In my DIYDIY Do It Yourself global temperature series I make June 2023 the warmest on record, beating the mighty 2016 by 0.06 of a degree, which in global temperature terms is quite big.
June 2023 | Warmest on record globally Read More »
The rate of increase in the 365 day moving average in my DIYDIY Do It Yourself Global Temperature series we’ve seen so far in 2023, looks very similar to the one we saw in 2019-20, but thankfully not quite as steep as that of 2016. There’s plenty of time though for that to steepen of course, as the effects of the new El NinoEl Niño El Niño 'The Boy' is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific event kick in during the remainder of 2023.
The steep increase across the northern temperate zones seem to have steadied off in recent months, but temperatures across the tropics and southern temperate zone are starting to surge. Temperatures in the Arctic have steadied after falling, and in the Antarctic temperatures continue to fall back.
June 2023 | Global temperatures Read More »
The SE-NW temperature thermal gradient across the UKUK The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. & Ireland during June is picked up well in this chart, even in the coarse reanalysis gridded data that I download and use from NCEPNCEP The United States National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) delivers national and global weather, water, climate and space weather guidance, forecasts, warnings and analyses to its Partners and External User Communities.. Sea surface temperatures in the North Sea may well have been at record levels during the month, but they still managed to dissect this area of warm anomalies in two.
June 2023 | Mean temperature anomalies Read More »
I make May the 4th warmest May in my DIYDIY Do It Yourself series that started in 1948. Its tight at the top, but May 2016 is still fractionally higher.
Global mean temperatures have started to show a bit more consistency in their rate of warming over the last month or so.
The current global increases are due in a large part to a sharp rise in temperatures in the subtropical northern hemisphere and not from the tropics. Having said that, increases in the north seemed to have peaked in early May.
May 2023: Global Temperatures Read More »
The latest global temperatures from the world’s leading monthly estimates are mostly in for April 2023. I say mostly because as usual the UKMOUKMO The Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the JMAJMA The Japan Meteorological Agency (気象庁, Kishō-chō), abbreviated JMA, is an agency of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. are trailing a month behind other series with their estimates as per usual. The graph above shows a 12 month moving average for the last 30 years up until April 2023, which was considered to be the fourth or fifth warmest as I had predicted back on the third of this month. All series continue to show the bounce back from the third mini-dip in anomalies of the last year.
April 2023: Global Temperatures Read More »
April 2023 was a little disappointing as far as global temperatures are concerned. I got the distinct impression that temperatures were starting to surge in March, but in the end April ended up just fifth warmest in my DIYDIY Do It Yourself series that started in 1948. That was slightly up on 2022 values, but along way short of 2016, the warmest in the record.
April 2023: Global temperatures Read More »
In my DIYDIY Do It Yourself Global temperature series based on reanalysis gridded data which I maintain, I make March 2023 the second warmest in my series, which started in 1948, a little behind March in the record warm year of 2016. The odd thing is that the largest increases zonally at the moment, are coming from the northern subtropics, and not the tropics, where the double dip La NinaLa Niña La Niña is an oceanic and atmospheric phenomenon that is the colder counterpart of El Niño, as part of the broader El Niño–Southern Oscillation climate pattern. The name La Niña originates from Spanish for "the girl", by analogy to El Niño, meaning "the boy". In the past, it was also called an anti-El Niño[1] and El Viejo, meaning "the old man." has just come to an abrupt end.
March 2023 – Global Temperature Read More »
Five out of the seven Met Services around the world have finally published their estimated global temperature anomalies for February 2023. I swear they get slower at updating their estimates each year. The Europeans are always first off the mark to report these days, but the slowest by far are the UKMOUKMO The Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, who have only just published their estimate for January. The comparison graph (above) shows that the weak third dip in anomalies that started in 2016 has now all but fizzled out. Now that the double dip La NinaLa Niña La Niña is an oceanic and atmospheric phenomenon that is the colder counterpart of El Niño, as part of the broader El Niño–Southern Oscillation climate pattern. The name La Niña originates from Spanish for "the girl", by analogy to El Niño, meaning "the boy". In the past, it was also called an anti-El Niño[1] and El Viejo, meaning "the old man." event has come to an abrupt end, and world ocean SSTSST Sea Surface Temperatures at record highs, you can only expect global anomalies start to rocket through the rest of 2023.
