News Note by Kip Hansen — 400 words/2 minutes
Despite all the caterwauling about “it is always hotter” and “it is the end of snow” and all the other Climate Crazy pronouncements, NASA says the United States had an anomalously cold January 2025.
They ‘measured’ the temperatures from space, of course.
Here’s the graphic:
Let me remind you that it is Summer in the Southern Hemisphere and Winter in the Northern. Eastern Europe and the Ukraine, along with Alaska and much of Canada, were gratefully less cold than usual – downunder, Australia is having a warmer summer.
Note the usual biasing by using red colors to indicate positive values implying that they are HOT. A good example of this is: Fairbanks, Alaska is shown in boiling hot deep deep red:
“In Fairbanks, Alaska, the average temperature for January 2025 was 6.27°F (14.6°F above normal).”
For those not quick at math, that is -14.3 C or 25 degrees F below freezing.
and for the continental United States (excerpted and with approximate Fahrenheit degrees added to the scale):
We see the West Coast was a degree or two warmer than the 2002-2024 average and that there were warmish January days in Wisconsin/Iowa/ Minnesota (which sends its thanks to the Weather Gods). The US ‘Deep South’ had very cold nights.
Otherwise, for most of the United States, both days and nights were cooler than usual, at least since the turn of the century.
And that’s the temperature-measured-from-space news.
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Author’s Comment:
My area is shown in white, meaning lacking “sufficient confidence to assert there is an anomaly”. That should give inquisitive minds a clue that these are not actually measurements or anomalies of measurements. They are statistical animals of some type, which require ‘confidence’ at a 95% level.
The source for this news is here. NASA performs some grand statistical gymnastics to give us (not particularly informative) graphic maps of “Increase (red) and decrease (blue) in the frequency of occurrence of the warmest 10% of temperatures in the recent month.” The same is done for coldest 10% . All this is the service of pushing “extreme weather” memes. Their “extreme weather” is, as any weatherman knows, just weather.
Your tax dollars at work.
Thanks for reading.
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NOAAs Climate Reference Network also showed it to be a cold January; February as well.
I live in Vienna, Austria, and we had a very mild winter, very few days below freezing.
Jimmy ==> Was that good news or bad news?
sounds horrible with all that nice, mild weather
Probably means ‘dunkelflaute’.
My family are Viennese and they love the mild winters.
NASA: It Was a Cold January
January 2025 was the warmest on record …scientists are trying to understand why.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/articles/cly9pg2dkdno
Needless to say, January in the UK was pretty chilly.
strat ==> The BBC always says it was the warmest ever…any time period. at least they now say “warmest” instead of the past obligatory “hottest”.
Indeed, no opportunity is missed to hype it up.
NASA’s GISTEMP analysis agrees pretty well with the satellite data using the same base period:
Which shows that January was 0.57 degrees warmer than the 2023-2024 average globally. This compares to 1.38 degrees warmer globally for the 1951-1980 base period
But in both cases, it does look like the contiguous US experienced a colder than usual January.
alanJ ==> Yes, it looks like things are getting better! Far less terribly cold in the far north.
I’m naturally suspicious that all the interesting stuff hapens where there are no people to see it.
Also – if those areas really do get warmer while the rest stay the same, then maybe people will move there to notice.
What would happen to China-Russia relations if Eastern Siberia became liveable during winter?
I think the China-Russia relations would get much worse. If Eastern Siberia became much more valuable (or Lebensraum), the cost/benefit ratio might change.
The Russian military is now shown to be a paper bear. If China committed fully, I think they could take all of Russia as far as the Urals.
Unless of course Russia deploys nuclear weapons.
One nuke behind the Three Gorges dam will cause a lot of damage.
You mean the untrained, unmotivated,unorganized military that has been losing for 3 years straight(officially)
but is now winning at all fronts?
Pretty strange for a totally decimated army only fighting with shovels.
Or is it that the official story, just as with climate, is total BS,
and that you,blessed with the integrity of a climate scientist,
believe the MSM you dispise for its climate lies, whenever it suits your bias.
