Alternate Title: The Annual Cycle in Global Land+Ocean Surface Temperature IS Far Greater Than 1.5 Deg C, AND Much-Much-MUCH Greater Than 1.5 Deg C Annually for Global Land Air Surface Temperatures
We all were taught early in school that the Earth orbits the Sun…that its path is elliptical…that because of the tilt in Earth’s axis of rotation, we have seasons as the Earth orbits our star annually. Because of the elliptical orbit, and because the ratios of land to ocean are different between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, we might expect that global average surface temperatures would vary over the course of a year.
Later in life we’ve been brow beaten with alarmism about human-induced global warming and climate change…that the Earth will become a literal—not figurative—hell if global surface temperatures rise—formerly 2-deg C—now 1.5 deg C above pre-industrial levels. But does the average person know much global surface temperatures vary annually as it orbits the Sun? It’s unlikely, because I’ve never before seen graphs that are similar to what’s presented in this post or seen it discussed in any of the global warming literature. Am I expecting most persons to find this information to be of any interest? Nope. I simply find it noteworthy that, as I mentioned before, I’ve never seen it presented anywhere. In fact, I just Googled, in quotes, “How Much Do Global Surface Temperatures Cycle Annually?” and Google replied (their boldface), “No results found for “How Much Do Global Surface Temperatures Cycle Annually?”.
Remarkable, is it not, in these times of global warming interest?
Enough with the preamble and on to the meat of the post:
The mainstream media and blogosphere went berserk with the release of the most recent propaganda-overloaded Special Report (SR15) by the UN’s global-politics-driven Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Their stories about the report were filled with all sorts of nonsensical gloom and doom prognostications about life on Earth should the rise in global surface temperatures exceed 1.5 deg C above “pre-industrial times”, which has also been redefined with SR15.
It wasn’t long ago, the gloom-and-doomsters focused on a 2-deg C change in global surface temperatures from pre-industrial times, but the point in time at which we were predicted to reach that 2-deg C threshold of all-nasty-things-to-come must have been too far in the future for them, so they revised their focus to a 1.5 deg C change in global surface temperatures to bring it nearer in time. In other words, as is characteristic of gloom-and-doomsters, the future gloom and doom is always a moving target.
BUT
As the title of the post asks, do doomsters know how much global surface temperatures cycle annually?
DATA SOURCES: The sources of much of the monthly global surface temperature data in absolute form are the following webpages at the Berkeley Earth website:
There, each listing is preceded by “Estimated Jan 1951-Dec 1980 monthly absolute temperature (C):”
For the 1951-1980 averages in absolute global (90S-90N) sea surface temperatures, I used NOAA’s much-adjusted ERSST.v5 sea surface temperature data, which is available through the KNMI Climate Explorer. Berkeley Earth uses the period of 1951-1980 for their anomalies. The KNMI Climate Explorer is also the source of the climate model outputs. As usual, I’m presenting the average (the consensus) of the outputs of the climate models stored the CMIP5 archive, which were used by the IPCC for the 5th Assessment Report. The models for this post are those driven by the historical forcings that precede the RCP8.5 forcings used for climate projections.
ANNUAL GLOBAL CYCLES IN TEMPERATURE
Now, we all have an idea of how much surface temperatures vary in our home towns. And we’ve all seen or heard the argument that goes like:
1.5 deg C? Where I live, temperatures can easily drop below -10 deg C (14 deg F) in winter and rise to about 35 deg C (95 deg F) for a few days in summer. We’re used to 45 deg C (81 deg F) swings in temperature each and every year. So who cares about 1.5 deg C (2.7 deg F)?
BTW, those truly are the conditions for where I live…and have been as far back as I can remember.
But few people realize that global surface temperatures vary noticeably as the Earth orbits the Sun and that the annual change in global Land+Ocean Surface Temperature is more than twice the gloom-and-doomsters’ 1.5 Deg C, and much-much-MUCH greater that 1.5 deg C for the annual cycle in Global Land Air Surface Temperatures.
