However, satellite data don’t agree with that finding
People send me stuff.
Today I got an email with an advance link to the NOAA/NCDC “state of the climate” briefing- that monthly phone call where Tom Karl’s NCDC staff spoon feeds unquestioning newsies like AP’s Seth Borenstein the latest worry over climate. Unsurprisingly, May 2015 is now anointed as the “warmest May on record”, thanks in part to the new and “pause busting” improved sea surface temperature record, all highly adjusted based on a variety of rationalizations.
This is what is being sent out today:
NOAA to Announce Key Climate Findings: Learn more about the temperature, precipitation and weather events experienced around the world in 2014, tomorrow at 11 am EDT. Dial 1-888-989-9791 with the password “Climate” to join the call and view the slides here (available at 10:30 am EDT).
It seems the oceans are now all the “Red Sea of climate despair”, except for that stubborn patch of low percentile blue near Greenland:
Wow, lots of red in the oceans, all based on percentiles (a statistical tool). Scary looking huh? I’ll bet AP’s Seth Borenstein (and others) will eat that right up and that global image they are pushing will be seen in news world-wide.
Of course, we knew back on June 19th this would be coming. Bob Tisdale wrote then:
NOAA recently published their State of the Climate Report for May 2015. Under the heading of Global Summary Information, they note:
Note: With this report and data release, the National Centers for Environmental Information is transitioning to improved versions of its global land (GHCN-M version 3.3.0) and ocean (ERSST version 4.0.0) datasets. Please note that anomalies and ranks reflect the historical record according to these updated versions. Historical months and years may differ from what was reported in previous reports. For more, please visit the associated FAQ and supplemental information.
But of course we know the adjustments that led to the new NOAA ERSST.v4 sea surface temperature data (the biggest changes to the NOAA data took place in the ocean portion) are not supported during the global warming slowdown period by the night marine air temperature dataset (HadNMAT2 from the UKMO) that NOAA used for bias corrections. (See post here.) In other words, it appears NOAA overcooked their “improvements”. Oops!
On the NOAA Global Analysis – May 2015 webpage they state under the heading of Temperatures:
The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for May 2015 was the highest for May in the 136-year period of record, at 0.87°C (1.57°F) above the 20th century average of 14.8°C (58.6°F), surpassing the previous record set just one year ago by 0.08°C (0.14°F). This ties with February 1998 as the fourth highest monthly departure from average for any month on record. The two highest monthly departures from average occurred earlier this year in February and March, both at 0.89°C (1.60°F) above the 20th century average for their respective months.
Somehow I don’t think that will surprise anyone.
There’s another global graph that NCDC made, showing anomaly data rather than percentiles, but that didn’t quite make it into the press briefing, perhaps because there’s not as much red in it:
Aw, shucks, where did all the hot red go? Interestingly, there’s no link in the press briefing document that take you to the directly to the May 2015 SOTC page at NCDC that this is presented on, so folks like Seth won’t likely see this image unless they actually switch from regurgitator to reporter mode and spend some time to look for it.
If you want to look at both the press briefing and the SOTC page where that image exists, here are the links:
SOTC Press brief: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/briefings/201506.pdf
SOTC May 2015: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201505
But, never mind. Let’s look at the global temperature for May 2015 as seen by satellite data (click to enlarge):
![052015map[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/052015map1.jpg?resize=720%2C446)
And the graph (click to enlarge):
![2015-graph[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/2015-graph1.jpg?resize=720%2C264)
Looks to me like the pause is alive and well, and look at the rightmost datapoint, May 2015, nowehere near a record. Now to be fair, the satellite record is only from 1979, but, there’s certainly no indication of May 2015 being the hottest ever.
Or if you prefer numbers, here is what UAH said about May 2015:
Global Temperature Report: May 2015
Third warmest May in satellite record
Global climate trend since Nov. 16, 1978: +0.11 C per decade
May temperatures (preliminary)
Global composite temp.: +0.27 C (about 0.49 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for May.
Northern Hemisphere: +0.33 C (about 0.59 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for May.
Southern Hemisphere: +0.21 C (about 0.38 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for May.
Tropics: +0.27 C (about 0.49 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for May.
Source: http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/climate/
Compare that to what NOAA/NCDC is saying:
The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for May 2015 was the highest for May in the 136-year period of record, at 0.87°C (1.57°F) above the 20th century average of 14.8°C (58.6°F), surpassing the previous record set just one year ago by 0.08°C (0.14°F).
So for May 2015 NOAA says the globe is at 0.87°C above normal, and UAH says the globe is at 0.27°C above normal – a difference by a factor of three.
Who to believe?
UPDATE: In comments, there is this point about that dangerous climate change aka the 2°C limit that alarmists keep wailing about:
Well, it would seem so. But, 2F is not 2C. 2.30F works out to 1.27C. Close but no cigar. NOAA/NCDC could do a better job in their press briefing for the globe tomorrow by using both C and F, especially since many reporters can’t do this simple temperature conversion. Right now, they only have °F on their PowerPoint, which is curiously unscientific and Americanized.
“Land: +2.30 degrees F”
So… we can stop worrying about how a two degree increase is going to kill everything?
Good point, I’ll add that.
“Well, it would seem so. But, 2F is not 2C. 2.30F works out to 1.27C.”
Even a 2C increase won’t kill everything.
