I fully expect our "Progressive" friends to come out from their leftist rocks and say "SEE, SEE, WE ARE WARMING RAPIDLY!!! HAVE TO DO SOMETHING!!!! HAVE TO SAVE THE POLAR BEARS AND TAX OUR EXHALING AND BODILY FUNCTIONS!!!"

I, also fully expect to see data posted this time next month for this cold, rainy, windy, wet, miserable May. Just making sure that things get balanced out, Brett. Please see to it, so our tree hugging friends can be held in check. By the way, Just WHEN IS IT GOING TO WARM UP??? (Reply: Last week of may Oiz.) I am going to crack if we don't get any Glo-BULL Warming soon!!!!!!

May 16, 2008 (spring time?) 11:13 a.m. 50 degrees F. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GLO-BULL WARMING!!!!!!!

UAH (University of Alabama-Huntsville)...+0.04 F (+0.02 C) above normal or 17th warmest on the UAH scale.

17th warmest out of a 30 year record puts it below the median. An unbiased description would have said "13th coldest." Reply: I was just noting what was said in the report, but that's fair PH. I t probably should have been worded that way.

UAH also showed the oceans below normal, which contradicts the press release and graph above - which was clearly written by someone with an agenda.

http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
http://climate.uah.edu/

From looking at the data I think the warmth was concentrated mostly in Asia.

I know anecdotally it was a cool April in my part of the country (DC area), as has been the case every month since November and May appears to be following suit.

Interesting sea ice extent in the Southern Hemisphere.

Wonder why the sea ice extent appears to have reversed direction? Is it because of the PDO shift and the extended solar cycle 23 inactivity? Reply: We probably will not know that answer for awhile.

I don't know what it means, but here in Western New York, it was the 5th warmest April on record and the sunniest ever recorded. Precip was below average. This followed a cold, snowy Feb and March. Just an observation.

Brett: Your filters deleted another of my posts yesterday. It was a comment to Dennis Hlinka with a link to the IUCN Polar Bear study. I know I can't be the only person this is happening to. There have to be a multitude a great comments and links that are being vaporized for no good reason and a good number of intelligent bloggers going elsewhere in frustration.

Let's try something. There are no links attached to this post. I've got the same webpage open in a separate window. On that post, I've got one TinyPic link and three BlogSpot links.

I'll attempt to post the other one a minute after this one.

Regards

Reply: Bob, your suspicions are correct. I will try to dig the other ones out.

Brett:

The NCDC also has a means of creating Absolute Temperature data sets. There were lots of things I hadn't anticipated, such as the magnitude of the step change in Maximum Annual Land Surface Temperature following the 97/98 El Nino:

http://i28.tinypic.com/11jp09d.jpg

I've taken a close look at LST, SST, and the combined data and posted it on my blogspot, but with the number of graphs and the volume of data, I broke it into three posts:

Part 1: Overview and Combined Global LST & SST

http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/05/fresh-look-at-ncdc-absolute-temperature.html

Part 2: Global SST

http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/05/fresh-look-at-ncdc-absolute-part-ii.html

Part 3: Global LST

http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/05/fresh-look-at-ncdc-absolute-part-3.html

Regards

Brett,
Are you in a position to comment on the accuracy and consistency of the U.S. land-based temperature sensing grid relative to the rest of the world?
How about your confidence in the global historical data from which the monthly anomoly is computed?

Reply: Obviously, there are some major problems with some observing sites across the states, no doubt about that thanks to Anthony Watts and his work. But, overall i think the amount of bad observing data is small enough to not have much impact on the overall trends when you look at the U.S. as a whole. In terms of global data, I do not know for sure. I suspect we probably have pretty good datra from more developed countries, but spotty and less reliable stuff from less developed nations and those involved with political strife or war. Still, my confidence in the global historical data is fairly high.

Interesting also is what appears to be the growing dichotomy between the Northern and Southern Hemisphere, with most of the warming occurring in the land heavy Northern hemisphere (Northern 7th warmest, Southern 22nd warmest). Wonder why that would be if CO2 is a well mixed gas?

You can also see the Cool phase PDO effects in the Northwest US/Canada very clearly.

The fact that we had a much colder winter, a much cooler spring and lots of snow this year doesn't add up to anything much in my mind. If I lived a 100 years and still saw this trend I would still have to be ho-hum about coming to any conclusions. What is a hundred years of some sort of trend in the big scheme of things?

