Home/BlogThe Version 6.1 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for February, 2026 was +0.39 deg. C departure from the 1991-2020 mean, up a little from the January, 2026 value of +0.35 deg. C.
The Version 6.1 global area-averaged linear temperature trend (January 1979 through February 2026) remains at +0.16 deg/ C/decade (+0.22 C/decade over land, +0.13 C/decade over oceans).
The following table lists various regional Version 6.1 LT departures from the 30-year (1991-2020) average for the last 26 months (record highs are in red).
| YEAR | MO | GLOBE | NHEM. | SHEM. | TROPIC | USA48 | ARCTIC | AUST |
| 2024 | Jan | +0.80 | +1.02 | +0.57 | +1.20 | -0.19 | +0.40 | +1.12 |
| 2024 | Feb | +0.88 | +0.94 | +0.81 | +1.16 | +1.31 | +0.85 | +1.16 |
| 2024 | Mar | +0.88 | +0.96 | +0.80 | +1.25 | +0.22 | +1.05 | +1.34 |
| 2024 | Apr | +0.94 | +1.12 | +0.76 | +1.15 | +0.86 | +0.88 | +0.54 |
| 2024 | May | +0.77 | +0.77 | +0.78 | +1.20 | +0.04 | +0.20 | +0.52 |
| 2024 | June | +0.69 | +0.78 | +0.60 | +0.85 | +1.36 | +0.63 | +0.91 |
| 2024 | July | +0.73 | +0.86 | +0.61 | +0.96 | +0.44 | +0.56 | -0.07 |
| 2024 | Aug | +0.75 | +0.81 | +0.69 | +0.74 | +0.40 | +0.88 | +1.75 |
| 2024 | Sep | +0.81 | +1.04 | +0.58 | +0.82 | +1.31 | +1.48 | +0.98 |
| 2024 | Oct | +0.75 | +0.89 | +0.60 | +0.63 | +1.89 | +0.81 | +1.09 |
| 2024 | Nov | +0.64 | +0.87 | +0.40 | +0.53 | +1.11 | +0.79 | +1.00 |
| 2024 | Dec | +0.61 | +0.75 | +0.47 | +0.52 | +1.41 | +1.12 | +1.54 |
| 2025 | Jan | +0.45 | +0.70 | +0.21 | +0.24 | -1.07 | +0.74 | +0.48 |
| 2025 | Feb | +0.50 | +0.55 | +0.45 | +0.26 | +1.03 | +2.10 | +0.87 |
| 2025 | Mar | +0.57 | +0.73 | +0.41 | +0.40 | +1.24 | +1.23 | +1.20 |
| 2025 | Apr | +0.61 | +0.76 | +0.46 | +0.36 | +0.81 | +0.85 | +1.21 |
| 2025 | May | +0.50 | +0.45 | +0.55 | +0.30 | +0.15 | +0.75 | +0.98 |
| 2025 | June | +0.48 | +0.48 | +0.47 | +0.30 | +0.80 | +0.05 | +0.39 |
| 2025 | July | +0.36 | +0.49 | +0.23 | +0.45 | +0.32 | +0.40 | +0.53 |
| 2025 | Aug | +0.39 | +0.39 | +0.39 | +0.16 | -0.06 | +0.82 | +0.11 |
| 2025 | Sep | +0.53 | +0.56 | +0.49 | +0.35 | +0.38 | +0.77 | +0.30 |
| 2025 | Oct | +0.53 | +0.52 | +0.55 | +0.24 | +1.12 | +1.42 | +1.67 |
| 2025 | Nov | +0.43 | +0.59 | +0.27 | +0.24 | +1.32 | +0.78 | +0.36 |
| 2025 | Dec | +0.30 | +0.45 | +0.15 | +0.19 | +2.10 | +0.32 | +0.37 |
| 2026 | Jan | +0.35 | +0.51 | +0.19 | +0.09 | +0.30 | +1.40 | +0.95 |
| 2026 | Feb | +0.39 | +0.54 | +0.23 | +0.03 | +1.91 | -0.48 | +0.73 |
The full UAH Global Temperature Report, along with the LT global gridpoint anomaly map for February, 2026 and a more detailed analysis by John Christy, should be available within the next several days here.
The monthly anomalies for various regions for the four deep layers we monitor from satellites will be available in the next several days at the following locations:
6th warmest February
1 2024 0.88
2 2016 0.70
3 2020 0.57
4 2025 0.50
5 1998 0.49
6 2026 0.39
7 2010 0.30
8 2017 0.30
9 2019 0.21
10 2021 0.20
Global anomalies still very close to the long term linear trend, which is surprising given the La Nina conditions over the past year or so.
March could be interesting as ERA shows a big drop in anomalies in the last week of February.
Still have a water vapor from that volcano. Water vapor is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2
https://acd-ext.gsfc.nasa.gov/Data_services/met/qbo/h2o_MLS_vPRE_qbo_00N.png
” Water vapor is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2 ”
This is not wrong of course, but is valid only at the surface and in the lower troposphere at altitudes up to 5 km and pressures from 1000 down to 500 hPa.
The water vapor average concentration in the lower troposphere is about 0.4 %, i.e. 4000 ppm, and can go near the surface in the Tropics up to 5 % i.e. 50000 ppm.
