From Dr. Roy Spencer:
UAH Update for January 2011: Global Temperatures in Freefall
…although this, too, shall pass, when La Nina goes away.
LA NINA FINALLY BEING FELT IN TROPOSPHERIC TEMPERATURES
January 2011 experienced a precipitous drop in lower tropospheric temperatures over the tropics, Northern Hemisphere, and Southern Hemisphere. This was not unexpected, since global average sea surface temperatures have been falling for many months, with a head start as is usually the case with La Nina.
YR MON GLOBE NH SH TROPICS
2010 1 0.542 0.675 0.410 0.635
2010 2 0.510 0.553 0.466 0.759
2010 3 0.554 0.665 0.443 0.721
2010 4 0.400 0.606 0.193 0.633
2010 5 0.454 0.642 0.265 0.706
2010 6 0.385 0.482 0.287 0.485
2010 7 0.419 0.558 0.280 0.370
2010 8 0.441 0.579 0.304 0.321
2010 9 0.477 0.410 0.545 0.237
2010 10 0.306 0.257 0.356 0.106
2010 11 0.273 0.372 0.173 -0.117
2010 12 0.181 0.217 0.145 -0.222
2011 1 -0.009 -0.055 0.038 -0.369
This is shown in the following plot (note the shorter period of record, and different zero-baseline):
SO WHY ALL THE SNOWSTORMS?
While we would like to think our own personal experience of the snowiest winter ever in our entire, Methuselah-ian lifespan has some sort of cosmic — or even just global — significance, I would like to offer this plot of global oceanic precipitation variations from the same instrument that measured the above sea surface temperatures (AMSR-E on NASA’s Aqua satellite):
Note that precipitation amounts over the global-average oceans vary by only a few percent. What this means is that when one area gets unusually large amounts of precipitation, another area must get less.
Precipitation is always associated with rising air, and so a large vigorous precipitation system in one location means surrounding regions must have enhanced sinking air (with no precipitation).
In the winter, of course, the relatively warmer oceans next to cold continental air masses leads to snowstorm development in coastal areas. If the cold air mass over the midwest and eastern U.S. is not dislodged by warmer Pacific air flowing in from the west, then the warm oceanic air from the Gulf of Mexico and western Atlantic keeps flowing up and over the cold dome of air, producing more snow and rain. The “storm track” and jet stream location follows that boundary between the cold and warm air masses.
GSW says on February 2, 2011 at 2:37 pm
Pedant alert, but if you cannot enter characters with the tilde over them, then you should spell it La Ninya and El Ninyo.
Further pedant alert. A noun is feminine or masculine, not female or male.
Now if the *red* line dips below 0.0 anomaly, then I’ll be moderately impressed.
For now, eh, better than not, I guess.
It more or less looks to me like this last el nino/la nina cycle are going to average out to back around the .2C we’ve been dancing around for quite some time now.
Which is still a problem for the AGWers, because it’s supposed to be going up .2C every decade in the relentless fashion they insist on.
Jeff Norman says:
February 2, 2011 at 2:31 pm
Assuming this temperature trend is correct and taking into account that temperature is only a proxy for the heat energy in the Earth fluidsphere, where did the heat energy go? As my thermodynamics professor always proclaimed, “The heat goes to Mars!”
And assuming the temperature spikes back up again, where was the heat hiding?
…………………………………………
My question also. Last time I asked it I got a few short messages saying “Look at that bright object in the sky and think”. However, it is more complicated than that. AGW suggests that a warming change should be irreversible in the sort term, with reduction in GHG the main way to lower the temp. Here, we have temperatures lowering with increasing GHG. The mechanism, by elimination, must be that the fluctuations we have been measuring are transient weather noise and noise goes up and down in the sort term, much as seasons do.
So, do we have a conservative system of constant total global heat content, with weather noise wiggles, or are we seeing systematic changes such as those that would result from insolation variability? (I’me leaving out geometric effects such as orbital cycles here).
One can’t simply say “It’s wet because of La Nina”, because that might mean it is less wet somewhere else. That is, ocean oscillations are not the end of the story; they are but a step among several steps when viewed globally.
Where is R. Gates ?
In another thread a while ago, he saw a confirmation of climate models as the tropospheric temperatures remained elevated a few months after the ground temperatures have already plunged.
Though that was not true because longer term ground temperature trends were still higher while they should have been lower (Lindzen therefore assumes ground based temperature trends are inflated by a whopping 60%).
Anyways, the UAH plunge came a bit later than expected, but here it is.
Time to become a 51% sceptic!
And then, posting something of value over on realclimate, after you will get censored and deleted, you may become a 99% sceptic faster than you ever thought.
Are you now, after this a 51% sceptic ?
Shouldn’t we expect significant warming from all the latent heat released when snow forms?
GSW says:
February 2, 2011 at 2:37 pm
@NoAstronomer
Because the warm waters of El Niño arrive about the Christmas season along the Peruvian coast the connection to “the Christ child” seems to have been made. See here:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/elnino/el-nino-story.html
For anyone interested here is a comment of the local effects of El Niño – also known as “The Callao Painter,” or simply “the Aguaje.”
