Global climate trend since Dec. 1 1978: +0.13 C per decade
February Temperatures (preliminary)
Global composite temp.: +0.36 C (+0.65 °F) above seasonal average
Northern Hemisphere.: +0.46 C (+0.83 °F) above seasonal average
Southern Hemisphere.: +0.26 C (+0.47 °F) above seasonal average
Tropics.: +0.43 C (+0.77 °F) above seasonal average
January Temperatures (final)
Global composite temp.: +0.37 C (+0.67 °F) above seasonal average
Northern Hemisphere.: +0.32 C (+0.58 °F) above seasonal average
Southern Hemisphere.: +0.42 C (+0.76 °F) above seasonal average
Tropics.: +0.37 C (+0.67 °F) above seasonal average
Notes on data released March 1, 2019 (v6.0)
February’s globally-averaged, bulk-layer atmospheric temperature anomaly of +0.36°C (+0.65°F) is essentially unchanged from January.
The NH warmed a bit, but that was counterbalanced by cooling in the SH. NOAA has declared that the long-awaited El Niño, a warming of tropical Pacific Ocean waters, has officially arrived, though as they had anticipated for several months, the strength of this one is minimal. Indeed, the month’s tropical satellite temperature anomaly is a weak +0.43°C (+0.77°F), which is only half of February 2016’s major El Niño value of +0.86°C (+1.55°F).
The month’s coldest seasonally-adjusted temperature departure from average is easy to spot on the map: -5.6 °C (-10.1°F) northwest of Edmonton, Alberta – and it’s already winter to begin with there! As we’ve often seen on these monthly maps, the warmest spot is nearby, just north of Alaska in the Beaufort Sea at +4.5°C (+8.1°F). When patterns become stationary, the largest departures of opposite sign tend to be close to each other.
The monthly map for February 2019 indicates many other colder than average regions such as North Africa, waters around Hawaii, North Atlantic and several areas in the southern oceans. On the warm side of things were the North Pacific, eastern US, Europe, Japan and scattered areas in the SH. The El Niño signature of very warm tropical temperatures is relatively weak this time around.
Spoiler Alert (Repeated until accomplished – no estimate yet): 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 NOAA-19 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:
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.
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waiting for the raw worshipers to pitch a fit
” 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.
[W]aiting for the raw worshipers to pitch a fit
No fit needed nor forthcoming. When manufacturers of “global indices”demonstrate a grasp of station signal structure even remotely as realistic as the available knowledge of satellite orbital mechanics, the insistence on vetted raw data will fade. Until such time, the snarky sales pitch for “homogenization” by blind numbercrunchers will remain but a pretentious exercise in junk science.
Whilst I have no doubts about Roy’s and John’s bona fides, it does seem that there is something very odd going on with these results. It is unquestionable that the USA was very cold over large parts during February, but that wasn’t what the satellite results suggest.
Is there something funky going on with the dataset, when it so obviously diverges from the weather it is supposed to replicate? And we’re not just talking about a fraction of one degree, either. It was seriously cold over the majority of the continental USA.
If Roy and John are convinced that their data is a true representation of the lower troposphere, then perhaps we need to reassess how useful that data is as a proxy for surface temps. Alternatively, there is some other unidentified, but significant issue.
Amazing how most comments here are missing the fundamental point that lower troposphere temps are NOT necessarily the same as surface temps…
Ric,
Your assertions are correct for a shorter duration of few days, but we are talking about a month’s worth of February Data. Heat from surface released to the lower/upper troposphere would surely give higher temperature in lower/upper troposphere, but the temperature cannot remain high for one full month in LT compared to the surface.
Ric
The surface data will likely show a relative ‘increase’ in global February temperatures compared to January; the anomaly was up about a +0.1 degree C. That’s according to the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis for the month, which is normally pretty close to the official surface data: https://moyhu.blogspot.com/p/latest-ice-and-temperature-data.html#NCAR
Early days, but March has started very warm too, globally.
I think there’s a lot of confusion in all the comments here between those talking about Northern Hemisphere temperatures and those talking about just the USA.
Half the arguments are that it was cold in the USA therefore it must have been cold in the entire Northern Hemisphere.
The others are arguing that the temperatures shown by UAH for the US don’t reflect ground temperatures. This last point seems more reasonable, in that NOAA show the USA as being almost 2°C below the 1981-2010 base period for February, whereas UAH show it as only 0.03°C below.
I’m not sure if the difference is due to differences between ground and lower Troposphere temperatures in general, or if there’s an issue with air moving around in the Troposphere so the specific area measured by the satellites is not identical to that if the land area. Or it could be to do with the way satellites measure temperature.
Yes, UAH has February 2019 as the 4th warmest February on its record for the northern hemisphere; USA48 was below average slightly for the month.
Another apparent oddity in the February 2019 UAH update is the value for Australia. UAH TLT places this at -0.07C below the 1981-2010 average for the month; yet BOM has stated that February 2019 was the 4th warmest February on record there: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/month/aus/summary.shtml
Further evidence I guess that TLT data cannot be taken as representative of surface temperatures even over large regions for periods as short as a month.
It would be interesting to see the ground truth calibration points along with the satellite determined temperatures at the same time. I assume this would be from ballon data. But it would be good to see that data each month. Can some one point me to it?
Environment Canada has recorded the mean temperature of Feb, 2019 in Edmonton as -19.4 Centigrade and the usual as -7.6 so there is something wrong with the anomalies if you say Northwest of Edmonton was the coldest at -5.6 below normal.
DWR54 raised the issue of BoM data from Australia. Can I just point out oddities in BoM Mean anomaly maps for Jan and Feb and for the 15 years 2003-2018 see –
Faulty BoM data adds to Australian hot summer
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=6118
Can anybody tell me how big is the instrument error of a single UAH temperature measurement? I studied physics and it bothers me that I can’t see uncertainties anywhere in the climate science field.
There are different types of measurement errors: random, systematic, instrumental. You can reduce random error doing more measurements. You can improve your methods and so reduce systematic error. But what I see nowhere is the instrumental error. And for better understanding: the total accuracy cannot be better than the instrumental error. You cannot take a tape measure and compute thermal expansion coefficient of a table – the tape isn’t precise enough to do so – thermal expansion of a table would be under 0.1mm, while accuracy of the tape would be ca. 0.5mm at best. You can’t overcome this limitation regardless how many times you measure the table.
The same can be said about Jason 3 – its instrumental accuracy is 4cm (yes, metrology says it should be rounded up to a single digit if it isn’t 1 – already a failure for NASA), so the total error cannot be better than 4cm because you take square root from squares of all your error types to get the total error. And so you cannot report sea level rise in mm. In reality it will always be 0±4cm.
The same goes for the land-based temperature records – it can’t be better than 1K. But for UAH I’ve never seen what their instrumental error is.