Dr. Roy Spencer has an essay below on sea surface temperatures starting to bottom out, but in addition to that, the UAH daily lower troposphere plot shows a sharp drop also.
As this graph of UAH TLT from D Kelly O’Day’s site shows, The current global anomaly is 0.044C – or very nearly zero. That’s a big drop from last month when we ended up at 0.60C.
Note the black dot, the value on 10-26-10. Click to enlarge the image.
Now compare that to Dr. Spencer’s Sea Surface temperature plot below.
Bottom Falling Out of Global Ocean Surface Temperatures?
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
Having just returned from another New Orleans meeting – this time, a NASA A-Train satellite constellation symposium — I thought I would check the latest sea surface temperatures from our AMSR-E instrument.
The following image shows data updated through yesterday (October 27). Needless to say, there is no end in sight to the cooling.
(Click on image for the full-size version).
Since these SST measurements are mostly unaffected by cloud cover like the traditional infrared measurements are, I consider this to be the most accurate high-time resolution SST record available…albeit only since mid-2002, when the Aqua satellite was launched.
I won’t make any predictions about whether SSTs will go as low as the 2007-08 La Nina event. I’ll leave that to others.
Next headline?:
“Arctic Sea Ice Extent dropping below 2007 line!”, see:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
Channel 5 is also dropping like a rock. October is going to be much closer to “normal” than previous months. The 1998 record is all but safe…
paulhan says:
October 29, 2010 at 2:37 am
Wow, 0.35C drop in just six months. That’s half of all the warming we have experienced since 1850.
Make that “…half of all the homogenised warming we have experienced since 1850″.
The BBC are still wailing and gnashing their teeth about warming, barely a day goes by without some mumbo jumbo SEJ inspired nonsense about melting ice/rising temperatures/sea levels etc.
Nail meet coffin, coffin meet nail? I can see the BBC being the very last body to give up the global warming charade, mind you the BBC has bet the farm on AGW allied eco/ethical investments for their pension plan…oooops.
The back peddling begins. How long will it take before the “New Ice Age headlines?”
A number of the AWG blogs have recently started to including a few comments about
planetary cooling and about cycle 24, that is a 180 degree turn around from standard the comment the “the scientific debate and discussion is over”.
The fall 2009 annual AGU meeting had a special session to discuss the abrupt changes that are occurring for solar cycle 24.
This is a link to Livingston and Penn’s second paper that discusses their finding that the magnetic field strength of each new sunspot formed on the sun is linearly decreasing as compared to previously produced sunspots.
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009EO300001.pdf
http://solarb.msfc.nasa.gov/
“According to our measurements, sunspots seem to form only if the magnetic field is stronger than about 1500 gauss,” says Livingston. “If the current trend continues, we’ll hit that threshold in the near future, and solar magnetic fields would become too weak to form sunspots.” “This work has caused a sensation in the field of solar physics,” comments NASA sunspot expert David Hathaway, who is not directly involved in the research. “It’s controversial stuff.”
The following is a 2004 paper that predicts the sun is heading towards a Maunder minimum based on an analysis of the paleo record of solar activity.
The paleo data also shows the planet cools during the solar magnetic minimums.
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/ml/ocean/sst/anomaly.html
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004ApJ…605L..81B
“We have examined the long-term trends in the solar variability that can be deduced from some indirect data and from optical records. We analyzed the radiocarbon measurements for the last 4500 years, based on dendrochronology, the Schove series for the last 1700 years, based on auroral records, and the Hoyt-Schatten series of group sunspot numbers. Focusing on periodicities near one and two centuries, which most likely have a solar origin, we conclude that the present epoch is at the onset of an upcoming local minimum in the long-term solar variability. There are some clues that the next minimum will be less deep than the Maunder minimum, but ultimately the relative depth between these two minima will be indicative of the amplitude change of the quasi-two-century solar cycle.”