Seriously, is the US ever going to get ’round to using Celcius? I mean, come on, really. A scale that uses 0-100 is just so much simpler and clean to use. I can understand using inches and miles, but Celcius and kilograms just make more sense. I litre of water weighs 1 kilogram. It is so handy to use that in everyday life. I’m 56, British, but have little idea of what ‘pounds of weight’ is anymore.
Sure using Celsius makes using arithmetic for the boiling point appear easier. A little bit.
But even the thermostat need decimal Celsius divisions for the real life: 21 is too cold, 22 is too hot. 21.5 is needed. Or 18.5. Or 19.0 , 19.5, and 20.0, …
And the actual freezing and boiling points for EVERY other liquid and solid – even at laboratory conditions of the artificially-assigned “standard temperature and pressure” – are NOT 0.0 and 100.0 degrees.
For water, maximum density does not occur at STP, nor does water boil and freeze at 0.0 at any other pressure but nominal atmospheric conditions – which do not occur inside tanks, pressure vessels, vacuums, or other altitudes but sea level. So the “easy” Celsius approximations fail in every calculation needed at ANY design conditions.
Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley, I’m afraid that I will have to join with RACookPE1978 on this one. True totally going metric, might prevent such mishaps as crashing spacecrafts into the surface of “Mars”; but in the end the true flaw with metric was they used “I litre of water weighs 1 kilogram.” Should have used one litre of beer, more important don’t you think. Stout preferably.
michael
Stout! What are you, a Lancasterian?
A 2C increase will probably not kill anything. It is approximately equivalent to moving from Atlanta to Charleston. I think a lot of people would survive that.
there’s an unconsidered factor in going metric instead of english units. it clearly is easier to go with multiples of 10. one can do it without really thinking about it. using english units requires thought and calculations to convert – inches feet yards miles. an exercised mind is needed to think. make it so easy that switching units requires none – one gets flabby grey matter, making thinking much harder and consequently far rarer. mental exercise becomes the act of pushing around one’s mental blocks rather than solving problems
.
Hey Ghost of Big Jim Cooley (“Seriously, is the US ever going to get around to using Celcius”): Actually the English measurement system is far and away better than Celcius. One degree F is just about the minimum temperature difference that most people can feel on their bare skin and most weather on earth falls between zero degrees F and 100 degrees F. An inch is the size of your middle finger knuckle. One foot is actually about the size of a grown man’s foot. One yard is about the size of a walking stride. A mile is a comfortable walking distance. A cup is about as much coffee as you’d care to drink, a pint and a quart and a gallon are natural easy to use measurements when buying enough milk for the family. And a pound of something is heavier and easier to estimate than is a kilogram. The whole thing is a very human based system. And with computers and calculators conversion math is no big deal anymore. Celsius is fine for science. But I prefer the English measurement system for everyday life.
Ghost of Big Jim
If you want to express temperatures in Celsius, you should at least learn how to spell it.
It was named after the 18th century Swedish astronomer, Anders Celsius
Or do as I do when using the “other” scale. Just put “degrees F” for fear of getting a silent H in the wrong place.
Only 2.3°F? We, Belgians, added 2.3°C since the beginning of our measurements!
https://trustyetverify.wordpress.com/2014/05/06/coping-with-a-2-3-degrees-c-temperature-increase/
If a 2°C increase kills, we should all be dead already.
Disclaimer: although our weather service doesn’t admit it, but that 2.3°C comes from something different than global warming. 😉
No. The 2 degrees they’re talking about is in celcius, not farenheit.
‘Well, it would seem so. But, 2F is not 2C.’
Heh, let’s not get picky; there’s only 2 letters of the alphabet between ‘C’ and ‘F’.
/sarc
I definitely have to give a good word for the old imperial system of measure, it not only kept the mind active but it was based on some very real stuff. The universe does not operate on decimals it is base 12 and more importantly base 8. Go back far enough in history base 10 was never used it is a modern construct that is alien to science and confoundes those seeking the truth of our existence and universe.
NOAA is looking at the Oceans and UAH is looking where the effects of CO2 are manifest – in the air.
So why not believe them both? It just means that natural variation (water sloshing about) overwhelms the greenhouse effect.
As water has a far higher thermal capacity than air it’s what anyone with secondary school physics would expect.
“So why not believe them both?” – Simply because their adjustments to both land and especially ocean (Karl) temps are fraud. If you were in a business and you adjusted your books and got caught, you go to the slammer. But our Marxist government lies on all the data it publishes and doesn’t suffer any consequences. Human history does repeat, not just rhyme.
Believe NOAA? Are you mad? The raw data, yes, but NOAA lost track of reality a long time ago.
“So why not believe them both?”
Because it is physically impossible for the atmosphere over the oceans to be appreciably warmer (or colder) than the oceans themselves. The ocean has an immensely greater heat capacity than the atmosphere. The only places where a large difference is possible (and happens) is in the arctics where air and water are separated by an insulating layer of snow and ice.
Thanks for the “heads up.” Usually these press releases are dropped like a bomb on the science community, so if some enterprising reporter were to actually look for contrary commentary, any skeptics would be caught short. Forewarned is forearmed.
Well, the month of May, in fact the last three Mays, have been well below average in my region – and I live in the region where the Laurentide ice sheet grows.
