David Stockwell has an interesting post here on March 2008 temperatures, noting a divergence between NH and SH temperatures, with NH temperatures rebounding and SH temperatures continuing to cool. http://landshape.org/enm/march-2008-temperatures/
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Climate Audit 
101 Comments
From the RSS satellite map – it was cold in Western Europe, Scandinavia and North America – and very warm in Eastern Europe and Asia.
The tropics and southern hemisphere were universally cold except for the southern tip of South America.
Today, a highly uncharacteristic approach to global warming from the BBC: “Global temperatures ‘to decrease’.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7329799.stm
“Global temperatures this year will be lower than in 2007 due to the cooling effect of the La Nina current in the Pacific, UN meteorologists have said.”
But also uncharacteristically balanced: “But Mr Jarraud [WMO Gen Sec] insisted this was not the case and noted that 1998 temperatures would still be well above average for the century. When you look at climate change you should not look at any particular year,” he said.
Yes, we know that, but funny that 1998 was the peak year on the Hockey Stick graph. And funny that at the BBC almost every extreme weather event is attributed to global warming.
I have been watching the global weather patterns on Google Earth for several months and it has been uniformly cloudy in the southern hemisphere, much more so than in the north over the past few months, Australia too.
How very interesting that 10 years of level or declining land and sea surface, lower troposphere and deep ocean temperatures should not count. On the basis of increasingly questionable data sources, the 1979-1998 trend lines rise and all is doom and gloom. However, on the basis of more readily verifiable sources [e.g. satellites and ocean probes] 1998-2008 trend lines level off and decline but the “institutions” [e.g IPCC and the MSM] keep on telling us this new information somehow means nothing. Strange how that happens.
From the BBC News report linked above (#2): “Experts at the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre for forecasting in Exeter said the world could expect another record temperature within five years or less, probably associated with another episode of El Nino.”
Maybe, but in December 2003 Dr Phil Jones of the CRU told the BBC that “Globally, I expect the five years from 2006 to 2010 will be about a tenth of a degree warmer than 2001 to 2005.” For this prediction to be realised, temperatures would need to rise VERY SOON (not in ‘five years or less’) – and stay there.
Re #5. I should have said ‘rise TO RECORD LEVELS very soon’. and stay there.
There is so much irony to go around. There is so much commitment to AGW. Yet I like to think that nature has some surprises in store for us yet.
When Hansen speaks the warmers listen and the warming continues
Nature too… 😉
I agree with TH. The median NH temperature is probably
If David Stockwell had added one more comparison, NoPol, he may have noticed what diverged drastically and pulled NH temps upwards. The following graph is of annual UAH MSU data.
http://tinypic.com/fullsize.php?pic=zswazc&s=3&capwidth=false
Is the polar divergence a delayed reaction to the 97/98 El Nino? Looks like it might be. Or did that trend at the North Pole start in the early 90s? That’s a possibility, too.
On page 17 of the 2006 NOAA “State of the Arctic Report”, an extended period of positive AO from the late 80s to the early 90s is blamed for driving old sea ice from the Arctic, out through the Fram Strait. Without the old sea ice, the Arctic had to, obviously, start from scratch and make new sea ice.
Click to access rich2952.pdf
Annual NH Sea Ice Extent indicates the negative trend began before the early 90s.
http://tinypic.com/fullsize.php?pic=e8tppe&s=3&capwidth=false
So maybe it was the El Nino that initiated the latest divergence.
I saw the report on BBC news last night. I was surprised – and encouraged – by one small thing. Their reporter stated that not all scientists agree with the consensus (though naturally he added they were in the minority). But for the BBC to state that any scientists have doubts is something of a breakthrough!
Chris
And the difference, over the long term, between NH & SH appears to be driven by the AMO.
http://tinypic.com/fullsize.php?pic=23mn96c&s=3&capwidth=false
Could the warmth in asia be due to Chinese pollution?
It will be interesting to see the comparison between land and sea surface temperatures in the GISS and HadCRU figures for March. I wonder if the contrast between the Northern and Southern hemispheres is mirrored by a similar difference between sea and land temperatures. The northern hemisphere has more than twice as much land as the southern hemisphere – the north is about 40% land, while the southern hemisphere is less than 20% land. If you take into account the fact that the satellite data does not cover the largely sea area above 82.5 north and the nor the continent of Antarctica in the south the contrast in the amount of land contained in the RSS results is probably even greater than that.
If the Argo data is correct and the deep ocean has not been warming over the last five years, we should not be surprised if the sea surface temperatures are also not rising much.
When the temperatures fell last year, some people argued that this was caused by heat being used up melting all that Arctic ice last summer. The melted ice was also blamed for spreading cooler temperatures. Since there was a great deal of new frozen ice during the recent winter would I be right to imagine that this causes warming in the climate as a whole?
My conjecture:
* The Southern Hemisphere (SH) is following a normal La Nina pattern, in which air temperature lags ENSO temperature by several months. The March 2008 SH temperature is responding to the December 2007 tropical Pacific SST. That said, I expect that the SH will remain anomalously cool into its winter.
