Post by Dr. Ryan N. Maue
December global surface temperatures cratered after the Cancun climate confab, which ended a string of above-average months. However, until the government temperature keepers put out their 2010 autopsy and bubble plot with the appropriate fanfare and press release, I am going to use the tools at my disposal to come up with a reasonable estimate of the recent global temperature.
From operational and reanalysis numerical weather prediction best-estimates of the atmosphere-ocean state, the global mean temperature for December 2010 [image link] was actually below the previous 30-year mean pushing 2010 down the list of the hottest ever. Europe, North America, and Australia saw much below average December temperatures, while the Arctic saw much above average temperatures (but that’s relative, it’s still really cold)
You must look at the weather — weather is part of the climate — and understand the high-frequency redistribution of heat, moisture, and momentum on the order of days and weeks. I will show you now why the weather matters.
Temperature Fluctuates Wildly on Short Time Scales: Weather
Here is a daily trace of the JRA-25 reanalysis near-surface temperature anomalies for 2009 and 2010 based upon a climatology of 1980-2009, a 30-year chunk of climate. Reanalysis datasets do have their issues, but also advantages, which are beyond the scope of this simple show-and-tell. There’s nothing sketchy going on here; no hiding of any declines; just showing you the data!
The blue-line is the zero-line corresponding to the 30-year mean. Blow it up and you see, what people can observe is the weather, and weather is not climate — except when it is. This plot shows you how temperature changes due to the global weather flow-regimes, which are modulated by all of the natural climate actors like El Nino, La Nina, the NAO, AO, AAO, etc. The daily temperature time series is extremely noisy and fluctuates wildly, but there appears to be a rhythm to the madness. I’ll leave that as homework exercise to explain the ups-and-downs (hint it’s weather). I find it rather discouraging that the entire time series I plot up is boiled down to one annual number, and an AGW signal is somehow sucked out — with a blizzard attributed to it no less! Even the IPCC AR4 models say we have many decades to go before seeing such visible changes.
Since we are using the previous 30-years as the baseline, the anomalies have course decreased in magnitude in the recent 1980-2009 period. The usage of 1961-1990 or 1971-2000 will provide the same qualitative picture, but there will be some important differences (future post). The Earth didn’t warm uniformly between the separate “climate normals”, and it isn’t expected to. That’s part of the point of my message here.
Temperature Fluctuates Spatially: Weather
Spatially, you can see the action of the temperature anomalies from the plot at the beginning of the post:
This is a great way to visualize all of that global warming going on. The image at the top is the most recent 14-day average ending December 30, 2010 showing the extreme Arctic warmth of +15 to +20C, and of course the northern Eurasian chill. If you mouse over the plot, you can watch the course of the past year go by. The development of the La Nina in the Pacific is apparent as the summer wanes. You can find the Russian Heat Wave pretty easily in July, even though 2010 ended up pretty much average there. If you desire, you can change the URL in your browser to see similar animations for the past 30-years: 1979 … 1989 … 1999 … 2009. Have fun with the weekly animations of temperature — all of the major cold blasts are in there for the USA…
What’s the Temperature Right Now?
But, what is the actual temperature: if it is 15 degrees C above normal in the Arctic, what does that mean: well, here is a global temperature analysis and 7-day forecast from my Florida State Weather Map page. Also, below this image, is the departure from normal, so you can see in real-time just how hot the planet is — and watch as 2011 starts off as just an average year. You’ll hear a lot about the historically warm Arctic, but who cares at this point, no one lives there and it is still plenty cold. Is that a global warming signal in winter up there? I doubt it, how about storm tracks, blocks, the NAO, and some natural climate variability manifested in the weather?
We are talking hundredths here? Really?
It’s a foregone conclusion that the official government data from whatever nation or agency will show that 2010 was the hottest year ever. It just has to be that way — please don’t look at that snow burying NYC or the bone-chilling historical cold throughout the UK and Europe, that’s just the weather. Instead, look at the articulate press releases with the bubble-plots from NOAA/NASA to see the real story of 2010, the hottest year ever by a few hundredths of a degree C. Yes, we are talking about hundredths and tenths of a degree during the past 10 to 30 years– that’s all. The Earth’s temperature varies a lot, from hour to hour, day to day, season to season, year to year for a bunch of reasons of which the sun is order 1, but even through all of that, you must know that the global temperature has changed only on the order of a 1-3 percent during the past 30-years. And, it isn’t a spatially homogeneous change, either. Not even close. AGW is built upon the premise of a slow, very slow upward trend that will eventually accelerate. But, that’s a long ways off — today, we are talking about hundredths of a degree C. How many trillions of dollars is that worth to you?
Bob Barker says on January 3, 2011 at 8:27 am
Were you hoping for the cold type of global warming or the warm type? It seems that the cold type is all we can get these days.
“You must look at the weather — weather is part of the climate”
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As a big MLB fan, I like to use the following analogy, which I think sums it up pretty neatly:
“Weather is a single game of baseball. Climate is the standings at the end of the season.”