As shown in Figure 1, depending on which of the Berkeley Earth Global Surface Temperature (BEST) datasets are referenced—with air over sea ice or with water under sea ice—the average annual cycle in global surface temperatures for their base period of 1951-1980 is estimated to be somewhere between 3.4 deg C or 3.7 deg C.
Figure 1
Even persons (climate scientists) who live in the politics-driven fantasy worlds of climate models have witnessed in their virtual worlds, on average for the period of 1951-1980, an annual change in global surface temperatures of 3.8 deg C.
Referring to Figure 2 below, according to Berkeley Earth, the average annual cycle (for the Berkeley Earth base period of 1951-1980) in global land-air surface temperatures is 11.8 deg C (almost 12 deg C) and that, of course, is much greater than the annual cycle in global sea surface temperatures (0.4 deg C) based on NOAA’s ERSST.v5 sea surface temperature data. In other words, the annual change in global land surface air temperatures is almost 8 times higher than the 1.5 deg C long-term change that agenda-hungry, unelected UN politicians from around the globe are telling us we need to avoid.
Figure 2
Thank you, oceans, for tempering Earth’s climate.
GLOBAL LAND+OCEAN SURFACE TEMPERATURE DATA & LAND SURFACE AIR TEMPERATURE DATA AND LINEAR TREND LINES FROM 1850 TO 2018 IN ABSOLUTE FORM MAY ANSWER THE TITLE QUESTION
If you have spreadsheets prepared that convert data from column form to table form and back from table to column again—as I do—it’s easy to take the monthly Berkeley Earth surface temperature data and add to it the monthly average absolute temperatures for their base years of 1951 to 1980, so that the global surface temperature data can be presented in absolute form. See Figure 3 for the Berkeley Earth (BEST) monthly global land+ocean surface temperatures and linear trend, from September 1850 to September 2018, presented in absolute, not anomaly, form.
Figure 3
Figure 4 presents the monthly global Berkeley Earth land surface air temperature data and trend in absolute form, again from September 1850 to September 2018. In other words, there’s no ocean-based data to soften the annual cycles.
Figure 4
[Sarc on.] Hmmmm, maybe the doomsters do know, and the examples above in Figures 3 and 4 are the real reasons why NASA GISS, NOAA NCEI, and the Met Office’s Hadley Centre will only furnish their global land-plus-ocean surface temperature data and global land-air surface temperature data in anomaly form. Oops, it appears that NASA GISS, NOAA NCEI, and the Met Office’s Hadley Centre forgot to tell Berkeley Earth, and Berkeley Earth spoiled it for them all. Oh well, back to the old drawing board! [Sarc off.]
Again, thank you, oceans, for tempering Earth’s climate.
That’s it for this post.
Have fun, and enjoy your Monday!
STANDARD CLOSING REQUEST
Please purchase my recently published ebooks. As many of you know, this year I published 2 ebooks that are available through Amazon in Kindle format:
- Dad, Why Are You A Global Warming Denier? (For an overview, the blog post that introduced it is here.)
- Dad, Is Climate Getting Worse in the United States? (See the blog post here for an overview.)
Just like you may have learned something new today with this post, you might learn much more from the books.
To those of you who have purchased them, thank you. To those of you who will purchase them, thank you, too.
Regards,
Bob
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VERY interesting Bob, thanks!
About Figure 2:
Average Yearly Land Temperatures: around 8C
Average Yearly Ocean Temperatures: around 18C
Those numbers suggest that the average ocean (surface) is around 10 degrees warmer than the average land surface. We could conclude that Oceans are warming Land. But because more of the (colder) land surface is situated on the higher latitudes than on lower latitudes, the difference in latitudes could/will be one of the reasons.
I am interested in the average temperatures for (1) Land and (2) Oceans for specific latitudes. I am especially interested in 10S-10N (wet tropics), 30S-30N (tropics, subtropics) and 45S-45N (warmest half of all latitudes, most of the Earth’s surface area). But I could nowhere find maps or graphics showing this information. Perhaps you (Bob) could provide some insight?
The interesting question is what the role is that the oceans play in collecting the Sun’s energy. I know tropical oceans are the main absorbers on Earth but it will be interesting to see the numbers(!) for Land and Oceans for the different latitudes.
