Global climate trend since Nov. 16, 1978: +0.14 C per decade
March temperatures (preliminary)
Global composite temp.: +0.18 C (about 0.32 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for March.
Northern Hemisphere: +0.33 C (about 0.59 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for March.
Southern Hemisphere: +0.04 C (about 0.07 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for March.
Tropics: +0.22 C (about 0.40 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for March.
February temperatures (revised):
Global Composite: +0.18 C above 30-year average
Northern Hemisphere: +0.37 C above 30-year average
Southern Hemisphere: -0.02 C below 30-year average
Tropics: +0.17 C above 30-year average
(All temperature anomalies are based on a 30-year average (1981-2010) for the month reported.)
Notes on data released April 1, 2013:
UAH climate dataset offers new products
Two new climate ‘products’ will soon be available from the UAH temperature dataset, while a long standing product has been improved to make it more accurate, according to Dr. John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. The “USA48” data, which tracks month-to-month temperature anomalies and the long-term climate trend over the contiguous 48 states, has been made more accurate by using a more precise tool for including the pieces of land adjacent to oceans.
The two new products are a USA49, which includes Alaska with the lower 48, and a listing for Australia, which includes Tasmania. Both of these new products will include temperature anomaly and trend data going back to the beginning of the UAH dataset in December 1978.
Compared to seasonal norms, during March the coldest area on the globe was in northeastern Russia, where the average temperature was as much as 6.49 C (about 11.7 degrees Fahrenheit) cooler than seasonal norms. Looking at the global anomaly map also shows the eastern U.S. and central Canada becoming much cooler than normal in March.
Compared to seasonal norms, the “warmest” area on the globe in March was middle of the Davis Strait, between Greenland and Baffin Island. Temperatures there averaged 6.49 C (about 11.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than seasonal norms for March.
Archived color maps of local temperature anomalies are available on-line at:
The processed temperature data is available on-line at:
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
As part of an ongoing joint project between UAHuntsville, NOAA and NASA, John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center (ESSC) at The University of Alabama in Huntsville, and Dr. Roy Spencer, an ESSC principal scientist, use data gathered by advanced microwave sounding units on NOAA and NASA satellites to get accurate temperature readings for almost all regions of the Earth. This includes remote desert, ocean and rain forest areas where reliable climate data are not otherwise available.
The satellite-based instruments measure the temperature of the atmosphere from the surface up to an altitude of about eight kilometers above sea level. Once the monthly temperature data is collected and processed, it is placed in a “public” computer file for immediate access by atmospheric scientists in the U.S. and abroad.
Neither Christy nor Spencer receives any research support or funding from oil, coal or industrial companies or organizations, or from any private or special interest groups. All of their climate research funding comes from federal and state grants or contracts.
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Also, Lower Troposphere temperature is different from surface temperature, whether local or global.
For me, the most significant number is the one Roy does not show:-
The 10 year average, 2003-12, is 0.19C.
We are now at 0.18C, with ENSO neutral conditions, and no sign of any warming for the last 10 years.
In February, GISS, HADCRUT & RSS all showed the same pattern, with 12 month averages also at around the 10 yr average.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/03/30/global-temperature-updatesfeb-2013/
I was thinking the same thing about the “where I live is the world” trap.
However, the coldest anomaly in the US on the map above, shown to be in the south central part of the country is -2.5 Celsius.
I did some checking on regional March climo reports and found the following Fahrenheit temp anomalies.
Evansville IN, Cincinnati OH =-6.4
Indianapolis IN, Louisville KY, Paducah KY =-6.7
This indicates a uniformly colder pocket of air across several states.
1. This means there should be a -3.5 anomaly on the map.
2. The location of the coldest anomalies on the map above is shifted hundreds of miles south and west of the actual coldest pocket/anomalies but I will assume its mainly the result of this being a 2 dimensional maps that loses perspective from the curvature of the earth.
3. The NWS stats are based on the same 30 year period for average(1981-2010).
4. Maybe on a global scale, missing a pocket of several states barely into a 1 degree C colder anomaly is nit picking(probably it is) but since its “where I live” just thought it would be worth sharing.
Coldest ever March Maximum in the Central England Temperature!
At the Meteorological Institute of Uccle, near Brussels, Belgium, the mean air temperature in March 2013 was only 3.0 deg C, while over the years the March average is 6.8.
What these figures do show is just how much they were affected last autumn by the El Nino during the summer. (You know, the El Nino that NOAA pretended did not exist).
