Jennifer Marohasy

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The Average Global Surface Air Temperature for 2011: Ole Humlum

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“ON the whole, the year 2011 was somewhat cooler than 2010…

In the Northern Hemisphere close to normal or relatively low surface air temperatures characterized most regions. Relatively warm conditions characterised northern Siberia and Russia, especially along the Arctic Ocean coast.

Conditions near the Equator were influenced by the cold La Nina situation, which has prevailed for most of 2011. Most of equatorial Pacific thereby experienced average surface air temperatures below the 1998-2006 average temperatures.

In the Southern Hemisphere surface air temperatures were close to average, or slightly below.

The Arctic was a region of relatively large contrasts. Most of the Arctic in 2011 had surface air temperatures near or above the 1998-2006 average, but along the northern coast of Siberia average 2011 temperatures were 3-4 C above the 1998-2006 average. In contrast, most regions just south of the Arctic experienced temperatures below the average.

In the Antarctic regions around the Weddell Sea experienced in 2011 above average surface air temperatures, in contrast to 2010, where the same regions were colder than average. The Antarctic Peninsula experienced relatively low average temperatures in 2011.

Please find below a link which will take you directly to a short newsletter (ca. 1.5 MB) with meteorological information summarised for the year 2011:
http://www.climate4you.com/Text/Climate4you_Year_2011.pdf

Ole Humlum, Professor of Physical Geography
Department of Physical Geography, Institute of Geosciences
University of Oslo, Norway

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Neville says

    Meanwhile 16 prominent scientists show their concern in the WSJ. Why do we need to panic about GW? Certainly kindy maths shows there is zero we can achieve by trying to mitigate CC.
    BTW I see electricity prices and record disconnections rates are front and centre in the QLD election. Let’s hope Labor is quilted and lose a record number of seats.
    It’s about the only way we can get these stupid fools to wake up and stop telling lies to the electorate. There is zero we can do about CC and we should stop wasting billions $ and spend these scare borrowed funds elsewhere for real benifit and a proper return.

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/27/sixteen-prominent-scientists-publish-a-letter-in-wsj-saying-theres-no-need-to-panic-about-global-warming/#more-55508

  4. spangled drongo says

    I went to the local Beyond Zero Emissions meeting where they put forward the Zero Carbon Australia [I suppose any group who calls themselves zero carbon has to be unbalanced and I should have known better] plan for total renewable energy [incl transport] by 2020 for the grand price of $8 per week per household.
    They presented this with a straight face to the mainly believing crowd who were mainly from the “Lock the Gate” on CSG and when I told them it had been extensively audited and found wanting in many areas of course I was a pariah from then on.
    I did get to ask one more question of the Greens local candidate who was the chairman of the meeting, which was: how do you reconcile the windfarms killing hundreds of thousands of birds as documented by US Fish and Wildlife, with sustainable environmental practice and his answer was: that’s easy, global warming is killing much more than that.
    I did not get a chance to ask for his data or to reply that birds generally seek the warm, not the cold.

    There was only one other sceptic there who was a retired scientist who quietly made some pertinent points but they didn’t want to know.

    Talk about aspirational fairyland!

  5. Luke says

    Just loved Nev’s 176 prominent deniers article

    Note the sheer quality “William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology” WRONG ! clang – a – lang – CLUNK ….

    And as if some astronaut fly-boy would know. How desperate.

  6. John Sayers says

    according to wiki: Kininmonth headed Australia’s National Climate Centre at the Bureau of Meteorology from 1986 to 1998

    SD – couldn’t make it but your description is what I would have expected. There proposal is so full of holes like you said, I wonder how they can deliver it with a straight face. BTW They propose 7MW wind turbines!! that haven’t been built yet – they reckon you can build a 500MW solar thermal salt storage power station when all they’ve created so far is a 20MW unit operating for 17 hours, not 24, and they also plan on burning all the wheat and sugar cane stubble!!

    They are crazy.

  7. Mark A says

    luke
    “And as if some astronaut fly-boy would know. How desperate.”

    Judging by your posts I think even the office tea lady knows more than you!
    I’d rather trust an astronaut than you when it comes to science.

  8. spangled drongo says

    John, you were smart not to make the trip. It was very lightweight in spite of people there claiming to be “climate scientists”.

    These people are so brainwashed and out of touch with reality that they speak of this mindless propaganda being taught to the youngest in schools as absolutely essential to our future.

    For the rest of it they specialise in telling only half the story.