In the Sahara Desert it might go from 132 deg F to 32 deg F in less than 24 hours. And yet things live there. Actually, in places like the Sonoran or Mojave desert, life is more abundant than most people realize. I have come across desert springs that are alive with hummingbirds, honey bees, and various unidentified insects. Some of the biggest mule deer I have seen were bedded down in the shade in arroyos north of Phoenix.
And the alarmists are worried about a 1.3C increase in a century?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0l3tymEagc
Tony Heller’s latest video proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that 97% of climate science is fake. NOAA and NASA GISS should be charged with fraud and their top administrators jailed for treason.
https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
The NASA website has a graph that puts 5 different temperature datasets on a single graph from 1880 to 2017 or so (hard to tell what latest year is) . Of course all these datasets are fake because they have suppressed the warming of the 1930s. 3 other things stand out. 1) The data sets are almost exact matches of each other 2) One of the datasets is GISTEMP which includes water temperature data along with land air temperatures. 3) Another one of the datasets is called Cowtan and Way.
So I go to their website to find out what the heck is that dataset? Lo and behold I find this caveat on their website. I quote: “Maintaining a scientific data set to professional levels of quality assurance is beyond our resources. These results are therefore presented as a best effort. ”
So it seems that NASA will accept data submissions from private individuals even if you admit that you can’t keep the data up to professional standards. I guess this isnt too surprising in the climate science field when you realize that there isn’t any data standards in climate science. It is a wild west free for all of “HIDING THE DECLINE, JUXTAPOSING TEMPERATURE DATA FROM LAND STATIONS TO WILDERNESS AREAS 1000’S OF KM AWAY, USING PROXY DATA AND REAL DATA ON SAME TIMELINE IN A GRAPH, ADJUSTING TEMPERATURES DOWNWARDS 80 YEARS AGO SO THAT YOU CAN CLAIM AN INCREASE, USING 2 DIFFERENT TECHNIQUES TO MEASURE SEA RISE AND PUTTING THEM ON SAME TIME LINE, USING A BOGUS CONCEPT OF glacial isostatic adjustment TO ADJUST LAND LEVELS FOR SEA LEVEL MEASUREMENTS, MIXING SEA WATER TEMPERATURE DATASETS WITH LAND AIR TEMPERATURE DATASETS, FAILING TO COMPLETELY ACCOUNT FOR UHI EFFECTS, AND WHOLESALE READJUSTMENT OF TEMPERATURES 20 YEARS LATER FROM GRAPHS THAT WERE ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED TO PRESENT NEW FRAUDULENT GRAPHS. Did I leave any other climate science data fraud procedures out?
To think that billions of dollars are being spent on this fraud and because of this fraud boggles the mind.
They all also diminish the global cooling between the ’40s and the PDO flip of 1976/77.
The NWS site for Washington, DC, at Reagan National Airport, shows the normal annual temperature variation is 50° C. In 2017 the highest high reading was 97° F and the lowest low was 16° F, for a difference of 81° F or 50° C. In 2018 the range will be larger, as the lowest low (so far) was 4° F, while the highest high reading again was 97° F.
So, an increase in the world average T of 2° C would not impact the Washington temperatures very much. In fact the lows are not as low as in the past and the highs are not as high (we used to have lows at 0° F or lower, and highs of 100° F or higher).
Data are in the graphs here: https://www.weather.gov/lwx/cliplot_monthly?site=KDCA They do need to be enlarged to get the exact extreme lows and highs for the green bars
The funny thing about the Dunning-Kruger effect is that the more one is convinced it applies to the other side, the more likely it is to apply to one’s self.
Yep. Dunning Kroeger is right in there with “Logical Fallacies”. Logical fallacies are things we should be highly aware of as we make arguments. We should never use them as arguments. We can use them as the starting point of the argument, but they are not the argument.
Inside the space of a comment on WUWT, we almost are forced to make some sort of logical fallacy, hoping that people reading can fill in the backstory without posting a dictionary entry for every word in our post.
The fallacy here is comparing short term variability with a long term drift.
