Guest post by Bob Tisdale.
Preliminary Note: An “alarmism warning” indicates alarmism is imminent. On the other hand, an “alarmism watch” indicates alarmism might occur, but that’s all the time.
We’re not just talking a record high for the month of August…we’re talking a record high for any month during the satellite era. I suspect our alarmist friends will be making all sorts of claims about attribution even though climate models still almost double the observed rate of ocean surface warming during the satellite era.
We recently discussed the likely reasons for the record high sea surface temperatures in the North Pacific, and their impacts on global sea surface temperatures. See the post On The Recent Record-High Global Sea Surface Temperatures – The Wheres and Whys. According to the preliminary satellite-enhanced sea surface temperature data for August 2014, the sea surfaces of the North Pacific are still warming. See Figure 1. After almost 2 ½ decades of showing no warming, apparently a blocking high is driving sea surface temperatures in the North Pacific skyward.
Figure 1
Due to the enormity of the North Pacific, and due to the magnitude of its apparent upward shift, sea surface temperatures globally are at record high levels, as shown in Figure 2. And as noted above, the record is not just for the month of August, we’re talking record highs for any month [during the satellite era].
Figure 2
AND NOW BACK TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PRELIMINARY SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE UPDATE FOR AUGUST 2014
GENERAL NOTES – BOILERPLATE
The August 2014 Reynolds OI.v2 Sea Surface Temperature (SST) data through the NOAA NOMADS website won’t be official until Monday, September 8,, 2014. Refer to the schedule on the NOAA Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature Analysis Frequently Asked Questions webpage. This post includes the preliminary Global and NINO3.4 sea surface temperature anomalies for August 2014 that the NOMADS website prepares based on incomplete data for the month. I’ve also included the weekly data through the week centered on August 27, 2014. The base years for anomalies are 1971-2000, which are the standard base years from the NOAA NOMADS website for this dataset.
PRELIMINARY MONTHLY DATA
The preliminary global sea surface temperature anomalies for August are presently at about +0.40 deg C. See Figure 2 above. Based on the preliminary data, they warmed a good amount (an increase of about +0.065 deg C) since July. With the apparent upward shift in the North Pacific sea surface temperature anomalies last year, and the early El Niño conditions this year, we’re looking at the possibility of record-high global sea surface temperatures for the year 2014. The other factor, of course, is the upward shift in the sea surface temperatures of the South Atlantic-Indian-West Pacific subset in response to the 1997/98 El Niño. See the discussion in this post under the heading of The East Pacific Versus the Rest of the World and the post here.
Another consideration, the sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific are warming again, in response to another downwelling (warm) Kelvin wave.
The sea surface temperature anomalies of the NINO3.4 region in the eastern equatorial Pacific (5S-5N, 170W-120W) are a commonly used index for the strength, frequency, and duration of El Niño and La Niña events. See the illustration here for the location of the NINO3.4 region. Based on the preliminary data, August 2014 NINO3.4 sea surface temperature anomalies are now slightly below the +0.5 deg C threshold of an El Niño event. They’re presently at +0.32 deg C. The threshold for El Niño conditions is considered to be warmer than or equal to +0.5 deg C (and for a La Niña, it’s cooler than or equal to -0.5 deg C). So the reading of +0.32 indicates the tropical Pacific in in ENSO-neutral conditions based on the preliminary monthly data. Also refer to the weekly data that follows, because the weekly NINO3.4 data have shown warming again in recent weeks.
Figure 3
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WEEKLY DATA
Weekly NINO3.4 region (5S-5N, 170W-120W) sea surface temperature anomalies for the week centered on August 27, 2014 have recently warmed and they are once again approaching the threshold of El Niño conditions. The weekly NINO3.4 sea surface temperature anomalies are approximately +0.47 deg C.
Figure 4
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The weekly Global sea surface temperature anomalies are now at record high levels. They are presently about +0.45 deg C.
Figure 5
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INTERESTED IN LEARNING MORE ABOUT THE EL NIÑO AND LA NIÑA AND THEIR LONG-TERM EFFECTS ON GLOBAL SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURES?
