Fifth Warmest July on Record for Globe

NOAA: Fifth Warmest July on Record for Globe


www.noaanews.noaa.gov...


August 15, 2008

The combined average global land and ocean surface temperature for July 2008 tied with 2001 and 2003 as the fifth warmest July since worldwide records began in 1880, according to an analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

Also, the seven months from January to July 2008 ranked as the ninth warmest seven-month period for combined average global land and ocean surface temperature.

Global Temperatures

* The July 2008 combined global land and ocean surface temperature was 0.88 degree F (0.49 degree C) above the 20th century mean of 60.4 degrees F (15.8 degrees C). For the January – July period, the combined global land and ocean surface temperature was 0.81 degree F (0.45 degree C) above the 20th century mean of 56.9 degrees F (13.8 degrees C).

* Separately, the global land surface temperature for July was 1.22 degrees F (0.68 degree C) above the 20th century mean of 57.8 degrees F (14.3 degrees C). For January – July, the global land surface temperature was 1.35 degrees F (0.75 degree C) above the 20th century mean of 46.8 degrees F (8.3 degrees C).

* The July global ocean surface temperature was 0.76 degree F (0.42 degree C) above the 20th century mean of 61.5 degrees F (16.4 degrees C). The January – July global ocean surface temperature was 0.61 degrees F (0.34 degrees C) above the 20th century mean of 61.0 degrees F (16.1 degrees C).

Global Highlights

* El Niño-Southern Oscillation conditions continued neutral through July in the tropical Pacific Ocean, ending the La Niña event that began in mid-2007.

* Northern Hemisphere sea ice extent ranked fourth lowest on record for July. Since 1979, Northern Hemisphere sea ice extent in July has decreased by 6.1 percent per decade. In contrast, the Southern Hemisphere sea ice extent was slightly above the 1979-2000 average and ranked tenth largest for July out of the last 30 years.

* Rains from Hurricane Dolly caused landslides in Guatemala that killed 21 people. The storm, after making landfall at South Padre Island, Texas, on July 23 brought torrential rain and flooding to both the Mexican and U.S. sides of the Rio Grande Valley. Nearly 250,000 people in Mexico were left without safe drinking water.

* Typhoon Kalmaegi/Helen (July 13-20) passed over the Philippines, Taiwan, and eastern China, killing at least 18 and causing about $10 million (U.S.) in damage. Some mountainous locations in Taiwan reported more than 1100 mm (43 inches) of rain during the storm. A few days later (July 23-30), Typhoon Fung-wong passed over many of the same areas, dumping 838 mm (32.9 inches) of rain on Hualien on Taiwan’s east coast. Extensive damage exceeding $6 million (U.S.) and six fatalities were reported.

* Heavy monsoon rains pelted northern India and Bangladesh between July 5-14, resulting in floods and landslides that claimed 20 lives. Eleven people died in monsoon flooding and landslides in Nepal in early July.

* By the end of July, drought conditions improved slightly across China’s northern Xinjiang and Gansu provinces, and in parts of Ningxia and Inner Mongolia provinces, where conditions improved from severe to moderate drought.

Other Key Events

* Two powerful storms struck New Zealand between July 26 – 30, triggering flash flooding and widespread damage caused by winds equivalent to a Category 3 hurricane. On July 5, the Norwegian capital of Oslo was hammered with heavy rain and flash flooding and 97 km/h (60 mph) wind gusts.

* Torrential downpours July 23-26 in South Korea inundated more than 3,000 acres of farmland, damaged more than 600 homes and killed seven. In western Japan, more than 100 mm (four inches) of rain fell in less than two hours, killing four and flooding hundreds of homes. Severe storms over Ukraine and Romania July 25-29 caused the Dniester and Prut rivers to top their banks, flooding nearly 50,000 homes and killing 34 people.

I can't speak for the entire globe, but here in SE Missouri, this summer was definatly cooler than last summer.

This is the effect of global warming, let this be a eye opener about the destructive consequences of global warming.

Found it interesting that we are still getting warmer though the sun is at a low right now.

wonder if we are just gonna keep heating till something breaks...

I say it will be the current in the north atlantic that circulates heat/cold.

reply to post by Blueracer


yes, but that's part of global warming, the weather turns it self upside down. You guys in the southern U.S have either been in a drought (the west) or in crazy rains (south east). Up here in vancouver, we had the 3rd coldest june on record, but have been smoking hot ever since.
it could snow in florida this winter, but rain in the north...

it's all messed up.

edit: hmm.. the quote isn't showing up...

[edit on 15-8-2008 by pynner]

Too bad there is no truth to this. Globally July of 2008 was 0.147 degrees above normal. How does that compare?

July 2007 +0.363
July 2006 +0.298
July 2005 +0.432
July 2003 +0.301
July 2002 +0.369

So right there it isn't even the 5th warmest this decade.

July 2001 +0.174
July 1998 +0.619
July 1997 +0.185
July 1991 +0.168
July 1988 +0.202

Data Source: ftp.ssmi.com...

Its not even in the top 10 going back to 1980. Take NASA with a serious grain of salt as long as Hansen is there. His has an agenda and he is known to be less than honest. Why do you use surface observations when satellite data is available? Because surface observations are contaminated by the urban heat island effect and the bad data skews the numbers to meet Hansen's agenda.

Satellite numbers do not support the claims NASA is making. They aren't even close. July was barely above normal. Certainly no top 5.

the 'Open Society Institute' funded Hansen to the tune of $720,000, carefully orchestrating his entire media campaign

Hansen received an earlier $250,000 grant from the Heinz Foundation

And then finish it off with this...