* In the Northern hemisphere, Asian temperature is sensitive to weather patterns. The March 500mb anomaly plot is here
This is basically a “highway” for the winds. The pattern for March brought cold air (blue arrows) into the north Pacific, North America and the Atlantic (lots of water) and warm air (red arrows) into Asia (lots of land). Water tends to dampen out any anomaly (lots of heat content in the water) while land, especially land that is normally snow-covered, tends to exaggerate an anomaly. So, since the warmth was over Asian land, it was exaggerated and the cold anomaly, while it was mostly over water, tended to be dampened.
There are multidecadal climate patterns (think AMO) which create tendencies for weather patterns (like the one above) to occur. As the multidecadal patterns shift, so do the weather tendencies. We’re currently in a pattern that encourages warmth in Asia, which exaggerates temperatures. My belief is that that tendency will change over time, as part of a natural pattern.
AGW may affect this pattern and/or may occur as a background warming, but Mother Nature will continue to play a major role, like in March.
Patrick Hadley
I understood that the ARGO data has been focusing on upper ocean, not deep ocean. “Recent Cooling of the Upper Ocean” and the Correction thereof, both by Willis et al.
Roger Pielke Sr. has from time to time over the years pointed to ocean heat storage changes as crucial to our understanding of global warming. On February 7, 2008, he posted “Deep Ocean Heat Accumulation: A Diagnosis Of Its Magnitude” at http://climatesci.org/
to include an abstract from “Recent bottom water warming in the Pacific Ocean” by Gregory C. Johnson et al., J. of Climate. Volume 20. November 2007.
Johnson recorded changes of abyssal temperature in the Pacific Ocean which “may amount to a significant fraction of upper world ocean heat gain over the past few decades”. Pielke then surmised, “If heat is being stored in deep depths, this would help explain why sea level continues to rise yet the upper ocean has not been warming in recent year[s]. It also means that the feedback of this heat into the atmosphere is delayed, or even lost for a very long time in terms of how this heat affects the rest of the climate system.”.
Thus, if more heat is stored in more Southern Hemisphere waters, you may expect to find a divergence between NH & SH. A review of land versus ocean temperatures (NH v SH) would indeed be useful.
Brian #18:
Interesting post. I would like to see more play given to the Argo data, largely because it is not apparently contaminated by UHI or equivalent distortions. Unfortunately the record is very short. However, it seems to make a lot of sense to test the apparent NH/SH divergence against the Argo data.
I think the anomaly difference between north and south is just natural variability.
All of Asia including Russia and Siberia had a very warm March (after a very cold February in southern Asia).
Antarctic ice has been well above-normal for the past year which has impacted southern ocean temperatures which impacts the overall southern temperatures. La Nina will have influenced the tropical temperature figures simply because it covers a large area of the tropics.
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/images/rnl/sfctmpmer_30a.rnl.html
The universe divided
As the heart and mind collided
With the people left unguided
For so many troubled years
In a cloud of doubts and fears
Their world was torn asunder into hollow
Hemispheres
Some fought themselves, some fought each other
Most just followed one another
Lost and aimless like their brothers
For their hearts were so unclear
And the truth could not appear
Their spirits were divided into blinded
Hemispheres
– Rush
Brian #17, I suppose it depends what you mean by “deep”. The Argo data is collected from the top 2000m of the oceans. Now there is a lot of water below that level, but Argo gives a good deal more information about ocean heat storage than can be gathered from sea surface readings, or from dodgy XBTs.
Purely on the basis of common sense it does not seem very likely that the ocean below 2000m would be warming if the water above it is not; but on the other hand there are plenty of scientific discoveries that prove “common sense” to be a very poor guide.
Most of the Indian Ocean, substantial areas of the Southern Ocean, and about 50% of the southern Pacific (below the Equator) are still below average temperatures. Since the Southern Hemisphere has much less land area than the Northern, this is the main reason for the observed divergence.
Speaking of being eaten alive, Ted Turner has now topped Al Gore on AGW horror stories. Cannabalism by 2040!
It is currently snowing, once again. ARRGGHH!
#22, does that account for the tropics too?
Patrick Hadley
Johnson’s November, 2007 abstract states, in part, as follows:
“Between 3000 m (or 4000 m in the case of P06) and the bottom these estimates of heat flux range from
0.01 W m–2 along 47°N (P01) to 0.06 W m–2 along 170°W south of the equator (P15S). These values are
between 5 and 30% of the heating trend of 0.2 W m–2 estimated for the 0–3000 m world ocean heat
content change between 1955 and 1998 (Levitus et al. 2005) and between 2 and 10% of the heating trend
of 0.6 W m–2 (per unit area of the Earth’s surface) estimated for the 0–750 m world ocean heat content
change between 1993 and 2003 (Willis et al. 2004).”
He suggests, “
Johnson suggests,”that abyssal variations may contribute significantly to global heat, and hence sea-level,
budgets. To close ocean heat, sea level, and likely freshwater budgets on interannual timescales, the
ocean below 2000 m must be much better sampled in space and time than it has been…”.
AGW theory states the sun has only a very small effect. This seems a good time to double-check that idea, due to a double-coincidence: Very little sunlight-blocking volcanic ash in atmosphere, plus a low point in the sunspot cycle.
Little ash would make summer sunlight clear and strong, and raise temps in NH. At the equator, where there is no “summer,” the weaker sunlight due to sunspot cycle would lower temps. And I suppose the weaker sunlight due to sunspot cycle would would overpower the clearer (but low and slanting) dust-free winter sunlight, resulting in lower SH temps.
