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
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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.
Found this interesting article.
“We now know that such solar minima correlate quite closely with colder-than-normal temperatures on Earth, but science has yet to ascertain exactly why. Solar maximums, on the other hand, have historically had little noteworthy impact on the Earth apart from extra-splendid auroral displays. But thanks to our modern, electrified, interconnected society these previously innocuous events could cause catastrophic economic and social damage in the coming decades.”
http://www.damninteresting.com/better-call-sol/#more-4653
Anybody notice that La Nina may be rearing its head again? A little later, and not as strong, but a come back none the less?
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/global_ncom/glb8_3b/html/anims/eqp/sst30d.gif
Bob – I did ignore the El Nino Modoki in the belief that they were not very common. Your statistics seem to prove that they are more common than I thought but it does not change the basic idea. CP El Nino happens when something blocks the El Nino wave before it has reached South America. The blockage forces the warm water of the El Nino wave to spread out on the surface which warms the atmosphere just as it does when it spreads out near the coast. As to the role of jet streams I have always regarded it as secondary to the main event
Venter says: “…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 “…Utterly hypocritical behaviour.”
Nah, he’s just being The Mosh.
polistra says:
August 11, 2012 at 3:56 am
That big curve from 1860 down to 1920 and up to present agrees with the record of Armagh, presumably “non-continental” and non-air-conditioned.
The Armagh observatory is downwind (northwest) of Armagh town, where coal and peat (a very smoky fuel) were the main form of domestic heating until the 1970s. You can clearly see the warming trend resulting from phasing out these fuels post 1970s. Reduced aerosols/particulates = increased solar insolation.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/29/24055/
Following up on this:
Bob Tisdale says:
August 11, 2012 at 6:31 am
Arno: Further to my comment above, your description of El Nino . . .”
Arno’s explanation at 6:55 pm seems to implicate warm rising air as ‘interfering” with the trade winds – what that means I’m not sure. Does it mean causing them to weaken? But isn’t warm rising air a characteristic of the ITCZ? Then the ‘prevailing Westerlies’ are invoked to incorporate this warm air – but again, confusingly, the Westerlies would have to be moved from their normal position to do this. So it seems:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_prevailing_winds_on_earth.png
I’m not saying that warm surface waters never reach these higher latitudes but that would seem to be a tail on the end of El Nino, and not the primary driver that “raises global air temperature.” Maybe there is another un-invoked (un-named) process in Arno’s explanation that I’m not understanding.
Further:
Pamela Gray’s comment @ur momisugly 9:19 is a direct reference to eastern Oregon and Washington State including that we have mountains between this region and the Pacific Ocean. “Analogue years” sometimes tell us to expect colder and drier winters, sometimes wetter and warmer ones, and so on. I haven’t a current link to this concept for North America but here is one for Western Australia with page 6 showing “five closest analogue years” for their 9 May 2012 report.
http://www.agric.wa.gov.au/objtwr/imported_assets/content/lwe/cli/ensosummarymay2012x.pdf
BTW, if you are looking for an Irish weather station without significant urban influences, your best bets are Valencia Island or Malin Head. Neither of which show significant 20th century warming.
http://www.john-daly.com/stations/stations.htm
Henry P
Response to your claim “UAH covers only the tropics.”
No, not even close.
I think what Mosher is refering to is the inability to respond directly to a comment with a reply button.
Jim
the UAH dataset covers 82.5° N to 82.5° S
With the circumference of Earth being about 40000 km, the distance from 82.5 to 90 would be 7.5/90 x 10000 = 830 km. So the area in the north NOT covered is pir^2 = 2.16 x 10^6 km2. So if we double this for the south, we get 4.32 x 10^6 km2. Dividing this by the area of the earth, 5.1 x 10^8 km2, we get about 0.85% NOT covered and 99.15% covered by UAH.
Jake says:
Because of the drought, the actual heat content of the air is likely to be low despite the “unprecedented” temperatures.
More appropriately, the “unprecidented” temperatures are likely because of the low heat capacity of the dry air. The lower the heat capacity, the higher the temp rise for a given input of heat.
La Nina causes drought in the southwest US. Drought in the southwest causes dry air in the southwest. Dry air in the southwest causes heat waves in the southwest. We are told that ‘global warming’ causes fewerand weaker La Ninas, so drought and heat waves in the southwest US should become less frequent/intense under ‘global warming’.
So, this is not what ‘global warming’ looks like.
Completely out of topic, but I wanted to share this with the cat lovers on the board:
Still think PDO isn’t real?
“””””…..HenryP says:
August 11, 2012 at 11:12 am
David Socrates says
HenryP, you have done some excellent research! Measuring regression slopes often reveals underlying trends very clearly
Henry says
there are not too many people who figured this
as far as I am concerned I have come to the end of my research because now there is not much for me to learn /
give me some time to check you research, thx, I don’t have time now……..”””””
When somebody tells me that they learned something about DATA by looking at slopes, the word that comes to mind is NOISE .
Differentiators are noisy processes, and they can’t add any information that wasn’t in the original data, but they can certainly create illusions.
Here’s one more Mosh comment today at Judith Curry’s blog criticising WUWT and having a discussion with two well known trolls, ” A Fan of More Discourse ” who used to post as ” A Physicist ” here and the other mindless troll lolwot.
Again, here’s ” weary ” of discussing with the people at WUWT but has no problem discussing with mindless trolls who don’t talk any sense.