After the the GISS data error was revealed, Hansen finally agreed to make public the method he uses to generate "official" temperature records from the actual readings. That process has been revealed to be thousands of lines of source code, containing hundreds of arbitrary "bias" adjustments to individual sites, tossing out many readings entirely, and raising (or lowering) the actual values for others, sometimes by several degrees. Many areas with weak or no rising temperature trends are therefore given, after adjustment, a much sharper trend. A full audit of the Hansen code is currently underway, but it seems clear that Hansen has more explaining to do.

Source: www.dailytech.com...

Hansen is going to get the same treatment for his dishonesty that someone would get if they were showing a cooling trend and their contributions came from the Bush family or Exxon/Mobile.

Be careful about what you believe to be fact.

reply to post by Indy


Indy, I can't get that link to open.

How do you explain the huge difference between NOAA's data (+0.49 degrees) and the one you quote?

Incidently, have you read this article from Roger Pielke's website?

Which link isn't working for you? I just clicked on both in the post and both opened. Somewhere there was a chart that showed global temperature trends involving satellite data. There were small differences between the three (I believe it was three) but for the most part they were pretty close together. There is however a huge disconnect between satellite data like the one I included in my post and the numbers NASA reports. I think it is because they are getting creative with their math to keep the numbers inflated. It is after all a cash cow for some people as I have also pointed out in my last post.

The link you included has something very interesting that people should pay close attention to.

Station drop-out has occurred– from a peak of 6,000 stations in 1970 to 2,000 today. The biggest dropoff occurred around 1990. The plot was made with downloaded GHCN 2 data with annual mean globaltemperature in degrees Celsius and number of stations. Many of the stations that were dropped were rural. A larger percentage of the stations remaining were urban. Notice the discontinuity of mean temperature at the same time as the dropoff suggesting a sampling error was introduced.

From your link above: climatesci.org... -aleo/

This graph says a lot.

climatesci.org...

It is really no great mystery that data collected from urban observation stations is contaminated. Because of the urban heat island effect the numbers will read higher. That shows clearly in the graph above. Some will say that the numbers have been adjusted to account for this effect. That in my opinion is total nonsense. Why? Because while it is know the heat island effect exists we don't really know exactly how bad it is on any given day. It will change based on time of year, cloud cover, and wind direction (location of station in relation to city. So to come out with an adjust number is to honestly just make one up. I guarantee you they will keep the adjustment at a convenient level for their cause.

That is the beauty of satellite observations. It doesn't care where the city or land station is. It grabs a complete picture. It will pick up the heat in the middle of the desert where nobody lives. It will pick up the cold in northern Canada where nobody lives. It picks up temperature readings where no stations exist. The results are much pure than the manipulated numbers put out by NASA. It is no shock to me that the satellites are all in agreement while NASA is off in their own little world working with contaminated data and calling it science.

Why would you take a pure reading like a satellite observation (especially when it is validated by two other satellites) and start to contaminate the data by injection urban measurements? If anything the satellites should prove that the use of land based observation stations for the purpose of calculating global temperatures is nothing more than bad science.

Had I used contaminated data to try and prove my experiment back in the days of high school science research I would have been lucky to get a C in the class. This is just bad science even at the high school level.

This month it's been mysteriously cool. At least where I'm at. Either end of the thermometer, it's really not natural.

Originally posted by Indy
Which link isn't working for you?

It was the data series - but works fine now ....

Anyway, I think I see the reason for the discrepancy.

Area Average anomaly data provided for several zonal latitude bands. Different files contain Ocean, Land, or Ocean and Land data. The land and ocean file also contains continental U.S.

ftp.ssmi.com...

Each column in that data series refers to different latitudal bands - whereas the NOAA figure is of course for the whole planet.

Had I used contaminated data to try and prove my experiment back in the days of high school science research I would have been lucky to get a C in the class. This is just bad science even at the high school level.

Can we give a D- for misinterpreting data and erroneous conclusions?

So, in sum, NOAA data does show July 2008 to be pretty warm, globally. Interesting that La Nina has ended.

And for the $720,000 lie, I think an F is called for. A group helped Hansen defend himself when he was being silenced, it was pro bono aid. The $720,000 is the funding from OSI to the GAP organisation who protect whistleblowers, and some others.

With Rick's leadership, GAP has launched Climate Science Watch - a GAP program that reaches out to scientists, helps them fight off censorship, and brings to light the continued politicization of environmental science.

GAP also represented Dr. James Hansen, one of the world's top climate scientists, who blew the whistle on NASA's attempts to silence him. Hansen's disclosures led GAP Staff Attorney Tarek Maassarani to conduct a year-long investigation that found objectionable and possibly illegal restrictions on the communication of scientific information to the media.

His findings, summarized in the report Redacting the Science of Climate Change, included examples of the delaying, monitoring, screening, and denying of interviews, as well as the delay, denial, and inappropriate editing of press releases.

linky

Be careful about what you believe to be fact.

rofl

Also, I'm very surprised to see Pielke Sr associate himself with D'Aleo. Pity. This guy doesn't have a very good record.

Since I'm an ice guy, I'm saddened that a place with ice in its name turned out to be unreliable. Still, I wandered over there and took a look at the first article on their main page (as of Aug 3rd, 8 AM) in the 'new and cool' section. The article was icecap.us... by Joseph D'Aleo (Seems to have been published first on 31 July in the Examiner). In very short order, I found a major error, a cherry pick, and an error or at least misleading graphic. I stopped there.

linky

[edit on 16-8-2008 by melatonin]