GISS August global down 0.01°C from July.

The GISS land/ocean temperature anomaly fell 0.01°C last month. The August anomaly average was 0.77°C, down from July 0.78°C. For the second month, the GISS report is not listed at the news page. It seems to be the fifth warmest August in the record, or, to put it another way, the coolest since 2013 (but warmer than any August before that). In some contrast TempLS rose 0.03°, but the changes are small. Satellite indices both fell considerably. In the last two months, satellite TLT rose and fell by about the same amount, while changes at surface were small.

Update I see that James Hansen and Makiko Sato have been issuing regular monthly reports as the GISS numbers are posted. The current one is here. There is a list of past reports here, where you can ask to get them by email.

The overall pattern was similar to that in TempLS. Very warm in Europe, extending to Siberia and NE Africa. .Also warm in N America, West coast and acean and NE. Cool spots in S Brazil and S Africa.

As usual here, I will compare the GISS and previous TempLS plots below the jump.


Here is GISS


And here is the TempLS spherical harmonics plot

This post is part of a series that has now run for six years. The GISS data completes the month cycle, and is compared with the TempLS result and map. GISS lists its reports here, and I post the monthly averages here.
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