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.
NOAA misrepresents by using selected statistics. They do it because their funding is dependent on alarming the public: click
The two videos on this page show what is really happening: click
SusanP (23:53:19) :
Am I mising something here, or do they consider the first 3 years of the satellite record for sea ice extent to be the “normal”, and everything else since has been “abnormal”?
…
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 think the batteries on your calendar are dead.
It’s 2010 now – satellite records on Arctic sea ice began 31 years ago.
The 21st century is pretty much same old same old – oh, the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004 and 2007. Otherwise, you didn’t miss much.
0.4″ (1 cm) of snow here in the bottom of a valley near Concord NH. April snow isn’t all that unusual, but it’s a bit of a surprise after the warm March.
I am a skeptic, but yes, March was very warm here in Nova Scotia, Canada. The golf courses opened in mid March, they usually don’t open until mid April.. which I’m not complaining about!
Anu; the NASA temperature map for March 2010 looks pretty cool on balance; and so what if it is only a land map; the land temperature is based on SST and El Nino effects;
http://meteora.ucsd.edu/papers/auad/Global_Warm_ENSO.pdf
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/gilbert.p.compo/CompoSardeshmukh2007a.pdf
cohenite (06:07:27) :
Anu; the NASA temperature map for March 2010 looks pretty cool on balance;
Did I mention the different baselines ? 2000-2008 vs. 1971-2000.
Oh wait, it’s still there: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/15/noaa-says-warmest-march-on-record/#comment-369521
Your personal “height anomaly” is probably positive relative to the average 3rd grader, and negative relative to the average NBA center. Baseline is important.
And there temperature database were one of the worst managed to begin with, right?
Mongolia is having possibly their coldest spring on record, with many people unable to sustain themselves – but NOAA apparently didn’t find that bit of news interesting. They are more interested in the fact that unpopulated areas of Canada aren’t quite as cold as it usually is.
Warmest on record? Depends upon how you calculate it. Daily high? Average of high and low? How many times a day were temperatures recorded? How was the data processed? Has the methodology changed since they began recording temperatures?
March and April were noticeably warmer than others I remember over the 20 years I’ve been living in Yellowknife, NT.
According to GISS, the Arctic seems to have cooled between 1880-2009 using the graph on their site. How can it be melting??
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2010&month_last=3&sat=4&sst=3&type=trends&mean_gen=0112&year1=1880&year2=2009&base1=1951&base2=1961&radius=250&pol=reg
Have I misread it?
MartinGAtkins (02:44:04) :
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 guess that “it’s been cooling since 1998” red herring is dead now.
Funny how the El Nino’s keep getting warmer and warmer, just like those crackpot climatologists predicted…
Dr A Burns (02:02:51) :
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
I hear they’ve been busy raising funds for and hiring data technicians to handle frivolous FOI requests, and also wasting time testifying to Parliament and various Panels about some hacking incident.
Hopefully they’ll get back to doing science in a timely fashion, soon.
AndyW (22:20:11) :
Has the UAH temp graph for March been put on here yet? I might have missed it.
Andy
I has indeed and even with its ‘corrections’ it shows the warmest March on its records, similarly for RSS. The two surface measurements reported so far NOAA and Gisstemp show similar results.
So despite the anecdotal cold weather being reported March appears to have been exceptionally warm (NJ had a record high a week or so ago, over 90ºF or more than 20ºF above normal so it hasn’t been cold everywhere).
Is this from raw data or was it “adjusted.”
Patrick Davis (22:43:18) :
Maybe posted by someone else, but it’s not so hot in the Arctic. A solo exporer needs rescuing thanks to the Canadian Army.
http://www.smh.com.au/wa-news/emergency-rescue-for-oneman-epic-adventurer-20100416-sj5g.html
Two planes AND a helicopter. All that lovely CO2 will thin the, rotten, ice even further.
The reason he needed to be rescued was that he fell through that ‘rotten ice’, which seems to be a problem everyone in that vicinity is having this year.
