2015 Global Temperatures

[stadiumwave]

Looks like RSS came in at 0.28C, down from 0.39C in June.

 

 

Read 0.22C by another met.

 

Either way:

JULY

• UAH v.6: 0.18
• UAH v.5.6: 0.24
• RSS: 0.22 or 0.28?
• CFSR: 0.16

The gap between satellite temps & GISS, HadCrut widens.  I don't get it.

[HailMan06]

Read 0.22C by another met.

Either way:

JULY

• UAH v.6: 0.18
• UAH v.5.6: 0.24
• RSS: 0.22 or 0.28?
• CFSR: 0.16

The gap between satellite temps & GISS, HadCrut widens. I don't get it.

We'll see what the surface data sources say when they come out over the coming weeks. I'm holding judgement for a couple more months, but I'd expect SOME satellite response by this point.

[nflwxman]

We'll see what the surface data sources say when they come out over the coming weeks. I'm holding judgement for a couple more months, but I'd expect SOME satellite response by this point.

 

It's weird, isn't it?  We've been in borderline or full El Nino conditions for nearly a year now.  It's somewhat similar to what happened in the 1980s-early 1990s.

[AvantHiatus]

The heat/forcing is there, the satellites are simply not picking it up on the same scale as the surface datasets. You can verify this by reviewing and comparing global and northern hemisphere SST anomalies, which are warmer than 2014 by a significant margin.

 

At this point, we have way better alternatives to measuring the global energy budget rather than relying on MTT data. More effective metrics on decadal scales include SLR and Ocean Heat Content. As a result, we already know the 2020's will be warmer than the 2010's due to the temporal lag between ocean and land temperatures.

 

Troposphere temperatures are unreliable/noise-prone and variable (subject to hadley cell dynamics, global wind speeds, etc), particularly in the way UAH assimilates the data. 

[StudentOfClimatology]

Only explanation I can think of is a reduction winds over the sea surface. The divergence in the surface/satellite data is much greater over the oceans than over the landmasses.

Weaker winds > reduction in evaporative cooling/upwelling and reduced latent heat release into the troposphere > warming of the surface boundary layer/cooling of troposphere.

[Isotherm]

Still not surprising to me given historical precedent on the satellite data. Typically, the rapid increase in global temperatures does not occur until the northern hemispheric winter solstice (southern hemisphere summer solstice) and shortly thereafter. 1997-1998 UAH progressed from +0.09C in November, to +0.22C in December, +0.47C in January, and +0.65C in February. We may not see much response with the satellite data until later in autumn 2015.

 

 

 

Only explanation I can think of is a reduction winds over the sea surface. The divergence in the surface/satellite data is much greater over the oceans than over the landmasses.

Weaker winds > reduction in evaporative cooling/upwelling and reduced latent heat release into the troposphere > warming of the surface boundary layer/cooling of troposphere.

 

 

Do you have any papers on the possibility that global winds tend to increase and propagate eastward in the tropical Pacific at the climax of a +ENSO event or near the southern hemispheric summer solstice / northern hemispheric winter solstice?

 

 

It seems the winds at the surface spread eastward as the solstice / beyond approaches, possibly enhancing latent heat release / tropospheric warming as the winds increase over warmer SST's.

 

 

Zonal winds Dec 1997:

 

 

 

 

Zonal winds Jan 1998:

 

 

 

 

Corresponding UAH global temperature anomaly increases:

 

Dec 1997: +0.22c

Jan 1998: +0.47c

Feb 1998: +0.65c

[stadiumwave]

Volcanic activity is really high right now per this article I read off of Dr. Curry's blog:

 

http://www.sott.net/article/295388-The-number-of-volcanoes-erupting-right-now-is-greater-than-the-20th-centurys-YEARLY-average

 

Something to watch in the next few years for "short term" climate changes

[AvantHiatus]

All it does is inject more carbon into the atmosphere and contributes to warming in the deep future, the CO2 forcing is too high to be overridden by anything outside massive unprecedented geo engineering.

 

Low solar combined with volcanic activity could be enough to cause another hiatus in the 2030-2050 period. Both would need to occur tho.

