A Warm July in the Antarctic

After seeing the July RSS anomaly that showed a warm July, I was perturbed that – once again – I was languishing in cool weather in Wisconsin while someplace else apparently “suffered” from warmer temperatures. Looking at the territorial data, one of the culprits for that nasty warm weather was the extreme south. It was rightly pointed out to me a while back that I must be careful in presenting the RSS data as “Antarctic,” since it only goes to the latitudinal line of -70 degrees. So, please know that when I reference the Antarctic region here, it simply means the -60 to -70 region, which is as far dwon as RSS goes.

The July anomaly in this region was 1.0490 (a full degree Celsius and then some), which was a pretty warm one. It is the 5th highest anomaly in the 367 data points and is the 2nd warmest July in the 31 data points. It is nearly 7 tenths of a degree warmer than a year ago and the anomaly if 0.56 units higher than last month.

Keep in mind that it’s winter down there right now. I point that out because I guess I’m just not sure how much of a difference a degree makes in July with regard to melting ice. I know that when it’s winter here, -19 doesn’t seem to do much more than -20. But what do I know? I’m just an actuary. And a Packer fan. Are you watching these guys? The offense is looking phenomenal! Preseason or not, I’m getting pumped for the season to start.

But I digress.

Anyway, the last 13 12-month average anomalies had been negative, but thanks to the most recent one, the current 12-month average is at 0.45 (0.0045 in degrees Celsius). That’s not even a hundredth of a degree, so it’s essentially flat.

There’s no real streak of warming or cooling to consider. This is the second straight year-over-year increase, after 2 decreases. In fact, there really have been no real streaks to speak of for years. You have to go back to 2003 just to find the last time there was 6 months of consecutive anything. And that one was a consecutive cooling stretch.

Trends

Overall Antarctic Trend since inception of RSS data

Despite the current large anomaly, it is evident that there is no particular long-term trend. There are fluctuations both positive and negative about an almost perfectly flat zero line. Also, there doesn’t seem to be any particular indication that things are fluctuating wildly about any more than they have in the past. In fact, the last 10 years saw no anomalies above an absolute value of 1.000 until this one, which is the largest gap in the data. We often hear about how climate change is producing more extremes, but we don’t see that in this data.

Latest Flat/Cooling Antarctic Trend - RSS

August 2009 Update on Global Temperature – RSS

Don’t look now, but I’m actually posting a temperature update!

We’re looking at the July anomaly release for Global RSS Data. 

Data Point

The July anomaly was 0.392 (or 39.2 in terms of 0.01 C, which is what I’ll use).  This is an increase of 23.4 units over last year’s anomaly, and an increase of 31.1 units over June’s anomaly.   Perhaps that El Nino that everyone started talking about a while back has had an impact?

Rank

This is the 3rd highest July anomaly in the RSS data, of 31 observations. (90th percentile)

It is the 26th highest anomaly overall in the data set, of 367 observations. (92nd percentile).

It is the 1st most aggravating anomaly for me to observe.  July was miserably cold, with record low highs in Wisconsin.   I’m simply not catching a friggin’ break with the warmer anomalies.   Dear God: If we’re going to be warm, that’s OK.  Please afflict Wisconsin with some of it.  Thanks!

Average

The 12-month average anomaly ending July 2009 was 20.3.  This is now the highest 12-month average since February 2008.

Streaks

After hitting a low with negative anomalies last year, we are now experiencing a streak of 8 consecutive months where the year-over-year anomaly is higher than previous year.

Trends

Overall Trend since inception of RSS data

Recent Non-Warming Trend - over 12 years