By Dr. David Whitehouse, The Global Warming Policy Foundation
Now that the relevant data for the temperature of the Earth’s surface for the past year are available, it is instructive to examine the claims made by some that it was the hottest year ever, and claims made by others that it was in second place.
One way of looking at the year’s data we have used before is to see how the individual months fare. This is only one way of interpreting the data, there are others, but this way will show if any record temperature is a result of a general yearlong rise or just a few exceptional months.
These five temperature databases I examine give the monthly temperature to thousandths of a degree which is superfluous. When rounded up to a more physically sensible 0.1 deg almost all of the differences between the years of the past decade go away, but that is another story, and not the subject of this post.
2010 was an El Nino year. Before I examine the monthly temperature for the year I thought it would be instructive to see what an El Nino year looks like. In this case the strongest El Nino on record.
1998
Data from Hadcrut3 produced by the Climatic Research Unit.
January; (at the time the warmest on record) cooler than 07, 04, 03, 02.
February; warmest on record.
March; (at the time the warmest on record) cooler than 10, 02.
April; warmest on record.
May; warmest on record.
June; warmest on record.
July; warmest on record.
August; warmest on record.
September; (at the time the warmest on record) cooler than 09, 07, 06, 05, 04, 03, 02, 01.
October; (at the time cooler than 97) cooler than 09, 08, 06, 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 97.
November; (at the time cooler than 97) cooler than 10, 09, 08, 06, 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 97.
December; (at the time cooler than 97) cooler than 06, 03, 97.
The data shows just how exceptional was 1998 (and 1997). Nine months broke a record, and the other three were close. The warm Spring is typical of El Nino.
The subsequent warm decade has altered things somewhat. We see that even for the hottest year on record, by most global temperature datasets, half of the months of the year were unexceptional in the context of the recent (and warmest) decade. 1998 now has the top 4 of the warmest months on record, and another entry in the top ten. Curiously, in the top ten warmest months, only two are after 2002 (Jan 07 in 6th place and March 10 in 10th.)
For comparison consider a non-El Nino year.
January; cooler that 07, 02.
February; cooler than 10, 07, 06, 04, 02, 99, 98.
March; cooler than 10, 08, 07, 05, 04, 02, 01, 98.
April; cooler than 10, 07, 05, 04, 02, 01, 00, 98.
May; cooler than 10, 05, 02, 98.
June; cooler than 10, 09, 05, 02, 98.
July; cooler than 10, 09, 06, 05, 02, 98.
August; 09,98.
September; warmest on record.
October; warmest on record.
November; 10, 09, 08, 05, 04, 01, 97.
December; cooler than 97.
The differences are clear.
Moving onto 2010 there are five temperature databases to examine.
Dataset: Crut3v
January; cooler than 09, 08, 06, 00, 99.
February; cooler than 09, 08, 06, 03, 01, 00.
March; warmest on record.
April; cooler than 07, 05.
May; cooler than 03, 98.
June; warmest on record.
July; cooler than 06, 05, 98.
August; cooler than 09, 01, 98.
September; cooler than 09, 07, 05.
October; cooler than 09, 08, 07, 06, 05, 04, 03, 98.
November; cooler than 05, 04.
December; cooler than 09, 08, 07, 06, 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 99, 98, 97, 96, 94, 93, 90, 89, 88, 87, 81, 79, 39,1852.
Note: Two record months, though not statistically significant. El Nino warmth in Spring. La Nina cooling later in the year.
2010 overall; cooler than 2005, 1998.
Dataset: Hadcrut3 from CRU
January; cooler than 07, 04, 03, 02.
February; cooler than 07, 02, 99, 98.
March; cooler than 02.
April; cooler than 98.
May; cooler than 98.
June; cooler than 98.
July; cooler than 05, 98.
August; cooler than 06, 05, 03, 01, 98.
September; cooler than 09, 07, 06, 05, 04, 03, 98,97.
October; cooler than 09, 08, 06, 05, 04, 03, 98, 97.
November; cooler than 09, 06, 05, 04, 01, 97.
December; cooler than 09, 08, 07, 06, 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 99, 98, 97, 92, 87, 79.
Note: No single month broke a record. Warm Spring evidence of El Nino.
2010 overall; cooler than 2005, 1998, equivalent to 2003.
“Met Office” Hadcrut3
(the Met Office also has a database it calls Hadcrut3 which it calculates a different way from CRU)
Jan; cooler that 07, 04, 03, 02, 98.
Feb; cooler than 07, 04, 02, 99, 98.
March; cooler than 02.
April; cooler than 98.
May; cooler than 98.
