Global Cooling since 2016 – 2018 was the 6th warmest year in the past 40 years

The global temperature has fallen over nearly three years, as illustrated by the graph above. Source: Dr. Roy Spencer, UAH.

 

From the University of Alabama, Huntsville. Jan 2, 2019

Global Temperature Report: December 2018

Global climate trend since Dec. 1 1978: +0.13 C per decade

December 2018 Temperatures (preliminary)

Global composite temp.:  +0.25 C (+0.45 °F) above seasonal average

Northern Hemisphere.: +0.32 C (+0.58°F) above seasonal average

Southern Hemisphere.: +0.19 C (+0.34 °F) above seasonal average

Tropics.: +0.32 C (+0.58 °F) above seasonal average

 

November 2018 Temperatures (final)

Global composite temp.:  +0.28 C (+0.50 °F) above seasonal average

Northern Hemisphere.: +0.27 C (+0.49°F) above seasonal average

Southern Hemisphere.: +0.30 C (+0.54 °F) above seasonal average

Tropics.: +0.50 C (+0.90 °F) above seasonal average

Notes on data released January 1, 2019 (v6.0)

The global average bulk-layer atmospheric temperature fell slightly in December to +0.25°C (+0.45°F) led by an unexpected dip in tropical temperatures.  It seems the warm seawater temperatures in the tropical Pacific have cooled a bit.  NOAA has indicated that this warm El Niño episode may be a mediocre one and the current modest changes support that view.  Global temperatures at this point (December 2015) in the 2015-16 major El Niño were +0.47 °C and rising, eventually hitting +0.86 in February 2016.  At the current +0.25 °C, the global temperature is well below that of the last event.  The modest nature of the El Niño is more revealing In the tropics where the December satellite temperature values for the last two major El Niños (1997-8, 2015-6) were +0.72 and +0.64 °C respectively.  As noted above, this December’s tropical temperature is +0.32 °C.

The month’s coldest seasonally-adjusted temperature departure from average was located near Altai in Western Mongolia (-3.7 °C, -6.6 °F) and the warmest near Dome Fuji in East Antarctica (+3.2 °C, +5.8 °F).

The monthly map for December 2018 shows the usual hot and cold alternating patterns in the higher latitudes of both hemispheres.  This time, the cold regions are found in eastern Russia/Mongolia to Alaska, the North Atlantic and Eastern Europe in the Northern

Hemisphere.  The warm spots are roughly in between these, landing in eastern Canada, Western Europe to northwestern Russia and eastern China to Japan.  Australia was well above average too.  The tropical band has shown a loss of heating with most of the region now near average.

The evidence for an approaching warm phase of El Niño continues according to NOAA, as the equatorial Pacific sea temperatures, both surface and deeper down, are still well above average, though have declined a bit since late November.  A good portion of this extra heat should make its way to the atmosphere in the coming months.  If this occurs, we should see considerable tropical warming in the atmospheric layer the satellites monitor.

Because this is December, we will also present diagrams for the entire year.  For 2018 as a whole, the Northern Hemisphere’s mid-to-high latitudes were dominated by above average temperatures with the exception being regions in northeastern Canada to the northwestern Atlantic and Kazakhstan.   Globally, the year was the 6th warmest of the past 40 calendar years as it was subject to a split personality, beginning with a modest La Niña (cold event) and ending with a modest El Niño (warm event).

Ten warmest years of the past 40 for the global lower troposphere.

 

2016 0.52
1998 0.48
2017 0.38
2010 0.34
2015 0.27
2018 0.23
2002 0.22
2005 0.20
2003 0.19
2014 0.19

 

Finally, a map of the 40-year trend (1979-2018) indicates most of the planet experienced a modest warming, overall being +0.13 °C per decade.  Faster rates of warming occurred in the high northern latitudes, the conterminous U.S., Eastern Europe to the Black Sea and from China eastward to the North Pacific. In the Southern Hemisphere, a band from Brazil to New Zealand warmed faster than the global average.  Patches of little warming or cooling are found in the north Atlantic, eastern subtropical Pacific and portions of Antarctica.

