Update: Latest Satellite Global Temperature Trend Data

A press release (just sent to me but not yet available online) from the satellite climatology folks at the University of Alabama at Huntsville is reporting:

Global climate trend since Nov. 16, 1978: +0.12 C per decade  

June temperatures (preliminary)

Global composite temp.: ±0.00 C (about 0.00 degrees Fahrenheit) above/below 20-year average for April.

Northern Hemisphere: +0.03 C (about 0.05 degrees Fahrenheit) above 20-year average for June.

Southern Hemisphere: -0.03 C (about 0.05 degrees Fahrenheit) below 20-year average for June.

May temperatures (revised):

Global Composite: +0.05 C above 20-year average

Northern Hemisphere: +0.05 C above 20-year average

Southern Hemisphere: +0.04 C above 20-year average

(All temperature variations are based on a 20-year average (1979-1998) for the month reported.) 

See also UAH climatologist Roy Spencer's report of the latest global temperature data below:

Comments

[Mike]

0.12 degress per decade. At this rate, in a few centuries the Earth will be as warm as it was during the Jurassic Period, and we all know that the planet was a barren wasteland back then.

[hmm]

WE"RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!
AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Never waste a good crisis.

This is clearly propaganda from Alabama to get more people to move to or visit that hot ass state. Where if you leave your shoes on the porch for a day they walk off on their own.

[comrade]

Jesusfreak hillbillies can't read a thermometer.

[Peter]

~2 degrees F per century? My air conditioner can beat that.

[Randolph Carter]

So global warming is crap? Not crap? Crap we can deal with?

[Peter]

Never waste a good crisis.

hmm, wasting a crisis is ok, what isn't ok is letting a crisis go to waste, because then we would be "doing nothing".

[PapayaSF]

Never mind the Jurassic; they were growing grapes in Scotland in historical times, and we still had ice caps, polar bears, and Florida and Bangladesh above sea level at the time.

Based on the graph, it sure looks like natural variations are much, much greater than any long-term trend caused by humans.

[denialist-smacker]

You are all so wrong! Temperature is not the important factor. It is the externalities caused by carbon production. It is folly to look at temperatures and conclude that we can do nothing. That is forgetting that temperature alone is not the reason we are turning our planet into a cesspool of sludge and corruption.

Your "fairy land" does not exist. It is a good thing people who know and understand the real problems in our future making the decisions. Not you.

Why the people on this site overwhelmingly want to destroy the world is beyond me.

[?]

The idea that there's a "global composite" temperature that can show meaningful fluctuation at hundredths of a degree is mathematically...bizarre.

Let's bring back angels/pinhead. It was less made up.

[Isaac Bartram]

Apparently Oxfam is arguing that farmers around the world are suffering crop failures and other hardships due to "global warming" in their latest fund raisers.

But they're talking about annual temperature changes in excess of 1dC* which if I'm not mistaken are likely due to local cyclical variations than what is normally understood as "climate change".

It's sort of like the folks who try to refute "global warming" by talking about the godawful cold winter they had last year.

*I'd make a degree symbol if I knew how.

[Isaac Bartram]

It is the externalities caused by carbon production.

And what, besides the "greenhouse effect", would those be?

[Benkham]

...the scientific margin-of-error in measuring such global temperatures is at least 0.1 degree Celsius... and likely higher.

Any conclusions from trends within the margin-of-error... are literally nonsense.

[Fascitis Necrotizante]

And what, besides the "greenhouse effect", would those be?

SLUDGE and CORRUPTION, sir! Can you not read?! FILTH and DEGRADATION! REPENT or REAP FURIOUS HARVESTS of RIGHTEOUS DENIALIST SMACKING!

[Lost_In_Translation]

How long until we're out of icecubes..err I mean icebergs?

[Silentz]

Come on Isaac, it's externalities. You don't have to explain them. Just accept that they're there and that they're going to kill us all.