My understanding is the Chinese are alrady occupying Siberia by stealth. Eastern version of illegal immigration.
Kinda like UFOs and Bigfoot. 🙂
There aren’t people most places on earth, so most things are happening where there are no people to see them.
The red area includes most of Europe. It is inhabitated.
Yet they use surface temperature sites that are basically all in those inhabited areas.
The fabrications are totally unreliable as a measurement of anything except urban warming..
Which as you state.. is certainly NOT global.
The red area is on a satellite plot.
Nick ==> I think we can rely on the Sat Temps to at least be self-consistent.
The question becomes then: “Is is beneficial for those normally ‘really cold in the winter’ places to be ‘less cold’ now?”
Interestingly, the 1951-1980 anomaly map bears a lot of resemblance to El Niño, as opposed to La Niña that we just exited.
GISS is made from urban surface site that are totally unfit for the purpose of temperature comparison over time.
Except for the ocean part, and the parts that don’t cover urban areas (like, most of the globe)?
What kind of coverage do we have for oceans. Nothing to speak of now and certainly no historic data of any accuracy. The entire so call world temperature” is not possible to be able to measure within plus or minus five degrees let alone in the hundreds of a degree. What were are looking are guesstimates. To be honest the human race may never be able to measure the earths temperature with any accuracy.
Brilliant.
And how long have we had reliable records for global ocean temperature?
READERS==> I am “out of the office” for the rest of the day — I’ll take a look at your comments tomorrow morning.
Did you hear that pin drop in the mainstream media? Church mice are much louder.
Right, the mainstream media hardly reported the fact that January 2025 was the warmest January on record globally, according to all the surface data providers. Church mice.
Try reading the post you are commenting on.
Rabid partisan views as ever in the echo chamber. As I read the article, I conclude that the USA had a cold January, whereas the title of the post is “Earth had a cold January”. Well guess what? There’s more to the Earth than the US……😉 And if we do go back to earlier climatic records eg 1951- 1980, there’s no other conclusion to reach than things are warming. Stop shouting at the referee you sycophants!
Challenge CO2 driven warming, of course ….but don’t challenge the fact that the Earth is getting warmer, otherwise you begin to resemble ostriches with their heads in the sand🙃
The “Earth” did not have a cold January. According to UAH it was 0.45°C above the 1991-2020 average.
The USA had a below average month according to UAH 1.06 below average. This follows 11 straight above average monthly anomalies for the US. And was followed by February,which was as 1.04 above average.
Yes, but the temperature spike is fading. Hottest-ever temperature records will likely be local-only for a long time. The low temps (USA48) do stand out.
Your source shows an increase from Jan to Feb in most cases. How does that show ‘fading’ global temperatures?
According to Berkeley Earth the “Earth” was the warmest January in their dataset going back to 1850.
https://berkeleyearth.org/january-2025-temperature-update/
If you stretch the y-axes even more, you would scare me a lot.
The y-axis should be -40 C to + 40 C, then the plot should be in 0.5 C increments.
Anything finer would be bull manure
The point is that temperatures in the US in any given month are not a reliable guide to temperatures globally.
Indeed, they are more or less irrelevant to the global picture.
Temperatures measured at junk sites around the world , the agenda adjusted, are certainly not a reliable indication of anything…
They are very useful for scaring the hell out of people with the MSM big foghorn, and spending $TRILLIONS/y
I shouldn’t say ‘irrelevant’ actually, on reflection; US temps of course inform the global picture, but only to the value of about 2%, land that is.
In other words, despite a much cooler than average January in the US, the world still managed to have its warmest January global surface temperature on record.
Ok Berkeley Earth
very cool
Here is the average January anomaly for six different indices, including UAH, set to the common bsae of 1991-2020. They all tell the same story, for the simple reason that they are all getting it right.
Or they are all getting it wrong
What are the odds that 6 different groups using 6 different methodologies all errored in 6 different ways and yet still managed to get consistent results?
Have you seen the 100+ computerized temperature prediction curves?