Spoiler Alert (Repeated):  Well, the time is once again approaching when new changes are required for the currently operating satellites as their performance changes with age.  NOAA-18 has been operating for 13 years and is now past its time frame for accurate diurnal adjustments based on initial drifting, meaning the adjustments are adding spurious warming to the time series.  On the other hand, NOAA-19 has also drifted so far that it too is introducing an error, but given its direction of drift, these errors are of the opposite sign.   The two satellites are almost compensating for each other, but not to our satisfaction.  In addition, the current non-drifting satellite operated by the Europeans, MetOP-B, has not yet been adjusted or “neutralized” for it’s seasonal peculiarities related to the diurnal cycle.  While these MetOP-B peculiarities do not affect the long-term global trend, they do introduce error within a particular year in specific locations over land.  So, all in all, we anticipate generating new adjustments for NOAA-18 and NOAA-19 to account for their behavior of late and shall also modify MetOP-B to account for it’s unique seasonal cycle.  This will be part of a coordinated plan to eventually merge NOAA’s new microwave sensor

(ATMS) carried on Suomi NPP and the new NOAA series JPSS.  We are hoping that NOAA19 will be the last spacecraft for which drifting adjustments will be required as the newer satellites (MetOP, NPP, JPSS) have on-board propulsion to keep them in stable orbits. With so many new items to test and then incorporate, we are waiting until we are confident that these adjustments/additions are appropriately stable before moving to the next version.   In the meantime, we shall continue to produce v6.0.

As part of an ongoing joint project between UAH, NOAA and NASA, Christy and Dr. Roy Spencer, an ESSC principal scientist, use data gathered by advanced microwave sounding units on NOAA, NASA and European 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.

The complete version 6 lower troposphere dataset is available here:

http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6.0.txt

Archived color maps of local temperature anomalies are available on-line at:

http://nsstc.uah.edu/climate/

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—

Updated 12PM PST: Headline added to, plus graph at top of post added, with comparison of Feb 2016 temperature. Graph from Dr. Roy Spencer, UAH.

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Dan Sudlik
January 3, 2019 9:00 am

Good. I love warm. Why do so many seniors move south? They hate cold.

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  Dan Sudlik
January 3, 2019 4:12 pm

Hemispherist!

Patrick B
January 3, 2019 9:02 am

You are measuring things. With devices. And making calculations with those measurements.

And your margin of error is?

MarkW
Reply to  Patrick B
January 3, 2019 10:26 am

An order of magnitude greater than the signal being claimed.

Stephen Richards
Reply to  MarkW
January 4, 2019 2:00 am

Right. The earth is a remarkably stable system which can only be achieved with negative feedback

January 3, 2019 9:07 am

Great update for TLT, but unless my feeble aging eyes missed it, I don’t see any indication as to what reference period is the basis for the anomalies. I presume it is 1981-2010, but it should be labeled on all the appropriate graphs and figures so as to leave no doubt (this comment addressed to the original authors). Since these graphics were not generated by WUWT, at least a postscript footnote comment would be helpful for nitpickers like me.

Reply to  Bryan - oz4caster
January 3, 2019 1:40 pm

First graph, left-hand axis, ’81 – ’10 avg

January 3, 2019 9:08 am

Retuning the satellite measurements. Uh-oh !! Those satellites always drift low in recent years and high in distant years, never mind we’re talking about historical data. Thomas Karl NOAA demonstrated that it is just fine to adjust historical data if it supports the globqal warming narrative. So let’s go ahead and restate all of the data… and make sure that the distant years are adjusted cooler and the recent years read hotter like in the Karl et al fidgeting … so to raise the alarm whistles and bells!

J Himanga
January 3, 2019 9:10 am

I think this quote sums it up…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.
In other words, there were no outside influences, only government one, so this makes our work above reproach…

Kenji
Reply to  J Himanga
January 3, 2019 10:00 am

Every single corporation in America seeks government contracts and funding … and their bottom lines would crater without it. I believe this is termed … “corporate welfare”. So why have have I never heard the term … “scientific welfare”? “Global Warming welfare”? “Climate change welfare”?

noaaprogrammer
Reply to  Kenji
January 3, 2019 10:35 am

Yeah — Climate Change Welfare — I could use some of that right now. (I just wore out a set of long-john underwear.)

John Endicott
Reply to  Kenji
January 3, 2019 10:44 am

Every single corporation in America seeks government contracts…I believe this is termed … “corporate welfare”.

government contracts are *not* corporate welfare. They are business contracts to provide a good or service, really no different than contracts from/with other businesses. The only difference is that the customer is the government rather than another business or other private individual/entity.

Corporate welfare, on the other hand, describes a government’s bestowal of money grants, tax breaks, or other special favorable treatment for corporations. So, giving a company a tax break to set up shop in your state would be an example of corporate welfare, where as contracting a company to supply new luggage scanners for the TSA, would not be corporate welfare

Kenji
Reply to  John Endicott
January 3, 2019 12:08 pm

Agreed. Now please describe the -essential- goods or services delivered by the climate change welfare recipients?

