Anticipation

Guest Post by Bob Tisdale

The CO₂ obsessed are patiently awaiting the GISS and NCDC global surface temperature data for December 2014 and for the calendar year.  GISS normally publishes their monthly updates on or around the 15^th of the month, while NCDC publishes theirs about the same time.  The UKMO updates their HADCRUT4 land+sea surface temperature product later in the month.

In the post here last month, we showed that the GISS Meteorological Annual Mean (December to November) surface temperature in 2014 was just shy of the 2010 value. See Figure 1.

Figure 1

I suspect there will be a noticeable increase in December 2014 so that the calendar mean of the GISS land-ocean temperature index in 2014 is slightly warmer in 2014 than in 2010…maybe by 0.01 deg C.

For NCDC, as shown in Figure 2, the meteorological annual mean (December to November) surface temperature in 2014 was 0.01 higher than the 2010 value.

Figure 2

And as illustrated in Figure 3, the HADCRUT4 data are the same as GISS, inasmuch as their Meteorological Annual Mean (December to November) surface temperature in 2014 was 0.01 deg C less than the 2010 value.

Figure 3

Will Gavin Schmidt, the new head of GISS, release their data early to steal the headlines, or will GISS and NCDC publish their long-anticipated press releases at the same time?

The suspense has to be driving the CO₂ obsessed crazy…or should that be crazier?

To spoil their day, I’ve already written and prepared the graphs for a post titled The Uptick in Global Surface Temperatures in 2014 Doesn’t Help the Growing Difference between Climate Models and Reality.  As you can well imagine, a swing in 2014 of a few hundredths of a deg C doesn’t noticeably change the outcome of that post, but I’m waiting for the December 2014 values to finalize it.  I believe most of you will enjoy it.