GISS September steady at 0.81°C

The GISS global anomaly is out. The timing is odd - it appeared on a Sunday, but seems to have been prepared on Friday 9 Oct, which is very early. It was 0.81°C, same as August. I have been writing about the somewhat disparate estimates - NCEP/NCAR was up 0.06, TempLS grid was steady, and TempLS mesh down 0.05°C. I thought differing estimates of Antarctica played a role.

This September was not (for once) the highest ever in the GISS record; it came second behind 2014 at 0.90°C. That was one of the warmest in 2014. Sep 2015 was still well about the record annual average (2014) of 0.75°C, keeping 2015 on track to be hottest ever.

I'll show this time first the GISS polar projections:


Antarctica is indeed cold, though not as uniformly as TempLS had it. But there is also a substantial grey area in the coldest part. That will be assigned the global mean value in averaging. Here I think that is a warm bias; TempLS mesh is probably more accurate there. Below the jump I'll show the usual lat/lon plot and comparison with TempLS.

Update - I see that with earlier comparison plots with TempLS ver 3 (since June) I have been inappropriately subtracting the mean, so the anomaly base was not 1951-80 as stated. Now fixed.



As with the TempLS spherical harmonics map below, it shows cold in Antarctica, W Siberia, N Atlantic, and watmth in US/E Canada, E Europe, E Pacific (ENSO) and Brazil.