UAH global temperature posts warmest January

Ray (09:51:45) : I’d sure like some of what you’re smoking.
Mann was not vindicated by the NAS. They agreed with Wegman, but in politer words. It’s just RC and others who’ve tried to substitute the message that “bad math” plus a lack of comment about consequences of the bad math means vindication.
Errors in UAH have been worked on and corrected as they’ve come to light. A far cry from any of the other global metrics.

yonason (09:22:38) :
“…lower tropospheric temperature anomaly soared to +0.72 deg. C in January, 2010.”
That’s it. There’s something seriously wrong with those satellites.
Of course there is. They were obviously fine in 2008 when they were coming up with negative anomalies but there is clearly a problem now.
Give it a rest with this nonsense. There is a significant El Nino taking place at the moment and temperatures in the atmosphere are responding to it – just as they responded to the La Nina in 2008.
I thought it was just the AGWers who rejected data they didn’t like.
Exactly what part of the world contributed to it? It wasn’t Europe, or North America or China, or Mexico, or Russia… So, where was it? I want to see a break down into smaller areas so it’s source can be found. If it isn’t all the extra cold areas, then there must be some spot, or spots, that is/are much hotter than usual.
Firstly, satellites are not measuring the surface. They are measuring temperatures in the troposphere. But, in answer to your question, the Pacific has been particularly warm- that’s more than 30% of the earth’s surface. The Middle East, North Africa, Mediterranean region and South America have also been warm. As have Greenland and parts of Canada.

The AGW crowd will have you believe that this “warming” proves that CO2 is the cause.
Maybe a couple of crackpots would say that, but the AGW crowd know that this is a weather event, not a climatic signal.
You will, however, find a gazillion posts mistaking weather for climate at all the better-known and more obscure anti-AGW blogs. Quite a number can be viewed just by scrolling up.
Whether it’s sea ice extent, atmospheric temperature, sea level data or what have you, the ‘skeptics’ seem to think that short-term weather phenomena, of a day/week/month/year/a decade tend to ‘prove’ something about climate.
Similarly, people seem to be confusing regional temperatures for global.
As someone said a little bit upthread – you need to look at the bigger picture: but ‘big’ for them was still a handful of years.
The minimum period for measuring climate change, statistically speaking, is ~15 years, but a more confident analysis rests on 20 – 30.
This information is easy to find. Is disinterest, ignorance or disbelief behind the lack of awareness on this?
Should 2010 turn out to be a record hot year, that too will be a weather event, not a climate signal.

One battle does not win a war.
Otherwise, all Yanks would all be speakin’ Rebeleze.
One satellite reading does not prove anything.
Otherwise, the AGW’ers would be spending our poor savings dry.
We are about ‘truth’ here, not a cause. If it can be proved that they’re right, they’re right. This isn’t a crusade against the heathens; though they do look rather strange when they start chanting and jumping up and down in a blizzard. I thought the idea was to get at the truth (whatever that may be).
If the sat’s broke, fix it.
If the sat ain’t broke, explain the reading.
How do the read outs (and altitude) factor into what is on the ground?
Don’t sit around cryin’ in your beer!
“Scientists don’t cry! Scientists DON’T Cry!”
(or was that baseball players?)

George E. Smith (10:54:33) :
[i]Observation three. Because of this large temperature differential from the hottest places to the coldest places (as much as 150 deg c in the extreme); natural thermal processes of convection and conduction, both in the oceans and the atmopshere, will tend to transfer large quantities of heat energy from the tropics to the polar cold regions; which are incapable of disposing of this excess heat because of their low temperatures.[/i]
Not sure what you’re getting at in suggesting that “cold regions are incapable of disposing of this excess heat because of their low temperatures”. Is there in fact ever any excess heat? Transfer between regions can only continue while one is colder than the other. If temperature equilibrium was ever reached then the heat transfer would stop. As to the amount of heat transfered, isn;t this a zero sum game? So what is your argument for the coldest places showing the biggest changes?

