The opening paragraph of NOAA’s press release NCDC Releases June 2013 Global Climate Report begins with alarmist statistics and an error (my boldface):
According to NOAA scientists, the globally averaged temperature for June 2013 tied with 2006 as the fifth warmest June since record keeping began in 1880. It also marked the 37th consecutive June and 340th consecutive month (more than 28 years) with a global temperature above the 20th century average. The last below-average June temperature was June 1976 and the last below-average temperature for any month was February 1985.
First, the error: According to the NOAA Monthly Global (land and ocean combined into an anomaly) Index (°C), the “last below-average temperature for any month was” in reality was December 1984, not February 1985. Makes one wonder, if they can’t read a list of temperature anomalies, should we believe they can read thermometers?
Second, it’s very obvious that NOAA press releases have degraded to nothing but alarmist babble. More than two years ago, NOAA revised the base years they use for anomalies for most of their climate metrics. The CPC Update to Climatologies Notice webpage includes the following statement (my boldface):
Beginning with the January 2011 monthly data, all climatologies, anomalies, and indices presented within and related to the monthly Climate Diagnostics Bulletin will be updated according to current WMO standards. For datasets that span at least the past 30 years (such as atmospheric winds and pressure), the new anomalies will be based on the most recent 30-year climatology period 1981-2010.
Apparently, the NCDC didn’t get the same memo as the CPC. The Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA) got the memo.
The following graph compares the NCDC global surface temperature product from January 1979 to June 2013, with the base years of 1901-2000 used by the NCDC and the base years of 1981-2010 recommended by the WMO.
If the NCDC had revised their base years to comply with WMO recommendations, the press release wouldn’t have the same alarm-bell ring to it:
According to NOAA scientists, the globally averaged temperature for June 2013 tied with 2006 as the fifth warmest June since record keeping began in 1880. It also marked the 17th consecutive June and 16th consecutive month (less than two years) with a global temperature above the 1981-2010 average. The last below-average June temperature was June 1996 and the last below-average temperature for any month was February 2012, though December 2012 was basically zero.
The monthly global surface temperature stats would be pretty boring if NOAA complied with WMO standards. Pretty boring indeed.
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jai mitchell says:
July 22, 2013 at 10:46 am
Don’t know Bob, I mean the WMO is pretty much absolutely positively certain that the earth is getting warmer, MUCH warmer…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You are kidding right? RIGHT?
Long term the earth is getting cooler. GRAPH
And the reason I say that is the Northern Hemisphere Summer Energy Leading Indicator Graph
340th consecutive month (more than 28 years) with a global temperature above the 20th century average
And for some perspective, RSS shows no warming for 199 months.
Since the past thousand years was the coolest 1,000-year period of the past 8,000 years, it is laughable how ignorance breeds panic that overrules reason. The current modest warming is a natural rebound from the Little Ice Age, the coldest extended period of the past 8,000 years. All of the back and forth of the past 40 years, a period of natural warming which is also a rebound from cooling (1950-1975), is “sound and fury signifying nothing.” Through it all, good observational science forges ahead against the headwind of failing, continuously reconstructed climate models. Never has such failure been so lavishly rewarded, as global warming gives way to climate change (the constant state since the inception of climate), to severe weather (made exceptional only as a result of ignorance and obfuscation), and now the magic of heat sequestration in the ocean depths. How the tiny atmosphere heats the massive ocean while not indulging itself in warming has become a monument to alarmists’ passionate quest for a Hail Mary for the salvation of their floundering religiously pseudoscience. The alarmists believe, as all deeply religious folk do, that miracles do happen, so why not for them. They certainly could use some.
Exactly. The leadership at NCDC has been involved with such blatant, obvious AGW wording for many years now. There “agenda” is VERY apparent. Sad!
@ur momisugly Bob Tisdale: Sorry for the off topic, but this would be your area. This fellow at the Met is claiming to have observed the missing heat transiting to the deep oceans. Is this worthy of a new post?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/has-global-warming-stopped-no–its-just-on-pause-insist-scientists-and-its-down-to-the-oceans-8726893.html
Humans live at the South Pole where temperatures average -50C and in Ethopia where the average mean temperature is 34C.