MarkW
Reply to  Kenji
January 3, 2019 12:15 pm

They provide jobs for relatives of politicians.

Another Paul
Reply to  John Endicott
January 3, 2019 12:14 pm

+1E6

Kenji
Reply to  John Endicott
January 3, 2019 10:37 pm

Oh … and what private business gives out contracts for goods or services at the volume and size as the US government? With virtually no cap on cost overruns, let alone any penalties for failure to deliver said goods and services. Yes, the taxpayers pockets are deepest. There is NO comparison with … any other typical business.

James Clarke
Reply to  John Endicott
January 4, 2019 11:02 am

“Corporate welfare, on the other hand, describes a government’s bestowal of money grants, tax breaks…”

Please do not refer to ‘tax breaks’ as government welfare (or some kind of a subsidy). A tax break is when the government takes less ‘private money’ than they threatened to take. A subsidy or welfare is when the government doles out money to some people that it has taken from other people.

There is a fundamental and important difference. People in a ‘free’ society are raised to believe that they can make their life whatever they want it to be; that the can achieve great things and reap the benefits of private wealth and success. People in a more socialist society are raised to believe that all material wealth belongs to the government and all material benefits are bestowed by the good graces of the central authority.

When we equate tax breaks with welfare, we are buying into the language of the New Socialist World Order, and they win another small victory!

John Endicott
Reply to  James Clarke
January 4, 2019 11:34 am

I was quoting a definition copied from online. Just google “corporate welfare” and you’ll find that very definition and/or others just like it. Don’t confuse “corporate welfare” with “subsidy” the two are not the same thing (while the later is one form of the former, not all of the former is the later). while a tax break is not, strictly speaking, a subsidy (as you say, and I agree, it is taking less of other peoples money, it is not giving them money that they did not first earn) it can be “special favorable treatment” if it’s a narrowly targeted tax break designed specifically for the benefit of particular corporate interests.

Tax breaks on EVs for example are designed to benefit EV companies over their non-EV competition (Ie incentivize people to buy EVs instead of traditional ICE vehicles) and are very much “corporate welfare” even though they aren’t strictly speaking a “subsidy”. or, for another example where tax breaks are a form of corporate welfare: Amazon – Amazon stands to get nearly $2.5 billion in tax breaks and other incentives as part of its deals to open up two new offices. Many of those tax breaks and other incentives are specifically for Amazon’s benefit to lure them to picking those locations for their new HQ.

Pft
Reply to  Kenji
January 3, 2019 2:40 pm

Eisenhower warned about government funding of science in 1961 in his MIC speech, saying we were in danger of being ruled by a scientific elite. Little did he know the science would be manipulated to serve the technocrats political agenda

michael hart
Reply to  Pft
January 3, 2019 4:00 pm

My understanding was that was exactly what Eisenhower did know.

Fact is that almost everybody has a paymaster somewhere. Spencer and Christy are somewhat unusual in that their results often conflict with what is wanted by their political paymasters and associated cronies. But Spencer and Christy don’t bend their scientific ethics like a green reed in the breeze.

wws
January 3, 2019 9:10 am

Seems to me that the warmest spots are always the areas with the least number of temperature sensors.

matthewdrobnick
Reply to  wws
January 3, 2019 10:44 am

sure does. interesting, that..

Reply to  wws
January 3, 2019 3:42 pm

This is a satellite view.

Bindidon
Reply to  wws
January 4, 2019 12:23 pm

wws

What you mean I would understand if the head post was talking about e.g. radiosondes.

But here, satellites are measuring 60 GHz emissions by O2 molecules, and I hope you will agree upon their rather uniform repartition within the lower troposphere.

R Shearer
January 3, 2019 9:30 am

I hope my old bones and body lasts long enough to experience a 0.5C warming from here.

Never mind, I’ll just take a hot bath.

Reply to  R Shearer
January 3, 2019 10:21 am

R Shearer

My thoughts are the same as yours. The second we hit the mythical 1.5C warming, and nothing disastrous happens to the planet, does that mean the end of the IPCC? In which case we can say “told you so”.

I sure hope so and the sooner we get there the better as far as I’m concerned.

The alternative is that the planet is plunged into global cooling and despite we sceptics not wanting it we can always say “told you so” then as well.

Win, win really…….. 🙂

Reply to  HotScot
January 3, 2019 12:20 pm

Hot Scot,

Clearly, you just don’t understand (:-)).

