I was working on a general report yesterday, but in checking background for it, I discovered this recent missive from Dr. Hansen. I suppose when your agency is the “odd man out”, you feel a need to explain yourself. Note the difference in November 2010 global temperature anomaly metrics:
UAH: 0.38 GISS: 0.74°C
Yes, I’d try to explain that too. I’ll have another post on this, but for now, here’s GISS report verbatim as it appears here. – Anthony
GISS Surface Temperature Analysis
2010 — Global Temperature and Europe’s Frigid Air
By James Hansen, Reto Ruedy, Makiko Sato and Ken Lo
Figure 1:
(a) January-November surface air temperature anomaly in GISS analysis, (b) November 2010 anomaly using only data from meteorological stations and Antarctic research stations, with the radius of influence of a station limited to 250 km to better reveal maximum anomalies. (View large PDF)Figure 1(a) shows January-November 2010 surface temperature anomalies (relative to 1951-80) in the preliminary Goddard Institute for Space Studies analysis. This is the warmest January-November in the GISS analysis, which covers 131 years. However, it is only a few hundredths of a degree warmer than 2005, so it is possible that the final GISS results for the full year will find 2010 and 2005 to have the same temperature within the margin of error.
As described in an in-press paper at Reviews of Geophysics (see summary PDF) that defines the GISS analysis method, we estimate a two-standard-deviation uncertainty (95 percent confidence interval) of 0.05°C for comparison of global temperatures in nearby recent years. The magnitude of this uncertainty and the small temperature differences among different years is one reason that alternative analyses yield different rankings for the warmest years. However, results for overall global temperature change of the past century are in good agreement among the alternative analyses (by NASA/GISS, NOAA National Climate Data Center, and the joint analysis of the UK Met Office Hadley Centre and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit).
Figure 1(b) shows November 2010 surface temperature anomalies based only on surface air measurements at meteorological stations and Antarctic research stations. In producing this map the radius of influence of a given station is limited to 250 km to allow extreme temperature anomalies to be apparent. Northern Europe had negative anomalies of more than 4°C, while the Hudson Bay region of Canada had monthly mean anomalies greater than +10°C.
The extreme warmth in Northeast Canada is undoubtedly related to the fact that Hudson Bay was practically ice free. In the past, including the GISS base period 1951-1980, Hudson Bay was largely ice-covered in November. The contrast of temperatures at coastal stations in years with and without sea ice cover on the neighboring water body is useful for illustrating the dramatic effect of sea ice on surface air temperature. Sea ice insulates the atmosphere from ocean water warmth, allowing surface air to achieve temperatures much lower than that of the ocean. It is for this reason that some of the largest positive temperature anomalies on the planet occur in the Arctic Ocean as sea ice area has decreased in recent years.
The cold anomaly in Northern Europe in November has continued and strengthened in the first half of December. Combined with the unusual cold winter of 2009-2010 in Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes, this regional cold spell has caused widespread commentary that global warming has ended. That is hardly the case. On the contrary, globally November 2010 is the warmest November in the GISS record.
Figure 2(a) illustrates that there is a good chance that 2010 as a whole will be the warmest year in the GISS analysis. Even if the December global temperature anomaly is unusually cool, 2010 will at least be in a statistical tie with 2005 for the warmest year.
Figure 2: Global surface air temperature anomalies relative to 1951-1980 mean for (a) annual and 5-year running means, and (b) 60-month and 132-month running means. In (a) the 2010 point is a preliminary 11-month anomaly. Green vertical bars are two-standard-deviation error estimates, as discussed in our Reviews of Geophysics paper. (View large PDF)
Figure 2(b) shows the 60-month (5-year) and 132-month (11-year) running-mean surface air temperature in the GISS analysis. Contrary to frequent assertions that global warming slowed in the past decade, as discussed in our paper in press, global warming has proceeded in the current decade just as fast as in the prior two decades. The warmth of 2010 is especially noteworthy, given the strong La Nina that developed in the second half of 2010. The La Nina, caused by unusually strong easterly equatorial winds, produces the cool anomalies in the tropical Pacific Ocean as cold upwelling deep water along the Peruvian coast is blown westward along the equator.
