2008: Ninth warmest year on record
The temperature statistics are in, and the year 2008 ranks as the ninth warmest year for the globe on record, making it the coolest year since 2000, according to an analysis compiled by NASA. NOAA's National Climatic Data Center rated 2008 the eighth warmest on record, and the British Climate Research Unit rated it tenth warmest. NASA noted that given the uncertainty in the measurements, a range of 7th to 10th warmest was reasonable. Global temperature records extend back to 1880. December 2008 was also the eighth warmest December for the globe on record.
The average global temperature the past five years (and the last ten years) is the highest on record. The top ten warmest years since 1880 have all occurred in the past twelve years. So, despite the impressive cold blast in the Eastern U.S. this winter, the global climate is warming. The relatively cool temperatures of 2008 probably represent a normal year-to-year fluctuation in the weather. Cool weather is to be expected globally during a strong La Niña event in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, which was present during the first part of 2008 (see the cool blue colors over the Equatorial Pacific in Figure 1). It is no surprise that the last year it was cooler, 2000, was also the last time we had a La Niña event. With La Niña conditions beginning to develop again this year, I'd be surprised if 2009 turns out to be a record warm year. Dr. James Hansen of NASA is predicting a new global record temperature either this year or in 2010, though.
Figure 1. Global temperature anomalies in 2008 compared to the 1950-1980 baseline period. Below-average temperatures are shown in blue, average temperatures are white, and above-average temperatures are red. (Gray indicates no data.) Most of the world was either near normal or warmer than normal. Eastern Europe, Russia, the Arctic, and the Antarctic Peninsula were exceptionally warm (1.5 to 3.5 degrees Celsius above average). The temperature in the United States in 2008 was not much different than the 1951-1980 mean, which makes 2008 cooler than all of the previous years this decade. Large areas of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean were cooler than the long-term average, linked to a La Niña episode that began in 2007. The graph shows the long-term trend in surface temperatures since 1880. The annual average temperatures are shown in light orange, and the jaggedness of the line indicates how much the average global surface temperature varies from year to year. Because climate is so variable from year to year, it can be easier to spot long-term trends through multi-year averages. The dark red line shows the five-year running average, which is an average of five years of annual temperatures centered on a given year. Even this five-year average shows that climate has ups and downs, but the long-term increase in global average surface temperatures is obvious. The gray barbells indicate the range of uncertainty. Not surprisingly, the uncertainty is larger for older measurements than for more recent ones. Image credit: NASA.
A cool and snowy December in the U.S.
For the contiguous U.S., December was the 35th coolest December, ranking it in the coldest 30% of all Decembers observed since records began in 1895. December 2008 had near-average precipitation, ranking 43rd wettest. It was the 8th wettest December on record in the East North Central U.S., and 9th wettest for the Central U.S. Only the South experienced below average precipitation during the month. For the year 2008, temperatures in the U.S. were not much different than the 1951-1980 mean, which makes 2008 the coolest year since 1997. U.S. records set in December 2008 (courtesy of http://extremeweatherguide.com/updates.asp):
Spokane, WA: All-time 24-hour snowfall, 19.4", 12/17-12/18
Spokane, WA: All-time single storm snowfall: 23.3", 12/17-12/18
Sandpoint, ID: All-time 24-hour snowfall, 27.0"
Jackson, WY: All-time 24-hour snowfall, 27.0"
Fargo, ND: Snowiest month on record: 33.5"
Spokane, WA: Snowiest month on record: 61.5"
Green Bay, WI: Snowiest month on record: 45.6"
Madison, WI: Snowiest month on record: 40.4"
Wausau, WI: Snowiest month on record: 37.6"
Idaho: All-time 24-hour state snowfall record set at Dollar Hide, 46.5", 12/26-12/27 (not confirmed)
At the end of 2008, 20% of the contiguous United States was in moderate-to-exceptional drought. This is a decline from the 28% of the U.S. that was under similar drought conditions at the end of 2007. The average precipitation for the U.S. in 2008 was 30.48 inches, which is 1.34 inches above average. 2008 was the wettest year on record for New Hampshire and Missouri, second wettest for Massachusetts, and third wettest for Connecticut, Illinois, and Iowa. Also, 2008 was the fourth wettest year for Indiana, fifth wettest for Maine, Michigan, and Vermont, seventh wettest for New York, and eighth wettest for Kansas and Rhode Island.