What you proudly show, however is the lower and mid stratosphere at altitudes between 15 and 40 km and pressures between 100 and 3 hPa.
If you look at the green part of the color scale, you see a water vapor concentration from 0 up to 1 ppm, i.e. 4000 times lower than in the lower troposphere.
And this 1 ppm in the stratosphere is also about 400 times lower than CO2, as this gas has on average the same concentration in both atmospheric layers.
The upper troposphere is considered to be 8-17km above the surface.
Lower reaches in the tropics can be 1012ppm and near the top 4-10ppm
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2009JD013209
While we don’t really know if CO2 produces any significant radiative warming of surface from those altitudes; we do know water vapor can carry 1600 times the heat per mole as CO2 mostly in the form of latent heat up into those regions changing the lapse rate and suppressing convection. The resulting cloud of water vapor creates the hotspot and can be triggered by any source of surface warming including orbital perturbations or earth by the same mechanisms recorded by various scientists over the decades prior to CO2 getting all the climate monies.
According to the Oceanic Niño Index (ONI), there hasn’t been a La Niña event since the last El Niño (2023-2024). There have been some recent negative values, but not negative enough to be classified as La Niña.
ONI has been phased out.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso/roni/announcement.php
According to MEI, the Multivariate ENSO Index, much more accurate than ONI (nino3+4), there was of course a La Nina episode which started in July 2025 and lasts until right now:
https://psl.noaa.gov/enso/mei/img/meiv2.timeseries.png
Data
https://psl.noaa.gov/enso/mei/data/meiv2.data
What is ERA and can you post a link?
Pet peeve of mine – use of imprecise words like “warmest.” Your post might not be an offender. I presume you are referencing the UAH data. But many others do not, especially the media, who use scare tactics using “warmest”, “record”, “highest” without (or burying deep in the article) reference to the margin above the previous temperature. Typically, the margin would be judged by “the man in the street” (and me) as quite small and certainly not alarming. “Warmest, record, highest” since the Medieval Warm Period? Nope. Our species and all Hominids have certainly lived and adapted quite well in warmer climate regimes. And they had little of our modern technology.
ERA5 is a reanalysis model from ECMWF
https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/datasets/reanalysis-era5-single-levels?tab=overview
This page has visualization for the daily data
https://pulse.climate.copernicus.eu/
I’m surprised that UAH is saying the land was so warm in February. Globally it was the second warmest February for land. Only 0.04C below the record set in 2024.
For the Northern Hemisphere it was also second warmest, only 0.02C below the record set in 2016.
US temps up again, but Arctic negative by a sizeable degree.
The Arctic is warming rapidly.
As a northeastern USAian who has experienced one of the cooler winters in the past couple of decades, I expected (without looking at other data) that the Arctic would be on the warm side this past month due to Arctic air being diverted to my neighborhood, but that seems not to be the case. Qualitatively, “climate reanalyzer” seems to be consistent with the UAH observation for February in that the past month’s surface temperature anomaly for the Arctic was on the cool side relative to recent years.
https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/?dm_id=arctic
That is, I agree with your assertion that “the Arctic is warming” rapidly” (on a long term average), but the data for this month seems to be a cold side outlier.
That all depends on when your start point is. It’s probably back to what it was in the 1930s/40s. By 2034, it will have started to cool just as ‘rapidly’. It’s just a cycle.
” It’s probably back to what it was in the 1930s/40s. By 2034, it will have started to cool just as ‘rapidly’. It’s just a cycle. ”
As usual, Buzz posts vague assertions without any source let alone data backing them.
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Even if their time series starts with 1871, Met Office has IMHO no valuable data for sea ice back to the ‘1930/40s’; one starts better with 1951.
Let’s therefore have a look at their HadICE data, going till Dec 25:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WcsjTtbsk8Dd93TprKT8_dYVHncGg9v2/view
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Not the least bit of a cycle to be seen there. Pure invention, as so often!
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And in case of anyone denying the value of anomalies, here is the absolute data they were obtained from by removing the annual cycle:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QtzRyo4uFIcsRMyiorlFRa3UgRSGyPxy/view
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Buzz probably obtained his Arctic ‘opinion’ from Watts’ WUWT, a blog best known as Heartland’s and GWPF’s loudest megaphone.
” It’s probably back to what it was in the 1930s/40s. By 2034, it will have started to cool just as ‘rapidly’. It’s just a cycle. ”
As usual, Buzz posts vague assertions without any source let alone data backing them.
*
Even if their time series starts with 1871, Met Office has IMHO no valuable data for sea ice back to the ‘1930/40s’; one starts better with 1951.
Let’s therefore have a look at their Arctic sea ice extent data, going till Dec 25:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WcsjTtbsk8Dd93TprKT8_dYVHncGg9v2/view
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Not the least bit of a cycle to be seen there. Pure invention of the poster, as so often!
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And in case of anyone doubting the correctness of anomalies, here is the absolute data series they were obtained from, by removing its annual cycle:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QtzRyo4uFIcsRMyiorlFRa3UgRSGyPxy/view
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Buzz probably obtained his Arctic ‘opinion’ from Watts’ WUWT, Heartland’s megaphone.
Met Office’s source:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadisst/data/download.html
Mark B,
Yes, the Arctic leaned colder in February, but it still ranked as only the 11th coldest February in the UAH NoPol dataset.