Figure 3: Temperature anomalies relative to 1951-1980 for the European region defined by 36°N-70°N and 10°W-30°E. (View large PDF)
Back to the cold air in Europe: is it possible that reduced Arctic sea ice is affecting weather patterns? Because Hudson Bay (and Baffin Bay, west of Greenland) are at significantly lower latitudes than most of the Arctic Ocean, global warming may cause them to remain ice free into early winter after the Arctic Ocean has become frozen insulating the atmosphere from the ocean. The fixed location of the Hudson-Baffin heat source could plausibly affect weather patterns, in a deterministic way — Europe being half a Rossby wavelength downstream, thus producing a cold European anomaly in the trans-Atlantic seesaw. Several ideas about possible effects of the loss of Arctic sea ice on weather patterns are discussed in papers referenced by Overland, Wang and Walsh.
However, we note in our Reviews of Geophysics paper in press that the few years just prior to 2009-2010, with low Arctic sea ice, did not produce cold winters in Europe. The cold winter of 2009-2010 was associated with the most extreme Arctic Oscillation in the period of record. Figure 3, from our paper in press, shows that 7 of the last 10 European winters were warmer than the 1951-1980 average winter, and 10 of the past 10 summers were warmer than climatology. The average warming of European winters is at least as large as the average warming of summers, but it is less noticeable because of the much greater variability in winter.
Finally, we point out in Figure 3 the anomalous summer warmth in 2003 and 2010, summers that were associated with extreme events centered in France and Moscow. If the warming trend that is obvious in that figure continues, as is expected if greenhouse gases continue to increase, such extremes will become common within a few decades.
A copy of this webpage text is also available as a PDF document.
Reference
Hansen, J., R. Ruedy, Mki. Sato, and K. Lo, 2010: Global surface temperature change. Rev. Geophys., in press, doi:10.1029/2010RG000345.
Contacts
Please address media inquiries regarding the GISS surface temperature analysis to Ms. Leslie McCarthy by e-mail at Leslie.M.McCarthy@nasa.gov or by phone at 212-678-5507.
Scientific inquiries about the analysis may be directed to Dr. James E. Hansen.
Hansen writes, “The warmth of 2010 is especially noteworthy, given the strong La Nina that developed in the second half of 2010.”
But what he fails to tell you is what happens to the leftover warm water from the El Nino during the transition to La Nina. It gets returned to the West Pacific by a slow-moving Rossby wave and spun up into the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension (KOE) in the northwest North Pacific where it continues to release heat during the La Nina.
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/12/enso-related-variations-in-kuroshio.html
Figure 1: (a) January-November surface air temperature anomaly in GISS analysis, (b) November 2010 anomaly using only data from meteorological stations and Antarctic research stations,
You remember Eureka Weather Station ? It is the only station for the Canadian Artic. Eureka is an anomaly in the artic . It´s a hot spot. Listen to Dr Tim Ball .December 10, 2010
http://itsrainmakingtime.com/2010/timball2/ min 34.00
All the interview is worth listening to.
What seems equally hard to “get” is the fact that it’s useless to propose mitigation strategies for a class of regularities that are not well understood. When people say, “natural variation” in this context, this is what they mean. So the point you’ve made here is incorrect.
“In short, claiming “natural variability” as a cause in no explanation at all as science is all about finding the reasons behind that variability.”
Thanks. This seems to be a particularly hard point for some to get.”
Steven Mosher,
I’d say that “natural variability” is more of an honest answer than “AGW .” Don’t you?
Andrew
Just look at COLA there is massive cooling occurring on ALL continents just check each map
http://wxmaps.org/pix/clim.html
Ken Roberts says:
December 12, 2010 at 12:54 pm
“Is all this “Hottest” year business just for bragging rights (rites?) or does it actually mean something?”
If it were the ‘hottest year ever’ by a degree or two it would mean something.
In reality it will just be by a few hundreds of agree.
More like a ‘photo finish’ in a horse race and declaring one horse the winner by a nose hair.
Yet Warmist climate scientists have a 95+ confidence that the recent warming cylcle was mostly caused by man-made greenhouse gases.
Evidence? Correlation, speculation and computer models, we can’t think of anything else. Think “natural variability.” :O)
The 3 station sets (NCDC, GISS, CRU) have been generally higher than the satellites for a while. For the GISS to be much higher than the other two is impressive. CRU had an October of less than 0.6C and NCDC was lower than that.
Here I compare the two satellite to the other two station sets. GISS might only be propaganda now for all its accuracy.