Consider a function f(t)= A sin(t) + B t. Now if A >>B then over any small
time interval the system is dominated by the sin(t) term but the long term
evolution is dominated by the B t term. The same is true with the climate —
there is a large amount of noise and periodic variability to which we are adding
a small forcing term which is going to win out in the long term.
You, like IPPC are saying that the magnitude of short term variations don’t change over the long-term so it doesn’t matter. That’s a false assumption.
That is not what I am saying. Nor as far as I can tell is it what the IPCC are saying either —
since some models predict a greater increase in extreme weather events as the temperature
increases. What I am saying is that different effects operate on different timescales — the
day to night temperature variation in most places is larger than the average temperature difference between summer and winter but that doesn’t mean that the seasons are unimportant.
I’m saying you should not consider short term variations as having an insignificant effect on the long term rate of change. The short term variations are constantly changing, especially with respect to energy loss to space by radiation.
Thanks for your comment. However, as I noted for Washington, D.C., the value of A is getting smaller. It is not a constant.
Thanks, Bob, for yet another dose of common sense. This will, unfortunately, fly right over the heads of the Warmistas and Alarmists, as its sanity lies quite beyond their comprehension.
Here’s what googling “annual temperature cycle” turns up as a top entry:
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7l.html
For those who mistakenly think that periodic diurnal and annual cycles are somehow involved in climate change, this WUWT post may be enlightening. For those who recognize that those cycles are irrelevant to the “climate signal” and are deliberately removed to display that very-much-weaker signal, there’s nothing much new to see here.
The IPCC demands that we keep the global average temperature less than 1.5 degrees C above the average global pre-industrial temperature circa 1800-1850. But what was that average temperature? The chart above shows it was about 14 degrees C. Reportedly we are now about 1 degree C above that rather poorly defined temperature and seem to be doing just fine, but another 0.5 degree increase will be catastrophic?
Should climate databases be reporting both absolute temperatures as well as temperature anomalies. And what a does 1.5 degree C temperature anomaly convert to as an absolute temperature value?
It depends on the base period.
There are, broadly speaking, three approaches to estimating the ‘average’ temperature of a field ( like the earth)
1. Average all the samples over time and space. This method, used by Tony Heller, is know to create huge biases when the samples vary in time and space. For example, if your sample is at low latitudes in one time period and evolves to include higher latitudes at other time periods. Or if your sample has a few stations during warm periods and more stations during cooling periods. These biases are severe especially for the samples we have for the earth.
2. Designate a period of time ( 30 years) where your station count is maximized ( 1951-1980 or 1961 to 1990). Calculate a Normal for this period known as the baseline. Now, you have a mechanicsm that allows you to correct for the bias due to gaps in time sampling. Your results will be anomaly with reference to the base period.
3. Use regression Temperature = F(x,y,z, etc), where your parameters — x,y, z, p, d, q etc– allow you to estimate the absolute temperature as a function of position (lat lon) time ( season), elevation, and any other parameters that you can assemble.. distance to coast, land cover, etc.
This regression approach is the only one that gets you absolute temperatures. You can also then present this as anomalies from any base period you like.
IN general however the science only cares about the CHANGE in temperature.
Why is that?
Well lets take climate sensitivity and use Lewis and Curry as an example. What we want to know is how much the earth warms for increases in forcing. forcing increases can be due to anything.. the sun
GHGs… etc. We want to know what happens — Delta temperature change– if we increase forcing by say 3 watts. So we need to know the change in forcing (3 watts) and the change in temperature. Delta T. Absolute T doesnt matter for this fundamental property.
The sad fact remains that none of the three methods outlined here provides consistent, unbiased statistical estimates of the average value of the global surface integral of temperature–even in the absence of data corruption by UHI effects. In the quite widespread presence of such effects at met stations around the globe, any claim of unbiased estimation is scientifically scurrilous. You can’t make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear.
Do all three methods produce a minimum global temperature when the Earth is closest to the Sun, as stated in this post?
This notion that one “average” temperature represents the entire globe is an illusion/delusion.
Nick,
You dont understand what the average represents.
1. All global averages are actually spatial fields. First and foremost, spatial fields
2. These fields are integrated to give you a global expectation.
What EXACTLY is the global expecttation?
