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Friday, July 08, 2011

An Astonishing Arctic Warming Rate

UAH published their value for the global June temperature anomaly: +0.314°C, which is rather warm for the end of a La Nina. This keeps the rate of warming for their entire record, going back to 1979, at 0.14 ± 0.1 °C/decade.

The really amazing number is the rate of warming at the North Pole, which they also measure. It comes out to 0.42 ± 0.03 °C/decade since 1979. (r2 = 0.28, but it is statistically significant.) That's one degree Fahrenheit every 13 years, though these temperatures too have been basically flat for the last several years.


Here is a nice paper that explains how to calculate slope uncertainties and statistical significance: "Statistical significance of trends and trend differences in layer-average atmospheric temperature time series," B. D. Santer et al, Journal of Geophysical Research (2000) v 105 n D6 pp 7337-7356. [PDF] You can accomplish it in Excel with the LINEST function.

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