When (if) we have reached the 1.5C increase over the pre-industrial era, there won’t be sudden catastrophes. I wish everyone understood that. The 1.5C increase is a pre-condition.

We will, however, have “baked-in” the conditions leading to catastrophes 50, 100 or 200 years from now, when no one will be around to be held responsible for their irresponsible projections.

There is a fair amount of sarcasm in my comment, as well as some truth.

Gary Pearse
Reply to  Retired_Engineer_Jim
January 3, 2019 2:14 pm

Or, high probability it will cool down despite mor CO2. The nul hypothesis is being staved off with as much trickery as can be decently put over on people. Even if more CO2, all other factors remaining the same, caused higher temperatures, there interacting homeostasis effects that counteract the temperature rise. Also, natural variability has resulted in 30-40 year cooling effects with rising CO2, and the warming periods have been exaggerated by natural rising trends. This all means that CO2’s effect is much less than the zealous have calculated. It is why IPCC and core crisis warming proponents forecasts 30yrs ago are running ~300% to warm, and why they started calling them ‘projections’ sonehow thing this validates them more. Here is my bet, business as usual, we wont even reach as high as the Paris target.

Reply to  Retired_Engineer_Jim
January 4, 2019 2:01 am

Retired_Engineer_Jim

The second we hit 1.5C the alarmists will have a field day with catastrophic events, however imagined.

I understand and agree with you entirely but so far, anything negative that can be attributed to a warming world, is attributed to it, and many things not attributable as well. 🙂

Despite the pause!

ResourceGuy
January 3, 2019 9:42 am

It goes up and it goes down, but it goes down too slow to cool policy mistakes by alarmists and policy fraudsters emanating from the the warm anomaly regions.

Scott
January 3, 2019 9:42 am

Whoever has some of the extra warming, please send it to Montana

ResourceGuy
Reply to  Scott
January 3, 2019 9:53 am

There is not enough to go around. Sorry. But you can send your carbon tax money to California and Paris for the virtue signaling cause.

Andrew Kerber
January 3, 2019 10:16 am

So the 6th warmest in the last 40 years means its not even in the top 10%. No doubt we will still see low IQ types claiming to be scientists still claiming this is evidence of global warming.

Reply to  Andrew Kerber
January 3, 2019 3:48 pm

Evidence of global warming is the trend since 1979. Circumstantial evidence is the fact that 4 of the 6 warmest years have occurred in the most recent 4 years.

Mack
Reply to  Bellman
January 3, 2019 5:00 pm

Ah, but if the warmest year on ‘record’ was 1998, and 2018 was the 6th warmest doesn’t that indicate another trend? It ain’t getting any hotter buddy. Take out the El Ninos and the customary statistical ‘margin of error’ origami and hocus pocus with data sets and bugger all’s being happening for 20+ years. And that’s in spite of the huge increase in Co2 emissions over the same period and the burgeoning UHI effect of human population growth and activity. Makes you wonder about all this settled sciencey stuff doesn’t it? God forbid that there might be some natural explanation going on in the background that 97% of the world’s leading sciencey type guys and gals might have missed to explain the complete failure of Mother Nature to stick to the doomster script. P.S. For anyone who missed the recent tipping points, when all our coastal cities and holiday beach resorts were drowned under a tidal wave of carbon sins as predicted by ‘The GoreMeister’ and his fellow investors, you’ll be pleased to know that a melting glacier will obliterate you all next week. Or in 2030. Oops, I meant 2070, ish! Keep smiling folks, and make the most of what this rather benign period of climate history is doing for mankind. It’s probably as good as it’s going to get for the current generation.

Reply to  Mack
January 3, 2019 6:29 pm

Ah, but if the warmest year on ‘record’ was 1998, and 2018 was the 6th warmest doesn’t that indicate another trend?

2016 was warmer than 1998. But whatever, the point is that individual years don’t really matter. What suggests there is a warming trend are the increasing frequency of warm years. But what confirms there is a warming trend is actually calculating the trend.

Richard M
Reply to  Bellman
January 4, 2019 7:37 am

Have more warm years during the +AMO is expected. It’s called science. Try it sometime.

Steven Mosher
Reply to  Andrew Kerber
January 3, 2019 4:12 pm

usually folks include an uncertainty associated with the claim of what order the years are in.
UAH don’t.
You would be justified to suspend judgement with regard to the claim

eck
Reply to  Steven Mosher
January 3, 2019 8:35 pm

You were not an English major, obviously

kwinterkorn
Reply to  Andrew Kerber
January 5, 2019 3:33 pm

Of course the recent years are the warmest. It has been getting warmer for the last 200 years or so.

