GISS reported the April anomaly: 44/100 C. That’s down from 49/100 C in March 2009. The blizzards in Utah, my slow-to-start spring garden and all the grousing about spring taking a long time to get here did register on the world’s thermometers. That said, April 2008 with its anomaly of 43/100ths was colder.
The trend since January 2001 is -0.03/decade; for those who prefer positive trends, the trend since January 2000 is +0.1C/decade. Both trends are below the IPCC nominal “about +0.2 C/decade”; both are declining. Because the current anomaly falls below the trend line, both likely will decline next month.
More detailed discussions of the statistics are deferred until HadCrut reports.
– “for those who prefer positive trends …” – that’s really funny but also quite insightful as well.
There are some of us (and some of them) that only want to hear the news they want to hear and will just drown out anything that doesn’t fit with their personal climate belief. I, as well, struggle to try to remain objective but it doesn’t always work.
I guess I prefer the actual trends, whatever they are, (but especially when they are not 0.2C per decade).
Lucia
With a high of 9C [that’s 40F !] and the wood stove going in the Gulf Islands on May 13 after two weeks of temps 6-8C under the seasonal norm, my money is on the trend being down. This is the equivalent here of tanning on the beach in October.
Did you see the pictures on WUWT of the snow a couple of days ago in Saudi Arabia? Bet you their trend is down as well.
🙂
Bill
You make a very important observation. Awareness of our own potential biases is central to any interpretation of the evidence. While skeptical of CAGW, I am not particularly learned in the sciences and therefore tend to rely, as does the majority, on the analytical gifts of those that are. Your admission is refreshing and it would do the debate no harm if there was more of it.
Best wishes, ian
Tetris–
I did see the article about the snow or hail in Saudi Arabia. We should be done with that by now here. . .
I was hoping the rain would stop so I can rototill and plant basil soon.
I should show my various flowers tomorrow.
Lucia [13590]
I know it’s weather vs. climate and all that, but right now [at 23:50hrs PDT] it is 6C. To the folks who have lived on these islands way longer than we have, this is completely out of the norm, but when asked to look at the past couple of years, it’s in keeping with how things have been trending. Temps down, spring quite a bit later and much cooler. Our apple trees have only blossomed in the past week and therefore missed their most important pollinators, the mason bees, who had their spring “humpathon” a couple of weeks ago.
Put differently, if climate is defined as “weather over 30 years”, we’ve certainly been able to distinguish a noticeable downward temp “trend” over the past 12% of that past 30 period.
For the urbanites amongst the readers, go and take the time to talk to the farmers around where you live. A drop in land surface temps of 1-1.5F [0.7-08C] in North America would, for all practical purposes, make it impossible to grow corn north of lat 35-40N.
By way of perspective, 0.8C is the entire purported temp increase over the past 120 years or so, and in the 1700-1800s corn was not a staple crop among the indians in Canada other than in the southern parts of Ontario.
A dirt under the nails look at things no doubt, but very day-to-day real.
🙂
Just saw a comment over at WUWT where someone was chortling about NOAA reporting a very warm April (4th warmest April ever.) I hadn’t realized NOAA had reported yet, and since I knew none of the others were even in the top 10, I went to lookin’.
Also, a lot of accusations elsewhere about UAH looking poorly vis-a-vis its “peer” (RSS), so here’s an interesting “peer” comparison since Jan. (GISS first, NOAA 2nd):
Jan 0.53 0.5360
Feb 0.41 0.4851
Mar 0.47 0.5392
Apr 0.44 0.6057
Yikes! GISS down by 0.03 and NOAA up by 0.07, net diff change about 0.1! Since Jan. GISS down 0.09, NOAA up 0.07, net diff 0.16!
As I recall, NOAA did a lot of hopping around late last year too.
JohnM– I knew NOAA had reported, but was waiting for Hadley. Reporting April temperature 5 times in one week seems a bit much, so I almost never report NOAA when it comes out. They almost never come out first. If they did, they might get more attention.
I have however, gone back to adding NOAA to my graphs of surface temperature, mostly because Easterling used NOAA, so I remembered to start looking at it again. The trend since 2001 with NOAA is -0.001 C/century. I’m still waiting for Hadley to come out. Then, I’ll post graphs of the surface temperatures with all three groups.
Lucia
Looks like the same thing was commented on at WUWT.
And FWIW, either I had too many post-game refreshments after the hockey game yesterday or someone went in overnight at NOAA and changed the numbers. Here’s how they read now (and this morning at ~8AM).
2009 1 0.5469
2009 2 0.5049
2009 3 0.5392
2009 4 0.6050
Waiting for Hadley…and waiting for Hadley…and waiting for Hadley…….
Fred– I know! Isn’t it odd? I can’t help but worry some key person is ill.
I hope that a major dataset such as HadCrut doesn’t rest on one person. I had a manager that constantly insisted that we ensure the project could survive the “hit by a bus” test. Could the project continue and be on schedule if one of the people involved got hit by bus, so to speak?
Anyway, I notice on the ftp site (ftp://ftp.cru.uea.ac.uk/data) that the HadCrut files was update on the 17th. I don’t have the time nor facility to decode the grid data so I don’t know if it includes April data. Perhaps you or one of your readers do.
Fred–
I figure I’ll just wait patiently like everyone else. Meanwhile… I’m trying to submit a manuscript. I need friendly reviewers. . . 🙂