29 thoughts on “UHA TLT: 2012 limps out of the gate!”

1. Woop! Finally.

2. Lucia –

   As I mentioned on the other thread, my premonition was correct. With an extreme anomaly (lower than any estimate) my sixth lowest guess was always going to miss out….

   Getting closer though!

   Of course, congratulations to those whose skill and judgement put them in the money 🙂

3. I love surprises. Those of us watching policlimate.com should have been expecting a big drop. It’s been interesting watching the difference between temperatures on that site coming in every six hours versus the monthly UHA.

   Looks like February should be even colder if things keep up their current pace.

4. Ged–
   Yep! But I’m so out of the news loop right now. Last night, sitting in the waiting room at the hospital the woman next to me said “If you grew up in Libertyville, you probably heard the news about Stevenson Highschool?” My answer was no because I’d been holed up watching the inlaws for about 36 hour straight!

   (The news: http://www.myfoxchicago.com/dpp/news/metro/stevenson-high-school-lincolnshire-drug-probe-student-cell-phones-20120202 This school is very near where I grew up. I was saddened to hear Don Cornelius died. I loved Soul Train and Don Cornelius has a sex voice! I saw that in the waiting room too. )

5. The minus sign! Where’s my minus sign?!

   (Just kidding. I had bet positive).

6. In the anedoctal territory, back in São Paulo, Brazil, I think this was the coldest, wettest January I recall.

7. What MDR said!!! Moreover, there is another problem, obviously the internet dropped some bits in xmisssion. It missed spelled my own name. Who the heck is that CoiRev? Clearly an internet issue! 😉

8. Anteros,

   A well deserved pat on the back from yourself, to yourself. If not for that cursed extreme anomaly, you might have been 5th, or 6th. Next time just bet 1 quatloo. You won’t go broke as fast.

9. Just doing my job anchoring the low end of the bell curve (just as in school)

   You’re welcome!

10. Tim W. (Comment #89281) —

    If it weren’t for bets like ours, the House would go broke. Then what would YFNWG do to garner a windfall of quatloos?

11. Don Montford –

    Glad to see you’re still full of the joys of spring 🙂
    I probably don’t have to tell you that Joshua is rather missing you and your little ‘interactions’.

12. I believe that’s the first time that every single bet has been on the high side.

13. Anteros,

    That little putz really doesn’t miss me. He takes everything I say so seriously. That boy got some serious issues. Keep yer nose clean. I’ll be watching you 🙂

14. TerryMN– I haven’t checked but I suspect that is so. I suspect we’ve never had the observation fall outside the range of bets. If it weren’t for the persistent hospital / assisted living visits over the past two months, I’d offer to budget time to look. But right now I know I would let that slip.

15. Don M “I’ll be watching you.”

    The Police

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMOGaugKpzs

16. Lucia, I’ve been dealing with family hospital/rehab facility visits for the last 2 months so I know what you are going through. Hope everything works out.

17. Dang it,

    I must have my dartboard mounted upside down.

    🙂
    Robert

18. What’s the betting this is the last time it ever goes below zero?

19. Paul Butler –

    You can have three to one, as long as you’re betting quatloos 🙂

20. Ged,
    “Looks like February should be even colder if things keep up their current pace.”

    Not necessarily.
    Based on AQUA CH5, the daily temp. reached it’s lowest point around January 23rd, with several days of record lows. Then it started to rise rapidly and February’s temp. will depend on whether that rise continues.
    Anyone watching AQUA CH5 should not have been surprised by this figure.

21. Ray,

    See, that’s not necessarily true. I watch both AQUA CH5 and policlimate on a regulare basis. AQUA CH5 gives you absolutes, but policlimate gives you the actual global anomaly; so you can’t say as much with AQUA CH5 unless you know what the anomaly for the years your comparing the current with.

    More than that, you’ll notice that the AQUA CH5 squiggles a lot, so the “raise” your talking about isn’t actually that much of a raise, and has flattened out today. Policlimate on the other hand shows that raise too, but it has left the global anomaly at -0.228 C. That’s quite lower than the January average! (January started out with a positive 0.1 C anomaly for about half the month, hence the average is just -0.09).

    Still, one never knows what temperature is going to do, that’s what’s so interesting about it–as this last round of everyone betting too considerably too high illustrates beautifully (definitely the fault of the groundhogs, saying we’ll have more weeks of winter). And I can’t give you concrete conversions between policlimate’s numbers and what CH5 gives–never bothered analyzing the relationship between the two that deeply.

