I’m sure the press will make this into a much bigger story. This today from NOAA News. The choice of “hottest” in the title is interesting. We should ask our Canadian friends if it was “hot” during March, since Canada seems to be leading the world in “hotness” according to the NOAA image. – Anthony
NOAA: Global Temps Push Last Month to Hottest March on Record
The world’s combined global land and ocean surface temperature made last month the warmest March on record, according to NOAA. Taken separately, average ocean temperatures were the warmest for any March and the global land surface was the fourth warmest for any March on record. Additionally, the planet has seen the fourth warmest January – March period on record.
The monthly National Climatic Data Center analysis, which is based on records going back to 1880, is part of the suite of climate services NOAA provides government, business and community leaders so they can make informed decisions.
Global Temperature Highlights – March 2010
Temperature anomaly is the difference from average, which gives a more accurate picture of temperature change. In calculating average regional temperatures, factors like station location or elevation affect the data, but those factors are less critical when looking at the difference from the average.
High resolution (Credit: NOAA/National Climatic Data Center/NESDIS)
- The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for March 2010 was the warmest on record at 56.3°F (13.5°C), which is 1.39°F (0.77°C) above the 20th century average of 54.9°F (12.7°C).
- The worldwide ocean surface temperature was the highest for any March on record –1.01°F (0.56°C) above the 20th century average of 60.7°F (15.9°C).
- Separately, the global land surface temperature was 2.45°F (1.36°C) above the 20th century average of 40.8 °F (5.0°C) — the fourth warmest on record. Warmer-than-normal conditions dominated the globe, especially in northern Africa, South Asia and Canada. Cooler-than-normal regions included Mongolia and eastern Russia, northern and western Europe, Mexico, northern Australia, western Alaska and the southeastern United States.
- El Niño weakened to moderate strength in March, but it contributed significantly to the warmth in the tropical belt and the overall ocean temperature. According to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, El Niño is expected to continue its influence in the Northern Hemisphere at least through the spring.
- For the year-to-date, the combined global land- and ocean-surface temperature of 55.3°F (13.0°C) was the fourth warmest for a January-March period. This value is 1.19°F (0.66°C) above the 20th century average.
- According to the Beijing Climate Center, Tibet experienced its second warmest March since historical records began in 1951. Delhi, India also had its second warmest March since records began in 1901, according to the India Meteorological Department.
Other Highlights
Download additional information and resources.
Download PDF (Credit: NOAA/National Climatic Data Center/NESDIS)
- Arctic sea ice covered an average of 5.8 million square miles (15.1 million square kilometers) during March. This is 4.1 percent below the 1979-2000 average expanse, and the fifth-smallest March coverage since records began in 1979. Ice coverage traditionally reaches its maximum in March, and this was the 17th consecutive March with below-average Arctic sea ice coverage. This year the Arctic sea ice reached its maximum size on March 31st, the latest date for the maximum Arctic sea ice extent since satellite records began in 1979.
- Antarctic sea ice expanse in March was 6.9 percent below the 1979-2000 average, resulting in the eighth smallest March ice coverage on record.
- In China, the Xinjiang province had its wettest March since records began in 1951, while Jilin and Shanghai had their second wettest March on record. Meanwhile, Guangxi and Hainan provinces in southern China experienced their driest March on record, according to the Beijing Climate Center.
- Many locations across Ontario, Canada received no snow, or traces of snow, in March, which set new low snowfall records, according to Environment Canada.
Scientists, researchers, and leaders in government and industry use NOAA’s monthly reports to help track trends and other changes in the world’s climate. This climate service has a wide range of practical uses, from helping farmers know what and when to plant, to guiding resource managers with critical decisions about water, energy and other vital assets.
NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the oceans to surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.
March came ‘in like a lamb’ and I wouldn’t say ‘out like a lion’ but it wasn’t as pleasant. Warmest on record … something isn’t right there. Even if I consider Southern Ontario, I remember winters with no snow in the 80’s and then they just cruised into an early spring.
I wouldn’t call it unusual and we definately had a warmer spring in the 80’s where the trees in central Alberta were green at this time. The frost is still in the ground in places now although the trees are starting to bud out.
The best thing to look at is http://www.gasalberta.com/pricing-supply.htm and you can tell by how the vanishing US Storage it was cold South of the 48th and despite lower production Canadian Storage stayed high so it wasn’t the cruelist winter. Then you look like at the ‘degree day’ graphs and it doesn’t look like March was unusual by any extent on the prairies anyway.