Sometimes people blogging at WUWT forget some basics that are fairly well established by data, resulting in quibbling over non-issues. I believe it is fairly well accepted, except by CAGW fanatics, that there was a Medieval Warm Period (when Greenland was green, if you will) and also a Little Ice Age (when the Thames froze over in the winter and sunspots were missing.). And accepted that now we are in a multi century rise from the Little Ice age, perhaps with other cycles superimposed related to sunspots or ocean cycles.

If we are in a period of naturally rising temps, of course the most recent years are the warmest….in the last 30 years, 40 years, 100 years, take your pick. It is a trivial projection of the past rising trend, and means nothing for the CO2-driven CAGW argument. Just the opposite, however, if temps flatten. If a flat trend continues, then a new climate regime could be starting…a return to another little ice age, for example.

So a pause is proof that the admittedly rising CO2 is not driving up the climate, unless some equal and opposite events are going on….with a cooling process countering a warming process. The principle of Occam’s Razor says don’t go there without exceptional evidence….which does not exist.

CAGW is now a political and quasi-religious issue. The science (meaning data-based, not computer-algorithm-based thinking) that exists does not support CAGW.

Reply to  kwinterkorn
January 6, 2019 7:03 am

you bring a good argument

fyi

here is my latest post

http://breadonthewater.co.za/2019/01/06/does-man-made-climate-change-exist/

January 3, 2019 10:40 am

Nahh…
Not true.
Sats sre wrong. Sun is destroying whatever they use to measure.
It is already cooling.
Click on my name to read my report.

Reply to  HenryP
January 3, 2019 1:42 pm

Needs an update for 2010 rate IMO.

Russ R.
January 3, 2019 10:56 am

Unprecedented extreme mildness!
The climate is so boring thousands of climate warriors may face junket extinction!
It is truly worse than we expected.
We are on the brink of the tipping point of mildness, that endangers all of our access to OPM.
“Please Gaia, bring us a large El Nino, to smite the agnostic heathens!”

brians356
January 3, 2019 11:28 am

I see a sine wave in that graph. We are on the backside of the red crest, heading for a traversal of the X axis. Prove I’m wrong.

Editor
January 3, 2019 11:29 am

RSS v3.3 appears to have been discontinued. RSS v4.0 also shows 2018 as the 6th warmest year. Here’s a quick-n-dirty ranking of RSS v4.0

2016 +0.769
2017 +0.651
2010 +0.603
1998 +0.581
2015 +0.574
2018 +0.513
2014 +0.450
2005 +0.449
2013 +0.398
2003 +0.396
2007 +0.395
2002 +0.386
2006 +0.359
2009 +0.357
2012 +0.330
2004 +0.317
2001 +0.277
2011 +0.274
2008 +0.185
1995 +0.179
1987 +0.123
1999 +0.118
1997 +0.113
2000 +0.111
1991 +0.111
1988 +0.091
1996 +0.078
1990 +0.064
1994 +0.038
1983 +0.027
1980 +0.013
1981 -0.002
1993 -0.099
1989 -0.112
1979 -0.141
1992 -0.162
1986 -0.174
1982 -0.203
1984 -0.236
1985 -0.290

shrnfr
January 3, 2019 11:30 am

Man, now that is science. The peak of the AMO is warmer than the other parts of the AMO. Who wudda thunk it??

ResourceGuy
Reply to  shrnfr
January 3, 2019 12:22 pm

Exacto

+10

Robert Wager
January 3, 2019 11:34 am

The four warmest years on record are el nino years. But far more damning is the fact since 2002 the temp increase is miniscule (0.05 at best) but CO2 went up 14 %. Always follow the data.

Reply to  Robert Wager
January 3, 2019 12:29 pm

If you actually work out the numbers, the trend since Jan 2002 was 1.2 °C/century, little different to the trend since 1979. And the trend difference since 2002 was 0.2°C.

Russ R.
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 3, 2019 1:03 pm

And little different to the trend from 1879. So where is the CO2 warming?
It is supposed to be accelerating, not trending the same as it was before all the “carbon pollution”!

Reply to  Russ R.
January 3, 2019 1:22 pm

“And little different to the trend from 1879.”
This is satellite data for the lower troposphere. There is no trend since 1879.

Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 3, 2019 1:50 pm

Of course there is a trend since 1879 – you just don’t know what it is.