The belief that CO2 is a great absorber of heat is just nonsense. CO2 when compared to air is poor at absorbing heat and compared to water vapor is positively insignificant. This can be verified easily in any lab, at any time, anywhere on the planet. Any claims otherwise had better come with real, repeatable, testable results showing not on charts but visually the actual real ability of CO2 to be the great heat lover it is claimed to be.
With a specific heat capacity of CO2 less than nitrogen, oxygen and aluminum, CO2 would appear to transfer heat to space more efficiently than either nitrogen or oxygen. And CO2 like aluminum retains next to no heat at all. So good luck to all those subscribing to this heat monster myth.
The website Science of Doom should be renamed Pseudoscience of Doom. AGW science is nothing but a bunch of confused nonsense based heavily on abstracted physics, models and lots of math. The line by the author of the prologue to “CO2 An Insignificant Trace Gas?” sums the believers stance up quite well. In it the author says “For science, personal experience and imagination are not the deciding factors. They lead you astray”.Really, does not science start from the personal observation of someone. Is not a blackbody an abstraction of reality? I have heard people claim that a blackbody has somehow materialized to be easily studied by science. NO.
Does the earth have a homogenous albedo that can easily be quantified by an average.
For 79 billion dollars and counting one would think that experiments done in the atmosphere (besides radiosondes) would be proposed, engineered and executed. So where are they? Its all well and nice to have a satellite in orbit and some sensors on the ground but without more scientific exploration of the atmosphere itself our knowledge is incomplete. So can anybody point me in the direction of the latest results of experiments in the stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere or exosphere?
AGW is a fraud (a cunning and clever one though) and fiasco right from the get go.

barry (10:44:40) :
You postulate that we are ignorant of what the warmers say, but we are not. You then posit laziness as an explanation for that non-existent ignorance. Like all warmers, your theory and it’s basic assumptions are fantasies
I repeat, we know what they say, and why it is wrong. See the video I reference in my yonason (10:41:42) : , above, to see for yourself, …that is, unless you’re too lazy?
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Leif Svalgaard (10:39:27) :
No, I don’t want to go too off road on this either, but if at some time you can supply some good references that you think address/refute what I said, by all means let me know what they are. I would be happy (and quite surprised) to see them.

sunsettommy (12:28:20) :
“I implore you to stop bashing the satellite data.”
No. You say it must be the oceans, since it probably wasn’t the land. Well, like I said above, show me where exactly the alleged warming is coming from, and support the result with another method, and I might reconsider, but failing that, the result is so beyond what is expected, that it must automatically become suspect.
As to, “it must be the oceans,” I’m afraid there are is some hint that might not be true.
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/03/the-ocean-really-is-cooling/
If it turns out that’s true, fine. But don’t expect me to buy it when so many other, and more direct, indications say, “NO!” without further, and a lot more, details.

To those who still believe carbondioxide is cause for global warming:
Note that the carbondioxide content went up by 0.01% from 0.03% (=280 ppm) to 0.04% (380 ppm) during the last 50 years, i.e from 1960 to 2010.
I have spent about 3 or 4 months now in the evenings as my hobby investigating the science behind the CO2 thing and I came to the conclusion that no one has ever done any proper investigations. Really, nobody convinced me from any type of research that CO2 is the cause of global warming. You see, if carbon dioxide traps infra red radiation from earth (keeping us warm) then it must follow that carbon dioxide also shields us from the sun (similar to ozone blocking UV and water vapor blocking IR). So the question I asked everyone and everywhere is: what is the net effect, especially at the relevant levels of carbon dioxide of 0.02% – 0.05%? (200-500 ppm). I found no clear answers to this simple question. The tests done on CO2 are on 100% and are then extrapolated to much smaller concentrations. That is not the right kind of science. It also seems that no one has realized that CO2 also causes cooling. In fact, together with an increase in water vapor (shallow water-dams for human consumption and irrigation) and an increase noted in ozone, carbon dioxide helps to increase earth’s albedo. (=earthshine). They actually use this UV absorption of CO2 to test whether there is CO2 on other planets.
Let us do a few simple scientific thought experiments. I think even non scientists can understand my thinking.
Experiment 1.
We have a glass vessel, about 10000 liters, flushed and filled with 80% nitrogen and 20% oxygen, representing the earth and its atmosphere at the beginning. We have a probe on the side, in the middle, connected to a thermocouple and a temperature recorder. We have a large heating element right in the middle of the vessel. The vessel is closed from the outside. The outside temperature and humidity is kept constant, at all times. A measured amount of energy is released into the vessel. The resulting increase of the temperature in the vessel is recorded until it falls back to the base line. The area below the curve is measured. The measurements are repeated until a constant result can be reported. (A). We now double the amount of energy released into the vessel, this increase representing the doubling of energy released by human activity on earth from 3.5 billion people in 1960 to 7 billion people in 2009. The area below the curve is measured. The measurements are repeated until a constant result can be reported. (B)
In the case of this first experiment, the result is predictable i.e. if you double the amount of energy released in a vessel you should find close to a doubling of the area under your graph.
Experiment 2
Experiment 2 is exactly the same as experiment 1, but now the vessel is filled with 80/20 N2/O2 + 350 ppm CO2. The results are C en D. What would be interesting for us to know is the difference between A and C and between B and D – in other words: if we release similar amounts of energy into the vessel, what effects, if any, does the 350 ppm’s of carbon dioxide have on temperature retention inside the vessel?
Admittedly, I don’t have the equipment to do these simple tests, but the results are predictable.
The 350 ppm CO2 added are far too small to have any effect on heat retention in this experiment. In other words: there is no measurable difference between A and C and between B and D. The concentration of CO2 is too low.
So now, from these simple thought experiments I have made the following conclusions:
a) the 100 odd ppms of CO2 added to the atmosphere since 1960 have had no measurable influence on heat retention (in this experiment)
b) if we add another 100 ppm’s (on top of the 350) it will also not have any effect at all on same measurements , i.e. still no measurable heat retention in this experiment.
c) if anything, assuming the atmosphere is indeed a greenhouse as claimed, (meaning my idea of representing the earth as a glass vessel is reasonable), the result from my experiment no.1 must mean that global warming is caused by humans releasing energy in the atmosphere. This would seem to indicate to me that AHF is much bigger than presently being thought possible… That also means: only that energy that we steal from nature is green (solar, wind, gravity, tidal etc.). Nuclear is not green, H2/O2 combustion (rocket fuel) is not green, fossil fuel is not green. It seems to me that CO2 is just made a major culprit because it suits certain interest groups. “What else can it be?” let us have planet, add some CO2, see if the temperature goes up, it did, so that must be it.
Unfortunately, I think some decent testing would reveal that the CO2 is not to blame, at least not at current concentrations. What I found is: they used experiments with 100% CO2 and then extrapolated the results to smaller concentrations. You cannot do that. Any good scientist knows that properties of a solution or mixture may change with varying concentrations. You always have to do your measurements at relevant concentrations, i.e. 0.02 – 0.05% (200-500 ppm) CO2