Why should you be interested? Sea surface temperature records indicate El Niño and La Niña events are responsible for the warming of global sea surface temperature anomalies over the past 30 years, not manmade greenhouse gases. I’ve searched sea surface temperature records for more than 4 years and ocean heat content records for more than 3 years, and I can find no evidence of an anthropogenic greenhouse gas signal in either dataset. That is, the warming of the global oceans has been caused by naturally occurring, sunlight-fueled, coupled ocean-atmosphere processes, not anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
Last year I published an ebook (pdf) about the phenomena called El Niño and La Niña. It’s titled Who Turned on the Heat? with the subtitle The Unsuspected Global Warming Culprit, El Niño Southern Oscillation. It is intended for persons (with or without technical backgrounds) interested in learning about El Niño and La Niña events and in understanding the natural causes of the warming of our global oceans for the past 31+ years. Because land surface air temperatures simply exaggerate the natural warming of the global oceans over annual and multidecadal time periods, the vast majority of the warming taking place on land is natural as well. The book is the product of years of research of the satellite-era sea surface temperature data that’s available to the public via the internet. It presents how the data accounts for its warming—and there are no indications the warming was caused by manmade greenhouse gases. None at all.
Who Turned on the Heat? was introduced in the blog post Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about El Niño and La Niña… …Well Just about Everything. The Free Preview includes the Table of Contents; the Introduction; the beginning of Section 1, with the cartoon-like illustrations; the discussion About the Cover; and the Closing.
Please buy a copy. (Credit/Debit Card through PayPal. You do NOT have to open a PayPal account. Simply scroll down to the “Don’t Have a PayPal Account” purchase option. It’s only US$8.00 marked down to U.S.$5.00.
SOURCE
The Sea Surface Temperature anomaly data used in this post is available through the NOAA NOMADS website:
http://nomad1.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/pdisp_sst.sh
Is this how a glaciation gets started?
No, this is how the next cycle of hype gets started.
I’ve posted this before, but I am still not seeing a proper explanation of why the ocean heat system (including ninos, ninas, oscillations etc) should be treated separately to the atmospheric heat system. Nobody has explained to me why the vast heat capacity of the oceans shouldn’t act as a moderator, then a delayer, and finally perhaps an accelerator, for atmospheric warming. Lots of talk of thermoclines and haloclines but no convincing numbers..
‘It’s not AGW.. its the ocean’ seems to me worse than an oversimplification
According to the fine folks at Weatherbell.com that blocking high over the N Pacific was one of these reasons for last year’s severe winter. If it persists, might this winter be worse?
My thoughts are that a blocking high means fair weather, i.e. few clouds. Few clouds mean up welling IR has no reflector/blocking function, which in turn means that the cooling of the SST can continue apace. Since the anomaly is just a delta T, the temperature of the ocean is right cool anyway – if you don’t believe me, try catching some of the Aleutian swells on a board without a wetsuit. Ergo, the current past the west coast of NA is going to be somewhat cooler than one might anticipate. If the Weatherbell folks were correct last year, then we’ll have more in spades this year.
How much energy does this warming represent?
Can the Sun give that amount of warming in such a short space of time?
Ralph
Thank heavens! Perhaps that enormous amount of heat in the Northern Pacific will, at some point, mitigate the bitterly cold winter we expect to see here in the eastern part of North America.
A bitterly cold winter, I might add, brought to us by Global Warming, umm, Climate Change umm, Climate Disruption.
Oh, whatever. We’re all going to freeze to death otherwise.
Dream on…
No — just the opposite. Warm in Alaska/N Pacific means cold in the US east. Last winter was somewhat an example, 1976-1977 was a better one.
Bob
Have you ever done, or is it possible to do, an individual comparison of sea surface temperatures over the years measured against the changing sea levels over the years in each of the ocean basins as defined by the University of Colorado here
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/regional-sea-level-time-series
tonyb
tonyb, I don’t recall doing it, but it’s possible. The University of Colorado sea level data are available in monthly format through the KNMI Climate Explorer.
http://climexp.knmi.nl/getsealevelave.cgi?id=someone@somewhere&WHERE=ocean_ib
You’d then have to select the coordinates of the sea surface temperature data to try to match the sea level data
Greg says: September 1, 2014 at 7:33 am
Just how hot are these hot spots in the Bering Sea and between Canada and Greenland?
I mean _actual_ SST.
Here is a chart that comes out at 6:00 AM ET daily that gives the actual temps.
http://weather.gc.ca/data/analysis/351_100.gif
Bob…
It appears the ENSO Meter (in the sidebar) has inched up a bit more toward the El Nino area. Do you have any hard predictions as yet on this?
