RSS data: 2010 not the warmest year in satellite record, but a close second

NOTE: A second graph has been added. See below.

The RSS data for Dec 2010 is out and available here, and I’m second in publishing it. The honor for being first goes to Lucia at the Blackboard here.

I used the same RSS lower troposphere data, but used a different plotting program than she did, Dplot, which provides for an automatically generated moving average. She computed the annual average as the average over Jan-Dec of each year and plotted each annual average, where I used a built in moving average generator in Dplot, set the moving average generator interval to 12 months, and came up with similar results as she did. The annotated plot is below:

click to enlarge

2010’s end moving 12 month average is .510°C at month 383 (Dec. 2010) The peak 12 month moving average value is .550°C at month 239, just after the red 1998 El Niño spike. So by the RSS satellite data, 2010 has not exceeded 1998. Lucia comes to the same conclusion: 2010 is not warmer than 1998, but is a close second. There’s still other year end data sets to be published. I would expect Dr. Roy Spencer to publish UAH soon and we’ll have that also.

Here’s the output from the Dplot program for the two curves above:

Curve 1 – Monthly Anomaly

Minimum = -0.458 at X = 68

Maximum = 0.858 at X = 231

Max – Min = 1.316

Mean = 0.09933333

Standard deviation = 0.2288476

Standard error = 0.1725063

Curve 2 – Moving average (prior), interval=12

Minimum = -0.2989167 at X = 79

Maximum = 0.5506667 at X = 239

Max – Min = 0.8495833

Mean = 0.09812891

Standard deviation = 0.1940199

Standard error = 0.1301371

The peak global monthly temperature anomaly in 1998 was .858°C while in 2010, the peak global monthly temperature anomaly was 0.652°C

Also, the December 2010 value at 0.251°C is down significantly from the peak value of 2010 which was 0.652°C in March. What a difference El Niño to La Niña makes.

UPDATE: I had some time later today after a busy post holiday Monday, so I decided to update this post. To better match the UAH data published today, which uses a 13 month moving central average, I’ve added this annotated plot:

click to enlarge

Here’s the output from the Dplot program:

Curve 1 – Monthly Anomaly

Minimum = -0.458 at X = 68

Maximum = 0.858 at X = 231

Max – Min = 1.316

Mean = 0.09933333

Standard deviation = 0.2288476

Curve 2 – Moving average (central), interval=13

Minimum = -0.2908462 at X = 74

Maximum = 0.5316154 at X = 233

Max – Min = 0.8224615

Mean = 0.09751444

Standard deviation = 0.191728

The results are slightly different, and the conclusion remains unchanged. The central moving average is a more correctly representative since it encompasses the entire year, where a lagged average needs to additional data points into 2011 to properly show 2010.

The peaks of the 13 month central average are:

.531 month 233 (1998)

.507 month 374 (2010)

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Byz
January 3, 2011 7:12 am

Well in the UK we’ve had the coldest year since the mid 1980’s.
In fact the average temperature has been in decline since April 2007 in the UK.
December was the coldest recorded since the UK national record started in 1910 and in London it was the coldest December since 1890 😮
What is of interest is that CET has been cold in the 2nd hottest satellite recorded year, so was the earth hotter when CET was recording cold in the past?
Unfortunately CET is the oldest record so we will never know, but on the second hottest year you’d expect CET to correlate.

Jeroen
January 3, 2011 7:14 am

I bet this data set will not reach MSM. It is up to us to post in on numerous sites.

Adam Gallon
January 3, 2011 7:17 am

12 years and no measurable increase in temperature?
That’s going to take some spinning.

Steeptown
January 3, 2011 7:25 am

That’s a hell of a big drop in December. Let’s hope it doesn’t continue to fall off the cliff.

richard verney
January 3, 2011 7:29 am

No doubt the warmists will be trumpeting the 2010 figure and claiming that global warming has not gone away.
It will now be interesting to see how temperatures pan out during the early to mid part of 2011 and to compare these with 1999.

Jeff Alberts
January 3, 2011 7:33 am

Certainly not the warmest here in Western Washington. We’ve been running 10+ degrees F below average now and most of 2010.

Joshua
January 3, 2011 7:36 am

The alarmists have already written their headlines “2010 the _______ Warmest Year on Record” Fill in the blank.

