After the first 6 months 2021 looks set to be the coldest year since 2014. The annual global average temperature calculated so far is 0.64C relative to a baseline 1961-1990. The June monthly temperature has remained unchanged since May (0.69C), although there are differences in the spatial distributions.
Annual global temperatures (2021 – first 6 months)
The monthly temperatures show an insignificant change relative to the May value keeping the annual average essentially the same as well.
Monthly temperatures. May and June 2021 are essentially the same.
There are however changes in the spatial heat distribution since May, but a strong La Nina effect remains in place. Here is an animation of the 3D temperature distribution in June. The southern hemisphere remains much cooler than normal. There is also evidence of a ring of warmer temperatures encircling the earth at ~40N.
The southern hemisphere remains “cooler” .
Is the 1961-1990 baseline the coldest period for the 20th Century? Why not use the 20th Century Average? 30 years is only half of a the short term climate cycle.
The 1961-1990 baseline is the same as that used by he UK Hadley centre and CRU. Global temperatures are really just an average of temperature “anomalies”. The anomaly at one weather station is the different between that month’s average temperature and the 30 year average over the baseline. In reality the earth’s average temperature changes by far more during the annual seasons mainly because there is more land surface in the Northern Hemisphere and the solar radiation depends on the ellipticity of the earth’s orbit. Using temperature anomalies cancels these effects out. The Global “temperature” is the area weighted average of the temperature anomalies over the earth’s surface. Each point represents just the difference between the 30 year baseline average. The global value is net change relative to 1961-1990.
stands to reason that the the pent up heat released by recent extreme weather would result in a temporary lull in average temperature rise.
Released? to where? Or is it possible that the “lull” in average temperature rise is not temporary at all? Simply moving energy from a warmer block of air to a cooler block does not change the “average” temperature, but it certainly would create a temporary lull in the extreme weather if the impetus (the sharp temperature gradient between adjacent blocks of air) was dissipated. Isn’t this what really “stands to reason”? Maybe the cart should come AFTER the horse, no?
There’s never any lull in AGW. Each month’s anomaly is about 0.00125 C higher than it would’ve been otherwise. *
*The value varies by dataset
Not sure if I stated the math correctly. The idea is the + 0.00125 C warming per month is cumulative, adding up to + 0.15 C over the course of a decade. But this higher temperature is relative to what would’ve been observed had there not been the steady increase in GHG’s.
The analogy is a stock that increases in value every month. It would have a cumulative, positive effect on the value of a broader index, regardless of whether the index goes up or down.
It looks like we were all “sweating it out” during the Trump years! Naively, one would expect a fairly small deviation from the average (the horizontal line). But if it was smoothed over a third of a year or so, two major episodes of about +1 deg. C are seen, with a still erratic but lower “over-temperature” between them, suggests what would seem to be a huge excess of input at the edges of that period and an enforced quiescence in between. It doesn’t look random, and the ocean’s heat absorbing tendencies are not likely to change that rapidly. How would you explain that?
stands to reason that the the pent up heat released by recent extreme weather would result in a temporary lull in average temperature rise.
I’m pretty sure the daily/weekly/monthly fluctuations in global temperature anomalies we see are the result of changes in cloud cover arrangement, at one moment promoting warming or cooling compared with an earlier arrangement.
Amounting to noise that tends to flatten out over longer time frames.
yes, exactly…and that would be due to weather.
maybe a little more thought needs to go into this statement. i am thinking that all weather, not just extreme, pulls heat away from the earth’s surface via evapotranspiration and updrafts into the mid-atmosphere where it releases latent heat. That heat is in turn radiated out to space. So, weather works to cool the planet by transferring heat away from the surface to a place where the heat can “cool off”. This steadies the average temperature even as the earth warms due to increasing GHG. The more heating the more weather we will likely see, and the more release of energy to space. After a period of active global weather, perhaps the energy release is enough to temporarily stall the average temperature increase, like in June.
A question can somethin be explained to me ?
What is the “baseline” exactly ? 1961-1990
Are sample points also indexed for environment changes ? Like in the past an open field and now in the middle of a town ?
Measurement Accuracy ? and quality of sample points.
Are all measuring points indexed for Model and type ? Age ?
Most sea measurement’s in the past were done by ships measuring in the propeller drive shaft. Satellites which did not keep their distance. etc.
After a recent big earth quake the Himalaya moved.
But only if you go there you can tell how much and up or down and or sideways because satellites can not.
Satellites wobble too. Gravity is not equal and the earths magnetic field makes any stationary orbit different too.
So what is the precision of measurement compared to the past.
The baseline is a 30 year period used to define a “normal climate”. At each point (weather station) the average temperature for each month over that 30 year period defines the zero point. If you book a holiday you often see the expected temperatures at the resort per month. That is exactly what these normals are.
Climate scientists just use temperature “anomalies”. An anomaly is just the difference from that temperature normal. The then average all these temperature anomalies together to determine the Global Temperature Anomaly. If this value is 1 degree warmer than the value it was say in 1850 then they say the earth has warmed by 1C.
The Urban heating effect is supposedly small compared to overall warming. It certainly exists and some fats growing cities have warmed more than the surrounding countryside e.g. Sao Paolo, but this doesn’t explain all the effect. Likewise changes in measurement methods (ships to buoys etc.) supposedly have all been taken into account. The precision today is obviously much better than it was in 1900. Therefore the uncertainty in temperature between 1850 and 1940 is much larger than say between 1960 and 2021.
A lot of work has gone into ironing out the inconsistencies you have pointed out through reanalysis and satellite verification, as pointed out in the link below. It turns out that trend is more truthful then the baseline values themselves… https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-how-do-scientists-measure-global-temperature
Hi Clive
My name is Iain Davis and I am a writer for the UK Based news Website UK column:
https://www.ukcolumn.org/writer/iain-davis
I wonder if you would be interested in participating in a planned symposium on Climate Change. This will hopefully be aired shortly before the COP26 conference in October 2021.
The symposium will gather qualified scientists and other experts who question the claimed consensus on anthropogenic global warming and climate change related science and policy responses. The objective is to provide a platform for informed voices, such as yours, to explain and debate their perspective on climate change.
The planned symposium will take the form of an online event and will be modelled upon the UK Column’s highly successful recent Doctors For Covid Ethics symposium, which garnered hundreds of thousands of views globally.
https://www.ukcolumn.org/video/doctors-for-covid-ethics-symposium-session-1-the-false-pandemic
If you are intrigued and would possibly be interested in participating, please email me directly at my personal blog: administration@in-this-together.com
All involved with UK Column feel it is essential that all the evidence relating to climate change should be discussed. I hope to hear from you.
Regards
Iain Davis