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/volcanic-eruptions-caused-permian-extinction-2014-12

This Is What Caused The Biggest Extinction In Earth's History

 

[frontranger8]

It's weird, isn't it?  We've been in borderline or full El Nino conditions for nearly a year now.  It's somewhat similar to what happened in the 1980s-early 1990s.

 

Not really, given that this El Nino didn't really take off until about 3-4 months ago. Typically with the satellite temps, there is at least a 6 month lag. Fall/winter anomalies will probably be well above summer.

[wolfpackmet]

Philip Klotzbach tweeted this out earlier this summer.  Both raw and detrended Nino 3.4 temperatures lead global temperatures by ~3 months by the peak of El Nino.   

 

 

[frontranger8]

Philip Klotzbach tweeted this out earlier this summer.  Both raw and detrended Nino 3.4 temperatures lead global temperatures by ~3 months by the peak of El Nino.   

 

CH5NXAFVAAAiy8t.png

 

That's surface, not satellite, though. The lag has proven to be longer for the atmosphere.

[donsutherland1]

It should be noted that the Radiosonde Atmospheric Temperature Products for Assessing Climate (RATPAC) data is more in line with the surface temperature data sets.

 

Through July, the 2015 ranks as follows:

 

Surface: 1st warmest (same as the major surface data sets)

850 mb: Tied 2nd warmest

700 mb: Tied 2nd warmest

500 mb: 4th warmest

250 mb: 4th warmest

 

Moreover, if one looks at the annual data, one finds that the surface to approximately 250 mb has been warming, while 100 mb to 30 mb has been cooling. This is consistent with the expectations of the climate models and with the reality that the growing atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases is producing an energy imbalance.

 

Trend (1958-2014):

 

Surface: +0.132°C/decade

850 mb: +0.160°C/decade

500 mb: +0.160°C/decade

250 mb: +0.086°C/decade

100 mb: -0.215°C/decade

30 mb: -0.445° C/decade

[StudentOfClimatology]

BTW, Don, that paper you posted regarding spectral contamination via H2^O was published in 2013, before the UAH upgrade. So it cannot be quantitatively applied to the current dataset.

[donsutherland1]

BTW, Don, that paper you posted regarding spectral contamination via H2^O was published in 2013, before the UAH upgrade. So it cannot be quantitatively applied to the current dataset.

That's correct. My point is that UAH 6.0 is cooling relative to 5.6, the opposite of what one would have expected had the paper's fix been applied. Do you know whether those who compile the UAH data set have ever addressed the paper's findings? Perhaps had they published a paper on 6.0, that question could definitively be addressed.

[StudentOfClimatology]

But would UAH (especially 6.0) and RSS look different if the problem related to cloud-affected radiances were fixed, especially as the lower and middle tropospheric warming trend would be increased by an estimated 20%-30%?

We won't know until V6.0 passes peer review. The v6.0 upgrade did contain a few upgrades to account for observed H^2O driven contamination in the polar/sub polar regions, but I don't know exactly what these are as of yet.

Thus far, there have been no problems discovered with the beta v6.0. That may change as time goes on, though.

[donsutherland1]

Another issue with satellite-derived temperature measurements: SSTs. From NOAA:

 

ERSST v3 has improved low frequency tuning that reduces the SST anomaly damping before 1930 using the optimized parameters. However, the addition of satellite SSTs introduced a small residual cold bias (in the order of 0.01°C). The Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer is an infrared-based instrument. There must be clear-sky conditions to obtain infrared measurements, and cloud contaminated data are often difficult to identify. This contamination leads to a cold SST bias in the retrievals. There were attempts to correct these biases as mentioned in "Improvements to NOAA's Historical Merged Land-Ocean Surface Temperature Analysis (1880–2006)," but the adjustment did not fully compensate for the cold bias. While this small difference did not strongly influence the long-term trend, it was sufficient to change the rankings of the warmest months in the time series. Therefore, use of satellite SST data was discontinued. Except for the removal of the satellite aspect, ERSST v3b processing is identical to version 3.

