Friday, April 8, 2016

Surface TempLS down 0.086°C in March, still second hottest

TempLS mesh, reported here (as of 8 April, 4359 stations), was down from 1.074°C in Feb to 0.988 in March (base 1961-90). This is comparable to the drop in the TLT satellite indices, and greater than the NCEP/NCAR index (0.057). TempLS grid dropped by only 0.037°C, which is similar to NCEP/NCAR. The TempLS anomaly is the second highest in the record, after February.

The spherical harmonics map is here:



Again unusually warm in Russia and most of N America (except Labrador strait region). Not so warm in Arctic, cold in Antarctica, and also cool in N Pacific.

The reason for the grid-mesh discrepancy is again the different coverage of the events at the poles. Both cooled, and the mesh algorithm covers that better. So GISS may well drop more than NOAA and HADCRUT.

To illustrate that, I'll show the attribution of the anomaly (from here):



It shows the area-weighted contributions to the average. SST actually went up a little. But Arctic and Antarctic went down from Feb, and it looks like in sum, by about 0.04°C. That is fairly close to the difference between mesh and grid. Otherwise Asia (excl Sib), Siberia and N America were the big contributors, with Europe still well positive, but less than Feb.





8 comments:

  1. JMA has reported the March temps, 0.62 C above 1981-2010, the same (record-high) as in February.
    Meanwhile TempLSmesh March has climbed to only 0.042 below Feb. I think it was Sudan data that caused the main leap upwards (the maps and charts in the TempLS update are stuck in April 7) Gistemp should report soon, My guess of 1.30 C remains..

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    Replies
    1. Olof,
      Thanks for that - yes, it's looking like March is pretty close to Feb. I'll fix the maps issue.

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    2. I repeat my estimate for GISS March using the newer TempLSmesh data and get 1.25 °C or 1.29°C for two different models. This is really high and surprising.
      If the final GISS March value is out, I will make a full prediction for the year. Probably closer to 1.1°C that to 1.0°C.

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    3. I think anything over .90 ℃ would be simply amazing. Especially if there are La Nina conditions in the Late NH fall.

      But I always think long term. Can April 2016 rebound a bit before the end of the month?

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    4. GISS March is out 1.28°C in the Table

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    5. @JCH: my regression model gives for GISS April 2016 1.23+-0.12°C.
      But I don't know why the error bars after the last update are so small, usually for single month never below 0.2, even if it is the next.

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  2. Uli- looking at Nick's tracker, April NCEP is at 1.164 ℃, which is lower than December 2016 at 1.181 ℃. On GISS L&O index, that translated to 1.1 ℃. Wouldn't Nick's April numbers for NCEP have to rebound in order to hit 1.23 ℃ (i hope you're about right)?

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  3. Uli,

    I would say for now: GISS 2016 = 1.15K +-0.03K

    If you understand german, here: http://www.wzforum.de/forum2/read.php?6,3190976,3196382#msg-3196382

    Or, i have choose the years, where a el-nino was beginning and end with la-nina, so then i look for the difference between the mean of the first tree month in this year against the Year-Value. Its shows that (1992 should be ignored because of pinatabo erruption) the Year is only arround -0.11K +-0.03K cooler then the first 3 months (mean of Januar, February and March)

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