This adds to the evidence that February was very warm indeed. The NCEP/NCAR index was up by a similar amount (0.175); the two satellite indices were up by about 0.3°C. Each, of course, highest in its record. I would expect comparable rises in the main surface indices (GISS, NOAA, HADCRUT). GISS, for example, could approach 1.3°C.
The heat was especially in a broad band from W Europe to E Siberia, with a branch down through China. Another branch from Alaska to US Midwest. I think the patterns around Canada/Greenland may change with more data coming in, with possible upside to the global total.
The breakdown plot shows heat almost everywhere, except for Antarctica. SST is very slightly down.
I'll show here the ENSO comparison with 1997/8. 2015/6 is similar in pattern to 1997/8, but nearly 0.5°C warmer. If the pattern continues, the peak warmth may continue till August or so. The plot is in the style of this post, which I'll update from time to time.
Posts
Pretty sure you meant to say Feb in the header ;)
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, thanks for the update! Given that the Sep to Oct "jump" can be attributed to the Antarctic recovery (after 6 extreme cold months before), it seems that 2015/16 is going to stay approx 0.5K above 1997/98 as long as Antarctic temperatures don't nose-dive again. Given the slower collapse of El Nino this year, chances are we may get even further ahead of 1997/98. But well, that's of course mere substance-free speculation on my part ;)
Well, March is looking warm too! But thanks, fixed.
DeleteThe latest Copernicus climate report is here
ReplyDeleteThe ERA-interim anomaly for February is 0.86 C, up 0.14 from January. Hottest February month ever by a stunning 0.5 C
It looks on your graph that february anomalies climbed like in 1998. But march is even warmer in 2016. That was not the case in 1998. The El Nino 2016 seems a bit different, températures in 3.4 region are still at +1,9°C in march, a huge anomaly, even compared to 1998. I Wonder how it will be translated in air températures.
ReplyDeleteTwo important cyclic phenomena are IMO incorrectly labeled
Deleteas unpredictable. The more obvious of the two is the
Quasi-Biennial Oscillation of stratospheric winds (and
temperature). This is rather precisely predictable based
on the seasonally aliased gravitational pull of the moon.
http://imageshack.com/a/img922/8199/jlhllp.png
A paper from this year showing the significant oscillations
in equatorial stratospheric temperature that are related to
the QBO of winds --
Alsepan, Givo, Sandro Wellyanto Lubis, and Sonni Setiawan.
“Analysis of the Equatorial Lower Stratosphere Quasi-
Biennial Oscillation (QBO) Using ECMWF-Interim Reanalysis
Data Set.” IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental
Science. Vol. 31. No. 1. IOP Publishing, 2016.
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/31/1/012032/pdf
This describes the thermal wind equation at the equator,
which relates wind shear and temperature.
So if we have the actual forcing mechanism behind QBO
understood (not the Lindzen version) then it will be
easier to compensate for the deterministic temperature
variations and thus isolate the underlying global
warming signal.
More challenging to model is ENSO, partly due to the
impact of noisy cyclonic activity interfering with
the measurements. Yet there is enough stationary
deterministic behavior from the past that one can
project ENSO fairly well. The model of ENSO that
we are developing at the Azimuth forum nailed the
current spike to within a few months, with the
training interval extending from 1880 to 2013.
It projected a spike in 2016 not as strong as
in 1998 but wider.
My prediction for Feb 2016 was +1.2 for GISS LOTI anomaly (the 1-sigma error was larger the 0.1), with the Feb data for the other now it may be warmer. But the warming may be lower then in TempLS mesh because TempLS mesh was cooling in Jan 16 compared to GISS. So GISS Feb may be between 1.2 and 1.3. Compare the rise of TempLS mesh from Dec 15 to Feb 16 which is lower.
ReplyDeleteFor March 2016 the linear regressing predicts a drop to +0.95 for the GISS anomaly, obviously influenced by the 1998 drop. But up to now, it does not look as the GISS March anomaly could fall below +1.0.
The prediction for the year 2016 is now 1.00. It may be higher if March does not cool.
"So GISS Feb may be between 1.2 and 1.3"
DeleteYes, I think that is reasonable. I thought 1.3, but realised that the TempLS rise in Feb followed a drop in Jan, which GISS didn't have. So if that drop was for reasons that didn't affect GISS, the recovery may not be present in GISS either. So 1.3 may be high.
So after more Feb data are out, I'm not so sure that 1.3 is high. I tried to predict the GISS Feb value by different regressions and end up with values between +1.19 and +1.38.
DeleteI have plotted the NCEP/NCAR monthly averages (1994-2015 monthly mean removed) from your zip file from Jan 1994 to Mar 2016, Ok Mar 16 will surly go down, but it looks crazy in 2016. The increase is very much larger than in 1998. In 1997/98 the increase form mid 1997 to peak 1998 was +0.4°C, in 2015/2016 the increase from mid 2015 to Feb 2016 is already +0.6°C but +0.8-0.9°C including the preliminary Mar 2016 value (the final mar value will be lower).
GISS: 1.35K in February
ReplyDeletehttp://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
Yes but... GISS is baselined on 1951-1980!
DeleteIf you take as baseline e.g. 1981-2010, that anomaly is reduced by 0.43K giving 0.92K.
And?? Thats trvial, every knows that another baseline is affecting the value of anomaly. So what is you points, i do see, Reyanalsis and GFS worked well, but little to cool.
DeleteSure it's trivial! My humble impression is that a common baseline would make things clearer when comparing them.
DeleteOk, but i belived we talked about GISS in their norm baseline here, which is 1951-1980, most comments before would make sense to this, look at the comments of Uli or the head-post which said: "GISS, for example, could approach 1.3°C. "
DeleteThats why i didnt understand your points at first, but now, y, its clear the same baseline is needed to compare different Products
I occasionally urge people to not use the default "Anon"; the next choice up in the menu allows you yo choose a name (using an ID makes it easier still). A dialogue between two anonymice gets confusing.
DeleteYou are right of course; but as I tried to use my wordpress id, the blogspot told me my OpenId couldn't be verified.
DeleteThis time again, text (in german):
Deine OpenID-Berechtigungen konnten nicht verifiziert werden.
Hello Mr Stokes,
ReplyDeleteI have constructed (just for fun) a series mix including 3 sat and 5 surface plus mean over all 8:
fs5.directupload.net/images/160312/vs3jsxg4.pdf
and would like to complete the little job with the balloon corner.
I found a lot of RATPAC data, but most yearly, one seasonal. Do you know of a monthly series I could easily compare with sat & surf? And of course I then need their baseline info...
Thanks in advance for your help.
P.S. JMA isn't present in the trend viewers, neither at yours, nor at Kevin Cowtan's, nor at WFT.
Is it due to their 5x5 gridded data? Anyway, that japanese stuff should make skeptics quite lucky :-)