I’m not claiming that animals predict the weather, but you should see our raccoons this year. “Scruffy”, a scrawny female, looks absolutely huge with about 2-1/2″ of winter fur. Most of our other little friends that visit us are also very thick with fur. It’s comical how fluffy they are. Hmm, there’s a good name for one of the others.
How inconvenient! Who’d a thought that some, I don’t know, natural “cycle” is happening. Cold 1940’s, cold 1970’s, cold 2010’s, a different cycle? Who knows, it’s cold here in Sydney, Australia, we “usually” get warm at this time of year, it’s like a switch! But no! COLD!
Those galeforce winds that went ripping by are heading northeast.
I wonder what those winds return trip will bring from the north?
Frank says:
October 29, 2010 at 1:37 am
What will that do with “the warmest year ever”?
Fecked
As they say in Ireland (not allowed to swear so they have made some new ones up LOL)
We are now experiencing AGC. Like some of the proxies, they´ve turned the data upsidedown. CO2 is actually cooling. We have to change our lifestyle now!
It is not hard to see what temperatures are going to do now.
The Tropics temperatures lag behind the ENSO by 2 to 3 months and this period looks to be following that pattern exactly. Still at least 4 to 6 months of cooling to come yet.
http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/960/ensotropicssept10.png
The global temperatures will follow the tropics temperatures, sometimes lagging behind by another 2 to 4 weeks.
The La Nina has moderated a little in the past few weeks – one more incursion of warmer water from the north equatorial counter-current. The subsurface pattern says there is at least one more tranche of cooler water to come up from below yet. The cooler La Nina water has made it all the way across the Pacific to New Guinea now at 140E where the deep ocean ends and the subsurface ENSO circulation pattern begins. So, even if this La Nina peaks in a month or two and ends around May, it’s cool water will be back in another 18 months anyway – probably a small El Nino in between.
Frank says:
October 29, 2010 at 1:37 am
> What will that do with “the warmest year ever”?
It will make the people who hyped it very happy they hyped when they did. News of 2010 not setting a record won’t be covered, all that will be left in most people’s memories is that 2010 was on a record pace.
Sam the Skeptic says:
October 29, 2010 at 3:22 am
I thought sceptics didn’t believe anything without hard evidence. Isn’t that the definition? So please can you tell me what evidence there is that the earth was created for mankind? Give me hard evidence and I’ll believe it. I’m not aware that anyone has come up with any so far.
Yours in scepticism.
I just wanted to say that watching the ENSO/SST reference page on a near daily basis has been a tremendous learning experience. You try to predict magnitude, correlation, and lag times which really forces you to respect these processes.
I’ve been watching all this long enough to watch the SST and temperature drop of 2007-08, what a travesty, then Joe Rohm predict that the temperature would go back up and global warming would resume in 09 and he was right until this pesky subsequent La Nina takes away all his global warming again.
The truth has always been that there is has been no significant global warming or cooling of the ocean or land outside of the natural flux for the past dozen years and we’ve been able to watch most of that quite well.
I hope someone would put a timeline of all this together so we could watch the oceans lead the temperature and superimpose all the cooling/warming proclamations on top of that.
It would be impossible to refute the case that man might have added a couple of tenths of degrees to the temperature but very difficult to make the case that man is now the dominate forcing.
Wonder what the new Volcanic eruptions in Russia will bring. It is getting more and more interesting.
Bill Derryberry
Could the date 12/21/12 have a meaning after all? The beginning of the next ice age … Wouldn’t need to be very impressive either, only historically relevant.
It’ll be worst the Day After Tomorrow…
Alec Rawls says:
October 29, 2010 at 12:34 am (Edit)
I’ll predict not just colder surface temps than 2007-08, but a long term cooling trend for all the world’s oceans.
Now – here’s the larger question: Are the current 2000 – 2010 years the peak of the Modern Warming Period – 400 years after the 1600’s LIA? Or do we have another 60 year short cycle yet to come before we slide back down into the Future Little Ice Age (FLIA) from 2060 into 2460?
