Warmest year ever? – 2010: An Unexceptional El Nino Year

Here Endeth The Lesson
Now will someone please turn off the refrigeration on the UK?

Whilst the CRU are a bit of a joke, even they haven’t upjusted the figures to get them as high as these.
Are they in Fahrenheit?

Have to share this one which I have just heard on Radio Scotland – after another night of sub-zero temperatures Scotland has had another band of snow sweep over this morning, so Edinburgh airport and many main roads and motorways all over the central belt are closed again. However, the airport on Barra Airport is now open – after they managed to break the ice off the famous beach runway. (Barra is the only airport in the world where scheduled flight timetable is set by the tides). So now even the usually mild Atlantic Ocean is beginning to freeze!

No warming trend for last 15 years

Ah I notice that the best temperature record is now the CRU one and coincidentally the coolest. I guess all the complaints about UHI, station placement, adjustments etc are no longer a concern.
I remember a few years back when the satellite records the best when they were the coolest.
In any event this method of analysis is quite odd. It simply lists a month-by-month basis which previous months were hotter with no attempt to discern a trend or pattern.
If 2010 is an unexceptional year in an unexceptional decade (as far as warming is concerned) we might expect more references to the 90s or even 80s. Instead the only years each month is cooler than are in the 2000s or strong El-Nino year of 1998. This makes it very difficult to support the argument that warming stopped in either 1995 or 1998.

Wow, the BBC had headlines on teletext that this year has been the warmest or at least second warmest ever and the Met office are confident that this is due to human induced rises in C02! I beleive them, they ARE THE BBC (not really). It’s NOT worse than we thought. Sorry it had to be said!

This is why we shouldn’t use “annual averages”. It does not give a real picture of what actually happened.

Wouter,
“Of course, it’s possible that the frequency of El Nino years is changing due to global warming.”
Possible? Does that mean very likely, more likely than not or somwhat likely?
” And, furthermore, you’re comparing individual months with cherrypicked years. Of course you’re going to find warmer years for several months.”
The point is that only 2 months of the year constituted record temperatures. People might ask how a record year can result from only 2 record months, if all the other months have precedents. How is that cherry picking? It is simply a fact. You are free to make of it what you will.

I’m surprised they waited so long before releasing the results for this “year”. After all, with each passing day the average drops precipitously. Think it has something to do with the shindig going on in Mexico? Just like the global financial “crisis” cropping up at the same time as the Nopenhagen failure. Governments figured they had it made 5 or 6 years ago on the carbon tax front, and started spending the money before they had it, as usual, and the failure of these taxes to yet materialise has caught them with their pants down.

Tom, the second row of data in the file is the percentage of the globe that the data covers. To find this information, follow Davids link and then delete the file name to go up one folder. Note that this percentage number has fallen quite a bit since the 1980s.
Also, the data that David Whitehouse uses and links to is for CRUTEM, this is the one based on land data only. The one that includes sea temperature data is HADCRUT3. But looking at 2010 and 1998 for HADCRUT3 gives a similar story. The monthly numbers for 1998 were
0.492 0.756 0.548 0.647 0.596 0.606 0.671 0.647 0.393 0.420 0.351 0.444
with a year-average of 0.548.
The monthly data for 2010 so far are
0.498 0.491 0.587 0.579 0.511 0.533 0.534 0.475 0.389 0.392
with a ten-month average of 0.499.
Of the 10 months so far, 2010 has beaten 1998 only in Jan and Mar.
To beat 1998, the 2010 HADCRUT3 anomalies for Nov and Dec would have to be up around 0.8 which is pretty unlikely give the current La Nina.
I have posted the numbers here, and saved a copy of the data files, just in case the numbers in the files mysteriously increase at the end of the year.

The Daily mail has the story,
What happened to the ‘warmest year on record’: The truth is global warming has halted,
referring to David Whitehouse’s story and the spin, distortion and backtracking of the Met Office.

This is awesome — global warming is total fiction!
2010 is ONLY the third warmest year on record! Those AGW alarmists are surely hanging their heads in shame having predicted 2010 would be in the top one or two!
It’s obvious now that any record high temperatures are merely caused by unexceptional El Ninos. Unexceptional El Ninos happen all the time, which is why record temperatures happen all the time, which is why record temperatures are booorrring!
Why, January was the COLDEST January this DECADE, not counting 2001, 2006, 2007 & 2008. March was NOT the coldest March ever: it was statistically tied with two others this decade! Every other month this year set similar records for LOW temperatures when compared to a small list of very recent years.
These are surely signs of the coming ice age.

Whilst in the UK, apart from June and July, this has been a cold year, I consider that the comparisons set out in this post tells us nothing as to whether 2010 globably as a whole was a particularly warm year. As Wouter notes, it is an invalid exercise making a comparisoon with cherry picked months all from different years.
I myself do not believe the data sets in view of the homogenisations/adjustments made and given the unreliability of the data sets, it is impossible to know which years were truly the warmest years experienced and hence I take these proclamations as to the warmest this or that with a pinch of salt.