I have lived at this location for 10 years. For most of those years we have been in a severe drought. I can't say we have lost any trees to this drought or change in climate. The people before us planted pine seedlings to act as a buffer along the road. They are now massive trees. We planted two maples that have equally thrived. We have thousands of acres of dense woods surrounding us and other than the fact that it is even more dense it all looks the same as it did 10 years ago. Our bird population has increased significantly since we moved here. One time a few years ago I saw 30 Indigo Buntings feeding on my lawn. Wow what a sight!!!! We have blue birds, wrens, buntings, woodpeckers, finches, cardinals, bluejays, sparrows, hummingbirds, etc., and of course many bald eagles that have come up very close to the house and quite close to ground. Really spectacular.

The only thing that I saw this year that was significantly different than any other year since I have lived here is how my horses shed their hair. Since shedding is based on light, it would seem strange that the process would have been so different this year. They usually have huge chunks that can be peeled off leaving a rather bare area, but not so this year. It was like they wanted to keep their coats and would only let a few hairs go at a time. Now what it means, I have no idea, but it does mean something.

I say we all come together and make a great effort to go for number one!

Let's make next April the warmest on record. Leave your lights on and breath heavily. If you can, find something carbon based to burn.

Because quite frankly, if next year is the same as the 13th warmest, I'm gonna freeze my bajabbers off.

Backyard weather time again folks:

My first lettuce crop failed due to excessive rain and chill. Planting of everything else is horribly delayed and I am concerned that for the second year in a row, my fruit trees will not produce. Just as the blooms were on the trees, we got nailed with a wet 3/4" of white global warming stuff.

Let me see, the "real" problem of global warming is what again? I forget.

I would like to congratulate everybody for their efforts in contributing to the record high sea ice extent for April! It appears that our environmental efforts are paying some small dividends in parts of the world.

Keep up the good fight, people.

Stay cool

The average person has to be totally confused by all the conflicting data being generated by both sides in this debate. I just read an article by Phil Chapman, a geophysicist and atronautical engineer in which he states the following: "All four agencies that track the earth`s temperature report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back to where we were in 1930."

Does everyone agree here that this is accurate information?

1. I mentioned to a friend three years ago that when NASA announces that its been the 4th, 5th etc. warmest year on record, they really mean that the temperature is either constant or declining. If you look at your graph on temperature anmalies compressed such that it covers 1980 or so to the present, you will see what everyone else sees namely that the temperature has been flat or declining over the last 3/4 of decade or more.

2. During the Fall of 2007, there was a large decline in northern sea ice. IThat has now been nearly reversed (http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/)!

Jack,

I think (mind you think) that the guy was referencing the Jan 07 - Jan 08 temperature difference, not the annual average of 07. The facts are that the difference between the Jan 07 temp and the Jan 08 temps were 'unprecedented' and Jan 08 was about .7C lower than Jan 07 temps.

07 itself was a relatively warm year overall though and it appears that it will be a lot warmer than 08.

Also, looking at the NCDC data April was relatively cooler than March (March was the 2nd warmest in the data set).

By the way, Just WHEN IS IT GOING TO WARM UP??? (Reply: Last week of may Oiz.)

REPLY REPLY: Thanks for the glimmer of hope, Brett. But as an old ball player named Yogi might say: "I'll Believe It When I Believe it...;-D...

Just trying to stay sane in a warming (50 degree) world!

I don't know what it means, but here in Western New York, it was the 5th warmest April on record and the sunniest ever recorded. Precip was below average. This followed a cold, snowy Feb and March. Just an observation.

REPLY: Hey thomasfurbs. Tell us what it's doing now. In May, AD 2008 in Western NY. Being 200 miles to the south of you and it's 53 degrees here, my guess is it's not very warm where you are at.

Bill

Thanks but I am sure he was talking about the calendar year of 2007...since Chapman was the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut I don`t think he would fudge the numbers...maybe we can get some more input from others. He claims Hadley, GISS, Christy group, and RSS all agree on this.

Hi Jack McLaughlin,

I refer you to the temperature plot for 3 of the reporting agencies created by junkscience.com:
http://junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/All_Comp.png

I also refer you to the CRU temperature plot for 150+ years:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/climon/data/themi/g17.htm

So the temperatures in the junkscience plot fell to the 0.2C-0.4C range, while the temperatures in the peak warm period of the 1930's was around 0-0.1C.

The fact that temperature have now fallen to the top of the peak of the last warm period is clearly no indication that we are entering an ice age as Mr. Chapman has been known to indicate in many of his recent media stories.

