Note the black dot:
Source:
http://chartsgraphs.wordpress.com/
Looking at Dr. Roy Spencer’s daily UAH plotter, comparing to last year at this time, globally we are nearly a full degree Fahrenheit cooler:
So far, much of January (red) has been below the average line (orange) for the data set since 2002. It is not in record territory yet for this dataset but with 1/4 degree.
My SWAG for the January average UAH value is -0.12°C. We’ll know in a few days when Dr. Spencer posts.
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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.
Ivan Moho says:
January 28, 2011 at 3:10 am
January 2008 was even cooler than what January 2011 is shaping up to be, by the way, so it’s not a particularly extraordinary result in my opinion.
In my opinion it is an extraordinary result when you consider that there have been 30+ years since the start of the recent warming trend, yet the average monthly temperature can fall to below the average on multiple occasions. This signals that the warming is not significant because it is less than the variability.
if i am not mistaken, Dr. Spencer encourages us to look at channel 5 as the closest representation of the global temperature, but his actual algorithm is more complicated than that. so i think channel 5 is a “rule of thumb”….but i could be confused. i am answering the poster above who said that taking the average of channel 5 daily is lower than the number Dr. Spencer actually puts out.
Just remember, if not for AGW, it would have been even colder. 😉
Dennis says: January 28, 2011 at 6:53 am
“Where did all the energy from last year go?”
It fell off Lower Loxley roof! He he! …
Re:Lewis says:
January 28, 2011 at 7:26 am
” That old enemy of sustainability – couldntgivea[snip]ability – has dealt the movement a setback.”
That one should be engraved on the tombstone of every socialist who ever lived.
I noticed that channel 5 temperature dropped during a single week in November from about where it had been for the past year to about the long term average … and has stayed there since.
And today’s sunspot number is …. zero.
Does anyone know how frequent it is to get a spotless day this far into the cycle?
From Climate Progress-
” Surface temperature anomalies for the period 17 December 2010 to 15 January 2011 show impressive warmth across the Canadian Arctic….
The largest anomalies here exceed 21°C (37.8°F) above average, which are very large values to be sustained for an entire month.”
Could this be the cause?
What data are being presented here?
If the anomaly comparison is truly against the 2002-present average, the result is not impressive. Given that the 2000s was the hottest decade on record, yada, yada, yada, being below that average is ho-hum. It certainly isnt below ‘normal’.
The orange ‘average’ line on the temp chart is not defined on the tracking page. Elsewhere, Spencer indicates that it is the 1979-1998 average (of what?). Given the apparent step change in global temp @ur momisugly 1998, being below the 80s-90s average would be more interesting.
“”””” John Marshall says:
January 28, 2011 at 3:22 am
Well the oceans are cooling so a fall in GAT is to be expected. The UAH figures do not agree with NASA but I am not surprised. “””””
Well UAH and GISS (NASA) don’t even measure the same things do they; so why would we expect them to be the same ?
GISS reads the Temperature (anomalies) inside chain link fence enclosed areas out in parking lots. I guess they fence them in to stop the Weber grills from taking refuge under the owl box.
Does UAH CH-5 read the 14,000 ft Temps or am I confusing this with something else. I’m sure they don’t read the SSTs at 14,000 ft, so maybe its the Temp anomaly.
The graph shown above does show some pretty wild swings for the last few years; but do we know how rare such unprecedented crash dives are. I guess the year is off to another interesting start; but it looks like the sea ice will peak at a lowish level compared to other recent years; well it’s just weather; the people back east know that and expect to be back in steam conditions before too long.
The difference between temperatures now and temperatures one year ago (red line vs. light blue line) is quite impressive. More so when you consider that the drop occurred in a single week and has stayed there.
Anthony – just remembered what happened the last time we had a dramatic fall in temperature like this in Jan 2008. The CRU data came out around the 20th of the (following) month. I knew something was in the air and I was keenly looking forward to the result so I could post off a few letters to the newspapers.
So, imagine my disgust when the week before we had never ending news coverage with the papers full of global warming nutter propaganda (with the biased BBC leading the charge).
So, by the time the CRU temperature came out the media had spent so much time telling the world we were going to cook to death – that you can imagine how successful I was getting any letters published regarding the 14year low.
“John Marshall says:
January 28, 2011 at 3:22 am
Well the oceans are cooling so a fall in GAT is to be expected. The UAH figures do not agree with NASA but I am not surprised.”
Of course not.
UAH doesn’t water board its data like NASA does.
“”””” Dr. Lurtz says:
January 28, 2011 at 8:36 am
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. “””””
“”””” 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. “””””
Well Dr Lurz, just how fast would you like the oceans to absorb heat? Is about 2.249 x 10^8 m/s fast enough for you ? That’s roughly the velocity of light in sea water; which is how fast incoming solar energy is deposited deep in the ocean. It takes about 2.223 microseconds, for the last vestiges of that energy to penetrate to 500 metres depth (99%).
Heat storage in the ocean is virtually instantaneous. It is the return of that energy to the weather/climate region nearer the surface, that takes time to happen. The heating of those deeper water (during daylight) should set up vertical convection currents , that will bring some of that energy back to the surface; and of course the competing conduction processes, will take some of it even deeper; but only under a rather low driving Temperature gradient.
An Inquirer:
“Others and myself who have followed the UAH daily plotter (for channel 5) have noticed that the average of the daily anomalies does not equal what Dr. Spencer reports for the monthly figure. The last time I did the math, the November average of daily anomalies was noticeably lower than Dr. Spencer report for November. I have not seen an explanation why. See http://troyca.wordpress.com/2010/12/03/aqua-ch5-daily-vs-uah-monthly/ for a graph of how the two correspond to one another.”
