Joseph Romm: UAH global satellite data has record WARMEST day for January; January 2010 likely to be warmest ever globally on UAH record

Paging Neil Cavuto: UAH global satellite data has record WARMEST day for January

"It’s almost certain by now that January 2010 will also be the globally warmest January on the UAH record"

by Joseph Romm, Climate Progress, January 15, 2010

Yes the anti-science crowd, from WattsUpWithThat to FoxNews, have been touting cold snaps over a small fraction of the globe as evidence of the non-exist cooling trend (see “disinformers to media: Please make case for something that isn’t true using data we don’t believe“).

Well now even they have been forced to acknowledge that the global record that’s going to be set this month is, in all likelihood, for warming — because it is showing up on their beloved satellite data (click to enlarge).


Yes, a Revkin tweet put me on to this — and no, I still don’t like green eggs and tweets!

This actually comes from a post by Luboš Motl, a Czech anti-science type to judge by his post (he uses phrases like “the AGW fad”), which was reposted by Watts.  Watts seems to think this is

now more from the “weather is not climate department”

That’s his way of pretending that all of his posts on local cold snaps aren’t an effort to make a climate-related argument to persuade his legion of anti-scientific readers that we’re cooling when in fact we’re warming everywhere you look (see “Skeptical Science explains how we know global warming is happening: It’s the oceans, stupid!“).

In fact, the “daily global average temperature” is considerably more relevant than, say, the temperature in Florida.  But a single day’s temp certainly isn’t climate data.  That said, the post Watts reprints goes well beyond one day with this prediction:

By the way, it’s almost certain by now that January 2010 will also be the globally warmest January on the UAH record – the anomaly will likely surpass 0.70 °C. It may even see the highest (or at least 2nd highest) monthly UAH anomaly since December 1978. I will print more exact predictions in a week or so.

Now we’re starting to get closer to the climate realm, as it appears we are increasingly likely to vindicate NASA’s prediction of a year ago that an El Niño would soon emerge and that — on top of the long-term human-caused warming trend — means “it still seems likely that a new global temperature record will be set within the next 1-2 years.”  And again, this is even more impressive because we’re at “the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century.”  It is just hard to stop the march of AGW, at least if we don’t sharply reverse emissions trends.

Of course, this record warming even in the satellite dataset isn’t a surprise — at least to those in the pro-science camp.  NOAA reported today in its 2009 global report:

Since 1979, NOAA’s polar orbiting satellite measurements have also been used to measure temperatures in the troposphere and stratosphere. Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) data are analyzed for NOAA by the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), Remote Sensing Systems (RSS, Santa Rosa, California) and the University of Washington (UW). These observations show that the global average temperature in the middle troposphere (the layer which is centered at an altitude of 2 to 6 miles, but which includes the lower stratosphere) has increased, though differing analysis techniques have yielded similar but different trends (see below).

In all cases these trends are positive. The analysis performed by RSS reveals a trend of 0.09 °C/decade (0.16 °F/decade) while the UAH analysis reveals a lower trend of 0.04 °C/decade (0.08 °F/decade). When adjusted by University of Washington scientists to remove the stratospheric influences from the RSS and UAH mid-troposphere average, the trends increase to 0.15 °C/decade (0.26 °F/decade) and 0.11 °C/decade (0.20 °F/decade), respectively. (A journal article is available that describes the University of Washington adjustments to remove the stratospheric influence from mid-troposphere averages.) Trends in these MSU time series are similar to the trend in global surface temperatures, which increased at a rate near 0.16 °C/decade (0.29 °F/decade) during the same 30-year period.

You know, it was in the 50s (°F) in DC today.  Not a record, but surely enough for FoxNews to use as a hook for a larger story on the overall human-caused global warming trend — see FoxNews’ Neil Cavuto still thinks winter chill disproves global warming; actual scientists disagree.  Neil, I’m ready for my close up.

Related posts:

• The hottest decade ends and since there’s no Maunder mininum — sorry deniers! — the hottest decade begins
• Must-read AP story: Statisticians reject global cooling; Caldeira — “To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous”
• Following third warmest November, December not even close to contiguous U.S. record for cold
• Met Office: “It is not cold everywhere in the world.”
• Breaking: 2009 hottest year on record in Southern Hemisphere and tied for second globally
• Experts: Cold snap doesn’t disprove global warming