    But anyways, the temps have not risen rapidly yet. Don’t let CH5 squiggles confuse you–they are not the anomaly–a raise one day may be an even more negative anomaly than the previous day.

    —————

    Lucia,

    I pray everything works out for you and yours. Not the the sort of activities anyone would plan to have :(.

22. Ray/Ged,

    it seems that at least one of you are trying do induce foolish betters to spend their quatloos unwisely. Shame on you!

23. “limping out of the gate” I kinda like that analogy to horse racing – and betting.

    I have been wondering in my world of guilt how one in our part of the globe who has been greatly enjoying this very mild winter think about globally cool temperatures.

    Looking at AGW from a simplistic and short term point of view one might feel good that the world is not warming so badly and yet my experience is seeing the benefits of warming. That is the best of all worlds view.

    On the other hand the more sophisticated and nuanced view would be that AGW is going to pick losers (mostly) and a few regional winners. To that I would have to react as not being worthy and very, very guilty.

24. Damn, since winning in the ice minimum competition the force seems to have deserted me. Quatloos-less!

25. I am sure the climate models all knew thqt there would be a blocking high over Siberia….Feb should be low too, if the experience of Europe counts

26. @diogenes

    There is always a blocking high over Siberia in the winter. The key is how the Atlantic/Pacific/lower lattitude weather systems affect the flow of cold air. Japan is having an epic snow season, with winds more westerly than the normal nor-westers. We are well on the way to match 2005 at 1,550cm.

27. Ged,
    “But anyways, the temps have not risen rapidly yet. Don’t let CH5 squiggles confuse you–they are not the anomaly–a raise one day may be an even more negative anomaly than the previous day.”
    Yes, I watch anomalies too, although not via Policlmate and I am not confused. Since average temp. at this time of the year are static, any increase in temp. will usually result in a reduced negative anomaly.
    “Policlimate on the other hand shows that raise too, but it has left the global anomaly at -0.228 C. That’s quite lower than the January average! (January started out with a positive 0.1 C anomaly for about half the month, hence the average is just -0.09). ”
    According to actual AQUA CH5 figures, the average January anomaly was -0.218k, not far off the current anomaly. But, by January 15th, the anomaly was – (minus) 0.067k, not +0.1c as you say. By January 23rd, the daily anomaly had reached -0.491k, resulting in a fall in the cumulative figure to -0.175k, after which, the daily anomaly did rise rapidly to “only” -0.227k by January 31st. The cumulative anomaly did not rise rapidly during the latter half of January, because of the very low temperatures up to January 23rd., but the daily temperatures, and anomalies did rise rapidly from the 23rd onwards.
    Of course, as you say, nobody knows what the temp. will do from now on, but the point is that the temp. is now in a warming phase and average temperatures during February are fairly static, so any warming at all will reduce the negative anomaly.

28. Ray,
    You did some good analysis, but it goes to show that the AQUA CH5 anomaly for January was -0.218 K when the TLT was -0.09. There’s a conversion here that isn’t straight forward.

    Also, to make my point. Yesterday policlimate showed the global anomoly to be -0.143 K or so. Today, the absolute temperature line for AQUA CH5 went up some, yet the global temperature anomaly has fallen to -0.217 K. So, even though absolute CH5 temperatures went up, for this time of the year, it still went up LESS than the baseline, and hence the anomaly has actually fallen. That’s what makes AQUA CH5 harder to follow unless you have all the datasets to compare to on hand; which sadly I do not, and hence why I like policlimate.

29. Ged,
    Yes, there is a conversion to be done to convert the AQUA CH5 anomaly to the equivalent UAH anomaly, but I do find that it is approximately linear.
    I am not sure whether the figures you quote are daily or cumulative, but I make the daily CH5 for Feb.5th to be about -0.05k and the cumulative figure to be -0.138k (these are relative to the average temps. which were previously shown in the discover website data files). The AQUA CH5 temp. has continued to rise and the daily and cumulative figures are already above 2011 at the same point and the daily anomaly is now very close to the average.
    Of course, the eventual AQUA CH5 and UAH anomalies will depend upon how long this rise continues and whether there is another large fall in temp. like last month, but all I am saying is that we cannot assume that the February UAH anomaly will be as low as that for January.

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