Buzz
[“That all depends on when your start point is. It’s probably back to what it was in the 1930s/40s. By 2034, it will have started to cool just as ‘rapidly’. It’s just a cycle.”]
A broken record:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/30/is-the-climate-sell-signal-imminent/
Feeling dumb?
Just remember there are skeptics who see one colder than average month in a single region and decide that anthropogenic global warming must be a myth:
https://tinyurl.com/2ke5wsdk
Bindidon,
It is playful sport to describe WUWT blog and assert links to Heartland Institute. That is easy social politics stuff.
For we scientists, the more interesting question is “What serious mistakes, if any, have they made?”
Would you like to offer a reply? Geoff S
“What serious mistakes, if any, have they made?”
If I had time enough to spend on all the mistakes anyone can find there, I would have written at least 1000 comments like this one:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/04/19/is-arctic-amplification-an-averaging-error/#comment-4067318
Geoff Sherrington,
See here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/04/04/the-new-pause-lengthens-by-three-months-to-5-years-10-months/
It is fairly clear to me and others that the “Monckton pauses” are created by choosing a regression period that begins just before a strong El Niño and ends during a La Niña.
Given that repeated pattern of selective framing, it is difficult to see it as accidental.
Nothing to do with selection, you can plainly see them on the UAH graph. Anywhere there is a visual sine wave like activity, it means the areas represented are a flat trend. Example mid 2016 til 2023. That’s a 7 year pause.
The IPCC called the 15 year period from 1998 – 2012 a pause. UAH extends it to 18 years.
Granted, it has warmed slightly through these pauses but in no way can such activity be attributed to anthropogenic warming.
The “Monckton pauses” are by definition choosing the longest period of zero or negative warming trend. Because El Nino/La Nina are typically the largest amplitude components in the temperature anomaly time series the tend to correspond with the beginnings and endings of “Monckton pauses”.
This may be a bit out of date, but this is my illustration of “Monckton pauses” for four of the major time series:
https://southstcafe.neocities.org/climate/escalatorGraph.png
I’ve also applied the statistical multiple regression technique of Foster/Rahmstorf 2011 to various time series to nominally remove the El Nino, solar cycle, and volcanic aerosol components of the time series, which makes the pauses shorter. The pauses are inherent in any noisy linear trend series with autocorrelation.
https://southstcafe.neocities.org/climate/escalatorChartFR.png
In both figures, the longest pause is in the UAH series centered circa 2005. Notably it remains in the series after FR2011 is applied and is largely mitigated in the other series. It has been hypothesized that this is an artifact of the way UAH treated the time of observation drift/merge for the NOAA 15 satellite vs what RSS did.
Thanks Mark B for reminding us of Foster’s & Rahmstorf’s excellent analysis showing us what remains in temperature time series when removing ENSO and volcanoes.
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Santer & al. did something similar a few years later, based on RSS (3.3)
https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/89054/solomon%206%20Santer_etal_NatGeo_Article_File_22jan2014.pdf
but did not publish their results in a form replicatable by anyone having the skills nedded to do.
The heart of their work:
https://fs5.directupload.net/images/160809/i5xhzij3.jpg
The picture I wanted to show was rather this one:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JK3TcyGrFvi4qu8BpJdued1tfiuqXdfk/view
Thanks Bindion, that was a really nice time series decomposition by Santer!
However, in the residual (why haven’t they indicated how much is still there) remains a large part that is unexplained by those factors. The variation is roughly the same as in the original data.
And I don really see the argument against the “pause” since there has been no upwards trend since more than the last half of the entire set, slight cooling if anything. The pause seems to be even longer now.. It is obvious that the linear fit of adds little value aswell.
Gordon Robertson wrote:
“Granted, it has warmed slightly through these pauses but in no way can such activity be attributed to anthropogenic warming.”
Why?
Gordon Robertson,
[“The IPCC called the 15 year period from 1998 – 2012 a pause. UAH extends it to 18 years.”]
You ignore the point about ENSO variability dominating short time windows and repeat the same mistake by invoking the 1998 – 2012 “pause.”
Just like UAH, the RONI index shows a negative trend from January 1998 to December 2012.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso/roni/
Could you also elaborate on your claim that the UAH time series exhibits a sine wave structure? The ENSO driven peaks occur at irregular intervals, and their amplitudes vary widely.
Yes the enso is dominating in the number of peaks. But 1940 and 2000 involved planetary alignments known to produce significant orbital speed adjustments to earth in its orbit.
Finally a 2020 peak occurred during a warm aligned Jupiter Saturn conjunction but during a moderately strong La Nina.
This pattern of saturn and Venus then teamed up for a very rare 4 jovian planet alignment peaking in 2023-24 as Jupiter conjuncted with all three other jovians between 2020 and 2024. From 1980 that alignment built with the slowest going into a warming influence in 1980 followed in order by the 3rd, 2nd, and fastest of the 4 Jovians compressing the alignment more narrowly especially from 1990 onwards to 2024 when Jupiter passed the last one. My money is on this alignment possibly being the strongest since the Minoan warm period.
It seems that everything is much the same as last month. The atmosphere is cooling from whatever happened the last 3 years. It has not been conclusively explained. ENSO effects seem highly unlikely. It has nothing to do with an incremental increase in CO2. Claims that warming has “accelerated” will have to wait for a few more years if ever.
