Data Comparisons

Time to guess the July UAH temperature anomaly!

30 Comments

Zer0th, who is a day ahead of me, posted:

It’s Aug 1 here in blighty.

N’er mind the ante-Renaissance Vatican zeal of the new-model priesthood re keeping the holy tomes for their eyes only… what I REALLY want to know is: will we be having another UAH pool this month? 🙂

Well, why not? The Channel 5 AMSU posted July 30 temperatures; July 31st won’t be available until sometime after the entire planet has clicked over to August. Even missing one day, Channel 5 may be the best we have for guessing the July 2009 UAH anomaly before Roy tells us what it really was. Here’s a graph:

Figure 1: Channel 5 AMSU anomaly relative to average daily average for AMSU baseline period.
Figure 1: Channel 5 AMSU anomaly relative to average daily average for AMSU baseline period.

As you can see:

  1. July was toasty in the troposphere.
  2. The temperature anomaly dashed madly upward during the early part of July. This was expected since El Nino conditions have recently established themselves in the Pacific.
  3. Temperatures indicated by the Channel 5 exceeded the record for all past July’s recorded by Channel 5. (Bear in mind, part of this is due to the fact that the AMSU drift, and part is due to actual temperature changes.)
  4. Temperatures flattened and began to drop a little over a week ago. The past week’s measurements declined each day.

Now, given this information and any other information you prefer, feel free to guess the July anomaly before Roy reports. When guessing, remember: Roy reports UAH to 3 significant figures. I’m guessing 0.435C.

30 thoughts on “Time to guess the July UAH temperature anomaly!”

  1. July 1998 was .510 so the record might still go unbroken!I’m watching this closely though (and I’m ready for the “I told you so”s if and when the 1998 record is broken).

    I’m usually really bad at this guessing stuff, but I figure with a wide enough margin I’ve got a shot! Here goes:

    .400+-.120

    I doubt I’ll be “wrong” 🙂

    Anyone care to know where I got my numbers?

  2. Andrew_FL (Comment#16988) I don’t care .418 because if you are close, they are higher. The cooling areas in US indicate that the atmospheric measurements above surface have to show warming since the earth is cooling. War is peace; cooling is warming; I love Big Brother.

    lol

  3. I’ll go with 0.485. Close to the record but not enough to get flustered about.

    John F. Pittman: as Anthony is so fond of pointing out, weather is not climate, and the U.S. is not the world. A growing El Nino wouldn’t necessarily have a large impact on U.S. temperatures quite yet, though it does suggest we might be in for a warm fall if the El Nino continues.

  4. Zeke–
    I’m hoping for warm fall. I think my first tomato will be ripe on Sunday, and I finally got basil seeds to sprout. If fall is warm, I may get a decent harvest.

    Oh.. I planted sweet potatoes and peppers too. I’m hoping to have some peppers so we can grill dragon turds using home grown peppers.

  5. Zeke-that depends where you live. Some places tend to be warmer during El Nino, others cooler. The Southeastern US I believe has the opposite effect from the West coast, but I don’t know exactly.

  8. Lucia, Dragon Turds???? Peppers? Now that’s a relationship. BTW even here in the Northern part of the South our tomatoes just came in on Monday. Lot’s of summer squash, tho, and hot peppers aren’t. Too cool for them so far.

  9. +0.397 (purely a guess). At my house in NE NJ, the anomalies for June and July were -3.8 and -3.6, respectively. SOI fell during July but looks like it is leveling-off or might even rise again and remains positive so I still do not think that the El Nino will be strong or long-lasting.

    http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/

    Good luck with your garden!

  10. First, I Manned out any undesirable low values and then Rahmsdorfed the rest into a straight line and then applied a Hansen historical correction algorithm to adjust the base of comparison and got an anomaly of 1.8. But that seems a tad high.

    So instead, I will just assume the heat in the hidden pipeline will remain there for yet another month and just SWAG a figure of 0.445. That is of course plus or minus 4 degrees C –my model has a really large error range, so it’s got to be right.

  11. I am having trouble with my basil and hot peppers as well. This is one year I decided not to plant sweet, because it gets so hot so fast, I can only get about 6 fruit per bush before the temperature causes rot. So I got tired of trying.

    I guess that shows just how much I really beleive in global cooling.

    My wife is happy though. The first time in my life (56) that I was able to cut off the AC in July at night, on a few nights and open the windows. Any month we can limit damage to our pocketbook from the local utility is a good month and cause to celebrate.

  13. I have been following the Channel 5 data for some time and it is simply not a good representation of the published monthly anomaly. NOAA publishes a daily map of global anomalies that does provide a good qualitative snapshot of how warm we are, and it has not been all that hot. I say the anomaly comes in at 0.15.

  15. BBucker– Do you have a link to the daily snapshots? I could use that next month.

    CoRev–
    Dragon turds are jalepenos stuffed with italian sausage wrapped in bacon and grilled. John Kass of the Chicago Tribune published the recipe, and we are hooked!

  16. Can we get some of the warmth up in Minneapolis? I saw this noted today:

    According to the Minnesota State Climatologist, this month ranked 3rd coldest statewide since records have been kept. International Falls has seen its record coldest July with not even a single high in the 80s! Here in the Cities, we went through the month without hitting 90. That’s only the 8th time we’ve done that…a fairly rare feat.

    Also – I’ll take .404 – just for kicks. And if this in horribly formatted, I’m blaming Google Chrome.

  18. If the link does not work, google ESRL PSD map room home, and click on that link. Under climate products, click on Global Circulation, means and anomalies, operational data, animations. Scroll to bottom to surface temps, I like the 1-day 8 frame animation. Also have option to plot actual temperatures which can be more useful than anomalies at times.

  19. B Bucker–
    Thanks. But there are multiple errors in that link. I know “cdc.noa” should e “ncdc.noaa”,but there must be at least one more typo because I can’t sort it out to make it work.

    Could you try again?

  21. Ok– I fixed the link. It was just the “noa” instead of “noaa”.

    That’s the forecast for August. We’re actually guessing July. Seems weird, but Roy won’t post the result for a few days, so it’s basically trying to predict what he’ll post.

    Do you know any measured data map from NOAA?

  23. Pingback: The Blackboard » NOAA surface Temperature Animation for July

  24. I liked SteveF’s method and was going to go with .321 in honor of Apollo 11 but being a denier that seems way too high so after appropriate hansenizing, it comes out as .123.

  25. My guess is +0.320C. Based on the AMSU I get 0.400. The seasonal ONI’s indicate 0.240C. The descrepancy is unusually large – I’ve picked halfway between.

  27. The largest month to month change in the record is .293. So I will guess that that is matched but not exceeded, that is .294.

    if I just looked at the one month data I would agree with Lucia.

  28. .472

    It shouldn’t be a record, because I suspect that even though this month has been above the record for a significant part of the month my guess is that the majority of those daily records was for one single year, 1998.

  29. David-the July 1998 anomaly was .510, so that would be pretty far from a record.

    BTW everybody, I have forgotten how I got my guesstimate, so forget asking about it! 🙂

  30. Andrew_FL,

    I am not sure what you mean. Wasn’t July 1998 a record for July, or do I have that wrong?

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