Enneagram
January 3, 2011 7:38 am

In December 1998 temperature at El Niño 1+2 are was above 28 deg.Celsius, in 2010 it is around 22. That graph it is as true as the hockey stick. But the question is: Will your EPA punish YOU because of this?. You must know that these lies won’t affect anyone else in the whole world but you.

Beesaman
January 3, 2011 7:50 am

This can’t be right, I mean Al Gore and his buddies won’t let it be…

January 3, 2011 7:53 am

And the nonsensical claims that the rise in Global TLT anomalies are the result of AGW shall commence.

dp
January 3, 2011 7:54 am

Can you explain what is meant by “warmest year”? Does that mean the greatest imbalance between energy received and energy radiated to space, or the year with the greatest amount of energy held in the atmosphere globally, or the year with the most days with average global temperatures above some value, or? In a year where the oceans are spewing stored energy into the atmosphere I’d kind of expect to see some warming, but I’d also expect it wouldn’t last long.

William
January 3, 2011 7:59 am

There does appear to be some global cooling underway based on ocean surface temperature delta over average. It will be interesting to see what the planetary average will be for 2011 and how the AGW aficionados explain a cooling planet.
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2011/anomnight.1.3.2011.gif

Vince Causey
January 3, 2011 7:59 am

Well that settles the RSS data. I wonder how the GISS pans out?

ew-3
January 3, 2011 8:03 am

GIGO

INGSOC
January 3, 2011 8:03 am

No doubt about it. It was almost worse than we thought. A few one hundredths of a degree would have tipped us into an inferno. Just be thankful for our moral and intellectual superiors in the Gaia movement climatology sciences for having clearly foretold of this near apocalypse. We must heed their warnings and do everything in our power to stop the climate from changing! Look what happened to the dinosaurs! They just wouldn’t listen, now look where they are…
Seriously though, I hope you had a pleasant respite Mr Watts.

Caleb
January 3, 2011 8:08 am

On another site I lurked and overheard an Alarmist inform someone that 2010 was warmest, “because a meteorological year runs from November to November; everyone knows that; it’s always been that way.”

John Peter
January 3, 2011 8:09 am

The latest AMSU-A near surface layer difference on 28 Dec. between 2009 and 2010 is no less than 0.49 degrees C. That is some plunge and could well herald a colder 2011 compared to 2010. The fall starts after 25 December so it could also be a malfunction, not corrected because of holidays.

Pingo
January 3, 2011 8:10 am

Will we see all the watermelon scientists publicly retract all their comments about the “new warmest year”. Very much doubt it, they knew the way things were going which why they got the comment out early. Despicable.

P.F.
January 3, 2011 8:10 am

According to Hansen’s 1988 testimony to Congress and the paper that preceded it, aren’t we supposed to be well over 1°C warmer than the late 20-th Century benchmark with an ice-free Arctic passage? Is there any statistical significance to a prediction that is off by factors of 3x, 4x, even 5x?

January 3, 2011 8:14 am

The press will wait until GISS comes out with their result and then vent on and on about the hottest year ever. But in the end, we are only talking about a few hundreths of a degree.

Caleb
January 3, 2011 8:14 am

Now the question will be, “How low can it go?” Some models show the La Nina hanging tough clear through into 2012. The moving average might drop below zero.

geronimo
January 3, 2011 8:17 am

Anthony, do the RSS satellites measure the temperatures in the polar regions, and if they don’t is that significant?
REPLY: -70 to 82.5 North

Gary
January 3, 2011 8:17 am

I think it’s better to center the moving average value on the midpoint of the range rather than at the end of the period. The 6-month offset is incorrect information.

ClimateWatcher
January 3, 2011 8:20 am

Just to be precise,
would you make it a point to label the MSU plots with the
particular channel analysis?
In this case the ‘LT’ or ‘Lower Troposphere’ analysis.
The MT ( Middle Troposphere ) of course has a significantly different
trend ( over the MSU era ).
The MT is also not a multi channel analysis as the LT is.
Further, the MT roughly corresponds to the height of the
erroneously modeled tropical upper troposhperic hot spot.
While 2010 indicated a second most warm calendar year for the MT as well,
the MSU era trend from RSS is about 0.53 C per century.
That is a rate lower than not only the surface and LT analyses, but lower than the
IPCC significance level.

matthu
January 3, 2011 8:21 am

ahh … but those figures are surely unadjusted figures? 😉

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