“ . . . and the invasion of a southward flowing, inshore current, the “El Nino” and the accompanying phenomenon known as the “Aguaje” or Callao Painter . . . In the Aguaje of 1925, the temperature of the surf at Negritos in northwestern Peru rose sharply . . . Such a sharp rise in the temperature of the sea water, if prolonged, results in a catastrophic destruction of most forms of marine life along large parts of the Peruvian coast as well as an upset in the climatic pattern on land. At such times, the decomposition of the vast quantity of dead marine life, much of it cast upon the beach, generates volumes of hydrogen sulphide that blackens the walls of houses and hulls of ships which are painted with white lead (the Callao Painter). Evidence of the southward flowing El Nino current in 1925 was demonstrated by the large numbers of sea-snakes stranded on the beach . . .” [passage #34]
http://www04.us.archive.org/stream/mollusksoftropic00olss/mollusksoftropic00olss_djvu.txt
More?
http://manoa.hawaii.edu/hpicesu/2010_04_14/Seabirds%20and%20El%20Nino.pdf
“The 1982-1984 El Nino and associated events affected seabirds in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Effects ranged from extralimital dispersal to nest desertion and adult mortality, and appeared most severe in the eastern Pacific upwellings off Peru and California, and in the central Pacific. Up to 85% of seabirds died in Peru. ”
Yeah, in SWFL we are running about 10-15 degrees below normal … the inshore water temp is holding in the low 60s.
So those dashed lines through zero are a typo right; or maybe a joke ?
Or is some statisticator going to claim they mean something (relative to the plotted data that is; I presume the plotted is data; not counting the dashed lines.
So I’m a little puzzled about the Global Oceanic Precipitation. I presume the “Oceanic” implies “sansland”, so now how does
AMSR-E sense “precipitation”, and is it type specific, as in liquid or solid, or otherwise discriminatory. Enquiring minds would like to know what machine is reading what Physical signal/parameter; if Dr Roy could explain, please . And if these percentages 4-7% max excursions are from 41 day rolling averages, izzere some raw unaveraged plot we can see to get some idea of the peak smoothing (if such exists; please again.)
What do you want to the betGLOBAL WARMING CROWD will try to find out where the error ,which there isn’t one there ,will be.And of course they will have an answer like because of GLOBAL WARMING it turned everything cooler .Just a natural variance of course but in 30 years it will be hot hot HOT IN JULY.Don’t you jist love how they always have an answer where it’s believable or not.
Sea Level rise has stalled since 2006. How far will it drop?
And for those interested, I’ve posted the preliminary Reynolds OI.v2 SST data for January 2011:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2011/02/preliminary-january-2011-sst-anomaly.html
“”””” Dr. Bob says:
February 2, 2011 at 2:52 pm
At a panel discussion on Capitol Hill last week, Joe Romm indicated that we would see catastrophic affects of GW by 2020 and will be desperate to get off carbon fuels. Based on the response of the audience and fellow panel members, no one took him seriously. But at least he did put a line in the sand that we can hold him to. “””””
I take a dim view of rival gang members drawing any sort of graffiti on the sand. Lacking a super Teracomputer, I need all the sand clean, to do my calculations on. So Stop it Joe !
We just had the coldest january in living memory and the BOM are trying to tell us teh anomly for the month was +1.5 degrees celsius!
Hey i just had a thought, if there’s one good thing to come out of all this malarky is the fact that Americans might now start using celsius
The significance of a negative spike in the UAH global temperature is quite low, based on the number of times such a spike has occurred and the temperatures have increased subsequently. Looking at the large picture, it does not appear that the upward trend in UAH temperature has been statistically broken.
Darren Parker says:
“Hey i just had a thought, if there’s one good thing to come out of all this malarky is the fact that Americans might now start using celsius.”
Fat chance of that. It’s 58 degrees and chilly here.☺
King of cool said:
“Both Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extent are presently below average and there are plenty of “extreme events” to back up their claims.”
The real metric for the effect of AGW on the arctic sea ice is volume not extent. Of course it easy to measure sea ice extent by satellite since 1979. However the pips 2 data has been convincingly shown by posters here to demonstrate a substantial gain in volume since 2007. The cryostat 2 satellite that was launched in April should be measuring the volume and I believe will soon verify the estimates of growing volume.
Since increasing volume is an exothermic reaction, some of the heat observed in the arctic may be due to the freezing. In addition new glacial isostatic adjustment measurements using gps now show that Greenland is losing ice at a much lower rate than previously estimated. I am not as knowledgeable as most of the experts that post here but I have my own theory that based on ice core solar proxy measurements going back 750 years there appears to be a twenty year lag between a change in group sunspot number and climate. I believe that twenty year delay has just kicked in and it is going to grow colder for the next twenty years.
