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.
I was a meteorologist for 40 years before recently retiring. I always paid close attention to the AO and the Southern Oscillation Index for hints as to the upcoming seasonal weather. You can see from this link: http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao_index.html the AO was indeed very negative (in fact off the chart negative), all winter but has now come back to positive.
The SOI was negative this winter http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/soi2.shtml meaning we had an El Nino, which was actually moderate to strong. Those who correctly forecast these two phenomenon made excellent forecasts for this winter (Joe D”Aleo and others).
The El Nino is currently forecast by all models to weaken quite a bit to a weak La Nina by next fall: http://iri.columbia.edu/climate/ENSO/currentinfo/SST_table.html The AO is already back to positive. Therefore, it seems very likely to me the warm start to this year globally will fade, especially the warm blob area of Canada and Greenland.
It is also interesting to note that even with a moderate to strong El Nino and record negative AO, the global temperatures have NOT exceeded those of 1998, and as I mentioned, should begin to cool slowly again.
‘Geo Magnetic Z bias’ for the emergence of two counterbalancing temperature blobs should not be taken seriously by climatologists.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC18.htm
Dave Andrews (13:44:16) :
“I think it is probably an equal area projection. Still distorts at the poles but not as much as Mercator.”
No, it’s NOT anywhere close to equal area projection. As I wrote (10:45:28), it’s close to equirectangular or ‘plate carrée’. This distorts areas, shapes and angles but is used for computing as X and Y axes map linearly to longitude and latitude. See here:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/images/eps-gif/EquirectangularProjection_800.gif
Areas are greatly distorted near the poles because they appear stretched east-west.
Okay folks, I’ve put up the three UAH Arctic polar plots for February and this gives a far better idea of what is really there. Is done equal area.
http://daedalearth.wordpress.com/
Could just as easily do RSS, all four layers. Is much the same but would be impolite given the article here.
I could do with some help otherwise this work is going to stall, it has already, I am weary.
Ideally I want to make this thing accessible cross platform to all. It is more or less there but a lot remains to be done. (those plots took a few seconds)
The whole thing works from a common format series of databases of gridded data, over a dozen so far. Is just a few Lua scripts, sqlite and gnuplot.
Anyone cognescent of tropospheric dynamic cannot be surprised by this.
This information has restored my faith in satellite measurements.
If you want to measure overall global temperatures then satellites are the way to do it. They are not subject to the kind of issues that afflict land based measurements, and they see the whole globe directly. The only problem for climate purposes is that the satellite measurements don’t go back very far.
However my belief in the efficacy of satellite measurements took a bit of a dent over this last year when they were proclaiming a record high February while Europe and the US were experiencing their coldest winter for a long time, and while nobody in the southern hemisphere seemed to be having an unusually hot summer.
Now the mystery is solved and my faith in satellites as a much better way to measure temperature is restored.
The location suggests a link with polar ice. As we know ice cover has increased significantly this year recovering from the wind driven cleanout of the ice pack in 2008. The specific heat released by ice formation is thus a very likely candidate for this hot spot.
If this is true then we should expect this hotspot to disappear completely over the summer (when ice does not form), and if the ice cover is back to normal levels next winter (as I expect it to be), we should not expect a repeat.
I wish they had released such a map at the same time as the earlier pronouncements about a record high February. I don’t understand the reason for the delay as the geographic information as to the distribution of temperature would have been available instantly. I would not have had cause to doubt the efficacy of satellite measurements if this data had been released at the time.
Pearland Aggie (09:58:24) :
> I wonder what that temperature anomaly graphic would look when plotted in a perspective other than Mercator (which tends to severely distort the polar areas).
For about the 10th time in the last year: It’s not a Mercator projection. In fact, it’s not a projection at all, it just a cartesian plot. Personally, I’d prefer one with x offset scaled by the cosine of the latitude because the polar area is distorted, just not as badly as Mercator does (Mercator maps with the poles are infinitely tall.)
The hot blob correlates with increased ice cover of the Arctic in the same area. So heating causes sea-ice to grow.
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20100303_Figure1.png
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
One effect I’ve noticed this winter, especially after mid-January, is that US east coastal storms would come up the coast, go through the maritimes (US weather reporting hardly ever mentions them), and then curve NW, dumping a lot of heat where the blob is. Sometimes the air mass actually looped around and came back to New England from the north bringing moderate temperatures instead of the frigid ones we’d normally see from that direction.
Well, it’s nice to see I’m not the only one these days who knows those maps are not Mercator projections!
LOL!
What do you think the “trend” maps are made of?
To get an anomaly trend map you first need anomalies and what you have here is an anomaly map made from the numbers that are used to make the trend maps. Your postiton is just look at the cake, it looks good, quit looking at the ingredients. Hate to tell ya this but you can’t make a good cake out of bad ingredients.
David Smith (09:47:40) :
That is just more alarmism about the ‘thermohaline circulation’. Alarmists can always be counted on to construe any event in the ocean into the potential ending of the thermohaline circulation.
