UAH Global Temperature Update for February, 2013: +0.18 deg. C
By Dr. Roy Spencer
Our Version 5.5 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for February, 2013 is +0.18 deg. C, a large decrease from January’s +0.50 deg. C. (click for large version):
These large month-to-month changes are not that uncommon, especially during Southern Hemisphere summer, and are due to small variations (several percent) in the convective heat flux from the ocean surface to the atmosphere.
The global, hemispheric, and tropical LT anomalies from the 30-year (1981-2010) average for the last 14 months are:
YR MON GLOBAL NH SH TROPICS
2012 1 -0.134 -0.065 -0.203 -0.256
2012 2 -0.135 +0.018 -0.289 -0.320
2012 3 +0.051 +0.119 -0.017 -0.238
2012 4 +0.232 +0.351 +0.114 -0.242
2012 5 +0.179 +0.337 +0.021 -0.098
2012 6 +0.235 +0.370 +0.101 -0.019
2012 7 +0.130 +0.256 +0.003 +0.142
2012 8 +0.208 +0.214 +0.202 +0.062
2012 9 +0.339 +0.350 +0.327 +0.153
2012 10 +0.333 +0.306 +0.361 +0.109
2012 11 +0.282 +0.299 +0.265 +0.172
2012 12 +0.206 +0.148 +0.264 +0.138
2013 1 +0.504 +0.555 +0.453 +0.371
2013 2 +0.176 +0.369 -0.016 +0.169
Related:
Global Microwave Sea Surface Temperature Update for Feb. 2013: -0.01 deg. C
The global average sea surface temperature (SST) update for Feb. 2013 is -0.01 deg. C, relative to the 2003-2006 average: (click for large version)
The anomalies are computed relative to only 2003-2006 because those years were relatively free of El Nino and La Nina activity, which if included would cause temperature anomaly artifacts in other years. Thus, these anomalies cannot be directly compared to, say, the Reynolds anomalies which extend back to the early 1980s. Nevertheless, they should be useful for monitoring signs of ocean surface warming, which appears to have stalled since at least the early 2000′s. (For those who also track our lower tropospheric temperature [“LT”] anomalies, these SST anomalies average about 0.19 deg. C cooler over 2003-2006.)
The SST retrievals come from Remote Sensing Systems (RSS), and are based upon passive microwave observations of the ocean surface from AMSR-E on NASA’s Aqua satellite, the TRMM satellite Microwave Imager (TMI), and WindSat. While TMI has operated continuously through the time period (but only over the tropics and subtropics), AMSR-E stopped nominal operation in October 2011, after which Remote Sensing Systems patched in SST data from WindSat. The various satellite datasets have been carefully intercalibrated by RSS.
Despite the relatively short period of record, I consider this dataset to be the most accurate depiction of SST variability over the last 10+ years due to these instruments’ relative insensitivity to contamination by clouds and aerosols at 6.9 GHz and 10.7 GHz.
James Abbott posted: “The report said there have only been 21 days in 102 years where the average maximum temperature for the whole of Australia has exceeded 39 Celsius …”
RichardD posted: “the brutally simple average of all the temperatures recorded at 721 weather stations on Jan 7th …
SamC would like to know: How many certified weather stations were there in Australia in 1911 and exactly who was calculating the “1911 daily average maximum temperatures for the whole of Australia”?
Or in 1912, … or 1913, …. or 1914, …. etc.
Using a few dozen highly questionable “daily temperature records” from the early part of the 20th Century, …. that were obtained via use of simple, un-calibrated thermometers at randomly selected “locations”, ….. then extrapolating said data to obtain a “daily average maximum temperatures for the whole of Australia” ….. and then comparing those “fuzzy” results to the calculated results from the less questionable seven hundred twenty one (721) 21st Century weather stations ……. is both silly and asinine.
A warmer climate with higher CO2 is a desired outcome for world food production and living conditions. We really do not want to return to LIA temperatures or CO2 levels.
Without responding to all the replies to my posting individually, just as a gentle reminder I said
“BTW the debate on whether the US has had its hottest month/year
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/03/a-note-about-temperatures/
can now turn to Australia:”
ie all I said was – have a look at this.
But it had the effect in starting a debate and as would be expected, the main aim from skeptics is to shoot down any data or report which does not fit with their mind set.
The January satellite anomaly gets branded an “outlier” whilst the February figure is “encouraging” and a “big drop in temperature”.
If I had posted a report saying that a given continent had had its coolest summer on record, I have no doubt at all that most skeptics would, without questioning the data, have lapped it up.