The same news release from Cancun cherry picked Canadian weather as well as having a record warm winter and commented on the globally warm decade.What the WMO conveniently neglected to mention in their latest news clippings about Canadian weather is that the main reason for the anticipated record temperatures in Canada during 2010 and the warm 2010 winter is the 2009/2010 El Nino . Also we have had 4 El Nino’s during the last 7 years .This is more frequent than in the past when they happened once every 4-7 years. Eight of the last 10 years have been affected by the natural occurring El Nino to some degree. Thus the prime reason for the warm decade and the warm the 2010 winter in Canada is the El Nino. This has very little to do with global warming or increases in greenhouse gas emissions.
Despite the record 2010 warm winter in Canada , if you exclude the El Nino winters of 2003,2005, 2007 ,and 2010 the Canadian winter temperature departure [ anomaly] from the 1948-2010 norm has actually been dropping during the last 10 years since 2000 from 2.5 C in 2000 to 0.3C in 2009, the last very cold winter. Some regions like the Prairie Provinces and Northwestern region have seen as much as 7.1 C drop in winter temperatures from the 2006 to 2009 winter .The warm El Nino’s greatly warm Canadian winters because of the close proximity to the warmer Pacific Ocean .The 2009/2010 El Nino is what accounted for the record 2010 warm winter and why there was less snow during the last Olympics, not due to global warming as many alarmists claimed. The snow prediction for the 2011 winter in my region [Ontario] is for 130 -160 cm of snow over this winter. That is about 4-5 feet. So there is no unusual warming taking place in our winters despite the isolated warm past winter. I expect our winters to continue to cool to the late 1970′s and early 1980′s levels during the next several decades

@PaulM – thanks, very helpful.

I just read that they say it will also be the warmest decade yet – any word on that?

Yes, this is all very well and it may well turn out to be an unexceptional year. But what the majority of people the world over will be the statement “globally third warmest year” on record. Then what can be argued is – it’s a local effect and your memory which makes you think that it was cold in the USA, UK, Canada, New Zealand etc – just look at the fires in Russia and Israel, the droughts/floods/hurricanes here there and everywhere you just can’t deny it any longer.
Probably a case of get your retaliation in early by the Met Office amongst others.
Just a thought

Models can be right….as long as nothing out there inconveniently changes. It is time to begin dealing with reality, to analyze the current Solar Minimum, how is it going compared to Dalton Minimum or Maunder Minimum.
Have anyone of you felt colder than usual lately, or may be warmer?

Didn’t Met O announce they were going to make large adjustments to HadCRUT data because they agree with Hansen’s method, or something to that affect?

“2010 will therefore be no higher than the third warmest year, possibly lower.”
You forget these people are experts at data manipulation.

I must say, this isn’t exactly the best analysis i’ve seen.
It’s interesting as perhaps a ‘coffee table piece’, but it does seem a bit weak so far.
As someone mentioned, it appears the el ninio was weaker in 2010 than 1998, yet the temperatures are similar (so far) – even as a ‘skeptic’ this would suggest that something else is shoring the temperatures up (not saying it’s co2, but it would seem that something ahs to be acting on temp).

ATTN: PaulM
Temperature is not measured to +/- 0.001 deg C.
“The monthly numbers for 1998 were:
0.492 0.756 0.548 0.647 0.596 0.606 0.671 0.647 0.393 0.420 0.351 0.444
with a year-average of 0.548”
should be:
0.5 0.8 0.5 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.7 0.6 0.4 o.4 0.4 0.4
with mean (+/- avg. deviation): 0.5 +/- 0.1
“The monthly data for 2010 so far are:
0.498 0.491 0.587 0.579 0.511 0.533 0.534 0.475 0.389 0.392
with a ten-month average of 0.499.”
should be:
0.5 0.5 0.6 0.6 0.5 o.5 0.5 0.5 0.4 0.4
with mean (+/- avg. deviation): 0.5 +/- 0.0
It is most likely that 1998 vs 2010 will be a draw.
I suspect that temperature measurements are not all that accurate. In Canada temperature in weather station records is now reported to +/- 0.5 deg C.
If you round temperature measurements to the nearest whole deg C, global warming vanishes.

All of this has a huge propaganda value for the warmists but in the real world on a statistical level it’s insignificant.
And the propaganda value will be short lived as the hyped temperatures will make a deep fall as the real cooling has set in.
I have read the comments from many warmist publications lately and most of the postings make clear the warmists have lost the argument.
Nobody believes them anymore.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/12/uah-december-anomaly-above-042-c-would.html

Bill Illis
You said “I didn’t hear any climate scientists talking about the warmest year ever in the spring of 2008 when the La Nina had dropped temperatures below average. ”
You are right on, Bill. This lack of impartiality in climate news and constant unjustified alarmism is wearing thin and the public are starting to see the very biased game that is being played here .Imagine if we only heard stock market news when the stock market is up only . One can see how twisted and unbalanced the climate science news has become .I think it is damaging to science as a whole as the public may soon no longer trust any scientists to tell like it really is. We need less ” one hand” news and more “on the other hand” news as well to get the complete and real story . Thank goodness for blogs like Anthony’s WUWT

If the media headlines are to be believed 2010 is heading to be either the warmest or in the top three warmest years since the instrumental global temperature records began 150 years ago, and proof that the world is getting ever warmer.

