Guest Essay by Kip Hansen
Last week Dr. Roy Spencer treated us to the latest UAH Global Temperature Update. Overall, the ”global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for October, 2018 was +0.22 deg. C, up a little from +0.14 deg. C in September”.
Dr. Spencer was kind enough to include in his post, as he usually does, a chart with the actual figures from his ongoing research. The entire post was mirrored here at WUWT.
Here’s the part that I found interesting, which only can be seen if one graphs the data from this chart:
Various regional LT departures from the 30-year (1981-2010) average for the last 22 months are:
YEAR MO GLOBE NHEM. SHEM. TROPIC USA48 ARCTIC AUST
2017 01 +0.33 +0.32 +0.34 +0.10 +0.28 +0.95 +1.22
2017 02 +0.39 +0.58 +0.20 +0.08 +2.16 +1.33 +0.21
2017 03 +0.23 +0.37 +0.09 +0.06 +1.22 +1.24 +0.98
2017 04 +0.28 +0.29 +0.26 +0.22 +0.90 +0.23 +0.40
2017 05 +0.45 +0.40 +0.49 +0.41 +0.11 +0.21 +0.06
2017 06 +0.22 +0.34 +0.10 +0.40 +0.51 +0.10 +0.34
2017 07 +0.29 +0.31 +0.28 +0.51 +0.61 -0.27 +1.03
2017 08 +0.41 +0.41 +0.42 +0.47 -0.54 +0.49 +0.78
2017 09 +0.55 +0.52 +0.57 +0.54 +0.30 +1.06 +0.60
2017 10 +0.63 +0.67 +0.60 +0.47 +1.22 +0.83 +0.86
2017 11 +0.36 +0.34 +0.38 +0.27 +1.36 +0.68 -0.12
2017 12 +0.42 +0.50 +0.33 +0.26 +0.45 +1.37 +0.36
2018 01 +0.26 +0.46 +0.06 -0.11 +0.59 +1.36 +0.42
2018 02 +0.20 +0.25 +0.16 +0.03 +0.92 +1.19 +0.18
2018 03 +0.25 +0.40 +0.10 +0.07 -0.32 -0.33 +0.59
2018 04 +0.21 +0.31 +0.11 -0.12 -0.00 +1.02 +0.69
2018 05 +0.18 +0.41 -0.05 +0.03 +1.93 +0.18 -0.39
2018 06 +0.21 +0.38 +0.04 +0.12 +1.19 +0.83 -0.55
2018 07 +0.32 +0.43 +0.21 +0.29 +0.51 +0.30 +1.37
2018 08 +0.19 +0.22 +0.17 +0.12 +0.06 +0.09 +0.26
2018 09 +0.14 +0.15 +0.14 +0.24 +0.88 +0.21 +0.19
2018 10 +0.22 +0.31 +0.12 +0.34 +0.25 +1.11 +0.38
The graph looks like this:
Sharp eyes will notice that I have not used all the data — I graph only Global, Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere, Tropics and the Arctic. (Leaving out US Contiguous 48 States and Australia — which I did not need and they only added clutter — each being already represented in their respective hemispheres.)
It is an interesting looking graph from several viewpoints. Here’s what I find so interesting:
- There are four traces that form a cluster across the graph, being very close to one another in a band about 0.5 °C in width: Global, N and S Hemispheres and the Tropics. The temperature anomalies from the long-term means are generally in step, but not lock-step, between regions.
- Except one: The Arctic. The Arctic trace is very different from the other four.
Here is the Arctic annotated with the seasons:
The Arctic shows more variability, both quantitatively and qualitatively.
The two Arctic winters are far more anomalous than the two summers. To me, the Arctic trace looks a bit chaotic with a seasonal overlay. Between January and February 2018, there is a shift of 1.6 °C in the anomaly.
NOTE: UAH’s “Arctic” is really denoted “NoPol” — North Pole — and is defined as 60N – 90N. It is not DMI’s “above 80N” nor is it “within the Arctic Circle”. It is larger than both.
The Danes have been treating us to Arctic temperature comparisons for many years. The three years covered by the UAH graphs above look like this when overlaid on one another:
We see that the Danish Meteorological Institute has calculated the average temperatures above the 80th parallel (yes, it is a model result) and we see that Arctic temperatures have been a lot less cold than the long-term average — 10-15 °C less cold. Even at that, Winters are running 20 degrees below freezing and Falls about 15 degrees below freezing. The Summers, however, have not been anomalously warmer. Summers show about 100 days of temperatures above freezing — and that by only a degree or so (never breaking above 275K — 0 °C = 273.15K)
This (painstakingly created) animation shows the DMI above 80N from 1970 thru Oct 2018. Images sourced from DMI’s Arctic Temperatures page.
The DMI data is in agreement with the UAH data, at least in a qualitative sense, in the last three years of the animation. It takes a good eye to see that nothing really changes much until after 2005, when there is an oddity, then after 2010 things change even more.