 

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/marineocean-data/extended-reconstructed-sea-surface-temperature-ersst-v3b

 

The newly-released ERSST v4 data set did not reintroduce satellite data:

 

ERSST v4 revisions are based on ERSST v3b. Major improvements include updated and substantially more complete input data from the ICOADS Release 2.5, revised Empirical Orthogonal Teleconnections (EOTs) and EOT acceptance criterion, updated sea surface temperature (SST) quality control procedures, revised SST anomaly (SSTA) evaluation methods, revised low-frequency data filing in data sparse regions using nearby available observations, updated bias adjustments of ship SSTs using Hadley Nighttime Marine Air Temperature version 2 (HadNMAT2), and buoy SST bias adjustments not previously made in v3b.

 

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/marineocean-data/extended-reconstructed-sea-surface-temperature-ersst-v4

[skierinvermont]

BTW, Don, that paper you posted regarding spectral contamination via H2^O was published in 2013, before the UAH upgrade. So it cannot be quantitatively applied to the current dataset.

 

So, basically a critique was made that indicated v5.6 had spurious cooling. Spencer and Christy create a new method, with even more spurious cooling, don't submit it to peer-review, and you say it cannot be criticized because it hasn't been through peer-review yet. Forgive me if I don't hold my breath. The irony is already killing me.

[StudentOfClimatology]

So, basically a critique was made that indicated v5.6 had spurious cooling. Spencer and Christy create a new method, with even more spurious cooling, don't submit it to peer-review, and you say it cannot be criticized because it hasn't been through peer-review yet. Forgive me if I don't hold my breath. The irony is already killing me.

Except spectral interference was/is only one of many factors that were corrected for. So, you're lacking context as usual.

[The_Global_Warmer]

Global ssts in July were record breaking.

Like warmest on record anomaly wise.

For any month

[chubbs]

Kevin Trenberth has a brief perspective piece on the hiatus in Science highlighting the role of the PDO. Below is the graphic.

 

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6249/691.full#ref-19

 

 

A staircase of rising temperatures.

(A) Seasonal (December-January-February; etc.) global mean surface temperatures since 1920 (relative to the 20th-century mean) vary considerably on interannual and decadal time scales. Data from (19). (B) Seasonal mean PDO anomalies (8) show decadal regimes (positive in pink; negative in blue) as well as short-term variability. A 20-term Gaussian filter is used in both to show decadal variations, with anomalies reflected about the end point of March to May 2015 (heavy black curves). (C) Decadal average anomalies (starting 1921 to 1930) of GMST (green) along with piecewise slopes of GMST for the phases of the PDO (orange). Note how the rise in GMST (A) coincides with the positive (pink) phase of the PDO at the rate given in C.

[wolfpackmet]

July came in at warmest on record for JMA, beating out 1998.  February is the last month left from the "super" 1997-1998 El Nino to hold a JMA monthly record. 

[donsutherland1]

GISS: July anomaly of +0.75°C (previous warmest July: +0.74°C, 2011)

 

January-July: +0.803°C (previous warmest: +0.761°C, 2010)

[Snow_Miser]

GISS: July anomaly of +0.75°C (previous warmest July: +0.74°C, 2011)

January-July: +0.803°C (previous warmest: +0.761°C, 2010)

Adding +0.6 to the Weatherbell CFSv2 anomaly seemed to once again do a good job "predicting" this month's GISS anomaly,

[donsutherland1]

A quick comparison of UAH v.6.0 vs. v.5.6 for July:

 

July ranked as the 9th warmest on record and the January-July period was the 4th warmest, but enormously behind 1998 (+0.215°C vs. +0.582°C in 1998) on v.6.0.

 

In part, UAH registers the impact of ENSO late in an El Niño event. However, part of what is shown above is not due to UAH's timing, but likely due to the linear cooling trend in v.6.0 vs. v.5.6.

 

If one looks more closely at the v.6.0 data set, one finds that January-July 2002 ranked above January-July 2015 on v.6.0 (2002: +0.252°C; 2015: +0.215°C). Below are the January-July mean anomalies for ENSO Regions 1+2 and 3.4 respectively:

 

2002: +0.16°C, +0.32°C

2015: +1.19°C, +0.91°C

 

On v.5.6, January-July 2015 registered as warmer than 2002, as almost certainly should have been the case given the large difference in average ENSO anomalies. On v.5.6, 2002 had a January-July anomaly of +0.241°C vs. +0.283°C in 2015. July 2015 also ranked as 7th warmest on v.5.6.

 

How about the earlier years ranked with a warmer January-July on both data sets?

