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Thursday, January 07, 2016

This El Nino's Lower Troposphere Temperature, Compared to the Past

Here is a nice, relevant plot from Sou at Hotwhopper: it shows UAH's calculation of the lower troposphere temperature anomaly, for this El Nino, 2009-2010's, and 1997-98's.

This year is significantly ahead:


And here's an update to an (admittedly confusing) graph I've given before: a comparison of surface temperatures during this El Nino, compared to 1997-98.


Even though the strength (dashed lines, left-hand axis) of the respective El Ninos is comparable, with this year just a little ahead of 1997-98's, surface temperatures (solid lines, right-hand axis) are consistently higher by 0.2-0.4°C. There's your global warming.
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2 comments:

  1. DocRichard4610:34 AM

    Fascinating. It would be interesting to use 1997 and 2015 (and maybe other El Niño years) and input all forcings and feedbacks that we know of. It might be a good test of the accuracy of our knowledge and the skill of our computers, and maybe put better constraints on the pulse of warmth the El Niño gives.

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  2. David in Cal6:53 PM

    Nice charts. They give some indication of the speed of warming. By my eye, the comparison of 2015 GISS anomaly to 1997 is a difference of around .75 deg, which would correspond to 4.2 deg per century. The same comparison for UAH would be a difference of about .2 deg C, which corresponds to 1.1 deg c per century.

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