Similarly, you don’t know all there is to know about how Earth’s temperatures change.

Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 3, 2019 1:18 pm

Your statement might be accurate, but it is based on the wrong science.
In the last 40 years there were about 10 so Enso events, with the slightly positive trend, but only the warming part of the AMO cycle.
The true trend may be known only after another 15-20 years of data.

justadumbengineer
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 3, 2019 1:48 pm

so nick, we are only going to analyze the last 40 years, since satellites started keeping records? what about the rest of time?

you are right, since 1979 the trend is about 1.2c per century. that doesn’t sound really bad at all when you consider the extra warmth and co2 is resulting in planet greening and crop yields up and none of the bad predictions. kinda cherry picking, 40 years out of 4 billion or even the last million years to try and make some bold, end of the world, mankind is going to kill the planet.

if we are cherry picking, lets use the 1940’s to 1980, another 40 year cycle. co2 went up, temperature went down, ice increased.

or the 40 years in the depths of the little ice age

bottom line. 40 years is nothing in the cycle of this planet. it warms it cools, over and over again. sometimes lots warmer and sometimes (12000 years ago) it was really cold. if you want to believe that co2, going from 300 ppm to 400 ppm is the magic sauce that will tip the balance, go ahead. if one wants to believe that its all about co2 and ignore the sun, orbits, ocean heat movement and currents, that’s ok too. I don’t see enough data to justify my electric rates jumping from $0.10/kwh to $.20 or $.30/kwh and completely stopping all fossil fuel use and modern chemistry and medicine…..to save the planet.

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 3, 2019 2:30 pm

Nick Ol’ Buddy,
Didn’t you recently claim that 2018 was going to be the 4th warmest year? What happened to your prediction?

Reply to  Clyde Spencer
January 3, 2019 3:13 pm

Clyde,
“Didn’t you recently claim that 2018 was going to be the 4th warmest year? “
And didn’t you agree?
This is another case of “quote my exact words”. Then we know what we were both talking about. I said:
“And if any truly have essayed an early estimate, they would have said it would be the fourth warmest surface temperature on record, behind only 2015 (just), 2016 and 2017.”
And it will.

Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 3, 2019 3:57 pm

Operative word being “surface”. All surface data sets look to place 208 as 4th warmest, both satellite sets as 6th warmest.

The difference is down to the two El Niño years of 1998 and 2010 being a lot warmer in the satellite data than in the surface data.

Richard M
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 4, 2019 7:40 am

Nick, the trend this century is zero when you remove the influence of ENSO. So, the question is why are you not pointing that out?

John Endicott
Reply to  Richard M
January 4, 2019 11:42 am

I believe the following quote applies:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it”

Reply to  Robert Wager
January 3, 2019 1:30 pm

I think it is – “Follow the money”!
There seem to be very large amounts of money spent on propaganda –
‘Unprecedented’
‘Huge’
‘Shocking’ – and so forth, applied to perfectly ordinary meteorological phenomena.
The Met Office, here in Britainistan, is looking forward to start the naming of (hitherto) ordinary rainy days. [We do get a few of those here, you know!].
So – Caveat emptor, and ‘Follow the Money’.

Auto

Reply to  Robert Wager
January 3, 2019 6:39 pm

The four warmest years on record are el nino years.

2017 is the third warmest year and it’s listed as a weak La Niña year.

https://ggweather.com/enso/oni.htm

Richard M
Reply to  Bellman
January 4, 2019 7:45 am

Bellman, not every year starts at the same baseline. Due to the absence of any Bjerknes feedback there was a lot of warm water hanging around after the 2014-16 El Nino. The 2017 La Nina was very weak but appears to have brought us back to the baseline we’ve been near this entire century.

This shows up best in the Spring/Summer data.
2001-02 .18 C
2007….. .15 C
2014….. .18 C
2018….. .20 C

January 3, 2019 11:45 am

Sun has entered the SC24 minimum. The ‘classic’ sunspot count (Wolf SSN) for December is just above 2 points while the new SIDC reconstructed number is at 3.1
Composite graph is here
SC24 is entering what might be a prolong minimum with possible a late start of the SC25 too.
Not even a ‘dead cat bounce’ .

Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Reply to  vukcevic
January 3, 2019 4:07 pm

The Sun was very close to the Earth three days back [apogee and perigee]. It occurs twice in a year.

sjreddy

ResourceGuy
January 3, 2019 12:20 pm

There is a real sense of urgency (Dems) to lock in carbon tax revenues before this gets any more obvious to the masses that the anomaly is going away. The whole enterprise is at risk here.