A scientific travesty
Nick ==> Despite some of the other commenters here, the real questions have to do with the “value” assigned to the change seen — beneficial? harmful? some of each?
We know the Earth has been warming in the medium term since the Little Ice Age — started warming up somewhere between 1780 and 1880. It is still warming. Mostly in the high northern latitudes.
If your graph could be reliably extended back to 1800 or so, we would see very little warming until we get to 1980, when a warming spike starts. Your graph shows the 1950s are the same range as the 1970s – then some warming starts.
Why that is so is also a controversial question, as yet uncertain.
How do you know the Earth has been warming if you think the concept of an average temperature is meaningless?
Berkeley uses all the very worst surface sites available.
Has no idea of the quality of those sites.
It is basically junk data.
Oh how times change.
Anthony once swooned upon BEST – until it contradicted his beliefs.
True. Like Trump once thought security breaches were a hanging offence. Seems not so much now.
What does this discussion have to do with Trump?
Personally, I like to stick to the original post and/or a faux claim of a commenter. But c’mon man. Every post here is effectively “open thread”. I’ll start catching links to commenters of your ilk hijacking – and will then repost to this link.
Zachery….
Berkeley? Please show at least a tiny bit of self respect.
This was the dataset Anthony Watts said had the superior methodology so I’m going to let you pick this fight regarding respect with him on your own.
That was funny at the time!
Watts keeps the comedy up at this site – unintentionally.
Yep, contains the timeless, famous, telling, unfortunate quote…
“And, I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong. I’m taking this bold step because the method has promise. So let’s not pay attention to the little yippers who want to tear it down before they even see the results.”
Funny how “supporters” become “yippers” over time.
It’s the same with Judith Curry. She agreed with the methodology. In fact, she even helped develop it and signed her name to it. She just didn’t agree with the result.
You guys have never done anything in the real world have you. How do I know? You must have never failed in creating a model that looked good and performed as expected initially. Then have it fail miserably as it was validated.
I designed circuits, obtained parts, designed circuit boards, only to have it not meet requirements when it met the real world.
Obviously, you have never experienced this or you wouldn’t go back years and try to say that AW’s past statement meant he APPROVED a method for all time. Typical of climate science that will never take a risk and make long term regional forecasts. Just continue to hide behind a global calculation that has no specifics.
Brother, we engineers have to get it right. If it does not work, we have to figure it out, fix it, and make it work. Reality faces us in our naked faces.
In systems engineering, verification is everything, as you know. I have yet to see anything to verify or validate the climate models and a ton of stuff that proves they are mere “computer games.”
FWIW, I am also called in by various unnamed organizations as a subject matter exert and often lead investigator when something goes wrong. The first task always is to prepare a detailed comprehensive list of alternative causes. Then each is tested, validated, verified, or disproved with a weighting of confidence of the analysis.
The point is, I have the cv that qualifies me to comment.
The other point is, you are spot on, mate.
Thank you!
Many of the things you mention are uncertainty budget items that must be dealt with. Too many mathematicians here have been trained using numbers that are 100% accurate and the only uncertainty derives from sampling error
Wouldn’t it be nice!
So what is the average temperature of the Earth? Around 59F(15C), too cold to live outdoors outside of the Tropics most of the year.
How to misunderstand the concept of a global average temperature in a single sentence.
Sorry, two sentences. He dragged it out.
Final Nail ==> He is right though and it is always best to admit when your opponent in a debate has said something that is factual.
The Global Average Surface Temperature is not quite 15°C — which is the temperature that NASA sets for an Earth-like planet. So, in effect, Earth is “almost Earth-like” as far as average surface temperature is concerned. Actually, NASA accepts even 16-17°C for Earth-like — in one case, a “detected exo-planet” was declared inhabitable by humans with an average surface temp of 22°C.
No, TFN is right. Temperature is not at all homogeneous, so the 15C is not useful. Some may experience it at some points in time only. But anomaly is much more homogeneous which has many benefits. It means that if the anomaly warms by 1C, people all over the world are likely to experience warming of that order, whether in Siberia or India or Tibet, day or night. It still varies, of course, but not nearly as much.