The point is that the debate between convinced skeptics and convinced warmists is all about selecting data to suit – which is about as scientific as choosing which doughnuts you like.
It’s not the trend that’s the problem, it’s the lack of statistically significant warming in 15+ years. The reason why these years are important is because of what it tells us about the predictive skil or lack thereof of the models. See below:
I think we are now on 16 years and at 100% level of confidence. 😉
Here’s another that states 17 years. If we pass this then it’s poooooof!
https://www.llnl.gov/news/newsreleases/2011/Nov/NR-11-11-03.html
There’s quite a bit about Flannery on this thread. Well here is Dr. Tim Flannery in a 2007 interview.
Let’s see how this prediction turned out eh.
Jan 2008
Australian Floodwaters Threaten Previously Drought-Struck Towns
Feb 2009
Crocodile risk in Australia flood
Dec 2010
ACT dams full to overflowing
Jan 2011
Unprecedented, "Biblical" Floods Inundate Australia
Feb 2012
Floods create ‘inland sea’ in Australia
Apr 2012
It’s official: Australia no longer in drought
Feb 2013
Warragamba Dam overflows
Mar 2013
Australia invests $100 million in flood mitigation infrastructure
Where are all those mothballed desalination plants when you need them? During the next natural cycle I will ask where are all those flood mitigation structures? What these fools don’t understand is that Australia has always been a land of extremes.
@oldfossil,
read the truly excellent book: “the allagash abductions” by ray fowler.you might change your mind-maybe!
i don’t believe in pink unicorns or climate models though!
cheers,phil
Walter Dnes says:
March 5, 2013 at 1:56 am
Anyhow, the value I get is -0.000251 per year Apr 1997 to Jan 2013.
Thank you very much! Can you also give me the slope for March, 1997 to January 2013? Thanks!
wbrozek says:
March 5, 2013 at 9:36 am
> Thank you very much! Can you also give me the slope for March, 1997
> to January 2013? Thanks!
March 1997 to January 2013
Hadley v3 4.35E-05 i.e. 0.0000435
Hadley v4 0.00394
GISS 0.007472
UAH 0.00733
RSS -0.00124
NOAA 0.003775
I’ve paid for a webpage that I’m not using. I really should put up my spreadsheet there one of these days.
Note for wbrozek
Correction to UAH March/97 to January/13 data. That should be 0.007395; I gave the latest number (i.e. through February) from my spreadsheet. The other numbers are OK, because I don’t have February data for them yet.
Walter Dnes says:
March 5, 2013 at 10:39 am
Thank you very much! I will let you know why I asked. I do not know if you saw my article today. The latest information I had was from SkS from March to the end of December where the slope for Hadcrut3 was 0.000 +/-0.135 with the 0 line at 0.41. So when the January anomaly came in at 0.388, I thought it was a no brainer to conclude there was no warming since March. But they sort of threw a curve ball at me when their original December 2012 anomaly of 0.233 was changed to 0.257 when the January numbers came out. Then when you wrote about the April month, I questioned myself.
So the anomaly from April was -0.000251 and for March it was 0.0000435. So it seems to me that I missed it by only 5 or 6 days when I said the slope was negative since March (1).
I really wish WFT gets up to date!
thelastdemocrat has skedaddled, but someone just posted this chart.
Not so scary, is it?
In fact, the past century and a half has been one of the most benign times in the entire 10,700 year Holocene. It shows that the alarmist crowd are a bunch of blinkered fools, arm-waving over a tiny 0.8ºC temperature fluctuation.
Werner Brozek says:
March 5, 2013 at 11:33 am
> But they sort of threw a curve ball at me when their original December 2012
> anomaly of 0.233 was changed to 0.257 when the January numbers came out.
That prodded me to run the linux “diff” tool on the December/2012 versus January/2013 downloads. It’s not just December 2012. There are other differences for the year 2012. I attribute this to climate data coming in late, as well as corrections. A cynical observer would note that all 9 changes were upwards. At least the changes only went back to March 2012, which sounds reasonable. It’s not like GISS with numbers flip-flopping all the way back into the 19th century every month. Here are the values for the 2 downloads…
Month Dec2012 Jan2013
==============
2012/03 0.290 0.291
2012/04 0.499 0.499
2012/05 0.483 0.484
2012/06 0.482 0.483
2012/07 0.445 0.448
2012/08 0.513 0.514
2012/09 0.514 0.517
2012/10 0.499 0.500
2012/11 0.482 0.487
2012/12 0.233 0.257
Can I contact you offline to discuss this further?
Walter Dnes says:
March 5, 2013 at 1:22 pm
Can I contact you offline to discuss this further?