In September and October, for instance, UAH peaked at 0.34C.
It will be interesting to see the Ocean/Land split when Roy updates his site. Ocean numbers fell more sharply than Land in Feb.
Continued low ocean numbers would suggest a prolonged drop in land temps in coming months.
I’m a bit puzzled by the title since according to the UAH data March was an anomaly of 0.184 vs 0.175 in Feb so it went up, especially since the average temperature is higher for March?
REPLY: Phil Felton, be puzzled all you want. Round up/round down, round out, go round and round, but .18 it is. – Anthony
The Widget shows the CO2 for January 2013. The anomaly only gets updated about 3 weeks into the next month. Whoever is responsible for maintaining the Widget, you’re doing it wrong.
REPLY: I’m responsible, and yes I’m not always able to update it because the code is broken (written right before climategate1 and got back burnered) and it must be done manually. Try running this blog and dealing with the hundreds of emails I get every day, and trying to keep up with the current news, demands of readers, demands of my business and family and see if you can do a better job. Walk a mile in my shoes while doing it all for free. – Anthony
Philip Peake says (April 2, 2013 at 9:06 am): “Of course, with all of the US media based in NY, when it rains there its floods of biblical proportions hitting America!”
South Park: “Tom, I’m currently 10 miles outside of Beaverton, unable to get inside the town proper. We do not have any reports of fatalities yet, but we believe that the death toll may be in the hundreds of millions.”
http://southpark-zone.blogspot.com/2008/01/s9-two-days-before-day-after-tomorrow.html
The map shown isn’t correct for our region: in De Bilt (The Netherlands) the march average temperature was 2.5 degrees Celsius, where the long year mean is 6.2 degrees. That’s a 3.7 degrees difference. The map only shows a 2.0-ish negative anomaly.
“Compared to seasonal norms, during March the coldest area on the globe was in northeastern Russia, where the average temperature was as much as 6.49 C (about 11.7 degrees Fahrenheit) cooler than seasonal norms.”
I think that should read northwestern Russia, not northeastern.
The colouring for Norway seems slightly off the detailed instrument record for March:
http://www.met.no/filestore/tama0313m.jpg
which was -3,0C compared to the 1961-90 average (which is significantly cooler than the 1981-2010 average).
btw – here in germany – the cold march and the long lasting winter 2012 / 2013 are stylized to an “example of extreme weather events” predicted by “CO2 climate change” to become true – obviously there is no bussines but snow bussiness … and ignorance rules – in the land of PIK and windmills and solar panel fostering… it should be a LOL – but it is much more, my purse can take … 🙁
I like to track the Daily official UAH temps. There are more interesting patterns such as oscillations that work on about two-week timelines that don’t really show up in the monthly averages.
Temps have been heading down since the impact of the last small El Nino peaked at the end of August and in mid-November, 2012. I see there is about 90 day or 3 month lag for when the ENSO provides it impact on global temperatures so the trend down started in mid-January and will continue into April.
Daily UAH temps over 2012 to 2013 to date.
http://s8.postimg.org/fhnk3hudh/Daily_LT_UAH_12_13_Mar13.png
This one is the Daily temps from 2010 to 2013 to date so we can see how temperatures have changed since the last large El Nino hit at the end of 2009 and how temps reacted to the last large La Nina (which peaked in early October 2011). End of March 2013 temps are down about -0.5C since the peak temperatures in mid-January 2010 but up from early January 2012.
http://s16.postimg.org/8ccra2d79/Daily_LT_UAH_10_13_Mar13.png
I’ve been waiting for the Lower Stratosphere temps to go back up after the impact of the last large volcano, Pinatubo’s, impact on Ozone depletion wears off. There might be a small uptick in March, 2013 with Tropics and the Southern Hemisphere in the positive territory. Lower stratosphere temps have been stable/rising for 16 years now.
http://s17.postimg.org/7bz49lfjj/Daily_LS_UAH_Regional_Mar13.png
This is how I see the volcanoes impacting both the Troposphere and the Stratosphere.
http://s9.postimg.org/qfkkx05kv/Daily_LS_LT_UAH_Lines_Mar13.png
I just don’t get it. It seemed a very large swath of the northern hemisphere broke all kinds of cold records everywhere for the entire month of march, (and I don’t remember reading about any extreme southern hemisphere heat) yet we still have a positive anomaly. I cannot imagine how cold it must get to get below average…does it require 10 feet of snow in Furnace Creek, Death Valley to get below the mystical zero mark? How on earth did people survive the 60’s?