Robber
January 3, 2019 12:30 pm

Oh, no, the world has cooled by 0.6 degrees C in just 2 years. We are doomed!
Weren’t we just told that a further 0.5 degrees of warming must be avoided to prevent catastrophes?

January 3, 2019 1:01 pm

– the highest temperature recorded in any year is in the range + 80 to +90 °C (highest ever recorded was +93.9 °C)
– the coldest temperature recorded in any year is in the range – 80 to -90 °C (coldest ever recorded was −93.2 °C )
Average global temperature is a scientific nonsense.

Reply to  vukcevic
January 3, 2019 1:51 pm

You should have provided the average.. Ie. 0.4C?? Ha.

Steven Fraser
Reply to  vukcevic
January 3, 2019 3:02 pm

Interesting, that. Over a range of 187.1 C.

Reply to  Steven Fraser
January 4, 2019 4:25 am

It is interesting that maximum and minimum recording temperatures are equidistant from the water’s freezing point. This would suggest that this stage of the our planets evolution, the ice age is the Earth’s natural equilibrium, while the short inter-glacials, as the current holocene are exceptions.

January 3, 2019 3:23 pm

Note the commencing date, 1970. I recall that being a cold period, “The ice age is coming”.

What about going back to 1880. That was said to be about the end of the “Little ice Age” and we did not have all that much heavy industry back then compared to today.

But it was still very cold right up till 1911, remember the Titanic sinking.

Also lets not forget the 1930 tees, it was hot, so by those periods what is a .5 C, and why do they make such a big deal of it ?

But it suits a lot of politicians to have something to scare us with, then just as long as we vote for them we are promised that all will be well.

Come to think of it, that sounds just like a faith that a lot of people still believe in.

MJE

January 3, 2019 3:50 pm

How many times do I have to do this: (^_^)

comment image

In other words, we call discussing highest temps in a range of less than ONE DEGREE C a real discussion ?

In the time it took me to compose this, I aged 300,000,000,000 nanoseconds — oh God, I’m dyyyyyyyying !!

Reply to  Robert Kernodle
January 4, 2019 7:43 am

Robert Kernodle

Excellent. And if the graphs of anomalies were also on a representative scale they would be wide enough that they would appear almost a flat line.

Afterthought
January 3, 2019 4:57 pm

For the love of God, USE KELVIN!!

Arno Arrak
January 3, 2019 5:05 pm

Looking at the December temperature report from UAH it seems that the 2306/2018 abnormalous El Nino rise is finally on a downslide. Simple extrapolation frpm its presently rported site puts global temperatrure back to thge zeo line on this chart by 2022.

Arno Arrak
January 3, 2019 5:12 pm

YoBack to zero line by 2022. Arno ArrakAnd Anthony – by eraswing what I say makes you afraid pf it.

Antonym
January 3, 2019 8:27 pm

Siberia, Alaska and Canada are warming since the LIA: the horror!

Reply to  Antonym
January 4, 2019 4:15 am

Actually
I don’t think it is – or it has been – warming in Alaska.
I have reliable data from Anchorage showing a downward trend of -0.01K per annum since 2000,
i.e. -0.2K in total
This means that on average the temperature in Anchorage is 0.2 degrees lower than it was 18 years ago,

In the case of minima, it is even worse. The trend here is -0.045K per annum since 2000,
that is 0.8 degrees C lower now than it was 18 years ago.

Funny. That -0.8, now versus 18 years ago.
I had exactly the same result that I measured here [in South Africa], but that was over 40 years.
https://www.dropbox.com/referrer_cleansing_redirect?hmac=jaP6qK%2BhahWhTzXJ3i7yFHDvVPg1FxldRrQJ2i9JoAw%3D&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dropbox.com%2Fs%2Fh7944heslj7gg7q%2Fsummary%2520of%2520climate%2520change%2520south%2520africa.xlsx%3Fdl%3D0

Reply to  henryp
January 4, 2019 4:21 am
observa
January 3, 2019 10:20 pm
ren
January 3, 2019 10:52 pm
ren
January 3, 2019 11:12 pm

An interesting weather situation in North America. Lows cumulate around Hudson Bay and southern Greenland.
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Espen
January 4, 2019 1:00 am

We’re roughly back at the 2002-2007 temperature level again. What happens over the this year will be very interesting, and will give us a better indication of whether the 2014-2016 El Niño will be followed by a step warming like the 1997-1998 was.

tom0mason
January 4, 2019 1:49 am

Looks like we could have another little temperature wobble, then a step change as NH winter in December 2020 moves in with a cooler temperature regime.