There was certainly no “global temperature record” 150 years ago. There isn’t one now.

” matt v. says:
December 6, 2010 at 6:15 am ”
“Despite the record 2010 warm winter in Canada” ?????
You’re talking about Eastern Canada! Don’t let the fact that they disassembled most of our weather stations here on the prairies fool you. I can show you three places in Saskatchewan, not a hill nor body of water larger than a dugout in between them and within 80km km of each other that fluctuate wildly as compared to the one station used for our area’s temp. As a whole, any 100km smoothing done here in Western Canada would be almost telling a fib but anything larger than 200km, an outright lie. Want to paint an alarmist’s picture of Canadian temps, its merely a matter of location. Remember that while Ontario and Quebec contain the vast majority of unemployed Canadians and members of the politico, Western Canada and The Territories account for the same in Canada’s landmass and we’ve fewer weather stations than the Toronto to Montreal run.

2010 will be remembered for just two warm months, attributable to the El Nino effect, with the rest of the year being nothing but average, or less than average temperature.
What average – that of the top six warmest months respectively??

But Professor, on the first test I did better then Bill and he is getting a B. On the second test I did better than Jane and she is getting a C. On the third I did better than Martin and he is getting a B+. So, why am I getting a D? It is not fair! I’m better than Bill, Jane and Martin!
I am sorry. You are right, it is not fair to give you D. You now have an F.

Anthony Watts said,
“There is no evidence whatsoever that the lack of warming seen in the global average annual temperatures seen in the last decade has changed.”
Sorry but there is evidence. The year 1998 had a strong El Nino, almost reaching the record of 1982. The El Nino cycle has a strong effect on global temperature. In addition, the solar cycle for 1998 was half way between the trough and the peak.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/klaus.wolter/MEI/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar-cycle-data.png
The year 2010 saw a La Nina and the lowest trough in the solar cycle in recent years. The fact that it is shaping up to be the third warmest in the modern record doesn’t show that cooling is on the way. The solar cycle is likely to climb out of its trough soon, and the La Nina conditions can’t continue indefinitely.
It is clear that other factors have made 2010 a warm year. This indicates that global warming due to greenhouse gases, which is a continuing effect is indeed operating, and when El Nino and the Solar Cycle become factors which cause warming rather than cooling as they inevitably will, there will be record warm years in the near future.

David Whitehouse said,
“There is no evidence whatsoever that the lack of warming seen in the global average annual temperatures seen in the last decade has changed.”
Sorry but there is evidence. The year 1998 had a strong El Nino, almost reaching the record of 1982. The El Nino cycle has a strong effect on global temperature. In addition, the solar cycle for 1998 was half way between the trough and the peak.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/klaus.wolter/MEI/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar-cycle-data.png
The year 2010 saw a La Nina and the lowest trough in the solar cycle in recent years. The fact that it is shaping up to be the third warmest in the modern record doesn’t show that cooling is on the way. The solar cycle is likely to climb out of its trough soon, and the La Nina conditions can’t continue indefinitely.
It is clear that other factors have made 2010 a warm year. This indicates that global warming due to greenhouse gases, which is a continuing effect is indeed operating, and when El Nino and the Solar Cycle become factors which cause warming rather than cooling as they inevitably will, there will be record warm years in the near future.

Louise says:
December 6, 2010 at 7:36 am
“think folks are confusing Anonymous Howard’s sarcasm for his actual view.
Read what he said again but look for the irony this time (Doh)”
Have you not considered that the replies to Howard’s ‘irony’ are themselves ironic?

tallbloke: Thanks for taking the time to explain. Must admit I’d been pondering the apparent contradictions re the El Nino events and the high temps but your posts helped clarify a lot of this for me.

@Jeff Alberts
“How does an El Nino or La Nina raise or lower temps? Don’t they just move energy around the system, so that heat that wasn’t near thermometers before now is?”
You’re quite right, what we call natural variability is simply energy moving from one place to another via various mechanisms. Sometimes either the to or from is somewhere we currently don’t monitor so we’re left to try and make guesses.
I suggest reading Kevin Trenberth’s An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s global energy and Skepticalscience’s summary for a better overview.

I think using temperature to determine energy balance is like using wave height to measure the tide.
If the temperature goes up because the earth is retaining more heat and releasing less then we have a problem. If circumstances cause already absorbed heat to be released we have a phenomenon but not a problem. In fact ocean heat released to the atmosphere by El Niño should cause a lowering of temperatures globally once that heat has radiated to space.
Over a period of time a certain amount of energy arrives at Earth and over that same period a certain amount leaves Earth. The rates have been in balance for a long time. Because of complex absorption schemes the balance can be irregular – we have weather. When we average out the bumps we have climate. El Niño is a bump.
Orbital geometry, solar and galactic variations, and atmospheric composition are climate changers. In this group of climate changers some are cyclic and the math is easily understood one is affected by feedbacks. We don’t understand those feedbacks probably because we spend too much time and money looking at silly things like bumps in the search for climate change. Because we don’t understand those feedbacks CAGW is just an interesting theory looking for a proof. They won’t find it in models.

