November Global Temperature Update Delayed
By Dr. Roy Spencer
There has been a delay in our monthly processing of global temperature data from AMSU.
An undersea telecommunications cable used to transmit about half of the huge volume of data coming from the Aqua satellite was cut in late November off the coast of the Netherlands, delaying receipt of that data. While there were redundant data transmission capabilities, apparently both failed.
Also, John Christy and I have been on separate travels quite a bit lately (I spent 2 weeks in Miami after my daughter had an emergency C-section — I’m a grandpa!) and now I’m at the AGU in San Francisco, with a trip to DC early next week, so monitoring of the situation has been difficult.
Version 6 of the UAH Dataset is in the Works
I have been working on a new diurnal drift correction for the UAH global temperature dataset, which will be released as Version 6 when it is finished.
The orbital drift of most of the satellites carrying the AMSUs (and earlier MSUs) has been the largest source of uncertainty in getting long-term satellite temperature trends, and the correction for this drift has been a research topic for us off-and-on for many years.
Fortunately, there has always been at least one satellite operating without significant drift, and so we have used those satellites as a “backbone”, or anchor, for the others. The Aqua satellite is the only one which has its orbit maintained with on-board propulsion, but channel 5 on the Aqua AMSU instrument has become increasingly noisy in recent years, so we anticipate at some point we will no longer be able to rely on it, thus the need for a new diurnal drift adjustment.
I’m hopeful that the new procedure I’ve developed will work well, which is rather novel and is mostly insensitive to instrument calibration (see if you can figure out how that would work, wink-wink). The ultimate test will be the removal of long-term drift between simultaneously operating satellites, which also depends on season. It should allow us to get better regional temperature trends, land-vs-ocean trends, and remove some spurious season-dependent differences in temperature trends.
The earliest Version 6 of the UAH dataset would be available is the early January update of the December temperature data.
Roy W. Spencer;
I’m not understanding your explanation of the problem. If the orbit is known precisely, and the drift is known, what is the challenge for correcting the data to show the proper position and the proper time stamp?
Or is the problem that you know the satellites are drifting, but not by precisely how much? Given you listed the cause as atmospheric drag, should we assume that the drag is not consistant, so extrapolating the amount of drift over any given period of time would also be problematic then?
“Congratulations Dr Spencer, The gene pool has been enriched.
Congratulations Dr Spencer!
That being said, I am surprised that such an important dataset is so dependant on a single individual. Billions is spent on Climate change research, but on the four main actual temperature datasets it seems to be a shoe string operation. Frustrated. Get more funding.
Blue Sky;
That being said, I am surprised that such an important dataset is so dependant on a single individual. >>>
Why? Briffa’s thousand year temperature reconstruction was 50% dependant on a single tree…
That’s how climate science works! 😉
David, day is warmer than night, right? If the satellite slowly changes its local time of observation from a cooler to a warmer part of the day (or vice versa), then a spurious long-term trend can become apparent which is only due to the local time of observation increasing.
BlueSky, we would love to have funding to do this, but as you might understand, funding agencies basically have us on their black list for not supporting alarmi.
I’m going with 0.0.
Roy W. Spencer says:
December 9, 2011 at 5:26 pm
David, day is warmer than night, right? If the satellite slowly changes its local time>>>
Duh. OK, brief feeling of stupidity passes over me….
….then curiousity takes over. Very interested to see how you compensate for that!
Must be particularly exasperating when one observes the tremendous treasure flowing into CAGW alarm generating, bias confirmation. You have the patience of a tree. Thanks for not succumbing to bitterness. GK
It’s a pity the UAH data is late during Durban week
– what about the RSS plots – they would be worth getting up
Richard RSS is 0.0
Congratulations and take time to look after the family.
Proverbs 17;6 Children’s children are a crown to the aged, and parents are the pride of their children.
Dr Spencer,
You could calibrate the drift if you had a stable land based temp record which is sampled at th same time as your local rising. Except for when a major weather front comes through around rising, the local warming curve for any season should be fairly standard – so many degrees an hour.
From this you could subtract out the drift. It all comes down to having a good ground reference set of points. I guess you could develop a current model of morning warming if there is not much historic data. And of course each region would have its own warming curve.
Best of luck!
@Spencer
I didn’t understand the drift problem either. So without active orbital correction you can’t make repeated measurements at the same time over the same place with the same satellite. You can make comparable measurements with different satellites but that then introduces a problem with MSU calibration differences between satellites.
Is that correct?
Congratulations grandpa! Best wishes to Noah and the family!
