UAH Global Temperature Update for May 2012: +0.29°C
By Dr. Roy Spencer
The global average lower tropospheric temperature anomaly for May 2012 (+0.29 °C) changed little from April (+0.30 °C), with some warming to near-average temperatures in the tropics being balanced by a little cooling in the Southern Hemisphere (click on the image for the full-size version):
The 4th order polynomial fit to the data (courtesy of Excel) is for entertainment purposes only, and should not be construed as having any predictive value whatsoever.
Here are the monthly stats:
YR MON GLOBAL NH SH TROPICS
2011 01 -0.010 -0.055 +0.036 -0.372
2011 02 -0.020 -0.042 +0.002 -0.348
2011 03 -0.101 -0.073 -0.128 -0.342
2011 04 +0.117 +0.195 +0.039 -0.229
2011 05 +0.133 +0.145 +0.121 -0.043
2011 06 +0.315 +0.379 +0.250 +0.233
2011 07 +0.374 +0.344 +0.404 +0.204
2011 08 +0.327 +0.321 +0.332 +0.155
2011 09 +0.289 +0.304 +0.274 +0.178
2011 10 +0.116 +0.169 +0.062 -0.054
2011 11 +0.123 +0.075 +0.170 +0.024
2011 12 +0.126 +0.197 +0.055 +0.041
2012 1 -0.089 -0.058 -0.120 -0.137
2012 2 -0.111 -0.014 -0.209 -0.276
2012 3 +0.111 +0.129 +0.094 -0.106
2012 4 +0.299 +0.413 +0.185 -0.117
2012 5 +0.289 +0.439 +0.139 +0.033
As a reminder, the most common reason for large month-to-month swings in global average temperature is small fluctuations in the rate of convective overturning of the troposphere, discussed here.
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One thing that has got me thinking is this. El Nino’s, the warm oceans heat the air, a proportion of the heat goes back into the oceans and the rest into space. Does this mean El Nino’s are really a net heat loss for the earth? And the more we have signifies that the planet is cooling?
Smoothed, it’s still a nearly perfect sine wave.
From Lucia’s place “The linear trend is distinctly positive with “no warming” rejected using any of the three statistical models shown in the figure”
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2012/roy-announced-uah-june-289c/
What’s striking to me (and has been for awhile) is how relatively consistent 2001-2012 is, compared to what came before. Almost like a plateau of some sort has been reached.
I was only thinking about that a minute ago and I thought I bet it is unchanged.
1. It looks to me like it should be fit with two flat lines with a step up in 1997.
2. Why the change from 3rd to 4th order polynomial?
3. The ‘entertainment’ fit appears to be useful in defining the endpoints of the total increase, but the sharper curve at the beginning kind-of ruins that.
Dang it Dr Roy, why did you go and switch on us, and move from a third order polynomial to a fourth. Are you trying to hide something from us or what ?
This is going to start one cherrypicking buzz for sure.
Well perhaps you have evidence that fourth order is more entertaining than third order.
I have serious doubts about the precision and accuracy of these measurements.
I have determined that earth has cooled ca. 0.2 degree C / K since 2000
it does not show in the UAH measurements
who is to say who is right and who is wrong?
http://www.letterdash.com/henryp/global-cooling-is-here
nik marshall-blank says: “One thing that has got me thinking is this. El Nino’s, the warm oceans heat the air, a proportion of the heat goes back into the oceans and the rest into space.”
When sea surface temperatures in areas remote to the tropical Pacific warm during an El Nino, it’s not because the air is warming the ocean. For example, the tropical North Atlantic warms about 3 months after the eastern tropical Pacific. It warms because the trade winds slow in the tropical North Atlantic. Slower trade winds in the tropical North Atlantic yield less evaporation there, yield warmer surface waters, also yield an increase in Ocean Heat Content. The weaker trade winds also upwell less cool waters to the surface.