@ tallboke- just re-read your post and i think i get it now.
The sun went quiet at 2003, but the latent heat was still ‘warming’ the earth slightly, hence the higher temps.
The el ninio was less significant, but due to the higher background heat, it has nudged 2010 to a similar temp to 1998. However, the low solar activity SHOULD result in a far quicker cooling- leading to (potentially) plummeting temperatures.
I getcha- i WAS being dense…
Interesting theory- we’ll find out in the next year i guess!

Dr. Roy Spencer says 2nd warmest based on troposphere temps, 0.38 degrees C:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/12/nov-2010-uah-global-temperature-update-0-38-deg-c/

I believe that the MET office year runs from September to October – why it should I have no idea. Autumn equinox?

tallbloke says:
December 6, 2010 at 8:58 am
In a nutshell:
Because the the sun was more active than it had been for thousands of years between 1930 and 2003,
========================================
thanks tallbloke

E.M.Smith says:
December 6, 2010 at 10:01 am
Harold Pierce Jr says:
ATTN: PaulM
=======================================================
You guys are all wrong! See, what happens is that we take a tree ring, or a clam shell, (whatever’s handiest) and compare them to the actual thermometer readings. As you stated, obviously, thermometers aren’t calibrated well enough to report in the thousandth’s, but as we all know, tree rings and the like are! So, we just calibrate the thermometers to the tree rings, and, voila, accuracy to the 1/1000 of a degree! (Works for all scales of temperature!) I think this is where Mann went wrong, he should have talked to Hansen first before he tried to strike out on his own. </sarc
My way of saying, "well said". Thanks.

From Bob’s iceagenow site is this dailynews Dec.3 article (which no doubt has been offered here already somewhere):
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1335216/UK-snow-Overnight-temperatures-fall-20C-Britain-left-sheet-ice.html

I really don’t have a problem with the “highest on record” comments, as long as the duration of the “record” is stated in the document – right up at the front, along with the measuring method, and error bands one sigma and three sigma. That is precisely what we don’t get from the warmists.
Anomalous anomalies, error bands a multiple of the resolution of the dataset, projections based on wishful thinking – as if the world really operated in linear fashion – non-science, non-think, new-speak is the order of the day.
Keep the battle up, and continue taking it to their side. WE WILL WIN!
We’re not trying to fake reality for profit or fame, just trying to understand a small part of the universe.

David, I would like to draw your attention to the (UAH AMSU daily temps) link on WUWT. When you plot the AQUA channel 5 for 2010 (recommended by Dr. Spencer) + the average temp curve + the record temp curve, you will see that for approximately ten months in 2010, this years temp consistently plots 0.2 to 0.5deg C higher than the average temp curve (I think this average temp is for the 2002 to 2009 period?). The satellite derived temp this year ran close to, or exceeded the record high temp curve, several times during 2010. It has recently fallen rapidly down to the average trend line. We need at least another 5 to 10 years of data to see if the temps are going to continue to flat line, or begin to trend up or down. In conclusion the Met office/CRU data is not my favorite data series for the current era and year to year changes in global temp, while interesting, are weather variations at best.
Regards,
Lorne

If these headline are based on land based temps alone… the jetstream seemed to be on the US/ Canadian border most of the summer, if not up into Canada, from the Midwest to the east coast, letting a lot of tropical heat up through the US. It would be interesting to plot the Jetstream path in “warm” years vs “normal” vs “cool” years. Just on observation from someone that does not have a Degree in science… so according to the Gorebull warmists, I am not permitted to make such an observation. I suspect though that in “normal” and “cool” year the jetstream has a path cutting through the US. Because we all know it has nothing to do with the sun..”Sarc off”.

Here is what was reported by WMO at Cancun about Canada’s record 2010 winter temperatures
“Canada had its warmest winter on record, with national temperatures 4 degrees C above the long- term average,” said the WMO.
“Winter temperatures were 6 degrees C or more above normal in parts of [Canada’s ]North”
Here are the actual Canadian 2010 winter temperature DEPARTURES [ IN DEGREES C] FROM 1948-2010 TREND as reported by Environment Canada for the 11 regions of Canada. The figure in brackets is the ranking from its regional warmest winter
LOWER CANADA [ roughly BELOW 60N]
ATLANTIC COAST + 2.5[3rd]
GREAT LAKES AND ST LAWRENCE + 2.1[9th]
NORTHEASTERN FOREST +4.2 [1st]*
NORTHWESTERN FOREST +2.8 [17th]
PRAIRIES +0 [40th]
SOUTH BC MOUNTAINS PACIFIC COAST +1.8[20th]
PACIFIC COAST +1.7[11TH]
NORTHERN CANADA [ roughly NORTH of 60N]
YUKON/ NORTH BC MTS +5 [10TH]
MACKENZIE DISTICT +4.7 [[5TH]
ARCTIC TUNDRA +5.4 [1st]*
ARCTIC MTS & FIORDS + 5.3[1st]*
NATIONAL CANADA +4 [1st]* Previous record was in 2006 at 3.9C
Not a single region was +6 C above normal. True new temperature records [shown as *] were only set in 3 of the 11 regions. You be the judge if there was fair reporting or explanation by WMO of what really happened in Canada during the winter of 2010

WikiLeaks And Claim Of Warmest Year On Record, Expose Climate Criminality
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/30752

A few days or even a year, such as 2010, don’t make much difference. The interesting finding is that except for the outlier year of 1998, most of the warmest years since around 1850 have occurred since 2000. That seems to suggest that 2000 to 2009 was a warm decade. The average temperature of 2010 does not go against the idea that the decade from 2010 to 2019 will be the warmer still but we need to wait a few years to find out. For sure, any objective analysis of the data goes against the idea that warming stopped in 1998. If that were true, one would hardly expect that 2000-2009 would be so much warmer than 1990-1999. Kind of reminds me of the frog that was cooked in a pot of slowly warming water.

