Global Temperature Trend Upate: April 2012

Every month University of Alabama in Huntsville climatologists John Christy and Roy Spencer report the latest global temperature trends from satellite data. Below are the newest data updated through April, 2012. 

Global climate trend since Nov. 16, 1978: +0.13 C per decade

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April temperatures (preliminary)

Global composite temp.: +0.30 C (about 0.54 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for April.

Northern Hemisphere: +0.41 C (about 0.74 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for April.

Southern Hemisphere: +0.18 C (about 0.32 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for April.

Tropics: -0.12 C (about 0.22 degrees Fahrenheit) below 30-year average for April.

Notes on data release: 

Spring brought somewhat more seasonal temperatures to the continental U.S., although it was still warmer than seasonal norms in April, according to Dr. John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. Temperatures over the contiguous 48 states averaged 1.49 C (about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than seasonal norms in April, making it the fifth warmest April in the 33-year satellite climate record. That was cooler than the record-setting 2.82 C (almost 5.1 degrees Fahrenheit) anomaly in March.

April 2012 was the fourth warmest April in the temperature record both globally and in the Northern Hemisphere. It was the warmest April in 33 years for the Northern Extra Tropics — everything from 20 degrees North all the way to the North Pole. Average temperatures there for the month were 0.73 C (1.3 degrees F) warmer than seasonal norms.

Go here to see the full satellite dataset. 

Comments

[sarcasmic]

1th!

[Groovus Maximus]

THE SCIENZ IS SETTLEDZ!!one1!Eat at Joe's!!1!

[Fist of Etiquette]

That was cooler than the record-setting 2.82 C (almost 5.1 degrees Fahrenheit) anomaly in March.

The difference between a trend and an anomaly is ideology.

[Mr. FIFY]

Externalities!

[Lord Humungus]

Question: The IPCC is projecting 0.2C warming per decade, i.e. 2 to 4C by the year 2100. What's your view?

Puls: These are speculative model projections, so-called scenarios - and not prognoses. Because of climate's high complexity, reliable prognoses just aren't possible. Nature does what it wants, and not what the models present as prophesy.

http://notrickszone.com/2012/0.....orologist/

[Lord Humungus]

html fail.

The Belief That CO2 Can Regulate Climate Is Sheer Absurdity Says Prominent German Meteorologist

[Brett L]

For a crazy denialist, his answers are so sensible. I hadn't thought about buoyancy and displacement w/r/t sea levels and ice before. He's right though (assuming the vast majority of the ice available for melting is supported by water).

[Isaac Bartram]

I believe he deals with the issue of icecaps that are on land above sea level (Greenland, Antarctica) with:

There are a great number of factors that influence sea level, e.g. tectonic processes, continental shifting, wind currents, passats, volcanoes. Climate change is only one of ten factors.

Much of the alarmist narrative is based on the assumption that the earth's systems are all completely static, except for climate.

[Isaac Bartram]

Puls: Ten years ago I simply parroted what the IPCC told us.

I think this is true of a great many of the scientists who make up the "consensus" on AGW. For the most part none of them have actually inspected the data and, in fact, many of them have no more training or experience than any other informed amateur to be commenting on it.

As for the journalists and politicians who make up the other part of the "consensus" they have only read the executive summaries of the IPCC reports which are written by political hacks and have been roundly criticised by at least some of the members of the IPCC itself for drawing unwarranted conclusions from the reports.

[mr simple]

Every month it looks more and more like the temp is oscillating about the mean, but that can't possibly be true. The science is settled!

But seriously, this is far too short a time series to make any meaningful long term projections, which would be meaningless regardless if they were based solely on past data and not the causes.

[Brett L]

It is oscillating about the mean. Its a 30 year running average and we only have 32 years of data.

[Alack]

Yeah, they way the data is presented here is pretty misleading, although I think it would be fine if it used a more long-term global average temperature as the baseline. Saying that 30 years of individual data points don't stray far from the average of those data points is nigh-tautological.

[mr simple]

I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to say so my response may be off. The oscillating about the mean is not automatic. If the trend just went up at a constant slope, the mean would be in the middle, but the trend would not be oscillating about it. It's the oscillation that is the important observation and runs counter to the AGW claims.

