Data Comparisons

UAH Temperature Up in November.

17 Comments

UAH reports the temperature anomaly rose from +0.116C in October to +0.254 C November. Below, I have plotted monthly data for both satellites since Jan 2001 rebaselined to the average for the period. The trend is just the OLS fit to the average of the two monthly anomalies reported by the two services.

Figure 1: Satellite Temperature Anomalies Up in November.
Figure 1: Satellite Temperature Anomalies Up in November.

Rumors of an incipient La Nina have appeared on WUWT, but those counting on that knocking temperatures down next month should be warned: Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched.

Hat tip to Fred who alerted me in comments. (Note: Anthony scooped me while I was making the graph! GRRR!)

17 thoughts on “UAH Temperature Up in November.”

  2. “….those counting on that knocking temperatures next month should be warmed [sic]….”

    I shall not be warmed LOL!!!

    Anyway, HadSST2 (global sea surface temperature anomaly) has dropped from +0.371C in Sep and +0.311 in Oct to just +0.228 in Nov which is back below the average for the year so far. In this context, it seems to me that the jump in LT temps may represent a heat loss rather than warming, so I wouldn’t be surprised at all if LT temps take a dip again in the next couple of months.
    http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadsst2gl.txt

  3. Fred Nieuwenhuis (Comment#7196) December 8th, 2008 at 11:06 am,

    So that’s why Hudson Bay isn’t freezing as fast as normal. In fact, about half the negative anomaly in the CT Arctic ice area data comes from Hudson Bay being behind schedule. It looks like it’s started to pick up speed now, though.

  5. Fred,

    The CT area numbers are about a week behind the images they post. There has been lots of ice formation in Hudson Bay in the last four or five days observed in the satellite images which has been reflected in an increase in JAXA extent of over 400,000 km2 in four days. CT will catch up soon.

  6. Lucia,

    Can you turn off this d**n Social Spark thing? I’m not fond of pop-ups but I can close them. This pop-up evades attempts to close it and just minimises so now average global temperatures are increasing because I’m boiling mad!

    Ta.

    Rich

    Oh, I’m using Google chrome so maybe it’s missing something.

  9. P-E Harvey (Comment#7221) December 9th, 2008 at 11:48 am

    “To Rich
    Firefox 3.0.4 works fine. I cannot see “this d**n Social Spark thing?” at all.”

    Firefox and I believe other browsers have the option to block pop-ups. I wouldn’t use a browser that didn’t.

  10. Martin–
    This pop up was “special”. Some browsers may not be programmed to block this type yet.

    I’d talked about this before and decided not to run them. When I first looked into it, I had taken the first step of accepting (which was required to learn the details of how it worked.)

    The second step was to install some code, which I didn’t do. I figured that was that and the code would never appear. Social Spark had an “auto-detect” feature and the blogger only got paid if the thing displayed. So…. I didn’t install the code, and figured that would be sufficient. The instructions seemed to suggest that would be fine.

    Well…. it must have turned out that lots of people did that, and some did it because they couldn’t figure out how to install the code!

    Social Spark must have “simplified” something, and made the pop-up load directly off their “ITK” tools. That simplification made the pop-up appear today!

    So, blocked the code on their ITK tools, and went in to cancel the sponsorship acceptance.

    Anyway, now I know how that thing actually works! I did notice that a) It only showed up once for me (unless I deleted my cookie.) and b) it was hard to make go away but c) it did go away on it’s own after a little bit.

  12. Just noting that current temps are probably not being affected anymore by the 2007-08 La Nina.

    The Nino regions have been close to neutral since July and given there is a 3 month lag in the ENSO on global temps, we can think of the current temperatures as “normal” in terms of El Nino and La Nina influence. There will be a very slight downturn over the next three months as the Nino regions have gone slightly negative since the summer.

    The AMO index is still slightly positive and is probably providing about 0.1C boost to current temperatures.

    At the start of the UAH record in December 1978, there was a mild La Nina event and a slightly negative AMO which probably reduced the temperatures at the start of the record by about -0.15C.

    By my reckoning, that provides for an increase in “normal” temperatures of just 0.1C to 0.2C in the 30 years of UAH satellite records. Not much global warming at all.

  13. Now that the pop-up distraction is resolved… the UAH LT temps usually lag ENSO by 2-3 months. There maybe a small jump in the next month or two but temps will come back down as the Pacific continues to cool. We just hit the -.5 threshhold in the Nino 3.4 region and upper ocean heat content is trending down at the moment with no more oceanic Kelvin waves due in the next 2 or 3 months. But chances are that if a La Nina does develop (using the ONI scheme) it will not reach the strength or duration as earlier this year which was moderate to weak compared to those of the last 60 years.

  14. La Ninas and El Ninos usually develop around the December timeline (anytime between November and February). 80% of the El Ninos and La Ninas since 1871 have met this timeline.

    In addition, the trend toward the Ninos usually starts around the summer and by this time of the year, we are usually into a +/- 1.5 C territory for any kind of significant Nino event but there really hasn’t really been any trend since the summer so it seems we are into neutral territory until next summer to December.

    There does seem to be some movement toward another La Nina event ocurring however as the Trade Winds have picked up and Southern Oscillation Index (which usually leads the ENSO) has been negative for some time now. Look for another La Nina trend to start by the early summer.

    Unless we are into the 20% non-usual timeline situation in which case it will start earlier.

  15. Just further noting that this month, November 2008, provides a really rare opportunity to assess how much warming there really has been to date.

    The influence of the 3 big ocean cycles affecting temperature, the ENSO, the AMO and the Southern Atlantic SSTs (which has a big impact on particularly the Southern Hemisphere temperatures) are all roughly Zero right now in terms of influence.

    The ENSO has been mostly neutral for 5 months, the AMO index for November is a paltry 0.055C and the southern Atlantic SSTs are just 0.025C. I’ve charted these since the 1850s and it is very rare for them all to be close to Zero.

    Going back, I see 0.4C of warming over the past 40 years and just 0.2C over the past 20 years.

    My regression gives the following for normal temperatures:

    Subtract: 0.076 * (Nina 3.4 index of three months previous – there is a 3 month lag in the ENSO)

    Subtract: 0.53 * (AMO index)

    Subtract: 0.34 * (Southern Atlantic SST anomaly)

    or for this month, November 2008, subtract just 0.05C to get the normal temperatures which removes the natural variation in temps caused by these ocean cycles.

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