Global Sea Surface Temperature continues to drop

I hope it freezes over!

Looks like it’s a persistent La Nina, much like the early one in 2008.
I find the Jet Stream interesting. It looks like it’s following more of an El Nino path than La Nina.

As ever, it is the ocean heat content that is the true gauge of global warming or cooling. I wish the warmists would agree with the skeptics to stop talking about global average temperatures, as it just misleads the public.

I once thought ’03-’07 might be the peak of the LIA recovery; now I think it is the ’98-’10 top.
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I find the following from the Aussie BoM quite interesting.

The four-month sequence of sub-surface Pacific Ocean equatorial temperature anomalies, to 22 December, shows that a large volume of cooler than normal water has been evident below the surface of the tropical Pacific for many months. Sub-surface water in the central and eastern Pacific has remained cooler than usual during December, with central areas more than 4 °C cooler than usual. The sequence also shows that warm anomalies in the western Pacific have continued to develop over the last four months.

Take a look at the chart here
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/sub_surf_mon.gif

wattsupwiththat?… Why on the year axis is 2010 a different size to the others? And what’s strange about the ocean warming in spring and summer and cooling in winter? What point are you trying to make? The average temperature hasn’t dropped, it was cooler in 2007/08, and it was warmer this year than it’s been all decade. This years low is warmer than last years and right now it’s not continuing dropping, it looks like it’s levelled off.

kim says:
January 3, 2011 at 3:09 pm
If the peak has occurred, it occurred in the 1930s-40s. We have likely never exceeded them.

@Juraj V. – no no, the weather events are a result of AGW; the earthquakes and tsunamis are Mother Gaia’s vengeance against the pillaging patriarchal West!
…which is what makes it so odd that it’s always the world’s poorest that get slammed by these events. 😛

I guess all of the melting glaciers are causing the ocean temperature to drop :-/

meanwhile in cuckoo-land Robyn ‘100m’ Williams and Tim ‘Alarmist’ Flannery had a chat last weekend.

On the release of his book, Here on Earth an argument for hope, scientist and author Tim Flannery appears in a public forum at The Seymour Centre in Sydney. Tim Flannery attended the Copenhagen climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009 which were largely seen as a failure. Despite this, and most environmental indicators looking bad and getting worse, Flannery outlines the reasons he is hopeful for the future of life on planet Earth.

The comments are interesting 🙂
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2011/3101365.htm

Joe Bastardi says
I second that along with a whole bunch of other people!

tallbloke says on January 3, 2011 at 5:16 pm

richard verney says:
January 3, 2011 at 4:04 pm (Edit)
It looks like the sea surface temperature variation may have bottomed out at – 0.1C and is not going to fall as low as 2008.
Unfortunately SST will continue to decline well into this year. Steeply asides from the occasional pause. It will bottom out well below 2008.
You can call that a prediction.

Would you care to quantify that, otherwise that prediction is not very useful. For example, 0.0001C below 2008 could be considered well below by some people.

It might be more helpful if I submit a link. All the other models are looking toward a neutral ENSO, while CFS is a standout. Reminds me of the mid-1950s.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/images3/nino34SSTMonE120.gif

Too bad we don’t have thermometers in rivers and soils. My worm garden has suffered from cold summer soils the last two years, and our rivers in NE Oregon are freezing from the bottom up starting in December, an event that occasionally only happens in January.
Something sure has flipped. Today I wore thermals and thick jeans, topped with two layered sweaters, topped with a long wool winter coat and winter scarf tied around my head. At 4 foot 10 and 1/2 inches, I couldn’t bend my flippin arms to drive! And if whatever has flipped keeps on flippin, a lot more people will be flippin party affiliation. Cuz it’s FLIPPIN COLD!

Rollingstone says:
January 3, 2011 at 4:02 pm
And what’s strange about the ocean warming in spring and summer and cooling in winter?
========================================================
Hey wait a minute RS our seasons in the southern Hem are reversed to yours! so its cooling in our summer.!! This is all global my son. In fact it’s the “long” term trend of this data that’s the issue (in this case its pretty short) but that trend looks pretty flat to my eye from 2002 to 2010.!

Leif Svalgaard says:
January 3, 2011 at 7:00 pm
Rising solar activity is clearly driving SST down…
It is clear that Gaia has requested the rising activity from Sol to offset the cooling she feels from the icy water brought about by irritable climate syndrome.