And he’s deliberately misrepresenting what Anthony said about NOAA’s absolute temperature comparions, by again talking about lack of anomalising etc.
it’s not that Mosh is not smart enough. He is smart. But he has definitely been stung ever since Anthony wrote the current surface stations record paper. From that time he has gone on a total antagonistic whining, moaning and sniping spree everywhere on the blogosphere about WUWT, totally negatively and with deliberate intention to hurt the reputation of WUWT and Anthony.
In that process, he’s got his head too much up his own a**e to realise that it is he who’s looking like a proper pillock.
[Reply: I’m provisionally letting this through, but Anthony ought to review it. Venter, I’m a bit uncomfortable with the “insult” tone. Can’t we find non-insult ways to express viewpoint? -ModE ]
Sorry, forgot to post the Climate Etc. link in the previous post
http://judithcurry.com/2012/08/11/week-in-review-81112/#comment-228205
Unprecedented since a week or two ago! Or whenever.
George E Schmidt says
……..””””” When somebody tells me that they learned something about DATA by looking at slopes, the word that comes to mind is NOISE . Differentiators are noisy processes, and they can’t add any information that wasn’t in the original data, but they can certainly create illusions.
Henry says
I found the “noise” alright. It is in the data called “average “global” temperature”.
Cannot get a rsquared better than 0.98 on the changes in degreesC/annum against time on that. If everyone continuously keeps looking at that, they will miss what is happening to our energy input. The rainfall data also seems a bit noisy to me, but I did find a pattern there from about 50 years.
There is much less noise in the maxima. Give me those data anywhere anytime, and I will show the pattern, that already existed for hundreds of years. And nobody but me is plotting them….
http://www.letterdash.com/henryp/global-cooling-is-here
Carry on, ploughing around in the darkness of your own foolish results.
it’s not that Mosh is not smart enough. He is smart. But he has definitely been stung ever since Anthony wrote the current surface stations record paper. From that time he has gone on a total antagonistic whining, moaning and sniping spree everywhere on the blogosphere about WUWT
I’d say his bad behaviour dates from when he was asked tough questions here about BEST, which he couldn’t or wouldn’t answer. Although his behaviour may well have got worse after Anthony’s paper.
Sorry MOD E, if you feel that there is an insult there please feel free to slip. I just wrote what I exactly felt about Mosh’s behaviour. I did not and do not like the fact that he’s been treated well by Anthony and repays by stabbing in the back in cowardly fashion. He’s going to town over WUWT literally every day and has a comment today in Lucia’s blog also about WUWT, in response to Willis’s challenge to him about his volcanoes article.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2012/on-volcanoes-and-their-climate-response/#comment-101336
This serial denigration of WUWT by Mosher every day bears out to the opinion I stated.
gymnosperm says: “Still think PDO isn’t real?”
The PDO is real. Most people misunderstand what it is.
John F. Hultquist says: “Arno’s explanation at 6:55 pm seems to implicate warm rising air as ‘interfering” with the trade winds – what that means I’m not sure. Does it mean causing them to weaken? But isn’t warm rising air a characteristic of the ITCZ?”
John, Arno would have to explain his erroneous description and assumptions.
In reality: the trade winds and sea surface temperatures are closely coupled, and it’s a positive feedback loop, known as Bjerknes feedback. Something has to disrupt the positive feedback of the “normal” state in order for there to be an El Niño. Contrary to what Arno wrote, it’s a relaxation of the trade winds in the western tropical Pacific that initiates the El Niño. When the trade winds relax, gravity causes the warm water that was piled up in the west to slosh east. The mechanics of this have been known for decades. The trade winds relax due to weather-related phenomena called Westerly Wind Bursts, and there are a number of causes of those.
Regards
Arno Arrak, regarding your August 11, 2012 at 3:57 pm and August 10, 2012 at 6:55 pm comments, your explanations of ENSO mechanics are fatally flawed and they broadcast a lack of understanding about ENSO on your part. You might want to begin your research at Bill Kessler’s FAQ webpage about ENSO:
http://faculty.washington.edu/kessler/occasionally-asked-questions.html
polistra says:
August 11, 2012 at 3:56 am
Can’t really blame NCDC for using 1895; that’s when the Weather Bureau set up its telegraph observation network, so it’s the start of regular records for most of America. It’s not a deliberate fudging of timeline. But starting at 1895 skips half of the curve, so most records are heading mainly upward since then.
————————————————–
The weather bureau records go back to 1735 and Harvard started a weather observatory in Boston in 1743. The weather bureau even has Arctic records starting in 1881, the first international polar year, when the Greely expedition sailed right up the then ice-free Nares strait and established a weather observatory at the northern end of Ellesmere Island.
http://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/027.html
The NCDC US temperature records use to start in 1867, then 1880 and now 1895. In 1860, there were 500 individual stations already operating. 1895 is just a convienently low starting point. 1881 average temperatures got to +0.4C and the NCDC could not have that for example. 1878 got to +0.65C.
So, here is the US temperature record back to 1743 (courtesy of Berkeley Earth and the NCDC – note that Berkeley has a 28% higher trend than the NCDC in the overlap period which appears to be the case with all of Berkeley Earth’s data – it has a higher trend than other available records which has not been explained so far – I believe their record splitting algorithm favours splitting break-points that go up over break-points that go down – who knows how that has affected the 1743 temperature record).
http://s12.postimage.org/vssiyp3dp/CONUS_1743.png
Contiguous US temperatures on a monthly anomaly basis back to 1743.
http://s13.postimage.org/ulqb2gcdj/CONUS_Monthly_1743.png