Friday, August 17, 2012

UAH LT Temperature at Mid-Month

At mid-month, my guess for the UAH lower troposphere anomaly is about +0.34°C. That's warm -- it would be the 3rd-warmest August among 34 years, if you think the data can distinguish among months that are 0.10°C apart. (I'm dubious.) In any case, it's up there. My simplistic method is really only good for the month as a whole (and last month it was spot-on), but in the past the anomaly at mid-month has differed from the anomaly for the entire month by at most ± 0.1°C.

As always, we will hear that global warming is over, that the AMO cool phase is coming, or the PDO flip will soon take hold, or a vastly cooler sun will ruin us for good. In the meantime the ice keeps melting, the seas rising, and the climatalogically relevant trend remains at about 0.15 - 0.20 °C/decade.

By the way, the overall trend for UAH LT is 0.14°C/decade, but if you fit the monthly numbers to something truly entertaining, like a 2nd-degree polynomial, and compute that fit's slope (the first derivative), you get a current trend of dT/dt = 0.23°C/decade.

It's also hot in Oregon -- yesterday it reached 100°F here, at 45.86° north. (Normal high for the day is 81°F.) It finally feels like summer, so any day now there will be some small but unmistakable sign that fall is just around the corner.

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