Rolling Stone:
No sir if you look at the chart you see that the from the start of 2008 to mid 2009 the SST rise with a few bumps along the way. Sorry but the temps start to rise in the N.H. winter.

Leif Svalgaard says:
January 3, 2011 at 7:00 pm
Rising solar activity is clearly driving SST down…
==============================
No, it isn’t. (Got your joke!) But isn’t there some sort of lag here?
The heat storage capacity of the oceans is well documented. I live in an area where we plant palmetto and mexican fan palms to give it that “tropical” look, only to see those palms trimmed back to the nub after extensive cold and even some snow.
Well that is in part because, where I live, thanks to the battle of the last vestiges of the Labrador Current and the ever-vigorous Gulf Stream, the temps of our ocean vary between seasons over 42 degrees F….sometimes more.
And trust me, the meteorology reflects it.
But one thing is certain: ocean temps lag that of atmospheric temps.
Certainly you can not just blame the natural decline in the winter’s ocean temps on the weather above? Has to do with the amount of (or lack of) solar energy heating the ocean.
Might there not be a lag (or lags) of ocean heat storage in relation to solar bombardment of the planet?
Too soon to rule out. But Tallbloke and Stephen Wilder and others opine on this quite regularly.
Certainly, as in normal natural simple observation (and Occams Razor) more sun energy equals more energy absorbed in the oceans….even if (and why even the “if” there should be an expected lag) a lag occurs.
Perhaps the lag is evident now….as solar activity “upswings” (though really sickly) (if you can call it an upswing) and ocean temperatures drop.
Hmmm.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

@ FrankK & R.Shearer
Thanks for the comments guys, just a couple of points…
Yeah, it’s 2011 by a gnats whisker but the graph only goes up to the end of 2010.
I am aware that the seasons are reversed down under and I did think about that at the time but I couldn’t see anything on the graph to state whether it was Northern hemisphere or southern. Maybe I’m missing something but if you present facts to fit a theory then maybe important information should be clearly stated, otherwise you can mislead.
The visual representation (pretty colours) shows readings from both hemispheres. I have to look at it again on a proper screen when I get the chance, but there’s lies, damn lies and statistics to be considered. Don’t need Janet and John colouring books level of presentation but all important information needs to be clearly displayed, don’t you think?

Stephen Wilde says:
January 4, 2011 at 12:12 am
I think Leif’s comment may have been a little piece of scandanavian humour.

“stephen richards says:
January 4, 2011 at 1:01 am
Stephen Wilde says:
January 4, 2011 at 12:12 am
I think Leif’s comment may have been a little piece of scandanavian humour”
Yes I know but it was a chance to try to provoke a more serious comment.
Since I adjusted my scenario to broaden the proposed causes of the ozone effects above 45km and pointed out that in view of the involvement of chemical processes the matter of radiative physics is of little significance I have not had a further comment from him.

Leif Svalgaard said:-
“January 3, 2011 at 8:25 pm
peterhodges says:
January 3, 2011 at 7:48 pm
holy smokes….did leif svalgaard make a joke?
Reminding people how they reacted to the drop in 2007-2008 [but with the reverse effect]. They shouldn’t jump on every little wiggle of a messy system and take that as confirmation of whatever pet theory they are peddling.”
Well that is just what the Warmistas are doing when they say that the “warm” 2010 is “proof” of AGW. I fact they are far the bigger culprits for wiggle jumping. Realists tend to look over longer time scales.

It is too early to call how SST will respond in 2011.
Before I had seen this post, I had presumed that the drop in temps would be similar to 2008. Who knows, it may yet be.
I merely commented on the plot which for the extreme latter part of 201o appears to have flattened out and took this in conjuction with Dr Spencer’s comment suggesting that the SST should by now have approached its coolest point.
Of course, there are times between 2007 & 2008 where the temperatures momentarily flattened off before falling further and 2010/11 may in the end show a similar profile.
Whilst I do not like the cold, personally I would like to see the SST fall further to around 2008 levels.

“the ocean, which should now be approaching its coolest point if it follows the course of previous La Nina’s.”
But, alas, will continue to cool into March, so sad.

This will definately cool the atmosphere considering the equator is the area with the most centrifugal force.