Thanks
F. Ross, the sea surfaces of the equatorial Pacific should reach back into El Nino “conditions”. There’s another wave of warm water working its way to the eastward and to the surface:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_update/wkxzteq.shtml
The warm water appears to be leftovers that were recirculated from the earlier Kelvin:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2014/08/12/the-201415-el-nino-part-15-august-2014-update-an-el-nino-mulligan/
But if the trade winds still don’t cooperate, we may not get a full-fledged El Nino.
I guess that link did not work. Go to
http://weather.gc.ca/canada_e.html
Then Marine >sea surface temperature
Note that the temp anomaly is about 0.3C from 1980 to present, or about 1.0C/century. Only if you use the most recent years do you see any non Scenario C Hansen profile.
The temperature (Y-) axis looks to be a killer only because of scale.
Precisely. A record may indicate the end of the “pause,” but if the peak ends here, roughly one half of one tenth of one degree above the ’98 peak, we are well below modeled paces. Time will tell…
No alarmism – just more data confirming the world is warming.
The vast amounts of time expended on comparing models and data trends, predictions of impending ice ages, even denial of the most basic physics, don’t change the fact that the world is warming due to increasing GHGs in the atmosphere.
The real debate is what the extent of the warming response of the system will be, the time it takes to reach equilibrium (subject to natural variations) and the impacts that increase in global mean temperature will have on physical parameters, particularly sea level.
James Abbott
Global warming has stopped. The Earth is NOT warming.
Face it,live with it and cope with it because it reality.
Global warming has stopped.
Richard
The world is not warming, though there will be a spike followed by the downturn that is the nature of the cold PDO events, when there is a pdo/mei spike. It tiring explaining this to every person that wishes to scream global warming, but the fact is what you see in the oceans is a product of decades to centuries of action and reaction in the climate and not the increase in 1 molecule of co2 out of 10000 molecules of air in the last 100 years Given another MAJOR tropical epac pacific cyclone likely to develop and perhaps strike the BAJA I think Bobs warning should be a double secret probation code red warning.. they will go nuts next week. Here is the global temp the last 10 years
http://models.weatherbell.com/climate/cfsr_t2m_2005.png
another spike is coming, followed by another fall to a lower level than the post 09-10 spike
second anyone want to mention what may have been another record cold summer at the NPOLE
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
click on 2013 for last year and then 2014 for this year.. last year was record
richardscourtney and Joseph Bastardi you clearly have not read and understood the article.
The article states:
“sea surface temperatures globally are at record high levels, as shown in Figure 2. And as noted above, the record is not just for the month of August, we’re talking record highs for any month [during the satellite era].”
The figure referred to clearly shows, as any reasonable person would agree, a warming trend continuing to the present, over the last 30 years. There are of course cycles within that as would be entirely expected given natural fluctuations, but the trend is clear.
Why is the sea surface temperature anomaly significant ? Because the oceans hold vastly more heat energy than the atmosphere.
You may wish for cooling temperatures and search for ever more remote methods of undermining the data, but the fact is the world has warmed and continues to do so.The pause in surface air temperature does need explaining of course, but it is not inconsistent with an expected long term warming trend.
There is a legitimate debate about the future response (sensitivity) to rising concentrations of GHGs but to keep on trying to claim there is no warming or even worse that increasing concentrations of GHGs have no effect is just futile and wasting everyone’s time.
James, without knowing what the history of sea surface temperatures are, as it definitely appears there are ocean temperatures cycle as well, and without knowing how they varied in the past, one does not even know if the current ocean temperatures are out of the ordinary. Basing the whole idea that the current ocean warming is looking catastrophic, on a mere 20 yrs of data, is just fear-mongering because there is no science upon which to back up the claim. The fact that the oceans are warming means absolutely nothing without knowing what the history is. Also, since sea level rise has not accelerated, more evidence the warming in much ado about nothing.
James Abbott says: “richardscourtney and Joseph Bastardi you clearly have not read and understood the article…….”
And you appear to have overlooked a portion of my post, James, which clearly states:
I suspect our alarmist friends will be making all sorts of claims about attribution even though climate models still almost double the observed rate of ocean surface warming during the satellite era.
And here’s the graph that was linked to that sentence:
James Abbott says: “The figure referred to clearly shows, as any reasonable person would agree, a warming trend continuing to the present, over the last 30 years. There are of course cycles within that as would be entirely expected given natural fluctuations, but the trend is clear.”
But you also overlooked the graph of the North Pacific data that showed it hadn’t warmed for nearly 2 1/2 decades. It was linked to the sentence:
After almost 2 ½ decades of showing no warming, apparently a blocking high is driving sea surface temperatures in the North Pacific skyward.
