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Guest post by Bob Tisdale
This mid-month update only includes the shorter-term NINO3.4 and global SST anomaly graphs; that is, the ones from January 2004 to present. Both the NINO3.4 and Global SST anomalies have dropped.
As noted in the November 2010 SST Anomaly Update, the global SST anomalies do not appear as though they will drop to the level they had reached during the 2007/08 La Niña, even if one were to account for the differences in NINO3.4 SST anomalies. This of course will be raised by alarmists as additional proof of anthropogenic global warming.
But the reason the global SST anomalies have warmed in that time is due primarily to the fact that the East Indian and West Pacific Oceans (about 25% of the surface area of the global oceans) can warm in response to both El Niño and La Niña events. Refer to Can El Niño Events Explain All of the Global Warming Since 1976? – Part 1 and Can El Niño Events Explain All of the Global Warming Since 1976? – Part 2, and the video included in La Niña Is Not The Opposite Of El Niño – The Videos.
Keep in mind, the warm water released from below the surface of the Pacific Warm Pool doesn’t simply vanish at the end of the El Niño.
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NINO3.4
NINO3.4 SST anomalies for the week centered on January 12, 2011 show that central equatorial Pacific SST anomalies have dropped in the past two weeks. They cycled back down to near their earlier low for this La Niña season. They’re at approximately -1.8 deg C.
http://i53.tinypic.com/zxp5l0.jpg
NINO3.4 SST Anomalies – Short-Term
GLOBAL
Weekly Global SST anomalies have dropped to a new seasonal low, but they are far from the low reached during the 2007/08 La Niña. They are presently at +0.04 deg C.
http://i51.tinypic.com/2choryb.jpg
Global SST Anomalies – Short-Term
SOURCE
OI.v2 SST anomaly data is available through the NOAA NOMADS system:
http://nomad3.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/pdisp_sst.sh?lite
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As a humble engineer and not a scientist, unversed so to speak in the intricacies of global thermal dynamics, I have an observation that seems most at odds with global warming per sec.
The ocean temperature anomalies on the high side are in the north and south polar regions bleeding heat into precipitation of wet and white on a global basis.
The warmth in the arctic ocean is of particular concern, as the heat being lost must be huge. The sun having a sabbatical that was predicted by real a scientist is a worry that the lost heat may not be replaced.
That the L.I.A. happened in similar conditions augers unwell for the northern hemisphere. The sun is almost unvarying in its output regardless of sunspots, however the distance to the sun varies greatly and rapidly depending on the orbits and alignments of our large neighbours.
The inverse square rule applies to the distance from the sun for our wattage, thus at the moment we are some-what shy 50 watts per square metre or more.
Measuring the output of the sun from solar orbit is some-what less than useful, and tells nothing of what the Earth receives. The sun is behaving as it always does, pushed and pulled and bullied by its companions and thus is predictable.
Brave forward thinkers have hindcast and forecast our sun and our prevailing climate with real Newtonian mathematics. In very short shift the sun can vary in distance from the Earth 3 to 5 Million Kms, with the inverse square rule that is a ship load of watts we do not get.
The solar system is in a perpetual waltz with periodic sinusoidal occurances that give rise to change in our rather special little life raft. That a cold snap is upon us is beyond doubt, the lack of sunspots is an indication of the effects of the orbits of the major planets and the effects on our climate of this condition is known in history.
For two thousand years the planet has been cooling in fits and starts, one can hope that the overdue ice age stays overdue for a millenium or two, or at least a couple of hundred years.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/images3/nino34SSTMon.gif
ENSO predictive models failed big time one year ago, so grain of salt recommended.
Walter Dnes says: “Anyone have alternate data for the past 2 weeks?”
You’d have to retrieve through the NOAA NOMADS website:
http://nomad3.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/pdisp_sst.sh
Just eyeballing, but it looks to me that global SST has dropped more in the last year than in any 12 month period on the above graph.
I really enjoy your site, Bob. I’m a graph guy.
Bob
Any idea’s why the Gulf of Mexico and “Gulf Stream” track are so low considering that the AMO is positive?.
The sea surface temperature off the south-west coast of Western Australia is of particular interest because it’s now carrying a category 4 severe tropical cyclone predicted to hit the mainland within 36 hours.
TC Bianca is spinning above 200kmh at the moment and the BoM has today hit the major emergency buttons as the capital Perth is in the firing line with about 1.6 million people exposed to the current cyclone path.
The region is parched so bushfires are on the cards, although locals are hoping for heavy rainfall to fill our dams. Cyclones usually only track this far south on average every eight years but it’s been quiet for about 20 years. The last major south-west impact was TC Alby in 1978 (five deaths), although she never touched land.