The Northern Hemisphere, in the UAH data, taken as a whole, does not show this type of variation.
Now, north of the 80th parallel is a very small portion of the planet but “the Arctic”– defined as the area inside the Arctic Circle at 66.5N — is quite a bit larger. UAH’s “NoPol” is defined as 60N-90N, is larger yet.
Both are part of the Northern Hemisphere.
For comparison, here is the Arctic Sea Ice extent long term average laid over the Arctic Circle. The 1981-2010 average is outlined in red (I think). You see that the 2016 and 2017 Maximum extents just about fill the long term average, with some empty space around the edges in the Bering Sea and the area north of Scandinavia.
Why show you Sea Ice Extent? — just to show that the UAH temperature high winter anomaly (north of the 80th parallel) isn’t caused by a lack of sea ice — almost all of that area is covered in sea ice in the dead of Winter.
Here is one last set of graphs, again from the DMI:
These graphs start in 1960 — about the middle of the 1945-1975 cooling period. Globally, temperatures start to rise again in about 1980 but NOT Arctic temperatures. DMI’s Arctic temperature (above 80 ° North) are steady, if variable, right around the long term (1958-2002) mean. It is not until 2005 that anything exceptional begins to be seen.
So, what does that leave? That’s what I’d like to know. Here’s Dr. Spencer’s UAH Lower Troposphere Global (top — marked with a blue line at 2005) and that regional three year graph (bottom):
One last one, really this time. This is UAH Arctic (UAH’s “NoPol 60N-90N” which is spatially considerably more than DMI’s “above 80N” and more area than “above the Arctic circle”):
Since the beginning of 2016 (highest spike in Arctic blue on the left), Global seems to follow the Arctic signal (which is 60N-90N) and has the same profile. The last data point is Oct 2018. [Note: The reference period for this graph is 1981-2010]
Here is my list of questions: (I have no answers — and I hope the readers here can shed some light on the matter)
- Why is the Lower Troposphere Temperature in that circle at the top of the world, 60N-90N, behaving so differently than the rest of the world ?
- How much does that odd behavior affect the global record?
- The DMI modelled Arctic Temperature, for north of the 80th parallel, also shows anomalously warm winters and springs, seemingly confirming that there is something going on, but only since 2005. Why is that?
- How is it that the DMI above 80N seasonal graphs show seasonal anomalies from 5-8 degrees, but UAH Arctic Lower Trop shows less than 1.5 as an extreme? Is there some physical measurement error in the DMI figures since 2005? Was there some change in the measurement or model? Or is there something physical happening (sea ice doesn’t change in the same period)?
# # # # #
Author’s Comment Policy:
Readers can consider this an Open Thread for comments on ALL MATTERS ARCTIC.
I thought I would find something interesting — and I did, but not answers. Not to worry, good questions are always more valuable than good answers.
I know Arctic warming is predicted by the AGW Hypothesis — but it only substantially appears after 2005.
All collegial comments are welcome — please discuss, not argue.
# # # # #
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Well, Kip, looks like you’re a Detective in your spare time. Arctic temperatures change after 2005 but sea ice doesn’t? Looks like the Butler (Professor Mann et al?) did it, changed the temperature reporting system for the Arctic, that is. The Arctic warming up does not strike me as anything negative, especially since our friends the Polar Bears are doing very well.
Ron ==> I’m sure convinced that less dangerously cold winters above 80N is a bad thing either. But it is odd — the timing is odd.
kip, your graph is showing why temperature anomalies are misleading. Volatility increases with latitude, so changes are most extreme near the poles. The warming is the effect of meridional transfers of heat from the equator, the natural process of planetary cooling.
My synopsis of Clive Best’s work on this
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2017/01/28/temperature-misunderstandings/
(1)
Is there any good reason
to trust temperature numbers
“above 80N”, even from
weather satellite data ?
(2)
What difference does it make
if the Arctic temperature averages
a degree warmer or colder
in one year, versus another year?
It’s always cold there !
I suggest the sea ice extent
is a more useful indicator
of the Arctic temperature,
and ocean tide changes,
than temperature numbers
of questionable accuracy.
Since very few people
live in the Arctic,
why is the temperature there
important to know?
Since Arctic ice is floating ice,
that won’t raise sea level
when it melts,
why is the sea ice extent
important to know?
A degree or two of warming
of the average GLOBAL temperature
over a century or two,
is also not important.
What’s important
is knowing when
we are going to exit
our very pleasant interglacial,
and face a colder
and colder climate.
Perhaps humans
are making the planet
a little warmer
than it would otherwise be,
with greenhouse gases.
If that’s true,
then we are delaying
the very offensive
cold climate ahead,
that will be caused
by planetary geometry.
And delaying the
inevitable colder climate,
seems like a smart thing to do
for our children !
A little warming in the Arctic,
especially warmer nights,
is not bad news at all
— it is unimportant news.
