Not according to UAH
(Examiner) Since 1978, satellites have been measuring the Earth’s temperature and have given us a snapshot of2015‘s overall temperature: it’s not a record breaker. Not even close. In fact, 2015 didn’t even come close to breaking any all-time records, the Daily Caller reported yesterday. Culling data from weather satellites that have been orbiting the Earth since 1978, climate scientists at the University of Alabama/Huntsville (UAH) reported that 2015 has only been the third-warmest year since satellite tracking began.
As for 2015, the temperature was .44 degrees Celsius above the 1981 to 2010 time-frame, it’s above-average warmth owed in large part to a naturally occurring El Niño event occurring in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. The last time an El Niño of this magnitude occurred was in 1998, the warmest year in the satellite record. But this current El Niño still ranks third when compared to the ones that occurred since 1950, when recordkeeping began.
Remember, Warmists used to say that satellite data was very, very important in understanding global warming/climate change. Here’s what it looks like
Of course, Warmists will say “look, warming!!!!!!” Here’s the thing: it doesn’t prove anthropogenic causation. It simply proves warming. Which has occurred multiple times during the Holocene.
Whether 2016 will be a record year is mostly dependent on El Nino. Not you driving your fossil fueled vehicle.
…the upper atmosphere isn’t warming up as predicted by the theory of global warming (aka the greenhouse effect). This is an enormous failure and should send climatologists back to the drawing board. If the theory says the upper atmosphere will warm up first, with the surface warming later, it fails. What the satellites are telling us is that the upper atmosphere isn’t warming up anywhere near as fast or close to what land-based measurements are telling us.
Might there be other reasons for the land surface readings being above the others? Land use, UHI, improperly sited and compromised measuring stations, and, yes, mucking around with the data.
The calculated UAH satellite estimates do not even agree with the calculated RSS satellite estimates. Why is that, you suppose? And neither agree with the direct temperature measurements from thermometers.
For reasons unknown, the satellites overestimate the highs and lows compared to thermometers, e.g., the 1998 El Nino registered higher in the troposphere than on the ground. This finding is why the deniosaurs claim it’s not warmed since 1998 – the satellites show 1998 as the warmest year!
These exaggerated highs and lows typically average themselves out but since about 2006 the calculated satellite estimates have been drifting lower than the thermometer measurements. It’s likely the algorithms used to generate the satellite “temperatures” need further adjustments to bring them back to reality (Christy and Spencer had to do this early on when it was demonstrated the complex calculations used to adjust the satellite “data” were incorrect and had to be fixed).
It’s clear the Earth is warming, including whatever it is that the satellites are measuring. All the surface temperature datasets will show that 2015 is the warmest year recorded, and 2016 will likely be just as warm.
In fact, 15 of the 16 warmest years in recorded temperature history occurred this century! 1998 is the only earlier year to sneak in.
In your opinion, what is causing the Earth to warm?
Why is the 21st Century the warmest we’ve seen? Magic? Natural variability? Or greenhouse emissions? Over 90% of scientists go with greenhouse emissions.
No direct scientific proof or data has been shown that link the current observations to human activity. The link is simply assumed to be a fact.
Wonder why that link can’t found.
The media always reports the NOAA data and never NASA because it supports their political agenda.
UAH and RSS do not agree but they are quite close. In the past, UAH was giving warmer predictions than RSS and it was assumed it was because UAH was newer. However, it turned out that it was UAH that needed adjusting.
The very slight overall warming is likely due to the earth coming out of the last ice age. It may be the Sun. It may be natural variance. However, if CO2 was the culprit the world would be much warmer than it is today according to climate models, and the warming would be mostly since CO2 began to rise in 1946. Since warming happened before 1946, there must be other contributing factors. This year so far we have had a mild winter in Eastern North America whereby the temperature on average has been about 7 to 10 degrees C warmer than this time last year. After two month’s of temperature whereby the temperature has been significantly warmer than last year, there has been no mass extinctions, or major weather catastrophes and humanity and nature have coped just fine. In the 1980’s the message was the earth is warming and we may need to adjust. Now it is been exaggerated to beyond doom and gloom, again for political reasons. If El Nino is the prime cause we should see the world continue to cool as it has been doing since 2010 (confirmed by this graph) next year or the year after. There is absolutely no reason to rob society in the name of AGW. If we want to reduce C02 emissions then let’s spend money on R&D to find an alternative. Not give the money to third world despots and their friends.
ALL the available evidence points to greenhouse gases causing the current warming.
Why do YOU think it’s warming?
There is no measurement standard for global temperature.
Why not?
And William’s UAH graph shows 0.75C warming from the first to latest satellite estimated ‘temperatures’! That’s a mere 36 years! Using trend values instead of absolutes at the beginning and end we find about 0.1C/decade.
Anyway, NOAA, HadCrut, Gistemp and Berkeley all show 2015 as the warmest.
Here’s a graph comparing the differences between UAH Versions 5.6 and 6.0 (red line). Note the negative values for the red line after about 2005 – almost as if Version 6 was adjusted down! Curious. On the other hand, the blue lines represent GISS version differences. Not how they cluster around baseline, meaning data adjustment didn’t alter the outcome much. Wow, UAH data is adjusted more than GISS data! That’s not to say that the UAH data adjustments are wrong, just that they received more adjustment than the thermometer readings!
http://www.moyhu.org.s3.amazonaws.com/2015/12/uahadj1.png
And here’s a paper from RSS describing how difficult it is to make the data adjustments to the satellite data.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/1520-0442%282003%29016%3C3650%3AAROTMC%3E2.0.CO%3B2
** from Prabhakara et al:
Nonsense.
