May 2016 was 2nd warmest May in satellite record
When is an anomaly just an anomaly and not necessarily part of a larger trend? Perhaps, when the anomaly is a significant outlier that can be linked to a specific cause.
May 2016 was the second warmest May in the satellite temperature record, trailing only May 1998 by 0.11 C, according to Dr. John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. Compared to seasonal norms, May 2016 was the 8th warmest month overall since the satellite temperature dataset began in December 1978.
The 16 warmest months (and 21 of the warmest 25) on the record, however, all happened during one of three El Niño Pacific Ocean warming events (1997-98, 2009-10 and 2015-16). The effect is especially noticeable when comparing temperatures from a specific month. In the May data, three El Niño Mays are warmer than the other 35 by an amount that is statistically significant.
Global climate trend since Nov. 16, 1978: +0.12 C per decade
May temperatures (preliminary)
Global composite temp.: +0.55 C (about 0.99 degrees Fahrenheit) above
30-year average for May.
Northern Hemisphere: +0.65 C (about 1.17 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year
average for May.
Southern Hemisphere: +0.44 C (about 0.79 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year
average for May.
Tropics: +.72 C (about 1.30 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for
May.
April temperatures (revised):
Global Composite: +0.72 C above 30-year average
Northern Hemisphere: +0.85 C above 30-year average
Southern Hemisphere: +0.58 C above 30-year average
Tropics: +0.94 C above 30-year average
(All temperature anomalies are based on a 30-year average (1981-2010) for
the month reported.)
May anomalies
(compared to 30-year May norm)
1998 +0.65 C
2016 +0.55 C
2010 +0.41 C
2015 +0.27 C
2002 +0.25 C
2014 +0.25 C
2003 +0.21 C
2001 +0.20 C
2007 +0.14 C
2005 +0.13 C
That effect is more pronounced when looking at May temperatures in the tropics:
May anomalies, tropics
(compared to 30-year May norm)
1998 +0.98 C
2010 +0.80 C
2016 +0.72 C
1983 +0.28 C
2002 +0.27 C
2015 +0.26 C
2003 +0.19 C
2014 +0.18 C
1988 +0.18 C
1991 +0.17 C
The upshot, said Christy, is that while there is a clear warming signal in the satellite temperature data, caution should be used when trying to extrapolate long-term conclusions about climate change based on months and years whose temperatures are obvious outliers driven by El Niño warming events.
The 2015-16 El Niño appears to be fading fast. Sea surface temperatures in the east central Pacific have fallen below norms, and a La Niña Pacific Ocean cooling event may be on its way. It is a tiny sample, but 3-year La Niña cooling followed immediately after strong El Niño events in 1972-73 and 1997-98.
“We should expect continued, but erratic cooling through the end of the year,” Christy said. “In comparing the current El Niño to the major 1997-98 event, we see that globally the last two months have fallen below the values seen in 1998. The ‘race’ for the hottest year is getting closer. (See attached graph.) Through May, 2016 (+0.67 C warmer than seasonal norms) is leading 1998 (+0.60 C). Annual anomalies, however, are accurate to only ± 0.1 C, so the two years are really in a statistical tie.”
Compared to seasonal norms, the warmest average temperature anomaly on Earth in May was just off the western coast of the Antarctic Peninsula in the Bellingshausen Sea. May temperatures there averaged 4.10 C (about 7.38 degrees F) warmer than seasonal norms. Compared to seasonal norms, the coolest average temperature on Earth in May was near South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands in the South Atlantic, where the average May 2016 temperature was 3.08 C (about 5.54 degrees F) cooler than normal for May.
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.
An interesting comparison…
It seems that Paul Clark at Wood for Trees is about to shutdown: only data that is automatically processed is shown for recent periods.
That is the reason why UAH data still is shown at revision 5.6 instead of revision 6.0beta5.
This is a pity, but is somewhow good as well: it allows us to show the concordance of UAH5.6 data with that of GISSTEMP:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/uah/from:1979/mean:12/plot/uah/from:1979/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1979/mean:12/offset:-0.428/plot/gistemp/from:1979/trend/offset:-0.428/plot/uah/from:1997/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1997/trend/offset:-0.428
Using RSS3.3 TLT (quite similar to UAH6.0beta5) we can show how these compare:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/rss/from:1979/mean:12/offset:-0.083/plot/rss/from:1979/trend/offset:-0.083/plot/gistemp/from:1979/mean:12/offset:-0.428/plot/gistemp/from:1979/trend/offset:-0.428/plot/rss/from:1997/trend/offset:-0.083/plot/gistemp/from:1997/trend/offset:-0.428
I am responding here to: DWR54 June 7, 2016 at 6:27 am. He has some searching questions about global warming for us. First, he points out that “Every data set we have, including the satellites, show continued global warming since 2002. In NOAA it’s statistically significant (0.174 ±0.157 °C/decade (2σ): ” http://www.ysbl.york.ac.uk/~cowtan/applets/trend/trend.html ” And then he follows it with: “How come surface and atmospheric temperatures have warmed during a period when ocean heat content also grew? We know it wasn’t the sun, because sunspot numbers have been relatively low during solar cycle 24. What explains the observed warming better than an enhanced greenhouse effect?”