“Temperature is not at all homogeneous, so the 15C is not useful.”
It’s strange how people keep saying that nobody lives in the global average, yet then claim that the average is too cold for anyone to cope with.
Or in Kip’s case he argues that a temperature average is meaningless in a past article but then assumes it has meaning in this article.
Which is it Kip? Does an average temperature have meaning or not?
You and bellman miss the point. It is too cold to endure without the amenities we enjoy today. One of those is reliable energy.
It is also worthwhile to note that as a statistical assessment it is worthless without statistical descriptors also being given.
As a mean, and assuming a symmetrical distribution, there are as many below the as above the mean. If you can’t quote a standard deviation for that mean, it has no meaning. The SD is important to knowing the range. Considering that it includes temps from the poles to tropics, the SD is probably fairly large.
Tell us the standard deviation of the data used to calculate the January temperature, both in the ΔT as shown and in the global average absolute temperature.
Kip,
“My area is shown in white, meaning lacking “sufficient confidence to assert there is an anomaly”. That should give inquisitive minds a clue that these are not actually measurements or anomalies of measurements. They are statistical animals of some type, which require ‘confidence’ at a 95% level. “
Where do you get that from? There is no basis for it at all. I don’t know why people here have such trouble understanding anomalies. They are simply the difference between observed T and the average over some time period for that month and location.
They are shown with a color range, where values near zero come out white. That is all.
Smoke and mirrors…
They use the difference between a long-term mean and the most recent observation and you claim “There be dragons here!”
Where on earth do you people come from?
You confuse mean with numerical average.
If you have a linear slop of 12C to 14C across 30 years, both the mean and the average are 13C. So any temperature taken at any moment above 13C is a positive anomaly even if it is below the current 14C point on the slope.
Anomalies versus averages or means is not informative.
It is why time series analysis has unique practices and procedures for performing an analysis. I might add quality control has some interesting info too. A control chart might show that all values are within 1σ or 2σ which means not a big deal
Humans need shelter, clothes and shoes to deal with real temperatures, not anomalies.
Right, so if the anomaly is consistently higher than average, over the longer term, then people will have to learn to deal with warmer “real” temperatures.
They’ll have to learn to adapt their shelters, clothing and footwear in order to cope with the rapidly changing conditions.
This isn’t difficult, honestly.
Right. If … then adapt. That’s what humans do. In the meantime, quit squandering resources trying to “manage” Earth’s climate. It really is that simple.
That is a much better plan than destroying energy sources and along with it human civilization all in the pursuit of Net Zero.
However, you contradict yourself with expressions of longer term and rapidly changing conditions.
Have you developed a control chart using that long average in order to see if monthly temperature are out of control?
Nick ==> I wasn’t complaining about the “anomalies” issue. The source NASA page makes it clear that they are doing some statistical jiggery and arriving at anomalies to 95% confidence.
If they were just straight measurements (even if space-based and therefore a remote ‘measurement’ calculated from other types of information) than there would be no statistical component for them to mention.
Did you look at the source?
Kip, the 95% relates to a space observation sampling issue. The AIRS satellite orbits about 15 times a day at 700 km height, scanning width about 1500 km. So each location is observed maybe once a day. From that they have to put together a monthly average in the face of surface diurnal variation, especially over land.
There is a lot to be said for conventional on the ground thermometers.
Scanning width of 1500 km at an altitude of 700 km. Must be a humongous aperture and the focal plan array is bigger than anything ever put into space.
Acquisition angle of the sensor array is large. Roughly +/- 45 degrees. The must have some kind of birds eye lens to get the incident light to an angle the sensor array can capture and that introduces all sorts of questions.
Enough.
They may be able to rotate the sensor.
They don’t have trouble understanding what an anomaly is…… they just disagree with you on principle because they are guilty of the very thing they accuse the AGW side….. that is: your views, no matter how evidence-based don’t conform to their narrative. Don’t cast your pearls before swine 😖
NASA should quit pissing its budget away on crap like this and instead make sure our astronauts always have a ride home. ALWAYS.
