We’ve talked a lot about record cold and snow, now more from the “weather is not climate department”, and this time there’s a warm side to the story. I’d planned to write something about this, since several people left the UAH numbers in Tips and Notes, but Luboš Motl beat me to it, so I’ll give him the honor here. It will be interesting to see what some pundits do with this number, especially if they compare it to the longer 100+ year instrumental surface temperature record. – Anthony
From his post:
Global UAH: warmest January day on record
Source for this graph is here
Many people think that the globe must be terribly cold these days. We’ve seen huge cold snaps and snowfalls in Britain, Eastern parts of the U.S., Western Europe, Central Europe, China, Korea, and India where hundreds of people have frozen.
So these are almost all the important places, right? (At this moment, the speaker forgets that there are places such as Latin America, Australia or the Balkans which have been warm.) So the globe must be cool – cooler than average, people could think.
However, the daily UAH global mean temperature shows a different story. The early January 2010 was warm. And on January 13th, which is the latest day whose temperature is known, we have seen the warmest January day on their record. The brightness global temperature near the surface was
T = -16.36 °C
which may not look excessively warm 🙂 but it is actually 0.11 °C warmer than the warmest January temperature recorded by UAH so far – which was on January 5th, 2007 (-16.47 °C). Of course, some alarmists might feel happy for a while. They’ve been afraid that the worries about a new ice age could escalate. And they’ve been saved: the global weather is warm again. The strong El Nino episode could have helped them – or someone else. It’s important that they’re saved. 😉
However, there is another, more important consequence of these numbers. And it is the following: the global mean temperature is irrelevant for you and for everyone else, too. It didn’t help the hundreds of frozen people in India, the passengers whose flights were canceled, and millions of other people in the European, Asian, and American civilization centers.
If you actually draw the monthly data from 1979 to 2009 – the global ones and those in e.g. Prague – you will find out that the correlation coefficient is just 0.17 – well below the maximum possible value of 1.00. It won’t be much higher outside Prague, either. 🙂
The Pythagorean average monthly anomaly in Prague has been something like 1.95 °C. Imagine that you want to use the global temperature in order to improve the estimate of the temperature in Prague for a given month. If you add the global anomaly and the expected local average temperature in Prague for the month, you will reduce the typical fluctuation from 1.95 °C to 1.92 °C or so – almost no change. The swings in the global temperature won’t visibly help you to improve the predictions of the local temperature.
So while it may be fun to watch the global temperature – a meaningless game that many people began to play in recent years because of the AGW fad (and yes, your humble correspondent only plays these games because others do, not because it is scientifically important) – it is very important to realize that the changes of the global mean temperature are irrelevant for every single place on the globe. They only emerge when things are averaged over the globe – but no one is directly affected by such an average.
Even if you accumulate a whole century of changes, the relevance of the global temperature will be essentially non-existent. A 1.5 °C warming of the global mean temperature is still less than one standard deviation of the monthly average at a given place. And the “local” climate may also shift – the January 2100-2150 average may be warmer than the January 1950-2000 average in Prague by much more than those 1.5 °C. Different regional climates change differently and most of these changes have nothing to do with the changes of the global mean temperature!
By the way, it’s almost certain by now that January 2010 will also be the globally warmest January on the UAH record – the anomaly will likely surpass 0.70 °C. It may even see the highest (or at least 2nd highest) monthly UAH anomaly since December 1978. I will print more exact predictions in a week or so.
Stephen Wilde (14:57:41) :
Have you started your book?
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
And besides the hotpsot in the South Pacific, also such a UAH reading can also be attributed to:
(1) the recent peak of the El Nino, as well as
(2) the significant amount of tropospheric and in some cases stratospheric warming over the last month in the Arctic.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/hgt.shtml
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Looking at the UAH_LT record, at least since 2001, temperature spikes seem to occur in January (’08 is an exception).
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_Dec_09.jpg
I suppose it’s just coincidental.
I still see cooler temps since 1998.
Some say 1998 shouldn’t be counted because it was an El Nino year.
So then the current warming from El Nino also doesn’t count?
Thinking that average temperatures have any local meaning is like the guy who, knowing that the average depth of the river he needed to cross was only 2 feet, waded in and was promptly drowned in a nasty hole.
[ Henry chance (13:30:52) :
So are the warmists predicting more earthquakes?]
Almost certainly there is some wide-eyed manic ‘scientist’ writing a paper to prove that earthquakes are caused by human activity in rich Western countries, the peoples of which must make grovelling apologies — and pay up.
Once more, I suspect that the error in an average global temperature is much bigger than the anomalies shown. I suspect if a true propagation of errors was done on the plots shown and displayed with the nice curves, the error would overwhelm any differences.