Bianca is now tracking around 35kmh and is expected to rapidly degenerate in the next day because of cooler south-west sea surface temperatures, and the BoM is predicting cat 1 wind strength upon landfall with winds up to 120kmh.
The interesting question is the orange warm SST wedge down the West Australian coast in the map atop this page, heat carried south by the Leeuwin Current. Is this warm enough to maintain Bianca’s rage to cat 2 when she touches down early Sunday?
There’s a lot of damaging difference between gusts up to 125kmh and gusts up to 164kmh. With good luck the SST will cut Bianca to little more than a rain-bearing depression but with bad luck it’ll deliver a nasty punch.
Tropical cyclones generate with SST around 26 C and the current SST off the south west is between 23 and 23.5 C:
http://www.marine.csiro.au/~lband/web_point/
However, colours in the BoM map from yesterday look between 24 and 26 C:
http://reg.bom.gov.au/oceanography/forecasts/idyoc10.shtml?region=10&forecast=1
If the following BoM graph is accurate, south west SST temps for January look about the same as they were in 1978 when Alby skirted the coast…
http://reg.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/timeseries.cgi?variable=sst®ion=sw&season=01
The landfall strength of Bianca will be interesting.
Updated BoM cyclone tracking is at:
http://reg.bom.gov.au/products/IDW60281.shtml
Enough research … time to batten down the hatches.
The radical shift in temperature anomaly points to the issue of temperature measurement. It would be a violation of Physical laws for that much heat to be radiated into space that quickly without a massive change in Global temperature; therefore, either the heat must be going somewhere, or, the temperature measurements do no represent the Global temperature!!
Where could the heat be going?? It must either radiate into space, or it must go into the oceans. The La Nina shows that the heat is going into the oceans; whereas, the El Nino shows that heat is coming from the oceans.
If we could get a “read” on Global ocean surface temperature (0-100 foot depth), we could determine how much heat is going into the oceans. I don’t know of any analysis available.
My thoughts are that the oceans can not absorb heat that fast; therefore, the sudden change in temperature anomaly is due to the inability to correctly measure the Earth’s Global Temperature.
Mycroft says: “Any idea’s why the Gulf of Mexico and “Gulf Stream” track are so low considering that the AMO is positive?”
The map linked at the top of the post is from NESDIS. And here’s the full version:
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/anomnight.current.gif
It’s pattern is “similar” to a correlation map of global temperatures in response to the East Indian-West Pacific SST anomalies (which warms in response to La Nina events).
http://i53.tinypic.com/14kz9s4.jpg
The correlation map is from my most recent post:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2011/01/removing-effects-of-natural-variables.html
Bob said:
“As noted in the November 2010 SST Anomaly Update, the global SST anomalies do not appear as though they will drop to the level they had reached during the 2007/08 La Niña, even if one were to account for the differences in NINO3.4 SST anomalies. This of course will be raised by alarmists as additional proof of anthropogenic global warming.”
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Bob, I very much respect your SST analysis, but the last sentence here is quite absurd. As as “warmist”, as in, one who believes that it is more likely than not that some level of AGW is occurring, I also can appreciate the natural long and short term cycles. Even if the current La Nina episode, which is occurring in the context of a cool cycle of the PDO, were to somehow dip lower than the previous La Nina level, that would prove nothing for or against the general theory that anthropogenic GHG’s have caused some level of AGW over the past century.
Looks like Indian and most other oceans are cooling to me!
Mr. Gates,
The trends between ENSO and temperature runs a LOT closer together than the CO2 and temperature trend does.
We know very well that CO2 is going up and up at a fairly steady rate.But temperature goes up and down in a very erratic pattern.No visible connection at all.
I have to agree that the proponents of the AGW hypothesis have little basis to try the CO2/temperature connection argument.It was dead from the start.
Cheers.
sunsettommy says:
January 28, 2011 at 7:09 pm
Mr. Gates,
The trends between ENSO and temperature runs a LOT closer together than the CO2 and temperature trend does.
We know very well that CO2 is going up and up at a fairly steady rate.But temperature goes up and down in a very erratic pattern.No visible connection at all.
I have to agree that the proponents of the AGW hypothesis have little basis to try the CO2/temperature connection argument.It was dead from the start.
Cheers
________
The effects of CO2, including positive feedback related to increases in water vapor and polar amplification, were never shown by any of the GCM’s to be linear. This fallacy seems to be continued by AGW skeptics as a way to somehow show the AGW Theory to be completely wrong, but it does nothing of the sort. The idea that small annual increases in CO2 will continually and in a linear fashion lead to small annual increases in temperature was NEVER part of the theory, as it was only that eventually, the forcing of CO2 would become the primary driver of warming as all other forcings would become noise in this longer term signal. Honest skeptics know this and don’t use the lack of direct linear correlation to annual temperatures as an argument against AGW.