I am no scientist, but my “common sense” makes sense to me, until informed yet again that the sun has no effect, by the AGW crowd.
It the really deep ocean is getting warmer from human activity then that must be being propogated to
the ocean via the amotsphere then to the water. So we’re warming up the surface (air/water boundary)
which is then transferred down 10,000 feet so efficiently that the the top mile of the ocean shows no
increase.
How does that happen?
The recent differences beween the SH and NH anomalies are not cofined to Planet Earth. A similar anomaly, this one for sunspot activity, is also occuring on our nearest star. Note the recent remarkable difference in solar hemispheric sunspot numbers. For the last several months an overwhelming percentage of sunspots have been in the solar SH. In fact, this past March the monthly total average daily sunpot numbers totaled 9.3 with 9.0 in the SH and only 0.3 in the NH! The divergence in hemispheric SS numbers seems to mimic the hemispheric divergence in Global surface temperatures albeit with the hemispheres reversed.
What a coincidence (if one believes in coincidence).
Teleconnection, obviously…
“How does that happen?”
Why the warm water sinks of course (see AGW Physics 101 :^))
JCL
It’s true, water becomes denser as it warms* and thus sinks.
(*at temperatures between 0C and 3C)
Yes, what a coincidence.
Linked to Global SST conditions????
While the Argo record is very short, I have to think that the trend has been going on for a lot longer.
You don’t turn the ocean around easily.
Try this one:
RE 27. Dr. Mann is planting Bristlecone pines on the ocean floor as we speak.
Science shows that a dozen or so of these plants can in fact reconstruct an entire global
climate signal.
Argo is old science. BCP under water is the truth.
It has been an unusual summer in Australia, especially in the West. Tropical moisture feeding in resulting in unsual cloudy, wet and cool temperatures. Forecasts for a very active cyclone season were far off the mark.
Either five or six tropical storms will hit Australia this season, which lasts from Nov. 1 to April 30 2008, according to a prediction by UK-based Tropical Storm Risk (TSR).
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/45274/story.htm
Oops, accidentally posted.
The ‘Either five or six tropical storms will hit Australia this season’ is a quote from the link.
In fact, this has been the quietest cyclone season I can recall. I think we had a cat 1 make landfall in December, since then no cyclone landfalls at all. Whether this has been an anomalous year or a new pattern is anyone’s guess, but clearly the models were way off.
The way warm water sinks, such as in the western Pacific during La Nina; warm water is blown west into a warm pool. Evaporation carries away water leaving saltier/ denser water which sinks. BUT, this water never gets deeper than a few hundred meters.
The current equatorial thermocline annimation (see bottom annimation):
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_update/wkxzteq.shtml
Is the ARGO data posted online (in the form of pretty graphs like HADCRUT3) somewhere? I know next to nothing, but I think the ocean temp is a lot more important than the surface temp. Seems like it would be something interesting to look at.
Thanks,
tim
#32 and #33
I flunked Physics 101. (Into Liberal Arts at the time; studied clouds during Math class.)
You say water gets denser between 0C and 3C. Is that water fresh? Is the same true for salt water? Salt water doesn’t freeze until around -2C. As salt water warms from -2C to 0C, does it rise, and then sink between 0C and 3C, and then start rising again between 3C and 4C?
Hmm. Caleb’s points are interesting.
Below 1000m, the ocean temps are mostly at or below 4 deg c. (according to http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/Water/temp.html ) If that were fresh water, we would expect warming to decrease increase the density, lowering the sea level contribution of that water.
When people blame sea level rise on thermal expansion, is that just the top 1000m? Or are the properties of water different with ocean levels of salt? I can’t seem to find a sea-water density/temperpature plot.
The RSS plot that intrigues me is this one:
This shows the difference between the lower troposphere (TLT) and middle troposphere (TMT) temperature anomalies: the smaller the number, the less the spread.
The plot shows that, for the last three decades, the middle troposphere is warming more slowly than the lower troposphere. That, I think, is the opposite of what the AGW models predict.
The cartoon on the right shows the portions of the atmosphere sampled by TLT and TMT (ignore the purple and red lines). As it indicates, little of the stratosphere is sampled. The effect of any stratospheric cooling on the plot trend is slight.
David, I agree that is a very telling graphic, because its important to identify those crucial experiments that falsify AGW, and the profile is one of them. It really only takes one fact that doesn’t fit to overturn a whole theory. Like a minute difference in the speed of light for example. The idea that CO2 captures more IR, warms the troposphere, then warms the surface is way too simplistic I think.
#Barry
Hit it on the nail
The question to weather wizards (not without personal monetary interest):
How current La Nina will influence coming South America winter?
Re # 20 Buzzsaw
Sometimes I have to agree with the sentiments of your verse. People are darting all over the mental sphere, conditionally attributing hot here, cold there, wet, dry, cloudy, clear, fast current, slow current, retreating-advancing glaciers, onion-skin layers, connections, feedbacks – and then we have a couple of atypical months (atypical within our recent memory) and the sky is falling in again. Look at the decades, unless there is a go-for-the-kill critical piece of weather (or climate) that calls for comment on mechanisms. I dabble in it myself because it’s intellectually seductive and fun kidding the serious people, but I’ll have to stop this in case I go deaf.