I’m noticing in my area that monthly averages are consistently above normal despite the days being consistently cooler than usual. After noticing the trend and then following the local data, it seems to be because we are not cooling off as much at night. The variance in temperature has been shrinking, with the higher lows keeping the lower highs from being reflected in the daily average temperature. This is probably the UHI effect creating the illusion of a warmer climate despite clearly cooler seasons.
Tell you what I’ve noticed in England over the past few years (maybe just me!). When the Sun is out, it’s damn warm, warmer than it used to be, I think. But when the Sun isn’t out, then it’s cool, cooler than it used to be. There, how scientific is that? But that’s how it feels. We can have a fairly cloudy day here, then as soon as the Sun comes out from behind a cloud…bam! Even fairly late in the evening, the Sun pitching down at an angle is still very warm on your skin. I swear it never used to be like that.
Big Jim, it’s called aging. Unless you’re a vampire it happens. I never used to have to take breaks when working in the yard on a sunny day. I used to stay out in single digit F temps for 6-8 hours at a time. I just can’t do it anymore, when it’s hot it feels too hot and when its cold it feels too cold … or maybe i can assume that the world is both cooling and getting hotter at the same time.
Actually, you might be right.
You might be right because we are talking The One The Only CO2 (which can do just about anything and everything)
They also measure against a different baseline period. The warmists typically use 1950-1980, I think and UAH uses 1980-2010.
That’s NASA GISS, NOAA/NCDC use 1981-2010, as seen in the global temperature anomaly graph above.
Thanks for correction, Anthony. So yes they do compare the same baseline period except in the case of the scary record setting May graph which uses 20th century Jan. to May average.
Anthony, on the NOAA graph you posted, they say “departure from 20th Century Average”.
Cheers
The divergence between satellites and surface data is getting ridiculous. I like to look at the data starting right before the last big climate conference in Copenhagen.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:2009.75/to/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2009.75/offset:-0.15/trend
The big yawning gap started in 1995, I think.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1994/to/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1994/offset:-0.15/trend
Anyone actually surprised by this? Every month of every year the data is adjusted up to a new record, then when it comes time for the next year to roll around they adjust it down and the new year up.
Repeat to infinity and with our news cycle it is always getting warmer.
They’ll be reporting the “hottest year ever” when the glaciers take back New York City and Canada has long been abandoned.
Yes , its called modern scientific matching , MSM if you will , reality must match the models. The temperature differences are so small and globally variable it will be 20-30 years before anyone finds out the truth and all the “Climate Scientists” concerned will have retired and the next batch of “Climate Scientists” will stand up to the mark and profess a new panic ?
it would appear these people attended the same school as the economic leaders of the european union. divergence from reality does not register on the radar, ever.
So for May 2015 NOAA says the globe is at 0.87°C above normal, and UAH says the globe is at 0.27°C above normal – a difference by a factor of three.
Who to believe
====
no one that claims to know what normal is
Their own NCEP temperature data does not agree with the garbage they are putting out much less satellite data.
thanks Anthony. Another fun press disconnect is the remarkable amount of glacial and ice loss reprted in Antarctica during the winter there.
https://twitter.com/BigJoeBastardi
The more they make the surface temperature trend rise above the lower troposphere trend the more they debunk the greenhouse effect. After all more infrared back radiation requires a warmer atmosphere.
Boston hasn’t had a 90° day yet. But the famous snow-pole finally melted today.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/07/15/last-trace-boston-snow-pile-finally-melts-away/
The divergence between the cooked data and the reality on the ground is becoming ridiculous. Eventually the cold hard facts of real weather/climate will overcome the mindless propaganda being spouted by NOAA and the rest of the Climate Lying establishment. People will finally wake up and realize they are being lied too.
You are far too optimistic,
If one clicks the link I just sent 7:57 am —Big Joe Bastardi. He shows the data NOAA has sent out is flat out wrong. No question about it.
It’s now eight years since the day when, through a process of polite inquiry, Steve McIntyre and Climate Audit caught Hansen with his hand in the cookie jar, and gave him a smack that forced him to readjust the adjusted readjustments.
http://climateaudit.org/2007/08/08/a-new-leaderboard-at-the-us-open/
Perhaps on August 8 we should have some sort of commemorative party.
It must be obvious to many in both NASA and NOAA that they are being used as propaganda spewers for dupes, and they must absolutely hate it. If the distortion of temperatures had happened only once in 2007, it could be called a “mistake”, but eight years turns it into a sort of bizarre addiction. In my mind’s eye I can see strange, green-faced zombies tottering around the hallways of NASA and NOAA, moaning, “Must have Distortion! Distortion! Must distort!” (I know that image is born of my frustration, and is disrespectful, but perhaps Josh could improve my bad image into a good cartoon.)
[SNIP wildy off-topic -mod]
I actually know such a young man, who I watched grow up. To some degree he is just as naive as I once was, and trusts authority he shouldn’t. In another respect he has the crazy confidence of youth, and thinks it is possible to achieve things which, thirty years down the road, he’ll become aware are not so easy to achieve. He believes all they need to do is fix the computer models here and there, and chaos will be fathomed.
I can recall an old man turning from a group of young men, many years ago, and jutting his thumb back over his shoulder at them, and saying, “These young fellows just got to learn.”
Disillusionment is involved, and that is never fun. Conscience stirs, and there is inner agony and crisis, and you are quite correct: It is a dilemma.
And you do bear the consequences of how you chose. You may not go to jail at age 94, but the face that looks back at you from the mirror judges you every day.
