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.
Mooloo (14:04:53) :
I think it’s pretty obvious that the NH is having a coldish winter. For the SH to not just cancel that, but exceed it by enough to make it a record high beggars belief. That would mean the SH was seeing not just highs, but super-hot days. As I live in the SH (NZ) I am surprised that we aren’t seeing that.
It may be scientifically accurate, but I’m struggling to find it even remotely plausible.
Two things I think you are missing. First, and perhaps most important, is that we’re discussing deviations from a baseline (“anomalies”) not absolute temperatures. So we’re not saying that the SH summer is offsetting the NH winter in absolute terms, but only “relative” to some baseline (1979-1998, I think, for the satellite data). I.e., the SH is “relatively” warmer than the NH is “relatively” colder.
Second, the offsetting warmth in the SH is mostly in the oceans, so you may not be experiencing it directly in NZ.
Plus, some of the offsetting warmth is actually in the arctic. Again, go here
http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_data_monthly.html?channel=tlt
and select the anomaly view, and look at all the red and yellow. Look at all the blue and purple, too. But the latter is concentrated…where people live, so it naturally gets all the headlines.
savethesharks,
It is an extreme position to claim that 95% of the rise in atmospheric CO2 would have got nothing to do with human acticity – you won’t get many skeptics to agree with you on that. I think Smokey is simply mixing total (cyclical) CO2 output with raise in CO2 levels. And it is an extreme position to claim that government funded climate science in general would be corrupted and that IPCC would be 100% political. You cannot generalise from the rotten behavior of a few known suspects. And while IPCC is politicized it is not thoroughly so.
And it is an extreme position to claim that CO2 as a climate forcing would be insignificant. I think most established skeptics like Lindzen, Spencer and Pielke consider climate sensitivity to be around 1C, while IPCC consider it to be around 2.5C. 1C, while definitely not catastrophic, is significant.
But not significant enough to warrant trillion dollar extra investments to fix the “problem” in a world with so many other, more urgent challenges. And that is the key question in the debate between consensus and skeptics.
With the data now slowly and inevitably becoming available, skeptics and consensus should seek to co-operate so that science, and not politicization, can satisfyingly decide the issue during the next 10 or so years.
The next IPCC process is guaranteed to be lot more transparent than the previous ones, Jones and Mann are bound to be relegated to bit part players.
In short my point is that further antagonism is not needed this moment in time, and it is better to wait and see how things develop, to remain open minded on the key question and seek common ground to research it. Personally I’m confident that it is in the field of science that skeptics will eventually win the debate.
Speaking of UAH, when is their hockey team going to get its act together? They perform very well when up against top teams, but against everyone else they’re rather embarrassing.
Where I live in Oz (lat 34.35 deg. south) is about 80 kms. from Sydney. Typically, our temps. range from 2-4 deg. (C) cooler. This has been one of the cooler festive seasons that I can recall in my 60+ years. The weather channel is predicting more cooler weather to come for this locality over the next ten days. Not complaining, can’t stand hot, humid weather anyways.
Sure, Melbourne and Adelaide in particular are having a “horror stretch” but that’s nothing really new for them. Hot air from the parched centre is forced south in a generally predictable pattern every year.
Buddenbrook (15:20:46),
I agree with much of what you say. But it should be kept in mind that all the skeptic side has been doing is asking questions and requesting information. It is the alarmist side that plays dirty.
Your expectation that the IPCC will become transparent is a triumph of hope over experience. This is about a major transfer of wealth disguised as saving humanity. It is based on scaring people with a non-problem. I don’t think those trillion dollar bills dancing in the eyes of the international scam artists who infest the UN will go away simply because the CRU and Michael Mann have been caught gaming the system. They will just be more careful. But transparent? No. They will not do anything to upset their financial game plan.
I posted those charts upthread in case anyone was interested. The one from the IPCC shows that for every ≈34 molecules of CO2 emitted annually, only one is emitted as a result of human activity. All the rest are natural emissions. Those are the UN’s AR-1 figures, not mine.
I provided that citation, and you responded with your opinion. Can you provide any solid, real world, testable evidence, showing that the approximate one-third rise in CO2 is expressly due to human activity?
It may well be that humans are the cause. But I’m a skeptic, and I don’t accept the endlessly repeated argumentum ad ignorantiam, which claims that the rise must be due to human activity — simply because that conjecture has not been proven false. There are other possible reasons for the increase. In the geologic past, CO2 levels have been many times higher, when humans could not possibly have been the cause.
The total amount of CO2 emitted by humans is well within the natural year-over-year fluctuations of the planet’s total emissions. In other words, the amount of human produced CO2 is down in the noise: one part in 34. If I take someone’s word that the one-third rise in CO2 must be due to human activity, rather than, for example, outgassing from a warming ocean, then I might as well take that person’s word for anything at all, and open my wallet.
We also disagree regarding the politicization of the IPCC. The IPCC policy makers are completely political. They have their marching orders. They receive their tax free pay from the UN, plus numerous other perqs, including expense accounts and international travel. Individuals in that relatively small group of policy makers are appointed by their political masters, and they can be replaced just as easily. There are always many more candidates for those jobs than openings. The basis for my statement that the positions are political is that they are political appointees. How could they not be political? We will just have to disagree on that point.