One other conclusion is that events such as the last 3 years demonstrate that data manipulation such as averaging and smoothing very often leads to misleading results — especially in the short term. The manipulators probably understand this as well. That’s why they do it.
“ENSO effects seem highly unlikely.”
Ummmm… We know from history, that ENSO effects on global temperature are the dominant cause of short-term variation.
“It has nothing to do with an incremental increase in CO2.”
True. An no one in climate science has claimed that CO2 explains short-term T variation.
“data manipulation such as averaging and smoothing”
OMG. Weird.
Neither of those are nefarious ‘manipulation’.
No one should be ‘misled’ by the use of these standard data analysis methods.
No, Nate, intelligent people are not going to be misled by your drive-by quotes. My whole statement is right there in context. You cannot try to fool dumb people without being really dumb yourself. It is obvious what you did. Most people with at least a high school education can see how each sentence in my comment follows the next to form a coherent thought. Taking them one at a time out of context does not change the meaning.
Please stop being a pest.
As expected we get the usual tirade of ad homs, but no science rebuttal from Tim.
Apparently you feel that your views cannot be challenged.
“Apparently you feel that your views cannot be challenged.”
It’s ironic given that Tim S is a MAGA supporter and MAGA supporters often claim to champion freedom of speech.
More BS from Nate, and now a new fool. Show me where I have ever supported Trump or MAGA in ANY way. I have criticized the media coverage from the liberal media, and the hysteria associated with that coverage in the same way that I have criticized media hype about climate while also acknowledging that CO2 should have some effect. I have provided detailed technical descriptions of the greenhouse effect. Have any of you?
Lazy stereotypes are a sign of a lazy mind. Intelligent people can understand that human behavior and climate are both topics that require the ability to comprehend complexity.
“An no one in climate science has claimed that CO2 explains short-term T variation.”
Nate,
If it can’t explain short-term T variation, it doesn’t explain long term T variation.
Cause you know, long-term is the short-terms put together.
So I ask you, how does a string of non-explanations turn into an explanation?
> If it can’t explain short-term T variation, it doesn’t explain long term T variation.
Holy meteorological fallacy, Bad Man!
(It’s the other way around.)
Bad Andrew, try applying your logic to the issue of whether the tilt of the earth explains variations in temperature.
Can you predict whether tomorrow (or the next day or the next day) will be warmer than today based on tilt of the earth? The changing tilt has basically zero impact on hourly or daily temperature changes.
But I bet you can predict (outside the tropics) whether January will be warmer than July.
A string of non-explanations for individual days DOES turn into an explanation for seasons.
Hi Willard,
Nice to hear from you again.
Your comment seems to be simply oppositional and lacking in meaningful content, like answering my question.
Talk to you later.
Tim Folkerts,
The relationship between the earth and the sun directly affects the earth’s temperature, yes. Observation.
More or less c02 is in the air makes it warmer or cooler is not an observation. That’s why “no one in climate science has claimed that CO2 explains short-term T variation”
See the difference?
Bad Andrew, you said “If it can’t explain short-term T variation, it doesn’t explain long term T variation.”
I am simply pointing out that this statement is ABSOLUTELY FALSE. There as MANY cases (including the one I gave) where a variable can’t explain short-term variations, but can explain long-term variations.
You need to understand basic logic before proceeding to basic science. See how that works?
“I am simply pointing out that this statement is ABSOLUTELY FALSE. There as MANY cases (including the one I gave) where a variable can’t explain short-term variations, but can explain long-term variations.”
Tim Folkerts,
OK so maybe I chose my words poorly to make my argument.
So, I concede that point.
BUT, C02 doesn’t explain any temperatures, short or long term. That’s a subjective imposition.
My bad, Bad. Allow me to explain –
The meteorological fallacy is a bit like the mereological fallacy: it’s an invalid inference from parts to wholes. A bit like suggesting that for you to think, your liver would need to think.
In our context, it’d be like saying that unless and until we can predict our next throw, we can’t say that in the long run, ceteris paribus, we can’t know that the sum of our throws will average to seven.
AGW is easy to conceive: it’s like adding a dot on the dice so that sometimes we can get 13s, more 13s, then 14s, and so on and so forth.
Thank you for your polite and patient response, Willard.
“AGW is easy to conceive: it’s like adding a dot on the dice so that sometimes we can get 13s, more 13s, then 14s, and so on and so forth.”
Indeed it is. So every throw results in a higher number than if you didn’t add the dot. Back in the day, Mosher would present a similar argument, which was “More C02 makes it warmer than it would have been otherwise.”
But it can’t be demonstrated that any dots have been added. “Would have been” is entirely imaginary.
You’ll say “More C02 is adding the dot.”
That’s a belief of yours.
I will expand on my comment. Over the years, there clearly is month-to-month variability in the dataset. That variation tends to fall within a fairly tight range. There are some notable exceptions, but not too many. To that extent, the current reading depicts the condition of the atmosphere relative to the history of the dataset. It does not explain what factors are “controlling” that temperature. Given the variation in the 13-month average, there must factors other than the steady accumulation of CO2.
The current grouping of monthly data shows a clear downward trend with the 13-month average running in the middle. That is a strong signal that the atmosphere is in a cooling phase. It does not reveal the mechanism of that decline. It does not predict the future condition.