E.M.Smith says: at 10:18 am & others
“Watch the crops. They don’t lie. They are saying 2010 was a cold year.”
My tomatoes told me the same thing – so I chopped them to bits and threw them in the compost pile. Then there are the grapes (always well documented by growers and vintners alike):
Harvest time in the vineyard is based on (among other things) the accumulation of heat by wine grapes over the summer. Harvest time and grape quality are great ways of summarizing, or integrating, weather with respect to long term expectations – especially that of the vines. That said, in central Washington State’s vineyards the 2010 summer was underwhelming.
http://www.yakima-herald.com/stories/2010/09/19/grape-harvest-is-a-bit-later-than-usual-this-year

“For sure, any objective analysis of the data goes against the idea that warming stopped in 1998. If that were true, one would hardly expect that 2000-2009 would be so much warmer than 1990-1999.”
I don’t see that. If there were a rising trend up to 1998 (or 1995 as per Phil Jones), then a plateau before the descent becomes established, then the decade of the plateau would obviously be warmer than the decade leading up to it.

R. Gates says:
December 6, 2010 at 11:27 am
It will grow increasingly entertaining to watch all the AGW skeptics come up with the reasons why “it isn’t really as hot as the data says” over the next few years.
========================================================
lol, kinda like watching a warmista claim increases of atmospheric CO2 causes warming and try to explain why it isn’t. Here, compare (using even sat. data) the 30 year trend to the last 10. According to the trend line, we quit increasing our CO2 emissions in 2001! BTW this includes this “hottest year evuh!” or second or third or what ever label you want to put on it.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1981/plot/rss/from:1981/trend/plot/rss/from:2001/trend

Jimmy Haigh says:
December 6, 2010 at 10:38 am
I’ve just had a text mesage from my brother Pete who is now only on his second pint in Aberfeldy after a longer than usual trip from work over the hills to Crieff. The greater than normal amount of man-made-global-warming, from which the UK is suffering at the moment, is clearly to blame.
The road used to be clear all the way until they started cutting down the trees I planted 30 years ago in order to make a bloody windfarm.
Jimmy – your brother was lucky to get home. The Central Belt shut down today, airports closed, buses trains, thousands of cars stuck on main roads and motorways. People had mass snowball fights and built snowmen on the A80. There are still drivers stuck in cars on the M74 and A80, some up to 7 hours after setting off. Think the M8 is much the same. Amazingly they re-opened most schools again today (kids have been off for a week). But don’t talk to me about that fecking Griffin wind farm – 68 120m high turbines which will produce diddly squat when we need it most. UK demand reached 59.9GW at 5.55pm today – broke last winter’s record peak by 2GW – and we still have most of the winter to go. All it will take is Longannet or a big station in England to go down and brownouts and blackouts will follow.

People, please all take a deep breath! Interesting as all the comments may be, there is a certain tendency to overlook the forest for all the trees obscuring the view.
First, whether or not 2010 was warmest ‘evah’ (or at least since the MWP) is irrelevant. If we accept, as most here do, that the planet has been gradually warming since about 1700, it is statistically inevitable that some random year or decade must be a ‘record’ warm, and that will remain true until we start into the next Little Ice Age.
And when might that occur? We don’t know, but there are some hints. If the warmest point of the MWP was around 1100 CE, and the peak of the Roman Optimum came around 100 BCE, we see a cycle of about 1200 yrs; that would place the peak of the Minoan warm at about 1300 BCE and the next peak should be expected about 2300, nearly 200 yrs. in our present future. If the warming trend seen since 1700 contiunes till then, we might reach the highs of the MWP. But probably won’t, since the trend of interglacials is to reach an early peak temperature followed by a gradual overall cooling until the beginning of dthe next real ice age.
Overlain on this 1200 year cycle are smaller cycles of about 60 yrs. which is mostly what we argue about on these blogs. Where are we on the level? Probably on the cooling slope since about 2000 which means the warmists are out of business for the next twenty years when they may again have something to get alarmed over. Notably absent in these trends, large and small, is any connection to CO2 concentration. Just something to think about…. L

According to UAH 2010 will have the same temperature as 1998. But according to IPCC temperatures are going up by at least 0.2°C per decade. So the warmists are obviously wrong.