Maybe someone capable should make a mathematical model of it.
Re # 44 erik
Layering in ocean water models.
I asked our local Met people about this a year ago and was told to search Google and then (more or less) to keep out unless I could solve Navier-Stokes equations. From that I deduced that you model whatever effect over whatever depth suits the story. It starts with some infra-red wavelengths being absorbed in less than the top mm of water and continues down to the unknown distributions, temperatures etc of ocean floor geological activity among Steven Mosher’s deep bristlecone pines.
One USA resident expert is Richard Feely from ORNL. He told me he did most of the relevant work for the IPCC on CO2 and acidity and supplied references to –
Impact of anthropogenic atmospheric nitrogen
and sulfur deposition on ocean acidification
and the inorganic carbon system
Scott C. Doney*†, Natalie Mahowald‡, Ivan Lima*, Richard A. Feely§, Fred T. Mackenzie¶, Jean-Francois Lamarque,
and Phil J. Rasch‡ 14580–14585 PNAS September 11, 2007 vol. 104 no. 37 http://www.pnas.orgcgidoi10.1073pnas.0702218104
and
Impact of Anthropogenic CO2 on
the CaCO3 System in the Oceans
Richard A. Feely,1,* Christopher L. Sabine,1 Kitack Lee,2
Will Berelson,3 Joanie Kleypas,4 Victoria J. Fabry,5
Frank J. Millero6 16 JULY 2004 VOL 305 SCIENCE
I am currently running a geochemical eye over these. Some work is ok but some statements take the breath away. This guy is a real dedicated AGW sponsor! Any other geochemists want to chip in?
45 David Smith
This effect is almost certainly because of the upper-troposphere cooling trend, which John Christy has discussed on this website, and is described in the Douglass, et al article, at http://www.uah.edu/News/pdf/climatemodel.pdf
Re #51 Indeed, thanks. I believe it was also the topic of a RC post in which they stated (sigh) that the time period was too short and/or the model variability was too large to say conclusively that the mid tropical troposphere should have warmed over the period.
The March 2008 middle tropical troposphere anomaly was -0.50C, a pretty sizeable number. I do think La Nina plays the major role in that current variance.
This article is on-topic and quite interesting as well
A.M. Sterin
Radiosonde Temperature Anomalies in the Troposphere and Lower Stratosphere for the Globe, Hemispheres, and Latitude Zones
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/temp/sterin/sterin.html
Mauna Loa Observatory is currently showing an interesting trend anomaly, with the largest (only) winter-time drop in CO2 concentration since 2004.
Not that this is a lot of gas, but it bears watching and will be interesting if decline continues. CO2 Decline is also in the face of a pretty cold NH winter with above average CO2 heating emissions. I suspect this is a La Nina effect as well as lower global SST overall. Or it could be splash of randomness.
The deepest point in our oceans is over 11.Km.
Water covers 70% of the planet
In global warming calculations, oceans/areas covered by water, represent 0.0002% of the equation, Science?
Looking at the 4 month winter period, December to March, MLO Monthly CO2 Trend Data, for 50 years,
I identified the following:
11 Winter Periods showed concentration unchanged or declining
WINTER PPM
_____________
07-08 -.30
88-89 -.02
85-86 -.09
83-84 -.10
74-75 -.26
71-72 -.35
70-71 -.04
67-68 -.26
66-67 -.07
59-60 -.00
58-59 -.01
This year’s decline is the largest since Winter 1971-1972, is the second largest in 50 years, and the first winter period decline in concentration in 19 years. Average 50 Year Concentration Increase .366 PPM
As pointed out, there is only one thing to say about March 2008 temperature anomalies: it was not Global nor Boreal Emisphere warming, but an abnorme Asian warming to bring up mean anomaly of global temperature, while all the other parts of the World had more or less a “normal” (let’s say better, less anomalous, both warm or cold) temperature.
Now, Polar Vortex (in March bringing late winter to North Europe as harsh cold to Canada, with temperatures that would have been cold even for mid winter)is moving onto Siberia, which is actually cooling much and fast, and I think large anomalous warm would interest in April maybe just South Asia, so global mean anomalies should get down.
La Nina, even if weaker, will continue her cooling effect at least until summer, but I think it will not bring a new very cold winter to South America (even if Australia seems to be living a very early and cold start of winter season, after a very hot late summer in parts of the continent).
52 David
The point I was trying to make is that the main difference between the coverage of TMT and TLT is the 10-15km region (which I consider upper troposphere) vs the 0-5km range, since both cover the mid (5-10km reasonably well).
The cooling trend is most marked in the 12-15km range, as the Douglass et al paper shows.
55 Allen
You are forgetting to take into account the wonders of tele-connection. ;>)
Since the beginning of the Mauna Loa data stream in 1958, no annual mean period has been observed with a CO2 concentration lower than the previous year although it came close in the mid 1960s. There is a chance that this record may be broken in this year or next. In just a few instances has the annual maximum in CO2 been lower than the prior max. Since we are just one month away from the normal annual maximum which is currently well below last year’s max (see here) this will likely be one of those exceptional years. None of the AGW crowd has yet suggested that man-made CO2 has declined or that the trend in land use vis-à-vis CO2 has reversed.