[Fascitis Necrotizante]

Why the people on this site overwhelmingly want to destroy the world is beyond me.

Can this please be a drink? It's afternoon on the east coast and It is a good thing people who know and understand the real problems in our future making the decisions. Not you. made me thirsty.

[Zeb]

"You are all so wrong! Temperature is not the important factor. It is the externalities caused by carbon production."

What the fuck are you talking about? We are talking about global warming/climate change. Temperature is the subject here. pollution and corruption are distinct issues.

[matth]

The externalities caused by carbon production involve profit, which is obviously evil. So, it needs to be minimized if not eliminated altogether.

Oh, also freedom - another externality of carbon production.

And breathing. Or is carbon production an externality of breathing? I forget.

[Isaac Bartram]

The idea that there's a "global composite" temperature that can show meaningful fluctuation at hundredths of a degree is mathematically...bizarre.

Got to admit, I've been trying to get my head around that one for a while too.

Any conclusions from trends within the margin-of-error... are literally nonsense.

I'm not sure why no one's brought this up before.

[stuartl]

Uh, guys? If you can't tell denialist-smacker is a spoof, it is time to start using relaxation exercises before you post.

[Isaac Bartram]

stuartl, I suspected it, but like Juanita in her early days it sounded like something that any number of true believers might have said.

[Mike M.]

Here in Washington D.C., it was one of the most delightful Fourth of July holiday weekends I can ever remember, and we're still topping out in the low to mid 80s on the extended ten day forecast. And that's below average for us.

[P Brooks]

See? This is why we must act, and act now!

[Isaac Bartram]

It's been hotter than usual this June and July in Central Florida. But so far while temperatures have approached record levels they haven't reached them.

[KyleG]

I didn't see any uncertainties posted with the data but maybe I clicked the wrong link and missed the actual report. Any error analysis that I missed?

[Xeones]

And that's below average for us.

Unusually low temperatures are as much a symptom of global warming as unusually high temperatures. Or if temperatures stay the same. Or something.

[hmm]

It was down right chilly in Saint Louis yesterday. You had to chew the air since the humidity was the normal 10,000%, but the temperature was nice.

My personal favorite is now it is climate change. WTF has the climate been doing on this hunk of rock since it first start orbiting the sun? I'll take changing for 100 pat.

[dbcooper]

*I'd make a degree symbol if I knew how.

? = Alt+167

[bloodstar]

Of course, looking at the chart, you realize that from 1998 on, we've had 60 months worth of data above .2 deg C.(that's .5 degrees F.) above the 20 year average.

And that the previous 20 year average had about 12 months worth of data above .2 deg. C.

So, in the last 11 years we've had about 5 times the months above average that we had the previous 20 years.

Just saying

[QSL]

Since 2007, winters in Michigan have been usually long and snowy while summers have been on the cooler side, at least compared to the string of warmer years prior to 2007.

Doesn't prove or disprove anything. But areas of eastern Canada and northeastern US haven't been visited by odd warmth as other parts of globe apparantly have. (Thank the stubborn, perpetual "Hudson Bay Low" that sits and spins and continuously ushers chilly air down into the Great Lakes)

[Michael Ejercito]

Never mind the Jurassic; they were growing grapes in Scotland in historical times, and we still had ice caps, polar bears, and Florida and Bangladesh above sea level at the time.

Could Florida's Indian tribes vouch for that?

[fresno dan]

Is "externality" an euphamism for "fart"?

[denialist-smacker]

I want to thank you all. You made my day.

[troll apologist]

Whether you like it or not, the best material in the comments usually occurs when someone (in jest or not) takes an extreme position then backs it up with vociferous ad hominem.

I support continued trolling in H&R and only hope that the creme de la creme (trolls that genuinely believe their own posts) can be encouraged to contribute more broadly and openly.

Also, everyone loves drinking.

[Matt]

I'm shocked by these catastrophic numbers! Everyone line up and turn in your freedoms immediately.