Sure! Just let the moderator know he has my permission to give you my email address.
Speaking of GISS, in January they made a whole bunch of changes including making the warmest month, January 2007, warmer from 0.89 to 0.93. You can still see the 0.89 on WFT.
Lightrain says:
March 4, 2013 at 11:26 pm
D.B. Stealey says:
March 4, 2013 at 4:18 pm
Here is a chart showing a normal y-axis. Not so scary, eh?
—–
Plot that again using zero kelvin as the start of the Y axis on the same graph size and see what that reveals. Why do we look at the top of the graph and blow that line up 1000 times to show the wiggle?
_________________________________________________________________
I take that as a rhetorical question ;;) but to give it a serious answer:
For the full explanation see “How To Lie With Charts” by Gerald E. Jones (Sybex 1995).
For the short version: Magnifying the wiggle exaggerates er ah accentuates its importance. Truncating the y axis just below the lowest point of wiggle makes it appear to be all there is and looks much more alarming.
All standard chartsmanship, nicht wahr?
Jimbo says:
March 5, 2013 at 7:57 am
It’s not the trend that’s the problem, it’s the lack of statistically significant warming in 15+ years. The reason why these years are important is because of what it tells us about the predictive skil or lack thereof of the models. See below:
Just playing devil’s advocate here but I’m not sure your assumptions are correct. If you want to invalidate the models you need to show that observations are significantly different to the model projections. As far as I can tell – they aren’t.
You cite this NOAA statement as justification for your assertion
Note that they refer to “ zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more”. But there hasn’t been a ZERO trend for this length of period. There have been non-significant warming trends but that is not the same thing.
The error bars on the model projections probably do rule out the zero trend for intervals of more than 15 years but they probably do still include the observed warming (albeit non-significant) trend.
What this all means is that invalidating the models will take several more years (unless there is rapid cooling). The best you can hope for is to show that the probability that the models are simulating reality (i.e. the observations) is small (e.g. less than 10%). Unfortunately the same logic leads to the conclusion that there is only a small probability that warming has really stopped.
John Finn says:
March 5, 2013 at 4:30 pm
Note that they refer to “ zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more”. But there hasn’t been a ZERO trend for this length of period.
Not with UAH. But RSS has just come out for February. The anomaly dropped from 0.442 to 0.194. As I said in my report, the 0.442 value ranked 3rd. The 0.194 value ranks 11th to put it into perspective. The average between these two is 0.318 and would rank 5th if it stayed this way.
As well, the longest time for a slope that is not positive goes up from 16 years and 1 month to 16 years and 2 months, going from January 1997 to February 2013. This is 194/204 = 95% of the way to Santer’s 17 years.
Tilo @ur momisugly here
If ENSO alone was responsible for global temperatures, we would expect to have seen a clear decline in temperatures since 1997 (which includes all of the le Nino period). I calculated the lnear regression for the ENSO SST anomalies you linked to, from 1997 to December 2012.
The trend is -0.12C/decade.
For 1998 to December 2012;
The trend is 0.1C/decade.
That’s a pretty sizable difference for one year.
Doing things crudely, we could subtract the ENSO trend and a get a rough idea of what the surface temp record is for each period, if ENSO was factored out. Here are the trends with no ENSO adjustment.
1997 – 2012
GISS: 0.09C/decade
Had4: 0.04C/decade
RSS: -0.001C/decade
UAH: 0.09C/decade
Subtract the 97 – 12 ENSO trend and you get
GISS: 0.21C/decade
Had4: 0.16C/decade
RSS: 0.12C/decade
UAH: 0.21C/decade
For that period, accounting for the ENSO trend makes a significant difference. There has been much talk about the 97 trend, and this resukt might recommend some circumspection on straight global temp trends without factoring for internal variability.
But the 98 to 12 period is positive for ENSO (0.08C/decade). factoring ENSO, the results look like this:
1998 – 2012
GISS: -0.01C/decade
Had4: -0.05C/decade
RSS: -0.12C/decade
UAH: -0.03C/decade
(we haven’t factored solar, which would skew temps downwards for the period, as there is a peak in 2000, and very low activity in recent times, which has been covered at WUWT – http://sidc.oma.be/html/wolfmms.html)
While I am surprised by the ENSO trend since 98, what the difference with the 1997 trend tells me is that the period is too short for ENSO influences to be evened out.