Well, the orders don’t come down to the rank and file. The WH works only with NOAA upper-management, who are only too happy to comply, partly because they believe in AGW and party because it advances their careers.
As part of the rank and file, I can tell you I’ve never been asked my thoughts on climate, and since it is not the main focus of my studies, if I ever receive a media request I am supposed to refer it to the NOAA ‘experts’ at NCDC (or whatever they’re called these days.)
Supposedly, NOAA has a policy protecting scientist from retaliation if they express their scientific opinions on weather-related matters. Never the less, we who don’t buy into the AGW hypothesis are reluctant to test this. Just look at how NOAA treated Bill Proenza for being an iconoclast. So we scurry along the halls whispering to each other, “The Emperor has no clothes.”
[SNIP wildly off topic -mod]
“[SNIP wildly off topic -mod]”
I agree with the snip, but you could have called your snip of my comment to the other snipped comment I commented upon to be to the point.
From https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-references/faq/anomalies.php
My interpretation is that the 0.87 C is compared to 1900 to 1999. Is that correct?
I just saw the comment above about 1981 to 2010, but this seems to contradict it!
What is going on?
Werner, I just found this under the NOAA site.
11.What is the difference between the gridded dataset and the index values?
The land and ocean gridded dataset is a large file (~24 mb) that contains monthly temperature anomalies across the globe on a 5 deg x 5 deg grid. The anomalies are calculated with respect to the 1981–2010 base period. Gridded data is available for every month from January 1880 to the most recent month available. You can use it to examine anomalies in different regions of the earth on a month-by-month basis. The index values are an average of the gridded values (see question #7); however, the anomalies are provided with respect to the 20th century (1901–2000) average. They are most useful for tracking the big-picture evolution of temperatures across larger parts of the planet, up to and including the entire global surface temperature.
The percentiles data NOAA show are the anomalies against 1900-1999 average temperatures.
Any one see it different?
Yes that is correct . The .87c anomaly is against the 1900to 1999 temperature data.
However I am sure this value would be much lower if satellite data could go back that far.
Thank you! It would be nice if ALL data sets used the same baseline for EVERYTHING!
So the claim is that the extra heat is going to the oceans. Doesnt that support our premise that the planet has a natural buffering mechanism? The atmosphere can only get so warm, then the oceans start to absorb that warm, and send it to the depths to cool off?
Not sure if this will work, but here goes, 3 x May RSS Temperature Maps, 1998, 2010 & 2015.
http://images.remss.com/data/msu/graphics/tlt/medium/global/ch_tlt_1998_05_anom_v03_3.png
http://images.remss.com/data/msu/graphics/tlt/medium/global/ch_tlt_2010_05_anom_v03_3.png
http://images.remss.com/data/msu/graphics/tlt/medium/global/ch_tlt_2015_05_anom_v03_3.png
What do you see? (If it works of course
I would say more blue in 2015.
It has gotten darker over the ocean.
The third image was taken at night, you fool!
i do not see an el nino, 2015 must be wrong. 😉
lets see, the greenhouse effect takes place in the atmosphere including up to about 30,000ft, and yet the missing heat is transported into the ocean, acknowledging that there is no measurable warming of the air. So then the temperature delta from air (no change) to water (warmer) actually decreases. I wonder what mechanism of heat transfer would explain this?
Maybe a spike in undersea volcanic activity? Nah, we have no way of knowing how much, so that gets the “myth” tag.
Just keep repeating “it used to be cooler than this” and “numbers don’t lie”, especially when in politicly correct company.
I wonder what mechanism of heat transfer would explain this?”
Unicorn dust from Al Gore’s jet.
I have cannot remember having seen a proper explanation of this mechanism.
Maybe the energy is radiating from the air, where it is absorbed, into the oceans by the same mechanism the energy is radiating into space?
Or maybe the energy is jumping from the colder air to warmer oceans?
ref:
Temperature of Ocean Water, University of Michigan. August 31, 2001.
“The average temperature of the ocean surface water is about 17 °C (62.6 F).”
Between 1961 and 1990, the annual average temperature for the globe was around 57.2°F (14.0°C), according to the World Meteorological Organization.”
According to the map, I live right on the line between a warmer than average and a much warmer than average square. I can’t believe that is true. Spring this year has been very cool and only now in the middle of July have we turned on the AC. I can’t prove anything of course but I’m suspicious.
I am working on limiting my breathing by sleeping more, working less and just walking to mailbox to get my welfare check and food stamps.
We were taught back in the old day in a number od different science classes that correlation does not prove causation. When did that change?
It changed when the tobacco companies began to instill doubt in the findings of science.
Joel D. Jackson:
Really? You think that? How and why?
Richard
It changed with the release of the IPCC FAR, along with a lot of other things we thought we knew.
Some were also taught a modern scientific method – the empirical method by Karl Popper.
Characterized by precise, falsifiable statements and clever and eager attempts to falsify hypothesis and theories. We were taught that theories were more valuable the more they excluded from happening and that theories were merited by the attempts of falsification they has positively survived.
We were warned about inductivism – a scientific method from the renaissance – used by IPCC.