Henry Pool
“To those who still believe carbondioxide is cause for global warming:
Note that the carbondioxide content went up by 0.01% from 0.03% (=280 ppm) to 0.04% (380 ppm) during the last 50 years, i.e from 1960 to 2010.”
It strikes me as a little disingenuous to claim Co2 has only increased by 0.01%, especially when it is not put into the proper context, which you did not do in your last post. Levels of Co2 went up by about 40% (280ppm-380ppm) which increased it’s total level in the atmosphere from 0.0% to just under 0.04% it did not go up BY only 0.01%, If we want to get specific, 0.028% (or 280ppm) times 140% is 0.0392% (or 392ppm, a level we are 4ppm below currently), an increase of 40%.
“You see, if carbon dioxide traps infra red radiation from earth (keeping us warm) then it must follow that carbon dioxide also shields us from the sun (similar to ozone blocking UV and water vapor blocking IR)”
It must do nothing of the sort, and it doesn’t do anything of the sort. Carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, etc, all allow most of the sun’s radiation to pass through them because it is short wave radiation. After it has heated up the Earth it is re emitted as long wave radiation, which does not pass through carbon dioxide as easily, it as absorbed and causes warming in the earth’s atmosphere. It is completely different to ozone, simply because one reflects the Sun’s harmful UV rays does not mean the other has to also reflect mostly everything from the sun, and to suggest that it does is a failure of logic.
Basically Henry, your major point of dissent here is that Carbon Dioxide is not as potent a greenhouse gas as is claimed(or one at all). If it is not then it can’t be the cause of the observed warming. If it IS as potent as claimed then there really is no other explanation for the anomalous warming (at this time), the warming has occurred almost exactly as one would predict when theorizing about the effects of increased Co2 in the atmosphere. It depends whether or not you accept the scientific research on carbon dioxide, reaching back as far as the early nineteenth century when it’s properties as a greenhouse gas where clearly established.
But let’s operate on the assumption that Co2 isn’t a greenhouse gas. What is your explanation for the anomalous warming? I predict you will either say “It’s natural” or “we don’t yet know”, but those aren’t explanations at all.