Same thing with land surface temperatures. Surface temperatures warm due to changes it atmospheric circulation, not because of a direct exchange of heat. Refer to Trenberth et al (2000):
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/papers/2000JD000298.pdf
Regards
The Reynolds OI.v2 sea surface temperature data for March won’t be official until next Monday, but I posted on the preliminary data last week:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/preliminary-may-2012-sea-surface-temperature-anomaly-update/
2012 in perspective so far
With the UAH anomaly for May at 0.289, the average for the first five months of the year is (-0.089 -0.111 + 0.111 + 0.299 + 0.289)/5 = 0.0998. If the average stayed this way for the rest of the year, its ranking would be 12th. This compares with the anomaly in 2011 at 0.153 to rank it 9th for that year. (1998 was the warmest at 0.428.)
According to the Interweb, we’re all supposed to be evolving to the fourth order (or something) this December. Dr. Spencer’s polynomial is merely (ahem) ahead of the curve.
I’ll get me coat.
Bob
If you look at the NRL SST animation, the tongue of cool water of Peru in the bottom right of the image seems to show a pulsatile variation:
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/global_ncom/glb8_3b/html/anims/eqp/sst30d.gif
Does this indicate that the Peruvian upwelling might be pulsatile? Just curious. I noticed a similar tongue in spring of 2011 when some were calling for an el Nino, but the cool tongue ended up developing into a small La Nina dip. Could the same happen again? I guess as you suggest its in the balance and could go either way.
Does the persistently very cold north Pacific (according to Ansys) have any significance?
As for western Europe, its just turned very cold and wet, just in time for the British Queen’s diamond jubilee, and (more importantly) our girls’ school party – both a washout.
It would be nice to have a view on the development of the anomaly. If the anomaly is going to step up to, say, 0.4 C (which a 0.1 deg C trend might indicate), let’s not be surprized by it. And if it is, the fourth-degree-for-entertainment function is going to take a big chunck out of Roy’s credibility.
I learned the hard way that there are no informal projections, only informal settings. If you don’t think the polynomial fits, don’t wear it. Personally, I am still reeling from Joe Bast’s ill-considered billboard, and that he doesn’t appear to understand how that undermines the skeptics’ credibility. When in doubt, let the numbers speak. If you’re not sure what they’re saying, don’t interpret. If you’re interpreting, or even giving the sense you might be interpreting, then make sure it’s a serious effort and suitably caveated.
While polynomial fits have no predictive value – true – it just so happens that a 4th-order polynomial using just the 1979-2002 data does a much better job of ‘predicting’ the last 10 years than any climate model. Try it.
When climate models are beaten by a simple non-predictive formula, it makes you wonder
Stop me if I’m wrong…but isn’t the graph he fitted still a third-order polynomial? A fourth-order polynomial should have both tails pointing in the same direction….
Never mind; I forgot it’s fitted only to the current range of data.
sk;
get a life. You’re full to the eyebrows both re Bast and Spencer.
Even if the global temp is stable, we’re not done with weird weather for this half of the year.
As a counterpoint to the cold and snow in Sweden and the (well, hardly uncommon) rainy pall on the Royal Diamond Jubilee, half of India has been suffering through a heat wave several weeks long, with several hundred dead and widespread water shortages.
And, the prediction is that the heat will rise over the coming week.
And Iceland has just emerged from a unusual bout of warm weather but could now drop to average or below normal.
Brian –
The data is moving up, the curve is moving down. If the data continues to move up, the AGW crowd will say the Roy was sloppy, frivolous, biased or wrong. This is what we say about Hansen and GISS, right? I see no reason to provide such an opening. If Roy has an opinion about the future, he should express it and explain his reasoning. If he doesn’t, he should realize that he is a leading scientist in the field, and even a casual fitting gives the impression that this is his interpretation of the data. If you’re a leading pillar of a community, you have the opportunity to be frivolous and right; you don’t have the luxury of being both frivolous and wrong.