[Brett L]

You're right I was unclear. It is oscillating and the mean is the baseline. However, It does appear that the oscillations have greater area below the mean in the first half of the series and greater area above the mean in the second half of the series. So there is some drift.

So what I wrote above had nothing to do with what I was trying to say.

[JerseyPatriot]

Ron,

Out of curiosity, why do you use the atmospheric data only when HadCRUT combines the atmospheric and oceanic data?

[tarran]

I would hope it's because he has concluded that CRU is unreliable; the CRU tolerates liars who cherry pick what data they publish in order to further their cult's superstitions.

[JerseyPatriot]

These slanders against the scientists have been repeatedly brought up and repeatedly put down. Your faith is strong, but your arguments are desperate.

[tarran]

BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

I'm sorry, Jersy, that was rude of me...

Would you like a juice box?

Would a cookie dry up those tears?

[Mr. FIFY]

What kind of cookie goes well with Salty Ham Tears?

[WTF]

Your faith is strong, but your arguments are desperate.

I believe this is called 'projection'.

[Brett L]

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/epubs/nd.....raw_pg.gif

Why we don't use surface data.

[Brett L]

http://wattsupwiththat.com/201.....ince-1975/

New HADCRUT v. old HADCRUT -- revisions to dataset and filling.

Why use an evolving standard?

[R C Dean]

Heard a new one this weekend.

We've gone from "global warming" to "climate change", but apparently that isn't working because "climate change" implies some sort of trend or more-or-less longterm, widespread change.

So, now I think its going to be "climate disruption". I believe that allows the warmists to blame every single weather event and trend on CO2.

[tarran]

The cultists are also promoting a new vision of apocalypse - the dreaded 'weather weirding'. Since older generations didn't have smart-phones that uploaded to youtube or blog, the cult will be able to pretend that events that happen at a low frequency never happened before.

[mad libertarian guy]

So, now I think its going to be "climate disruption". I believe that allows the warmists to blame every single weather event and trend on CO2.

They're already at it. I have a friend who, with every weather event that he doesn't perceive as somehow normal, proclaims that it's because of "climate change."

Tornados, snow storms, lack of snow, any heat above the normal, cool temps below average, lots of rain, drought, whatever is all because of Global Warming. It's highly annoying.

[JerseyPatriot]

The climate threads and the student loans threads are a fun comparison. In the student loan threads, humanities majors are mercilessly mocked, and STEM is exalted. In the climate threads, the people who actually do the science are repeatedly trashed, their motives questioned, and their science refudiated by people who honestly think they have great insight that isn't covered in the first week of atmospheric chemistry.

The takeaway message is that all learning must be subject to the right-wing cultural prejudices of American libertarians. Science is fine, but politics is the ultimate truth. It's a hoot.

[tarran]

. In the climate threads, the people who actually do the science are repeatedly trashed, their motives questioned, and their science refudiated by people who honestly think they have great insight that isn't covered in the first week of atmospheric chemistry.

So Jersey, who is mocking and ridiculing Judy Curry?

[Isaac Bartram]

Since Judith Curry is a Climate Change Denier she is clearly a shill for Big Fossil Fuel. No further evidence is required.

Other shills include just about any scientist who specializes in studying hurricanes. Of all the claims made in IPCC reports few have been more wildly erroneous than the claims that hurricanes have become more frequent and intense since the middle of the twentieth century.

[Brett L]

JP:

For a very well docuemented analogous case to what I believe is going on in climate science, you should check out Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes.

To summarize, people within a scientific community colonized positions of authority and grant boards, and used their power to shut down any discussion of countervaling evidence to the position they had put forth. Their reputations became more important than the science.

The same arguments and behaviors are being displayed within the climate change community and it leads many of us to suspect that maintaining power and title are more important than what the truth is.

In both cases, the people in authority did, in fact, do science. However, they didn't do it rigorously.

[JerseyPatriot]

Taubes' book is very good, and he explains exactly which studies went wrong and why. For example, the Ancel Keys study, which kicked off lipophobia, was flawed from the start for cherry-picking the third of the countries that supported Keys' thesis. Please explain the climate studies that are wrong, and why.