Poppers is soothing for scientific minds:
http://strangebeautiful.com/other-texts/popper-logic-scientific-discovery.pdf
(First part is easy reading)
then if you use GISS data, the May anomaly is less than half of what NOAA is using…
http://i59.tinypic.com/10i9oqv.gif
that’s even with GISS using the incredibly small range of -.25C to .25C as ‘normal’
it does seem though that NOAA is using the 20th century as their base peroid, which will of course make recent temps appear to be running warm
I notice that central Scandinavia which probably has one of the highest station densities in the World is a grey “no data” zone. Well, it was a bloody cold May there (and a bloody cold June and a bloody cold July so far).
Warning! If you plan to go walking in the Swedish/Norwegian mountains this summer, better bring skis/snowshoes:
http://www.klimatupplysningen.se/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/137.jpg
Sorry, did not see the spelling error – of
Record highs or lows are meaningless when it comes to temperatures or other metrics of the natural world. Imagine you climb to a plateau and as you are walking along a plateau you come across a rock. That rock is a record high but it doesn’t mean anything other than its the highest point on the plateau so far. You’ll come across a slightly larger rock soon enough. In fact quite often, as maximum values on a fractal distribution follow an arcsine distribution so extremes are quite common.
Good point.
It seems that many tend to believe that every possible record, for a normal climate, has already been set and recorded for every single spot on earth. Hence every new record must be proof of climate change.
A prediction: we will experience a tipping in science soon, where even the staunchest CAGW scientists will be staring at gross misrepresentations. So gross, so enormously slanted will there foundational data be that they will by like Saul under the hot sun…pooof! Disgusted, they will turn on the violent wrongs they have partied with, they will cast off Mann and become chickens pecking into existence the new age of untrifled datasets
It seems like they say about the same thing every May or is it every month.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201205
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/news/ncdc-releases-may-2013-global-climate-report
http://www.weather.com/science/environment/news/may-2014-was-worlds-hottest-warmest-record-noaa-20140623
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/summary-info/global/201505
Then, can anybody explain why the ice caps are not collaborating?
The North pole ice extension is normal right now and the South pole ice extension is above normal.
AGW changes the properties of water ….didn’t you get the memo?
From the middle of the hot spot in the Pacific Northwest USA, here’s the rankings of May temperatures from Oregon State University:
Year (Ave. temp F)
1931 61.32
1940 61.19
1992 60.34
1947 60.29
1897 60.18
1936 60.1
1997 60.02
1958 59.85
1928 59.55
1949 59.27
1946 58.98
1938 58.87
1939 58.84
1993 58.77
1890 58.71
1924 58.69
2014 58.4
1934 58.27
1925 58.27
1987 58.16
2013 58.1
1945 58.08
1937 58
1956 57.95
1969 57.81
2015 57.8
May 2015 was the 26th hottest May since record collection by the university began in 1893, not even close to the hottest.
For those with an eye toward Paris, be aware of the stakes.
Consider the Iran deal just cut. It will take a 2/3 majority of both houses to stop the executive order. The moment it is in force the money will flow almost overnight and the damage will be done. It will be hard to put that baby back.
Fast forward to Paris. The blueprint will have been created and tested via the Iran agreement. An executive deal will be made, money will start to flow like water and the damage will be done long before another administration can do a thing.
Karl, et al and its offspring such as this May report are just small bricks in the building of the temple. Call it an evil conspiracy or a confederacy of dunces, it makes no difference. The time to do the hard work in scientific and political communities is now…. January will be too late.
“So for May 2015 NOAA says the globe is at 0.87°C above normal, and UAH says the globe is at 0.27°C above normal – a difference by a factor of three.
Who to believe?”
#############
fallacy of the false dilemma.
They are both “correct”. These estimate different things. No one expects them to be the same.
Which of course statistically would question the robustness of the overall conclusion were this not the era of post-normal scientific methodology. Especially when combined with the noise of each individual station. My first born for NOAA ground level temperature series error bars.
NOAA error bars are – Floor, Ceiling.
Is she a redhead too?
Clearly we are not on the same page. Error bars should be determined for NOAA’s data set. Instead they dismiss the use of error bars by adjusting and/or smearing data from one sensor to other sensors or areas. Homogenization of noisy ill-kept sensors is an assumption unsupported in my view. I stand by my statement with one change. My first born son for NOAA ground level temperature series error bars.
And actually I wouldn’t give him away even to the Queen of England to be declared a prince. And why would I need to? If we had NOAA employees who understood what they were doing, we would have frickin error bars.
No connection between surface temperatures and the lower troposphere. They are two totally different things. They have no physical basis for any physical interdependence. none at all. They are just completely different things.
As both the anomaly data and the trend data continue to diverge, eventually the claim above will have to be made. On that day, it will be “Game Over” for the alarmists, and everybody knows it. The alarmists paint themselves into a corner with these claims.
BTW – satellite and weather balloon data are available, why do they never use it. It seems like the satellite data in particular would have much utility as an adjunct to a somewhat difficult data set. Possibly even for the use of making impartial corrections and adjustments. You know, unbiased.
You appear to be unaware of the meaning of robustness as it applies to different data sets and methods that attempt to measure Earth’s temperature. Temperature reconstructions are filled with different ways of indicating Earth’s temperature. And the robustness is not as good as some folks wish they were (right Michael Mann?). Ground and satellite ways of measuring temperature are of the same method. And to be robust, they should mirror each other quite well. It is clear they do not. That there is such a divergence between methods would be noted by other disciplines as having evidence of decreased hypothesis robustness, thus leading to caution in interpreting results. Would that climate scientists learn from solar scientists.