Jeff,
Sorry, but all your pontificating is wrong. Your conclusions are not correct, your science is off the wall, and your logic is poor as usual. Then, the your desire to correct the temp by changing world government and taxation is not even supported by the priest in your religion. Don’t you ever get tired of appearing stupid to the world?
How so?
Maybe you’ve discovered the standard.
Where is it?
And here’s what Roy Spencer had to say about RSS (William and Monckton’s fav):
dave,
Being called stupid by the likes of you is a compliment.
drowningpuppies, I apologize for typing “nonsense”, I should have referred to your typing as “gibberish”.
“Anyway, my UAH cohort and boss John Christy, who does the detailed matching between satellites, is pretty convinced that the RSS data is undergoing spurious cooling because RSS is still using the old NOAA-15 satellite which has a decaying orbit, to which they are then applying a diurnal cycle drift correction based upon a climate model, which does not quite match reality. We have not used NOAA-15 for trend information in years… we use the NASA Aqua AMSU, since that satellite carries extra fuel to maintain a precise orbit.”
I think this is old info.
I think RSS is considered the most reliable of the two but now that UAH has been amended they are generally considered to be both correct. Well within the margin of error.
So where is the measurement standard for global temperature?
“And here’s what Roy Spenser had to say…” So you were against Spenser before you were for him? Got it. “Why is the 21st century the warmest we’ve seen?” The question is- how many have you “seen”? What are you comparing it to? J continues the pathetic attempt, with no evidence behind it, to portray this as unusual.
It’s still irrelevant gibberish and you know it, but keep asking. Better yet, rather than repeating something you read at a denier blog, make a relevant argument.
j,
Stop changing the subject. William made the claim, based on UAH troposphere (not surface) calculations alone, that 2015 isn’t the warmest since we’ve been measuring. It’s likely also the warmest in at least 100,000 years.
Obviously, science has to operate with the data it has not on what deniosaurs imagine.
What we know right now is that the Earth is warming rapidly from CO2 we’ve added to the atmosphere.
No direct scientific proof or data has been shown that link the current observations to human activity.
There are mountains (and oceans) of evidence that overwhelmingly support the theory that human activities are causing the planet to warm. Not sure what will convince the deniosaurs, or what “direct scientific proof” you are expecting.
Atmospheric CO2 slows infrared radiation escaping into space, warming the Earth. Check.
The increase in atmospheric CO2 from 280ppm to over 400ppm results from human activity. Check.
Jeff,
Once again and always, you are wrong. Knowledge basis is poor, logic does not exist, in short you are an intellectual light weight and don’t know it.
dave,
ALWAYS wrong? Really?
The Earth is warming. Is that wrong?
CO2 in increasing. Is that wrong?
The CO2 is increasing from humans burning fossil fuels. Is that wrong?
Pick your favorite “hole” in the Theory of AGW and educate us all, please. Otherwise, why do you even bother repeating your same sad insults?
I encourage debate, but you won’t even select a single point I’ve made and tell me why you disagree! Instead, I’m ALWAYS wrong. Really?
The earth is warming.
CO2 is rising.
However, there is no direct scientific proof or data that link current observations to human activity. The link is assumed as fact.
Could you provide that link?
Could you provide the measurement standard of global temperature?
drowningpuppies,
I know the last thing you want is an actual scientific discussion, but please clarify a couple of points.
What “current observations” do you mean? Be specific, please.
What do you mean “direct scientific proof or data”?
What do you mean by “measurement standard of global temperature”?
Do you at least agree that 1) the Earth is warming? and 2) that CO2 is rising? and 3) that the CO2 rise is a result of humans burning fossil fuels?
Oh, now you want specificity and clarification when you’ve been spouting generalities.
I asked for a measurement standard, there isn’t one.
All five entities that “measure” global temps use different methods to arrive at a number. All five have different numbers. There is no standard.
Current observations and scientific proof…?
Do you really want to play this dumb?
CO2, by itself, has not been proven to cause global warming.
Spare me the insults.
I didn’t think so.
What is the ideal amount of CO2?
It’s impossible to say what the ideal concentration of atmospheric CO2 is. Do you think it important to designate an “ideal” CO2? Certainly the current CO2 level is man-made and not natural.
What we do know is that human civilization developed and evolved when atmospheric CO2 was around 280ppm and the global mean surface temperature was lower than now. We humans have added so much CO2 to the atmosphere that the current level is 400ppm and climbing. This has caused the global mean surface temperature to increase 1C over just the past 100 years. William calls 1C ‘miniscule’ but 1C is greater than the total temperature range of the Holocene epoch. From the previous high in the Holocene (about 5000 years ago) the temperature has slowly dropped about 0.5C, but has rocketed up the past century.
We humans will adjust to the current warming but if it continues it will change how our grandkids, greatgrandkids and great-greatgrandkids live, and not for the better.
Regurgitation of Michael Mann’s “Hoaxy Stick”.
Still trying to erase the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age.