Next, by quoting the upper range Prof Lindzen’s climate sensitivity, and then the IPCC’s lower range, you make it appear that they are close to agreement. They are not. Further, in every IPCC Assessment Report, they have significantly reduced their sensitivity number. It is still too high. Climate sensitivity to CO2 must be very low. How do we know this? Because the planet is telling us: as CO2 continues to rise, the temperature does not follow. There is ample evidence that CO2 rises following a rise in temperature, therefore it is an effect of warming, not a cause.
Climate sensitivity is tied to CO2 residence times. There are numerous peer reviewed studies showing a CO2 residence time of under ten years. But that would destroy the IPCC’s hypothesis, which requires a much longer CO2 persistence. So based on nothing more than that requirement, the UN arbitrarily assigns a century long CO2 persistence: click
You say “it is better to wait and see how things develop,” and I agree. There is no urgency. The longer we put off taking unnecessary action, the more obvious it will be that the whole CO2=CAGW hypothesis is a financial scam — the biggest financial scam the world has ever seen.
Posts like this get skeptics derided by warmists. Anthony, you’ve built this site up with quality posts that confront the issues that seem to get ignored by warmists. If this is the best response to a single graph of preliminary data over a few days, count me as a warmist.
Mostly off-topic, but either a shameless blog promotion or on-topic for the general coverage of the wattsupwiththat blog – there is a peer-reviewed paper about the UHI in Japan in International Journal of Climatology which is covered at:
http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/01/17/urban-heat-island-in-japan
Buddenbrook (Jan 16 15:20)
In short my point is that further antagonism is not needed this moment in time, and it is better to wait and see how things develop, to remain open minded on the key question and seek common ground to research it. Personally I’m confident that it is in the field of science that skeptics will eventually win the debate.
You might have been right if the governments of the west were not still full steam ahead for carbon nonsense. Give me a link for a pronouncement from the relevant minister of a western country that is not pro sequestration, cap and trade etc. based on “the science is settled”.
In contrast to you I think the skeptics and particularly the skeptical climate scientists have to keep on shouting, and they need the general skeptical public’s support, scientists and laymen. It is urgent that decisions are put off for a few decades in order not to destroy western civilization as we know it, and this will not happen by being nice nice with the “hiding the decline” scientific side.
I understand that the UAH values don’t reflect conditions on the ground in a particular area. So we are freezing (not today) in the Northeast yet UAH values are above normal because elsewhere on planet earth it is above normal, Duh, not sure that deserved a post.
However, I assume the UAH values over time have value in assessing global temperature. The fact that UAH has been flat/declining over the last decade in the face of increasing CO2 is not consistent with AGW. I assume that during the Medieval Warm period, the global T at 14,000 ft was above “normal” and that during an Ice Age, it is below “normal”; otherwise, why the hell are we measuring it. I like’d to understand why the UAH T is at 20 year record highs. We just went through an extended solar min; and various solar indices are low, why aren’t UAH T lower?
Can Anthony please provide a legend for the various colours and tell us which of those the little 2010 January segment (LHS of graph) represents? It might also be nice to know what the other plots have been doing 2010 during the January stealth heat snap.
I’m now guessing that the other plots are for several previous years. If so, my bad.
The UAH LT temperatures continue to climb: the latest anomaly is now +0.84 C. This is extremely high compared to the historical monthly values:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah
It now looks increasingly likely that we’re seeing something similar to the 2008 Super El Niño. This would raise two questions. Firstly, why are we seeing just 12 years after 1998 an event that had previously last occurred in 1878, 120 years before? Secondly, there was a shift of about +0.4 C after the 1998 El Niño in the temperate northern hemisphere temperatures:
http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/5596/rssglobal.png
Is this step increase in temperatures going to be repeated?
I mentioned this WUWT post over at Accuweather’s “Global Warming Site,” in the comments under a post entitaled, “Is World Climate Data being Manipulated to Show Warming?”
I like to go to that site when I’m in the mood to go toe-to-toe with Alarmists. In particular, there is one Alarmist who calls himself “Brookline Tom,” and he and I have been debating for over four years now. He remains a true-blue and faithful supporter of Hansen, but after four years of bickering I can’t help but like the fellow.
The other person mentioned in my comment is Brett Anderson, who runs the site and also is the Accuweather blogger-forecaster for Eastern Canada.
Here is my comment:
OUR GOVERNMENT IN ACTION:
Rather than investigated, Mann gets a half million in stimulus money.
Sigh.
Poor Brett. I’ll bet you could use a half million of stimulation, but do you get even a red cent from the government? Nope. Instead you have to pay them taxes. Tain’t fair!
I could go into quite a rant, but I would only annoy my good buddy Brookline Tom, so I won’t go there.