John Kehr
I will believe that the world is warming because of co2 if I see evidence that it is happening,I can’t see any at the moment.If the world is warming ,because of co2,then the UK being part of the world must warm also.The average temperature of the world might be warming or it might not,I don’t believe your adjusted temperatures,but if the UK does not warm then there is no global warming.The co2 hypothesis predicts that we should have global warming not just average warming of the Earth.It is important that the UK and North Western Europe are cooling despite what maybe happening elsewhere.
steven mosher
Even you must admit you don’t fully understand how natural variation is currently and will work in the future due to uncertainties. So when someone says natural variation it is by definition what the Earth does (over 100 weather/climate interactions) and we don’t fully know how the Earth does it.
Yet Gates is 75% confident of AGW theory and 25% driven to be sceptical!
Anthony said: So in essence, using 1951 to 1980 GISS is thirty years behind the “climate normal” times. If I wrote a peer review paper today and used old base periods it would get tossed on that basis alone. But hey, if you are the GISS king of climate science, any old base period goes for your work. – Anthony
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Oh come on, Anthony, stop it. It depends on the objectives of your research. The choice of base period for GISS has to do with when their stream of ongoing research started. This makes ongoing reports w/i that stream easily compared and logically followed. The HadCRUT base period is 1961-1990, for instance. The raw data from each stream of research can be compared using any base period, which has been done with high confirming correlation.
The argument you’re making may be applied to any long-term research in an attempt to undermine it, which is a chief and blind objective of yours. I suppose you recommended Spencer’s older data be thrown out when they implemented the new AMSU-A equipment ….
REPLY: Oh Jack, stop it. If it were anybody but GISS, using an old base period they’d be villified. “I just happened to start my research in the late 70’s so that’s the basis for keeping my base period.” Yeah that’s some scientific argument. You are playing favorites here when we have a standard for normals and base period calculations clearly defined. And you seem NOT to understand the differences here with this idiotic statement:
“ I suppose you recommended Spencer’s older data be thrown out when they implemented the new AMSU-A equipment ….” Wow.
Changing the base period for anomaly calculation is NOT “throwing out data”. Actually, I have made recommendations to Spencer to improve UAH, and they did it. here’s the readme file released with the new data set.
…
And looky, Version 5.3 is here: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.3
What have you done in climate science to improve the data or METADATA other than whine, jab, and complain? And tell me Jack, how can you trust a man like Jim Hansen who is the gatekeeper of the data, who gets himself arrested pushing a cause where he’s using his publicly funded work on that data as the basis for elevating and injecting himself into protests? Hansen has destroyed any scientific objectivity with his transition from scientist to advocate.
No wonder he’s getting sued.
– Anthony
Something puzzles me. I have often read that the greenhouse effect is more pronounced in the Arctic so the Arctic temperatures are relatively much higher than the rest of the globe. At this point, I do not wish to get into the reasons for this, but I would like to point out that the anomaly for November was 74. However at this time of year it is totally dark way up there. From my understanding, the sun has to shine in order for there to be any greenhouse effect. In June, July and August, they had 24 hours of sun per day (at least at the pole, although less at lower latitudes). Yet the anomaly for these three months was much lower at 55, 51, and 55 respectively. Am I missing something?
steven mosher says:
December 12, 2010 at 1:11 pm
R. Gates
“In short, claiming “natural variability” as a cause in no explanation at all as science is all about finding the reasons behind that variability.”
Thanks. This seems to be a particularly hard point for some to get.
CAUTION * DELIBERATE STRAWMAN ALERT* CAUTION
R. Gates and Steve Mosher,
If all the claims and failures of AGW “science” were collated, what do you think the result would be?
No matter what happens, no matter what part of the “theory” fails, there’s always an escape clause, a sort of plausible deniability. That is what many people have become weary of. And please, don’t invoke the “that’s how science works” meme.
It’s been 5 years since Hansen claimed OHC was the “smoking gun” for AGW. Now it is 2010 and the above essay doesn’t even mention it. Why is that? We’ve been told for 20+ years the NH would decrease in snow extent, snow pack would continue plummeting, hurricanes would increase, etc. etc. etc. I don’t have the time to go through and dig up all the quotes from the “experts” saved on my computers over the years, but maybe someone else would care to perform such a service.