[Ponce de Leon]

Could Florida's Indian tribes vouch for that?

Certainly not! I have disposed of every last one!

[Silentz]

Doesn't that chart start right about the time that the "little ice age" ended in the 70s? Wasn't there a downward trend just prior to that?

[hmm]

There was at least 30% less ice in the new Ice Age III: Dawn of the Dinosaurs movie. We must act quickly. Global warming, I mean global climate change is starting to effecting our movies.

[Larry Seltzer]

>>Global composite temp.: ?0.00 C (about 0.00 degrees Fahrenheit) above/below 20-year average for April.

That's a typo right? Should be "...for June."

[EscapedWestOfTheBigMuddy]

Would someone please report the fits and the reduced Chi-squares for constant and linear functions as fitted to this data?

Log likelihood preferred, but I'll take least squares.

To the Mark I eyeball that looks like noise. With---maybe---a tiny little warming trend.

[Andrew Jackson]

Ponce de Leon | July 6, 2009, 1:43pm | #
Could Florida's Indian tribes vouch for that?

Certainly not! I have disposed of every last one!

You left some for me!

[Isaac Bartram]

Actually, Andy, the one's you dealt with had migrated from the north less barely two or three hundred years before.

It was them who took care of whoever Ponce de Leon left behind.

[R C Dean]

Come on Isaac, it's externalities. You don't have to explain them. Just accept that they're there and that they're going to kill us all.

Oh, yeah. We had an M. Externality posting here last week. Very threatening.

[Baa]

The latest global-warmist alarm is rather comical: Sheep are shrinking! The New York Times describes the findings:

The wild Soay sheep that live on the island of Hirta in the North Atlantic have been under careful scientific observation since 1985, partly because the island ecosystem is a simple one consisting of the sheep and the vegetation they eat.Timothy Coulson, a professor of population biology at Imperial College London, and his colleagues analyzed the sheep data and found that the weight of the average female Soay has slimmed about three ounces a year, or about 5 percent over the past quarter-century.It's not really as funny when you do the math. We imagined woolly beasts the size of housecats, but if you do the math, it turns out they still weigh nearly 90 pounds apiece. (There's still tongue-twister potential here: Can you say "Hugh's ewes used to be huge" 10 times fast?) Even if they continue shrinking three ounces a year, it'll be nearly three centuries before their weight is negative.

How does global warming shrink sheep, anyway? You may imagine an effect similar to running a wool sweater through the dryer, but in fact it is not individual sheep--is that an oxymoron?--that shrink. Rather, a warmer climate turns out to be more hospitable to ovine life:

Larger sheep have better odds of surviving, and evolution tends to favor those that are stronger.But thanks to changing climate, the survival of the fittest has become a bit easier, enabling more of the less fit to survive. Fall lasts now later into the year and spring arrives earlier and more of the smaller lambs, which once perished in winter, now survive to their first birthday.The next time you see somebody driving a Prius or buying one of those compact fluorescent bulbs, tell him about all the little lambs he's driving to the slaughter by reducing his carbon footprint.

[Isaac Bartram]

Oh, yeah. We had an M. Externality posting here last week. Very threatening.

R C, the original intent of posing the question in my post was to get a response.

I figured it would be enternaining whether denialist-smacker was a troll or not.

[Voros McCracken]

"There was at least 30% less ice in the new Ice Age III: Dawn of the Dinosaurs movie. We must act quickly. Global warming, I mean global climate change is starting to effecting our movies."

What do you think the plotline of Ice Age II: The Meltdown was?

[troll guidance counselor]

" Oh, yeah. We had an M. Externality posting here last week. Very threatening.

R C, the original intent of posing the question in my post was to get a response.

I figured it would be enternaining whether denialist-smacker was a troll or not.

"

If only all of the internets were so enlightened. People can be such pretentious twats that they fail to see the benefit of industrious trolling in this day and age. H&R has a bright future for you!