Unless you can explain the lack of warming for 2 1/2 decades, while emissions of manmade greenhouse gases rose, you can’t claim the long-term warming for 3+ decades was caused by those greenhouse gases.
Regards
Remember that sea surface is only sea surface. There are miles / kilometers more sea depth below. SSTs are easy come easy go, as next year will show when there will likely be a strong La Nina starting around Feb.
No-one said anything a few months ago when North Pacific temperatures were anomalously cold. Bill Illis (above) has the correct explanation – strong uncorrected seasonality in the N Pacific SST record peaking now in August. This may be deliberate – periodic faux warming scares serve media and political agendas as I’m sure James understands very well.
An additional metric that can used to determine if AGW is significant – the length of the pause. The length of the pause should be proportional to the severity of the AGW. As it is, the pause is already close to long enough, if not already long enough to negate the possibility of CO2 caused CAGW. The EPA should NOT be enacting any CO2 regulations for at least the next ten years. If the pause lasts longer than 20 years, then that is very strong evidence that AGW is negligible, a TCS well under 1C. Right now it is a stretch to get TCS much more than 1C with the current data.
Also, since the climate modelers have assumed very small values for natural variation (in order to fit with Mann’s Hockey stick) there should have been no way that a TCS value of greater than 2C should have been able to allow for a pause more than a couple of years in the first place.
Too bad it snowed on Labor Day in northwest Wyoming down to 9,000 feet to ruin the story. Strange stuff this climate change.
“We’re not just talking a record high for the month of August…we’re talking a record high for any month during the satellite era.”
After over a decade of hearing and seeing bad science on effects of CO2 as GHG, bogus claims of AGW, absolute fabrications by IPCC, Faux Hockey Schtick, Tree Ring Circus, molested data, cherry picked results, Climate Change Alarmism, and blatant ties of AGW to political agendas; Pardon me if the story of Boy who cried Wolf comes to mind with any thing involving NASA/Government satellites and “data” from them.
Don’t blame us, Climatologists and GWers (Hansen, Mann, Gore), and those Scientists who failed to call them out are responsible for cries falling on deaf ears.
Darren Potter says: “Pardon me if the story of Boy who cried Wolf comes to mind with any thing involving NASA/Government satellites and “data” from them.”
The in situ data from buoys and ship inlets show the same thing, Darren. The following graph is of the North Pacific SST anomalies based on ICOADS data, which is the source data for the “non-satellite” ERSST.v3b data from NOAA and the HADSST3 data from UKMO:
Sorry, you can’t blame satellites.
Cheers
Seriously, ICOAD data from NOAA? Same group who has tweaked GHCN data by eliminating more Weather Stations located in colder regions vs. Weather Stations located in warmer regions? Same group who has tweaked GHCN data be eliminating more and more Weather Stations as time progressed? Same group who has ignored issues with poorly located Weather Stations due UHI? Same group who takes “Raw” weather station data, adds a warming bias to create “Official Adjust” data” instead of subtracting warming bias due to UHI. Same group who reports to same current Global Warming Alarmist Government NASA does?
Wolf, Wolf, Wolf, Wolf!
Are the graphs in this post based on this analysis (I Googled “Reynolds sea surface temperature” to find this)?
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutsst.shtml
If so then firstly it says “The actual areal coverage of the analysis and the anomally (sic) data is roughly between 60°S and 60°N globally”, so it doesn’t include the Arctic which according to Joe B. above has been exhibiting record low temperatures. What percentage of the earth’s surface / oceans is covered? I don’t have time to do the math, but it seems that calling the anomaly ‘global’ might be a bit inaccurate. If a part of the oceans outside the coverage is showing lower-than-average temperatures then one might expect a hotspot inside the coverage area to maintain the same global average temperatures.
Secondly the above-linked page says “The analysis uses buoy and ship data, satellite SST data, and SST’s simulated by sea-ice coverage. Before the analysis is computed, the satellite data is adjusted for biases using the method described by Reynolds (1988) and Reynolds and Marsico (1993).” So it’s not just satellite data.
I realise the graphs in this post may not be derived from the Reynolds “analysis” I linked to but that they may rather all derive from some common underlying dataset, but I am not clear whether or not this is the case, and I wonder if the points above about coverage, and non-satellite (and adjusted) data, still apply to the graphs in the post.
SJF says, “If so then firstly it says “The actual areal coverage of the analysis and the anomally (sic) data is roughly between 60°S and 60°N globally”, so it doesn’t include the Arctic which according to Joe B. above has been exhibiting record low temperatures.”