I recently saw a graph of Arctic Ocean water temperature. That for the year 2007 was noticeably warm. I believe more than coincidence considering the amount of ice that disappeared that year. I normally archive exciting finds like that, but just now could not find the graph to make a point related to a posting here today. If anyone can remember where to find that graph, kindly send it to me at imcqueen (at) nbnet.nb.ca or post it here.
Will they ever stop using Mercator projections for the map? (I guess as long as it look scary, they won’t)
Hopefully someone here can answer this question for me:
How does NOAA weight the 5deg X 5deg boxes as they move north? Just looking at the map it appears they don’t.
I inadvertently hit the Tab key and sent the previous message before I had got to the subject of recent weather. In southern New Brunswick, and in eastern (Maritime) Cnada in general), it was an unusually mild winter and spring. The amont of snowfall through the winter was considerably less than usual, which cut my plowing bill to about a third of usual, and the lesser amont of snow in the woods has limited the rise of water in the annual spring freshet. Instead of the usual high water here, considerably less of my land has been covered this year and the water appears to be retreating now. (Every year some ducks swim around over what is dry land the rest of the year. Recently it’s been five racously-colored wood ducks.)
Damn that Tab key! I just hit it by accident and my incomplete and non-proofread message got sent out prematurely. I wish it could be disabled as a way to send a posting!
Anyway, as I was saying, the winter was unusually mild in this part of the world (eastern Canada). I suspect that it was an ENSO phenomenon and that next winter will be all too normal. (Canada’s chief meteorologist pronounced this the mildest winter on record.)
I put out a hummingbird feeder on the 15th because the birds have already been spotted in adjacent Maine and Nova Scotia. This is a few weeks ahead of normal, which would describe all natural phenomena, like tree budding, snow melting, golf course opening, etc., etc. We’ll enjoy it while we can!
And I want to say that WUWT is so great for bringing together an international community of posters. Where else could we get first-hand reports on conditions in so many parts of the USA, Canada, Australia-NZ, Japan, and other parts of the world?
IanM
Why use a base period from 1971-2000 as that can distort things quite a bit. Shouldn’t they use the historical period of record instead of a 30 year average that is now almost 10 years old.
pwl (20:38:18) :
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.
More “skeptical” hysteria, based on sloppy reading.
Read the article above:
The monthly National Climatic Data Center analysis, which is based on records going back to 1880,
Or read the actual report:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global
March 2010
The combined global land and ocean surface temperature anomaly for March 2010 was 0.77°C (1.39°F) above the 20th century average, resulting in the warmest March since records began in 1880.
Ice doesn’t “record” temperature, you have to analyze it to derive temperature data.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/record
c (1) : to register permanently by mechanical means (2) : indicate, read
The fact that Milankovitch cycles and Earth climate system feedbacks caused a warmer March 125,000 years ago says nothing about how quickly we are changing the temperature now by dumping gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere. If a forest burned down 125,000 years ago, due to lightning, where your house stands now, that doesn’t protect you from burning down your house by smoking in bed. As the fire begins in your bed, saying “this is nothing, it was much hotter here 125,000 years ago” is no solution to putting out the fire.
Anu,
“Hopefully they’ll get back to doing science in a timely fashion, soon.”
Why start now? They never bothered before.
“Peter of Sydney (23:55:54) :
All meaningless nonsense. I’m more concerned about the probability of the Earth being hit by a killer asteroid.”
Actually-
All meaningless FABRICATED-NEW MATH-FAKED-FRAUD newspeak nonsense.
NOAA and GISS along with at least 1/2 of the US Govt fraudulent departments need to be shut down – nothing but leeches.
As this site has shown, time and again, the various departments are frauds.
Thanks to Mr. Smith, Mr. Goddard, Mr. McIntyre, Mr. Watts and other very dedicated researchers for the truth.
Anu- go back to “realclimate” –
March in Saskatchewan was mild but to put this in context, in the late 80’s I managed to get a 90KM ride in on my `60 sporty Feb 2. Weather was weather even then.