I think that the anomalous decline in the slope of the Mauna Loa CO2 curve during this past boreal winter with is normally a season in which CO2 rises rapidly, is directly tied to the Central Pacific SST. Cooling SSTs raise the oceans’ solubility of CO2 which it then extracts from the atmosphere. In the 50-year history of the Mauna Loa record, the slope of the CO2 curve became more positive during the positive PDO regime, ~1975-2005, which favored warm Tropical SSTs (El Niños) with just a few brief La Niñas. PDO regimes usually last for about 30 years. Now that the PDO has shifted into a negative phase, we should see cooler La Niña patterns becoming more prevalent with fewer and briefer El Niño episodes. The 20th Century contained two positive PDO regimes and one negative one. Little wonder why there was a net rise in Globally averaged temperature during that period. Consistent on-site measurements of CO2 didn’t begin until the latter half of the last negative PDO. Furthermore, should CO2 concentrations at Mauna Loa now show a decline, it would suggest again that CO2 is a lagging indicator, not a leading one.
Skeptics continue to look for (and find) climate components that can be construed as falsifying the alarmist AGW hypotheses. Since the foundation of all of these hypotheses are a steady, if not accelerating, increase in man-made CO2, should we now see a year, just one year, in which total CO2 as observed at Mauna Loa shows a decline from the previous year(s) we may have found a smoking cannon.
[Some AGW proponents will say that the current cooling is not a result of CO2 but can be blamed on La Niña and should be ignored. That’s simple sophistry. La Niña is at least as much a component of the Global climate system as is CO2 and according to AGW alarmists, a CO2 driven warming should precede changes in SST, not follow it.]
aurbo: Remember methane levels rolled over inexplicably too.
Thats I record I will be looking out for. These data highlight increasing cognitive dissonance between models and reality. I am not convinced though of internal states or ocean oscillations as explanation for globally integrated indexes such as global CO2, sea level, and temperature. Do you have references to an accounting of net global heat change due to states like La Niña and PDO, not just the local temperature changes?
60 David S
I think a good case can be made that methane levels are in good part tied to emission from thawed tundra, so a drop in temperature, especially near the Arctic Circle, could well cause reduced methane levels.
(In addition, I can’t help wondering if some of the CO2 isn’t from ozone-oxidized methane.)
Re your last question, you can calculate it yourself by estimating the volume of seawater changing temperature. Since the global surface is 4/5 seawater, it’s a lot of thermal energy.
If Methane levels are declining due to NH tundra, why are SH methane levels declining just as fast, and possibly starting earlier.
Comparing methane levels in air leaving Australia and reaching NZ it is evident that the concentration increases across the Tasman Sea – with the amount of increase varying by season.
Hence, it would seem more reasonable to postulate an oceanic link, with La Nina conditions being associated with a faster decline in methane levels
Pat, I could, but it would have to be integrated across all of the oceans at appropriate depths. I would have thought one would look into the global balance, before successfully attributing a global change to essentially a regional phenomenon.
62 William
CO2 and methane are supposed to mix globally rather rapidly, so your result may be due to instrument error.
Or it could be that those Tasmanian Devils are more dangerous than we thought! (or it could be the extensive tundra on Tasmania, I suppose….) ;>)
63 IIRC, someone reported that calculation the other day on this website, but I can’t remember who or which thread.
re #54,
hswiseman says:
April 5th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Last time I looked at the Mauna Loa CO2 webpage I read something about required CO2 adjustments that they make once they look at measurements of other atmospheric gas. The text speaks to the adjustments as they aren’t much in scope, but it does not elaborate on details, nor point to any raw data, at least what I saw. Wouldn’t surprise me to see an “adjustment” in the future, following review of relevant new data of course.
Re #64
See CO2 from space
66 Phil
Interesting, but confusing. Is there high degree of mixing, or not? If I could only read the tiny scale on the figure, I suspect I would find small variations, but who knows how small?
Aurbo #59 I concur with your hypothesis re cooling SST/decline in CO2 atmospheric concentration, and the implication is a responsive and elastic oceanic CO2 absorption curve. This would support the “CO2 as lagging indicator” argument (at least with respect to SST) but also needs to squared with the ice core research showing that, based on paleo records, the CO2 concentration lag time relative to surface temperature is quite lengthy.
John Norris #64 I am guessing we are looking at a standard deviation here between 3 and 4. That will be pretty hard to overcome with a “dog ate my homework” excuse. The data is here if anyone wants to work with it.
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt
One further question that needs an answer is whether cooler SST quickly saturates with absorbed CO2 and the monotonous atmospheric concentration increase then resumes, or even spikes if SST increases.
Re #67
Sorry I didn’t realize that image wasn’t ‘zoomable’, here you go.
Anthony has a post with a couple charts of the CO2 data. Seems Mauna Loa measurements only reflect regional values.
Hi
# 70
Can someone explain why the CO2 concentration is higher in highpressure-zones than in the low-pressure-zones.
Have a look at the January and July chart (worlds low/high pressure zones.) and compare
You can hardly see the CO2 concentrations over big City’s and industrial areas……Why?