Sorry this link was late. I was away from home for a while. The preliminary March 2013 sea surface temperature anomaly data was posted yesterday:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/preliminary-march-2013-sea-surface-temperature-anomaly-update/
John Parsons AKA atarsinc
Mike Maguire says: “1. This means there should be a -3.5 anomaly on the map.”
No Mike. You’re measuring surface temp. Tnis is a lower tropospheric measurement. JP
Can people take a breath here – this report is the satellite record for the lower troposphere – it is not the land record.
Robert Wykoff — Yep, that’s the real tragedy here, if you go back further than satellite records, it’s pretty clear what GISS is telling us — if something isn’t done soon our grandparents will freeze to death.
Seriously though, even when Europe and the U.S. are cold/hot it’s not unusual for the anomaly to go the other way, we’re just not that big a piece of the puzzle as a whole. Been watching this for a long time now, it used to surprise me too.
Hmmm. It’s interesting that the maximum warmest anomaly is, at a global scale, practically next door to the maximum coolest anomaly. The recent discussion about the time-resolution of paleoclimate reconstructions (the averaging that inevitably results from estimating temperature from, for example, the sediment layed down over decades or centuries) also makes me start wondering about the geographic resolution of those reconstructions. Is there any way to control for or to at least estimate the degree to which the measured data is an artifact of location rather than an indication of global trends?
In theory, it should all average out but I am becoming more and more distrustful of that assumption.
“The Widget shows the CO2 for January 2013. The anomaly only gets updated about 3 weeks into the next month. Whoever is responsible for maintaining the Widget, you’re doing it wrong.
REPLY: I’m responsible, and yes I’m not always able to update it because the code is broken (written right before climategate1 and got back burnered) and it must be done manually. Try running this blog and dealing with the hundreds of emails I get every day, and trying to keep up with the current news, demands of readers, demands of my business and family and see if you can do a better job. Walk a mile in my shoes while doing it all for free. – Anthony”
Anthony, am more than happy to take on the task of keeping said widget current.
Cheers
Mark
John Parsons AKA atarsinc
What will it take for people to get it in their head:
1. What’s happening in your backyard does not determine the global/hemispheric averages.
2. Anecdotes from media outlets about certain large regional areas do not determine global/hemispheric averages.
And while we’re at it:
Don’t conflate Lower Tropospheric Temperatures with surface temps.
Geez.
John Parsons AKA atarsinc,
Thanks for correcting me. Yes, of course you are right. The UAH data is from the lower troposphere and the temperatures in my previous post came from the NWS, which records temperatures using thermometers inside of shelter boxes around 2 meters/6 feet above the surface.
John Morrow says:
April 2, 2013 at 10:20 am
“,,,Lower Troposphere temperature is different from surface temperature, whether local or global.”
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
That is the point.
It follows from this that one cannot make a direct comparison with the surface thermometer based data sets Our own personal experience is at surface level, and, of course, it is local to where we live, not some globalized average.
Keith Gordon (April 2, 2013 at 9:25 am) points out that in the UK, March was some 3degC below ‘normal’. A similar point is made by Jean Meeus (April 2, 2013 at 10:37 am) for March temperatures in Belgium (similar northern latitute to that of UK).
A more significant fact that has not yet been picked up by MSM is that for the UK the winter average has fallen some 1.5deg C since 2000. It would appear that UK winter temperatures are falling, and falling fast. The UK is not well prepared for this since the UK Met Office is always forecasting warmer temperatures.
Thanks, Dr, Christy.
Very cold March in Europe!
I will update your graphic in ARVAL.
mikerossander says:
April 2, 2013 at 2:08 pm
I am “..wondering about the geographic resolution of those reconstructions. Is there any way to control for or to at least estimate the degree to which the measured data is an artifact of location rather than an indication of global trends?”
////////////////////////////////////////////
Mike
Look at temperature anomaly figure 1 of the Marcott FAQ. This is apparently the thermometer temperature anomaly taken from stations from the same geographical location (or nearby location) as the proxies used in their reconstruction was taken. It shows just 0.5degC warming from 1880 to date. It shows that to day (2000 – 2012) is just 0.2degC warmer than 1940. The temperature anomaly in figure 1 is quite different to the usual thermometer temperature anomaly sets such as GISS Hadcrut etc which suggests that the reconstruction is to some extent an artefact of location (which is of course what one would expect)..