These are important points about which much misinformation has been spread. I will take care of this nisinformation below. To start with, , let us agree on the basics. I exclude the sun like you do because there is no observable connection between sunspot numbers and climate. The validity of past connection between them is a hypothesis to me that has not yet been proved. IPCC doctrine today takes it for granted that the greenhouse effect is caused by the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and this claim embraces the whole lower troposphere. When these gases are analyzed it turns out that carbon dioxide we are supposed to fight is neither the most important nor the most abundant greenhouse gas in the air. Water vapor is both. It makes up 95 percent of greenhouse gases present while carbon dioxide is only 3.6 percent. Ignoring water vapor, the greenhouse effect itself is said to be produced when carbon dioxide in the atmosphere absorbs infrared radiation and thereby warms the air. Hansen knew in 1988 that this had not been proven and took it upon himself to prove that the greenhouse effect is real. First he claimed that a 100 year warming curve existed hat had to be produced by the greenhouse effect. Then he said that more greenhouse effect could be observed at high latitudes than at low latitudes, and that more warming took place in the winter than in the summer. But when it came to actual data all he could say is that “…in all of these cases, the signal is at best beginning to emerge, and we need more data.” At this point he had no actual data but nevertheless claimed having discovered the greenhouse effect with his famous statement that “…global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect.” You can paraphrase this as: “Global warming itself is proof of the greenhouse effect. “ This is not science but it is nevertheless accepted as proof of the existence of the greenhouse effect by IPCC and other global warming advocates. When it comes to the real world, observation of the global temperature curve by NOAA shows that large parts of it cannot possibly be caused by the greenhouse effect. For example, there is a thirty-year period of warming that starts in 1910 and ends in 1940. Checking the extended Keeling curve to see if carbon dioxide was involved we discover that no carbon dioxide was added to the atmosphere during this period as is required to create greenhouse warming. To this you must add the fact that the warming stopped in 1940. It so happens that in order to stop greenhouse warming you must pluck all of the absorbing carbon dioxide molecules out of the air. That is an impossibility and therefore the the fact that warming stopped in 1940 tells us that this warming could not possibly have been a greenhouse warming. This means hat one third of the twentieth century is now proven to be greenhouse free. Your hope of finding greenhouse warming in some other part pf the century is also greatly diminished by this because there is no reason to think that the greenhouse effect will suddenly come alive elsewhere in that century. We know of other related warming-cooling situations where the same rule about stopping applies. They are associated with the periodic appearance of El Nino peaks and their associated La Nina valleys as part of the global temperature curve. No one so far has claimed that El Ninos have anything to do with the greenhouse effect. The spacing between El Nino peaks is approximately five years but it can vary. Each time an El Nino appears it starts with a clear warming period, followed by a clear cooling period that descends to the bottom of its neighboring La Nina valley before turning to the next El Nino in line. An excellent view of the global temperature chart showing the location of all El Ninos from 1850 to 2016 is in the paper by Kevin Cowtan referred to by the first quote above. This chart is taken from HadCRUT4 according to the author. Ignoring the errors in HadCRUT4 and the trend shown by his graph shows that from the beginning to the end of this time period the entire graph is completely filled with a shoulder-to-shoulder mass of El Nino peaks, separated by La Nina valleys. These are the so-called “noise,” usually eliminated by a running mean. No one thinks about them – out of sight, out of mind, and we pay dearly for this lack of thyought. . Now, think about what this mass of El Minos tells us about the greenhouse effect. Or don’t think, I will tell you. A total failure of institutional science pushing for irrational decarbonization goals. This array of El Ninos tells us that no greenhouse effect can exist anywhere in the recorded global temperature records. None. The alleged anthropogenic global warming is a total myth. The billions spent on decarbonizing are a total waste. The Copenhagen and Paris conferences were organized under false premises. And we have a huge institutional cleanup of damage done by the global warming movement ahead of us.
Arno, you what is really useful? PARAGRAPHS.
Paragraphs?
Paragraphs?
We don’t need no stinkin’ paragraphs !
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stinking_badges
Dude…. Paragraphs! Use ’em! Makes you more readable, and also forces you to organize your ideas in a logical fashion.
Using paragraphs to present ideas does not make them logical — just easier to read.
I didn’t say using paragraphs makes your ideas logical, but that it forces you to organize them in a logical fashion. Well, forces is a bit strong, but it sure as hell helps.
I tried to read your comment, but my eyes were not good enough — I got so dizzy and fell off my bar stool.
… so I created another version in my own easy-to-read non-traditional format, and fixed a few minor typos I found.
You had some very interesting ways of describing some things, such as:
“Global warming itself is proof of the greenhouse effect.”
If you use some spaces in your future posts, more people will read them.