Even the polar bears
would not care.
My climate science blog:
http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com
Has someone been smearing temperatures around again?
Mike ==> Good question. Cowtan and Way (2013) fooled around with arctic data but not sure if they are responsible. The linked essay (mine) says: “In 2005, 2006, and the first part of 2007 there seems to be some discernible differences, still in the one or two hundredths of a degree range, which disappear for a year or more beginning what looks like mid-2007 and lasts until 2009 (the right edge of the yellow box). There is something definitely different in the last few years of the data.”
So, if DMI uses Cowtan and Way’s reanalysis method, that may be what we are seeing…
Cowtan and Way would not affect UAH NoPol.
Even though the climate authorities of the Danish government are to the most part trustworthy, they still are under tremendous pressure from people like Mann et al to adhere to the global warming meme. The only temperature data that both sides trust is the UAH data. That still leaves the question of why the Arctic temperature anomalies are higher than the rest of the globe?
Apparently the UAH satellites cannot cover the globe above 85 degrees in latitude for both poles. This could have some explanation for Arctic temperature anomalies being higher but for the area of 85 to 60 degrees it is still a puzzle.
No satellite covers the “Pole Hole” above 85 degrees, and there are no weather stations that far north either, except possibly a very few automatic ones on ice floes.
The area “above” 85ºN is only 2.84% of the area above 60ºN
It becomes almost irrelevant within the possible measurement errors.
Nope. DMI uses ECMWF reanalysis which is probably fairly trustworthy.
Cowtan and way dont do reanalysis.
FFS
Hi Mosh
notice they use – “The mapping step makes use of the optimal interpolation algorithm known as kriging”
wonder where that idea came from?
Kip,
Late to the party here, but I noticed that DMI clearly indicates that the split in the data is around 2002, although you note the large divergence post 2005. I suspect the trend change post 2002 is due to the change in the “hindcasting” reanalysis they did pre-2002 vs the current ECWMP analysis done post 2002. In addition, post 2002 they ECWMP had some “updates”/step changes in how the model was run, resulting in possible step changes in the output with relation to 80N+ temperature assumptions since 2002.
The real question here is what was done on the hindcasting that may not be done now — ie. validation and correction of erroneous observations — and what changes have been made to the ECWMP since 2002 which may have biased 80N+ temperatures. Answers to these two questions may resolve the clear change in trend since the early 2000s.
Michael
And this is why the flat line for the post 1960 arctic tree ring data on warming was correct when it was flat while the instrumental data showed a sharp rise in temperature and was also correct. The growing season for the trees is just the summers (which are not warming) while the temperature measurements are year round. The instrumental data should never have been tacked onto the paleo data.
Sean ==> “instrumental data should never have been tacked onto the paleo data.” — and it never should be tacked on. Ever….
It might be worth looking at oil spill into the Arctic ocean. I know a lot of spilled oil comes down the big rivers, but when it started I have no idea.
JF
Arctic area has few weather stations. So a lot of temperatures are ‘estimated by extrapolation’. This fact may account for the ‘high’ temperatures. Common sense says that a temperature of -30 instead of -40 is no big deal. Both are well below freezing. So an ‘anomaly’ of 10 degrees should be taken with a sackful of salt, considering the method of ‘estimation’ when direct measurements are lacking. Possibly these have been juiced up since 2005. Remember satellite measurements, RSS, are only upto 60 degrees N.
“Remember satellite measurements, RSS, are only up to 60 degrees N.”
Why is that, since the satellites are in polar orbits?
Tom, I am not sure it is the same reason, but a lot of imaging satellites in polar-offset orbits also don’t report data for polar regions. Their problem is a lack of receiving dishes such that they can’t store the digital data in memory long enough to come into range of a receiving station, so they are programmed to not collect the data.
Weather satellites are not in true polar orbits. They are in Earth-synchronous orbits so as to pass over a given site at the same time every day. Data would be extremely difficult to use otherwise.
The “best” possible earth-synchronous orbit has an inclination of 98 degrees which means that it never comes north or south of 82 degrees latitude. By making off-nadir (slant) observations it is possible to get data up to about 85 degrees latitude, but no further.
That’s good enough for government-funded climate science work: They’ll just krig their way to the Pole from there. If only Scott of the Antarctic had known that trick in 1911 then he could have turned back weeks earlier and claimed to have beaten Amundsen to the South Pole.
Thanks for clearing that up, Ron and tty.
“earth-synchronous orbit has an inclination of 98 degrees which means that it never comes north or south of 82 degrees latitude”: This is unclear; my first reading was that you meant the satellite would always be north of 82 degrees north. But of course it’s not physically possible for an orbit around the Earth to not cross the equator. Perhaps you meant it never goes north of 82 degrees north, nor south of 82 degrees south latitude? The second sentence of that para seems to imply this is what you meant.
mscwell ==> I think he is just pointing out that these satellites, that UAH depends on, don’t really measure temps at the very tip top of the globe, above 85N or so.