All you have to do is imagine how they would compile something like this and then you have to wonder why do they bother making such a silly meaningless statement.
December had the coldest day in my life in it (record) but the entire month wasn’t totally brutish and March was nice but I’ve seen it green by now in the past (mid April). How you quantify that with a number … I don’t know.
Well, Canada, at least the Easterly bit, was mild, and it was appreciated by all. However, I am skeptical of the Big Red Blob, given that there are VERY FEW meteological stations in that area and, in general, the fewer the stations, the warmer it gets.
The record warmth depends upon several things:
1) Lack of historical temperature sequences
2) A strong El Nino – just wait ’til it becomes La Nina in August
3) Period of observation.
It is ironical that to truly measure a global change in temperature trend, one must measure the temperature trend of millenia, but the AGWers cannot do that because the measurements show higher temps previously. However, short period averages fall victim to their own argument that a short term change is just noise, not trend.
Question for these equivocating scum-bags: What is the ideal period of time over which a true global temperature trend could be measured? It’s in your court.
Yes, it was an unusually warm month for Quebec, but back to normal now. The earlier spring was munition to warmists, although apart from the media and environmentalists, everyone enjoyed it. We even saved a lot of money in Montreal with less snow to pick and reduced heating costs.
Of course, no word about El Nino, but they sure did blame CO2 for it (and enviro-freaks asked for bigger cuts in GHG), like they did for the lack of snow at the olympics.
H.M.S. Unbelievable sail again.
No hot weather on several of those No. Calif. red dots.
Not even warm. Rained, snowed, hailed, cold fog, very few sunny days, cold winds. People complaining “When is Spring going to get here?”
The credibility of this report is dubious at best.
All those storms slamming into the East, Midwest, right down into the South.
It looked like and acted like weather straight out of the 70’s.
Does NOAA think that people cannot remember what the weather was last month? Apparently so.
What really catches my eye out of graphs like that is that there is very little ‘normal’ in them. Someone got carried away with the -adjustment factor- , eh?
Most models are forecasting negative ENSO by July.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf
This may be the last fun for CAGW groupies this year.
Robert of Ottawa (19:43:19) :
Intersting obsevation.
Now, what if NOAA were comparing Mar 2010 to any Mar that they could find that was colder?
Anomaly-o-rama.
Was it the warmest before or after NOAA put in their “corrections”? Would it still be the warmest if they hadn’t made so many retroactive “corrections” to the past?
Maybe NOAA and GISS should talk because their March maps don’t seem to quite match up. CA has a look at the latest GISS offering—have a look at Finland.
Except Dave Wendt…
It appears from the unfudged data that it hasn’t warmed. So your comments about milder weather or whatever due to warming is bunk.
We broke lots of records in March (NE Ohio), so I’m not surprised. April has been similar (broke another record today!) Everyone’s happy about it, as far as I can tell, lol.
The thing that angers me the most… is that NOAA is funded publicly by the taxpayer… yet they resort to this ideological sophistry!
“Hottest March on record.”
Big F-ing deal!
Chris
Norfolk Virginia USA
Here in Ft Myers, Florida, it was the coldest March in history. We lost half the citrus crop. It was 50s & 60s, did not ever hit 70, where the average was 80 in March. My avocado tree just barely survived – even though I am on an island in the Gulf that is protected from freezes unlike the interior mainland.
Good news, though – all the feral boas and pythons that had escaped as pets died. We lost the islands only crocodile – she was 12 feet and weigh 1/2 ton, an about 40 years old. Iguanas (escaped pets, again) dropped from the trees from the cold.
Great; I’m working to get an 80’s MB TD (in-line 5-cyl turbocharged diesel Mercedes Benz) operational for transportational purposes by combusting waste veggie oil* … bring it on Lindsey Gramnesty and Sen. Kerry …
*A cost-effective process has been worked-out over the past several years for the identification/selection of the right feedstocks, the transportation (incl. the withdrawl of source stock from premises holding tanks), the filtering/decanting of said ‘oil’ into usable fuel …
.
.
actually take a look at UAH the slope looks like its gonna get pretty cool. We shall see… climate is 1000’s years not a monthly thing silly!
Trouble is with this stuff NOAA is showing its definitely got an agenda silly…
Up here in Edmonton we had a nice March and an early spring, and our golf course opened on April 8, which is early. It also closed on April 8 because that same afternoon a storm blew in from the north and we got snow and freezing temperatures.
