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.
It’s amazingly warm in all those areas in which they no longer actually read the thermometers.
Let them keep saying this, because the public will get ever more sceptical of AGW. It was certainly NOT the warmest on record for millions of people in the N Hemisphere, and that is what they feel and understand.
.
Still go my winter draws on here in England
At night it is cooler than outside?!
When we were young, we had a lot of fun making unreasonable sentences, Nonsense Sentences.
Many times, now again by NOAA, we must listen to such Nonsense Sentences. “March this year was the warmest (hottest) since begin of record.”
It is obvious that this is a Nonsense Sentence.
As all of us know we are just escaping the Little Ice Age, which took place between 1300 and 1850. We find ourselves at comfortable warm temperatures and climate conditions of the Modern Climate Optimum.
By the way we are the first human generation which fears optimal climate.
“Ask” people living during the Medieval or Roman climate optimum, what they would like to choose; surely not the Little Ice Age conditions.
The temperature record e. g. by NASA GISS is beginning 1880. Therefore necessarily the last ten years with nearly constant or slightly decreasing temperature anomalies are, thanks God, the warmest since.
Imagine you go out of your house on a cold winter morning. You take a thermometer with you and record every hour the temperature: -8, -7 …-4, -6,-8 °C up to 6 pm. Finally you come home in your hopefully comfortable warm house. You continue measuring +20, +20,5, +20, +20,7 °C.
What do you belief the last two hours will show us? The “hottest” temperature since record started!
This is a Nonsense Sentence!
The same as
“at night it is cooler than outside”,
“March 2010 is the hottest since record”.
The regrettable situation here is, that these are scientists, who would like us to believe, that this makes sense. They want to scare us and to believe in their alarmist view of anthropogenic climate change.
It is nothing but hot air, especially if you consider that in addition we are in an El Nino regime. Compare 1998!
Rainer
Weather in UK is disappointing, as it always is.
Perhaps it has something to do with geography, latitude and the Atlantic Jet Stream, which of course is just my whacky “off the wall” theory.
This is about as relevant..
The hottest march I’ve ever seen had me in a sweat.
Most of the girls were buxom blondes with long legs. I doubt this march was any hotter.
Susan P
If this was the “17th consecutive March with below-average sea ice coverage”, but records only began 20 years ago, then only the 3 or 4 previous Marches were used as the baseline? Maybe those 3 years were just way above average??
I understand where you are coming from but you have missed something.
Sattelite records began 31 years ago. It is just that they have only taken the average from the first 21 years. So they are basically saying that the last 17 years have seen a fair bit less ice than the first 14.
However I still think there is a deception hidden in the way the figures are presented.
If one assumes the 60 year cycle of ocean temperatures we would expect minum ice every 60 years with max ice 30 years before each peak. Anecdotally at least, we know arctic ice was very low in the forties and fifties; WUWT has reprinted newspaper articles to that effect. So it is entirely consistent with natural cycles to see a max ice around 1980 and a new minimum around 2010.
If you plot this cyclical pattern as a sign wave you would get exactly the pattern of observations that has been observed. So what is the big deal?
Indeed the speed by which Arctic seems to be recovering from minimum ice seems to suggest that the prevailing trend may well be negative now. If I was a betting man I would be more concerned about getting colder than getting hotter.
“Cooler-than-normal regions included ……northern Australia”
Nationally, it was the coldest March since 2003.
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi?graph=tmean&area=aus&season=03&ave_yr=0
Sign of the times?
Last night we had the big political debate in the UK with the three main party leaders. During the debate on domestic policy the following words and phrases were mentioned:
Green – 0 times
Climate – 0 times
Global Warming -O times
Carbon footprint – 0 times
The politicians will never admit they were wrong, or worse yet fooled, but keeping their mouths shut is a start. A few months ago we would certainly have had a major ‘greener than thou’ competition.
I doubt it will last because there will be two more debates.
While its generally been above average here in March, the rest of the winter has been distinctly below normal by a significant margin, with snow cover above normal and zero thaw in January, contrary to normal.
That said, I’m glad I wasn’t in Britain.
BTW: Reuters is reporting that Cap and Tax is back on in the Senate: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N15202117.htm
To add to my last post. It is worth looking at how sine (sorry about the typo in the first post “sign wave”!) waves work reference averages because there is room for more hysteria to come.