This is very interesting. I hope this research becomes more public knowledge, that the Arctic has warmed in the winter only. Cooled, if anything, in the summer.
The summer cleaves very closely to the long term average. I think it’s because of all the melting ice. The heat that it takes to melt ice is about eighty times as much as it takes to warm water up 1°C. As long as there’s ice to melt, the temperature can’t change much.
Bernie and Commie Bob ==> We are talking air temperature here. I have walked over snowy frozen rivers in the spring with air temps in the 60s F.
Sea ice might affect air temp at 2 meters, but probably not Lower Troposphere.
OK, so what’s your explanation of why the arctic temperature sticks so close to the long term average during the melt season? You can go all the way back to the 1950s and there’s not much difference.
There’s a huge difference between a snowy frozen river and a whole ocean.
The ice works as an enormous thermostate. It takes a .lot of heat to melt ice (333 KJ/kg to be exact), so until all ice has melted the temperature will only be just above zero.
Water works the other way around in autumn. Until the sea has frozen temperature won’t sink much below 0 C. In ice-covered area it drops quickly once the sun is gone.
This is well known to anyone with experience of the Arctic. It can be quite sunny and nice inland in summer, but on the coast it is always cold and often foggy.
you are looking at DMI, which is ECMWF, a weather model
it would keep the temp about melting ice at the temperature you see.
Yes indeed. ECMWF models actual weather short-term, and fairly well as a matter of fact. Therefore it is not as trustworthy as a “true” GCM.
Is that what you are implying?
I guess it’s pretty windy up there so there would be good turbulent mixing of air. So the constant temperature of the phase change would predominate every summer. 2005 changes? No idea.
But isn’t the melting due mainly to warmer water entering the Arctic region. If that is the case then how could melting ice have all that much effect upon air temperatures?
The ice melts from below long before melt water is visible on the surface. That occurs when the air temperature is well below freezing. In that case, the air temperature determines the thickness of the ice. In other words, the heat transported in by ocean currents can’t be ignored.
Having said the above, there is much more heat that comes in via the atmosphere. My source for that is a set of illustrations for a geography course at the U of Colorado. Sadly, it isn’t always available and it is currently a dead link. Fortunately, there is a version captured by the Wayback Machine. Ocean heat transport is 3 watts per square meter. Atmospheric heat transport is 84 watts per square meter. Radiation is net negative over the year. The slide is called “Annual Energy Budget of the Arctic Ocean”. It points out that the numbers don’t balance so there’s lots we don’t know about the Arctic Energy Budget.
The other thing to note is that ice dramatically changes the local climate. On the north shore of Lake Superior, the climate is moderated by the lake until it freezes over. That will also hold for the Arctic as well.
It’s dramatic how close the air temperature sticks to the average in melt season. Most of the energy it takes to melt the ice comes from the atmosphere. Refer to the slide “July Energy Budget of the Arctic Ocean”. The atmosphere supplies 100 watts per square meter to the ocean and the solar contribution is a puny 10 watts per square meter. It seems pretty reasonable to conclude that melting sea ice regulates the air temperature.
“The ice melts from below long before melt water is visible on the surface. ”
Not necessarily. In some parts of the Arctic it is the other way around. The meltwater on the surface seeps down and refreezes under the ice when it comes into contact with the subzero salt water. This was already shown by Nansen on the Fram Expedition in 1893-96.
1. We know its warming in the winter, AS PREDICTED.
2. Summer temps ( at 2m) will see more increase…… After the ice melts.
the excess heat goes into melt ice limiting the increase in air temps..
so yes, during the summer you can expect that temperatures will not be going up until
ice melts
Which it doesn’t at present. Sea-ice has been constant or slightly increasing for a decade.
http://www.cpom.ucl.ac.uk/csopr/seaice.html?show_cell_thk_ts_large=1&ts_area_or_point=all&basin_selected=0&show_basin_thickness=0&year=2018&season=Spring&thk_period=28
80 N tty.
I am explaining why 80N HAS NOT changed
AMO and Arctic warming is normal during a solar minimum.
Re-read the Svensmark hypothesis on the role of cosmic rays in cloud development. It is well established that during the night, temperatures are higher if it is cloudy. This is true everywhere since the clouds prevent the escape of heat when input from the sun is absent, especially in the polar regions where the nights are very long, i.e. 24 hours in the winter. Svensmark clearly predicts warmer winter temperatures in the polar regions with increased cosmic rays in the lower atmosphere causing increased cloudiness and with the decreasing sunspot activity, measured cosmic rays in the lower atmosphere are increasing. The finding of increased winter temperatures fits in well with the cosmoclimatology theory.
Suzanne ==> Thank you for that insight. Do you have any data on why this would show up only after 2005? any ideas about the timing involved?