Next post
Check out Ricky Rood's latest blog, called Cold in the East: A rant. There is a lot of misinformation circulating in the media right now about climate change, and Ricky and I will be doing our best to try to explain what is fact and what is crap in the coming weeks. I posted one such discussion last week, when I showed that the recent claims that sea ice is back to 1979 levels were a clever bit of cherry picking of the data that hides the critical summertime loss of Arctic sea ice. I'll have a new blog post on Friday.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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Lots of tornadoes too, right?
What scares you Amy?
being land-locked....I get claustrophobic....need to see the ocean....
Envious, I am.
Issued by the Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Centre (JATWC) at 07:45 AM EDT
on Friday 23 January 2009
********************************************************************************
SUMMARY:
The Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Centre has detected an earthquake that has
also been reported as being felt near Darwin.
The earthquake of magnitude 6.1 has occurred at 2016 UTC on 22 January 2009 in
the Banda Sea.
Based on the magnitude and location of this earthquake THERE IS NO TSUNAMI
THREAT
TO THE AUSTRALIAN MAINLAND, ISLANDS OR TERRITORIES.
No further updates will be issued unless the situation changes.
1 in January, February, March, or April.
2 May 1-15
3 May 16-31
4 June 1-15
5 June 16-30
6 July 1-15
7 July 16-31
8 After July
I,m going for #5 for now
A huge shelf of ice is on the brink of splitting from the continent at the bottom of the world
take a look on whats on yahoo news right now
Link
I say 3.
Do you rrally think we'll have three years in a row with a pre-season storm? no to shoot you down, it could happen
I change my mind to between 3 and 4.
Tropical Disturbance Summary
TROPICAL DEPRESSION SIX-F
9:00 AM FST January 23 2009
================================
At 21:00 PM UTC, Tropical Depression SIX-F (1006 hPa) located near 18.2S 164.5W is reported as moving south at 10 knots. Position GOOD based on infrared imagery with animation, peripheral observations, and latest QUIKSCAT Pass. Sea surface temperatures around the region is 29C.
Tropical Depression SIX lies along a monsoonal trough, under a 250 HPA diffluent region in a moderately sheared environment. Low level circulation center slightly obscured with pulsating convection to the east. The depression is expected to continue in a general southward direction towards cooler sea surface temperatures. Another low level circulation lies embedded in the trough, northwest of Tropical Depression SIX,
Global models [US/UK/EC] has picked up tropical depression SIX and continues to move the system south with little intensification
POTENTIAL FOR TD 06F TO DEVELOP INTO A TROPICAL CYCLONE IN THE NEXT 24 TO 48 HOURS IS LOW.
6. Then again, I thought 2008 would start off relatively slow too, and then pick up, so meh.
3pts to those who get it right 1 to those who guessed an adjacent time frame. somebody else did that I forget who
Tropical Cyclone Warning Number TWENTY
EXTRATROPICAL DEPRESSION EX-FANELE (07-20082009)
4:00 AM Réunion January 23 2009
===========================================
At 0:00 AM UTC, Extratropical, Ex-Fanele (995 hPa) located at 27.8S 51.8E has 10 minute sustained winds of 35 knots with gusts of 50 knots. The storm is reported as moving south-southeast at 15 knots
Dvorak Intensity:
Gale-Force Winds
=================
40 NM from the center extending up to 65 NM in the northeastern quadrant and up to 140 NM in the southern semi-circle
Near-Gale Force Winds
======================
70 NM from the center extending up to 110 NM in the northeastern quadrant and up to 230 NM in the southern semi-circle
Forecast and Intensity
=======================
12 HRS: 30.1S 53.1E - 35 knots (EXTRATROPICAL)
24 HRS: 31.8S 54.8E - 30 knots (EXTRATROPICAL)
Additional Information
========================
Classical imagery (IR, Water Vapor) sugges that Finale is no an extratropical cyclone. Residual deep convection that was located in the southern semi-circle has vanished during the night. However, this system still produce some strong winds as shown by the ASCAT Pass around 18.00z. A wide central area of relatively weak winds (diameter about 40 to 50 NM) surrounded by a crown of strong winds can still be depicted.