We have “ramped up” in 1880-1890, 1935-1945, 2000 – 2010 – declining after each ramp slightly before temperatures increase again. In the early 1800’s, Cornelius Vanderbilt began making his transportation empire from boats he rowed across the Hudson between ice floes. When will we next see ice that far down?
How about some solar panels to heat water and generate electricity in the winter down at the poles? It is carbon free energy. Surely the Chinese whom Joe romm adores have technology for panels that operate in the shade and in the dark.
William says:
October 29, 2010 at 4:15 am
“The back peddling begins. How long will it take before the “New Ice Age headlines?”
The following is a 2004 paper that predicts the sun is heading towards a Maunder minimum based on an analysis of the paleo record of solar activity.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004ApJ…605L..81B
“We have examined the long-term trends in the solar variability that can be deduced from some indirect data and from optical records. We analyzed the radiocarbon measurements for the last 4500 years, based on dendrochronology, the Schove series for the last 1700 years, based on auroral records, and the Hoyt-Schatten series of group sunspot numbers. Focusing on periodicities near one and two centuries, which most likely have a solar origin, we conclude that the present epoch is at the onset of an upcoming local minimum in the long-term solar variability. There are some clues that the next minimum will be less deep than the Maunder minimum, but ultimately the relative depth between these two minima will be indicative of the amplitude change of the quasi-two-century solar cycle.”
Spot on William! Our climate is driven by deterministic chaos, and is starting to swing towards the ‘cool Earth’ attractor as the energy from the sun starts to decline…
1410-1500 cold – Low Solar Activity(LSA?)-(Sporer minimum)
1510-1600 warm – High Solar Activity(HSA?)
1610-1700 cold – (LSA) (Maunder minimum)
1710-1800 warm – (HSA)
1810-1900 cold – (LSA) (Dalton minimum)
1910-2000 warm – (HSA)
2010-2100 (cold???) – (LSA???)
Of course other quasi-cycles will cause periods of warming within the cool halve of the cycle, and vice versa for the warm half of the cycle, but overall I think the next 90 years will be colder than the last.
The bottom of northern Hemisphere surface temperatures could fall out some more due to these events . Two new active volcano eruptions at KAMCHATKA and possibly others pending.This year there have been 12 different volcanoes erupting in this area . Fortunately none have been major to date . This may signal a change .
http://www.avo.alaska.edu/activity/avoreport.php?view=kaminfo
http://english.ruvr.ru/2010/10/24/28211707.html
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=15631672&PageNum=0
Global average temperature varies about the average on a month by month basis by 0.6C?
That’s as much as all the purported anthropogenic warming since teh beginning of the industrial revolution!
OMG!
Look at how deep and fast the 2010 SST drop is!!!!
It’s the fastest EVER! Never in history has something like this happened. /sarc
Great news!
For I have just completed the addition of 10″ R30 insulation to my attic, 1″ R5 foam to all attic knee walls, foam sealing of all ceiling penetrations and air ducts, and foam sealing of all outlets on exterior walls.
I’m ready.
[This is a science blog, and all units should be in metric values. I’m sorry, but you will need to rip out that insulation and re-install it in appropriate thicknesses. 8<) Robt]
Now that the sun is slowly coming out of its minimum the strength of the solar wind is increasing.
That produces more solar photons reaching the mesosphere which then cools a little from increased ozone destruction to increase the temperature gradient right down to the tropopause. The tropopause then rises a little and the jets move a little more poleward to produce a stronger upward energy flux from the surface.
Thus energy is leaving the Earth system a little faster than it was when the sun was quieter and at the same time the developing La Nina is denying energy to the air with the result that the air is cooling from two directions. That should at last put a solid end to the late 20th century tropospheric warming trend after the past ten years or so of mere cessation of warming.
As per my interpretation of the recent Haigh data an active sun cools the mesosphere and stratosphere for a stronger upward energy flux and a quiet sun does the opposite.
For a while the solar minimum held more energy within the system and combined with the recent El Nino to achieve the recent tropospheric warmth. Both processes have now reversed hence the more noticeable cooling that we are observing.