What happened to the warmest year ever?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1335798/Global-warming-halted-Thats-happened-warmest-year-record.html

“John F. Hultquist says:
December 6, 2010 at 11:22 am
E.M.Smith says: at 10:18 am & others
“Watch the crops. They don’t lie. They are saying 2010 was a cold year.”
My tomatoes told me the same thing – so I chopped them to bits and threw them in the compost pile. Then there are the grapes (always well documented by growers and vintners alike):”
John and others:
I live in the Mid West (USA) and my tomotoes ripened three weeks earlier than usual. This is the first year that hardly any green tomotoes were left by early September. Tomatoes were usually early due to the hot spring weather which continued into the summer. This is shame, because the first killing frost was late this year. So, maybe neither Washington State nor Indiana is sufficient to say much about global trends or averages.

James Sexton says: (December 6, 2010 at 12:44 pm)

Just so I’m clear, you seem to be stating, ‘when it gets hotter, that’s man’s interference with nature via CO2 emissions. But when it stops getting hotter or cools, that’s natural variation. Is that it? Oh, and trends only matter when it shows warming? OK, got that.

N0, no, no. Read David Whitehouse’s article again. When temperatures rise for a century, that’s natural variation. When temperatures remain at that same (record-high) level for about a decade or less, that’s evidence it was all “a short-term natural effect and nothing to do with anthropogenic global warming.”
How many times do we have to say it? Record high temperatures are unexceptional

If Dr. James “Thumbs On The Temperature Scale” Hansen is permitted sole access to cooking the temperature books at NASA GISS, we can be assured that every new year will be the warmest on record.

Anonymous Howard says:
December 6, 2010 at 1:38 pm
“….When temperatures remain at that same (record-high) level for about a decade or less, that’s evidence it was all “a short-term natural effect and nothing to do with anthropogenic global warming.
How many times do we have to say it? Record high temperatures are unexceptional”
======================================================
Hmm, lol, record high temps! Well, if we’re going by sat data, I guess you’re right! We’ve record a decade high in all of the 3 decades we’ve been measuring! OTOH, I’m not sure the 2000 decade was exceptional, the ’30s used to be until an algorerythym lowered the previous high temps. Of course, we can’t be sure that the same algorerythym won’t attack this year, and thus the whole decade. So, while I’m sure this year will be the hottest evuh, we’ve a pretty good chance that it won’t reach the highs established in the 30’s, 90’s or even this decade, well, if those highs existed today.
All that aside, doesn’t the current climate alarmism thinking go something like ‘an increase in atmospheric CO2 cause an general increase in earth’s temps’?
You see, I’m a bit confused. We saw an increase in the earth’s temps in the decade of the ’80s, and upon that decade, we decided we needed to do something, so in 1990 we had our very first IPCC report! The correlation was obvious! Man’s increased CO2 output! But, the decade of the 2000s didn’t see an increase.(depending upon data sources, but either way, either a decrease, or an insignificant increase). So did mankind stop increasing CO2 emissions? Or did the correlation cease? http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1981/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1981/to:1991/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1991/to:2001/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/trend
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1981
Hmm, seems there really isn’t a correlation. Or it may be, as has been posited, we’ve hit the top end of the logarithmic curve CO2 presents. Either way, all of the hand waving, record breaking,(btw, Steve Goddard has many examples of the hottest year evuh in action! http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com ) ,relative temps doesn’t seem to ebb the tidal wave of skepticism/realism.
Howard, I hate to break this to you and Mr. Gates, but its dead guys. Temps and CO2 aren’t corresponding anymore. Scientists are wandering off the reservation. The town criers’ arguments are circular and contradictory, http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/hansen-global-warming-unabated-met-office-global-warming-has-slowed/
Nature isn’t cooperating. And no one is buying the snake oil anymore. Meanwhile, some people in G.B. are dealing with real climatic issues, that have the poor riding buses all day to stay warm, the elderly freezing to death and now they’ve got MPs doing a modern day Marie Antoinette in suggesting the government step in and raise the price of energy!

Jason S. says:
December 6, 2010 at 10:20 am
“Call it cherry picking… WHATEVER. If I’m going to buy extreme AGW warm-mongering, you’ve got to show me 2010 was the hottest… period. Not 2nd – or 3rd – or a tie. This El Nino gave us the best shot at warmest evah. That’s 12 years of Co2 (how much ppm increase over 12 years… does anyone know?), and we can’t even statistically tie 1998?
It’s unfortunate that most climate experts have painted themselves into a corner by down-playing solar activity. Otherwise, I’d give them some credit there. But then we’d have to adjust our models, wouldn’t we.”
Sorry but your facts are wrong. There was a mild El Nino in the first 3 months of the year, but the balance of the year saw a strong La Nina. The impact of the El Nino cycle was a slight net cooling effect on the global surface temperature.
If you look at the temperature trend, it is evident that the El Nino of 1998 made the global temperature about 0.2C than it would otherwise have been based on the temperature trend.
http://theartofstart.blogspot.com/2010/06/how-earths-temperature-is-changing-past.html
Solar activity in 2010 was at a low for all of 2010, as the new solar cycle is slow to start up. So incident solar radiation was below average. The estimated difference in temperature associated with the solar cycle is about 0.2C, so that if we were at the top of a solar cycle the global average temperature would have been a modern record.

