While there’s wailing and gnashing of teeth over the US CONUS surface temperature being the “hottest ever” a cursory review of the sea surface temperatures in U.S.Coastal waters shows no cause for alarm, as they aren’t even close to record levels. It’s just one more reason to suspect that UHI and thermometer siting issues are a major forcing component of the surface temperature record. – Anthony
Are July 2012 Sea Surface Temperatures for U.S. Coastal Waters Also At Record Levels?
Guest post by Bob Tisdale
The map in Figure 1 shows the July 2012 sea surface temperature anomalies, based on NOAA’s ERSST.v3b dataset, for the coordinates of 24N-50N, 130W-65W.
Figure 1
We’ll use those coordinates for the sea surface temperatures (not anomalies) of the U.S. Coastal Waters in the following two graphs. Figure 2 illustrates the July sea surface temperatures for those coordinates from 1854 to 2012, and Figure 3 shows the annual (ending in July) sea surface temperatures for U.S. Coastal Waters from 1855 to 2012. I’ve also plotted the July 2012 value in Figure 2 and the value for the period ending in July 2012 in Figure 3 to simplify your task of comparing the most recent temperatures to the earlier values.
Figure 2
HHHHHHHHHHH
Figure 3
The sea surface temperatures of U.S. Coastal Waters are nowhere close to being at record levels for the month of July 2012 or the 12-month period ending in July 2012. I’ll let you decide (speculate about) what that means with respect to the claims of unprecedented U.S. land surface temperatures in July 2012.
My priority is finishing my book about ENSO and its multiyear aftereffects. I’ve only got a few more chapters to write and then I’m done with the first draft of Who Turned on the Heat? The Unsuspected Global Warming Culprit, El Niño Southern Oscillation. Then I have to go back and read the 500+ pages to see what I wrote.
SOURCE
The map and the data presented are available through the KNMI Climate Explorer.
Steven Mosher says: August 10, 2012 at 12:35 pm
It would be instructive to actually look at the historical relationship between land temps and SST. You will of course be surprised.
No particular surprise there Steven, natural variability in both the land and ocean, is within fraction of a degree.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GSC1.htm
Think about it a second…
The flow into the Great Lakes as a collective whole comes from U.S. states
not totally within the “2012 Dought” area, but well within the region that’s
had temperatures elevated (not necessarily record highs) since June.
Increased regional land temps with moderate drain-off and increased surface
temps through insolation in shallower bodies of of water like Lake Erie yielding
higher than usual water tems just makes logical sense.
The same applies to the Eastern seaboard where the warmer drain-off from
non-drought states has yet to mix with the Atlantic waters and then head off to
the North.
The real drought and higher temperature region in the U.S. tends to
drain into the Missisppi river, so the reduced but warmer water flow has less
impact when finally mixed with the Gulf of Mexico waters.
See:
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
For the recent (past 10 days) air and near-land ocean current flow around
the Atlantic seaboard see:
http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/comp/cmoll/cmoll.html
Things may change a bit for the “cool” waters off the west coast below central
California after the current temperature spike this weekend/next week.
“Not so hot” could be rephrased as “Just about right”.
Back to the Olympics…
Who Turned on the Heat? is a book I have been waiting for.
I think it may be that ENSO holds an important climate key.
Thanks, Bob, and godspeed!
Marble Mouth Mosher Mumbles MAT. My My.
Anybody notice the new shape of hockey sticks in the Olympics? Looks more like a question mark on the end. Now that has got to sting. Poor guy can’t catch a break.
Not positive, but MAT might stand for “Marine Air Temperature” – or Mosher Adjusted Temperatures. Hard to say.
davidmhoffer:
At August 10, 2012 at 1:17 pm you write:
Your analogy is brilliant. I write to ask your permission for me to use it, please.
Richard
Not suggesting heat in the pipeline.
MAT is well known.
Another interesting source of data are the bouys that take air temperature.
looking at the difference between SST, SAT and MAT is fun and instructive.
Scripts in San Diego has so much Buoy data it would take years of super computer time to make a dent in it – so how accurate is the data we do see?
In the paleoclimate discussion, La Nina (cold eastern Pacific) is believed to be the cause of US drought. Hoerling’s excellent discussion of past droughts (well before current interest) also emphasizes cold Pacific.
Note the warm SSTs over the Atlantic downwind from the large US East conurbations, a reduced aerosol effect.
Not sure why Bob put East and West coast SSTs in the same graph. The oceanic influence will come from West coast (Pacific) waters, with some contribution from Gulf waters. East coast (Atlantic) waters will have no influence.
And West coast waters are unusually cool.
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sfc_daily.php?plot=ssa&inv=0&t=cur
Apologies Bob.
130W-65W is West coast.
Stephen Richards says:
August 10, 2012 at 1:21 pm
Steven Mosher says:
Yeah me too. What happened to old Mosh?