Kip, Also, remember that the Earth’s magnetic field has been wandering faster as of late, in the process of flipping (probably). Around 1994 is started moving more rapidly.
https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/GeomagneticPoles.shtml
The pole change plus Svensmark could be important.
The UK has had greater sunshine hours and hence reduced cloud with the warm AMO phase since 1995. You think that the Arctic would be the reverse of that and had increased cloud cover since 1995?
I’m no expert, but couldn’t some of the apparent variability be due to the fact that there are fewer temperature recording stations, and the satellite measurements don’t work well at the poles? Couldn’t it just be an artifact?
This was my first thought. But why would the satellite have a hard time in the winter but not in the summer? So my effort (if I had time to look into it) would start by looking into how the satellite makes and records its measurements, and how the surface temperature data is collected (created?).
My second thought is the air temperature is a result of the extent of ice cover, not vice versa. Isn’t there already a scatter-plot of surface air temperatures (not SST as in water temperatures, I mean air) vs. ice coverage? And not temperatures extrapolated from a reading in St. Louis, I mean real measurements. I think I just answered my own question, because we know there are almost no permanent weather stations over the oceans. And I think that may explain the difference between satellite and surface, but what about the rising non-summer anomaly measured by satellite?
I should have switched to keyboard to type this, instead of this dumb smartphone.
Bruce and Red94 ==> Well, it could be an artifact, but that is less likely as it (something) shows both in the DMI modelled “above 80-N” data set and in the UAH satellite data set.
Kip, I can’t tell from what’s been posted so far, doesn’t the Northern Hemisphere data set and line in the graph include the data points that make up the North Pole line and graph? If that’s true, then would a graph of the Northern Hemisphere data points outside the North Pole appear even more flatline? Of, if it has already been subtracted out, then a graph of ALL Northern Hemisphere would have a bit more variability? I think that would be an interesting comparison.
that is a good point red viper. we would need to see the northern hemisphere data with the arctic circle component removed.
In addition it is winter when the troposphere is at its thinnest. Does the measurement process process this gradient or zone of measurement consistently.
The Tropics conversely are much thicker and summer winter consistent.
So what we are left with is winters always below freezing, last few years Summers same or colder than 1958 on the DMI site.
Hmm, why the melt-
“Winds from Siberia reduce Arctic sea ice cover, Norwegian researchers find”
The researchers began to analyze the circulation patterns over the Arctic.
“We found that these patterns can explain in large part why the ice cover decreased so much more rapidly after 2000. Wind patterns depend on the position of major high-pressure and low-pressure systems. We discovered that months with very little ice cover and high temperatures corresponded with crucial variations in the wind patterns,” explains Mr Sorteberg”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100427111449.htm
richard ==> Thanks for the link. Here we are not talking about sea ice but the temperature profile in the UAH North Pole data — oddly anomalous compared to the rest of the Northern Hemisphere and rest of world.
Kip, as I noted already, isn’t the air temperature related to – a result of – the amount of ice coverage? I would like to see a scatter plot of average air temperature for this “North Pole” region vs the amount (maybe normalized to percent coverage?) of sea ice for the same region. And done at different time lags, up to a year, what the heck, maybe up to 2 years? Covering up the ~0° C (isn’t the freezing point of sea water a bit below that?) open water with ice that can be any temperature below 0° C could allow a lot more variability of the air temperature, but it would probably have a time lag, don’t you think?
I did already see you comment about frozen rivers in 60° F air temperatures, but I think that’s a lot different, when you have land mass all around that river, than in the open ocean where you have nothing but water around that temperature reading.
As a matter of fact the sea-ice has not decreased at all for more than a decade since 2007, so that analysis had better bet taken with a grain of salt.
Is there any way to seek an appraisal from DMI? Their opinion would be valuable. Does Dr. Spencer have additional thoughts? It would be nice to hear from those directly involved.
R2Dtoo ==> maybe they’ll check in here on this.
My first answer to why the Arctic is different is that the Arctic (north of 66.5N) is a mere 4% of the globe. As a result, it will be subject to much wider variations than say the Tropics (23.5N – 23.5S), which is about 40% of the globe.
My second answer is that unlike the rest of the world including Antarctica, the Arctic is mostly ice-covered water. As a result, it is subject to very different conditions than the rest of the planet. For example, warmer water can come up from the Pacific and push under the ice, leading to melting from below.
My third answer is that the MSU satellite doesn’t cover the area from 85N to the pole. And they define the “Arctic”, curiously, as 60N – 85N (6.5% of the global surface).
As to the DMI, it’s models all the way down, so there’s no telling what they’ll come up with.
Thanks for an interesting post,
w.
Willis – regarding Suzanne Morstad’s question above – is there CERES data going for enough back to allow us to compare cloudiness in the Arctic with winter-spring Arctic temperatures?
w. ==> Yes, the DMI area is above 80N (very tiny — and modeled). UAH uses 60N-90N for North Pole, larger than the Arctic circle by a bit — it it is this data set that shows the hinky behavior of larger swings and dips.