@ E.M. Smith and
@ Enneagram, both re oranges in Florida, and the year-round problem.
Fellas, ya got it all wrong! Let me try to “explain” this.
CO2 from man’s activities warms the Earth, and therefore tropical conditions are moving North-ward, out of Florida and into Georgia. Orange groves are being expanded and moving into southern Georgia. Soon, they will also reach northern Georgia, and eventually into South Carolina and Tennessee. This is all according to the IPCC, that august and authoritative international organization that strives to prevent all manner of horrors due to the Earth’s over-heating.
Please, do not introduce facts obtained from observation into the discussion. In particular, no facts such as freezes that damaged or destroyed the citrus crop in Florida in recent years; domestic water pipes bursting due to freezing temperatures in Florida; and certainly not the news/weather predictions such as in this link:
excerpted quote: “Another hard freeze is expected Wednesday morning (12/8/2010) — a forecast low of 22 — which would break a record set in 1984. Thursday morning’s forecast is for a 23 degree low, which would also break a record for the date.”
http://www.news4jax.com/news/26031471/detail.html
Please, fellas, stick with the program. It’s getting warmer, everyone knows this, the science is settled, and the fact is that orange trees just aren’t as tough as they used to be.
Sheesh…
(sarc off now… boy, that was fun!! )
Here’s a fascinating, and perhaps accurate, timeline on major Florida freezes that impacted the citrus industry:
http://www.flcitrusmutual.com/industry-issues/weather/freeze_timeline.aspx
The list ends in 1989, however. It would be quite instructive to have the major freezes since 1989 added to the list. Perhaps there have been no freezes since 1989, due to global warming….. oh, wait… in January 2010 there was a rather big one. In December 2010 apparently another one — right about now.

Steve says:
December 6, 2010 at 1:48 pm
R. Gates says:
December 6, 2010 at 12:07 pm
“The primary reason we saw a leveling off in the increases to temps in the last decade as the prolonged and deep solar minimum, and even with the once in a century solar minimum, we only saw a leveling in the temperature increases and not a plunge. Now we are headed back to a solar max in 2013 or so, and even if it is a modest solar max, temperatures will be rising once more.”
Really, you are so quick to jump on a correlation between sunspot activity and global temperature as “the primary reason” for a lack of temp increases? What exactly is the physical process that leads to both lower sunspots and lower global temperatures here on Earth? I like the theory, but I don’t know of anyone who has nailed down the physics to the point that they can claim a “primary reason” so assuredly.
______
Steve, low sunspot numbers and cooling periods on earth have been studied for decades. The mechanism is undoubtedly multi-faceted, involving Total Solar Irradiance, reduction of the solar wind, increases in galactic cosmic rays hitting earth, etc. What should be most remarkable to AGW skeptics is that the prolonged and deep solar minimum did not take the temperatures down even more, and, for example, Arctic Sea Ice did not even get back to its running 30 year average. Now indeed, we may be in for a prolonged period of low solar activity, perhaps much like the Dalton Minimum or even the Maunder Minimum, but my guess is that the 40% greater amount of CO2 that we have in the atmosphere now versus during those periods will mitigate a great deal of the cooling effects of an such an extended solar minimum. Furthermore, though some forecasters such as Joe Bastardi would call for a cooling period based on cycles in the PDO, NAO, or AMO, the big assumption here is that the 40% increase in CO2 has not affected the ocean currents in such as way that the character of these natural ocean cycles has been affected.

The current IPCC global warming theory would have the November 2010 anomaly at +0.907C.
Hansen’s 1988 Scenario B prediction has 2010 at +1.035C.
So, uhmm, yeah the theory is off a little so far.
The problem is the pro-AGW set never actually checks how their theory’s predictions are doing.

“PaulM says:
December 6, 2010 at 5:58 am
To beat 1998, the 2010 HADCRUT3 anomalies for Nov and Dec would have to be up around 0.8 which is pretty unlikely give the current La Nina.”
This is very true. The number for November 2009 was 0.448. And check out the daily values at Dr. Spencer’s site at http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/01/daily-monitoring-of-global-average-temperatures/
Compare the sea surface and near surface layer for November 2009 with November 2010 and it is obvious that November 2010 will be quite a bit lower than 0.448. And the first 5 days in December also show no signs of warming.

Anonymous Howard says: December 6, 2010 at 1:38 pm
“How many times do we have to say it? Record high temperatures are unexceptional.”
Howard, record high temperatures are a certain sign of impending fall. Climate is composed of an infinite number of cycles all of which are about to descend whenever a report of increasing average temperature is released. This is especially true during solar minima and IPCC meetings. Nothing is better than quality data but tree rings are better than nothing, so it follows conclusively that tree rings are better than quality data and that an ice age is on the way.

OK, after looking at the following graph, I GUARANTEE that you will mentally subtract 1.6°C from 1990ff global average temperatures from now on:
http://www.canadafreepress.com/images/uploads/ball120610-2.jpg
Chopping reporting stations INSTANTLY increased reported temps. Case closed.
From this article: http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/30752

OK warmists – I have to ask – who ordered the launch of the “cherry picking” meme?