I’m pretty sure we can adapt to a small 2C temperature increase. We evolved by taking advantage of the hottest time of the day on the African savanna when the other animals were hunkered down in the shade, panting to try to keep cool. We are warm-adapted already.
Chris D. says:
July 23, 2013 at 4:05 am
@ur momisugly Bob Tisdale: Sorry for the off topic, but this would be your area. This fellow at the Met is claiming to have observed the missing heat transiting to the deep oceans. Is this worthy of a new post?
———————————-
Temps at the Surface, in the 0-700 metre Ocean and in the 0-2000 metre Ocean going back to 1955.
I don’t see how a small 0.0021C increase in the 0-2000 Ocean can be seen as acceleration. It is the same as it has always been in the record. It is also a lower rate than the error margin in the Argo floats. And at this rate, in 100 years, it will have warmed 0.2C. Wow, that should really change things. In addition, it is equivalent to 0.5 W/m2 while net GHG forcing is over 2.0 W/m2. Surface cooling – ocean accumulating 25% – where is the other 75% going.
http://s13.postimg.org/iiu9nju0n/Temps_Surface_2000_M_Ocean_Q1_2013.png
Thanks Bob and Robin for trying to find updated indices 🙂 Can’t seem to get anything plotted from the links you supplied Bob, so I guess I’ll just have to wait for the updated indices.
What I’m curious about is the relative stasis in the ENSO index in the past few months, at a time when it is usually haring off in one direction or the other. From what I can tell, such periods are unusual in the past 30 years and tend to be during periods of weak positive-to-neutral conditions, rather than weak negative-to-neutral conditions. Are prolonged ENSO-neutral conditions in store, I wonder, or do the strengthening trade winds indicate La Nina on the way? Is it a passing phase prior to El Nino?
Something I have noticed in the Modoki data is that, though the numbers are basically up and down for the overall index and for Boxes A and B, Box C (the equatorial Western Pacific) shows a very marked step up following the 1998 El Nino, remaining at elevated levels ever since. I know Bob has frequently posted about this step-change for the Western Pacific as a whole, but hadn’t noticed until now that the equatorial western warm pool itself has been the major part of this, not just the poleward extensions.
Further to my previous comment, the strong trade winds at present may perhaps turn out to be analogous to the those of the fairly weak 1995-96 Nina, which Bob shows to be the trigger for the step-change in Western Pacific temperatures and the subsequent Nino. I don’t know if there’s enough warm water built up there at present to trigger another big El Nino (doesn’t appear to be), but it could be one to watch.
Illiteracies often go together.
mathematically
illiterate
Last time I noticed, the standard for GISS was roughly 1950-1980. (Correlates well with a time of relatively stable readings.) And the standards for HadCRUT and IPCC were 1961-1990.
Meanwhile, the warming rate in the graph appears to me as largely unchanged between the two curves, despite the fact I see them as being not perfectly identical. And, .”current” of .22 degree C warmer than 1981-2010 average “WMO standard” sounds to me like warming on top of the 1981-2010 period being one that experienced warming.
I seem to think that sticking to lack of warming from 2001 (12 years) is a lot easier to sell, and a lot closer to the truth than stuff said above, and other stuff spouted about lack of warming being for 16 or 17 years. Just look at the graph – and consider that from late 1997 to early 1998 we had a century-class El Nino, and its spike needs some discounting from the trend in a time period of only almost 35 years. The most recent greater spike was 1877-1878, close to 2 cycle peaks before the 2004-2005 one in the periodic cycle that I have seen as discernable in HADCrut3.
(The surface index that I note as having greatest resemblances to the UAH and RSS satallite
lower-troposphere indices).
NOAA always likes to report/comment like; “June 2013 is the 5th warmest since 1880”. Or the 13th warmest ect. This as I see it is strictly for “show” or as “alarming”. The fact is known that the Globe warm-up from 1977 to about 1998. To continually present the latest “month” as warmest since records started in 1880 is very childish. We have a new high. Over the past 16 years, any reported temperature below the 8th… indicates cooling. Above the 8th indicates warming. But against the total of the past 16 years, if the reading is just a couple of 1/00ths higher or lower, the change to the global average is minor and no change at all to the new normal. This is called a political or bias spin. This is not what our “scientists should be practicing.