All your ideas are sound — but no smoking gun (I didn’t find one either…).
I thought that UAH only covered 60 to 85 degrees.
Yes. UAH Readme https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/docs/readme.msu
defines Global = [ -85°, +85° ] latitude.
”Sectional definitions for uahncdc.XX files
Global -85 to +85 latitude
Hemispheric 0 to +/- 85 latitude
Extratropics +/- 20 to +/- 85 latitude
Polar +/- 60 to +/- 85 latitude”
Hans Ahlmann has the same observation:https://archive.org/details/glaciervariation00ahlm/page/22
The winter temperature at Svalbard on the rim of 80 Deg N is very unstable.
It goes from -3,5 (1909) to +4,5 (1932).
That is not CO2 but H2O.
The rest of the season he does not see the same variation.
The green curve is due to no sun over the horizon and the “heating” (red curve) is due to water in the air hiding the black sky!
Lasse ==> Terrific link, thank you. The data for West Spitsbergen shows similar temperature anomalies in the Winters in the 1930s.
Kip, it also includes the meandering Northern Jet Stream and the wandering Polar Vortex.
As we have seen recenyly when the Polar Vortex slips “South” warm air moves in to replace it.
That leads to quite large swings in Polar Temperatures.
Oh, I forgot to mention one last oddity. The UAH category “Extratropics” includes the Arctic and the Antarctic. From their “ReadMe” file:
w.
w. ==> Quite right. However, the data set for UAH version 6, 1978 to present, is at
https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6.0.txt
and has a definitional note at the end:
“GL 90S-90N, NH 0-90N, SH 90S-0, TRPCS 20S-20N
NoExt 20N-90N, SoExt 90S-20S, NoPol 60N-90N, SoPol 90S-60S”
It is correct the the MSU satellites cover only up (and down) to 85 degrees, leaving the tiny circle 85N-90N uncovered. For UAH NoPol (nominally 60N-90N) it probably doesn’t make much difference. The UAH NoPol figure probably does not really go all the way to 90N.
above 85ºN is only 2.8% of above 60ºN,
It will make very little difference within the range of measurement errors.
What does make a difference is including Greenland which because of its high altitude is known to cause the MSU/AMSU data to be noisy and should be excluded from any analysis. Spencer has discussed this.
Thanks, Kip, I hadn’t caught that.
w.
Kip, it was pointed out acouple of years after that time that we were in a “Pause”which was admitted to by Trenberth and Jones in climategate emails and after the email release. IN the fillowing years In 2007, Hansen “revised” the 40yr cooling period after the mid 40s, first in the United States and then afterwards globally to give it a slightly rising temperature (pauses were forboten!).
The Dreaded Pause was the most catastrophic event warming proponents had faced. They were already engaged in a campaign of “hottest climate ever”, hockey sticks, etc. when nature threw her curve ball. An unknown number of climate scientists were afflicted by the well publicized, so-called “Climate Blues” which was terminal to their careers. The more political types undertook egregious revision of the climate record, tellingly, both Hansen and Karl, the worst, did it on the eve of their retirements!
The deep cooling before 1980 was removed and the 1930s 40s pushed down because, otherwise, almost all of the warming would have occurred by the late 30s and the two bigest ‘pauses’ occurred since 1950, when CO2 was deemed to have only begun to have an effect. More recently they shoved the 1950 starting point back to 1850 to bankroll half their 1.5C dangerous rise by 2100 (to double the warmibg of the past century). They didnt want pauses longer than the warming they were worrying about.
That is why the UAH data set is the only one that both sides trust and will be the final nail in the CO2 scam.
When the stratospheric polar vortex is weak, more water vapor reaches the polar circle in the winter.
Temperature (C) in the US on 10/11/2018.
Stratospheric Intrusions are identified by very low tropopause heights, low heights of the 2 potential vorticity unit (PVU) surface, very low relative and specific humidity concentrations, and high concentrations of ozone. Stratospheric Intrusions commonly follow strong cold fronts and can extend across multiple states. In satellite imagery, Stratospheric Intrusions are identified by very low moisture levels in the water vapor channels (6.2, 6.5, and 6.9 micron). Along with the dry air, Stratospheric Intrusions bring high amounts of ozone into the tropospheric column and possibly near the surface.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_int/gif_files/gfs_hgt_trop_NA_f00.png
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_int/
ren ==> How do you think that extra water vapor affects the temperature? particularly since 2005?
The animation shows how far north reaches water vapor.
http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/product.php?color_type=tpw_nrl_colors&prod=europe×pan=24hrs&anim=html5
You should see how the stratospheric polar vortex develops from autumn.
http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/clisys/STRAT/gif/zu_nh.gif
http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/clisys/STRAT/
Almost all “global warming” has been in the Norther Hemisphere, mostly in the Arctic, mostly in Arctic winters. In other words, “global warming” isn’t global. This fact, alone, is enough to show that CO2 is not the primary cause because CO2 is well mixed in the global atmosphere. UAH data show almost no warming at the South Pole but CO2 concentrations are essentially the same as the North Pole.