Absence of wind causes local CO2 accumulation (thanks to ferdinand)
Re # 70 Phil and CO2 satellite map
Climate aside, simply looking at patterns, there are problems with interpretation of this data set. I look first to SH and I see a band of high CO2 at mid latitudes 23 – 35 deg S or so, that intensifies over land in Sth America, but not Africa or Australia. Now that’s a strange effect. In the NH, at similar N lats, I see a blob over West USA and another in the Atlantic E of USA. The western Pacific, land and sea, is relatively patternless (though on the map edges). Where is the Chinese and Japanese CO2 from Fossil Fuel burning? What of India’s low and the Gobi Desert high? Nobody posting above has convinced me with a good explanation for this pattern. Keep in mind estimates of 2-4 years for NH-SH transport. Even the albatross can’t make the cross.
In general, instruments based on infra-red reflectance of gases can have wide bandwidths and often overlap signals from other gases. The CO2 could well be a residual signal derived from a multivariate model that subtracts water vapour and some other gases. These devices, if this is the case, are very hard to calibrate as to accuracy and specificity.
I’ve not looked at the satellite instrumentation in detail, but my first guess would be, Houston, we have a problem…
Readers interested in CO2 may find this site useful.
Web Site for the FLUXNET Synthesis Data set
An overview is available here.
70, 74 Phil Geoff
Thanks for the larger image. As I suspected, small variations (probably within the measurement-error band) are misleadingly exaggerated by color coding.
BTW, I don’t see Willam’s Tasmanian Devil effect in this image. I guess these variations change with time and changing weather patterns, per Hans’ comment.
Re #74
Geoff, perhaps you should have read the instrument specifications before you pontificated on the results?
Bear in mind that the results are for the mid-troposphere not the surface, and there’s this rather high mountain range called the Andes
which you seem to have ignored!
Re #76
Those small variations you mention are the equivalent of several years of growth, yellow-red is equal to one year’s span in the ML data.
William may well have been referring to surface measurements.
Pat: I’m sure at least some of the CO2 is from ozone-oxidized methane. Many of the other interesting reactions between the gases seem to be left off the equation.
Certainly something’s going on with them as a group.
It seems that except for water vapor, the “GHG” only facilitate the conversion and movement of energy in various forms up and down in the system, and that more of them don’t necessarily (and probably don’t) equal an increase in net energy in the system after all is said and done.
78 Sam
Interesting. It appears from your post that the OH ion may by more important in the lower and mid troposphere than O3 in oxidizing methane to CO2 and water. O3 is probably more important near the tropopause.
77 Phil
The best correlation appears to be with latitude. The equatorial latitudes and colder latitudes show lower ‘levels’, while the latitudes around 35-40 (N or S) show the highest ‘levels’.
Could this be associated with Hadley cells?
Here is an interesting chart:
This Hovmoeller (latitude / time / temperature anomaly) plot shows how the upper tropical troposphere has behaved so far in 2008. Blue and green colors are anomalously cool while the yellows and reds are anomalously warm.
Note that as 2008 has progressed the upper tropical troposphere has progressively cooled. This is important because this part of the atmosphere affects the rate at which IR radiation exits Earth: the cooler this level, the greater the IR flow (assuming constant relative humidity) because of lower water vapor.
My read is that the tropics continue to cool, perhaps a delayed effect of La Nina. The $64,000 question is whether this coolness and enhanced IR transmission continue as La Nina fades.
re # 77 Phil,
You are quite correct, I should have read the specs of the actual instruments used. I am familiar with general principles, but not exact ones here.
In return, what on Earth (so to speak) have the Andes got to do with anything? For comparison, we have the Rockies, with a high, the Urals with no apparent pattern, the Tibetan Plateau with a low. Seems the pattern is hard to relate to topo.
Obliquely, I was trying to make a point that too much reliance on calibration against Mauna Loa can cause artificial problems; but that some CO2 alternatives have problems of their own.
80 (David)
Please advise how or where you generated the Hovmoeller (latitude / time / temperature anomaly) plot.
Less man-made aerosol production from the factories of the Former Soviet Union and less burning of coal and ag waste in the fireplaces of northern and western China is the main reason for the temperature anomaly over Asia. The anomaly is likely worse in March than any time of the year as farmers burn surplus ag waste as the weather warms. I predict the anomaly over Asia disappears as summer approaches.
RE dropping CO2 year-over-year:
Contrary to some comments above:
Three months in 1974 (above) showed an absolute decline in CO2 over the previous 12 months. 1974 was a cold year – Hadcrut3 temperature anomaly of minus 0.213C.
Four months in 1964-65 also showed similar 12-month declines – both cold years.
Other such 12-months declines exist as well. 1977 was another cold year, with no such 12-month CO2 declines.
Best, Allan
Data from Mauna Loa at ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt
Global data only goes back to ~1980, at ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_gl.txt
Both datasets are fairly similar. Mauna Loa CO2 seasonal peaks and lows occur ~1 month earlier than those of global CO2. Mauna Loa CO2 exhibits higher seasonal peaks (in April or more often May), but both datasets exhibit similar seasonal lows (Mauna Loa in Sept-Oct).
Regards, Allan
decimal CO2 avg dCO2/dt
date (ppm) (ppm/year)
1974.042 329.35 0.81
1974.125 330.71 1.15
1974.208 331.48 1.18
1974.292 332.65 1.15
1974.375 333.16 0.68
1974.458 332.06 (0.01)
1974.542 330.99 0.12
1974.625 329.17 (0.14)
1974.708 327.41 (0.10)
1974.792 327.20 0.02
1974.875 328.33 0.17
1974.958 329.50 0.86
Re #81
Well my thought was since the measurements were at ~8km and upwind is a range of ~6km mountains that air from over the surface of the ocean would be forced up to the measurement level resulting in the ‘hot-spot’.