The same argument can be made for a 30 year or 40 year trend. Without additional data going further back, it is not possible to rule out long term trends that have nothing to do with the rise in CO2. Long term surface data and sea level data suggest this current warm period could be influenced by something other than rising CO2.
Nate, get lost! Do not try to pick this apart.
Tim S
“That is a strong signal that the atmosphere is in a cooling phase.”
The current behavior of UAH is not nearly as remarkable as you suggest.
The equatorial Pacific is currently in a moderate La Niña phase, and UAH has so far bottomed out around +0.3C (though additional cooling may occur given the recent cooling in the tropics).
The most comparable pre-2023 ENSO episode is 2017–2018, when UAH bottomed out at −0.03C in September 2018.
In my view, a stronger cooling argument should at least wait to see whether the 2025–26 season reaches a similar minimum.
At the moment, we are still far from that point.
Again, you seem to feel that your comments cannot be challenged. But that is not the case, since you do not own this forum.
“It does not explain what factors are “controlling” that temperature. Given the variation in the 13-month average, there must factors other than the steady accumulation of CO2.”
As I mentioned ENSO is one that through long experience and research, we CAN know that it controls a significant faction of the short term global temperature variation.
Get back to us with your theory when the data stops going down.
[“Get back to us with your theory when the data stops going down.”]
Not a theory. Just the variation in the data — you know, the thing you were just commenting on:
“That variation tends to fall within a fairly tight range. There are some notable exceptions, but not too many.”
“Get back to us with your theory when the data stops going down”
How bout the fact we’ve just had a modest La Nina period?
Again, historically, such a period after a strong El Nino, leads to global cooling.
It is helpful to look back at similar periods of ENSO history, to see whether we have warmed relative to them.
We are now 2 y after the end of the 23-24 El Nino. We can compare to 2 y after the 15-16 El Nino, early 2018, again after modest La Ninas.
In surface record we are about 0.25 higher (end of red curve) than the same period in 2018 (end of green curve).
https://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:2010/plot/gistemp/from:2010/to:2018.2
For the record, I welcome honest and intelligent response to my comments. That includes Nate just as soon as that might happen. I do not appreciate pure argument for the sake of argument. That is especially true of dumb arguments which I find really boring.
[“I do not appreciate pure argument for the sake of argument. That is especially true of dumb arguments which I find really boring.”]
Then respectfully, you should probably hold yourself to the same standard and avoid implying that Roy Spencer is somehow manipulating readers with the 13 month running average he applies to the UAH time series.
You wrote:
[“Averaging and smoothing very often leads to misleading results — especially in the short term. The manipulators probably understand this as well. That’s why they do it.”]
A 13 month running mean is simply a standard way of reducing month to month noise in the dataset.
You may not agree with everything Roy says, but he is the owner of the blog and deserves a certain level of respect.
I will just accept that you are not very bright. The 13-month average is ADDED to the graph. It does not substitute the monthly data as if that was measured. In the case of UAH, the 13-month average helps to show how the monthly variation is centered. It does not erase the monthly data.
There are numerous graphs including those posted here on this site by Bindidon that propose to show a 10-year average as the actual measured data for that year. The method is to smooth out effects such as the last 3 years as if that represents an acceleration of warming. The classic case is the various graphs that attempt to erase the warming of the 1930s with the associated rapid increase in sea level.
Thanks for asking, but you really are not paying attention.
kynquora…”A 13 month running mean is simply a standard way of reducing month to month noise in the dataset”.
***
There is no noise in the UAH data set, each data point represents actual data. The running average simply smooths out the wild variation in the data to give a smoother trend.
Tim S,
[“The classic case is the various graphs that attempt to erase the warming of the 1930s with the associated rapid increase in sea level.”]
Smoothing does not remove real events.
If an alleged feature diminishes significantly under moderate smoothing, it reflects short term variability rather than a persistent climate signal. In that case, the basis of your complaint is not particularly strong.
I have a better answer. The raw data would be even more revealing if it was done weekly, but that would be much more work for Dr Roy. Nonetheless, there is a good example of the value of the monthly data to demonstrate the rate of temperature movement. In early 2023 there was an extreme acceleration in temperature that is clearly depicted by large changes in the monthly data that are more dramatic than the 13-monthly average. Some commenters here claimed it must be a problem with the satellite — it was thought by some to be not physically possible.
“I have a better answer. The raw data would be even more revealing if it was done weekly, but that would be much more work for Dr Roy”
How bout hourly? Would that be better?
Given that weather variations are inportant on weekly time scales (it takes warm air masses a week or more to cross a land mass), this would simply add weather noise to any clmate signal.
Short term noise obscures signal of interest, which in the case of climate change is years or decades.
Eg. 30 y, is the standard mereorological period to establish the climate normal.
To those of us who analyze data for their daily job, we understand that reducing random background noise by averaging or smoothing is a standard usedul tool, when the signal of interest is expected on a much longer time scale than the smoothing time scale.
“not very bright”
Again Tim is being a delicate flower who needs to put down anyone who challenges his ‘brilliant’ opinions.
Not a good look, Tim.
Nate, in my quest to help you become a better person, I have a suggestion. If you don’t like being described as a pest, you could simply behave better. As the expression goes:
Play stupid games — win stupid prizes.
You are always welcome to make rational comments that accurately depict my statements and my intent. I think you are capable of that. I am pulling for you. I am a friendly supporter.