As for MAT being well known, guess what a Google search shows? Or am I just a door MAT for the smart guys posting here? /sarc off
http://www.google.ca/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=MAT&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&redir_esc=&ei=aaglUOWGNMSYiAK2vICgCg
I enjoy “fun and instructive” Mr Mosher, so help me out. Assuming some of the old Mosh is still in there somewhere. Thanks.
From WJD (Just an Engineer)
Philip Bradley says: “130W-65W is West coast.”
Philip, scroll up to Figure 1. The longitudes are listed on the map. 130W-65W captures the waters for both coasts.
Interesting. Put sst, sat, and mat into a google search and now you get Mosh’s comment on WUWT popping up. Fun and instructive? Sort of.
Steven Mosher says: “MAT is well known.”
And as far as I know, the Hadley Centre’s Marine Air Temperature dataset, MOHMAT, has not been updated since 2007.
Bob – Sea surface temperature in general has very little to do with continental interiors with the exception of the SST in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific. That is because the El Nino wave makes landfall there and spreads out. This warms the air above it, warm air rises, interferes with trade winds, mixes with prevailing westerlies, and thereby raises global air temperature. When that El Nino wave then falls back ocean level behind it drops by half a meter, cold water from below rises up behind it, westerlies are cooled, and a La Nina begins. It is ENSO that is globally a prime mover of temperature and its workings are laid bare in that part of the world.
Reply to Mosher’s cryptic comments —
Psychiatrists don’t try to puzzle out a patients’s cryptic comments — they just note it as a symptom — one usually associated with megalomania. Being something of a cruel person I am tempted to send you a “Freedom Of Information” request demanding that you explain your comments — because I am positive such an action would serve to validate your deluded opinions about yourself and escalate your symptoms further — surely leading to a quicker and longer hospitalization.
Eugene WR Gallun
Steven Mosher said (August 10, 2012 at 3:52 pm)
Not suggesting heat in the pipeline.
MAT is well known.
Another interesting source of data are the bouys that take air temperature.
looking at the difference between SST, SAT and MAT is fun and instructive…”
As others have said, a mention of the acronym’s meaning or a link would be helpful.
Otherwise, one could spend hours trying to find a link between Supersonic Transports, Scholastic Aptitude Tests and the Miller Analogies Test (a high-level mental ability test requiring the solution of problems stated as analogies).
Cryptic answers are cryptic…
Bob Tisdale:
According to Hadley, the current version of the dataset is MOHMAT4.
MOHMAT4 has been updated to produce MOHMAT43N and HadMAT1, both of which are available here:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/mohmat/data/download.html
From them: “…Up to 1996 the measurements used are those in the U.K. Marine Data Bank; more recent years use data coming in through the GTS. MOHMAT is no longer updated.
After gridding the anomalies, bias corrections are applied to remove spurious trends caused by changes in ship deck heights and various unusual operational practices, and the data are smoothed to reduce noise.
An optimal interpolated version of this dataset, HadMAT1, is also available. It has been shown to be better than the non optimally interpolated NMAT data when it exists for very many applications…”
richardscourtney
of course. (almost missed it, still reeling from the REP news)
Arno, those of us in the interior portions of West coast states, and states just to our East, readily feel the ocean’s influence. Analogue years, years that mimic current oceanic conditions, are used to forecast the next three months for agriculatural purposes. Both temperature and precipitation amounts and type from these analogue years help farmers and ranchers make all kinds of risky decisions, made less risky by the predilection of our zonal climates to follow what the ocean is telling them to do.
And Mr. cryptic comment high and mighty Mosher who doesn’t discuss anything and only pontificates with ” I’m smarter than you, nya nya nya ” type of comments has the gall to state at Judith Curry’s blog that ” Discussion is not possible at WUWT “. It is is one his comments in this below thread
http://judithcurry.com/2012/08/03/post-normal-science-deadlines/#comments
He has no problems discussing with dozens of crappy and downright wacky trolls.
But he can’t discuss at WUWT!!
Utterly hypocritical behaviour.
davidmhoffer says:
August 10, 2012 at 1:17 pm
…the ocean with a mass 1400 times that of the atmosphere dictates just how far atmospheric temps over land can stray.
Exactly, despite meddling with data. Even in landmass dominated Northern Hemisphere natural variability is within a fraction of a degree.
Venter says: August 10, 2012 at 11:53 pm
And Mr. cryptic comment high and mighty Mosher who doesn’t discuss anything and only pontificates with ” I’m smarter than you,…
Steven lives in a convoluted subroutines of many computer programming languages.
Analog thinking process causes crush in his undutiful capacious processing intelligence.
Otherwise he isn’t a bad guy.
Here is an interesting unpublished paper on aerosol, clouds and temperatures over the USA from 1985.
It is scandalous that papers on these topics never get published.
http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=7&ved=0CFMQFjAG&url=http%3A%2F%2Fvigor.wustl.edu%2FCAPITA%2FCapitaReports%2FClimatic%2520Trends%2FClimatic%2520Trends.doc&ei=pRMmUMfeDo2RiQf3ioHQAQ&usg=AFQjCNGZKS0yp7KAA_TxphALlAREKsJ_Kw