But if this year’s unusually early opening is proof of something, what was last year’s unusually late opening proof of?
Just took a look at their map:
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/images/anomalies2.png
and they have a 5 C rise in Canada from a 1971-2000 baseline. So in 25 years from the midpoint of the baseline (1985) we’ve in theory been rising at 1 C per 5 years? They actually believe that? Somehow I sense a “jump the shark” moment forming….
BTW, GISS in their map:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2010&month_last=3&sat=4&sst=0&type=anoms&mean_gen=03&year1=2010&year2=2010&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg
show the same Canada center as warming in the 4-8.5 range (with a band of 3-4 C around it) from a 1951-1980 baseline. So, roughly the same 5C but over 45 years.
I think they need to get there stories straight…
They both show Latin America in the 1-2 C range (if I’m reading the charts correctly) and they show Pakistan and North Africa at about the same.
Gee… Australia too…
Somehow I get the feeling that what we have here is some buggered data after 1990 that puts a constant hockey blade on the end of the stick… Seems there was no warming from 1950 to 1990 based on the A/B comparison of these two maps (though a more detailed data comparison would be a better test than just ‘eyeball the graphs’).
But as a ‘first look’: I see a shark, and a guy on a board in the air…
Cool looking graph.
It would appear that despite this spate of hot weather the Arctic is still… well… still suffering Arctic conditions:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newshome/7070418/adventurer-calls-for-help-on-north-pole-trek/
An Aussie adventurer has activated his emergency device (EPIRB) en route to the North Pole.
Just south of Calgary, my climate station March Average was 3.3 (normal -1.1C), yes, a very nice march, but then again, 1992 was also 3.3 here, 1991 was 3.1, so nothing extreme, wonderful el-nino spring!!! Bring it on, beats cold anyday!
They better enjoy their alarmism while they can. El Nino is ending very soon.
After a ‘limited snow’ Olympics, Vancouver has had some major dumps… it has been quite cold. The local mountains are extending their seasons a couple of weeks, in order to accomodate seasons passholders. My lawn cutting guy is crying the blues, because he is having to curtail his cuttings. Who knew?
It is colder than normal on the BC coast.
Doomed nope. Highest March on record? Nope, the Vostok Ice Core Data has plenty of other March’s on record that were warmer.
How can they get a way saying it’s the “warmest March on the record” when it’s a blatant false statement? Clearly they need to clarify their statement so that it is honest and accurate.
Let’s look at the records that allegedly don’t exist. Oh funny that, they do exist.
Vostok Ice Core Graph:
http://dailybayonet.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Vostok.jpg
Vostok Ice Core Data:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/temp/vostok/vostok.1999.temp.dat
Article:
http://dailybayonet.com/?p=2888
As you can see from the 1999 red line in the above linked Vostok Ice Core Graph it has been MUCH HOTTER than it is now and that we’re NOT DOOMED as AL would like to see us GORED. Conclusive evidence that we’re not doomed, well not by CO2 anyway…. maybe an asteroid…. now that would make the hottest month on record… oh wait we’ve already had a few of those hits too… hmm…
Ahhhhh…
Alberta was definitely warmer … I have pictures sitting on my deck in mid April with a bunch of friends and there was still two feet of snow in the fields, this year the field have been bare for weeks except in the shadows of the trees.
On the other hand, there was a blizzard with three foot snow drifts in southern Alberta yesterday …. see http://www.facebook.com/wayne.delbeke?ref=profile
But then we usually get these little storms right into May. The highs in my area north of Rocky Mountain House has been a few degrees above normal for a few weeks.
But if you look at the record highs and lows for this region for specific dates, it is pretty hard to define “normal” The record lows and the record highs can be 50 or 60 degrees Centigrade apart …. record March low was 42.2 degrees below; the record high was Plus 27 – 69 degree variance – pick anything in between.
Halfwise;
Up here in Edmonton we had a nice March and an early spring, and our golf course opened on April 8, which is early. It also closed on April 8 because that same afternoon a storm blew in from the north and we got snow and freezing temperatures.
But if this year’s unusually early opening is proof of something, what was last year’s unusually late opening proof of>>
Hmmm… hasn’t golf been around for like 300 years or more? I don’t suppose the club records for opening day would be available that far back? Because that would make for an interesting climate proxy, would it not?