Clearly from all those red lines that we are headed for an ice age any day.

Or is the excuse that we can't trust computers and satellite because Verizon keeps dropping my calls?

Or is it that the trend line only goes back over a century?

Or it is NOAA data and Jim Hansen works there (reply: Hansen works for NASA) so the data is contaminated because he made a .01 degree error once?

I'm getting so confused about all the denial.

And this proves what? Besides showing the IPCC, Hansen and the other modelers don't have a clue about what drives the climate, that is.

Warming is not in itself evidence of any particular cause.

Another way of looking at it - it's the warmest la Nina-influenced 5-month period on record. la Nina conditions ended recently, though. Expect the 2nd half of the year to be warmer.

In other news, Krugman highlights a recent CBO study calling out alarmists who are trying to scare the public regarding emissions reductions. The costs of Waxman/Markey, excluding the benefits of job creation and mitigated environmental disaster, averages 18 cents per day per household. Low income Americans actually come out slightly ahead.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/climate-change-fantasies/

great recent post...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boj9ccV9htk&feature=channel_page

Speaking of data for the January through May, 2009 period...

Those who have "strong disapproval" for our President, increased from 14 percent to 34 percent. Temperatures are going down, just like approval ratings. Pray for sun.

http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2009/06/obamas_approval.html#comments

THE PLANET IS NOT ANTHROPOLOGICALLY UNSTABLE. SOME OF THE PEOPLE ARE.

Why does the government data show warmer temperatures than the satellite data?

Isn't the satellite data showing a trend that is similar to the observed trend for the past century?

Shouldn't the trend be increasing if anthropogenic co2 is contributing to warming?

Don't the IPCC models say that temperatures should be increasing this decade?

If the models are correct, when should we see a return to the warming trend of the 80s and 90s?

The divergence between UAH/RSS and NOAA is very interesting. The decadal trend certainly seems very benign and nowhere near the big numbers being thrown around by the IPCC. And from what I see, the UAH anomaly does not show any crisis.

While I am at it, isn't it fascinating that the, "the 6th warmest Jan-May period over the past 130 years" in one that includes April frosts in Texas, unusual May snows in Brazil, Africa, Turkey, UAE and Saudi Arabia and a very cold Midwest and Notheast? Where exactly was it so hot enough to offset those colder temperatures?

Nothing curious about it. AGW continues.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/05/rss-global-temperature-anomaly-also-down-in-may-halving-the-april-value/

What? No comments? Dang, I thought it was COLD!

So, why do the ground measurements show nearly triple the departure from normal of the satellites?

It wouldn't have anything to do with all those stations in parking lots that don't conform to NOAA standards, now would it?

(wink wink, nudge nudge)

Brett-
I'll save time for your d-unit.

It is NOT warming, those figures are inaccurate.

LIES. It is still cold in (******). Fill in your city.

Just more cherry picking by the global conspiracy.

How dare you- we know the earth is cooling.

What about volcanos?

Gamma rays (marigolds?) are not being accounted for.

And on and on...........

Geoff:

Why do you want to confuse the issue with pesky questions? Do you think we study these things to answer your questions?

Come on, get with the program! Everybody says it's warming, so it must be. You don't think these guys would say it's warming if it wasn't true, do you?

Why, next thing you know, you're going to ask for actual direct evidence that this is all caused by human activity!

idecline,

Your post is so much better than mine (first comment).

John Gault -- how does this data show that IPCC was anything but conservative in their projections?

Mark B - how does a 5 month period change anything on a 130 year graph?

Rich -- what does the president's poll numbers have to do with scientific data?

"So, why do the ground measurements show nearly triple the departure from normal of the satellites?"

They don't. You might not be adjusting for baselines. The satellite anomalies are offset from the average of 1979-1998 - so its anomaly is of course smaller than the NCDC anomaly, which is offset from the 20th century average. The trends have largely correlated - UAH being a little lower.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Satellite_Temperatures.png

Of course reading titles from nutty contrarian blogs "rss-global-temperature-anomaly-also-down-in-may-halving-the-april-value" gives the impression of subtantial cooling. "Halving the April value!"

The satellite record has been notoriously unstable. UAH in particular has seen a series of very large upward corrections over the years. Only 10 years ago, the same data erroneously showed slight cooling. I'm not sure why it's used as a primary source.