The lack of hour by hour data is terrible. This monthly average business is a grotesque smoothing of he truth.
“Nate, in my quest to help you become a better person, I have a suggestion. If you don’t like being described as a pest, you could simply behave better.”
Oh, OK.
So that means don’t challenge your science claims, no matter how erroneous they are, because you wont have any answers, and are very insecure and thus will need to beliittle your challengers.
Got it.
Warmest winter (DJF) on record for ‘USA48’, I think
Warmest…since when? And the magnatude…by how much?
geoff sherrington…”For we scientists, the more interesting question is “What serious mistakes, if any, have they made?”
***
Are we talking about WUWT and Heartland, or the climate alarmists? I don’t see any serious mistakes made over at WUWT and Heartland is more the messenger than the message.
My concern is with the egregious mistakes made by climate alarmists. Where do I begin?
First, there is the inference that warming since 1850 has been due to a trace gas in the atmosphere. Syun Akasofu, a geophysicists who gained fame due to his brilliant work on the solar wind, claims the IPCC has erred by attributing the warming to a trace gas while ignoring the much greater factor of a re-warming from the Little Ice Age.
The IPCC are so desperate to get away from the LIA that they have dismissed it as a phenomena local only to Europe. They have not explained how it is possible for the frigid conditions recorded in Europe over the 450 years of the LIA to be local only to Europe while the rest of the planet was unaffected.
There is essentially no evidence to support the anthropogenic theory, the IPCC resorting to the work of Tyndall and Arrenhius in the mid to late 19th century. While Tyndall’s work is sound, in that he discovered gases like CO2 can absorb infrared energy, he did not prove anything with regard to the pithy amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Tyndall knew nothing about electrons and how they form bonds to create molecules like CO2. He had not the slightest idea as to why CO2 absorbed infrared energy. In fact, he lacked the instrumentation to do any serious measurements in the atmosphere nor did Arrhenius. Even today, we cannot prove how much CO2 warms the rest of the atmosphere.
There is not a shred of scientific evidence supplied in any IPCC literature that demonstrates how a trace gas can produce significant warming.
In fact, the long established Ideal Gas Law limits the warming of CO2 at 0.06 mass percent in the atmosphere to a mere 0.06C per 1C warming of the atmosphere.
Most IPCC propaganda comes from unvalidated climate models. The models suffer from two main issues: the amount of warming they attribute to CO2 is egregiously exaggerated and the positive feedbacks they claim that amplify warming (AGW) cannot exist in our atmosphere.
If you take away the propaganda and outright lies, anthropogenic warming theory is more pseudo-science than fact.
“the positive feedbacks they claim that amplify warming (AGW) cannot exist in our atmosphere.”
How do you explain the large global temperature difference between glacial and interglacial periods without invoking positive feedbacks?
Orbital variations act as the initial trigger for ice age cycles, but they mainly redistribute regional insolation rather than significantly altering global mean insolation.
Without major feedbacks, it is difficult to see how such large global temperature changes could occur.
eldrosion…when we talk about positive feedback in the context of anthropogenic warming, we are talking about an amplifying positive feedback. Let me explain.
There are two basic types of positive feedback. One requires an amplifier to amplify input signals, a portion of which is fed back to the input, either in phase or out of phase. That kind of feedback, no matter where or how it is applied is governed by the equation…
G = A/(1 + AB)
G = overall gain of system
A = amount of amplification, or gain
B = amount and phase of output signal fed back to input.
If the sign of B reinforces the input, then the output increases each cycle and can eventually runaway, limited in electronic amps only by the amount of current the power supply can deliver or the ability of the devices to deal with high current before they blow. A controlled form of this positive FB is used in oscillators and the likes.
If the sign of B detracts from the input signal, the output signal reduces. This form is used in audio amplifiers to increase and flatten bandwidth.
This type of positive feedback cannot exist in the atmosphere since there are no amplifiers available. Unfortunately, people like Carl Sagan and his acolyte at NASA GISS, James Hansen, incorrectly applied such theory inappropriately, envisioning a thermal runaway greenhouse effect on Venus.
They have tried to model Earth’s atmosphere based on Venus. Problem is, the surface temperature of Venus is 450C whereas the average temperature on Earth is closer to 15C. There is no way the dense atmosphere of Venus could have been caused by thermal runaway due to CO2.
Another type of positive feedback is the type used in servo systems where amplification is not required to operate the system. Rather, the system works on voltage polarity. This kind of PF is more like what is found on Earth.
For example, if one needs to control the speed of a motor, one can use a motor controller, an electrical device that varies the armature current to the motor. Motor speed is directly proportional to armature current.
It is then a matter of attaching a tachometer to the motor shaft, the purpose of which is to generate a positive and negative voltage, depending on whether the motor RPM is above or below a set point RPM. If positive means the RPM is high, and low is vice-versa, those signed voltages when fed back to the motor controller tell it whether it should increase or decrease the armature current.
Hopefully, you agree that kind of feedback can amplify nothing. So, we are left with amplifying feedback to explain any warming due to feedbacks. If you check it out carefully, you will see that any feedback in the atmosphere has to be negative only. If it is referenced as positive, it is done relatively, with positive meaning a not-so-negative, negative feedback.