Global Temperatures – February 2023 Read More »
The double dip La NiñaLa Niña La Niña is an oceanic and atmospheric phenomenon that is the colder counterpart of El Niño, as part of the broader El Niño–Southern Oscillation climate pattern. The name La Niña originates from Spanish for "the girl", by analogy to El Niño, meaning "the boy". In the past, it was also called an anti-El Niño[1] and El Viejo, meaning "the old man." event that’s been going on since August of 2020 has come to an abrupt end. This means that global temperatures will probably start running riot without the cooling effect La Niña brought to the central Pacific. The NOAANOAA NOAA is an agency in the Department of Commerce that maps the oceans and conserves their living resources; predicts changes to the earth's environment; provides weather reports and forecasts floods and hurricanes and other natural disasters related to weather. synopsis for the next few months reads: La Niña has ended and ENSOENSO El Niño–Southern Oscillation is an irregular periodic variation in winds and sea surface temperatures over the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean, affecting the climate of much of the tropics and subtropics. The warming phase of the sea temperature is known as El Niño and the cooling phase as La Niña.-neutral conditions are expected to continue through the Northern Hemisphere spring and early summer 2023.
La Niña comes to an abrupt end Read More »
Global temperatures in February 2023 in my DIYDIY Do It Yourself Global temperature’s series were the fourth warmest since 1948. The 365 day mean temperature (see below), after flatlining since last spring is also showing signs of surging upwards despite the ongoing La NinaLa Niña La Niña is an oceanic and atmospheric phenomenon that is the colder counterpart of El Niño, as part of the broader El Niño–Southern Oscillation climate pattern. The name La Niña originates from Spanish for "the girl", by analogy to El Niño, meaning "the boy". In the past, it was also called an anti-El Niño[1] and El Viejo, meaning "the old man." trying to keep it in check.
The main driver behind this nascent surge in global temperatures seems to be rapid warming in the last few months of the northern subtropics despite a continued fall in temperatures at the tropics fueled by ENSOENSO El Niño–Southern Oscillation is an irregular periodic variation in winds and sea surface temperatures over the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean, affecting the climate of much of the tropics and subtropics. The warming phase of the sea temperature is known as El Niño and the cooling phase as La Niña.. This is the third surge in temperatures in the northern subtropics in recent years, the others were in 2016 and 2020, but the magnitude of this one might top them both despite the recent SSWSSW A sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) is an event in which polar stratospheric temperatures rise by as much as 50 °C in the course of a few days. The warming is preceded by a slowing then reversal of the westerly winds in the stratospheric polar vortex. SSWs occur about six times per decade in the northern hemisphere, and about once every 20-30 years in the southern hemisphere. event.
February 2023 – Global Temperatures Read More »
NOAANOAA NOAA is an agency in the Department of Commerce that maps the oceans and conserves their living resources; predicts changes to the earth's environment; provides weather reports and forecasts floods and hurricanes and other natural disasters related to weather. have just updated their global temperatures series. The latest version, version 5.1 differs from 5.0 in two major ways:
This chart extends back to 1950 shows the monthly anomalies coloured by the ENSOENSO El Niño–Southern Oscillation is an irregular periodic variation in winds and sea surface temperatures over the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean, affecting the climate of much of the tropics and subtropics. The warming phase of the sea temperature is known as El Niño and the cooling phase as La Niña. status for that month. As you can see it’s not written in stone that a a La NinaLa Niña La Niña is an oceanic and atmospheric phenomenon that is the colder counterpart of El Niño, as part of the broader El Niño–Southern Oscillation climate pattern. The name La Niña originates from Spanish for "the girl", by analogy to El Niño, meaning "the boy". In the past, it was also called an anti-El Niño[1] and El Viejo, meaning "the old man." event coincides with low anomalies, or that an El NinoEl Niño El Niño 'The Boy' is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific event coincides with all the warm spikes in global monthly anomalies either.
NOAA GlobalTemp v5.1 Read More »
January 2023 in my DIYDIY Do It Yourself global temperature series was the fifth warmest since 1948, and just a shade warmer than January 2022. The 365 day mean temperature continued to flatline last month, being held in check by the ongoing La NinaLa Niña La Niña is an oceanic and atmospheric phenomenon that is the colder counterpart of El Niño, as part of the broader El Niño–Southern Oscillation climate pattern. The name La Niña originates from Spanish for "the girl", by analogy to El Niño, meaning "the boy". In the past, it was also called an anti-El Niño[1] and El Viejo, meaning "the old man." and a cold Antarctic no doubt.
Interestingly the northern extratropics (23.5N to 66.5 N) warmed considerably just after Christmas, daily anomalies ballooned up to 1.2°C for a while before erratically falling back. All connected with the very mild temperatures across North America and that exceptionally warm New Year in Central Europe.
January 2023 – Global Temperatures Read More »
January 2023 was yet another month in the UKUK The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. with a NW-SE cold/warm thermal gradient on the anomaly chart.
