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

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”
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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.

@ur momisugly E.M. Smith and
@ur momisugly 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.
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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.