By Steve Goddard
RSS April 14,000 Foot Anomalies
UAH and RSS satellite data have been showing record warm temperatures in 2010, despite the fact that many of us have been freezing – and CAGW types have been quick to jump on this fact. But Had-Crut surface data has 2010 at only #5 through March, which is the latest available. So Watts Up With That?
Had-Crut rankings through March
I don’t have any theories about root cause, but there are some very interesting empirical relationships correlating ENSO with satellite and surface temperatures. Satellite TLT data is measured at 14,000 feet and seems to get exaggerated relative to surface temperatures during El Niño events. Note the particularly large exaggerations during the 1998 and 2010 Niños below. UAH (satellite) is in red and Had-Crut (surface) is in green.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1978/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1978/normalise
Looking closer at the 1998 El Niño, it can be seen that both UAH and RSS 14,000 ft. temperatures were highly exaggerated vs. normalised Had-Crut and GISS surface temperatures.
Below is a chart showing the normalised difference (UAH minus Had-Crut) from 1997-1999
The chart below shows the same data as the one above, but also plots ENSO. This one is very interesting in that it shows that the satellite data lags ENSO by several months. In 1998, ENSO was nearly neutral by the time UAH reached it’s peak, and the 1999 La Niña was at full strength before UAH recovered to normal.
Conclusions: ENSO is already headed negative, but it is likely that we will see several more months of high satellite temperatures. CAGW types will abandon their long cherished Had-Crut, and declare 2010 to be the hottest year in the history of the planet. Yet another way to hide the decline.ñ
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Something has happened to the UAH data. I recall during the Y2K leadup that there was some debate on a Y2K website (now gone of course) about the threat of global warming and the fact that 1998 was a record year. At the time (late 1999) the UAH data showed a smaller anomaly than HAD-CRUT. Somehow that has changed in the last 11 years. Has the HAD-CRUT data been altered to make 1998 cooler (not likely) or has the UAH data been adusted upwards?
Hide the decline until the Cap & Trade bill is signed!
Steve, I’ve asked some pretty basic questions about the satellite temp readings. From the people I find credible, here’s WUWT. First, the satellites don’t measure surface temps. Secondly, they’re not calibrated to any thermometer. I don’t give much credence to the “reported” surface temps, but comparing it to some altitude reading that isn’t measured by pressure on mercury strikes me as odd. I don’t have the technical expertise to explain what the difference is, only I know it is a significant difference. I can look at the map of anomalies an know it doesn’t reflect reality to the surface temp I experienced in April or now. In April, in SE Kansas, we probably had 2 days in which the temp was acceptable (for me) to go fishing. All other days were too wet or too cold. That in itself is an anomaly. Perhaps we’re witnessing a dynamic that hasn’t been considered. Perhaps it is simply warmer in an altitude above us that isn’t relative to surface temps. I don’t know, what I do know is, in the part of the world I live in, the map doesn’t reflect reality.
Isn’t it nice when they can deny or ignore the CO2 lag yet seize upon this one. My the cherry trees are beautiful at this time of year…
Kind of Off / On Topic:
I’m worried that we will be offered up as evidence a new kind of model in the form of a liquid globe to try and maybe replicate and predict Ocean dynamics!!!! It might soon be used in relation to ‘climate change’.
14 May 2010 – BBC
“In pictures: The ocean in a laboratory”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10108401.stm
http://www.physics.mun.ca/~yakov/
So… surface temperatures are still declining? Even when considering that most sensors suffer from UHI? It’s worst than we thought!
Regardless, I trust the satellite data more than the ground data as there are far fewer fudge factors and sources of error.
Doesnt this just show that the hot air from the ocean rise up, and the heat is radiated out to the cold, empty space? As expected?
It needs to be established that
(1) the normalisation is correct
(2) the more convenient dataset (hadcrut 3; discredited recently in ‘climategate’) is the ‘correct’ one (or the more realistic estimate)
(3) that the urban heat island effect has not contaminated the surface temperatures, as proposed 200 times on this site
Please cherry pick now!
It’s worse than we thought.
monckhausen
UHI effects would drive the UAH minus HadCrut numbers in the opposite direction.
On thing for sure – if it were GISS and Had-Crut showing the positive anomalies, skeptics would be criticizing them. It is important to be balanced and keep our eyes open.
James Sexton says
I live in south Alabama. My wife has always had the giant elephant leaf plants and a few ginger plants. This year none of them ever came up. I guess because of the many days in a row of below freezing temps we had over the winter. Like you, I can’t exactly explain this but something is going on. The maps do seem strange.