2012 in perspective so far
With the UAH anomaly for May at 0.289, the average for the first five months of the year is (-0.089 -0.111 + 0.111 + 0.299 + 0.289)/5 = 0.0998. If the average stayed this way for the rest of the year, its ranking would be 12th. This compares with the anomaly in 2011 at 0.153 to rank it 9th for that year. (1998 was the warmest at 0.428.)
With the RSS anomaly for April at 0.333, the average for the first third of the year is (-0.058 -0.12 + 0.074 + 0.333)/4 = 0.05725. If the average stayed this way for the rest of the year, its ranking would be 21st. This compares with the anomaly in 2011 at 0.147 to rank it 12th for that year. (1998 was the warmest at 0.55.)
With the GISS anomaly for April at 0.56, the average for the first third of the year is (0.34 + 0.39 + 0.46 + 0.56)/4 = 0.4375. If the average stayed this way for the rest of the year, its ranking would be 13th. This compares with the anomaly in 2011 at 0.514 to rank it 9th for that year. (2010 was the warmest at 0.63.)
With the Hadcrut3 anomaly for March at 0.305, the average for the first three months of the year is 0.239. If the average stayed this way for the rest of the year, its ranking would be 18th. This compares with the anomaly in 2011 at 0.34 to rank it 12th for that year. (1998 was the warmest at 0.548.)
With the sea surface anomaly for March at 0.242, the average for the first three months of the year is 0.225. If the average stayed this way for the rest of the year, its ranking would be 14th. This compares with the anomaly in 2011 at 0.273 to rank it 12th for that year. (1998 was the warmest at 0.451.)
So on all five of the above data sets, for their latest anomaly average, the 2012 average is colder than their 2011 average value.
On all data sets, the different times for a slope that is flat for all practical purposes range from 10 years and 7 months to 15 years and 6 months. Following is the longest period of time (above 10 years) where each of the data sets is more or less flat. (For any positive slope, the exponent is no larger than 10^-5, except UAH which was 0.00103655 per year or 0.10/century, so while it is not significant, it could be questioned whether it can be considered to be flat.)
1. RSS: since November 1996 or 15 years, 6 months (goes to April)
2. HadCrut3: since January 1997 or 15 years, 3 months (goes to March)
3. GISS: since March 2001 or 11 years, 2 months (goes to April)
4. UAH: since October 2001 or 10 years, 8 months (goes to May)
5. Combination of the above 4: since October 2000 or 11 years, 6 months (goes to March)
6. Sea surface temperatures: since January 1997 or 15 years, 3 months (goes to March)
7. Hadcrut4: since December 2000 or 11 years, 5 months (goes to April using GISS. See below.)
See the graph below to show it all for #1 to #6.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2001.16/trend/plot/rss/from:1996.83/trend/plot/wti/from:2000.75/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997/trend/plot/uah/from:2001.75/trend
For #7: Hadcrut4 only goes to December 2010 so what I did was get the slope of GISS from December 2000 to the end of December 2010. Then I got the slope of GISS from December 2000 to the present. The DIFFERENCE in slope was that the slope was 0.005 lower for the total period. The positive slope for Hadcrut4 was 0.004 from December 2000. So IF Hadcrut4 were totally up to date, and IF it then were to trend like GISS, I conclude it would show no slope for at least 11 years and 5 months going back to December 2000. (By the way, doing the same thing with Hadcrut3 gives the same end result, but GISS comes out much sooner each month.) See:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2000/to/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2000.9/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2000/plot/gistemp/from:2000.9/to:2011/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2000.9/trend
phlogiston says: @ur momisugly June 4, 2012 at 3:21 pm
…..As for western Europe, its just turned very cold and wet, just in time for the British Queen’s diamond jubilee, and (more importantly) our girls’ school party – both a washout.
_________________________________________
Well it hasn’t been exactly warm this May on the other side of the Atlantic either. I am in NC and it is supposed to get down to 54F (12C) tonight (BRRrrrr)
No predictive value? But any graph has predictive value in global warming. I can predict that alarmist will look at any graph and be alarmed.
So the big question is, are we headed next for an el nino and warmer temps? Or will it stay neutral?