With apologies to Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. and Steve McQueen, I offer this advice: run ! A giant temperature anomaly is attacking Canada and Greenland.
An Example Of Why A Global Average Temperature Anomaly Is Not An Effective Metric Of Climate
Roy Spencer and John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville have reported in their Global Temperature Report that February 2010 was the 2nd warmest February in 32 years (e.g. see Roy’s summary).
Their spatial map of the anomalies, however, shows that most of the relative warmth was in a focused geographic area; see
The global average is based on the summation of large areas of positive and negative temperature anomalies.
As I have reported before on my weblog; e.g. see
What is the Importance to Climate of Heterogeneous Spatial Trends in Tropospheric Temperatures?,
it is the regional tropospheric temperature anomalies that determine the locations of development and movement of weather systems [which are the actual determinants of such climate events as drought, floods, ect] not a global average temperature anomaly.
Sorree, not Mercator but it is one that exaggerates polar regions.
Attaching this to the Olympics may be fun, but the Olys were in Vancouver, thousands of km from the epicenter of this blob.
Also, to those conjecturing that this is an artifact of surface temperature absurdities, note that this is from Roy Spencer and John Christie, who derive their data from satellite instrument measurements. Apples and Oranges.
I live in the southern rim of “the blob” and I’ll attest that, despite our unusually cold November/December this whole region was unusually warm since the New Year, while you guys down South and in Europe were freezing your buns off in unusually cold weather.
What will be interesting is what fallout there comes in terms of the Greenland and Eastern Arctic ice sheets. My thoughts: not much. A time-limited anomaly like this has precious little effect. The Arctic ice this year is quite “healthy” — if what we mean by this is that there’s more than there has been in recent years — despite the unusually warm late winter.
Re: David Smith (Mar 19 09:47),
Contrawise, more cooling and sinking will draw warmer surface water into the area where the cooling occurs. Since there’s been more sea ice extent this year, this could mean that more water sank and thus had to be replenished from further south. Since there are only a few areas where the warm water can enter the Arctic Ocean, they would thus tend to be hotter. But who really knows? We need to see a plot of how much cold bottom water is flowing out of the Arctic Ocean to decide.
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Add this to the point which I made further above “Re: fusion heat” – and you may have a winner.
Considering that the bedrock of AGW is CO2 then this would be interesting overlayed with CO2 distribution. it could be that CO2 is really lumpy.
This may be stupid.
I haven’t thought this out and I may be all wet or confused but is it possible that the global average temperature trend could be opposite a global median temperature trend?
Is it mathematically possible for a median trend to be opposite an average trend?
Most? more like all.
Although there is small positive sst anomaly in the region, I wonder if the anomaly isn’t related to the deeply dipping jet stream related to the negative arctic oscillation which has allowed moisture laden low pressure cells to drop their snow load in the US after which the resultant dry air masses are heated from the latent heat of fusion as water vapor turns to snow and adiabatic heating from descending air masses as the low pressure cells arrive near Greenland from the southwest.
Why is it precisely over Quebec?, Too many levogyre thermocephalics up there?
John Galt:
The calculated trends are independent of the reporting baselines used. But if you really want to compare the actual magnitudes of anomalies from source to source, that’s straightforward as well.
R Gates:
I’m glad somebody else has finally raised the Arctic Oscillation. The AO was reported heavily on this webpage throughout the winter, though perhaps the emphasis was on the cooler-than-normal US and Europe. What goes with that is a warmer-than-normal pattern further north.
When you look at the map for an individual month, you’ll see weather patterns like that. Blobs here, blobs there. But the blobs of any given month don’t tell you much about the long term trends.
For that, you look at the trend map. In the trend map, you do indeed see stronger warming over the Arctic. But you don’t see this blob, which was specific to this last winter and the AO.
Sou?
What are you looking at? most of the world is normal with below average areas appearing larger than above average. Even with the large polar exaggeration it doesn’t look anything like “most of the earth’s lower troposphere was warmer than the seasonal norms”
Seriously, what the heck? Is this some of that post normal reality stuff? Are you trying to be ironic or do you need to see a specialist?
Steve Oregon (11:45:36) :
Go to GISS and make a trend map. You’ll see the location-specific trends.
richcar 1225 (11:52:59) :
Although there is small positive sst anomaly in the region, I wonder if the anomaly isn’t related to the deeply dipping jet stream related to the negative arctic oscillation which has allowed moisture laden low pressure cells to drop their snow load in the US after which the resultant dry air masses are heated from the latent heat of fusion as water vapor turns to snow and adiabatic heating from descending air masses as the low pressure cells arrive near Greenland from the southwest.
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Exactly my sentiment.
The latent heat from the freezing ice at the polar ice cap may add to that effect, too.
It would be interesting to see if the difference in anomalies from the US to the blob can be historically associated with eastern US snowfall and the negative arctic oscillation.