We were told for the last 20 years, one of the main tenets of AGW was the hot spot in the tropical troposphere which culminated in Santer 08 “refuting” Douglas et al only to discover Santer’s “research” paper was nothing but a fraud. You may not like that word; too bad. Santer refused to release the data etc. and did so only under threat of possible legal repercussions IIRC. Nonetheless, the data “analysis” was stopped at 1999 because extending it out to 2008 did support his claim. Yet, the “peer review” process, which is supposedly in place to prevent such deception, somehow missed it. How convenient.
And now we have Andrew Dessler claiming to have refuted Roy Spencer’s latest work, even citing Spencer 10 in his paper. Upon closer scrutiny however, Dessler does nothing of the sort. Now what, is Spencer required to go through the same obstructions all over again for the next 18 months to refute the Dessler sham?
Then there’s Steig. And Mann. And Jones. And……
Siberia can have some variable weather at this time of year. It looks like they were quite warm for the first two weeks of November but then in the last week of the month and continuing so far in December, temps are way below normal; some -50Cs in places.
Northeast Canada has been above normal for a few years now but they have variability as well. A few years is long time for that though.
Put those things together along with the ridiculous 1200 km smoothing and deleting the ice-covered SST data and it was a warm November apparently. Wait and see what happens in December when the current Siberian temps are smoothed across the Arctic.
Note that the current daily temps from the Satellites has the northern hemisphere below normal right now, even cooler than the La Nina tropics – not +0.9C like GISS has.
ftp://ghrc.nsstc.nasa.gov/pub/data/msu/t2lt/tltday_5.3
Please note that Hudson Bay is often open to shipping until early December. James Bay which is shallower fresher is almost always open until the end of November. See this pdf for the historical data: http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/transactions/1/hudsonnavigation.shtml
According to the Port of Churchill they can almost always ship grain until the end of November. I looked at the ice conditions in Hudson Bay the other day, most of the bay was open except for the western shore the bears had good hunting ice on Dec. 2, 2010.
For those who worry about the different base periods, Nick Stokes (comment #63703, http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/giss-nov-anomaly-0-74c/#comments) over at the Blackboard has a graph that corrects that:
http://myweb.westnet.com.au/ncgstokes/blog/ind5_12.jpg
As one can see, GISS goes steeply up lately, whereas the rest go down.
GISS should not be used in a scientific discussion. It is just politics, and the worst side of it, too.
steven mosher says:
December 12, 2010 at 1:11 pm
R. Gates
‘“In short, claiming “natural variability” as a cause in no explanation at all as science is all about finding the reasons behind that variability.”Thanks. This seems to be a particularly hard point for some to get. ‘
Apparently, a harder point to get is that we sometimes do not have a clue what the “reasons behind the natural variability” are. When we do not, we have a duty to say so. It is a duty of humility or scepticism that binds all scientists. “The beginning of knowledge is recognizing our ignorance,” Socrates. And it is worth stressing that no one has ever cited natural variability as a cause of something; rather, it is cited as showing that the causes are so poorly known that natural variability provides just as good an explanation.
Hansen/GISS say “, we estimate a two-standard-deviation uncertainty (95 percent confidence interval) of 0.05°C for comparison of global temperatures in nearby recent years.”
I wonder what they consider to be the confidence interval for the comparison of global temperatures FOR THE SAME MONTH, but measured by different organizations?
GISS: 0.74°C – UAH: 0.38°C = 0.36°C
I also note that the NASA article shows 250km smoothing. Doesn’t the main NASA time series use 1200km smoothing/smearing/homogenization in some areas?
Werner Brozek says:
December 12, 2010 at 2:32 pm
From my understanding, the sun has to shine in order for there to be any greenhouse effect…
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Incorrect. GH gases work 24 hours a day, taking no time off for sleeping at night. The LW radiation bouncing around from GH molecule to GH molecule originally came from the sun of course, but it doesn’t require the sun to be shining for the effect to occur. One perfect example of this is winter nights when there is some cloud cover. The water vapor (King of the GH gases) in the clouds will usually keep the temps higher than if there was clear skies and no cloud cover. Now, just because we can’t see the CO2 molecule in the same way we can often see water vapor, doen’t mean it isn’t working away at night doing it’s GH thing.