June; cooler than 98.
July; cooler than 98.
August; cooler than 09, 06, 05, 03, 01, 98.
September; cooler than 09, 07, 06, 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 98.
October; cooler than 09, 08, 06, 05, 04, 03, 98.
November; cooler than 05, 04, 01.
December; cooler than 09, 08, 06, 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 99, 98, 97.
Note 5 warm months in the Northern Hemisphere Spring – sign of a strong El Nino. No single month broke a record.
2010 overall; cooler than 1998.
Dataset: NOAA
January; cooler than 07, 03, 02.
February; cooler than 04, 02, 99, 98.
March; warmest on record.
April; warmest on record.
May; warmest on record.
June; cooler than 05.
July; cooler than 05, 98.
August; cooler than 09, 06, 05, 03,02.
September; cooler than 09, 07, 06, 05, 04, 03, 02, 98.
October; cooler than 09, 08, 06. 05, 04, 03, 02.
November; cooler than 04.
December; cooler than 09, 08, 07, 06, 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 99, 98, 97, 94, 90, 87, 82, 79.
Note: Three record months, though not statistically significant. Evidence of El Nino warmth in Spring.
The NOAA Press Release said 2010 tied with 2005. However, the quoted errors are +/- 0.07 which means that 2010 is statistically equivalent to 09,08,07,06,05,04,03,02,01,98.
Note that in the NOAA dataset 2010 is 2nd warmest land temperature and 3rd warmest ocean temperature.
Dataset: NasaGiss
January; cooler than 07, 05, 02.
February; cooler than 98.
March; cooler than 02.
April; warmest on record.
May; cooler 98.
June; cooler than 09, 05, 98.
July; cooler than 09, 08, 07, 05, 02, 01, 98.
August; cooler than 09, 01, 98.
September; cooler than 09, 06, 05, 03, 98.
October; cooler than 05, 03.
November; warmest on record.
December; cooler than 09, 08, 06, 05, 04, 03, 01, 99, 97.
Note: Evidence of warm El Nino Spring. Record warmest months not statistically significant.
According to NasaGiss 2010 set a record with only two record months.
A NASA Press Release said 2010 tied with 2005 which at a temperature anomaly of 0.63 was 0.01 above 2005. The Press Release went on to say that 1998 was in third place with 09,07,06,03 and 02. However, the reality is that 1998 and the other years are statistically equivalent being spread over a range of 0.03 deg C within the errors of 2010 and 2005. NasaGiss is thus statistically equivalent to no change since 1998 (note that in 2005 NasaGiss announced that 2005 was a dead heat with 1998. In 2007 they put 1998 behind 2005.)
Many press reports said that 2010 was a near-record breaking year despite the cooling influence of a La Nina later in the year. What was omitted however was mention of the fact that the reason why the year was marginally warmer than previous years was because of the warming El Nino.
Contrary to press reports the evidence is that 2010 was a year no different from all of the years 2001-2009 with the exception of a moderate to strong El Nino that elevated temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere’s Spring, and a cooling La Nina later in the year. The standstill seen in global temperatures since 2001 continues.
Finally, the temperature anomalies for the past 13 years.
| Year | Met Office Hadcrut | CRU Hadcrut | CRUTem | Giss | NOAA |
| 2010 | 0.50 | 0.47 | 0.71 | 0.63 | 0.62 |
| 2009 | 0.44 | 0.44 | 0.64 | 0.58 | 0.56 |
| 2008 | 0.31 | 0.33 | 0.53 | 0.44 | 0.48 |
| 2007 | 0.40 | 0.40 | 0.68 | 0.58 | 0.55 |
| 2006 | 0.43 | 0.43 | 0.67 | 0.55 | 0.56 |
| 2005 | 0.47 | 0.47 | 0.75 | 0.62 | 0.62 |
| 2004 | 0.43 | 0.44 | 0.61 | 0.48 | 0.54 |
| 2003 | 0.47 | 0.47 | 0.65 | 0.55 | 0.58 |
| 2002 | 0.46 | 0.46 | 0.66 | 0.56 | 0.58 |
| 2001 | 0.40 | 0.41 | 0.55 | 0.47 | 0.52 |
| 2000 | 0.24 | 0.28 | 0.36 | 0.33 | 0.39 |
| 1999 | 0.26 | 0.30 | 0.49 | 0.32 | 0.42 |
| 1998 | 0.52 | 0.53 | 0.82 | 0.56 | 0.60 |
Note; Met Office Hadcrut, CRU Hadcrut and CRUTem are all with respect to 1961–90. Giss is 1951-80. NOAA 1901-2000.