To clarify, they are of the same research method as multiple ways of reconstructions in that ground and satellite sensors are different ways of measuring Earth’s temperature, which is an excellent way of determining the robustness of one’s hypothesis.
How is global temperature defined in the global warming theory?
Which temperature product is the right one to use?
How is measured water temperatures combined with measured air temperatures?
Total mass and heat capacity of air and water is very different as illustrated by these estimates:
Specific heat capacity of air approximately 1.0 kJ/kg*K
Total mass of the atmosphere 5.14 x 10^18 kg
Specific heat capacity or water approximately 4.2 kJ/kg*K
Total mass of the oceans 1.4 x 10^21 kg
What is the definition of the measurand?
To illustrate why this may be relevant.
The amount of energy it takes to warm the atmosphere by 1 K would just heat the oceans by 0.001K.
S or F,
If I may,
– to illustrate why that is significant, we do not know the actual temperature of ‘the Oceans’ (big place, as has been observed before) to, I suggest, any accuracy better than 1 K.
Shed loads of Argo buoys – each measuring the temperature of [one spot in] on average many thousands of square miles, each averaging a couple of miles or so deep.
[The average width of Manhattan Island, about Central Park, is a couple of miles or so.
Turn that horizontal distance about one end, so it’s vertical – that’s the average [mean] depth of the world’s Oceans.
A lotta water – no?]
Satellites, measuring surface temperatures well enough – but not the depths [miles deep, often, as noted].
And, as I did in earlier decades, some ships’ officers taking temperatures with buckets . . .
Paucity of data.
Some not necessarily accurate [even if consistent].
And huge expanses of water
I get the distinct impression, Steven Mosher, that you are not a fan of satellites ‘measuring’ temps (OK, I get that they are actually modelling the temp: Models, huh?). I read on many posts here that you put all your faith/belief/trust (delete as applicable) in UAH. That said, had you been asked/consulted about RSS before it was launched, would you have told them not to bother as the satellites could never come close to the sparse array of surface stations, could they? I don’t know how they ever got off the ground, do you?
I think it is unfair to call “Who to believe?” a logical fallacy – I think it is reasonable to ask which temperature product to believe in. The answer that they are both correct can only only be correct if the global warming theory is not precisely defined – in which case it is not falsifiable – in which case the global warming theory should not be referred to as science.
Oh – by the way – I forgot to ask. I found this comment by Steven Mosher at Judith Curry´s blog:
“We are staring a blog at Berkeley. Thinking about 1/2 technical and the other half educational.
if I were commenting at our blog i would have banned me a long time ago.
so I am think of rules for the blog comments that will outlaw my most outlandish behavior.
I consider most blogging and comments on blog to be theatre…doing something non theatrical is tough.”
I happened to take your comment above, here at Wattsupwiththat, seriously. Was I right in doing so?
Also GISS is base-lined at 1951 to 1980 and UAH for 1981 – 2010.
Above in response to Mosher.
Correction: NOAA GHCN data baseline is 20th cent.
Thanks for your thoughtful answer to my questions in a previous story: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/07/13/a-return-to-the-question-was-2014-the-warmest-year/
One of your statements seems a bit contentious.
It seems to me that some folks think it matters a lot. 🙂
The above is a reply to:
Steven Mosher says: July 15, 2015 at 9:43 am
sciguy ….+100
The GISS set is obviously the more accurate set. The presence of snow cover over entire swaths of the upper latitudes smashes any extent previously recorded with this tool:
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=07&fd=05&fy=2008&sm=07&sd=12&sy=2015
Lordy. Save us from skeptics who don’t know a damn thing about data limitations.
Pamela, you’re very grouchy lately! Everything alright in Pamelaland?
Did you click on the link Rob used? How in anyone’s world is that a snow cover support for his statement??????
The mistake Rob used was to see a picture with his rose colored glasses on, which prevented him from reading the cautions more carefully.
This brilliant little test by Tony Heller is quite telling when it comes to data tampering by
NOAA NCDC (National Climatic Data Center)
This is the only example of near perfect correlation within climate fiction.
Unfortunately – it indicates fraud:
CO2 Drives NCDC Data Tampering
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/10/02/co2-drives-ncdc-data-tampering/
After watermelons milk the anthropogenic bloody heck out of this turnip, a year from now some low level employee will write up a little non-media focused ditty about the causes of this heat wave being related to weather pattern variations that hit earlier than usual (you know, the random walk thing), thus breaking records for May. And it will be buried in an NOAA file far away from the public eye. But reality counts little, whether hidden or exposed. It’s the impression that matters and impressions must be early, as in your first impression of a date when you were 16. We have hormonal juveniles running the country.
Hormonal juveniles with the keys to the car and no need to answer to the car’s owners.
Re Title: Thanks partly to NOAA’s new adjusted dataset, tommorrow they’ll claim to reporters that May was the ‘hottest ever’
Only one “m” in tomorrow.
Keep up the great work Anthony!
And there is no F in way
Is it possible to generate a graph of temperature for the conterminous US from the GHCN-M to compare to the same from the USCRN for the last ~10 year period?
Has anyone ever seen/read through this article? http://www.1ocean-1climate.com/FIGURE_Engl1939_Aug14.pdf
Dan,
The link is interesting – but adduces no data for the number – or activity – of warships in the area of study, so, although the general drift – that the 1939-1940 winter repays study – is probably right, the specific – the vast numbers of warships sailing – and fighting – in that area precipitated a nastily cold winter remains, for me, unproven.