I suspect Arctic warming is mostly due to cyclical movement of warm air and water from the North Atlantic into the Arctic. I suspect the Atlantic ocean rather than the Pacific ocean because the Norwegian sea is wide and deep while the Bering Strait is narrow and shallow.
There is a near-perfect correlation between the Atlantic Multi decadal Oscillation and global temperature but the record is too short to draw any firm conclusions.
That the Antarctica isn’t warming is not surprising. CO2 has a net cooling effect in inland Antarctica:
Notice that the radiation temperature in Antarctica is actually higher in the CO2 band due the semi-permanent temperature inversion in Antarctica. So more CO2 (and othe GHG:s) actually cools the Antarctic.
TTY, Interesting. But Antarctica also isn’t cooling and in the UAH record and the Souther Extra Tropics are just barely warming. CO2 still fails to answer why the world is warming from the “top” down.
Thomas
CO2 warming is a hoax. It was never and it will never be. Click on my name to read my final report on that.
The Arctic is what? 4% of the total world surface and it seems that both sides of the Climate Change/Global Warming discussion obsess over it. My general question is why? Or so what? Why should I care what the sea ice is doing?
I think a lot of it has to do with perception drawn from the distortion of world maps produced by the Mercator projection of the world map.
We are told the Greenland ice cap is losing mass. Considering that calving of icebergs is a temporally delayed function of snow fall I wonder how much is due to temperature. Isn’t Greenland way below freezing nearly everywhere nearly all of the time? And since the IPCC tells us:
Wouldn’t warmer winters produce more snow, not less?
Until we have 100-200 years of instrumental data for the Arctic (and globally) it’s impossible to say what is normal and what is not normal. Even then, it would not be straightforward. Apart from just measuring it’s fractal dimension maybe, to confirm the obvious – that climate variation is nonlinear-chaotic and thus has the log-log fractal signature.
But knowing the climate’s factual dimension would be very cool, even if it has no practical application. : )
Tasfay Martinov ==> absolutely — as with almost all things climate, we are severely handicapped by lack of long-term data.
I too thought the UAH Arctic data looked a bit “non-linear” (chaotic) overlaid with seasonality. I wrote a series on Chaos and Climate — the essays are in the search returns — page down.
There is nothing unusual going on in the Arctic that hasnt happened 90-100 years ago. See the link that was provided by Lasse in a post above.
https://archive.org/details/glaciervariation00ahlm/page/22
Kip
I am not sure if I explained this to you before. I had a similar problem with my own results trying to understand how it could be that by my own estimates [from my own results], temperatures here in SA, and the SH in general, were actually going down [especially looking at Tmin] whereas in the NH they were still rising.
[although on average it seems Tmin global is dropping]/
If you click on my name you can read some of my results in my final report on this.
It did take me some time but I think I finally figured it out. Come down 1 or 2 km into a goldmine here and notice the sweat soon pouring from your face. Meet the elephant in the room: earth’s inner core and he has been moving, north east to be exact, much faster this past 100 years than the century before.
Apart from the solar variation in irradiation [as per the relevant solar cycles] it seems there is also a variation in the alignments of earth’s inner core with that of the sun’s inner core, both mostly consisting of [molten] iron: the Eddy cycle. This explains the settlements in Greenland by the Vikings that only now are becoming visible. One of my forefathers, Willem Barentz, was convinced of a passage to the east via the north. He must have heard this from stories in Norway. Unfortunately he and most crew died trying to find it. Hence, the “Barentz” sea.
Funny, to realize that he died for the benefit, of what we cry for now, not wanting it [for fear of global warming] ?
Anyway, you will realize that that a change in the position of earth’s inner core does not affect summer T that much as it is more controlled by the sun but it will affect winter T a lot when there is no sun at all [above 60 lats.. It is simply earth warming things up from the inside to the top and that one is changing now that the inside of earth has shifted.
I welcome all of your comments on this.
henryp ==> A novel idea….
At 10000 metres below the surface it gets to more than 450 K.
Here are a couple more graphs to assist in visualizing what’s happening …
w.
w. ==> Thanks, is that the Version 6 data?
Kip, if you look at the first graph that Willis posted… you can see clearly that something changed in 1993. I found this in the data a while ago, but still don’t have any answers for it. Even in your own Arctic graphs, I see the breakpoint at 1993, not 2005.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/NOAA%20SST-NorthAtlantic%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1979%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
When the jet streams are more meridional there are more incursions of warm air and cloud into the Arctic.
They are more meridional during the winter months because of the increased latitudinal temperature gradient.