Feedback: david.whitehouse@thegwpf.org
Robert,
Please reproduce the complete data, metadata, and methodology of MBH98.
As you know, Mann has refused to provide it. Maybe you can do better.
Robert: interesting link to clearclimatecode about the difference between airports and non-airports. The “airports” temperature curve goes all the way back to 1880. Would you please be so kind as to tell me how many airports there were in operation in 1880?
About this temperature anomaly:
Just went outside, and I couldn’t tell if it was 39 or 39.1 degrees.
I doubt if any human could tell the difference in the tenths of a degree they tell us the temp has gone up.
And, on another post, Robert says “With all due respect Smokey you couldn’t be more incorrect. Mann’s 1998 and 1999 data are on NOAA’s paleoclimate data website (easily found) as well as the majority of the other reconstructions. His methodologies are well known and have been emulated in the literature multiple times. His code for matlab is also readily available. This idea that this stuff is not available right now is an outright distortion of the truth. That graph is over 10 years old. A whole decade has passed and better reconstructions have come about (Moburg et al 2005, Mann et al. 2008 …etc…) please stop rehashing old arguments.”
Yet when you ask people if Mann’s use of the Tiljander proxies was correct (knowing there was recent contamination, and using them upside down), they suddenly become very quiet…
Smokey, Cook has not “dragged” the fitted curve and it is not “his”. It is an automated algorithm that best fits all the data, including the hump in the forties and the correlation coefficient of the fit r squared is a very good value of 0.841.
The CO2 signal did not arise out of the “natural” variations until the 80’s. Climatologists have been able to account for the ups and downs with purely natural factors up until that point. After the 80’s they find they cannot account for the observed temperature rises without including the effect of increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration.
One of the main natural factors is solar radiation, and the following graph (from Cook again) shows how the observed temperatures matched pretty well with solar out putuntil the 80’s and then solar activity dropped but temperatures kept rising.
It also indicates that solar input alone is a pretty good match to the forties hump without taking into account other natural factors. Cooks site covers numerous other information on factors affecting the observed temperature fits.
henrythethird says:
February 5, 2011 at 12:50 am
Just went outside, and I couldn’t tell if it was 39 or 39.1 degrees.
I doubt if any human could tell the difference in the tenths of a degree they tell us the temp has gone up.
Really you can’t tell? That’s interesting. A little about my. I am an Inuit from Northern Canada. We can tell pretty well. Where I am originally from was over 3 standard deviations outside of the mean this year. Baffin Bay had winter temperatures over 10 degrees above normal. You wanna know where we notice it? Our lifestyles. Can’t travel on sea ice or the lake ice like we used to even 10 years ago.
Pertaining to the Tiljander proxy. It makes no large difference in the reconstruction, you can check his supplementary material for evidence of this if you like? You wanna make claims that aren’t supportable, go right ahead. Note Kaufmann also used it wrong but when he fixed it, it didn’t make any difference in his overall reconstruction…
Roger and Philip Shehan:
This thread is about the above analysis by David Whitehouse. It is NOT about some other analysis on another blog.
In the extremely unlikely event that you can and do point to some significant error in the analysis by David Whitehouse, then it may be appropriate to discuss alternative analyses. But unless and until you do that then there is not – and there cannot be – any valid reason to consider any other analyses by anybody.
The facts are that David Whitehouse has provided an analysis which proves that according to each of the established global climate data sets 2010 was NOT the warmest year on record.
And it is not surprising that you want to change the subject. AGW alarmists always try to avoid inconvenient truths.
Richard
From Philip Shehan on February 5, 2011 at 5:55 am:
This is fascinating. So in a time of a warm Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), which lasted from 1977 to (at least) 1998 (Ref. 1, general PDO info), with dropping solar activity, the CO2 signal arose out of the noise (“natural” variability). Such variability would (should?) also include the 1998 Super El Nino, and its impressive rise in global average temperatures (see first graph, Ref.2 ). This would indicate the CO2 signal is very strong indeed.
The CO2 atmospheric concentrations continued to rise.
Now the PDO is in a cool phase. More in-depth and recent info at Ref. 3 places the shift to cool phase at 2008. [Note: At the first graph at Ref.3, “PDO Index 1900 – September 2008,” you can see the short drop starting around 1998, which is apparently related to the Ref.1 speculation of the warm phase extending to “(at least) 1998.”] The esteemed Prof. Phil Jones of UEA-CRU confirmed there was a cooling trend from 2002 to 2009 (eight years) although not statistically-significant, apparently due to the short period. In the article above we can see how 2010 fared, also discussed elsewhere on WUWT, as well as the dropping of ocean heat content. As found at Ref. 3 and mentioned elsewhere, with the shift we have about 25 to 30 years of cooling global temperatures coming.
