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
timetochooseagain says:
Yes…The basic picture in the tropics (where the air is moist and convection is the dominant mechanism) is this: Imagine two parcels of air at the surface, both saturated and one at a temperature of 1 C warmer than the other. As they rise up in the troposphere, they expand and cool (adiabatic expansion); however, being saturated, they also have to condense out some of their water vapor and this releases latent heat, reducing the amount of cooling from what would otherwise occur. The warmer parcel has to condense out more water vapor for each degree that it cools than the cooler parcel (because, as a function of temperature, both the saturation vapor pressure and its derivative increase with increasing temperature). Hence, the warmer parcel will release more latent heat and will thus cool more slowly than the cooler parcel. As a result of this mechanism, a certain temperature difference at the surface tends to get magnified as you go up in the tropical troposphere. This goes by the name “moist adiabatic lapse rate theory”.
As timetochooseagain alludes to, this picture is the explanation of why the climate models predict the so-called “hot spot” in the tropical troposphere, i.e., they predict that the temperature trend should be magnified as you go up in the tropical troposphere. (This prediction is sometimes falsely claimed to be a prediction specific to the mechanism of warming due to greenhouse gases, but it is not. The temperature structure in the troposphere, at least in the tropics, is dominated by the atmospheric dynamics.) The data clearly show this magnification for fluctuations in temperature, such as those due to ENSO, as Steve Goddard has (re-)discovered in this post. The data for the multidecadal trends are more ambiguous because all the data sets used have issues in regards to artifacts that could affect the multidecadal trends.
Just The Facts says: May 14, 2010 at 8:01 pm
Wrong thread, long week…
Steven, you mention that “Normalisation is a shift, not a scaling”
but the Woodfortrees website states: “Normalise – Scales and offsets all samples so they fall into the range 0..1”
So, clearly the normalizing function at woodfortrees does more than just shift the data…
The general temperature behavior appears to have a period of 60 years – the multidecadal period – a sine curve with period 60 years and amplitude 0.25C on top of a 1C/century increase. 1910-1950 is similar to 1970-2010.
Notice that
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1935/to:1948
shows a similar pattern in the 1940: TWO peaks before a big decline.
I have asked before the same question as Jantar above. Probably around 1998-2000 HadCrut must have shown the 1998 peak AT LEAST AS BIG as shown by satellites, to prove warming.
The same 1998 peak is now SMALLER than the satellites, so as to diminish the cooling 1998-2010.
QUEST: Does anyone have a record of HadCrut temperatures as put out around 2000 (web or publications,) so we can check it against HadCrut temperatures now?
Just The Facts says:
May 14, 2010 at 8:01 pm
The word that comes to mind is hubris: “extreme haughtiness or arrogance. Hubris often indicates being out of touch with reality and overestimating one’s own competence or capabilities, especially for people in positions of power.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubris
If we had discovered that Earth’s average temperature can be regulated by simply adjusting the trace amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, it would be one of mankind’s greatest accomplishments. But the facts do not support this hypothesis and our understanding of Earth’s climate system is much too rudimentary to be assigning primary driver status to anything……..
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Of course the facts support the hypothesis. That’s why you won’t find a scientific society of standing that disputes it.
Beth ,
I don’t really understand the description on the WFT website, but you get the identical result by shifting HadCrut -0.23
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1978/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1978/offset:-0.23
So whatever their normalisation algorithm is doing, it isn’t scaling.
Wren:
“Of course the facts support the hypothesis. That’s why you won’t find a scientific society of standing that disputes it.”
Which hypothesis? The original null hypothesis? Then I would have to agree.
But any putative… *ahem*… “fact” that supposedly supports CAGW is in reality nothing but a conjecture… which is all that CAGW is.
Unless you can provide testable, empirical evidence based on reproducible raw data. But of course, that is the big stumbling block for the CAGW contingent.
How do I know this? A little birdie told me so.
Wren says: May 14, 2010 at 8:30 pm
Of course the facts support the hypothesis. That’s why you won’t find a scientific society of standing that disputes it.
How about some empirical observations? No database exists with enough resolution to determine if CO2 is having an impact. If you look at the historical temperatures, UHI and erroneous/missing algorithms are enough to explain all of the warming that can’t be attributed to the normal 60 year cycle. Doesn’t say much for your appeal to authority who have to rewrite history to invent a non-calamity.
Wren
The scientific societies have been taken over by activists, more interested in poly sci than sci, sad to say.
Stephen Wilde says:
May 14, 2010 at 7:30 pm
Could you run through that again, and this time explain how that affects our land & sea temperature?
I get a mental picture of a ‘lid’ on the pressure cooker.
Smokey says:
May 14, 2010 at 8:42 pm
Wren:
“Of course the facts support the hypothesis. That’s why you won’t find a scientific society of standing that disputes it.”
Which hypothesis? The original null hypothesis? Then I would have to agree.
But any putative… *ahem*… “fact” that supposedly supports CAGW is in reality nothing but a conjecture… which is all that CAGW is.
Unless you can provide testable, empirical evidence based on reproducible raw data. But of course, that is the big stumbling block for the CAGW contingent.
How do I know this? A little birdie told me so.
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Do you have a specific null hypothesis in mind?