@LazyTeenager
First, when did “cos”become an acceptable abbreviation for “because”?
I have a different analogy for you. Let’s say your Dad tells you he wants you to re-paint your room white from the blood red color you thought would look cool. So, after cursing him under your breath, you put two coats of white paint on the wall. He comes by to inspect your work and sees that the red color is still bleeding through and tells you to put on two more coats of paint. Once again, you curse him under your breath but comply. The next day, he inspects your work and again asks you to put on one last coat of paint. You protest as there is no sign of any red paint bleeding through. He says, “I don’t care, paint it again to make me happy.” Cursing, you paint one last coat. After it dries, you do not notice any difference in the wall’s appearance.
What is the point of this story? Man’s contribution of CO2 to the atmosphere is like that 5th coat of paint. The saturation point of non-human CO2 has already maxed out its greenhouse effect. So, go ahead an exhale – your CO2 in your lungs needs to be released freely without any guilt.
lgl says:
January 3, 2011 at 8:17 am
There’s a 27 days periodicity so it’s either the lunar perigee/apogee or the solar variation.
……
Sun has a magnetic bulge at about 240-250 heliocentric longitude.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC13.htm
It drifts slowly from one cycle to the next.
The “red blob” is right over the currently unfrozen part of Hudson Bay. I’d venture to say that the warm high-pressure over south Greenland is the reason that area of H Bay hasn’t frozen over yet, and why a hot-spot occurs right there (it’d normally be frozen over by now).
Or maybe Canada has built a clandestine underwater nuke plant there….
it’s colder in nm, arizona, and california than in areas around hudson bay.
funny how the co2 seems to make places warmer where there’s no sun, and turns the sunny desert southwest into siberia.
onion says:
January 3, 2011 at 4:35 am
[“must panic”…”must disasterize”…”must always worry about the necessary CAGW apocalypse just around the next corner”…”must panic”] We could hit something abruptly on the way up.
In fact it’s possible we’ve already started hitting something…*points at the snow storms in the UK and US* [my emphasis?]
onion, you forgot one very important piece of “evidence” which should further accellerate the thrill you derive from your panic-seeking quest!!!! In some of the areas where heavy winter snow and significant above ground cold, are your necessarily-perceived evidence of unusual warming at least somewhere, the underground water mains supplying houses, etc., are apparently freezing and breaking, or at least breaking from ‘frost heave”, necessitating water rationing once they start leaking and draining the reservoirs!!!
Enjoy!!!!!!
Thanks Vuk,
And how does that change Earths temperature 0.6 deg C?
anna v says:
January 3, 2011 at 7:04 am
You’re entirely correct in pointing out that (dry-bulb) temperature anomalies are a misleading proxy for global thermal energy variations. The thermodynamic concept of enthalpy, which also involves mechanical work done by pressure gradients, is required for accurate accounting. But skin temperatures on land are far more variable–both temporally and spatially–than air temperatures. That’s the reason that the 2m level is standard in meteorology. It gets the thermometer above the near-surface boundary layer wherein the temperature is far less stable. Otherwise it would have to be sampled at very high frequencies that are prohibitive in practice.
TerrySkinner in effect makes a point that I wish to endorse and enlarge on. This is that it would be more informative to present these excellent plots on an equal areas projection rather than on something presumably related to Mercator’s venerable method, which is excellent for navigational purposes but which severely distorts ones areal perception of the real globe. It would be more “honest”, I think, and would certainly change ideas on the relative importance of any changes.
Louise tells us that the new NIWA data is scarcely different from their previous revelations. What the NIWA analysts seem to have missed is that in 1954 a step change in temperature took place in /all/ the seven sites that they presented. If you don’t believe this just try fitting least squares lines to the data split at 1954, and examine the inferential statistics, including confidence interval plots for the fitted LS lines. You may be considerably surprised.
LazyTeenager says:
January 3, 2011 at 6:24 am
Would it not have been better to slow down and look at the situation carefully before proceeding?
Indeed, is that not what skeptics are saying? While the AGW crowd rushes ahead, the skeptics are saying “should we not understand the situation better before we run over society?”
The weather patterns have a signature of global cooling-blocking over greenland-weaker jet stream which loops a lot more bringing cold air into Europe and most of North America. Coldest Dec. since 1683 in London-the year the greatest frost fair ever was held on the frozen Thames River. During the depths of a colder period known as the little ice age. Blocking over greenland was a rare occurrance during the warmer decades of the 20th century, but was frequent during little ice age which led to extreme cold and snow over western europe. The only thing mitigating it is the stored up warmth of the oceans which is making n. new england and e. canada very mild as the east winds blow off the warmer water-due to a southward expansion of the polar easterlies-which is caused by the cooling trend. A local effect of global cooling would be to make europe much colder in winter but n. new england and e. canada milder-at least initially.
peterhodges says:
January 3, 2011 at 11:30 am
funny how the co2 seems to make places warmer where there’s no sun, and turns the sunny desert southwest into siberia.