Of course, because nutrition science went wrong does not mean that climate science is going wrong. There is no conspiracy to suppress the truth of AGW Denialism, just as there is no conspiracy to suppress the truth of the Subluxation Theory of Infectious Disease or the literal reading of Genesis 1. Science supports the Germ Theory of Infectious Disease, an old universe, and human-caused global warming.

[joshua corning]

Please explain the climate studies that are wrong, and why.

The proxy studies that show current temperature at 1000 year highs are based on only a few flawed proxies. Notably the Yamal single tree which goes away when compared to regional trends.

All the models have overestimated the current warming.

Satellites show CO2 is released in low population areas. ie the rise in CO2 is natural and caused by a warming planet not the other way around.

[joshua corning]

plus this:

http://westinstenv.org/wp-cont.....000yrs.jpg

[Groovus Maximus]

Subluxation Theory of Infectious Disease

This shit is really getting old, JP.

More on Osteopathic Medicine, which incorporates subluxation of joints concomitant with allopathic regimens of TX.

Moreover, I haven't seen one poster claim that chiropractic medicine is a cure all for infectious disease, and IMMO, any chiropractor that claims so is a quack. However, chiropractic care can be an adjuvant to more traditional allopathic TX regimens, particularly in the management of chronic PX.

More on the Palmer College of Chiropractic.

[Isaac Bartram]

You know, I don't believe that any of the posters that are obviously libertarian or libertarian leaning has ever posted sympathetically with regard to a literal reading of Genesis 1 or in support of denial of the Germ Theory of Infectious Disease. So I'm sort of wondering where that comment by JerseyPatriot came from.

Now as to AGW I believe there are some who accept it as fact and those who don't. What is pretty universal is the notion that the state should not be enslaving people our destroying everything that makes our modern standard of living possible in the service of somehow preventing the world from getting to hot.

[Brett L]

Except the part where they pick who will be invited to be on the IPCC review.

[Joshua]

Shifting sand...

You appeal to "experts" then abandon that when "experts" are shown to be imperfect.

You do not argue in good faith.

I haven't made up my mind about the extent of climate change, but at least a third of the science I have looked at has been awful.

The burden of proof is on the boy crying wolf, and I am not impressed with their burden carrying ability.

[R C Dean]

In the climate threads, the people who actually do pursue a political agenda by subverting the science

Or perhaps you believe that science is done best when its done in order to advance the right political agenda?

[VG Zaytsev]

Duh science is a democracy.

Scientists vote on what the truth is and when consensus is reached the science is settled.

[JerseyPatriot]

Do you have any evidence, besides fossil fuel complany propoganda? I'm guessing no.

[DesigNate]

How about the FACT that not one of the climate models or predictions has come true?

It's okay, I'm sure they'll get it right the next time.

[Groovus Maximus]

They're waiting for the clock to stop.

[R C Dean]

There's the destruction of original data, the emails on gaming the peer review process, the refusal to release information.

That's off the top of my head.

[Pip]

"above 30-year average for April"

Totally meaningless.

[R C Dean]

Still think a running 5 year average would be more informative.

[joshua corning]

http://climateaudit.files.word.....teadj2.png

Green line is what really happened.

Black line is the line used to make the hockey stick and based on one tree.

I think the oil companies made a time machine went back 1000 years and changed all the trees.

But they missed one tree...and the IPCC found it!!!

That or man made global warming is bullshit.

Anyway here is the full article:

http://climateaudit.org/2012/0.....awed-data/

[joshua corning]

This was supposed to be in response to this comment:

JerseyPatriot|5.14.12 @ 12:18PM|#

Do you have any evidence, besides fossil fuel complany propoganda? I'm guessing no.

[Mike Laursen]

Is it just me or is that curve starting to clearly take on the shape of a sine wave?

[Mike Laursen]

Oh, never mind. You guys were already talking about that above. Sigh, there goes my Nobel prize.

[joshua corning]

Well that and the graph has a sin wave on it....

[plu1959]

These are some of the best threads on HnR.

[????? ??????]

Thanks