Sources of systematic error:
1) emissivity, how much the gray constant is different from the black body constant of 1
This table of emissivity for some materials
shows a large percentage deviation from black body ( sand is 75% of black body, water 95-96% etc). Suppose we take this 350watts per meter square that have to be radiated by infrared for the energy to balance, ten percent is 35 Watts per meter square, so how can one talk of a radiation budget to the accuracy of 1 Watt/m^2 ?
As to the emissivity of the atmosphere , ( the percentage difference from black body) the gray body constant of air which can be calculated as in formula 8 in link and is temperature dependent: for 10C it is 0.74, at 20C it is 0.79. for 30C it is 0.85 introducing more errors.
These errors can be of the order of 10% the transformation of temperatures into energy, and it is energy that is important.
2) the geographical disposition of emissivity, errors coming form the maps, and changes of the maps due to cloud cover snow cover etc changes. I suppose even wind, when it is loaded with dust from the deserts is a time dependent phenomenon
I really really would like to see those lovely AMSU plots have an error display.
Maybe out of this fiasco of AGW one should come out with two separate measures.
Temperatures are useful locally, for life on earth, and anomalies locally have a real meaning. That can be kept with the local thermometers very well.
Satellites should stick to energy entering and energy leaving the earth in total. This will tell us eventually if we are warming or if we are cooling and sliding towards the next ice age.
Is there such a satellite ten year plot of average total energy input -energyoutput in watts per meter square?
Henry chance (13:30:52) :
I happened to catch part of Rush Limbaugh’s show today. He had a clip of Danny Glover (Detective Roger Murtaugh in Lethal Weapon) claiming the earthquake was a result of not just global warming, but the failure of the Copenhagen conference!
See http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,583162,00.html
Isn’t this a great world? We don’t need to study the sciences to figure out what is going on; just tune into one of our entertainers and they will tell us what to believe.
David Letterman will be glad to help you out if you’re puzzled about world events.
Remember in the old days comedians just cracked jokes and newspapers just reported the news and weathermen just tried to predict the local weather and no one was trying to save the world?
Steve Goddard (13:43:15) :
I’m sure both organizations are up to the challenge of keeping temperatures warm.
Hi guys; I’m an Australian; our govt is shortly retroducting the CPRS legislation; our top science site the CSIRO says under the heading Climate Change:
Globally, observed CO2 emissions, temperature and sea levels are rising faster than expected.
The warming has been fastest over land, and greatest in the higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere.
Global ocean temperature rose by 0.10 ºC between 1961 and 2003, to a depth of 700 metres.
In Australia, there has been a 0.9 ºC warming since 1950.
We have already observed changes to our climate that are more rapid than anything the earth has experienced for at least 1800 years.
There is greater than 90 per cent likelihood that most of the global warming seen since the mid 20th-century is due to increases in greenhouse gas emissions
How can I challenge that; anyone got any great ideas; I’m not a scientist; just a layman with a legal background
any hints; please e mail me at v_majkus@bigpond.com
Well as a long time sceptic who has always felt that the landbased temps were unreliable and open to manipulation our mainstay of anti AGW hype has been the satellite data! Now what the heck is going on?
1) There is a fault or the sat data has been got at
2) Its correct and the planet is still warming
3) if 2 is correct that still doesn’t mean that the AGW’s havent been spinning for gold
However if the sat data is correct then Houston we gotta problem
Gary (14:13:47) :
There’s a Sea Surface option too on the AMSU. ‘Highest on record’ (after 2002).
[snip]
[if you use the word deleted in the URL field of your post, to imply we are censoring something, we won’t publish it. RT – mod]
The daily data is still from an old satellite. Spencer writes:
“This web page should be used as only a rough guide, because there are some data adjustments made before we officially post the UAH monthly updated data. (I post a plot of those data here.) The biggest adjustment is the fact that we don’t even use NOAA-15 right now…we are using the AMSU data from NASA’s Aqua satellite in the final UAH product.”
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/01/daily-monitoring-of-global-average-temperatures/
tfp (14:21:32) :
The numbers from the same site plotted:
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/2104/amsutemptrends.png
Note that the 1km altitude measurements showing the most rapid increase were discontinued for some reason.
I’m sure it isn’t to hide the incline!
The reason for discontinuing this measurement would be of interest.
Did you also note the opposite decreasing Trend for the 25000ft – 7.5Km?
John Finn (03:20:49) :
[snip]
[if you use the word deleted in the URL field of your post, to imply we are censoring something, we won’t publish it. RT – mod]
I’ve never come across that before. Anyway my original post made the following point:
Presumably Jan 13th is now only the second warmest January day
since Jan 14th was warmer.