Ergo, positive feedbacks in the atmosphere cannot amplify heat, yet climate models are incorrectly programmed with such amplifying feedbacks.
If you are suggesting that I think I am correct and all scientists claiming temperature rises due to PF are wrong, that’s exactly what I am saying. There is an excellent explanation here by engineer Jeffrey Glassman, under ‘Gavin Schmidt and Positive Feedback’.
http://rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/11/gavin_schmidt_on_the_acquittal.html
Schmidt, with a degree in math and head of NASA GISS is revealed as having no idea of the meaning of amplifying positive feedback. Yet he uses that theory to give his models far too much warming effect.
Feedbacks in physics simply means a change in a system alters conditions in a way that increases or decreases the original change.
Many systems behave this way without electronics. For example, consider avalanches. A small disturbance can cause some snow to start sliding. As that snow moves downhill, it destabilizes additional layers of snow, causing more of it to break loose and join the slide. The process builds on itself, and the avalanche rapidly grows larger. There is no amplifier circuit involved.
Regarding climate change specifically, it is well established that the Arctic is particularly sensitive to warming. One major reason is the loss of sea ice. This exposes more open ocean, which transfers heat to the colder Arctic atmosphere during autumn and winter. The Arctic surface temperature record clearly shows this trend: October is the fastest warming month at the North Pole.
Eldrosion,
Why do you say that orbital variations are the initial trigger for the ice age cycles? No two orbits are the same. By the same logic the climate warming could also be caused by the orbital changes.
How big a change in the orbits would cause an ice age or global warming?
In 2007 I read a post titled “Natural Variation.”
Apparently we are still stuck on that lesson nearly two decades later. Deniers still cannot reconcile natural variability with a rising GHG induced trend.
http://web.archive.org/web/20070225090704/tamino.wordpress.com/2007/02/20/natural-variation/
Why? Because they are afraid of reality.
That’s because there is not an iota of scientific proof that anthropogenic warming has any significance. If you have such proof, a one to one correlation between the 0.06 mass percent of CO2 in the atmosphere and significant warming, I’d love to see it.
This Eldro guy just can’t get it. He believes in the CO2 nonsense, and he’s sure the science is on his side. Yet, he doesn’t even understand the basics.
His cult claims that Earth is 33K warmer than it’s supposed to be because of CO2. When I asked him where the “33K” came from, he balked. When I tried to explain it to him, he balked.
He doesn’t know the science, and he can’t learn.
The “33K” nonsense comes from comparing Earth with an imaginary sphere. A sphere that has no oceans and no atmosphere. It’s a completely absurd comparison. It’s a perversion of reality. Yet it’s the basis of the CO2 nonsense.
The warming we’re seeing is due to “Natural Variability”, not any CO2 nonsense. The science is NOT on the side of the CO2 cult.
The issue raised was statistical: temperature records consist of a long term trend plus natural variability, and short windows can be dominated by that variability. That is why short segments of the record can appear flat or even cooling while the longer record continues to show warming.
Whether the long-term trend is attributed to CO2, solar forcing, or something else is a separate question. The statistical structure of the data remains the same:
temperature = trend + natural variability.
This comment does not really address the point being discussed. And you need to accept the fact that the planet is dying.
Eldro, the fact that the “33K” nonsense is a basis for the CO2 hoax went right over your head. You refuse to accept reality, and you can’t learn.
Thanks for proving me right, again.
And since we know CO2 can’t warm Earth, then your “equation”. becomes reality:
trend = CO2 warming + solar forcing + natural variability
trend = zero + natural variability
temperature = trend + natural variability
temperature = natural variability.
CO2’s radiative forcing does not depend solely on the simplified 33 K estimate.
Another strong line of evidence is the observed cooling of the stratosphere alongside warming of the lower atmosphere.
In the thin stratosphere, infrared photons emitted by CO2 are more likely to escape directly to space. In the denser lower atmosphere, photons are much more likely to be absorbed and re emitted.
Spamming “thanks for proving me right” like it is a victory lap just tells everyone you are insecure about your position. We all know self awareness is not exactly your strong suit.
I see you’re already using false accusations, Eldro. That didn’t take long. Thanking you for proving me right is NOT spamming, it’s reality.
You’re just throwing crap at the wall now, hoping something will stick. “Photons” won’t help your case, they debunk it. CO2’s 15μ photons can not raise the temperature of a 288K surface. Just like photons from ice cubes can not boil water.
So thanks again for proving me right.
Your attempt to use photons failed as quickly as the bogus “33K” nonsense. What will you try next?
You failed to see the insulation mechanism operating in the lower troposphere.
And if your reply did not address the substance of my argument, how exactly did it “prove you right”?
Eldro, your “photons” didn’t work for you so now you’re trying the “insulation mechanism”. Obviously you don’t understand that CO2 isn’t “insulation” for Earth. Oxygen and Nitrogen can provide insulation, but CO2 absorbs and re-emits. The re-emitted 15μ photons can not raise Earth’s 288K surface temperature.
You clearly don’t understand any of this, which proves me right, again.
What will you try next?
Its just maths. and the sums don’t add up, John Christy.
Your response is unclear. Can you specify what you mean?
The 33 K difference between Earth at 288 K as it is now, and Earth at 255 K doesn’t have anything to do with
– CO2
let alone with
– a ‘sphere that has no oceans and no atmosphere’.