 

1998: v.5.6: +0.530°C; v.6.0: +0.582°C

2010: v.5.6: +0.467°C; v.6.0: +0.413°C

 

Consistent with v.6.0's linear cooling trend, the earlier years showed up as warmer, while the later years showed up as cooler than v.5.6.

 

In short, the data, especially the issue of January-July 2002 vs. January-July 2015  despite much warmer average ENSO anomalies in 2015 raise questions about v.6.0, as it appears that the linear cooling trend on that data set has tainted the numbers to the extent that there is an emergent disconnect between the new data set's figures and ENSO conditions.

[stadiumwave]

GISS: July anomaly of +0.75°C (previous warmest July: +0.74°C, 2011)

January-July: +0.803°C (previous warmest: +0.761°C, 2010)

What does the raw data look like?

[donsutherland1]

What does the raw data look like?

I don't have the raw data and it wouldn't be representative, as sites have moved, TOBS had to be addressed, etc.

 

However, a comparison with JMA (as NCDC hasn't been released yet) shows that January-July is the warmest on record:

 

JMA: Difference +0.050°C

GISS: Difference +0.042°C

 

In other words, for practical purposes, the conclusions are the same and the margin of difference is nearly identical.

[ORH_wxman]

GHCN is what you would want to look at for raw data. But if you want a true comparison, you'd want to look at BEST data for land temperatures since they don't use GHCN data unlike the other mainstream surface data sets....which means they aren't really independent. But BEST would be. Unfortunately you'll have to wait for their data. I don't think it is updated every month...but rather every few months.

[donsutherland1]

GHCN is what you would want to look at for raw data. But if you want a true comparison, you'd want to look at BEST data for land temperatures since they don't use GHCN data unlike the other mainstream surface data sets....which means they aren't really independent. But BEST would be. Unfortunately you'll have to wait for their data. I don't think it is updated every month...but rather every few months.

It seems that BEST only has data through 2014 (http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/auto/Global/Land_and_Ocean_complete.txt) unless more current data is elsewhere on the site.

[LithiaWx]

the world continues to torch.

[StudentOfClimatology]

A quick comparison of UAH v.6.0 vs. v.5.6 for July:

July ranked as the 9th warmest on record and the January-July period was the 4th warmest, but enormously behind 1998 (+0.215°C vs. +0.582°C in 1998) on v.6.0.

In part, UAH registers the impact of ENSO late in an El Niño event. However, part of what is shown above is not due to UAH's timing, but likely due to the linear cooling trend in v.6.0 vs. v.5.6.

If one looks more closely at the v.6.0 data set, one finds that January-July 2002 ranked above January-July 2015 on v.6.0 (2002: +0.252°C; 2015: +0.215°C). Below are the January-July mean anomalies for ENSO Regions 1+2 and 3.4 respectively:

2002: +0.16°C, +0.32°C

2015: +1.19°C, +0.91°C

On v.5.6, January-July 2015 registered as warmer than 2002, as almost certainly should have been the case given the large difference in average ENSO anomalies. On v.5.6, 2002 had a January-July anomaly of +0.241°C vs. +0.283°C in 2015. July 2015 also ranked as 7th warmest on v.5.6.

How about the earlier years ranked with a warmer January-July on both data sets?

1998: v.5.6: +0.530°C; v.6.0: +0.582°C

2010: v.5.6: +0.467°C; v.6.0: +0.413°C

Consistent with v.6.0's linear cooling trend, the earlier years showed up as warmer, while the later years showed up as cooler than v.5.6.

In short, the data, especially the issue of January-July 2002 vs. January-July 2015 despite much warmer average ENSO anomalies in 2015 raise questions about v.6.0, as it appears that the linear cooling trend on that data set has tainted the numbers to the extent that there is an emergent disconnect between the new data set's figures and ENSO conditions.

So far, there have been no problems found with the upgrade to UAHv6.0, so I don't think "tainted" is the right word to use. In fact, it would be abnormal to see a TLT ENSO response this early in the game.

The TLT response to the 2009-10 Niño did not occur until January. The TLT response to the 1997-98 Niño did not occur until November. The TLT response to the 1982-83 Niño did not occur until December. So, there is no "disconnect" occurring right now..RSS is in lockstep with UAH, so I suspect it has the right idea.