  9. Luke says

    Oh woo hoo John Sayers – that’s not climate research section at all – that’s the data management group – and his publications pretty close to nil. Pullease. Don’t be such a drongo. It’s just a puff piece.

    Mark A – I am the office tea lady on days when I wear a dress ! Have some respect.

  10. spangled drongo says

    “Note the sheer quality “William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology” WRONG ! clang – a – lang – CLUNK ….”

    Do you dispute that Kinninmonth was the head of the National Climate Centre?

    Summary
    The National Climate Centre is the service division of the Bureau of Meteorology responsible for the provision of climate data services, climate monitoring services and archiving the nation’s climate record.

    That sounds like what Hansen does for NASA GISS and Jones does for HADCRU except that the last two then adjust it and hide it.

  11. Luke says

    Nuh – not a climate researcher IMO. Otherwise where’s the publications? (I guess there’s always E&E!)

  16. Luke says

    “but what’s your take on the Ordovician when CO2 levels were ~4,000 ppmv during an ice age”

    well it depends on the solar insolation and organisation of the continents doesn’t it? sigh ….
    http://droyer.web.wesleyan.edu/PhanCO2(GCA).pdf It’s all an interlinked system.

    John Sayers – 38 years – but so did the tea lady? and did your google find lots of climate research – I think not

  17. spangled drongo says

    “well it depends on the solar insolation and organisation of the continents doesn’t it?”

    It’s hard to imagine continental change to account for the rapid dip and reversal of temperature but otherwise you admit that this is a possibility through normal climate change.

    IOW, just another of the great uncertainties of climate completely unrelated to ACO2.

  18. Neville says

    SD don’t forget the end of the Younger Dryas 11,500 years ago with a rise in temp of 10 c in just 10 years, or 1c every year for 10 years.

    All entirely natural and found in Venezuela at the same time. Of course Luke etc worry about a 0.7c rise over the last 100 years, some of which may be because of AGW.

    But this increase comes at the end of the LIA in 1850 so much of it must be natural.

    http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/abrupt/data4.html

  19. Ian Thomson says

    Hi Luke,
    I am sure that if Mr Kininmonth had produced ‘publications’ like this fairy story, you would have more respect for him.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/9038988/Climate-change-will-make-UK-new-holiday-destination.html

    And when did the scenario change from ” Greenland Ice melt will stall Gulf Stream and Europe will freeze ” ,to this ?
    Ah well , another day, another Govt grant, another computer. Beats the hell out of studying the weather for decades, like poor Mr K. As for all that unpleasant stuff like looking out the widow ,Bah.

  22. Robert says

    I’m a skeptic. I don’t believe anyone has ever measured an Average Global Surface Air Temperature. That does not exist. Someone may aggregate some very superficial measurements taken within a given period using info from a ridiculously limited number and range of sites. I agree that’s possible, and perhaps worth doing, if people could stay humble and sane enough not to draw baseless conclusions. As to feeding this superficial tripe into a computer to make models…

    Also, if an Average Global Surface Air Temperature were ever to be measured in a way that was truly thorough and representative of the realities of weather and ocean events…it would simply be a piece of information to be filed. After hundreds of years of taking such readings, a little speculation might be allowed. But perhaps the information would be in the hands of true scientists, loathe to speculate.

  23. Luke says

    Well you failed skepticism 101 Robert. Satellites do provide a global measurement and the wiggles match the surface station record. MATE !!

    And “that superficial tripe” IS NOT fed into a computer to make models. What drongoism.

  24. debbie says

    Luke,
    you just failed ‘reality101’.
    Robert may have used emotive words but he is nevertheless correct.
    Those models are useful and we can also use them to speculate.
    We are in the process of using those and other computer models right now to speculate our next year in business as well as update our 5 and 10 year plans.
    Guess what we ALWAYS ALWAYS have to do first?
    We have to update the ones we used previously with REAL data.
    Otherwise we would be planning our future on INCORRECT projections or speculation as we move onto to the next phase.
    That’s because the speculation rarely matches reality. It’s sometimes close but if it is not correctly updated the next projections will stray further and further from reality.
    We have found that working with ‘normal parameters’ which is vastly different to long term averages and means and medians is far more likely to be helpful. We are also fully aware that we can easily ‘tweak’ our projective models to tell the story we want to tell to whichever entity we are submitting it to.
    As always, my objection is that this work has been hijacked by people/AGW celebs / politicians/ bureaucrats. etc and the excellent research and data collection is being used inappropriately.