Atmospheric CO2 did not increase from October 1973 to October 1974.
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt
I plotted Mauna Loa CO2 levels, focusing on October 1973 through October 1974.
Instead of the normal ~2ppm per year increase in CO2, there was none.
Years 1973 to 1975 inclusive were cool, with Hadcrut3 anomalies of minus ~0.2C, and CO2 emissions that held steady at 4.6GtC/year.
Perhaps this suggests a “CO2 factor” of ~10ppm/degreeC, not ~3 in this case.
It seems to me entirely possible that atmospheric CO2 concentrations are affected by humanmade emissions, but that other factors could be as important or even more so. If humanmade emissions were dominant, atmospheric CO2 levels should have increased over this time period, and this did not happen.
Best regards, Allan
Re: 86
1974 US recession was longest since WWII. Perhaps world economy also slowed then.
#87:
Correct Fred. As I stated in #86:
“Years 1973 to 1975 inclusive were cool, with Hadcrut3 anomalies of minus ~0.2C, and CO2 emissions that held steady at 4.6 GtC/year.”
CO2 emissions increased again only in 1976. My point is that 4.6 GtC/year is a significant amount of CO2, and the level of CO2 in the atmosphere did not show any net increase over a 12 month cycle. Clearly there are more causative factors here than just humanmade emissions.
Ferdinand Englebeen and I have been discussing this point for some time, based on my paper at
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/carbon_dioxide_in_not_the_primary_cause_of_global_warming_the_future_can_no/
My paper and subsequent work shows that CO2 trends LAG temperature by ~6 months (for short-term temperature cycles). Ferdinand points out that there is a problem of scale – the sensitivity of CO2 to temperature, which he calculates at ~3ppm/degree C, is not large enough to account for all the increase in CO2, and he may be right. However the 1974 data suggests a sensitivity of ~10ppm/degreeC.
The other complexity is this is a dynamic system, not a static one, and there may be dynamic effects we are not taking into account in these simple calculations. Also there are many longer term temperature cycles that could have their effects superimposed on the shorter cycles.
This subject is pertinent because of the possibility that we are entering a significant cooling phase, and further speculation that this could lead to an annual decline in atmospheric CO2 levels, if these are indeed driven primarily by temperature, not by human emissions.
My point is that this has already happened, in the October1973-74 CO2 cycle, when CO2 emissions were ~half of today’s levels, so we don’t have to wait to see if this will happen again. It already has occurred, and we should be able to deduce that we do not even fully understand the critical factors that drive atmospheric CO2, let alone those that drive Earth’s temperature.
Regards, Allan
CO2 emissions are included below for 1959-2006.
Sources:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/ndp030/global.1751_2004.ems
Personal calculations after 2004, using cdiac and BP data.
Year CDIAC Emissions GtC/y
1959 2.46
1960 2.58
1961 2.59
1962 2.70
1963 2.85
1964 3.01
1965 3.15
1966 3.31
1967 3.41
1968 3.59
1969 3.80
1970 4.08
1971 4.23
1972 4.40
1973 4.64
1974 4.64
1975 4.62
1976 4.88
1977 5.04
1978 5.11
1979 5.40
1980 5.35
1981 5.19
1982 5.14
1983 5.13
1984 5.31
1985 5.46
1986 5.63
1987 5.76
1988 5.99
1989 6.11
1990 6.20
1991 6.31
1992 6.19
1993 6.20
1994 6.34
1995 6.49
1996 6.65
1997 6.84
1998 6.79
1999 6.80
2000 6.98
2001 7.12
2002 7.17
2003 7.50
2004 7.91
2005 8.20
2006 8.46
Is the latest NCDC temperature data contrary to the RSS and UAH satellite data for March 2008, which showed a global temperature anomaly of only +0.1C? I have analysed ST (Hadcrut3) vs LT (UAH) data back to 1979 and there is very good correlation. Hence these figures are a surprise – is there a simple answer to this question?
Climate of 2008 – March in Historical Perspective
National Climatic Data Center
15 April 2008
http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2008/mar/global.html#Temp
Global Highlights:
Based on preliminary data, the globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was the second warmest on record for March and the January-March year-to-date period ranked eleventh warmest.
March 2008 temperatures were above average in Europe, Asia, northern Africa, central and southern Australia, parts of the southern states of the contiguous U.S, southern Alaska, and parts of South America. Cooler-than-average conditions occurred in Canada, northwestern, north-central and northeastern states of the contiguous U.S., eastern Australia, and parts of South Africa.
March 2008 Global
[Land] [Ocean] [Land and Ocean]
+1.78°C +0.31°C +0.70°C
Regards, Allan
89 (Alan): Yes, there does seem to be something amiss, or maybe just showing how unreliable these numbers really are. Here is a comparison of the last few years (satellite in pink) including March 2008:
#53 (Hswiseman): The stratified trend looks like there’s something blocking temperature equilibrium between the upper & lower troposphere. What’s in the middle troposphere that could first be pushing heat down into the lower troposphere?