Yeah, in the USA. This is the second shot you guys have had at this same, silly, story.
So it was colder than average in the US in January.
Globally, according to this site’s beloved UAH temperature data set, it was the second warmest January on their record!
Looking at conditions outside your own window, or even across your own country, is not a reliable guide to what’s happening globally.
And the UAH temperature is plummeting at present.
You think the second warmest January on record is a “plummet”?
I’d hate to see a spike.
Final Nail ==> You present a long running argument — what is more important?: “where I live and work and farm?” or “global averages of things that are not global?”
This requires a value judgement. Wheat farmers in the Ukraine region are very happy with the improvement in their regional weather, so are Canadian wheat growers. I don;t know how the more primitive people of the far north feel about it, but if I lived up there, I might be happy that it was not life-threateningly cold for months on end.
This issue — “do Global Averages have any significant meaning for people in the daily lives?” — feeds the advocacy issue. As far as the polls show, people care most about weather where they are but can be scared by media reports of disasters in distant places.
Also, all of a sudden we are taking NASA’s data at face value.
It was colder than average in the US in January so we accept NASA, no questions asked.
Warmer than average? Then it’s conspiracy central.
Climate change denialism is such an infinitely moveable feast.
A statistical analysis of weather data from 1850 to 2015, for the lower 48, showed that the US climate was ‘slightly’ milder. Highs did not move, but lows were slightly warmer. All good.
According to nClimDiv the trend of the highs is +0.16 ± 0.04 C.decade-1 and the lows is +0.19 ± 0.04 C.decade-1 from 1895/01 to 2025/02.
I don’t know so much about Australia having a warmer summer. Here in SEQLD has been reasonably cool through summer with few very hot days.
Here is the anomaly map for Australia. Yes, the Qld coast was only a little above average. Most of the country was more.
Streetcred ==> Like all science findings, they only find exactly what they find. The first image in the essay is surface temperature (from space) anomalies for the month of January. Shows a deepred blotch over much of central and northern Australia.
Nick Stokes offers another view of a different metric, “Maximum Temperature Anomaly” for 1 Dec 2024 through 28 February 2025, which shows inland more southern parts of the continent as warmer.
Given the article referred to by NASA talks about the temperature in the USA during January why does the title of the post refer to the Earth?
Phil ==> The source article from NASA is Earth oriented — the “featured image” (at the very top and on the WUWT home page) shows an planetary condition.
I wrote about the US as an area of interest and left the planetary issue up to the readers who might have wanted to follow the NASA link
The headline: “EARTH had a cold January”. The real issue: “US had a cold January”. Find the problem!
Frank ==> All news focuses on some tiny aspect of a larger picture — the featured image is a part of the larger issue, and the NASA link leads to data about the even larger temperature issues about January 2025.
One takes one pick of what they wish to spend their time on. In truth, the majority of readers here live in North America — and thus are more interested in stories about the United States (even in its crazy politics!).
The graph at the top of the page is taken from this
Which as Kip mentions is not showing anomalies for all of January. It’s showing an average of the coldest three days of the month, in relation to daily values over the base period.
The explanation for how this is calculated or what it means is not very clear, and if I’m understanding it correctly I have some doubts about the method.
Bellman ==> Hurrah! At least one other sensible person was mystified by the explanation NASA gives for the derivation of those images (both the hotter and colder version). I couldn’t make head nor tails out of it — both what exactly they did and “why in the world would that even attempt to do such a thing ant then present it as a map?”
“I couldn’t make head nor tails out of it”
Yet you claimed it showed the earth had a cold month.
I do think I understand what they are doing, but it’s not explained very well or done in the way I would do it. I also think it’s possible there’s an error in their approach that means there should be less blue and more red in that map. And the opposite in the hot extremes map.
It is difficult to understand complaints about a mild winter. Perhaps there are fewer ski or snow machine days? I am thinking that possibly lower utility bills, fewer travel problems, and more BBQ days are a problem. Less excuse to travel south? That could be it.