UAH Global temperature, up in April

Eli has asked Dr. Roy before. Crickets at 12. but it’s nice to know there are bunnies in this patch. Lazy ones, but bunnies none the less. Typhoon raises an interesting point, but not the one Eli thinks he is asking. Assuming a set of measurements (the actual returns from the satellites or the readings at various stations) how do you determine the ability to determine a mean and a statistical error and the variability. Not so simple.
One approach is to hold out a subset and compare the subset values to the values of the rest of the set (see rural station subset in GISS), or to add additional stations (see BEST) and compare. Another might be to compare satellite and surface sets. All approaches yield the same answer wrt mean values and variability and there are discussions of the annual and spatial variability in the literature. Wood for Trees, or Nick Stokes JAVA plotter are your answer.
REPLY: Perhaps if you asked using your real name, and your university affiliation, rather than the fake name and lagomorphic affiliations you go by all the time, Dr. Spencer might consider your request on the up and up, rather than your usual snark baiting cowardice – Anthony

Kelvin Vaughan says:
May 10, 2012 at 4:32 am
…says The page you requested was not found on this server
______________________
Sorry my computer is cranky this morning (mouse dying I think) try
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/monitoring/nino3_4.png
or go to top and Edmin’s first comment at May 10, 2012 at 12:28 am http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/10/uah-global-temperature-up-in-april/#comment-981036

Kelvin Vaughan:
“I was told by a statistician once that any graph that does not show the zero axis is biassed.”
——-
Perhaps you were told that once, but if so, you probably shouldn’t take advice from this person in the future. Particularly in the context of temperatures, this comment makes no sense: why zero C and not zero F or zero K? (Similarly, one has to wonder why Ian W doesn’t simply go all-out and display the temperatures on a scale from absolute zero to the temperature of the surface of the sun if he really wants to make his point. Though honestly I think his comment mostly makes the point that any data set can be presented in a way that intentionally obscures what’s interesting about it; people who are interested in understanding how things work use temperature anomolies for a reason.)

Scottish Sceptic says:
May 10, 2012 at 12:24 am
“One thing I’ve learnt since watching global temperatures, is that whenever you see a pattern, whenever you think you can predict what is going to happen …. you find you can’t.
So here’s my prediction: …. my prediction that it is unpredictable will be proven wrong and it will (appear) predictable.
You win!.
It is always a pleasure to me, month by month, to see the global average lower tropospheric temperature follow indeed slavish twice the Big band sound of 11 synodic frequencies of the planets. Its getting some colder on Earth next decades.
V.

“So here we are, ENSO-neutral and coming out of a prolonged La Niña, with solar activity at a very low level, and yet the UAH global temperature is at a higher level than it reached at any time from the start of the record in 1979 to the super-El Niño in 1998. Can anyone explain this?”
The climate system is ‘getting ready’ for the deep drop, the thermal inertia is delaying the decline, sea temperatures need some time, ice need a bit of recovery, which is already beginning. Have patience!

“Since you are a wordsmith by trade (a lawyer) you understand the significance of the word “fails” in a sentence, so I responded to that.”
Bob, I find that I use words in a very technical and cold fashion and do not always anticipate an emotional impact. To my lawyerly mind the phrase ‘fails to’ is almost synonymous with ‘doesn’t ‘ and so an emotional impact was not actually intended but I will try harder in future to avoid potentially loaded words.

For those of us playing the home version of the climate game (at woodfortrees) why is it that the flat temps over the last fifteen years go unreported:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/last:180/plot/uah/last:180/plot/rss/last:180/plot/gistemp/last:180/plot/hadcrut3vgl/last:180/trend/plot/uah/last:180/trend/plot/rss/last:180/trend/plot/gistemp/last:180/trend
Instead we see apocalyptic (his word choice) articles from the likes of Jim Hansen in yesterday’s NYTimes, and folks who should know better doing backflips to make his lousy predictions over yesteryear look good. Is this simply Chicken Little journalism? Why is it so hard for people to say “we don’t actually know”.

lookupitseasy says:
May 10, 2012 at 6:29 am
Kelvin Vaughan:
“I was told by a statistician once that any graph that does not show the zero axis is biassed.”
——-
Perhaps you were told that once, but if so, you probably shouldn’t take advice from this person in the future. Particularly in the context of temperatures, this comment makes no sense: why zero C and not zero F or zero K? (Similarly, one has to wonder why Ian W doesn’t simply go all-out and display the temperatures on a scale from absolute zero to the temperature of the surface of the sun if he really wants to make his point. Though honestly I think his comment mostly makes the point that any data set can be presented in a way that intentionally obscures what’s interesting about it; people who are interested in understanding how things work use temperature anomolies for a reason.)

People who want to obscure what is actually going on use averaged atmospheric temperature for a reason.
1. Atmospheric temperature tells you nothing atbout atmospheric heat content. The reason the ‘temperature’ went up with the last measurment could easily be a drop in humidity. WIthout knowledge of the atmospheric humidity and therefore its enthalpy measuring temperature is totally and completely meaningless. As everyone is concerned about heat content then the metric used should be Kilo Joules per Kilogram. In those terms a humid misty morning in Louisiana at 75F has twice the heat content in Kj/Kg than a 100F dry day in Arizona. But all the lemmings will be saying “Isn’t Arizona Hot – it’s global warming!”.
2. For the reason at (1) averaging temperature between ultra dry antarctic and extremely humid tropics just displays ignorance and generates an even more meaningless figure. (Quote:”it’s as useful as an average phone number.”) A one degree rise in atmospheric temperature in the dry antarctic requires hugely less energy than a one degree rise at the equator. But who cares right? After all it’s only climate ‘science’.
3. This is then compounded by using anomalies rather than actual figures meaning differences between meaningless averages all on elastic scales. But as its anomalies the actual temperatures don’t have to be shown so that allows 4
4. As even using anomalies does not come up with sufficient big numbers to worry the ignorant the scales on the displays are compressed in time and extended in degrees of ‘anomaly’ to make minor noise variations that are well within the extreme error bars look as if something important was happening.
So have a look at Atmospheric Enthalpy – go on Lookupitseasy

All this worry about a tenth of a degree in temperature.