V. Ramanathan & G. Carmichael’s recent studies of soot-ladened aerosol clouds indicate a mid-tropospheric brown clouds that push IR downward, amplifying surface temperatures. His most recent estimates are ~40 percent global atmospheric forcing.
Likewise, could the very same thing be functionally insulating the upper troposphere from surface IR?
#80 (David): Is that anomalous January heating 30N in the middle troposphere? I’m a bit confused by the red text in the bottom RH corner “150 mb anomaly.”
#73 Hans Erren: I’m assuming aerosols accumulate in a similar manner. Is there an optimum of heating vs. wind where aerosols (soot particularly) stay aloft the longest?
Re #92 lee, all the data on the plot is at 150 millibars pressure, which is about 14km above sea level and near the tropopause.
I glanced at other data and the warm burst seems to originate in the Pacific region. I probably need to limit this type of chart to 20N or 25N rather than 30N, or use 200mb, to stay clear of the tropopause.
Also, this uses reanalysis data, so I should note that we can’t put a fine point on any aspect.
#94 David: Well, I asked, wanted to see what you had there. The latitude of that warm burst in the NH in January though does makes me wonder … tropospheric aerosols? Purely conjecture, I know. 😉 — lee
#90 (Leif):
This is helpful – authorship unknown – perhps someone here on CA?
Best, Allan
Let us begin with a comparison of temperature anomalies for three different datasets: MSU Satellite, RSS Satellite and NASA GISS, courtesy WoodforTrees.org.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:2007/plot/rss/from:2007/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2007/plot/gistemp/from:2007
Notice how RSS and UAH are in good agreement with each other but GISS indicates a sudden heat wave.
Now let us look at the global temperature anomaly map for the RSS satellite for March 2008:
http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_data_monthly.html (make sure to click the anomaly tab)
Notice the heat wave occurring in Asia while there are cool temperature anomalies in Southern Africa, North America, and in the South Pacific near Antarctica.
Now let us look at the March 2008 anomaly map from NASA GISS:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/ (set ocean for Had/Reynv2 and base period to 1979 – 2000 to match the satellite anomaly period then select “make map”)
Here you can see the heat wave over much of Asia, but notice that data is missing for Southern Africa, a large portion of North America and the South Pacific.
The result is this official NASA GISS temperature anomaly graph that shows a dramatic jump in global temperatures in March 2008:
96 (Alan): but note that the article conveniently leaves out HadCRUT for March 2008, although they include HadCRUT for earlier data. Go back to #90 and see what a plot of combined NCDC [assumed to be GISS], HadCRUT, and MSU LT looks like.
Re #95 lee, the 200mb (upper tropical troposphere temerature anomaly plot is below:
The tropical upper troposphere remains anomalously cool. Presumably this is a lag effect of La Nina.
(90) Lief
It is possible, even probable that Hadcrut3 was not out at time of writing – date and authorship of that note are still unknown.
As discussed, ST lead LT trends by ~1 month, so let’s see if April LT’s reflect the strong warming spike alleged in March 2008 ST’s. We will also see if April ST’s exhibit a strong reversal.
“Disconnects” of Hadcrut3 ST and UAH LT trends do occur in the past datasets – but are not all that common or that large.
Best, Allan
P.S. New record cold this weekend in southern Alberta (Lethbridge). Must be due to all that record hot March weather. 🙂
96 and 97(Leif)
If you run through the original plots in post 96 (emailed to you), you will see the writer’s point is true. There is a warm anomaly over most of northern Asia – it is shown on GISS ST and also on UAH LT satellite data, so this warming is already reflected in the UAH LT dataset, which shows only minor March warming on a global average basis. The GISS ST shows a higher Asian warming anomaly, which may be valid, but GISS also lacks any data for large parts of the globe that are outside the warm Asian region – so the GISS weighted average is high. I expect the ST/LT difference will narrow in April 2008.
Best, Allan
http://www.weatherquestions.com/Roy-Spencer-on-global-warming.htm#research-update
April 19, 2008 RESEARCH UPDATES:
(1) – Our latest article, “Potential Biases in Feedback Diagnosis from Observational Data: A Simple Model Description”, has been accepted for publication in Journal of Climate. It uses a simple climate model to show how daily noise in the Earth’s cloud cover amount can cause feedback estimates from observational data to be biased in the positive direction, making the climate system look more sensitive to manmade greenhouse gas emissions than it really is.
(2) – I have asked the editor of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society to consider publishing a paper I have written entitled, “Evidence for Internal Radiative Forcing of Climate Change”. I believe that this paper addresses the single most important issue neglected by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC): Natural climate variability generated within the climate system in the form of INTERNAL radiative forcing.
This paper is a generalization of our paper that has just been accepted for publication in Journal of Climate, and describes how mixing up of cause and effect when observing natural climate variability can lead to the mistaken conclusion that the climate system is more sensitive to greenhouse gas emissions than it really is. It also shows that a small change in cloud cover hypothesized to occur with the El Nino/La Nina and Pacific Decadal Oscillation modes of natural climate variability can explain most of the major features of global average temperature change in the last century, including 70% of the warming trend. While this does not prove that global warming is mostly natural, it provides a quantitative mechanism for the (minority) view that global warming is mostly a manifestation of natural internal climate variability. (This paper is sure to be controversial, and it will be interesting to see how difficult it will be to get published.)