OK, if the plots are correct, then the El Nino Ts are reported higher by the satellite datasets, and lower by the climategate-hadcrut dataset.
(1) Both T-sets show warming in the long run, just the El Nino spikes are smoother: therefore no ‘decline is hidden’
(2) This is expected since El Nino/La Nina are superimposed on the CO2 forcing
(3) This proves McLean et al. (2009) wrong, who claim that all warming comes from ENSO
(4) The climategate-hadcrut 3 T-dataset is acceptable – or it is accepted whenever handy.
Don’t worry everyone, soon the UAH anomalies will fall then we can go back to rubbishing the GISS and Hadley.
When I run the regressions on the different temperature series over the entire time periods available, I get more-or-less the same response to the ENSO.
By itself, the coefficient for the Nino 3.4 lagged 3 months on RSS, UAH and Hadcrut3 is 0.082 and 0.065 for GISS.
When the AMO is also a variable, the coefficients are 0.078 for Hadcrut3, 0.061 for RSS, 0.066 for UAH and 0.060 for GISS.
So, this means that N. Hemisphere summer will ramp up as UAH plunges, eating into it. S. Hemisphere winter will ramp up as UAH plunges, driving it to an icy frenzy.
N. Hemisphere Winter will come in like a bear.
On the AMSU channel 4-8 channels and their apparent divergence from the channel 9-15 and the surface reading (actually 15 from memory).
Go lookup the actual User Manual and the Calibration Manual for the AMSU instruments. They are in PDF form and I am not going to do the digging for you. They are public, or were, and if I remember they are on a NASA site.
I’m not saying something is malfunctioning or mis-calibrated, only the possiblity. As you read these documents notice that there are not this myriad of channels, only two actual instruments and channels. The channel 4-8 and 10-14 (once again, as I remember) are manufactured by algorithmic combinations of the soundings from those two. I am just saying pay attention to exactly what you are looking at as data. Certain data is not equally made to other data which is real and even the real data still has uncertainty and is created by real flawable instruments. But I am sure these are well built and seldom have problems, if ever.
It is curious however why half of the channels show high and half do not. I have noticed this since January.
So, I’ve been wondering this for a while and no one seems to have an answer. If satellites measure the temperature at 14,000 ft and it is known that UHI can affect downwind weather patterns/storms (think Atlanta), then is it also possible that some of the satellite data is contaminated by UHI? Thunderstorms can reach many multiples of 14,000 ft into the atmosphere, so it seems plausible that UHI-induced heat could be transported to those levels in the atmosphere. Furthermore, the dispersion of that heat throughout the atmosphere would cover many times the actual area of the UHI itself. Afterall, we do live in a 3-dimensional world…
“CAGW types will abandon their long cherished Had-Crut, and declare 2010 to be the hottest year in the history of the planet.”
Indeed, that’s a bold, falsifiable prediction.
Yes, it’s pretty clear that the Had Crut people suppressed the temperatures back in 1998 just so that they could hide the relative decline in subsequent years, whereas the UAH 1998 spike showed that temperatures declined steadily for years afterwards. Well, until this year, after which we’ll be able to see the temperatures decline again on the UAH trend but not on Had Crut, where they are already fiddling today’s temperatures downwards in anticipation of hiding future declines.
It’s mind boggling.
Basically, fluctuations in temperatures at the surface are amplified in the troposphere. This is not the case with trends, IMAO because the surface data contains spurious warming.
Doug in Seattle says: “Regardless, I trust the satellite data more than the ground data as there are far fewer fudge factors and sources of error.”
There is no fudge factor greater than failure to calibrate your instruments.
Seems to me that UAH vs hadcrut shows that 14,000 feet has more varaibility than surface through the whole record, just easier to see in el nino years because it is a bigger spike. Since it is colder at 14,000 feet than at surface, would we not expect higher sensitivity to an energy fluctuation and hence a bigger anomaly?
OOPS !
Somebody Normalized the Had-Cru but NOT the UAH.
The “Higher Peak” effect dissappears if you normalize both — or neither. PS: Steve’s source lets one do both. So I played around with what occurs if you treat both Datasets EQUALLY :
— the Satellite records show a NARROWER Peak/ and /WIDER Dip ( ! ? ) , for All big jumps, than Had-Cru.
For Magnitudes of the peak of the Peak, & low point of the Dips, the 2 are nearly Identical.
A few weeks back Joe Bastardi predicted that the end of El Nino will lead to a collapse of global temperature by November to January:
http://www.accuweather.com/video/83060117001/sink-o-de-nino-the-rapid-collapse-of-el-nino.asp?channel=vblog_bastardi
I’ll bet he’s right again.