From UAH: Global Temperature Report: March 2016
Global climate trend since Nov. 16, 1978: +0.12 C per decade
March temperatures (preliminary)
Global composite temp.: +0.73 C (about 1.31 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for March.
Northern Hemisphere: +0.95 C (about 1.71 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for March.
Southern Hemisphere: +0.52 C (about 0.94 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for March.
Tropics: +1.09 C (about 1.96 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for March.
February temperatures (revised):
Global Composite: +0.83 C above 30-year average
Northern Hemisphere: +1.17 C above 30-year average
Southern Hemisphere: +0.50 C above 30-year average
Tropics: +0.99 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 4, 2016:
March 2016 was the warmest March in the satellite temperature record and the third warmest month overall, when compared to seasonal norms, as the El Niño Pacific Ocean warming event continues to warm the tropical atmosphere, according to Dr. John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. While the record high set in February 2016 was driven by exceptionally warm temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere, temperatures in March were pumped by a broad band of warmer than normal air that girdled the tropics entirely around the globe.
While temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere cooled 0.22 C (almost 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit) between February and March (compared to seasonal norms), temperatures in the tropics were 0.1 C warmer during that same time.
Globally, the average temperature anomaly in March (+0.73 C) was 0.1 C cooler than February, and very slightly cooler (0.01 C) than the previous record high set in April 1998 (+0.74 C), during the so-called “El Niño of the century.”
As expected, while the El Niño continues to pump heat into the atmosphere, this event hasn’t been powerful enough by itself to push the atmosphere to new record highs. Without the kind of transient heat spikes aided by fluctuating weather patterns in the high latitudes, such as were seen in February, this El Niño may continue to fade. The February anomaly might stand out as an anomalous spike in the dataset rather than part of an ongoing trend.
The warmest months in the satellite temperature record are:
Warmest Months, Global
How much warmer than seasonal norms
Feb. 2016 0.83 C
Apr. 1998 0.74 C
Mar. 2016 0.73C
Feb. 1998 0.65 C
May 1998 0.64 C
June 1998 0.57 C
Jan. 2016 0.54 C
Aug. 1998 0.52 C
Mar. 2010 0.50 C
Jan. 1998 0.48 C
Mar. 1998 0.47 C
Feb. 2010 0.47 C
Warmest Marches, Global
How much warmer than seasonal norms
2016 0.73
2010 0.52
1998 0.47
2004 0.35
2007 0.26
2002 0.24
1991 0.23
2005 0.19
2015 0.17
1988 0.16
Compared to seasonal norms, the warmest average temperature anomaly on Earth in March was over south central Greenland. March temperatures there averaged 5.19 C (about 9.34 degrees F) warmer than seasonal norms. Compared to seasonal norms, the coolest average temperature on Earth in March was over the Ross Sea, north of Marie Byrd Land in Antarctica, where the average March 2016 temperature was 3.04 C (about 5.47 degrees F) cooler than normal for March.
The complete version 6 beta lower troposphere dataset is available here:
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6.0beta5.txt
Archived color maps of local temperature anomalies are available on-line at:
As part of an ongoing joint project between UAHuntsville, NOAA and NASA, Christy 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 are collected and processed, they are 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.
–30–
5″ of snow here in eastern Massachusetts yesterday, 19º F at 7 AM EDT this morning.
“April is the cruelest month.” —T. S. Eliot
/Mr Lynn
Gloateus Maximus says:
April 4, 2016 at 4:51 pm
For instance, check out maximum state temperature records from the 19th century through the 1930s:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/scec/records
This was good information. when looking at Texas, (ALVIN) THE PRECIPITATION you see 42+ inches of rain. what causes that here is when a front stalls, often happens, and a tropical shows at the same time, you receive a training effect of rain fall. you will also see it happen when tropical storm ALLEN, the following year turn sand pits into Red Adair park. later the park change the name. no unusual here in this part of the country. Back in the 70’s, about every june 7th through 21st you could count on the freeway feeder roads flooded. Weather comes and Weather goes.
‘Weather comes and weather goes’, tell that to a warmist!
Tom,
NOAA tried to change the state high and low records, but the states fought back.
Did you see this WUWT story:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/14/newly-found-weather-records-show-1930s-as-being-far-worse-than-the-present-for-extreme-weather/
Yessir, it’s all about the weather.
I’m wondering how the middle east managed to be above average temperatures for March when Saudi Arabia and Oman both received record snowfalls, and Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Yemen received record rainfall in the month.
Now I imagine that I am missing some factor (night time mins are higher due to unreasonable cloud coverage?), but would how is that factor possibly large enough to overcome the fact that it was snowing in freaking Saudi Arabia in March?
My grandson saw the most snow he has ever seen this last winter. He is almost three.
Having the warmest March in a thirty five year satellite record is pretty meaningless, isn’t it?
I think you are drawing attention to the fact that 35 years is not very long in the grand scheme of things. In which case the answer to your question is that it is not meaningless. It tells us what is happening now. We must put it into perspective of the “natural variations” that we do not know enough to explain. A 3 year local trend (or record) will usually be unexplainable. A 35 year global trend is long compared to the fluctuations we would expect, and may be explained.
