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.
An international law needs to be passed limiting climate science to colors that do not use Red.
If the color relationships in the NOAA image were accurate to the temperatures, it would be all blues and greens. NOAA’s point isn’t to alarm so why do they choose these color extremes?
@ur momisugly Anu (06:49:29) :
Funny how the El Nino’s keep getting warmer and warmer, just like those crackpot climatologists predicted…
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100415141121.htm
Yeah “just like” they predicted. 😐
Steve M. from TN (07:37:21) :
Will they ever stop using Mercator projections for the map? (I guess as long as it look scary, they won’t)
Apparently they have, that’s not a Mercator projection! Perhaps a Gall? in any cast you could use the excellent converter site referenced on Giss, G.projector.
Sifted thru 100+ respones. Not one of them made a constructive scientific argument against.
Apparently they have, that’s not a Mercator projection! Perhaps a Gall? in any cast you could use the excellent converter site referenced on Giss, G.projector.
ah you’re right…I’m wrong 🙂
Still with the map they use, the higher latitudes of the each hemisphere have more data points than the lower latitudes
fhreid (10:17:51) :
Sifted thru 100+ respones. Not one of them made a constructive scientific argument against.
Against what?
Here we had snow in March. At Sea Level. And it’s damning cold right now and we’re in Mid-April! This is damned Spain, for God’s sake! I wonder how cold is gonna get once the El Niño is finished. I don’t think I can stand another year this cold. Maybe I should move to Canada.
Anu (06:49:29) :
http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt74/MartinGAtkins/Mar-uah2.png
I guess that “it’s been cooling since 1998″ red herring is dead now.
On the March data for each year alone? Surely we would use the entire monthly annual data across the time span before we could make such a bold statement. The trend, if we include the entire 97/98 El Nino and include this march is about +0.2. If I were you I would show caution about using phrases like “red herring is dead now”. Using the time span we have here gives a volatile trend line, that can flip from positive to negative over a period of months.
I don’t trust my trend line generator so please try to confirm my graph with an independent source.
http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt74/MartinGAtkins/UAH-TREND2.png
Funny how the El Nino’s keep getting warmer and warmer, just like those crackpot climatologists predicted…
This El Nino is not warmer than 97/98 and nor have the ones been between.
http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt74/MartinGAtkins/NINO-79.png
In my estimation 2010 will not be warmer than 1998. The high global anom temp figures over the first three months are a product of the timing of the El Nino and in them selves say nothing about probable outcome of the annualized figure.
Funny, but I suspect if we’d experienced the coolest March in 100 years, that it would be the #1 topic on every AGW skeptic blog for days on end. Having a record warm March 2010 is completely in line with general AGWT, so it is not the hot topic for those who think it is likely that AGW is happening.
BTW, it seems the March “bump up” in Arctic sea ice, which was mainly the Bering sea is melting fast as predicted, as it was very thin ice, only 4 to 12 inches and was caused by a lingering negative AO condition, that’s faded now as the spring thaw has really kicked in. To see how fast the March “bump up” in sea ice in the Bering sea is now melting, see :
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.2.html
And so the Bering sea is rapidly heading toward the same state the rest of the arctic sea ice is in– a negative anomaly condition, as it has been since 2004.
R. Gates (11:11:34),
What is it that you can’t understand about natural climate variability? If ice extent only went up, the equator would be covered in ice.
Despite the tinge of panic in your posts, the climate is well within the parameters of past natural fluctuations: click
John from CA (09:15:24) : “An international law needs to be passed limiting climate science to colors that do not use Red.”
Unfortunately, I think there is still so much support for the catastrophic global warming hypothesis, especially in international organizations, I expect the possibility of passing any law controlling this type of propaganda is probably quite low.
I think we should keep in mind that there still are a lot of people out there who really believe that catastrophic global warming is a serious danger to the world. The elite press seems to be saying that there is no reason to delay addressing this problem, now that the climate scientists have been fully cleared of all technical wrong-doing. New momentum also seems to be building up for Congress to finally pass the ‘Cap and Trade’ bill.
@fhreid (10:17:51) :
‘Sifted thru 100+ respones. Not one of them made a constructive scientific argument against.’
ROFL!
Are you completely mental? You’re not an actual denier are you?
World has, as far as can be ascertained, accumulatively warmed since the last ice age, period.
The questions are by how much, and what percentage is by man, or by Mann, and what percentage is natural, in the whole warming process.
And of course there’s the whole pot of disgustingly gooey hairy things that everyone has a problem with too, like just which manner you splice and dice, tree readers, half retired satellites that should’ve gone where no satellite has gone before already, population growth around temperature apparatus’, half baked scientists, non-caring people taking temperature reading for the weather but the readings is used to describe climate, et cetera et al.
Essentially it’s a matter of parts of a degree, rather than being for or against.
NOAA puts it’s books in the oven before serving.
How about we take a look see at how this dish was cooked up, and what ingredients the recipe included.
It’s time for cap and tax, so not to easy to hide the connection … They don’t want to go the way of NASA, now do they.
You can’t say that there is any trend significantly different than 0 in the anomaly because the range of anomaly values includes 0.