Darn it! More clouds over the crystal ball. 🙂

Graham
January 4, 2019 5:20 am

So, global warming is confirmed because 2018 was not the hottest year.

A C Osborn
January 4, 2019 5:56 am

I have now read twice that the Satellites Measure from the Surface to the Top of the Atmosphere.
So WHERE ARE THE SURFACE TEMPERATURES?
Why do we only see Lower Trop average -9C and above even colder.
If the satellites can actually measure the surface temperatures why aren’t they published for all the areas where we actually have Thermometers to compare them to?
What is happening in the Trop is NOT what is happening at the surface where we live and where it is important.

Reply to  A C Osborn
January 4, 2019 8:04 am

@AC Osborn

my experience has been that you cannot rely on the sats because of issues with the degradation of the measuring instruments [when exposed to no atmosphere] and the uncertainty in the exact position of the satellite above earth.
When they knew things had gone wrong, either way, it appears to me that what RSS and UAH have done frequently is to re-allign with some of the terrestrial stations’ data sets –
which as such are unbalanced because there being so much more stations in the nh compared to the sh-

Anyway, they all still seem to believe that earth is still warming when in actual fact the opposite has happenend and this is in fact the reason for many of observed climate change.

Click on my name to read the way I approached the problem.

See my submission here

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tps2cd4kuds8o6g/SUBMISSION%20by%20Henry%20Pool.docx?dl=0

and do something similar IYOB to see whether the place where you live is actually warming or cooling?

Let me know what you find.

1sky1
January 4, 2019 2:20 pm

Given the strong sub-decadal variability seen throughout the UAH monthly data series, the decline from the record 2016 peak hardly constitutes any noteworthy “global cooling.” Much more noteworthy is the uninterrupted run of positive anomalies from early 2012 onward–by far the longest in the satellite era. It would require a similarly long run of negative anomalies to speak meaningfully of global cooling in any secular sense. Meanwhile, the current anomalies seem disinclined even to register values below ~0.25 C. That’s definitely still in the warm phase of any multidecadal oscillations.

ren
Reply to  1sky1
January 5, 2019 1:27 am

This only indicates the disturbance of the ENSO cycle, which causes the strongest fluctuations in global temperature.
https://weather.gc.ca/saisons/animation_e.html?id=year&bc=sea

ren
Reply to  1sky1
January 5, 2019 1:35 am

Current sea surface temperatures.
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A C Osborn
Reply to  1sky1
January 5, 2019 4:34 am

Yes it is in the warm phase, thank goodness, but that period is not that unusual.
The period from 2012 to the 2016 el nino running average rises by 0.5C with a plateau at 2013.
The period from 1985 to1988 ( a period of 1 year less) rise by 0.45C
The period from 1993 to1996 ( a period of 1 year less) rise by 0.40C
The period from 2008 to 2010 ( a period of 2 years less) also rise by 0.45C
But you have to remember that it is measuring the heat leaving the earth via the atmosphere.

Federico Bär
January 4, 2019 5:13 pm

I was sitting in the front gallery of my house, enjoying the pleasant afternoon warmth provided by – so they say – the sun. When it was time for other regions of the world to receive some energy, it became fresher on my gallery. Not very much, but noticeable. Today, a Friday, I found myself asking:
if human activities affect this tiny blue dot’s climate as much as scientists [quotation marks omitted on purpose] confirm, why didn’t I perceive a, however light, drop in temperature when the industrial hustle and bustle everywhere stops at the the end of the day ? And perhaps more so, at the end of a whole week ? Just a thought…
.-

ren
January 5, 2019 11:09 am

Current circulation (polar vortex) in the central stratosphere.
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Chris Norman
January 5, 2019 1:11 pm

Its simple.
It’s warmer in the day than at night because of the Sun.
It’s warmer in summer than in winter, because of the Sun.
It’s been warmer recently than it was a hundred years ago because of the Sun

All else is imagined, no more than superstition. As vast, organised, convinced and corrupt as the Catholic Church an army of the confused study the roons finding themselves ever more confused (but wonderfully rewarded for writing perverse scriptures). Even wuwt is drawn in, quoting those scriptures, debating the sermons of the priests.
The Sun is waning, heretics warn of the coming cold. Best to listen.

January 6, 2019 7:05 am

thx. I used some of your argument in my latest post.
http://breadonthewater.co.za/2019/01/06/does-man-made-climate-change-exist/