Just like you, I do not believe in paragraphs … but I eliminate them in a different way, which I used when I re-formatted your comment (below):
I am responding here to: DWR54 June 7, 2016 at 6:27 am.
He has some searching questions about global warming for us.
First, he points out that:
“Every data set we have, including the satellites, show continued global warming since 2002.
In NOAA it’s statistically significant (0.174 ±0.157 °C/decade (2σ):
http://www.ysbl.york.ac.uk/~cowtan/applets/trend/trend.html”
And then he follows it with:
“How come surface and atmospheric temperatures have warmed during a period when ocean heat content also grew?
We know it wasn’t the sun, because sunspot numbers have been relatively low during solar cycle 24.
What explains the observed warming better than an enhanced greenhouse effect?”
These are important points about which much misinformation has been spread.
I will take care of this misinformation below.
To start with, let us agree on the basics.
I exclude the sun like you do because there is no observable connection between sunspot numbers and climate.
The validity of past connection between them is a hypothesis to me that has not yet been proved.
IPCC doctrine today takes it for granted that the greenhouse effect is caused by the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and this claim embraces the whole lower troposphere.
When these gases are analyzed it turns out that carbon dioxide we are supposed to fight is neither the most important nor the most abundant greenhouse gas in the air.
Water vapor is both.
It makes up 95 percent of greenhouse gases present while carbon dioxide is only 3.6 percent.
Ignoring water vapor, the greenhouse effect itself is said to be produced when carbon dioxide in the atmosphere absorbs infrared radiation and thereby warms the air.
Hansen knew in 1988 that this had not been proven and took it upon himself to prove that the greenhouse effect is real.
First he claimed that a 100 year warming curve existed hat had to be produced by the greenhouse effect.
Then he said that more greenhouse effect could be observed at high latitudes than at low latitudes, and that more warming took place in the winter than in the summer.
But when it came to actual data all he could say is that:
“…in all of these cases, the signal is at best beginning to emerge, and we need more data.”
At this point he had no actual data but nevertheless claimed having discovered the greenhouse effect with his famous statement that:
“…global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect.”
You can paraphrase this as:
“Global warming itself is proof of the greenhouse effect.”
This is not science but it is nevertheless accepted as proof of the existence of the greenhouse effect by IPCC and other global warming advocates.
When it comes to the real world, observation of the global temperature curve by NOAA shows that large parts of it cannot possibly be caused by the greenhouse effect.
For example, there is a thirty-year period of warming that starts in 1910 and ends in 1940.
Checking the extended Keeling curve to see if carbon dioxide was involved we discover that no carbon dioxide was added to the atmosphere during this period as is required to create greenhouse warming.
To this you must add the fact that the warming stopped in 1940.
It so happens that in order to stop greenhouse warming you must pluck all of the absorbing carbon dioxide molecules out of the air.
That is an impossibility and therefore the the fact that warming stopped in 1940 tells us that this warming could not possibly have been a greenhouse warming.
This means hat one third of the twentieth century is now proven to be greenhouse free.
Your hope of finding greenhouse warming in some other part of the century is also greatly diminished by this because there is no reason to think that the greenhouse effect will suddenly come alive elsewhere in that century.
We know of other related warming-cooling situations where the same rule about stopping applies.
They are associated with the periodic appearance of El Nino peaks and their associated La Nina valleys as part of the global temperature curve.
No one so far has claimed that El Ninos have anything to do with the greenhouse effect.
The spacing between El Nino peaks is approximately five years but it can vary.
Each time an El Nino appears it starts with a clear warming period, followed by a clear cooling period that descends to the bottom of its neighboring La Nina valley before turning to the next El Nino in line.
An excellent view of the global temperature chart showing the location of all El Ninos from 1850 to 2016 is in the paper by Kevin Cowtan referred to by the first quote above.
This chart is taken from HadCRUT4 according to the author.
Ignoring the errors in HadCRUT4 and the trend shown by his graph shows that from the beginning to the end of this time period the entire graph is completely filled with a shoulder-to-shoulder mass of El Nino peaks, separated by La Nina valleys.
These are the so-called “noise,” usually eliminated by a running mean.
No one thinks about them – out of sight, out of mind, and we pay dearly for this lack of thought.
Now, think about what this mass of El Ninos tells us about the greenhouse effect.
Or don’t think, I will tell you.
A total failure of institutional science pushing for irrational decarbonization goals.
This array of El Ninos tells us that no greenhouse effect can exist anywhere in the recorded global temperature records.
None.
The alleged anthropogenic global warming is a total myth.
The billions spent on decarbonizing are a total waste.
The Copenhagen and Paris conferences were organized under false premises.
And we have a huge institutional cleanup of damage done by the global warming movement ahead of us.
” The alleged anthropogenic global warming is a total myth.”
And, if you look at the rate of change of min and max temps individually (ever wonder why only mean is examined)across different regions, it’s obvious a global, uniform, homogenous forcing could not possibly be the source of those changes.