MarkB: You wrote, "Another way of looking at it - it's the warmest la Nina-influenced 5-month period on record. la Nina conditions ended recently, though."

To be accurate, according to the NOAA "Historical El Nino and La Nina Episodes", and/or the ONI index values, the Northern Hemisphere winter of 2008/09 was not an official La Nina. It was ENSO neutral.

www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf

SST Anomalies may have reached into La Nina values, but it was not a La Nina in the true sense. Global temperatures responded accordingly.

Have a nice day.

So many of these comments remind me of a kid with his hand in the cookie jar saying, "who, me? - waddya mean; so what if you can see my hand in the cookie jar - I didn't put it there!"

I also liked this one:

"Warming is not in itself evidence of any particular cause."

But we don't just have warming in itself. We have warming with increasing CO2, melting glaciers, increasing ocean warmth, longer growing seasons, and on and on. The evidence comes from all directions and fits to a T with the basic laws of nature and physics. As a book called The Long Thaw pointed out, if our CO2 and other greenhouse-contributing emissions and land-use processes weren't causing global warming, the laws of physics would be violated.

The physics of the greenhouse process has been understood at its basic level for well over a hundred years and follows from basic laws of physics and chemistry. It only became controversial when people's lifestyles were implicated. Since an El Nino is likely to take hold this year and temp measurements will once again start to soar at a rapid rate, I await the deniers claim that soaring temps have no relationship with AGW because it's all just El Nino. Reminds me of that TV commercial about people who refuse to buy flood insurance while the water washes their belongings away.

The survey may be accurate, but I really don't trust the land measurements from so many poorly located sensors.
The ocean surface anomalies are a good indication that the oceans are giving up their heat. The survey is of sea surface anomalies with no indication on what is below the surface. There is approximately 1 million more kilometers^2 of arctic ice now than there was in 2008. That being said, it is hard to wrap what is happening with a logical explanation.
If we have warmer oceans, why is there more arctic and antarctic ice?

Robert

A nice tender juicy piece of Hamburger/Meatloaf/Meatball/Weather/Climate/Climate/Weather for our tree hugging, panic mongering, tax loving, big government worshiping, Obstructionist, Al Gore hommage paying friends to feast on, eh, Brett??? And of course the responses are typical. Hey G-Warm, Why didn't you respond to my response to you on the NIPCC thread??? Your silence is defening!!! LOL!!!!

TO THE BITTER BITTER BITTER END!!!! DENY DENY DENY THE GLO-BULL WARMING LIE!!!!!

Bob Tisdale writes:

"To be accurate, according to the NOAA "Historical El Nino and La Nina Episodes", and/or the ONI index values, the Northern Hemisphere winter of 2008/09 was not an official La Nina. It was ENSO neutral."

To be complete, it depends on which definition of la Nina you're using. 2009 falls a month short in the NOAA definition.

By CPC's definition, however, it's been an official la Nina. From your link:

"CPC considers El Ni�o or La Ni�a conditionsto occur when the monthly Ni�o3.4 SST departures meet or exceed +/-0.5�C along with consistent atmospheric features. These anomalies must also be forecasted to persist for 3 consecutive months."

At any rate, the first half of the year has been influenced by substantially negative ENSO SST anomalies, albeit short-lived.

MarkB: In response to the question, "So, why do the ground measurements show nearly triple the departure from normal of the satellites?" you wrote, "They don't. You might not be adjusting for baselines. The satellite anomalies are offset from the average of 1979-1998 - so its anomaly is of course smaller than the NCDC anomaly, which is offset from the 20th century average. The trends have largely correlated - UAH being a little lower."

For much of your response, I'll agree. However, if you were to divide the globe into sections and examine the differences between GISTEMP surface temperatures and UAH MSU TLT data, you'd find that Africa and the Antarctic are the continents with the greatest divergence between MSU TLT and GISTEMP surface temperature. They're also the continents with the greatest areas of missing surface station data. These are areas that require infilling by the Global temperature products (GISTEMP, HADCRUT, NCDC) that rely on surface station data. The other continent where the GISTEMP is significantly higher than UAH MSU TLT data is Asia. This would seem to indicate that Asian data needs to be evaluated further.

Click on my name. My reference is there.

Getting warm:

Long-term or short-term, I don't see how you can see that this corresponds at all with any of the IPCC estimates.