There is no comparison with current maritime traffic in the same study area that I noted.
I have saved the document, but . . . .
Incidentally the Kriegsmarine [German Navy] is recorded in Wikipedia, about 2115Z 15.7.15, [so accurate I can edit it . . . .] as having completed just four battleships, during the whole of its existence; and three pocket battleships. Three heavy cruisers [c. 18,000 tons displacement] too. I don’t think they were all active in late 1939 and early 1940. The light cruisers, of about 7,700 displacement, were materially smaller than HMS Belfast – moored in the Pool of London – see Google Maps for a view from London Bridge or, better, Tower Bridge.
Ten ships [on the German side] bigger than that [and some from Britain, France, etc.] caused a nasty winter.
Hmmm – maybe . . . .
Auto
Thanks Auto…, I have not had time to read through the article but right away my eyebrow “skeptically” arched a bit!
Dan
May was the hottest ever because they added 0.12°C to all the ocean buoy temperatures. Now that’s really man-made global warming.
What matters is what do the temperatures do going forward not what they have done looking back.
The answer is down and down and more down.
No. They will be noisy. Up, down, up, down. The overall direction of the steps depends on the trade winds. If they continue to be easterly weak with western wind bursts, we will continue to have warm spikes. However, the overall direction of the up and down steps will be down simply because of a lack of clear sky conditions in that all important equatorial band replenishing the ocean energy being lost to evaporation from the euphotic (sunlit) zone.
http://www.mbgnet.net/salt/oceans/zone.htm
Pam, are correct they will be up/down/up/down. I wanted to make it more dramatic.
…and Pam will only be correct if we continue in El Nino/El Nado land. However La Nina/La Nada will likely commence restoring at least some ocean energy. How much it restores will then tell us how much can be discharged again. My only claim is that of a cyclic intuition that says we will return to a 50’s and 70’s ish La Nina/La Nada colder period that recharges the oceans then followed again by a warmer El Nino/El Nado discharge period. I don’t see an ice age or even little ice age anytime soon.
One caution: if a super volcano goes off with lots of pulses of aerosols that make it into the stratosphere during a recharge cycle, the oceans won’t be recharged sufficiently to then allow us a return to our present and welcoming warmth with the oceans swaddling us in cozy Earth-greening growing seasons.
Yes. It’s very frustrating trying to to any analysis on this dataset because you have to download a new version almost every month. Even figures from more than a decade ago have changed again several times within the last year.
“Percentiles are a statistical tool.” Shows the level of scientific understanding this author expects of his audience. Sheesh!
NOAA map ignores the poles which were cold during May.
NOAA :
FORECAST CONFIDENCE BEYOND 72/84 HRS IS LOW.
in belgium after a good heatwave, we had ground frost on 10 july in the south… on one station we even had 0°C (32°F) just 0.3°shy of the coldest july minimum temperature ever recorded 🙂
groundfrost can still happen in the south due to it’s elevation (600 meter/roughly 1800 feet) and distance from the sea though it’s rare it happens once every 30 some years….
From what I can make out, it’s only been the past 20 years that automatic weather stations have been installed, with accuracies of +/- 0.1 deg C. In Russia and Antarctic, these weren’t installed till 2008. Prior to that time, recording accuracy was +/-0.5 deg C. Measurement errors were hence greater than =/-0.5 deg C.
Errors cannot be reduced by averaging (as claimed by Jones et al) because the data is not homogeneous.
Given that variation from current temperatures across the entire range (except for 1998) was less than 0.5, NOAA claims are meaningless.
At least the lawyers are on alert?
http://blogs.law.columbia.edu/climatechange/2015/07/15/sabin-center-supports-upr-recommendations-on-climate-change-and-human-rights/
Well yes, at a Law Center specifically focused on Climate Change.
http://web.law.columbia.edu/climate-change
World Meteorological Organization defines climatological standard normals as “averages of climatological data computed for the following consecutive periods of 30 years: January 1, 1901 to December 31, 1930, January 1, 1931 to December 31, 1960, etc.” (WMO, 1984).The latest global standard normals period is 1961-1990. The next standard normals period is January 1991 – December 2020.
The Data (1961-1990) is available for free download here,
http://data.un.org/Explorer.aspx?d=CLINO
(scroll down page)
Enough Data to Overwhelm most people on here.Is this Gold or Iron Pyrites for the ‘Data Miners’? Check out your Local Area for 1961-1990 period.
Have fun.
“NOAA to Announce Key Climate Findings: Learn more about the temperature, precipitation and weather events experienced around the world in 2014, tomorrow at 11 am EDT. Dial 1-888-989-9791 with the password “Climate” to join the call and view the slides here (available at 10:30 am EDT).”
This is about 2014. Why is everyone talking about 2015? Real sceptics notice such things 😉
Anthony you quoted this:
“NOAA to Announce Key Climate Findings: Learn more about the temperature, precipitation and weather events experienced around the world in 2014, tomorrow at 11 am EDT. Dial 1-888-989-9791 with the password “Climate” to join the call and view the slides here (available at 10:30 am EDT).”
That NOAA announcement tomorrow you quoted is to do with temperature, precipitation and weather events experienced around the world in 2014.