Most of the available NWP models are in good agreement with the forecast track. Wind should progressively abate along the forecast track before the system merges with a mid-latitude trough at the end of the forecast.
And I remember some people saying it may have been a major hurricane at landfall. <_<
Link
TampaSpin's Weather Blog Link
yea i know right, it certainly made me chuckle.
SuperBowl is not until next Sunday......not this Sunday..
Yep ....there should be a front coming thru about next Friday.....
The GFS long range forecast has a low developing on 2/1 SuperBowl Sunday in the GOM and moving across Florida moving up the East Coast as a very strong NorEaster....interesting to see if the Model forecast is correct.
First, your graph (from NASA) on 2008 global temperature has at the bottom a graph from 1880 to present (baselined to the 30 year 1950 – 1980 average) that shows a “global” surface temperature with 3 bars of uncertainty (about 1890, 1945, and 2005). These bars are decreasing over time. On the surface this makes perfect sense. A confidence interval’s margin of error (assumed to be at least part of the uncertainty listed in the graph) is made up of three components, a confidence level (unknown as it is not listed with the graph), a variance term (taken directly from the data), and a sample size term. Since the confidence level is not listed, not much can be said about it in any detail; only general comments can be made. IE, the higher the confidence level the broader the margin of error; conversely the lower the confidence level the smaller the margin of error. The lack of transparency on the confidence level is a red-flag to mathematicians that someone might be skewing results – since a 10% confidence level would have a smaller margin of error and look more “scientific” than a 90% confidence level that might be off the graph.
The variance term brings with it a whole set of issues on data collection. First, what is the precision of the measurements? According to mathematics any change that is below the precision of the measuring device is in the noise of the data collection. For example a thermometer that measures temperature to 1° C would have a precision of 0.5° C. Any changes less than that precision in average temperature data is in the noise level of the collection device and therefore unreliable. Surely the precision of our measuring devices have changed over time making our measurements more accurate and this leads to the lessening of uncertainty expressed in the data. But it also makes drawing conclusions on small changes in earlier collected data more problematical. The second area of concern with the variance term is in the location of the measuring devices themselves. If we look at a continuum of data collection points, most of the ones that have a long history associated with them are in the middle of population centers. Over time these population centers have become temperature “hot points” (as any infrared satellite imagery can document). Increases in temperature over time in these “hot points” could make measurements from these “hot points” to be possible outliers in the overall data. Since humans tend not to populate the distant cold lands, the readings, especially the further back we go, from these areas would be underrepresented in the data and could possibly skew our model’s output (global temperature). Since most of the surface of our planet is oceans, we probably have these areas underrepresented in our data, again especially the further back we go as well. All this to say, that from a statistical standpoint, we have a lot of things that contribute to the uncertainty in the data.
Obviously as the number of collection points increase (our sample size increases), the uncertainty in our data should decrease. We need to be careful to avoid convenience sampling techniques as any statistician would tell you that they are unreliable. Without better insight to the distribution of the collection sites, I couldn’t begin to make any comment on whether that would apply here or not.
For those of us without access to the data, we have to trust others to accurately analyze and interpret the data. Try and research the material on the internet and you will be buried in opinion pro and con on any issue – with lots of purported documentation. With so many examples of peoples’ and companies’ lack of integrity in these studies, many times it comes down to who paid for the study to be done and what vested interests did the investigator have in the study. Obviously if several studies concluded that our climate change is due to a natural evolutionary process of our planet and there’s very little we can do about it, then I don’t think these people will get any more money to study the issue (not from a political viewpoint, but a scientific – no need to spend more money on a settled issue). Insight into these area would be helpful.
Could you repeat that please ?
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