“”” Brian (12:13:13) :
The belief that CO2 is a great absorber of heat is just nonsense. CO2 when compared to air is poor at absorbing heat and compared to water vapor is positively insignificant. This can be verified easily in any lab, at any time, anywhere on the planet. Any claims otherwise had better come with real, repeatable, testable results showing not on charts but visually the actual real ability of CO2 to be the great heat lover it is claimed to be.
With a specific heat capacity of CO2 less than nitrogen, oxygen and aluminum, CO2 would appear to transfer heat to space more efficiently than either nitrogen or oxygen. And CO2 like aluminum retains next to no heat at all. So good luck to all those subscribing to this heat monster myth. “””
Well Brian, perhaps first we should deal with some terminology; starting with that word “heat”.
I was not the first to make the observation or declaration that “heat” is NOT a noun. (it’s a verb).
“Heating” is a process of raising the average kinetic energy of actual molecules of material; any material. But “Heat” has also come to be colloqially equated with that molecular kinetic energy itself rather than the process. In any case, the word heat has NO physical significance of any kind, in the absence of actual material i.e. molecules of something. It is not something that can propagate in the absence of molecules or atoms.
So questions of exactly where “heat” (in that kinetic energy sense) resides in the atmosphere, certainly involve matters like the “specific heat” of the various component gases of the atmosphere; including CO2.
But what CO2, and other GHGs such as H2O and methane CH4 can and do do in the atmosphere, is selectively intercept and absorb ENERGY in the form of Electromagnetic Radiation; treated either as a Photon stream or a wave as you prefer.
And CO2 most certainly does intercept photons, in a number of prominent wavelength bands, the most important of which covers approximately the wavelength range from 13.5 to about 16.5 microns in the Long Wave Infra Red region. This happens to be a significant part of the total thermal radiation (EM LWIR) emitted by the earth’s surface (land and sea) as well as from the warm atmosphere itself.
And it can be clearly demonstrated in the laboratory that this process is quite effective and raises the kinetic energy of the CO2 molecule. In resulting collisions with other molecules of the atmosphere, this captured energy generally gets transferred to the ordinary atmospheric gases of N2, O2, and Ar; which thereby raises the atmospheric temperature.
There is not much future in denying that this process occurs.
As to the consequence for the total energy balance of the planet; that it a much more complicated issue, but to deny that CO2 “heats” the atmosphere as do other green house molecules, is not a fruitful pursuit.
As to what total effect that has, and how the exact amount of CO2 comes into play are other issues.
Water H2O differs from all other GHGs, in that it alone exists in the atmosphere in all three phases, vapor, liquid, and solid, and in the latter two phases, H2O forms clouds which result in negative feedback cooling, to counter the positive feedback heating that H2O vapor performs.
It is that cloud feedback override, that can negate the atmospheric warming due to CO2.; but it does not stop the CO2 from blocking some outgoing LWIR energy; which is perfectly capable of propagating in the complete absence of any materials; unlike “heat”.

“”” Ian M Campbell (11:32:23) :
George E. Smith (10:54:33) :
[i]Observation three. Because of this large temperature differential from the hottest places to the coldest places (as much as 150 deg c in the extreme); natural thermal processes of convection and conduction, both in the oceans and the atmopshere, will tend to transfer large quantities of heat energy from the tropics to the polar cold regions; which are incapable of disposing of this excess heat because of their low temperatures.[/i]
Not sure what you’re getting at in suggesting that “cold regions are incapable of disposing of this excess heat because of their low temperatures”. Is there in fact ever any excess heat? Transfer between regions can only continue while one is colder than the other. If temperature equilibrium was ever reached then the heat transfer would stop. As to the amount of heat transfered, isn;t this a zero sum game? So what is your argument for the coldest places showing the biggest changes? “””
I thought I had already explained that in considerable detail.
The coldest points on earth’s surface in the Antarctic Highlands near Vostok Station, in the middle of winter midnight reach as low as (unofficially) -90 C, -130 F or 183 Kelvins. The absolute maximum possible radiation emittance from such a surface (black body) is given by the Stefan-Boltzmann law W = 5.6697 x 10^-8 x T^4 Watts per square metre; which is 63.6 Watt’s per square metre. No surface at 183 K can exceed that rate of radiation.
The hottest dry desert surfaces in the North African and middle east deserts can be in excess of +60 deg C, 140 For 333 Kelvins, so the maximum rate of emission there can be no higher than:-
5.6697 x 10^-8 x 333^4 or 697.2 Watts per metre squared. That’s a factor of 10.96 times the rate near Vostok at its coldest.
For the supposed mean global surface temperature of about +15 deg C or 59 F; 288 Kelvins, the maximum emittance is 5.6697 x 10^-8 x 288^4 which is 390 Watts per square metre, the number given in Trenberth’s official NOAA energy budget chart.
Because of this 4th power law, it takes a lot more energy to raise the temperature of the hottest tropical deserts by one deg C than it does to raise the temperature of Vostok station by one deg C. In fact i just showed you that it would take about 11 times as much.
Consequently if the total energy input to the earth increases, the temperature rise in the hottest regions is only a fraction of the temperature increases in the coldest regions.
What is so hard to understand about that ?