OMG! The Channel 5 AMSU temperatures page reports June 13, 2010 456.85F was warmer than this day last year!!!
I clicked to read the text file associated with the graph; nearly all temperatures, including last years June 13 temperature are currently replaced by the missing value flag of -999.00. It looks like the script doing the subtraction is treating last years June 13 tropospheric temperature as 0K. Talk about snowball earth!
Presumably, an inappropriate text file was read in during today’s update; and the previously recorded values will reappear shortly. These are values of the daily anomalies I’d calculated based on data available yesterday:
Here’s the betting entry form for those of you who have not yet bet on the UAH data:
[sockulator(../musings/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/UAHBets2.php?Metric=UAH TTL?Units=C?cutOffMonth=6?cutOffDay=16?cutOffYear=2010?DateMetric=June, 2010?)sockulator]
Betting is set to close “6/16/2010”, I think that’s exactly at midnight separating 6/15 and 6/16 in California.
The error return code is (1). I didn’t realise his computer system was so screwed. Could be the work of criminal hackers.
Bugs– It could be all sorts of things. I’ve noticed at NOAA, I sometimes arrive and find the temperature pages missing. If I come back 30 minutes later, they’ve been updated. I’ve always assumed that means something is taken offline while all the new data is sucked in.
BTW: I suspect the value of 253.805C that happened to be listed for June 13 will change on update too. If it doesn’t that will represent quite a large daily drop.
“It looks like the script doing the subtraction is treating last years June 13 tropospheric temperature as 0K”
Interesting. This puts the current temp well below the freezing point of water at surface pressure. That doesn’t make sense. Presumably the pressure is lower up in the atmosphere, but because water’s behavior is anomalous, water’s melting point moves up, not down, with lower pressure. How is the water vapor not solidifying right out of the atmosphere? Is the pressure up there less than .006 atmospheres?
http://www.standnes.no/chemix/english/phase-diagram-water.htm
AndrewFL– The TLT’s aren’t the surface; this is at roughly 4km above the surface. It’s colder up there. Sometimes, the clouds contain ice crystals.
Obviously the computer calculated the difference to absolute zero
( 0 K = – 275 °C = – 459 °F ) instead of the difference to 13 June 2009.
The value of – 19.5 °C is rather low compared to the standard value of ICAO. It would be 253.805 K, not 253.805 °C (C without the ° is not correct anyway).
The air pressure is 600 mbar (click on graph), which would be 600 hPa in modern units, and about 0.6 atmospheres depending on whether you use at or atm.
lucia (Comment#45906)-What bothers me is that under those conditions I don’t see how liquid or gas phase water can exist at all-it should all be ice. As Alexej noted above, the pressure is about .6 atmospheres, at which the melting point should be a little over 273.15 K. The mean temperature is clearly much lower than that, deep into solid territory. What gives?
Andrew–
Before I give you an answer to your mystery, think about this:
The atmospheric pressure in my house is roughly 1 atmosphere; the boiling point of water at 1 atmosphere is about 100 C. The temperature in my house is much less than 100C in my house right now, and there is water vapor in the air. This is true even though the temperature in my house is deep into liquid water temperature. In fact, if I mop the floor or leave clothes out to dry, water would evaporate. 🙂
I don’t understand how these scientists keep screwing up. People here find all of these mistakes, there is clearly way too much focus going on with the stupid global warming. Oh well, I guess it is good that there are sites like this that analyze the temperatures. I have a question I hope somebody can answer. The radiative forcing value of carbon dioxide has been changed by the IPCC at least 3 times that I know of. How do they know that they now have the right forcing value? It seems to me that a lot of these values are just assumptions.
Oh, right, the difference between evaporation and vaporization, right? Very subtle, but important!
Andrew_FL–
That and the partial pressure of water vapor in my room is not 1 atmosphere. It’s much lower. The same thing happens with air in the upper troposphere and/or when it’s colder near the surface.
I said GHG’s could never turn us into another Venus and there is the proof! More fool I!
OMG, it’s worse than we thought!
I think you should stop knitting if you want any credibility
Lucia could you explain us the basics of thermodynamics?
Start with enthalpy
shooshmon (Comment#45917) June 15th, 2010 at 1:10 pm
I don’t understand how these scientists keep screwing up.
“it’s a web page, chill.” . While we might expect it to be perfect, all software has bugs. whether it’s a scientist or a engineer or a hacker doing the coding. In fact it probably wasnt a scientist doing the code. more eyes on the problem always helps.
We now have actual data again, and evidently its Aqua channel 5 now (according to the label). Its 457 degrees (F) warmer than last year if you read the chart note, or about 0.5 degree (C) warmer if you look at the chart values.
Gone is the 20 year record and 20 year average. And the data seems to be spikier now.
The most recent data point appears indistinguishable from 2005 at this point, though most of the year has been warmer than that. Indeed, it looks like the first half of the year was mostly warmer than all other years from 2002 on-pretty much continuously indeed, since mid April.
If I had to guess though, I’d say that this elevation relative to the other years will not last through the summer. We’ll probably be back to more “normal” conditions, at least for the last ten years, by the end of the year-depending on what ENSO decides to do. 2010 will definitely be a warm year, though.
Michael–
Mystery solved! Unfortunately for me, I can now no longer make daily anomaly charts comparing to the baseline. I wonder if we’ll get a baseline eventually?
I don’t understand the angoise. It shows up like this frequently and is probably because the routine subtracts automatically for all the channels and is probably the same for all channels. No comparison graph/temp so you get 0°K – currentT.
As the Mosh says “get over it”.
Andrew,
I have to be pedantic here: evaporation is a sort of vaporisation. What it isn’t is boiling.