So the 35 year satellite record is not meaningless, but it does not tell the whole story either. It is a meaningful part of the story.
The title sounds like a warmunist headline — except that they’d “adjust” the data so they could claim ” “Warmest month OF ALL TIMES !!! ”
It’s actual silly to for a headline to say “3rd warmest month” … with only 35 years of data, and all the measurements made DURING a rising trend … and then comparing a near-EL NINO peak month with most months not affected by an EL NINO at all.
Of course there will be new records, or near records, if we ONLY have measurements made during a rising trend and we are still in that RISING trend — so what? — that’s what rising trends do.
Real news would be several years WITHOUT a new record, or near-record, temperature.
In addition, the month of March 2016 should only be compared with a comparable month in the El Nino cycle — one month after the 1998 El Nino peak might be one good comparison.
A fair comparison of two EL NINO peaks compared:
Feb. 2016 +0.83 C
Apr. 1998 +0.74 C
The fact that the 1998 EL Nino peak was only 0.1 degrees C. different than the apparent 2016 EL Nino peak (well within reasonable measurement error estimates) would be worth writing about.
Two big El Nino peaks 18 years apart, and only a surprisingly small 0.1 degree C. difference.
That’s news to me.
The amount of time “deniers” spend studying the monthly average temperature to the nearest one tenth of a degree is puzzling to me.
I would consider a change of less than 0.5 degree to be “noise” — random variations no one would ever notice if not for articles like this one — I doubt if most people would even notice a change of 1 degree C.
I think average temperature to the nearest one tenth of a degree is one of the most useless statistics ever compiled … and unfortunately also one of the most dangerous statistics ever compiled, because of needless reactions to it — needless counter productive reactions to slight warming, which is actually good news for humans, but treated by many people as a symptom of a coming climate catastrophe !
Tenth of a degree changes should not matter … unless you are a warmunist and want to use small rises by extrapolating them into “proof” of the dreaded runaway global warming iyou’ve been predicting since the 1970s.
No one should care about the monthly average temperature.
Even an annual average temperature is not very important.
If the crop growing season was declining – that would be important.
If green plants were growing slower, that would be important.
If Antarctica ice was melting at an unusual rate, that would be important.
If sea level was rising at an unusual rate, that would be important.
The fact that the March 2016 average temperature
is +0.1 degree C. warmer than the May 1998 average temperature
(both are the month after an EL NINO temperature peak)
is not worthy of a headline, or article.
With 4.5 billion years of climate history to study,
where average temperature for 99.999% of that time
is from very rough climate proxy estimates,
I wonder why is the average temperature in March 2016
is considered important enough to have its own article?
Climate blog for non-scientists
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Richard Greene
Had a look at your site (and wish I hadn’t wasted 2 minutes of my life). I don’t mean to be rude, but it is cutting edge nonsense. I mean look at the first graph you use. It is utterly meaningly. Has anyone ever explained the concept of scale to you?
I think you didn’t grasp RG’s message: there is no problem of scaling here.
It is what you obtain when using absolute temperatures (actually around 15 °C) instead of deltas wrt a baseline.
Bindidon
Like measuring the weight of a feather with bathroom scales. A totally misleading waste of time and a clear indication he has no idea.
No idea: maybe. I rather think of no experience.
Typical for people who do not understand why we use deltas of absolute values rather than the latter themselves.
Maybe they don’t know that while the global mean surface temperature is about 15 °C, that of the lower troposphere is about -9 °C… and that these two levels of measurement, though distant by 24 °C, nevertheless give us surprisingly well correlating information.
The chart represents a series of about 130 ordinary thermometers and clearly shows how little the claimed very rough estimate of average temperature has been in the past 130 years.
You should be thanking me that the chart on the first page scared you off — your mind is obviously closed — you have bought the ‘world is going to end from climate change’ malarkey.
You probably also showed yourself to be a leftist — desperately scared of opposing viewpoints — launching character attacks in the first sentence of your comment – since leftists do not debate their beliefs!
If you have a problem with my website, pick one sentence related to climate change that offends you and refute it.
I guess you can’t refute anything … but just wanted to complain about the vertical scale / range used for an accurate chart based on government data (data from Obama’s government — from your hero’s favorite bureaucrats!)
If you want to argue that climate change is not 99% leftists politics — we can debate the effect of politics on the “science” — that is only my opinion as to why the science is so bad.
The chart on the first page presents GISS data correctly, in a visually unbiased way.
You don’t like the range of temperatures used for the vertical axis of the chart ?
Well, “my” chart is a lot less deceiving than a chart with a one degree range — the type of chart you must love — making tiny temperature variations look like huge mountains and valleys.
I suppose when a weather man says the high temperature will be 71 degrees that day, you call the TV station and complain you want that in tenths of a degree?
“I wonder why is the average temperature in March 2016 is considered important enough to have its own article?”
It is in April 2016 – maybe not at other times. See “the news” -full of recent events that are not particularly significant in the grand scheme of things.