August global surface TempLS up 0.032 °C from July.

The TempLS mesh anomaly (1961-90 base) rose a little, from 0.641°C in July to 0.673°C in August. This is opposite to the 0.067°C fall in the NCEP/NCAR index, while the UAH satellite TLT index declined more (0.13°C). There may be a reason for that discrepancy, which happened in the opposite direction last month. Although the land temperatures went down a little, SST went up, by about 0.04°C, which is quite a big month change for SST. It makes it warmest since last November, and could be the first sign of a coming El Niño influence. The reanalysis and troposphere measures do not use SST directly.

As with the reanalysis, there were few prominent patterns in the month. Cool in parts of S America, N Canada, and a large region of A Australia and adjacent ocean. Still warm in E Europe and far N Siberia, and NE USA. Antarctica was the only notably warm place (relatively). Here (from here) is the plot of relative contributions to the rise (ie components weighted by area). Note, as mentioned above, the strong effect of the SST rise on the global average:

Here is the temperature map. As always, there is a more detailed active sphere map here.

This post is part of a series that has now run since 2011. The TempLS mesh data is reported here, and the recent history of monthly readings is here. Unadjusted GHCN is normally used, but if you click the TempLS button there, it will show data with adjusted, and also with different integration methods. There is an interactive graph using 1981-2010 base period here which you can use to show different periods, or compare with other indices. There is a general guide to TempLS here.

The reporting cycle starts with a report of the daily reanalysis index on about the 4th of the month. The next post is this, the TempLS report, usually about the 8th. Then when the GISS result comes out, usually about the 15th, I discuss it and compare with TempLS. The TempLS graph uses a spherical harmonics to the TempLS mesh residuals; the residuals are displayed more directly using a triangular grid in a better resolved WebGL plot here.

A list of earlier monthly reports of each series in date order is here:

1. NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis report
2. TempLS report
3. GISS report and comparison with TempLS