At Ref. 3 in the “PDO Links to Climatic Effects” section is found the abstract (and paywall link) to: Tropical Pacific Decadal Variability and Global Warming (Amy J. Bratcher & Benjamin S. Giese, Department of Oceanography, Texas A&M University, Geophysical Research Letters, 29(19), 2002):
The PDO weakened prior to the shift, cooling global surface air temperatures were predicted, they happened.
Ref. 4 also highlights the importance of the PDO, with its about 60-year total pattern thus about 30-year warm and cool phases. As seen in Ref. 5, the above quoted abstract, and elsewhere (see Ref. 3), the warm phase of the PDO accounted for much of the global warming that was seen.
And now, the mighty CO2 signal, detectable above the noise in the 1990’s which included above the PDO, when the solar activity was dropping… Where did it go? The PDO shifted, the planet is cooling, and the mighty CO2 signal that was detectable against the PDO warming, is apparently AWOL. The CO2 atmospheric concentrations kept increasing, the CO2 signal should have kept getting stronger, and instead it looks like the mighty CO2 signal has wimped out. Have other factors proven so powerful, the noise of “natural” variability, they have (temporarily) overridden the mighty CO2 signal?
As the CO2 atmospheric concentrations keep rising, what’s going to happen? As the PDO shifts back to a warm phase after about 2035, will the mighty CO2 signal, which heralds (C)AGW, with all the “hidden” global warming building up somewhere in the climate systems, again be clearly detectable?
References:
1. http://cses.washington.edu/cig/pnwc/aboutpdo.shtml
2. http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/02/uah-update-for-january-2011-global-temperatures-in-freefall/
3. http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/PDO.htm
4. http://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-background-articles/the-pacific-decadal-oscillation/
5. http://www.drroyspencer.com/research-articles/global-warming-as-a-natural-response/
(And apologies to Richard S Courtney, I spent considerable time researching and writing this comment, then noticed yours. Sorry about this.)
robert says:
“Really you can’t tell? That’s interesting. A little about my. I am an Inuit from Northern Canada. We can tell pretty well. Where I am originally from was over 3 standard deviations outside of the mean this year. Baffin Bay had winter temperatures over 10 degrees above normal. You wanna know where we notice it? Our lifestyles. Can’t travel on sea ice or the lake ice like we used to even 10 years ago.”
——————————–
Yeah, right, robert!
You’re an Inuk who calls himself an Inuit. That’s like me saying I’m a Canada.
Lots of unfrozen lakes in Baffin Bay????
Oliver Ramsay,
Scathing. I think you’ve exposed a poseur.
The poseur says:
“Pertaining to the Tiljander proxy. It makes no large difference in the reconstruction, you can check his supplementary material for evidence of this if you like? You wanna make claims that aren’t supportable, go right ahead.”
Robert misses the central issue: Mann was informed before he published that the Tiljander sediment proxy was upside-down. But he used it anyway because it gave him the hockey stick shape he needed. His protestations after he was caught, claiming that it didn’t make a differnce, are not believable. Since Mann already knew the proxy was bad, he would have left it out if it made no difference.
But Mann’s tame referee pals hand-waved his paper through the corrupt climate peer review process. No doubt Roberto the Esquimeaux will defend Michael Mann the charlatan.
As Smokey stated, if Mann knew there were problems with a particular series, and it didn’t make much difference, why use it?
And to Robert: Mann KNEW about potential problems, and mentioned it in the SI you wanted me to read:
“…Potential data quality problems. In addition to checking whether or not potential problems specific to tree-ring data have any significant impact on our reconstructions in earlier centuries (see Fig. S7), we also examined whether or not potential problems
noted for several records (see Dataset S1 for details) might compromise the reconstructions. These records include the four Tiljander et al. (12) series used (see Fig. S9) for which the original authors note that human effects over the past few centuries unrelated to climate might impact records (the original paper states ‘‘Natural variability in the sediment record was disrupted by increased human impact in the catchment area at A.D. 1720.’’ and later, ‘‘In the case of Lake Korttajarvi it is a demanding task to calibrate the physical varve data we have collected against meteorological data, because human impacts have distorted the natural signal to varying extents’’). These issues are particularly significant because there are few proxy records, particularly in the temperature-screened dataset (see Fig. S9), available back through the 9th century…”
There’s NOTHING in his paper or SI as to why he needed to turn it upside down, either.