Its a prediction, a spatial prediction. It says this:
Take the global average X.
pick A random selection of places on the globe and sample them. y1, y2, ect
X is the best predictor ( smallest error) for this sample.
From the article: “It wasn’t long ago, the gloom-and-doomsters focused on a 2-deg C change in global surface temperatures from pre-industrial times, but the point in time at which we were predicted to reach that 2-deg C threshold of all-nasty-things-to-come must have been too far in the future for them, so they revised their focus to a 1.5 deg C change in global surface temperatures to bring it nearer in time.”
It looks to me like they lowered the catastrophic temperature change to 1.5C because the latest ECS estimates are hovering around 1.5C or lower. So they make it look like their estimates are still in the ballpark and still catastrophic, so they continue the narrative even as the ECS gets lower and lower.
Soon they will be telling us how dangerous a 1C increase would be.
There have been comments in other posts that the change in temperature isn’t important, it is the rate of change that matters, and we are “currently” experiencing an unprecedented rapid change in temperature. First, current temperature isn’t changing at an unprecedented rate. Even the “rapid” temperature change during the 1988-2001 (2002?) period was unprecedented if one doesn’t erase the 1930’s from the record.
However, diurnal and annual temperature change rates exceed any of the doomsters CAGW / CCC rates, and everything seems to survive just fine.
I am quite suprised by the non-existent annual cycle in overall sea surface temperatures in particular, in one of the graphics above. I have seen many people say that the anual cycle in atmospheric CO2 levels, which rises during half of the year and goes down the other half, was partially explained by Biosphere activity in the NH and partially by the changes in sea surface temperatures, which affect the solubility of CO2, therefore when the southern oceans are colder they absorb more CO2 than when they are warmer.
That explanation is obvioulsy at fault if the average temperature of the surface of the oceans worldwide does NOT experience a yearly cycle, meaning that the same ammount of CO2 that may be absorbed in some areas of the southern oceans must be being released in some others in the northern hemisphere. Which leads to the obvious conclussion that it is the BIOSPHERE activity alone which causes the anual cycle in atmospheric CO2 concentrations, as I have always believed. Which has VERY good implications.
Using Mauna Loa data one can verify that the ammount by which CO2 decreases in the half of the year when the Biosphere is absorbing it has remained stable since we measure it. Given that we are obviously emitting much more CO2 in those months than we did in the fifties in the same months, this means that the Biosphere absorbs more and more CO2 every year. We can expect that trend to continue.
Not mentioned enough is the effect of humidity . Here in dry humid wise South Australia , once one gets away from the coast , it can reach 40 C during a summers day, but at night go down to 15 C.
And what about a traveller from say Hobart the Capital of Tasmania in the South , to Cairns in the North of Queensland. Even in the winter the swing in temperature from snow in Hobart to the tropics of Cairns is big.
Marble Bar in the cenntre is even more of a variation n temperature
Should we apply to Canberra for permission to travel over such a dangerous level of temperature change, sarc. of course.
MJE
Are all historical temperature records now available online? For a long time, various researchers claimed their research as propritary even if public money was used to do the research. This is a statement regarding the Hadcrut data. Are there any data sets where this is not true still?
Access to weather station temperature records was often under formal or informal confidentiality agreements that restricted use of this raw data to academic purposes. From the 1990s onwards the unit received requests for this weather station temperature data from people who hoped to independently verify the impact of various adjustments, and after the UK Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) came into effect in 2005, there were Freedom of Information requests to the Climatic Research Unit for this raw data. On 12 August 2009 CRU announced that they were seeking permission to waive these restrictions, and on 24 November 2009 the university stated that over 95% of the CRU weather station temperature data set had already been available for several years, with the remainder to be released when permissions were obtained. In a decision announced on 27 July 2011 the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) required release of raw data even though permissions had not been obtained or in one instance had been refused, and on 27 July 2011 CRU announced[9] release of the raw temperature data not already in the public domain, with the exception of Poland which was outside the area covered by the FOIA request.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HadCRUT
Bob,
“If you have spreadsheets prepared that convert data from column form to table form and back from table to column again—as I do”
Can you share, hopefully it’s in excel.