I received a note that the UAH LT anomaly for April 2012 is +0.295°C, which I assume will be posted soon.
That's the 4th-warmest April in their 34-year record.
Also, that RSS uses a different base reference (1979-1988) than UAH (1981-2010, the WMO standard), which I didn't note here. In the UAH base, RSS's April anomaly is +0.211.
I can't really fault it, but I've never much cared for the "nth warmest month" statistic when we are talking about anomalies, as being anomalies they are comparable with all other months.
ReplyDeleteRemoving 11/12th of the data seems pointless. It would be just as remarkable to say it's the 40th warmest month in UAH IMO, of course the naked eye sees the lower "4th" figure as more meaningful.
What I find more interesting is that many of the warmer months occurred during El Ninos and so IMO can be ignored. A scatter graph of ENSO vs UAH monthly anomaly with some lag time might be interesting. The recent month might be an outlier.