2 words:
Spatial Variation.
Where I live, winter 2009/10 was the hottest I’ve ever seen. Just across the mountain range, it was frigid.
It’s simple:
Things aren’t spatially uniform.
Furthermore:
Spatial patterns vary over time – (also simple).
It only gets complicated if cravings for sweeping generalizations go unrestrained.
kwik says: May 14, 2010 at 4:33 pm
“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?”
Intuitively, I would agree.
Heat goes up and arrives at the troposphere with some latency.
As it gets stratified laterally as well, there is an amplification.
Increased temperatures increase the loss to outer space and are just another manifestation of the (natural) negative feedback.
Charles Wilson May 14, 2010 at 6:17 pm
we’ve had a BIG El Nino forcing temps up the last 6 months or so.
No, it’s been a moderate El Nino. 1998 was a big one. Check the numbers.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/klaus.wolter/MEI/table.html
Or you can look at a graph.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/klaus.wolter/MEI/
Sun spot count is lower now than in 1998, too.
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/weekly/RecentIndices.txt
Paul Vaughan
You had a “hot” winter? First time I have heard of that concept.
Stephan
I hope you are correct about getting a response from Dr. Spencer. I have been asking this question for a long time, and haven’t heard a satisfactory answer from anywhere.
Steve Keohane says:
May 14, 2010 at 8:59 pm
Wren says: May 14, 2010 at 8:30 pm
Of course the facts support the hypothesis. That’s why you won’t find a scientific society of standing that disputes it.
How about some empirical observations? No database exists with enough resolution to determine if CO2 is having an impact. If you look at the historical temperatures, UHI and erroneous/missing algorithms are enough to explain all of the warming that can’t be attributed to the normal 60 year cycle. Doesn’t say much for your appeal to authority who have to rewrite history to invent a non-calamity.
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The facts:
1. Average global temperature has been rising.
2. CO2 from man’s activities has been rising.
3. CO2 is a green house gas.
4. Green house gases have a global warming effect.
So more CO2 in the atmosphere from man’s activities(e.g., burning fossil fuels), causes more green house gas, which in turn is a warming influence. Natural influences(changes in solar activity and ocean currents) can add to or subtract from the man-made warming.
Recorded global temperature data do not support the notion of a “normal 60 year cycle.” In a cycle, temperatures would increase and decrease, but return to a mean. In contrast, recorded temperatures show a long-term rise.
Latest data at UAH brings the temperature trend for that set to 0.14C from 1979 – present.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/05/april-2010-uah-global-temperature-update-0-50-deg-c/
That’s within 0.02C of the trends derived from the other data sets for the same time period (RSS/GISS/CRU). Seems they’re getting closer to each other as time goes by and the law of large numbers reduces discrepancies – and makes the quibbling over slight differences a bit overwrought.
“Latest data at UAH brings the temperature trend for that set to 0.14C from 1979 – present.”
Meant to say: 0.14C per decade.
#
rbateman says:
May 14, 2010 at 5:15 pm
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.
………………….
Lock your door!
So I think I get it.
Warming causes increased convection so warm air goes up, mostly in the warmest zones and pulls cold air in behind it mostly from the colder zones. So warm air goes up at the equator and spills over sideways somewhere around 14000 feet or so, so they can lie on their backs waving at the satellites and screaming hey look at us! In the meantime air from the arctic zones has to come in underneath to replace the warm convecting air, and so cools off the land surface as it goes. Ergo the earth is warming up and the nasty cold summers for the last couple of years are evidence.
So how hot does the planet have to get before it starts snowing in Florida in July?
Wren;
Recorded global temperature data do not support the notion of a “normal 60 year cycle.” In a cycle, temperatures would increase and decrease, but return to a mean. In contrast, recorded temperatures show a long-term rise.>>
Yes they do Wren. They show a long term rise that started a couple three hundred years ago and haven’t changed their slope hardly at all despite a 38% increase in CO2 that only showed up part way through the last century. Or does the CO2 in 1980 cause warming in 1780 as well? The 60 year cycle is clearly visible in the temperature record, superimposed on a much longer cycle that has been in an upward trend for centuries and which shows no evidence of being accelerated by CO2. I think it sad that you keep regurgitating this stuff even tough its been explained in multiple threads multiple times to you and you just repeat it anyway.
Hey I checked your bank account. There’s been some deposits to it of the same size I was expecting in mine that never showed up, so that must be my money, please send it over.
Paul Vaughan said
“Where I live, winter 2009/10 was the hottest I’ve ever seen. Just across the mountain range, it was frigid.”
I am particularly interested in micro climates and the way they can alter naturally due to changing weather patterns.
Can you tell us where you are from and which adjacent area had such a different winter?
thanks
Tonyb
Davidmhoffer
You are right of course. Temperatures have been gently rising since 1690-obviously with some notable reversals and advances (1700-1730) -but the temperature has drifted upwards. The 60 year cycle (or thereabouts) is clearly visible. It would be reasonably accurate to say that when looking at all the seasons we are getting less cold rather than getting warmer. Less cold winters have a disproportionate effect on overall mean averages as they have a higher variability than summer temperatures.
I think you will find that money was intended for my account but I am prepared to give you a finders fee 🙂
tonyb