First, the graph from DMI that Joe Bastardi presented was not of Arctic sea surface temperature.
Second, the word “roughly” was used in the quote you provided. Seasonally, sea ice extends “roughly” to 60S and 60N, and if there’s sea ice, there’s no sea surface temperature data.
Here are last week’s maps of the daytime and nighttime AVHRR retrievals from the satellites used for the Reynolds OI.v2 data. They extend as far as the sea ice and that’s farther poleward than 60S and 60N.
http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/research/cmb/sst_analysis/images/satcol.png
And while I’m providing links, here are the maps of the locations of the in situ measurements:
http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/research/cmb/sst_analysis/images/inscol.png
Both of those maps are linked to this webpage about the Reynolds OI.v2 data:
http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/research/cmb/sst_analysis/
SJF says, “So it’s not just satellite data.”
I never said it was “just satellite data”. I used the terms “satellite-enhanced sea surface temperature data” and “satellite era”.
Regards
Bob, in case it came across that way, my comment was not a criticism of your post, which as is usually the case I found to be careful and quite convincing. I was rather questioning (in the sense of I genuinely was not sure) some possible features of the Reynolds dataset which might further affect our certainty that there is cause for alarm.
Another very good article as usual, Bob. Thanks.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
James Abbott,
Global warming has stopped. That is indicated in the numerous references to the “pause”, and the “hiatus”. They all mean the same thing: global warming has stopped. Deal with it. It’s a fact.
=============================
JohnWho says:
Not too be confused with the “half-vastness” of the Alarmist/Warmist belief.
Their beliefs are always half-vast.
I think it is interesting and a little alarming to see this huge change in temperatures over the last 2 – 3 years. There is to much rationalisation and clever interpretations in most of the comments, to get a deeper understanding of what happens. One question is if there is less cooling of the ocean surface, and what can cause that. Has there been changes in evaporation? Or is the sun over oceans brighter. It is a very interesting observation that the SST can change that much. Is it only the first mm or is it the first meters. If it is some meters deep in the ocean it is huge energies that is in play. For me it is more questions than answers.
So, global sea surface temperatures are at a record level and we’re not even having an El Nino.
We really are screwed.
Just to see how the sea surface temperature anomalies have gotten out-of-whack with ridiculous seasonality still embedded in the numbers, …
… here are the Northern Ocean anomalies 20N-90N (just going back to 2004 so it is more apparent).
http://s28.postimg.org/c3st9eiql/Northern_Oceans_20_N90_N.png
… and then the Southern Ocean anomalies 20S-90S.
http://s24.postimg.org/c02uq1y2d/Southern_Oceans_20_S90_S.png
Sorry, they are not supposed to look like this.
I think the reason for the higher SST in the North Pacific is the number of eastern Pacific tropical cyclones i heading more north this year rather than west. What does all this mean ? A cold winter again as the extra warm surface water and atmosphere disrupt the pattern of the Polar vortex forcing part of it again further south than normal and changing the jet stream pattern . A repeat of the 2013/2014 winter ? Cold winters lead to cooler spring and summer which lead to lower annual temperature anomalies which extend the pause to include 2015.
Bill ILLIS
Bob’s previous track updating the JULY 2014 SST anomalies showed both the Southern Oceans and Southern Pacific SST anomalies were declining .
I might add that the Eastern Pacific SST has been rising giving the Eastern Pacific Cyclones energy to move further north
dbstealey
You say
“Global warming has stopped. That is indicated in the numerous references to the “pause”, and the “hiatus”. They all mean the same thing: global warming has stopped. Deal with it. It’s a fact.”
Sounds like a mantra there.
But back to the article by Bob Tisdale, the data presented suggests otherwise. It shows record sea surface temperatures. The oceans hold vastly more heat energy that the atmosphere. Therefore, warming has not stopped. Its basic physics.
Bob Tisdale stated in his article – his words, not mine:
“With the apparent upward shift in the North Pacific sea surface temperature anomalies last year, and the early El Niño conditions this year, we’re looking at the possibility of record-high global sea surface temperatures for the year 2014”.
James,
You continually confuse global sea surface temperature with global temperature and global ocean temperature.
Sea SURFACE is only the SURFACE and is not reflective of the OVERALL temperatures of the oceans.
Also, if you pay ANY ATTENTION, you would know that global average temperature has been the same for the past 15-18 YEARS depending on which dataset you choose to use.
Now please go troll somewhere else.