I agree that 2010 is not an exceptional year in comparison to the past decade. Looking at NASA’s data, we can learn, as of 2009, “that each of the last 13 years was one of the 14 warmest years in the global recored. By the end of this month just about every agrees that we can say: “each of the last 14 years was one of the 15th warmest on record. Clearly the decade from 2000-2009 was the warmest decade in the instrumental record. However, we still need to wait 9 more years to see whether the prediction that “the decade from 2010 to 2019 will be the warmest on record. The question is whether the steady warming over the last 30 years is just natural variation, or do climate scientists know what they are talking and writing about. The next nine years should be interesting.

R. Gates says:
December 7, 2010 at 10:54 am
Jeff Alberts said:
“…my point is, there is no “global climate”. You have regional climates that are disconnected from each other…”
___
Uh, no. You might want to go back a do quite a bit more studying before making such a broad and very incorrect assertion. Regional climates are part of the complex global climate and though different regions display different reactions to changes in the global climate, they are all very much connected. A perfect example in the ENSO cycle, where Australia gets one kind of weather and South America gets another, and though they are different, they are quite connected.
Uh – yes actually R. You might like to check a dictionary – a well established one such as the Oxford:
Climate
the weather conditions prevailing in an area in general or over a long period:
“our cold, wet climate”.
[mass noun] :
“agricultural development is constrained by climate”, “a region with a particular climate: he had grown up in a hot climate.”
Origin:
late Middle English: from Old French climat or late Latin clima, climat-, from Greek klima ‘slope, zone’, from klinein ‘to slope’. The term originally denoted a zone of the earth between two lines of latitude, then any region of the earth, and later, a region considered with reference to its atmospheric conditions. Compare with CLIME.
This point has been made repeatedly here e.g. by Pamela Gray. The original meaning of “climate” is indeed the integrated general weather experienced in a particular geographic region. So Jeff Alberts ogirinal point is valid. Climate in its original sense is a local parameter.
Of course no-one will argue that, globally, climates are not linked, and the usage of the word in scientific research has morphed in the direction of global time-integrated weather. But here again you give a very nice example of AGW double-speak. When faced with inconvenient factual evidence for – for instance – the medieval warm period, then it suits the CAGW narrative for the MWP to be a local phenomenon, not global – thus climate is regionalised when necessary. But here in this thread you now find it more expedient to emphasise the global fashion of the word climate. Your characteristic intellectual flexibility takes on an eel-like nature.

phlogiston says:
December 7, 2010 at 11:35 am
R. Gates says:
December 7, 2010 at 10:54 am
Jeff Alberts said:
“…my point is, there is no “global climate”. You have regional climates that are disconnected from each other…”
___
Uh, no. You might want to go back a do quite a bit more studying before making such a broad and very incorrect assertion. Regional climates are part of the complex global climate and though different regions display different reactions to changes in the global climate, they are all very much connected. A perfect example in the ENSO cycle, where Australia gets one kind of weather and South America gets another, and though they are different, they are quite connected.
Uh – yes actually R. You might like to check a dictionary – a well established one such as the Oxford:
Climate
the weather conditions prevailing in an area in general or over a long period:
“our cold, wet climate”.
______
Thanks for the layman’s dictionary definition but from a scientific perspective it is pretty meaningless. I can talk about the “climate” control mechanism in my house as well. Fortunately smart men and women (yes, those dreaded “climate” scientists) are working hard every day to find those global connections between regional climates that all add up to the global climate. During the period when the earth was going through it’s snowball phases and there was ice all the way to the equator, it would be absurd to think that regions of ice just happened to have come together (unconnected in causation) to form the snowball earth. The whole push and effort of climate science, and indeed, science in general, is to find those connections between seemingly unconnected events. From Milankovitch cycles to CO2 levels, there are causes that do indeed affect the whole globe. Discovering those causes and the mechanisms behind their effects is way human scientific knowledge progresses…

R. Gates says:
December 6, 2010 at 11:27 am
It will grow increasingly entertaining to watch all the AGW skeptics come up with the reasons why “it isn’t really as hot as the data says” over the next few years. Entertaining in a sad and pathetic sort of way…
===============================
“Entertaining in a sad and pathetic sort of way…”
Dude you wrote the book on that one long long ago.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

Dear mods: I believe a post I just made may have gone to spam. Thanks for checkin’!
Chris

savethesharks says: (December 7, 2010 at 8:18 pm)

“Entertaining in a sad and pathetic sort of way…”
Dude you wrote the book on that one long long ago.

Ooh, total burn! I nominate for comment of the year!

MACK1 says:
December 6, 2010 at 7:33 pm
That is an excellent graph – now it just needs to be expanded with the max and mins for each year of the Hadcrut record to see how many record lows and mins have occured in which years.
Taking the current year 2010 – there are only a couple of peaks above the 95 percentile limits – so how can this be a ‘warmest’ year? Surely, a warmest year would be one where most of the max’s would be above the 95%ile values?

For me, as a UK citizen, the importance of these figures is that the UK Met Office claims this year is a record hot one. They also forecast a warm winter as little as six weeks ago, but the Central England Temperature record, the oldest in the world, showed the fortnight covering the end of November and start of December as the coldest ever since the daily record began in 1772.
Regardless of the fact that these figures only apply to the UK, if the world famous Met Office can be so wrong (yet again) how can anyone accept their views on “global warming?”