I partly agree that this may not be too significant but the UAH November 2009 anomaly was the highest November anomaly on record and it looks likely that January 2010 will be the warmest January on record.
I’m just wondering how many more records need to be broken before there is a realisation that the sun may not be as influential as some seem to think.
val majkus (02:12:05) :
I have sent you the link to this great website.
http://gustofhotair.blogspot.com/
John Finn (04:20:29) :
I’m just wondering how many more records need to be broken before there is a realisation that the sun may not be as influential as some seem to think.
I’m wondering how many times I’ll have to explain the post solar minimum modoki el nino to you before you stop making dumb statements like this one.
I know you are intelligent enough to understand it, so maybe you are just being rhetorical.
I am very naive when it comes to climate but this graph surprises me. If somebody had explained to me that the average temperature was calculated from readings taken all over the globe on each day of the year and then asked me what the graph of these averages would look like, I would have said a straight line. I would have reasoned that when the northern hemisphere is hot then the southern is cold and vice versa so that it all ends up cancelling out. This graph clearly show an annual rise and fall. Not only that but the values are so low. Could somebudy either enlighten me or point me in the direction of some explanation?
It’s best advised not to write things like “warmest January on record” otherwise unscupulous warmists like the BBC are bound to take it out of context. We may know it only refers to 30-odd years of satellite readings and not 300 years of temperature records, but using a short-term record to imply “ever” is something they’ve done before (e.g. arctic ice) and no doubt will do again.
Paul Coombes (04:31:29) :
I am very naive when it comes to climate but this graph surprises me. If somebody had explained to me that the average temperature was calculated from readings taken all over the globe on each day of the year and then asked me what the graph of these averages would look like, I would have said a straight line.
The Earth has more continental mass in the northern hemisphere. This reradiates heat more readily than the oceans dominating the southern hemisphere. So even though the Earth is closer to the sun in Austral summer, the atmosphere gets warmer in N.H. summer.
The data shows the same warming at high altitudes (46,000ft).
That cannot be related to the greenhouse effect, which is at a lower altitude.
I guess it must be solar-driven.
Feedback to UAH on their plot-Tool;
——————————-
Thank you so much for making this excellent Web-based plot-tool on the web for all to use, all over the globe.
You know probably very well that as soon as you make something like that, people want more, and more…..
I have a couple of suggestions, to even clearer plot what is going on, and maybe you will find them constructive;
(This is not negative feedback, neither is it forcing. Its supposed to be positive feedback 🙂
-Introduce a selection so we can see year by year (as is now) versus start until end. Of course 1998 until 2009 wil create a wide band of colour over the screen, so to get a trend one will need a running average. The running average value, e.g. 12 months should be adjustable. That will teach people why a running average us usefull, just as a visual tool to see trends.
-Introduce a global (as is now) versus Hemispherical plot. One line for ,say -30 to +30 lathitude, one for +30 to +60 , one for +60 to +90, and same for Southern Hemisphere.
With running average selection as well, and start until end.
I agree with those saying effects from clode-cover is better called feedback, rather than forcing, and that the sun’s influence could be called external forcing… however, maybe “external input” would be even better?
(Avoiding the “forcing” word altogether ; not much used in control-loops in electronics or cybernetics I think… )
Paul Coombes (04:31:29) :
I am very naive when it comes to climate but this graph surprises me. If somebody had explained to me that the average temperature was calculated from readings taken all over the globe on each day of the year and then asked me what the graph of these averages would look like, I would have said a straight line. I would have reasoned that when the northern hemisphere is hot then the southern is cold and vice versa so that it all ends up cancelling out. This graph clearly show an annual rise and fall. Not only that but the values are so low. Could somebudy either enlighten me or point me in the direction of some explanation?
Tallbloke answered one part of your question but didn’t answer why the value is so low. I’m going to guess what you are referring to is more along the lines of how could it be -xx C when the Souther Hemisphere is in their summer phase. The reason is actually simple, what UAH is reading on Channel 5 of the satellites is not surface temperatures but the middle layer of the Troposphere. Dr. Roy Spencer explains exactly what the satellites are measuring at his site here:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/01/how-the-uah-global-temperatures-are-produced/
If you are new to how global temperature datasets are made and who uses them I started a small Yahoo group that has some files that give basic definitions about who makes them, what they and who uses them and how:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/LaymansGuide/
I provide links to various NASA, NOAA and UAH datasets and interactive maps and graphs.
We have had a significant downturn in hurricanes lately. I suppose the warm oceans could be a side effect of limited heat release by hurricanes.