If you have a sine wave with a period of 60 years, going between +1 to -1 say, and you start measuring at the +1 point on the cycle you will find that the measured value will decline for 30 years and will therefore always be below the average. At the end of 30 years the measurement will be at -1 and the average will be 0. The average will then continue to decline as more of the cold cycle is included but it will be several years before the actual exceeds it. So it is entirely consistent with normal cycles to have nearly 40 years of ice “below average” as long as you start measuring at the “right” time. Which is exactly what they have done.
It will be interesting to see hadcrut3 when they get off their butts and publish March data
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3gl.txt
AndyW (22:20:11) :
Has the UAH temp graph for March been put on here yet? I might have missed it.
http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt74/MartinGAtkins/Mar-uah2.png
I installed a Davis weather station at my home at the beginning of the year and spent a great deal of care insuring it is well calibrated. Here’s a good set of numbers for you:
According to NOAA,The average CDD and HDD (Cooling and Heating Degree Days) for the last 30 years for February in Tampa, Florida were 59/136 (CDD/HDD). Tampa is around 25-miles away inland from us so they run a little colder without the stabilizing effect of the Gulf water temperatures.
In February my Davis station reported 1.1/268.4 (CDD/HDD).
This was the coldest February I remember since 1975….
Interesting.
I guess the graph might not have the necessary resoltuion, but the local portuguese met institute says this was the coldest march in 24 years (here):
“the coldest in 24 years, with average maximum temperature, minimum and average air below the respective average values for 1971-2000, with anomalies of -1.5 ° C -0.2 ° C and -0.8 ° C respectively.”
The NOAA graph shows mostly white dots and a red one in the south. Weird.
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).
I’ll add that to the “take with a grain of salt” category since there are huge areas in the southern hemisphere that weren’t even measured until 1920, let alone measured regularly and accurately.
Afterthought: Different baselines? Entire 20th century for NOAA vs. 1971-2000 for the portuguese met institute?
Here in Sudbury in Northern Ontario, March was nice and warm. We had maybe a half dozen record breaking highs and a few nights that did not go below the normal high. It was warm. We also only received 1.4 mm of precipitation. Normal is around 65 mm. Forest fire warnings abound in March. Indeed, we have been rather warm since late January. This week we are again 4 to 7 C above normal. It is great.
John M Reynolds
Nicer image from NASA here, but no March map here either;
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=43235
The question should be ‘Is industrialization and its economic and atmospheric consequences making the world less habitable for humans and the animals on which they depend?’ Answer: No way. It certainly is not. Because the concept of habitability is akin to that of a resource in that they both combine the given of nature and the got of expanding human knowledge. The world is becoming, on net, ever more habitable as human know-how and can-do increases.
How much oil reserves had the cavemen? Far less the we do today. To know what use can be made of something and how to get the something or cheaper substitutes is the ultimate resource. And additions to this knowledge are limitless. See Julian Simon and W W Bartley to start.
As has been said: ‘The stone age didn’t end because people ran out of stones’.
March 2010 image from NASA: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/GlobalMaps/view.php?d1=MOD_LSTAD_M#
shows a lot more blue areas than the NOAA map.
Simply: They are red just because THEY ARE RED.
Damage control time. We are coming out of a brutal winter and people are starting not to believe the garbage being sold. So in a desperate attempt to make people think it is still worse than we thought, NOAA comes out with a “hottest ever” report.
I will buy that it was a warm March globally. The brightness temperature of the TLT channel seems to be around the same as the 1998 El Nino from the RSS site. However, by not stating that this was an El Nino event and that it followed brightness temperatures that were below the average from 1980 is grossly misleading to the average person.
Ulric Lyons (04:11:43) :
March 2010 image from NASA: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/GlobalMaps/view.php?d1=MOD_LSTAD_M#
shows a lot more blue areas than the NOAA map.
Look at the base-periods:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/GlobalMaps/view.php?d1=MOD_LSTAD_M#
has a base period of 2000 to 2008, and doesn’t include the oceans.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=global&file=map-blended-mntp&year=2010&month=3&ext=gif
has a base period of 1971 to 2000.