January 2023 – Temperature anomalies Read More »
It’s not very often that the world’s leading estimates of global temperatures all have a full complement of up to date monthly data as they have at the end of December 2022. Not a lot of people know this but there are two things that all of these temperature series have in common, and that is (a) they have all been rising at a similar rate of between 1.96°C and 2.4°C per hundred years over the last 30 years, and (b) they have all ‘tripled dipped’ since 2016. No one seems to want to mention the ‘triple dip’ and the fact that global temperatures are little higher than they were back in 2015, but that’s another story. The anomalies in each of the series are also alarmingly different in magnitude as you can see in each of the six graphs. This is down to how they are calculated and more importantly which LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO. they choose to calculate the anomalies with. I suppose the important thing is that the shape of the 12 month moving average line series are similar, and the linear trend for the last 30 years in each of them is similar too.
Global temperatures 1992-2022 Read More »
The recent surge in temperatures across Europe in January can be seen in a sharp rise in estimated mean temperatures across the northern extratropics in the daily anomaly chart for the last year. The surge seems to have started shortly before Christmas in my DIYDIY Do It Yourself global series, and is still going on in around that zonal region, with anomalies now around 1.2°C higher than the 1991-2020 LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.. The effects of the North American cold wave and the cold snap across Europe are also visible as a blue down spike at the very end of November.
European temperature Surge Read More »
The recovery in global temperatures from the double dip that occurred in recent years has continued to falter in the second half of 2022. The 365 day moving average continued to nudge slightly lower in December 2022, threatening a triple dip. Having said that estimated global mean temperatures for December in my DIYDIY Do It Yourself series, were just a whisker higher than they were last year, making it the third warmest December globally since 1948.
Global temperatures – December 2022 Read More »
Just as I found in the gridded UK data series from the UKMOUKMO The Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy that 2022 wasn’t the warmest 12 months on record, I also find that it isn’t the warmest 365 day period in the CETCET Central England Temperature series either. That accolade belongs to the 365 days between the third of May 2006 and the second of May 2007, with a mean temperature of 11.71°C which is far higher than the 11.15°C temperature for the year 2022 in central England. It may not mean much to most people, but I think it makes a bit of a mockery of all the hoo-ha that we’ve had to endure recently from the media about 2022 being the warmest year, when in reality it occurred almost 15 years earlier both in the CET series and the gridded series.
2022 not the warmest 365 days in Central England either Read More »
If you spend some time grubbing around in the UKUK The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. gridded temperature series from the UKMOUKMO The Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy that extends back to the year 1884 as I do, you might find that the highest mean temperature for a 12 month period didn’t actually occur in the year 2022, but the 12 month period that ended in April 2007. The mean temperature of 10.41°C was considerably higher than that of 10.03°C for 2022 that has been bandied about so much in recents days by the media.
There’s no reason to think that the UKMO weren’t aware of this fact, but they obviously kept shtum about it, not wanting to detract from making an even bigger splash with a headline “Warmest year on record” or the climate crisis version of it “Hottest year ever!“.
2022 not the warmest 12 months on record Read More »
The big problem with the monthly global temperature estimates from the world’s Met Services, such as the UKMOUKMO The Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, is that they are all quoted in anomalies rather than as monthly mean temperatures. Anomalies are calculated by taking the LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO. from that mean temperature, and the LTA used to do this aren’t all using the same 30 year period. Ideally that period should now be from 1991 to 2020, but only two of the big six temperature series use it, in fact the GISTempGISTemp v4 The GISS Surface Temperature Analysis version 4 is an estimate of global surface temperature change using data from NOAA GHCN v4 (land stations) and ERSST v5 (ocean areas). series still uses the period from 1951 to 1980. My global temperature application allows you to compare anomalies from the big six series, and it also allows you to ‘zero’ the anomalies of all of them, and that’s what I’ve done in the chart above for December 1992.
As you can see there is now quite a spread in the estimated anomalies close to 0.12°C between the highest and lowest, which as far as global temperatures goes is a pretty large deviation. The UAH series can get pretty wild with its estimates, but in recent years it’s the ERA5ERA ERA stands for 'ECMWF Re-Analysis' and refers to a series of research projects at ECMWF which produced various datasets (ERA-Interim, ERA-40, etcetera). series from the ECMWFECMWF The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts is an independent intergovernmental organisation supported by most of the nations of Europe. It is based at three sites: Shinfield Park, Reading, United Kingdom; Bologna, Italy; and Bonn, Germany. It operates one of the largest supercomputer complexes in Europe and the world's largest archive of numerical weather prediction data. that’s running the hottest of the six.
The dashed line represents values from my own DIYDIY Do It Yourself series. As you can see the shape of the curve follows the other series faithfully but the magnitude of the anomaly in that time is around 0.25°C lower. The DIY series is based on pretty coarse grid (2.5° x 2.5°) of six hourly surface temperatures, but is obviously lacking a certain slowly increasing (fudge) factor that my series doesn’t seem to have. This maybe because of differences in the LTA they use, more probably the complexity of the algorithms they use to produce a global estimate, and how they cope with temperatures over land, sea and ice.
