GISS May global down 0.11°C from April.

The GISS land/ocean temperature anomaly fell 0.12°C in May. The anomaly average was 0.86°C, down from April 0.97°C. It compared with a 0.149°C fall in TempLS V4 mesh. I should note that there were late moves in both indices. GISS' April figure dropped 0.02°C between posting last month and now, making a total drop of 0.13. I note that GISS says that this month is the first using GHCN V4 (other than beta); the change may be part of that. The drop in TempLS is somewhat less than originally posted. I posted that rather early, since all major countries seemed to have coverage, and I got stable results two days in a row. The latter proved illusory, though. A minor nuisance with GHCN V4 is that they keep adding to the inventory. I have resolved to only update it once a month, and this was the first time it had been updated automatically. It didn't quite work; the net result was that my apparent stability was due to data not being updated. It should be OK in future.

The overall pattern was similar to that in TempLS. Warm in most of Asia and Africa. Cool in central Europe and much of the N America (but warm in NW). Arctic warm.

As usual here, I will compare the GISS and previous TempLS plots below the jump. I have now switched from my spherical harmonics based TempLS plots to LOESS based, which gives a more similar resolution.

May global surface TempLS down 0.177°C from April.

The TempLS mesh anomaly (1961-90 base) was 0.703deg;C in May vs 0.88°C in April. This was a lot more than the drop (0.086) in the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis base index, and takes it back to January's temperature.

The drop was mainly in land temperatures, and central N America was quite cold, as was central Europe, and less so, China/Mongolia. Africa and Brazil were warm, and also the Arctic. SST has been drifting down slowly, but is still warm.

Here is the temperature map, using now a LOESS-based map of anomalies.



And here is the map of stations reporting:

May NCEP/NCAR global surface anomaly down 0.086°C from April

The Moyhu NCEP/NCAR index fell from 0.496°C in April to 0.41°C in May, on a 1994-2013 anomaly base. It was a substantial fall, exactly the same as from March to April, and yet it still leaves May as warmer than February, or any earlier month back to May 2017.

The Arctic was quite warm, including Greenland and west. There was a band of cool from E Canada to California. Also W Europe was quite cool, and also China through to central Asia. Antarctica was mixed.

The BoM ENSO Outlook is back to Watch - still an enhanced likelihood.