  25. Robert says

    Just on surface temp: People need to look honestly at the data they have and call it what it is. If you have a temp reading for a piece of ground in a settlement in Greenland, you don’t have a Greenland temp. You have a temp for a piece of ground in a settlement in Greenland. If you have an SST reading from a British ship in 1945, don’t call it an SST reading, because it won’t be the same as a reading from a US vessel, which had a different way of sampling water. So just say you have an SST reading from a British vessel in 1945. It’s tedious, it’s disappointing, it means that every graph and chart should have its catalogue of qualifiers and disclaimers far longer than the graph or chart. No fun! It means no spokesperson for a science body gets to say things like “hottest ever” or “record high” because words like “ever” and “record” and even “hottest” require so many qualifying explanations that dry, factual accounting will be the easy option for those claiming to be scholars. But, hey, you still get to gather a few bits of knowledge.

    Loosely on-topic: When there was a severe drought in the early eighties, I decided to take advantage of the situation and go for a “bushwade”: a long camping tour of the Myall Lake system walking the shallows. I met a Hunter hydrologist who told me his career had been taken up with flood mitigation plans and projections because, after the seventies, nobody thought the heavy rain would just go away. I seems to me that preparedness is a far better thing than projection.

  26. spangled drongo says

    “And “that superficial tripe” IS NOT fed into a computer to make models. What drongoism.”

    OK Luke, I’ll bite. What IS the tripe then, that they feed in?

    You sound as if you think you know but whatever it is, it doesn’t work.

  27. Luke says

    The models are physically based – it’s not tuning a regression equation to global temperature. And without greenhouse forcing the models don’t reproduce the warming of the late 20th century. Now there’s plenty one could criticise about models – (which incidentally is what modellers spend their time doing) but let’s at least get off the deck with a sledge.

    Robert should also note how tedious it is that SST and NMAT temperature series tell the same story. And here it is again – look Mum – no hands – no land based instruments and UHIs. A very simple and elegant story of centennial warning from first principles. Overlain with interannual and decadal variability.
    http://www.gi.alaska.edu/~bhatt/CJC/Parkeretal_2007.pdf

    Sigh !

  28. Robert says

    Does anyone not believe that the world may warm, and may have warmed from the later 19th century? I’m told 1930s were a real bugger and – look Mum – no forcing. Roll on those 1950s, cooler weather and Everly Brothers. What could be better?

  29. spangled drongo says

    It seems the experts pretty well agree on sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 being ~ 1c.

    The models apply 3x – 5x for feedbacks and the sceptics apply 0.5x.

    Who are ya gonna believe? The models or ya lyin’ eyes?

  31. kuhnkat says

    Little Lukey,

    “and remember the IPCC range goes as low as 1.1C – see page 8 ”

    Yes, and they have been pulling in the humorous max predictions in every report also. They are still wrong. They show no negative in the range and we may be seeing that in a few years!!

    A lot of people will not be appreciating the cooling. The torches, feathers, and hot tar should warm up some of them.

  34. Debbie says

    Seriously Luke,
    You’re so focused on ‘shooting the messenger’ and you appear to have a such a deep seated hatred for your perception of ‘sceptic’ that you are completely missing the point. You in fact appear lost because you can’t see the forest for the trees (word for trees 🙂 )
    Many of us appreciate the good work of science and what it can achieve. We also know that it is not infallible
    Can I just point out that unlike the IPPC science community, so called ‘sceptics’ are not a singular definable group or organism working for wages, in an organisation with a boss/bosses. Most of your shots are completely missing the target because ‘sceptics’ think for themselves and refuse to be chanelled onto a super highway that only has one destination. They have that luxury because their livelihoods (wages) don’t depend on directing all traffic onto that superhighway.
    As infuriating as you seem to find it, it is natural for people to ask questions. When they are given nonsensical, exaggerated, PR motivated answers, they rightly become suspicious.
    They are also very quick to notice and condemn the bureaucratic culture of ‘shoot the messenger’.
    You would have way more success if you stuck to the issues.
    That is if you actually do have a clear message?????
    Maybe you just like firing shots?
    Jennifer provides this forum for people to discuss issues and she is extraordinarily tolerant of people who persist in firing off personal attacks.
    The ‘sceptic meme’ as you call it is at least offering alternative common sense ideas.
    What is your vision for the next generation?
    Hopefully it’s not to kill off everybody who doesn’t automatically bow down to ‘consensus science’?????