The huge differences in anomalies in the Arctic and Antarctic regions are no surprise to me living in Norway. The thing is, the colder the temperature, the greater it swings within a day or night or week or month. In the summer, the air is more full of water vapor and the less the temperature varies. In the winter, the air is cold, its relative humidity is very low and large swings are common – more than 20 degrees Celsius in a few hours is not unusual at all, but common most days in January and February given relatively cold nights. As the sun comes up the day warms up tremendously.
So I am actually not affected by the huge anomalies, I think it is semantically wrong to mark them by huge red spots, and I seriously doubt them as showing anything at all except – yes – temperature differences. If one were to show something meaningful, one should show something consisting of temperature anomalies relatively to relative humidity. The lower the relative humidity, the larger the possibility of a huge anomaly, so this should be compensated for.
As it is now, it is as misleading as the global warming modelling in the IPCC reports I just downloaded – the large red areas show differences in average temperature from for instance -30 to -35 and that these should be comparable to differences between +20 to +25. I don’t have a solution to what should be shown instead.
A metaphor to the global temperature chart might be that you are shown two charts, one that shows how a young boy runs 100 yards faster every year as he grows from 5 to 20 years of age and another that shows the world champion’s results every year from let’s say 18 to 33 years of age. One would vary greatly, the other would not vary very much, yet they obviously show the same thing.
In this case, the global warming community would draw the conclusion that the young boy in a few years will run the 100 yards in half the time of the world champion.
Another question with regards to satellite measurements – are the measurements continuous with regards to measuring at least 100 times a day or what? Please tell, I am eager to know.
Who dreamed up this global average temperature in the first place. It’s a worthless, meaningless parameter, with which far too many are obsessed.
I don’t get it.
The UK Metoffice has issued it’s own graphic on the phenomena.
http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt74/MartinGAtkins/bbc2.jpg
Some want to talk about the AO to distract from what the point is: Take out that One Big Red Blob and you get a flat trend in the rest of the world. So the called “Global” Warming is not really Global it is just one area of the world that has a disproportinate effect on the “Global Trend”. This is more evidence that Dr. Pielke Sr. is right in his postion that you need to look at regional/local trends not a “global temperature trend”.
Mercator or whatever, it still leaves unanswered whether such a localized anomaly has much or any effect on global or even other region’s temperatures.
I think it also leaves unanswered whether a similar phenomenon occurred in the 1940’s when the last warming episode ended.
A re-analysis of the mid 20th century temperature records might shed some light on the transition from warm to cold regimes. We are promised this will occur by the Met Office – I’m not holding my breath, but not ready to dismiss yet.
Stephen Skinner (11:41:34),
The AGW believers here never seem to mention the supposed cause, do they?
That’s because this is natural climate variability.
The blob can be viewed as an indicator of additional cooling. There was a movement of thermal energy to high latitude in the NH winter, therefore additional heat energy should have been dispatched off to space.
By the same argument, the opposite ought to have been happening over western Europe and central Russia.
On balance (and without trying anything numerical), there would be compensating changes and this should reduce the temptation to claim anything special in the overall picture.
(And when you look at those sharp edges in the monthly average I am still concerned about aliasing)
“it is the averaging together of these “blobs”, taken over many years that give us the important trend lines that climate change is all about.”
Nonsense!
It is the attempted (because it is impossible to achieve) averaging of temperature data improperly distributed around the globe in both time and space and that has been tortured with corrections that is at the root of much mischief and misguided angst.
(I was gonna stop posting this rant – recidivist, I guess)
One thing we don’t know is the RH of the blob.
If it’s very low, there may not be much energy there at all.
DaveE.
Future low solar activity periods may cause extremely cold winters in North America, Europe and Russia
“Summary.
The observed winter temperatures for Turku, Finland (and also generally for North America, Europe and Russia) for the past 60 winters have been strongly dependent on the Arctic Oscillation index (AO). When the Arctic Oscillation index is in “positive phase”, high atmospheric pressure persists south of the North Pole, and lower pressures on the North Pole. In the positive phase, very cold winter air does not extend as far south into the middle of North America as it would during the negative phase. The AO positive phase is often called the “Warm” phase in North America. In this report I analyzed the statistical relation between the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation index (QBO is a measure of the direction and strength of the stratospheric wind in the Tropics), the solar activity, and the Arctic Oscillation index and obtained a statistically significant regression equation. According to this equation, during negative (easterly) values of the QBO, low solar activity causes a negative Arctic Oscillation index and cold winters in North America, Europe and Russia, but during positive (westerly) values of the QBO the relation reverses. However, the influence of the combination of an easterly value of the QBO and low solar activity on the AO is stronger and this combination is much more probable than the opposite. Therefore, prolonged low solar activity periods in the future may cause the domination of a strongly negative AO and extremely cold winters in North America, Europe and Russia.”
http://www.factsandarts.com/articles/future-low-solar-activity-periods-may-cause-extremely-cold-winters-in-north-america-europe-and-russia/
What about the current solar minimum having an effect on the climate? Nice study though.
Mogamboguru (10:46:03) : “Oops: ‘residual heat’ = fusion heat. I am sorry to be german sometimes…”
What you meant was perfectly clear in context.