Keep in mind that I posted that before this most recent baseline change, which lowers the UAH anamoly by about 0.1 C. It’s still not an exact match, but the reported UAH anomaly on average is only about 0.08 C higher than the AMSU average of daily anomalies now, rather than 0.18 C.
Lubo Motl says:
January 28, 2011 at 7:51 am
“My prediction for the UAH January 2011 anomaly is +0.06 deg C, obtained from Channel 5 by a comparison with January 2010.”
But, our top Nobel prize-winning climate scientist has stated…
“The Earth has a fever and just like when your child has a fever, maybe that’s a warning of something seriously wrong…”
The Earth’s thermometer must be broken!
(By the way, the CAGW crowd shouldn’t worry if the mean temperature drops back to normal or below normal – the scientists at NASA and NOAA will continue their efforts to make the past cooler so as to keep their GCM hindcasts accurate. Because we all know that the past cooler than you remember).
Claude Harvey, you noticed – today is either a laugh out loud or a couldntgivea[snip]ability day! Read the article, though, it’s one of the funniest I’ve ever read!
“”””” stephen richards says:
January 28, 2011 at 5:12 am
Joe Lalonde says:
January 28, 2011 at 4:10 am
How much water vapour can be generated with an air temperature of ~ -20°C and a water temperature of -4°C ? I do not know the energy of sublimation for salt water but am aware that some energy from the sun may be lost by Bragg reflection. What are your thoughts? “””””
Well there’s not enough information in your post to guess at what you are referring to. But last time I checked “Bragg” reflection, is something that happens in crystalline structures. For example VCSELs (Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers) are able to function because underlying the active lasing gain layer, there is a “Bragg Mirror”, made from multiple crystalline layers; it is related to diffraction from ordered structures, such as first used in X-Ray studies.
But the reflectance of sea water or any water, is normally referred to as “Fresnel Reflection”, which is the result of a set of equations that can be derived directly from Maxwells Equations of Electromagnetic Radiation. Those equations explain why in general the reflected (and transmitted) light from an optical surface (including water) is partially plane polarized; or in the case of the Brewster Angle Incidence, the reflected light is completely plane polarized. (Brewster angle is arctan (N) where N is the refractive index; actually the ratio of the indices for the two materials (>1.0)). The reflectance at a media boundary, like air/water, or air/glass is very much the same as the reflections that result in a transmission line (co-ax cable), when there are impedance discontinuities.
The Transmitted beam is never completely polarized under any condition; because the Reflected components are only of the order of 2-3% of the total.
So water is only weakly reflecting; so 975 or so of the incident energy is transmitted, and if the water is deep enough is completely absorbed eventually; but mabe only after 100-500 metres or so. So for all practiuical circumstances, deep ocean water is pretty much a Black body absorber; or at least a gray body with an emissivity of about 0.97.
Sans the blue Raleigh scattering in the atmosphere, earth would be known as the “Black Planet” rather than the “Blue Planet”.
Anthony:
This just in from Science Daily via LinkedIn (here is the first paragraph):
Mass Extinction Linked to Ancient Climate Change, New Details Reveal
ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2011) — About 450 million years ago, Earth suffered the second-largest mass extinction in its history — the Late Ordovician mass extinction, during which more than 75 percent of marine species died. Exactly what caused this tremendous loss in biodiversity remains a mystery, but now a team led by researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has discovered new details supporting the idea that the mass extinction was linked to a cooling climate. [My emphasis]
Here is the link:
http://www.linkedin.com/news?viewArticle=&articleID=345093490&gid=3062307&type=news&item=345093490&articleURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Esciencedaily%2Ecom%2Freleases%2F2011%2F01%2F110127141703%2Ehtm&urlhash=STiQ&goback=%2Egde_3062307_news_345093490
From my previous post (Please use Frankenstein’s Monster’s dialect): Warm good, Cold bad.
JJ,
if projected -0.12 anomaly holds until the end of months, that would be slightly bellow the old (1979-99) average as well.
If temps can vary by 0.5 degrees in a six month period than how can we possibly claim that the average has risen 0.7 degrees in the last century and be alarmed about it?
[REPLY – To be fair, a die roll can vary widely, but after 100 rolls we would expect the average to be c. 3.5. On the other hand, 0.7C increase in and of itself (stipulating the adjustments are correct) is still nothing to be alarmed about. ~ Evan]
Bubbagyro
I started looking into the impacts of warmer waters on fish in the Eastern North Atlantic and came across this recent study- which seemed to show that species richness increased with warmer temps. The authors also noted a number of other studies which showed the same thing for butterflies, plants, freshwater and marine fish, etc.
http://www.int-res.com/articles/feature/m414p001.pdf
In one area, the West of Scotland, the authors found a decrease in the number of boreal (cold water) fish, but they also found a positive correlation to fishing practices here as well as warmer temps, so kindof hard to tease apart I guess.
Haven’t looked at those other studies yet, but the message again seemed to be a net gain for biology in a warmer world.
I guess that should be a good thing. ?
Anyone like to throw some cold water on this conclusion?
Stu:
To be fair, the conclusion of the paper only relates to catastrophically cold times, not incrementally cold or incrementally warm.
The fact that flora seems to be moving downslope (recent article) seems like the terrestrial life can migrate to what suits them.
As for fish, I am reminded of a statement by an old Portuguese fisherman when asked if the fishing was good here. He said simple, “The fish, they swim around.”
For there to be mass marine extinctions, it must have been really bad times, in which the fish could not get away—like a snowball earth.
If you look at history, times of cooling was when we have had periods of upheaval in human history. Cool periods are when Rome was sacked, the Huns were invading, the Goths were invading, plagues were on the march and certain regents were losing their heads.
Colder periods of climate are very hot periods of history.
I don’t like “interesting times”.