I’m in a bit of a paranoid mood today and think that these recent changes were done to get rid of that ’20 year record highs’ trace that has been below this year’s trace for a substantial period (never before witnessed). First the switching from 13-month smoothing to 25-month smoothing (and back), then the new versions taking the top off recent record monthly anomalies, and now this.
Again, I’m in a paranoid mood (lack of sleep). 🙂
It looks like they may be finally converting to the AQUA satellite.
This year when UAH is showing a persistently high T it’s notable that they’ve twice made changes whereas in the past when the T was showing low T they were resistant to change. Spencer seems to be feeling the heat (metaphorically).
stephen richards
I don’t understand the angoise.
I wouldn’t have posted except that I wanted to encourage last minute bets. You are correct that there are intermittent glitches in the web available data. This one was more dramatic than most– there was exactly 1 non “-999” record in the data set.
Neven–
Oddly, whatever the motive, it looks like the Troposphere temps may finally drop. (I’m basing this both on the recent drop and ENSO forcasts.)
DG–
It does look like the converted to the AQUA satellite, as they said they would. I happened to catch it on the day when they swapped out data.
Mosher, I don’t think you got my point. I could care less who did the website or what the graph shows. Think of it this way. If we had all the technology we have now, say in 1940, and we were monitoring the temperature and what scientists say and all that, what difference would it make? Oh boy, the temperature went up, so now we can infer that this, this and that will happen. Oh, the temperature went down, well now this this and that is going to happen. My point is that humans never cared about monitoring the temperature in the past, they assumed it was controlled by the earth and God. Why can’t we do the same? And that’s not to say we should not monitor the temperature of the globe but I’m so sick of hearing how a temperature this month or that month is higher than it was the same month 30 years ago. Guess what, the temperature was higher and lower at another point in time. What difference does it make?
When UAH moved to version 5.3 back in February one of the consaquencies was the reduction of the winter anomalies (Dec 09, Jan 10, Feb 10). One of the predictions I seem to recall from a couple of people was that the anomalies later in the year would likely see a small boost from this change.
Perhaps they can find a way of keeping the old data set online for a few more months to see how things pan out against it.
Oh and I forgot to point out another item of interest – he appears to have added a daily SST channel. Or was that there before?
“Stephen richards (Comment#45957) June 16th, 2010 at 8:27 am
No comparison graph/temp so you get 0°K – currentT.”
Appreciate you know how to make a °; but the K lost the ° in 1967. See SI.
lucia (Comment#45973) June 16th, 2010 at 11:28 am
Oddly, whatever the motive, it looks like the Troposphere temps may finally drop. (I’m basing this both on the recent drop and ENSO forcasts.)
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Some comentators suggest that the temperature anomaly in the atmosphere peaks just after the el Nino ends, I have seen it suggested this is due to the warm surface waters dissapating over a wider area.
Of note that the mid troposphere anomaly on the UAH site has shot up notably in the past couple of days. There is still alot of large pools of very warm water in the Atlantic, South Pacific and Indian Oceans.
Nature has a way of making fools of us all, but it may be a month or two before we see noteworthy drops in the anomaly.
Re: dorlomin (Jun 18 04:35),
I agree. When I said “may finally drop”, I didn’t mean to suggest they have already dropped or that rise and fall precisely matches that of El Nino. The drop may well take a month or two.
Of course it’s even possible they won’t drop. I’m just suggesting there is a reason to expect they may drop pretty soon. Of course, we don’t know how soon, exactly how much, or even when.
Anyway I had a bit of an epiphany over why the satellite data and the surface temperatures vary so much.They both show similar(ish) trends but the UAH\ RSS data tends to show el Ninos and la Ninas much more forcefully. Then it kinda struck me, the satellites measure mid troposphere temperatures not surface temperatures, so they will be affected by the latent heat released as water vapour condenses into liquid water to form clouds! Bingo says I. ENSO events are largely in the equatorial oceans, they will allow alot more water vapour to enter the atmosphere and form clouds. But the surface station measurements wont pick this up. Surface temperatures will likely show up the land heating more as air over land warms faster than air over the oceans but land is not really a source of water vapour.
Hence GISSTemp and so on should show a different pattern to UAH\ RSS, that is less variation in due to the ENSO and more overall warming.
Clumsily written, but have I gotten it right idea?
New UAH for June is in
http://www.drroyspencer.com/
That was a bit quick.
Global cooling since March!!!!! Al Gore is fat and likes happy endings!!!!!
another second hottest month.
and that is with the revised Spencer method, which was introduced to keep a gap to 1998.
sod (Comment#47668) July 1st, 2010 at 4:11 pm
another second hottest month.
and that is with the revised Spencer method, which was introduced to keep a gap to 1998.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = =
There is no evidence of wrong doing on the part of the UAH team that I am aware off. If you have a good well researched paper that you have or are about to submit for peer review showing something nefarious then please post it otherwise I would appreciate if people did not turn idle speculation and gossip into allegations.
And the RSS teams data also shows that 2010 has not topped 1998.
carrot eater:
Globally there’s been a cooling trend starting in January:
YR MON GLOBE NH SH TROPICS
2010 1 0.648 0.860 0.436 0.681
2010 2 0.603 0.720 0.486 0.791
2010 3 0.653 0.850 0.455 0.726
2010 4 0.501 0.799 0.203 0.633
2010 5 0.534 0.775 0.292 0.708
2010 6 0.436 0.552 0.321 0.475
I’m sure that’s terribly important for some reason.
It works out to a staggering 5°/century drop. It is indeed much worse than we could possibly thought. I’d even say our goose is veritably cooked.
Or should I say freeze dried??!
/chickenlittle
Re:
“Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.”
— Terry Pratchett (Reaper Man)
That was quick! I’m gearing up for the long weekend– I didn’t even see Roy got that out on the first!