Actually, you can bet on a number of such things at Intrade. E.g.: Will Global Average Temperature for 2011-2012 Be Warmest on Record?
A number of others here: https://www.intrade.com/jsp/intrade/contractSearch/index.jsp?clsID=19&grpID=8628#
aaron says:
February 2, 2011 at 3:54 pm
“Shouldn’t we expect significant warming from all the latent heat released when snow forms?”
At what altitude did the snow form? How much CO2 was between that released heat and the ground?
Hmm….
“”””” aaron says:
February 2, 2011 at 3:54 pm
Shouldn’t we expect significant warming from all the latent heat released when snow forms? “””””
The normal order of procession, is for the Burro to be in FRONT of the cart; since they will stop dead in their tracks, if they see anything immediately in front of them.
So NYET on the warming; the snow simply will refuse to form, UNTIL all that latent heat of freezing is REMOVED from the water (or water vapor). Don’t forget, you have to extract about 539 +80 Calories per gram to go from water vapor to ice crystals. Only then can you have snow; AFTER the latent heat is already gone; kapische ?
And that heat is lost in the upper atmosphere mostly due to radiative cooling, hence at least 50% to space.
When water is cooled continuously so the Temperature is dropping, the Temp comes to a screeching halt, when it gets to zero (usually under normal conditions); and it stays at zero until the latent heat is removed, and then solidification starts (aka freezing) For a small quantity of water (so that temperature gradients are small), the whole lot stays at zero till it all freezes, and then the Temperature continues its downward journey.
This Temperature hesitation on freezing, is used to advantage, when doing black body cavity measurements, such as a freezing copper black body cavity for example. The Candela used to be specified as 1/60th of the Luminous Intensity of a one square cm Black Body cavity, at the Temperature of freezing Platinum. Only Bill Gates, can afford a Freezing Platinum Black Body Laboratory Standard; so most of the poor folks have to make do with a copper one.
Same goes for condensing from the vapor phase; the latent heat represents the energy that is keeping the molecules apart in the vapor phase, and that energy has to be dumped before the condensation can occur, and only then can the Temperature continue to drop.
So when steam condenses on your skin (or your wife’s) in the kitchen, it is going to dump about 539 calories per gram onto your skin, which is going to burn the hell out of you; but your skin Temperature is NOT going to suddenly rise to 639 deg C. It can never rise above the 100 deg C that the steam was (presumably) at the time.
So again; nyet on warming after precipitation.
Actually the names are “EL NIÑO” -the boy- and “LA NIÑA” -the girl. They first talked about EL NIÑO and EL ANTI NIÑO. But since here in Latin America EL NIÑO means EL NIÑO DIOS or the newborn Jesus Christ , el ANTI NIÑO sounded like the Anti-Christ. So they changed the name to LA NIÑA.
Here in Latin America for Christmas we honor Jesus Christ Child. NAVIDAD (spanish) means the birth of Jesus and NATALE (portuguese) too means the birth of Jesus. Almost every home will have a Christmas crib honoring EL NIÑO DIOS -Jesus Christ Child- So it is understandable that talking about EL ANTI NIÑO was unthinkable in this wonderful Latin America.
This UAH temperature shows the slow sinking of the “satanic co2” Titanic. Beautiful! Cheers
Building on what Anything Is Possible said,
In 2005 two solar physicists, Galina Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtsev, bet climate modeler James Annan $10,000 that global temperatures would be cooler in 2012-2017 compared to 1998-2003. When this La Nina goes away (this too shall pass), others may take her place.
Bruce says: February 2, 2011 at 4:34 pm
“Sea Level rise has stalled since 2006. How far will it drop?”
It is a secret.
Most recient published data data from
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_noib_ns_global.txt
2010.7143 25.189
2010.7415 22.563
We are awaiting another eight or so data points (2 1/2 months of data) to finish off 2010, but for some reasone they do not seem to be being posted.
I wonder why?
Could the drop in sea level be worse then they thought?
Actually, you DO get warming — up where the snow is forming. Where the heat goes is another matter, as GES sez.
The La Nina looks like it has reached bottom now and is on the way back up. The Nino 3 region around the Galapagos Islands is warming pretty fast now even though there is still alot of cool water just below the surface. The lack of clouds means the sun is beating down day after day and the top surface of the ocean at least is warming now.
The Nino 3.4 minimum will be recorded as happening in the first week of October or in the week of January 12th but they are close enough that we can say the week of January 12th was the bottom peak in Nino 3.4.
So, there is still about 3 months of cooling yet to come after the January UAH numbers.
The extra rains and snowstorms will continue for awhile yet because the atmosphere is dumping water vapour as it cools.
Next up is the big red spot at 160E, 150 metres depth which is slowly making its way east.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ocean/weeklyenso/wkteq_xz.gif
goodlocust;
Yeah, there must be CO2 back-radiative insulation of the upper clouds from the ground, by GHG logic. Once the H2O heat-pipe has pierced most of the troposphere, it’s “up, up, and awaaayy!”
😉