The spread of global temperature estimates in the last 30 years Read More »
The effect of the cold wave on temperature anomalies across north America can be clearly seen, in what was apart from that a fairly mild month across there. There are no vestiges left of the cold spell in the first half of the month across the UKUK The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland., although to be fair this reanalysis data is on a sparse 2.5° x 2.5° grid, but it is noticeable that the familiar N-S cold gradient has returned once again.
December 2022 temperatures Read More »
Dear Diary
The 12 month average is now and truly on the slide once again – and for the third time since 2016. Mean global temperatures are no higher that they were seven years ago, back in 2015. I don’t think this was a talking point at the recent COP27COP27 The 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference or Conference Of the Parties of the UNFCCC, more commonly referred to as COP27, was the 27th United Nations Climate Change conference, held from 6 November until 20 November 2022 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. summit, and I’m sure if Greta ThunbergGreta Thunberg Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg (born 3 January 2003) is a Swedish environmental activist who is known for challenging world leaders to take immediate action for climate change mitigation knew about it, she would have a big scowl on her face. I’m sure that the climate scientists will blame it all on the triple dip La NiñaLa Niña La Niña is an oceanic and atmospheric phenomenon that is the colder counterpart of El Niño, as part of the broader El Niño–Southern Oscillation climate pattern. The name La Niña originates from Spanish for "the girl", by analogy to El Niño, meaning "the boy". In the past, it was also called an anti-El Niño[1] and El Viejo, meaning "the old man.", which may be true, but I reckon there’s a bit more natural variability in the mix, but then again what the hell do I know.
As an example of just how the world is cooling at the moment take a look at the estimated monthly anomalies from the GISTempGISTemp v4 The GISS Surface Temperature Analysis version 4 is an estimate of global surface temperature change using data from NOAA GHCN v4 (land stations) and ERSST v5 (ocean areas). series since 1970. This November [2022] is a full 0.2°C cooler than last year, this may not sound much, but in regard to global temperatures that’s a massive amount of cooling.
November 2022 – Global temperatures Read More »
Dear Diary,
That warm plume from Algeria to Scandinavia which we’ve seen so much of this year is evident once again in this months anomalies. Central Saharan Africa was colder than average again, I’m certain that there’s some kind of tie in with temperatures in this region and Atlantic tropical cyclones. The Baffin Sea was exceptionally cold thanks to the NW flow that dominated up there for much of the month. And guess what, much of Greenland and the Greenland sea was exceptionally mild once again.
November 2022 – Temperature anomalies Read More »
With regard to global temperature the IPCCIPCC The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations responsible for advancing knowledge on human-induced climate change. It was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme, and later endorsed by United Nations General Assembly. uses the reference period 1850 to 1900 to represent pre-industrial temperature to measure the degree of global warming that has occurred. They say about this reference period in their 2018 report:-
In principle, ‘pre-industrial levels’ could refer to any period of time before the start of the industrial revolution. But the number of direct temperature measurements decreases as we go back in time. Defining a ‘pre-industrial’ reference period is, therefore, a compromise between the reliability of the temperature information and how representative it is of truly pre-industrial conditions. Some pre-industrial periods are cooler than others for purely natural reasons. This could be because of spontaneous climate variability or the response of the climate to natural perturbations, such as volcanic eruptions and variations in the sun’s activity. This IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C uses the reference period 1850–1900 to represent pre-industrial temperature. This is the earliest period with near-global observations and is the reference period used as an approximation of pre-industrial temperatures in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report.
Global Warming of 1.5°C – IPCC Report
I thought I would look and see how the CETCET Central England Temperature series was doing and see if it was getting close to the magic +1.5°C. The daily mean maximum and minimum only began in 1878 so it’s not possible to calculate mean values using this data, but daily mean temperatures are available back to 1772, and so it’s possible to calculate a mean for 1850-1900. It’s also possible to go back further and calculate a mean from 1772-1900, or better still calculate a mean for the period 1772-1850, which in my opinion is a better start for the dawn of the industrial era or the industrial revolution.
The anomalies in the bar chart are larger than you would normally see because I’ve based them on a long-term average for the period 1851-2000. Annual mean anomalies nearly exceeded 1.5°C back n 1949, and in recent years the 1.5°C barrier has been breached at least six times including this year (2022) which looks likely to become the warmest year on record. So we’ve not quite reached the +1.5°C mark globally but we are not far off in central England. I wonder what Gordon Manley would make of it all?
What caused the cooling between 1950 and 1980 in global as well as temperatures in central England? Maybe it was the airborne testing of thermonuclear weapons that followed the second world war and which continued till around 1976 according to Wikipedia. Natural variability or man made? My money’s on the latter in this case.
Warming of 1.5°C in Central England Read More »