C. James said:
“…the global temperatures have NOT exceeded those of 1998, and as I mentioned, should begin to cool slowly again…”
Well, with the Met Office (and myself) predicting that 2010 will be the warmest year globally on instrument record, then we’ve all laid down the gauntlet so so speak. And this is going to be a good test, and really the first of several watershed years for AGWT ahead. Some interesting things to watch:
1) Even if El Nino fades early this spring, will 2010 still eclipse 1998 (or 2003) as the warmest on record? If it does, how will the AGW skeptics account for this wamth, especially in light of the recent long and deep solar minimum. AGWT says the solar cycles play less of a role in climate than GH gases, so the next few years will really start to show the differences.
2) Will arctic sea ice ever go above the long term year-to-year avergage, into a positive anomaly range. I actually thought we might this winter with the deep solar minimum, but it is getting to be a race against time now with the spring melt season starting. If the arctic continues it’s long term negative anomaly, and even approaches the 2007 low this year or next, what does that say about the role lf the long and deep solar minimum? If it can’t get the arctic sea ice even back above average, and it even continues its decline, it gives support to AGWT.
The two sides have pretty much staked their claims– on one side, the AGW believers who think that GH play a bigger role than any natural cycles, and if the world is warmer this year than any other on instrument record, it is a strong bit of support for the theory…and on the other head, those AGW skeptics who think that solar cycles, astronomical influences, and other natural cycles will always be more important than any influence of human activity.
The next few years are critical, and will certainly budge me one way or another from my current position of being a 75% AGW believer/25% skeptic.
I have a friend that had spent the winter in Germany and is back now. She said it was very cold and snowy, more than usual. The blue in the map shows this.
Vincent (10:32:44) :
I’m a bit surprised to hear this. I keep hearing that although the northern hemisphere had the coldest winter
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The blob is not over most of the land mass of the NH
That’s pretty simple to see.
Mogamboguru (10:39:14) :
Think “residual heat”.
Trillions of tons of water have frozen to ice this winter – trillions of tons more than froze over the the past winters. This freezing frees lots of residual, thermal energy which, in turn, has to go elsewhere – exactly, 332,5 kJ per kg of water.
This heat has to go somewhere. And it did.
The huge heat-island up north is the direct consequence of the arctic ice-cap recovery.
This heat island to the west of Greenland / Hudson Bay area is the direct consequence of Global Cooling.
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You’re theory makes sense.
Isn’t this warmth in that part of the earth a normal part of el Nino?
David Smith (09:47:40) :
I really liked your point about the warm anomly occurring right where the thermohaline sinking occurs. Makes sense to me: Less cold, less sinking. Less sinking, less warmth drawn north. Perhaps it is the AMO shifting from its warm cycle to a cold cycle, or a step of that multi-step process.
I’ve been thinking that the warm anomaly was created by the record-setting negative AO.
But what made the AO so negative? Maybe it was the loopy jet stream.
But what made the jet stream so loopy? Maybe it was bacause Asia and North America bred more cold air.
But why did they breed more cold air? Maybe it was due to the extended solar minimum.
This same dynamic which created the record-setting AO also created weaker trade winds, which bred the El Nino.
So all the apparent warmth was set off by a weaker sun. The warmth will soon fade, I expect.
Considering there are all these really neat actions and reactions to study, it seems a crying shame that any scientist would want to waste his time tweaking temperatures in the records from the 1800’s downwards.
R. Craigen (11:34:10) :
What will be interesting is what fallout there comes in terms of the Greenland and Eastern Arctic ice sheets.
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So it was -45F instead of -55F? How much difference would it have made? But, again, this isn’t surface temperature.
I am living here in Montreal and we have spring flowers in winter for the first time, there are folks in shorts, the montreal canadiens have a big winning streak, its definitely unusual whats going on.
Monthly, annual, even decadal global averaged temperatures are meaningless in evaluating climate change, at least when the anomalies are in tenths of a degree.
Climate = 30 years +. Anything less is weather.
In this case, the anomlay is due to a negative NAO coupled with El Nino. Most of us froze our butt off, a lucky few had pleasant winters. I suppose the warmers will find some evidence of the warming in Greenland this winter to convince folks it is due to mans CO2.
I live in the center of the red area and we had a HIGH pressure system that just wouldn’t move for almaost a week at a time. A quick low would go through then high pressure again. This week the temp was 15-18 degrees C. No snow left but some Ice still on the lakes.
“The hot blob correlates with increased ice cover of the Arctic in the same area. So heating causes sea-ice to grow.”
No, the white is the current ice, the magenta line the median. There is LESS ice over that area.
I live on the edge of that blob, and let me tell you, it has been a very nice spring here. In fact, there is a little contraption they put out on the ice for an ice out contest, and it already went through, on St Patrick’s day. The ice isn’t gone yet, but it will be soon, and usually, it is here through the middle of April. So I can attest to the anomaly.
One question I would have is what kind of cloud cover have they had in that region. I know here in Nebraska we tend to find things warmer when we have that nice little blanket of insulation rather than open to the sky (funny how that works ehh?) and of course an increase in cloud cover is a tenet of the cosmoclimatology theory.
Places around the edge of the blob (Eastern and Western Greenland and parts of Alaska) have upwards of 7metres of snow on the ground today.
http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/data/analysis/352_100.gif
That may or may not be anomalous – anyone know?