Also to consider, there is a lag of several months between ENSO peaks and surface/tropospheric temps (also well-covered here). I ran a regression starting from the last 3 months of 97, to the 9th month of 2012 (to avoid any annual signal). the result was -0.08C/decade., which would more properly be consonant with global temperatures. This would make the 98 – 12 trends:
GISS: 0.15C/decade
Had4: 0.11C/decade
RSS: 0.04C/decade
UAH: 0.13C/decade.
In this crude analysis, those last are what I would call the real global temp trends after factoring out ENSO for the period 1998 to 2012. They’d be slightly higher if solar was factored (and the solar/temp lag also accounted for). Finally, the satellite data show higher peaks for ENSO events than the surface records, but this is too difficult for me factor.
The temp difference if I take of one year and only go up to 2011 (accounting for lag) would produce no significantly different result from the temp trends as they stand with no ENSO adjustment. One year less makes a trend difference for ENSO of 0.02C/decade (warmer). This is a trend difference of 0.1C (ENSO data) just from dropping a year. That’s significant, and reinforces the error of looking at a time period this short, or thinking that one year could not make much of a difference.
If you believe in Global WArming or Climate Change you have too much free time on your hands.lol Libturds enough of the Chicken Little the SKY is falling BS i look up in the SKY and i see crystal clean blue skies.Sky aint falling were i live.lol Global Temps have been fallen since 1998 and as far as Climate Change goes well DUH Climate always changes thats why we have 4 seasons and rain,snow,drought,hurricane,tornado’s find a New Pagan Cult Libturds
James Abbot replied: and as would be expected, the main aim from skeptics is to shoot down any data or report which does not fit with their mind set.
James Abbot, it is a perfectly normal, logical, reasonable, intelligent mindset that “shoots down” the “junk science” silliness of anyone claiming an associations, correlations and/or comparison between the extrapolated “average surface temperature” derived from the pre-1960 temperature Records ……. and the post-1960 calculated “surface temperature averages”
No one really cared about “average surface temperatures” until Charles Keeling started getting correct atmospheric CO2 ppm “counts” in 1958. And it was only after 1958 that the interested Climate Scientists had to “back-pedal” into those old Temperature Records and extrapolate out some reasonable sounding “temperature averages” to support their junk science “CO2 causing AGW” claims.
And PS, I am not a “skeptic” of CO2 causing AGW, ….. I am a “denier” of it, …. simply because it is not based in/on actual, factual science & mathematics, logical reasoning and/or intelligent deductions.
james Abbott says:
March 5, 2013 at 7:25 am
I’m with James here. There is far too much groupthink in the WUWT comments threads. The skeptic community can only stand to gain in credibility if we challenge assertions coming from all sides.
For example, look at the second chart presented by Dr. Roy Spencer above. It shows the Global SST anomaly, relative to the average for 2003-2006. But any anomaly will appear to be zero if we just choose the right base period.
I accept that Dr. Spencer’s intention here was not to mislead, but to display SST variability over the last decade. However, the factoid that will stick with the casual reader is the zero anomaly.
oldfossil says:
March 7, 2013 at 2:47 am
“The skeptic community can only stand to gain in credibility if we challenge assertions coming from all sides. For example, look at the second chart presented by Dr. Roy Spencer above. It shows the Global SST anomaly, relative to the average for 2003-2006.”
In reference to the content/context of the above comment, and not to the author of the comment, ….. it is my opinion, that any tit-for-tat challenging, arguments or discussions between AGW proponents and their skeptics that is related to or associated with the above cited chart by Spencer is, …. in actuality, …. much ado about nothing. Absolutely nothing of any value to anyone other than maybe a “feel good feeling” about their own importance.
Thus said, I would think that anyone in their right mind would be asking …. “Who the ell cares what those Global Average SST anomalies currently are or have been over the past 11 years”?
And if you don’t agree with my above assessment then, ….. while looking at the above cited graph of global average sea surface temperatures (SST) from July 2002 to Feb. 2013, …. pretend or imagine that it is now say Jan 2005 …. and then ask yourself just what challenges or arguments the above “comments thread” would contain?
Then do the same thing again for Jan 2008. Then again for Feb 2010. And again for Dec 2012.
And when you are all done, include the above Feb 2013 “comments thread” and then tell me, …. just what the ell has been accomplished, proven, disproved, justified, resolved, settled and/or factually confirmed ….. that is related to the “cause & effect” claims of CO2 causing Anthropogenic Global Warming climate change.
You might as well create a similar graph for the “passing yards gained” by one of the NFL Teams, …. between Jan 2002 and Jan 2013, …… and then get in a “heated” argument about how those past PYG “averages” are going to directly affect and/or determine the number of “passing yards gained” during their 2013 Fall Football Season.