Instead I’ll give Brookline Tom some news that likely will have Alarmists jumping for joy. The UAH satellite data showed a fascinating spike in world temperatures at the start of January. They went from around +.2 to +.7, which is up past the levels reached by the 1998 El Nino.
However the fact that air temperatures can fluctuate to such a huge degree in only a couple weeks creates doubt as to whether they are a reliable measure of how “warm” the planet is.
They likely are a measure of other things. They may be a measure of how much heat the oceans are shedding, or even a measure of how much heat the planet is giving up to outer space.
Heat is stored up on earth in a number of ways. Here is one example (out of many):
Melting ice and then vaporizing the resultant water takes heat, and that heat is then stored as latent heat in the molecules of water vapor. Then, when the water vapor condenses, and then freezes to snowflakes, all that latent heat is released, and returned to the system. Therefore the creation of a huge snow-cover releases heat, but melting that snow-cover will use up that heat.
This may in part explain the spike in world temperatures over a period of just a few weeks.
In any case, all the needed research on the earth’s energy-budget can be done using satellite data as opposed to surface stations. The surface station data is too “adjusted” (fudged) to be much use, and our tax-dollars are better spent on satellites than on tweaking the temperature data from, for example, 1889.
Surface station data is very important to hard working forecasters of daily weather like Brett, but in terms of so-called “Climate Science,” there are much more interesting things we should be studying.
Tom P (01:39:13) :
The UAH LT temperatures continue to climb: the latest anomaly is now +0.84 C. This is extremely high compared to the historical monthly values:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah
It now looks increasingly likely that we’re seeing something similar to the 2008 Super El Niño.
This is a bit premature. So far, what we’re seeing is more like the 2002 El Nino. The latest ONI is 1.5, which is what it got to in 2002. This one may rise a bit more yet, but is still far short of the 2.5 seen in the 1997-98 “Super” El Nino. Tomorrow’s ENSO evolution report should be interesting, to see if it suggests that this El Nino has further to go. This past week’s CFS ensemble showed the current El Nino at a peak, and forecasts were down from the present figure.
vukcevic (14:36:24) :
For hot spot in the South Pacific Try this link : http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif
Crappy graphics-is that hot spot minus 4 or plus 8 by the color indicators? Or maybe I’m just color blind.
Crappy, indeed. It is bad form to repeat the contour colors. The very lowest temperatures appear where cold air has been flowing off the continents, so the alleged -8 must be off the U.S. east coast, or in the Skagerrak, but too small a region to resolve at this scale.
I’m pretty sure the people involved with the MSU satellites would have already thought of this, but is any else here familiar with AAS/AES? I hope so, because I simply don’t have the time or patience to go into a full explanation. It sounds counter-intuitive, but there are instances in spectroscopy when line-specific emissions can increase at the same time that total energy input to the system is decreasing (and vice versa). Hint: think about a 1% drop in TSI, but 6% drop in UV wavelengths? I don’t know how accurate those numbers are but they make sense in context.
Good luck.
Anyone????
Could someone please answer this…
The temperature variations are always expressed only as drybulb temperature variations. Wetbulb temperature variations are never discussed. Since AGW is really a discussion about HEAT at the Earth surface, if both are not known, how can we possibly know if heat at the Earth surface is rising or falling?
It seems to me that a record of drybulb temperatures withouth wetbulb temperatures is a completely meaningless record (heat wise).
Am I wrong
No, you are not wrong. The wetbulb would actually give us the enthalpy of the air rather than just its temperature. However, drybulb temperature is what drives LW radiation and so is closely related to the concept of equilibrium; wetbulb is more difficult to measure, and generally less accurate; the COOP stations do not measure this routinely (I think); and if humidity of the air remains constant (I doubt it does) then enthalpy is approximately proportional to temperature anyway. You can see from reading this site that temperature alone is difficult to measure accurately. I suspect that trying to reach the point of mapping enthalpy would reduce the whole exercise to chaos without adding enough to the discussion to be worth the effort.
Anthony, Andy Revkin says you and Hansen agree:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/hansen-and-watts-agree-cold-weather-isnt-climate/
Buddenbrook (15:20:46) :
savethesharks,
It is an extreme position to claim that 95% of the rise in atmospheric CO2 would have got nothing to do with human acticity – you won’t get many skeptics to agree with you on that….”
No Smokey is looking at the actual numbers on the chart from the US Department of Energy and doing the arithmetic. Human CO2 is 2.9126% of the total.
Smokey is not being “extreme” I suggest you take a look at the climategate discussions or better yet Hansen’s never ending “adjustments” to the US temp data.
Blink graph: http://i31.tinypic.com/2149sg0.gif
Before you start criticizing someone, LOOK at the information he has given first. It saves getting egg on the face.
Sean Peake (06:41:03) :
Like I said skeptical suicide! Please no more of these posts.
Jim Arndt (13:42:06) :
Just by looking at the past years it is easy to see that this spike will drop by the end of the month. I do not see any spike in temperature that has lasted more than two to three weeks. Most likely will end up only half of the .7 C anomaly by the end of January.
Well it looks like I’m right. Diving back to 2009, nice warm spell.
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps+003