They are also more meridional when the sun is less active because solar induced changes in stratospheric ozone push the height of the tropopause down over the pole so that cold surface air breaks out equatorward more readily.
I’m not sure that it makes any difference, but I don’t think UAH covers North of 85N or South of 85S. That’s really two very small areas, and maybe not worth worrying about. That’s what Wikipedia says and seems consistent with usual orbit planning practices.
My first question would be to what extent (if any) we are looking at meanderings and ice cover of the warm Gulf Stream and West Spitzbergen Currents. I expect that someone around here knows off the top of their heads
Joe Bastardi has taken note of this very phenomenon for quite some time and comments upon it from time to time in his daily/weekly update on Weatherbell Analytics. (www.weatherbell.com). He has proposed a working theory he discusses there that it is a water vapor phenomenon caused by moisture introduced by warmer ocean temps esp. super El Ninos such as 1998, etc. which has created slightly more moist atmosphere even in the arctic. And, so he argues, it only takes a small amount of water vapor introduction to change the temperature behavior of the lowest temperature air – that is, winter temps in the arctic.
That’s right, just a small amount of water vapor in the upper troposphere.
Mark ==> Thanks for the tip — I’ll check out his bkog and search for the discussion.
ren and joe nailed it. That is good enough for me!
You can also see the Arctic winter warming in the CFSR data. It is most likely due to more open water. The Arctic sea ice reached it’s current level around 2006 and that is when this started.
With open water energy from the water is released into the atmosphere which warms it. It only makes a big difference in the winter when the average temperature of the old ice covered area was well below freezing and now it has increased to near freezing. In the Summer those areas are normally near freezing and hence little change.
Naturally, this has a big effect on the GAST for such a small area of the planet. Some of this also affects the NH extra-tropical areas. My own assumption is this is due to the +AMO bringing warm water into the Arctic and melting the ice.
This is the reason I only look at spring/summer temperatures to try and understand what is really happening with the climate. Here is what I found when I ignore the influence of the Arctic on climate. I use April-September removing the high and low anomalies. Also try to use only ENSO neutral non volcanic years.
1980-81 14.4 C (58.0F) -.06C
1990….. 14.5 C (58.1F) .01C
1995-96 14.6 C (58.2F) .08C
2001-02 14.7 C (58.4F) .18C
2007….. 14.7 C (58.3F) .15C
2014….. 14.7 C (58.4F) .18C
2018….. 14.7 C (58.4F) .20C
Still a warming trend from 1980-2000 but nothing since then. A total of only .26 C of warming in 4 decades. This is why I expect to see a significant cooling of global temperature data sets when the AMO goes negative and the Arctic sea ice returns.
Richard, I agree with your analysis. I suspect that water in its various forms (water vapor, clouds, precipitation, oceans, snow, ice, glaciers, etc) is far and away the most dominant influence on climate changes on the order of years to decades to centuries and probably even out to a few millennia. Other greenhouse gases, including CO2, are probably very minor players as are human induced changes in land albedo. I expect that most of the small effect from CO2 occurs in dry cloudless air over deserts at night, including polar deserts.
At longer time scales from tens of thousands of years to millions of years, earth’s orbital/axial mechanics appear to be a major influence (glacial cycles) and at even larger time scales, plate tectonics begin to exert a substantial influence. And of course at very long time scales, on the order of hundreds of million years, the gradual increase in output from the sun will have major effects and will eventually boil away the oceans and burn the earth to a crisp by a few billion years.
Exactly. It is in dry climates where CO2 could have a large effect. Interestingly, this effect diminishes at higher altitudes meaning places like Antarctica and Greenland also see little of the potential effects.
Richard and Brian ==> But ….The Arctic is pretty much totally ice covered by the true Winter months — very little open water outside of the long-term norm.
Am I missing something here?
Kip, winter ice extents in recent years are lower than in the 1990’s and 1980’s, and down to 60N there are large areas of exposed ocean north of Europe in the winter that would have been covered in ice.
Your missing clouds.
Clouds in mid winter would have a warming effect, unfortunately we dont have a lot of data on cloud levels.
Stuart, you’re right and in addition more exposed ocean without ice leads to higher water vapor in the air above leading to more clouds to be spread around by the wind, adding to the warming effect in the winter night.
I think the answer is simply water vapor. How much does it take to warm 245K air 5 degrees vs air at 275K? Compare that to trying to warm 300K air in the tropics just .5 degrees.
When you get a huge Pacific High or Low pumping water vapor into the arctic in winter, it has a much more pronounced influence in winter than during the summer. When we have primarily zonal flow winters the water vapor doesn’t make it that far north. When we have loopy jet streams (goreism), water vapor is more likely to make it there in the cold seasons.
Yes, so the real issue is the cause and timing of those more loopy jets.
I have previously explained how it could be solar induced.
rbabcock ==> But would physics just suddenly start to work in 2005? I understand the water vapor issue but that should have held for all years since at least 1980, particularly in the really low ice years.