct — the public has merely misinterpreted them.
“…Susan Watts, BBC Science Editor, on Newsnight, as she attempted to explain why the abysmal failure of climate “scientists” to predict current weather conditions does not in any way reduce their credibility in predicting global warming: ‘In fact that seasonal forecast predicting a mild winter wasn’t actually wrong, but it left people with the wrong impression.’ ”
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=4839
Gentleman: “What are you doing with that herring?”
Met Office: “Just holding it. I am *not* going to whap you in the face with it.”
*whap*
Gentleman: “Ow! You snippety-snip-snipping-snip, why the snip did you do that?”
Met Office: “I *told* you I was going to whap you in the face with it — you misunderstood!”