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CO2 works in mysterious ways.
To add, global cooling could actually warm the arctic during the winter-all the positive anomalies on the map occurred in conjunction with blocking anticyclones setting up shop in areas that normally dont have them. While the mid latitudes show a lot of very negative anomalies-the global anomaly looks to be below the average overall-and the weather patterns fit that very well.
BillD says:
January 3, 2011 at 3:34 am
Yes, temperature is increasing slowly for humans, who often think of a decade as being a long time. However, the heating of the planet seems to be very fast compared to the past, where shifts in climate usually took 1000′s of years. A trend of 0.2 oC does not seem like a lot, but it’s really quite fast. The prediction of those pesky computer models is that warming should be strongest in the arctic, rather far from the UHI effect.
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But your looking at a too-short-a record. The data quoted is on a historical rising “limb” over this period.
Look at a much longer record:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET2.htm
0.35 C deg per century.!!
I note that the articles on the end-of-year RSS and UAH data published after this one have positive anomalies relative to the same 30 year period that this article uses. Why is there a difference? And which is a more accurate summary of the present state?
[ryanm: the numerical weather prediction analysis will generate a different temperature estimate, and this is expected. That’s the dilemma, to use only observational data, satellite data, a combination of both in a model context, or some other incarnation to get the “true” temperature. Here, I am plotting up 4 times a day snapshots of temperature — clearly missing out on a lot of diurnal variability. Neither is completely right or wrong.]
The hotspot in HBay looks more like an open-water situation than an atmospheric warming. Current changes could be responsible for the less-than-normal ice in Hudson’s Bay, or more sunshine that melted the ice. What are the current and cloudcover stats like HBay over the last 15 years?
[ryanm: anomalous easterly flow from the Atlantic into Canada — the SST’s if you look are much warmer than normal off the Canadian Atlantic coast…]
Watch the Jets! The more they vary, the more variation to the weather (and climate). After the MWP and before the LIA there was a long period of great variation (hot and cold) with the up and down girations of the Jets. Betweem the recently ended ‘Modern Warm Period’ and the next LIA, the Jets are going to dance once again. Global Warming? Yes, sometimes; but not the ALGORE kind. Global Cooling? Yes, sometimes that too. What’s ahead? Another glacial, no bout a doubt it! Hummmm… wonder what the boys and girls at the UN are going to say and do about that? Bet it won’t be much different than what they’re crying about now. One thing you can always count on are politicians (and the weather).
I’m glad I’m not the only one who looks at those temp plots and thinks “wow, look at the earth hemorrhage heat into the arctic night while the rest of the globe freezes”.
The current Arctic heating is a trap that I expect many scientists to fall into, and lose their way.
CET (Central England Temp) for December was -0.7 degrees C. This puts it
at 351 out of 352 for the warmest December temperature.
Or to put it the other way, the second coldest in the 352 year CET record.
I have now concluded my analysis of the, at times, very, pretty, pictures.
What with the anomaly color is green, in the first two images containing green, which denotes below normal, minor, but still, one can only conclude the overall is below normal.
There’s a “huge” real frakking anomaly in the next to last image though. OMFG but W(ho)TF did chose pink as being colder ‘an blue for antarctica’s edges?
The map color schemes used by these agencies are very poorly chosen.
LazyTeenager says:
January 3, 2011 at 6:24 am
Well I agree that nothing much has happened yet [concerning temp. increases]. But why is it so hard to appreciated that if we delay acting until we get a serious beating about the head then action will be too late to be effective.
Therefore, LT, according to you, there’s no evidence whatsoever of CAGW since there’s no significant warming “yet”, eh, not even a tropical trophospheric “hot spot”; so “let’s all try to commit suicide by getting back to being an underdeveloped nation as a precaution, before it’s too late”?
Well, me, I’m sticking with the opposite fossil fuel and nuclear energy cure instead being enacted by two of those already existing underdeveloped nations, LT, India and China, as necessary to their survival and wellbeing; but I can see how you better keep going on ahead with your own bad self’s “precaution”, since you apparently feel sooo strongly that your facts and logic can never be falsified, eventually even in the face of the mighty Precautionary Principle!
But please let me know exactly what you are doing in your own personal life to decrease your own “carbon footprint”, because you can probably do enough for the both of us, even if it might have to really mean committing suicide, as you seem to suggest it would for many people; and I wouldn’t want an altruistic person such as yourself to miss a chance at trying to personally “save” one more person!
I love it when people say “it is possible”. It is possible temperature will go up/down, sea levels will rise/fall, all due to whatever people will pay me to say. Most people keep their jobs by towing the line. How long for example, would Gavin last if he was to tell Hansen, hey guess what, I’ve check the numbers and you have it wrong, it wasn’t CO2 after all.