Roy says: “I’m hopeful that the new procedure I’ve developed will work well”
I am wondering why it is that I don’t see on any climate blog site, including WUWT, the development of maxima and minima in tandem with the reported average temperatures on earth. Is this something the satellites cannot tell?
Average temps. do not tell you anything at all. You have to see what it causing the average temps. to rise or fall.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
OK, I get it now.
Any given satellite gets to “see” any given spot on earth once every 24 hours. But, it isn’t exactly 24 hours because of atmospheric drag, so it is 24 hours plus a few seconds. The satellite starts out taking the temp of a given spot on earth at 6:00 AM, and a few years later, that exact same satellite is taking the temp of the exact same spot at 9:00 AM. Three hours of daily temperature rise are now incorporated into the daily data that shouldn’t be there.
So, the question in my mind is, do you have ANOTHER satellite that does NOW see that exact same spot at 6:00AM? If so, would it be possible to calculate the temperature differential between 6:00AM and 9:00AM of that specific spot and subtract it from the first satellite’s measurements? I’d think you’d still have a problem in the callibration differences between the two satellites, but you would still get a much more accurate number over all.
There is a problem with temperature sensors, whether surface or satellite.
Surface sensors only tell us the energy content of the air passing the sensor.
Satellite sensors only tell us the energy content of the outgoing longwave radiation passing the satellite.
Neither tell us anything about the Earth system energy content (not temperature).
It is perfectly feasible for the Earth system to be gaining energy whilst the sensors show a low reading and losing energy whilst the sensors show a high reading.
The reason for the potential discrepancy is variable energy retention by the oceans and variable solar energy into the oceans from variations in cloudiness and albedo.
So far as I can tell nobody but nobody and certainly not the models has or have any idea of the net balance of energy flow at any given moment and none of our data services can tell us either.
The nearest we have is the Argo system and that seems to be having difficulties.
We are all just shooting in the dark.
Further to my post at:
Stephen Wilde says:
December 10, 2011 at 1:36 pm
I suggest that the only way of knowing whether the Earth system is gaining energy or losing energy is to examine jet stream behaviour.
The more jet stream zonality we observe the more likely it is that the system is gaining energy as during the late 20th century.
The more jet stream meridionality we observe the more likely it is that the system is losing energy as from 2000 to date.
Dr. Spencer,
Congrats on the addition to the family. VERY Glad to hear that all are doing well. Amazing what all those medical advances that came along with fossil fuels have accomplished ! I bet the hospital involved used lots of sterile plastic devices to help insure a good outcome.
Although it sounds a little akin to the “The dog ate my undersea cable” excuse to me, Ha Ha Ha.
Best wishes to all, And a Merry Christmas too…..
Cheers, Kevin.
Changes in atmospheric temperature have a particular importance in climate research because climate models consistently predict a distinctive vertical profile of trends. With increasing greenhouse gas concentrations, the surface and troposphere are consistently projected to warm, with an enhancement of that warming in the tropical upper troposphere. Hence, attempts to detect this distinct ‘fingerprint’ have been a focus for observational studies. The topic acquired heightened importance following the 1990 publication of an analysis of satellite data which challenged the reality of the projected tropospheric warming. This review documents the evolution over the last four decades of understanding of tropospheric temperature trends and their likely causes. Particular focus is given to the difficulty of producing homogenized datasets, with which to derive trends, from both radiosonde and satellite observing systems, because of the many systematic changes over time. The value of multiple independent analyses is demonstrated. Paralleling developments in observational datasets, increased computer power and improved understanding of climate forcing mechanisms have led to refined estimates of temperature trends from a wide range of climate models and a better understanding of internal variability. It is concluded that there is no reasonable evidence of a fundamental disagreement between tropospheric temperature trends from models and observations when uncertainties in both are treated comprehensively.
Henry@Dieta
And your point is?
Henry@anyone here
I am so surprised that I don’t see on any climate blog site, including WUWT, the development of maxima and minima in tandem with the reported average temperatures on earth.
Average temps. do not tell you anything at all. You have to see what it causing the average temps. to rise or fall?
Henry@Dave Springer
That thing that we argued last time, namely your reason why I see no warming in the SH, does not work out for me.
I analysed a weather station on an island in the caribean (Hato), and here too I see the same pattern as I see on other islands like Easter Island and Marion Island: it is maxima increasing, pushing up the mean average temps. Hawaii was maybe the wrong island for me to chose as it is volcanic.
The only explanation I can see for the results that I am getting is that there is a correlation between the extra heat being trapped (or not) and the increasing greening of earth (or not, or de-forestation).
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
That would pretty much agree with temperature readings. GK