I am a long time reader of WUWT but a first time poster. I happened to be up in Iqaluit on Baffin Island on Wednesday. The temperature was -16c along with a very strong north wind and Baffin Bay was completely covered over by sea ice. As this was only my second time there I cannot say if it is any warmer or colder than normal for this time of year, but for sure no one was going to go and throw a few shrimp on the barbi that afternoon!!! (even if they could have found it under the snow)
Owen.
While the El Nino weakens, global temperature should follow it with a lag of 2-4 months.
NASA predicts a major La Nina event which is going to start in June. http://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/products/climateforecasts/plots/CGCMV1/forecast_indices/nino/gmao/apr10_fore_nino3_sm.png
ECMW is waiting for a moderate La Nina: http://www.ecmwf.int/products/forecasts/d/charts/seasonal/forecast/seasonal_range_forecast/nino_plumes_public_s3!3.4!/
Steve M. (10:57:40) :
Apparently they have, that’s not a Mercator projection! Perhaps a Gall? in any cast you could use the excellent converter site referenced on Giss, G.projector.
ah you’re right…I’m wrong 🙂
Still with the map they use, the higher latitudes of the each hemisphere have more data points than the lower latitudes
The whole ‘map projection’ technique is really unnecessary in the Age of Powerful PC’s – have you seen these plots overlayed on Google Earth ?
http://neo.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/Search.html?group=67
Just click on the “open in Google Earth” links. If you have trouble setting up your browser to do it automatically, just download the .kmz file and drag/drop it on a running Google Earth (which is free from Google: http://earth.google.com/ )
Seeing the data on a scalable, rotatable globe is better than any 2D projection.
They also have some .kmz files which allow data “movies” to be played on Google Earth, showing data changing over time.
R. Gates (11:11:34) :
BTW, it seems the March “bump up” in Arctic sea ice, which was mainly the Bering sea is melting fast as predicted…
I’d be more concerned if it *wasn’t* melting.
R. Gates (11:11:34) : “Having a record warm March 2010 is completely in line with general AGWT”
AGWT is BS. “Having a record warm March 2010 is completely in line with” recovering, painfully slowly, from the Little Ice Age ending mid 19th century.
We haven’t been so lucky in Australia. It was the coldest March here since 2003.
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi?graph=tmean&area=aus&season=03&ave_yr=0
tobyglyn (18:51:42) :
… and to whom it concerns
The category of the blog is climate news; if you want to talk about the
weather, it is nice and I enjoy your comments from different places,
getting a synchronous sweep of a large area!
But, if you draw conclusions on GW or AGW based on this news you are
not helping. There is no chance for a fruitful discussion if the distinction
betrween weather and climate is not observed.
Dave F (09:28:03) :
@ur momisugly Anu (06:49:29) :
Funny how the El Nino’s keep getting warmer and warmer, just like those crackpot climatologists predicted…
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100415141121.htm
Yeah “just like” they predicted. 😐
Yup:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/pr20091210b.html
Dr. Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), always wants better Earth observing instruments. But most of that “missing ocean heat” has already been found, it’s in the layer 700m to 2000m, which Trenberth doesn’t include in his paper.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/ocean-heat-2000m.gif
This graph is from Figure 11a:
http://www.euro-argo.eu/content/download/49437/368494/file/VonSchukmann_et_al_2009_inpress.pdf
From the ScienceDaily article:
Trenberth and Fasullo estimate that, based on satellite data, the amount of energy build-up appears to be about 1.0 watts per square meter or higher, while ocean instruments indicate a build-up of about 0.5 watts per square meter. That means about half the total amount of heat is unaccounted for.
That’s for looking at the oceans down to 700m.
Looking down to 2000m, other scientists see an oceanic warming of 0.77 ± 0.11 Wm−2
Once they start measuring under the polar sea ice, maybe that goes to 0.85 or 0.90. Add in down to 3000m, maybe we’ll see 0.94
But he’s right, the current Argo armada is just a start. It could be higher resolution, it could go deeper and take more data, and it is missing a lot of ocean area at the poles. Eventually, they will see exactly where all that imbalanced radiation caused by CO2 increases is going.
Bill Tuttle (13:58:12) :
R. Gates (11:11:34) :
BTW, it seems the March “bump up” in Arctic sea ice, which was mainly the Bering sea is melting fast as predicted…
I’d be more concerned if it *wasn’t* melting.
——
I wouldn’t be concerned either way…a short term up or down does not a climate make…the longest term trend over the biggest area of the earth is the most accurate indicator of climate. Short term dips or bounces are just noise. My point in mentioning it is that much was made of the March “bump up”, so that we had pundits like Rush Limbaugh even talking about it, as though it meant anything.
I note that a few of the people in hot places have remarked on lower than usual precipitation. Does this translate to lower than usual absolute humidity?
If it does, it could also account for the higher than usual temperatures.
DaveE.
Anu (05:31:12) :
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.
Reply;
About 0.37 degree celcius difference between the two base periods. This will not change the picture very much.
Anu (05:31:12) :
has a base period of 2000 to 2008, and doesn’t include the oceans.
Well just because there is an El Nino doesn`t mean land temperatures were warmer than they really were!