MarkB: You wrote, "By CPC's definition, however, it's been an official la Nina. From your link:

"'CPC considers El Nino or La Nina conditions to occur when the monthly Nino3.4 SST departures meet or exceed +/-0.5C along with consistent atmospheric features. These anomalies must also be forecasted to persist for 3 consecutive months.'"

The definition you quoted is for El Nino or La Nina CONDITIONS, not a FULL-FLEDGED El Nino or La Nina EPISODE, or as you called it "an official la Nina". NOAA even underlined "conditions" in their definition. They also emphasized the qualification in their definition by italicizing the clause, "along with consistent atmospheric features."

Regardless, global temperatures responded to the La Nina conditions as one would expect.

Mark B,
Thank you. From viewing NCDC pages I do see that we're talking about departures from normal from two different data sets.
But this is really much ado about nothing.
Even if the ground stations are true, all we're talking about is a consistent .5 degree to 1 degree F warm period beginning a couple decades ago.
So what?
Maybe we don't live long enough to see the cycles' ebbs and flows?
Maybe data hasn't been collected accurately enough for long enough?

I have to say wow,,been a very cool wet spring here and back through the midwest and into Canada, have talked with people there and never heard to many reports of well it has been a warm spring. This is almost comical anymore.

It's always interesting that people think the jet stream doesn't exist, or has not effect. It's really very simple:

North of the jet stream is it cooler, south of it it is warmer, and right at it is often stormy because of weather in transition.

Climate change includes more extremes which is what Brett's graphs and the daily overall weather news shows. The fact that it's cold up north does not cancel out all the recordbreaking heat we've been having down south.

By September we should have a better picture of what is happening in Greenland. If you have a globe (everyone should have one to get a larger view; satellite maps here are helpful as well), take a look at where it is. All that ice melting is creating water vapor and spreading some cold southwards. In the end, that will likely disperse, but at the moment we have more Arctic weather influence from the north.

By the way, for all you who love to hate the IPCC, which is overly conservative due to the wide variety of entities involved in creating it, here's some confirmation. It will be interesting to see the spin that makes understatement a reason to believe it is an overstatement!
"This staggering ice loss ... was not predicted by the IPCC’s climate models. As Penn State climatologist Richard Alley said in March 2006, the ice sheets appear to be shrinking '100 years ahead of schedule.' In 2001, the IPCC thought that neither Greenland nor Antarctica would lose significant mass by 2100. They both already are.

"Even the 2007 IPCC report assumed very little contribution to sea level rise this century from Greenland and Antarctica, since it was based almost exclusively on studies done before 2006. And that’s of course why a US Geological Survey study concluded sea-level rise in 2100 will likely 'substantially exceed' IPCC projections.

"One reason landlocked ice is flowing faster: The floating ice shelves that normally block that ice like a cork in a bottle are disappearing at a staggering rate. Ohio State researchers reported at the AGU meeting ... 'the amount of ice lost this summer is nearly three times what was lost one year ago'"

Here's more:
http://global-warming.accuweather.com/2009/06/rapid_retreat_of_ice_sheet_can_1.html

I pasted in the wrong link: this is what I meant to use.
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/jaboxgrnlnd.htm
"Greenland's Glaciers Losing Ice Faster This Year than Last year, which was record-setting itself"

The ice story is fascinating, so the link to Brett's previous post was not entirely irrelevant.

I've been asking a lot of questions and interested whether northeastern weather was connected to rapid ice melt. Here's the most straightforward answer I got:

"The cap of cold air that used to sit up there has been weakened by increasing temperatures. Instead of basically sitting up there at the North Pole (this is a very simplified example), it is being pushed around by the heavy streams of warmer water vapor (weathermen talk in terms of high and low pressure areas, but I am just going on the rather dramatic visuals). Sometimes, the cold air is split up into two or three separate areas. If you look down at the South Pole, the hot moist air is going down there too, but the region of cold air is too big to budge much. Soon, the hot air is just going to have its way up at the North Pole, and weather patterns as we used to know them will be gone and we have no idea what is going to come."

You all should read and respond to the materials Brett posts, rather than using this blog to promote your opinion or those of the denial machine. Ask yourselves, who benefits from all the misinformation you've been using; isn't it logical that the recordbreaking profits Exxon makes every quarter support all the materials that attempt to undermine the evidence that is all around you?