Your headline says “Thanks partly to NOAA’s new adjusted dataset, tommorrow they’ll claim to reporters that May was the ‘hottest ever’”
Your headline doesn’t make sense seeing that NOAA announced the May 2015 report back in the 18th June.
Did you mean to say the 2015 June report will be released tomorrow instead?
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/briefings
Every month and every year is HOTTEST EVAH. This will go on and on until glaciers cover Canada.
“Thanks partly to NOAA’s new adjusted dataset, tommorrow they’ll claim to reporters that May was the ‘hottest ever’”
This is an odd post. If you follow the link in the NOAA message, you find this:
NOAA Monthly Climate Updates …
Latest Briefing: June 18, 2015 …
Next Briefing: Thursday, July 16, 2015 @ 11:00 AM EDT
The briefing about May temp came out on June 18. This post quotes extensively from it. And yes, it did say, back then, “warmest month on record”.
Tomorrow’s report will be about June 2015. And yes, it may well be even warmer.
I agree it is odd, the Madison Avenue PR firm Climate NEXUS sent this out today, citing 2014 in their message.
“NOAA to Announce Key Climate Findings: Learn more about the temperature, precipitation and weather events experienced around the world in 2014, tomorrow at 11 am EDT. Dial 1-888-989-9791 FREE with the password “Climate” to join the call and view the slides here (available at 10:30 am EDT).”
I wanted to highlight ahead of time what I consider failings in the methodology, related to Karl et al (which you embrace, but then again that’s what you are paid to do). Tomorrow I’ll have another report covering June.
The story will very likely be the same as May, but I agree with the previous poster, the title needs clarifying.
“I wanted to highlight ahead of time what I consider failings in the methodology, related to Karl et al (which you embrace, but then again that’s what you are paid to do”
Is that why you highlight 2015 stuff when the press release is about 2014 stuff? Inquiring minds want to know.
Interesting how both poles are colder than average.
I could have sworn that all of the models claimed that the poles would warm the most.
You’re right. Cowtan and Way claimed that the poles were warming about 8 times faster than the rest of the planet. Of course, 8 X 0 = 0. But what happens if the planet cools? Will the poles cool 8 times faster? Maybe that’s what’s happening.
You guys are aware that the two datasets use different baselines to determine the anomaly, yes? No surprise the UAH anomaly is lower since it’s using a more recent, and thus warmer, baseline than NOAA.
***CAGW advocates, taxpayer-funded ABC in Australia is ready to call it:
15 July: ABC: Greg Jericho: The ‘war on wind’ is part of a much bigger fight over renewables
The Abbott Government may be many things, but a friend of renewable energy is clearly not one of them, and it will take more than Greg Hunt professing his love for it to convince anyone otherwise…
The first five months of this year has been the warmest start to any year on record. According to NASA, the average global air and sea temperature from January to May was 0.77C above the mean temperature from 1951 to 1980…
***If June to December temperatures just average what occurred over the past five years, then 2015 will break the record for the hottest year…
But if we take a longer-term view, the past 10 years, and the past 20 years to May were both the hottest on record…
If the earth was an athlete you’d be testing it for drugs, because it keeps breaking records so frequently, something unnatural must be affecting its performance…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-15/jericho-the-war-on-wind-is-part-of-a-much-bigger-fight/6620394
it’s only weather, but…
15 July: Daily Mail: Emily Crane: And you thought the big chill was over! Australia is shivering through the COLDEST week in two decades as Antarctic blast re-freezes the country
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3161539/Parts-Australia-shiver-COLDEST-week-19-years-arctic-blast-freezes-country.html
“May 2015 is now anointed as the “warmest May on record”
Because we know that May’s temperature data will be adjusted again in the future, their proclamation means absolutely nothing. What good is today’s data when we already know that NOAA will, at some point, find errors in the data and adjust them again? The data is as useless as a house built on shifting sand.
Tony Heller, AKA Steve Goddard, Realclimatescience.com, has been demonstrating for a couple of years now the fraudulent adjustments and estimated data NOAA, NCDC and GISS have been fabricating and reporting. What do you people not get about that ??? All the rest of this climate debate is merely semantics. You should be debating the fraud being committed, not the so-called nuts/bolts of minuscule and irrelevant climate (weather) variations !
In Maine anecdotal evidence like lobsters shedding late puts a lie to the satellite data that purports that New England was warm. Even tonight the weather reports significantly lower than normal temperatures 50 F. Tough on tomatoes under the fruit setting temperature. Gee, wish the lobsters and tomatoes would get with the narrative. Dont have to look very far from the house to find water that freezes at 28 F. I heard that NOAA was coming up with thermometers that redefine the freezing point of fresh water to be 36 F. Salt water will now freeze at 32F a perfect example of climate change by index creep.
The real danger is that there are good scientists interspersed with those have no credibility any more as scientists. The good ones keep their heads down. Sigh.
It is quite shocking how the government agencies are wasting their time and public money on such reports — monthly data, few months data, year data. In fact these are not associated with global warming. They are associated with several factors over different parts of the globe along with natural cyclic variation, solar variations, etc. How, can they separate these two show how much is the global warming component. In India, the temperature difference between a wet year and dry year are even around 2 oC.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Talk out here in Commiefornia was that we had a reverse Spring. May was colder than March. Granted, during early March we had the second of two “False Springs” but nonetheless May out here was colder than normal.