1. I thought the expert opinion is that the higher altitude (troposphere?) is a better indicator of a global average temperature and trends. So why is surface data the most prominently shown and the 29 years of high quality troposphere and stratosphere data from satellites/balloons relegated to the bottom of the page at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2008/apr/global.html#tropo

2. UAH mid-trop had a drop from the average base period (-0.20�C/-0.36�F) and instead of having the primary label as "4th coolest", they say "27th warmest".

3. How about the UAH stratosphere which shows a drop (-0.66�C /-1.19�F). They do say "2nd coolest" in the 30 year period instead of 28th warmest, so I give them a bit of objectivity credit on this one, but its not until all the way at the bottom of the page.

4. Never mind that the surface temperature record is subject to massive statistical processing with METHODS NOT REVEALED so that others can validate them. Never mind the substantial questions of temperature site integrity, urban heat island effect treatment, a reduction in coverage of sites since something like 1980(?) and incorrect (or fraudulent??) data manipulation that always lowers past data to make the recent increase look more significant?

5. Reveal the methods (and raw data?) in full and there would be no allegations floating around. Why in the world would a publicly funded effort not require full disclosure? It forces the due diligence folks of the world to think somebody is hiding either mistakes, shoddy practices, or fraud.

5. Oh. I'm sorry the antarctic sea ice extent being the highest since 1979 must be in error, because I didn't see that info on CNN and Al Gore hasn't come out hoping that maybe that and the other trends mean that we may be OK and can focus on protecting the environment and pushing for energy self sufficiency.

Jack,

Then he must have been mistaken because clearly, looking at the RSS, UAH, & GISS overall temps in 2007 did not drop .7C. The only temps that dropped .7C was the Jan 07 to Jan 08 temp.

17th warmest out of a 30 year record puts it below the median. An unbiased description would have said "13th coldest." Reply: I was just noting what was said in the report, but that's fair PH. I t probably should have been worded that way.

I'm guessing the reason it is worded that way is for the sake of consistency. NCDC is using a 114-year record for its surface-temperature analysis, so suddenly going and saying "13th coolest" of a different dataset could end up being more misleading than "17th warmest." Considering the "17th warmest" from UAH is not far off the "13th warmest" reported by NCDC, I'd say using the same wording also makes it easier to make comparisons between each analysis. Reply: Another good point Travis.

Brett,
This is a bit off topic but extremely relevant. Many questions have been asked about the reliability of climate models. So far only “Climate people” have looked at their results with their Statistics 102& 102 abilities. The title is “Assessment of the reliability of climate predictions based on comparisons with historical time series”
From the:
European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2008
Vienna, Austria, April 2008
Session IS23: Climatic and hydrological perspectives on long term changes
This never got much press but it’s a perspective from somebody outside the clich� of the AGW dogma world.
A very interesting article, especially the conclusions on Slide 20. This is worth a look and a topic in itself.

Real Climate panned it saying they were “misguided.”- Translating that into simple English is “That can’t be! We never thought about that!”

http://www.itia.ntua.gr/getfile/850/2/documents/2008EGU_ClimatePredictionPr.pdf

Have a great weekend
ted

13th warmest April on record, that means there were 12 warmer,{did that one on my own!!} Where are the reporting spots located, have they been in the same spot since 1880? Or have they been placed near blacktop surfaces, towns, warmer locations, in sun, in shade? And are they accurate to start with? For example where I live, I have a thermometer on the hill where I live and out my driveway in a creek bottom, many mornings it can be 10 or more degrees different in a 100 feet in elevation on a calm morning, although afternoons warm up to basically the same in both spots, the average over all daily temp would be 5 degrees cooler in the creek bottom. So if a recording spot were to change locations in a short distance as my example showed this could greatly show temps are warming, this among many other factors. Some monings here it might be 10 degrees and go down the road a ways and on top the Mt it might be 30, this in a 10 mile radius, especially with snow cover. As for snow cover it really seems hard to believe that it could have been less extensive this year when you here of all the southern states that had recieved snow and the spots that were hit recieved x% of snow above normal, here while it was not a very snowy year it still came out to about average. But looking at the trend over the years "according to the graph" we should be headed towards some snowy years! Yee HaH! 8p.m the drizzle has finally stopped and now is turning breezy and temp is at 41 and it is May 16th. Global warming it must be happening everywhere but here, just my luck.

The average April temperature, 51�F, during April was one degree below the 20th century mean, and was the 29th coolest, or 86th warmest, based on preliminary data. = LOL

Was Western New York pulled into a Void or something in April ? Tom Furb is right ! We had probably the most beautiful April I can remember since I was a child. Hey Oiznop, maybe you needs to move up North where it's warm [I think we got some of that gw stuff workin for us up here - I think it was in the mid 60's today. ]