Mid-January 2011 SST Anomaly Update

Combet’s hot air tax
by Bob Carter
January 3, 2011
No seasonal break for the climate commissars
Following the failure of the UN’s Cancun talkfest, Climate Minister Greg Combet, displaying what Paul Keating would doubtless term remarkable intransigence, commented that it was still “very important from the government’s point of view that a market mechanism is adopted” to put a price on carbon dioxide.
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2011/01/bob-carter
Support for Australia’s international objectives. Australian objectives presumably should not include economic and political stupidity in the face of the collapsed talkfests at Copenhagen and Cancun. The idea that overseas nations will discriminate against Australia unless we implement anti-carbon dioxide measures is well worn out, and has anyway always been a juvenile argument. Nations take hard decisions in accordance with their sovereign economic interests, irrespective of Green lobby group dreaming.
The irony is that the eleven principles adopted by the MCCC, to the degree that they are not mere persiflage, add up to a strong argument for NOT introducing a levy on carbon dioxide emissions, i.e., the principles indicate a course of action precisely the opposite of what the government currently intends.
This obvious conclusion escapes not only the government, but also our national newspaper which editorialised recently (December 30th):
Blaming Julia Gillard’s [intended] carbon legislation [for recent increases in the price of power] will come easily to consumers — even if putting a price on carbon is inevitable and logical. A price mechanism is the cheapest way to end uncertainty and reduce pollution …
Meanwhile, from the UK has just come the news that, with a December temperature average of -1 deg. C, England has already had its second coldest winter since records begin in 1659 – and, if January and February continue to be cold, England may yet achieve its coldest winter in the last 1,000 years.
The effective response from the British Meteorological Office (BMO) was for Director Julia Sligo to demand more funding to purchase bigger computers, saying:
It’s quite clear that if we could run our models at a higher resolution we could do a much better job — tomorrow — in terms of our seasonal and decadal predictions. It’s so frustrating. We keep saying we need four times the computing power. We’re talking just 10 or 20 million a year — dollars or pounds — which is tiny compared to the damage done by disasters.
The delusion that pouring more funds into ever more powerful computers will “solve” the climate prediction problem is chimerical, and simply represents an infinite regress for continuing (indeed, increased) funding for the very scientists who have led us astray so badly by their naïve over-reliance on unvalidated computer models in the first place.
To the degree that statements such as those made by BMO’s Dr. Sligo represent the views of the professional meteorological community, that community has now moved beyond parody and demands to be ridiculed. Can it really be the case that amidst the hurricane of Green spin about global warming, not a single bureaucrat or government politician in Canberra has retained a functioning bullshit detector?
Remarkably, in enunciating their “eleven principles”, the Canberra MCCC managed to evade entirely any mention of the underpinning scientific justification for introducing a tax on carbon dioxide. That is, of course, because there is none (which is doubtless why only one, tame, scientist was included as a member of the committee in the first place).
As the government will discover from its focus groups over the next few months, no matter how hard Mr. Combet tries to spin it as beneficial, they will introduce a carbon dioxide tax at their considerable electoral peril.
For where global warming alarmism is concerned, the good news is that the bullshit detectors of the Australian electorate are both alive and activated.

There is still a difference in the behavior of the central Atlantic compared to 07/08. Much like the stock market past performance does not predict future performance.

Bob,
In the first chart the period of time for the SST anomalies to be around -1.6 is about the same currently as the time period before and after 2008. That’s just viewing, so I don’t have the exact days or average for these. Still, the current value seems not to be about to jump up. So, is a longer period of slightly less intense La Niña more or less interesting?

The reduction of the strength of the ENSO to just a narrow band of numbers may hide information that would show different behavior.
If these SST anomaly maps are compared:
Jan 13, 2008
http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom-080113.gif
Jan 14, 2011
http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom-110123.gif
It is apparent that there is a considerable difference in the spread of the cold upwelling. It may be that the air pressure differential and winds were stronger – but the SST anomalies appear colder and more widely spread this time.
Or am I looking at the wrong thing?

It may look like it’s stalling but it could still drop further. Sun continues to almost flatline. SOI continues high and will prob finish the month around +18

Thanks Mr. Tisdale,
Your site’s archives are the best eduction for anyone hoping to understand the oceans.

I wonder what the Navy Submariners know about the oceans temperature gradient. They know more about this than any scientific organisation do. And the records are go back to the 50’s perhaps?
They need to know. And it’s classified me think.

Ian W says: “It is apparent that there is a considerable difference in the spread of the cold upwelling. It may be that the air pressure differential and winds were stronger – but the SST anomalies appear colder and more widely spread this time.”
Sometimes it’s better to compare monthly maps because of the weather noise. So I checked the monthly maps for Dec 2007:
http://i52.tinypic.com/30lze6r.jpg
and Dec 2010:
http://i55.tinypic.com/huofg0.jpg
Still tough to tell.
The other way to check is at the GISS map making webpage:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/
There you can create a “trend” map of the month and years in question for the SST data only. It gives you the change in temperature based on local linear trends, and it’s the same Reynolds OI.v2 SST data:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2010&month_last=12&sat=-1&sst=1&type=trends&mean_gen=12&year1=2007&year2=2010&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg

@ur momisugly Ed Scott:
January 27, 2011 at 4:51 pm
Hah. I wonder how it long it will take the BMO to understand that it is their own equations that are wrong and not the resolution. Until they bring those equations back to reality they will only fail miserably. Tuned for an upward slope for so many years, that is their problem and the unwillingness to correct, we have the same problem on this side of the pond.

Mother Nature plays with loaded dice. About anything can and probably will still happen. I strongly suspect this La Niña is not over yet. It very easily could drag on, deepening or just taking its own sweet time about heading back to neutral conditions.

Hi Bob,
So you think this La Niña is going to end in the next three months or so? (Not trying to put words in your mouth, just my take on what you had said.) I was thinking that it would moderate, (to around -1.0 or so…) then swing back into full gear in late summer or early fall. Would you consider that scenario unlikely?

i don’t get the article. sst’s look like they are probably still dropping and the la nina integral looks as big as 2008.