Werner Brozek says:
December 12, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Something puzzles me. I have often read that the greenhouse effect is more pronounced in the Arctic so the Arctic temperatures are relatively much higher than the rest of the globe. At this point, I do not wish to get into the reasons for this, but I would like to point out that the anomaly for November was 74. However at this time of year it is totally dark way up there. From my understanding, the sun has to shine in order for there to be any greenhouse effect. In June, July and August, they had 24 hours of sun per day (at least at the pole, although less at lower latitudes). Yet the anomaly for these three months was much lower at 55, 51, and 55 respectively. Am I missing something?
It is in darkness that the atmosphere actually performs most like a “greenhouse”, keeping surface temperatures higher than they would be absent the planet’s atmosphere. Which is one of many reasons why “the greenhouse effect” is such a terrible analogy for what is occurring. In bright sunlight a greenhouse must often be vented to keep it from getting too hot, but in sunlight the atmosphere of the planet actually functions to keep the surface cooler than it would be in its absence. One need only look at the Moon or similar bodies, down to satellites in orbit, which without atmospheres are much colder than the Earth on their dark sides, but also much hotter on their sunlit sides. The atmosphere functions much more like a flywheel than a “greenhouse” although even a flywheel isn’t an entirely apt analogy. But then, nothing is ever entirely analogous to another thing but the thing itself.
Perhaps we could convince Anthony to hold a contest to pick a replacement phrase to replace this flawed and ultimately deceptive coinage. The alarmist crowd have always been masters at manipulating the language of the argument to their advantage, and though recent events suggest they are in retreat, the war will never be ended as long as we continue to have to argue the truth in terms that are implicitly biased to favor their interpretations.
BTW, folks, please remember that the GISS “anomaly” is not really a comparison of the temperatures from a thermometer now to that thermometer in the past.
They use a ‘Grid / Box anomaly” that is constructed by comparing a set of thermometers NOW to a completely different set of thermometers THEN.
So is my new Mercedes hotter than my old ’67 VW? And does that mean cars are getting hotter?….
This is a splice artifact being dressed up as an anomaly. Splicing new thermometers onto old thermometers (often in different places) and calling the hockey stick a “trend”.
Natural variability is simply the climate null hypothesis, against which any alternate hypothesis must be tested.
The primary alternate hypothesis states that an increase in CO2 will result in runaway global warming and climate catastrophe [CO2=CAGW].
But if a doubling of CO2 results in ≈1°C rise in temperature, then there is no justification for spending immense sums on such an insignificant ΔT. During the Holocene temperatures rapidly increased and decreased by more than 3° on numerous occasions. Such events are completely normal and natural – and CO2 is observed to follow temperature rises and declines. Effect cannot precede cause, creating a major problem for the CAGW alternate hypothesis.
To keep the grant money flowing, the alternate hypothesis must be CAGW. But the current climate is completely indistinguishable from the null; CAGW isn’t happening, despite increasingly desperate attempts to assign the blame for every weather hiccup or two-headed frog discovered to a beneficial trace gas.
Climate grant hogs have deliberately replaced the scientific method with a nebulous and largely fictional “consensus.” The result may be more grant money. But without the scientific method, it isn’t science, it is advocacy.
Having just started studying this so-called global warning, I found the anomaly maps and graphs very disconcerting. It appears they are working solely in anomalies. Somebody please tell me that they DO NOT take the anomaly for every grid then calculate an average global anomaly. It appears from the maps that they do exactly that. Please tell me that they really calculate a temperature for each grid, calculate a global average temperature, and then determine the anomaly.
Anthony:
The period is chosen because it has the least interannual variability – it’s a common and appropriate method for establishing a baseline. The Met office also applies this theorem (using a different 30-year period).
NOAA do not use the last 30 years, as suggested by your selected quotes from them. They use the 20th century average (they are 10 years ‘behind’).
The satellite records use more recent baselines because they do not have data further back than December 1978.
The choice of baseline only matters when you are comparing anomalies derived from different records with different baselines. This should have been made clear at the top of your post. Defending your omission by criticising baseline choices is a red herring.
UAH: 0.38 GISS: 0.74°C
…is misleading.
When adjusted for the different baselines, as pointed out above, the result is:
UAH: 0.38 GISS: 0.46°C
The rhetorical value of these disinformative values at the top of your post is obvious. If you are interested in shedding light, it is necessary to account for this oversight in the top post.