The difference lies in the water content of the troposphere, which currently ranges between 0.4% and 5% in the tropics, compared to a situation where:
– the planet receives significantly less solar radiation – for example, due to an extreme position within one or more Milankovitch cycles
and consequently,
– the troposphere cools so drastically from the tropopause to the surface that all the water vapor it contains precipitates, and the Earth’s surface then resembles an icy ball.
For this reason, the albedo in the equations used to calculate the 255 K is 0.3 – exactly as it is currently, since 0.3 is also the albedo value for long living ice (fresh snow has an albedo of 0.8).
The albedo value for a ‘sphere that has no oceans and no atmosphere’ is around 0.12: this is no alarmista invention.
It is the value shown for our Moon in the pseudoskeptic GHE denying papers written by Nikolov & Zeller under their (stoopid) nicknames ‘Volokin & Rellez’.
Bindi, you’re very confused. Most of your comment is either irrelevant or wrong.
The “33K” nonsense is clearly your cult’s attempt to “prove” CO2 warming. Where have you been?
Stick with producing poor-quality graphs. Even the simplest science is over your head.
Ah, the little ankle-biting Clint R dog can’t keep silent, denies evidence with the usual
” Most of your comment is either irrelevant or wrong. ”
without of course being able to explain why.
*
” The “33K” nonsense is clearly your cult’s attempt to “prove” CO2 warming. Where have you been? ”
No. Any scientist knows that water vapor is by far the major aspect in the GHE. Only people like Clint R keep fixated on CO2, which in comparison still plays a minor role – but that will change in the future.
*
” Stick with producing poor-quality graphs. ”
You don’t even have the least idea of how to pruduce any graph, let alone to process the data they represent, hence don’t know anything about their quality.
All you are able to is ankle-biting and leaving poops everywhere, endlessly repeating your antiscience.
tim f…”The changing tilt has basically zero impact on hourly or daily temperature changes”.
***
Are you serious, Tim? If I am sitting here in good, old Vancouver Canada on a fairly pleasant winter’s day with temps around 10C, then suddenly, within hours, the temps are sub-zero C, do you think the the Earth’s tilt has nothing to do with that?
The reason the air becomes so frigid so quickly is that freezing air from the Arctic has descended on us. That air being frigid has everything to do with the Earth’s tilt and its orbital position.
The tilt causes an absence of sunlight in the Arctic, and it gets mighty cold up there without sunlight. That freezing air can descend as far south as Texas and Florida and when it collides with warmer air from the Gulf, things can get nasty.
Ergo, the tilt causes major storms in North America alone. This winter on the Pacific Coast by Vancouver was particularly mild whereas further east, right to the Atlantic, conditions were brutal re cold ad storms. Earth’s tilt producing cold Arctic air which was pushed aside by warmer Pacific air.
Tim F,
You claim that the earth tilt has zero affect on temperature changes.
So how do you explain that in the northern hemisphere it’s actually a lot colder when the earth is closer to the sun.
Gordon Robertson,
Your reply didn’t address the main point.
Tim Folkerts was making a timescale argument about signal versus variability. Earth’s axial tilt changes negligibly over days and weeks, which is why winter lasts roughly 3 months. As such, it is not a useful predictor of temperature on weekly timescales.
By the way, in your earlier comment were you interpreting the term “noise” as fake or erroneous data? “Wild variation” is exactly what statisticians mean by noise.
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2026/03/uah-v6-1-global-temperature-update-for-february-2026-0-39-deg-c/#comment-1736680
No worries if that was the interpretation. Tim S perplexingly argued that Roy’s running average is fake and intended to mislead, which understandably muddies the discussion for readers.
Earth’s thermal inertia is tremendously large. It is the reason Earth is never in equilibrium with incoming solar energy.
Either there is a slow, orbitally forced rise in global accumulated thermal energy, or, decline in thermal energy, because of the orbitally forced the lessened the surface accumulative abilities.
In our times the total yearly SW reflection along with the total yearly immediate IR emission are lower, than some few millennia previously. Lowering radiative losses resulted to increased heat accumulation and global temperature rise.
The warming is because of orbital circumstances, not because of extensive fossil fuels burning. The phenomenon originates from the planet’s changing ability to accumulate solar energy.
When Earth is closer to sun on winters, Earth gets warmer, than when Earth is closer to sun on summers. A big differencies occur, with the intermediate phases in between. You will be immediatelly convinced by a single glance at a classroom’s demonstration globe.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
My name is Charlie Kirk and my credit card number is 6735-8812-2278-6833
The expiration date is 08/27
The security code is 269
https://tinyurl.com/yptsh697
” How big a change in the orbits would cause an ice age or global warming? ”
*
It seems that some have difficulties with the influence of Earth’s orbit changes on its climate.
Of course: people observing this influence don’t look at geologically tiny moments like e.g. the last 2000 years.
The best to understand the issue is to have a look at a beautiful page made long time ago by people working at Indiana’s University, but which recently disappeared, very probably due to the dictatorial, ‘anti-free speech’ behavior of the US’ top ignoramus known as the Trumping boy.
*
But… thankfully, there’s (1) the Web Archive and (2) all those companies like Alphabet or Amazon that scour the entire web daily to optimize their answers to our questions, heh heh.
So take a look at these simple explanations:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210206021955/https://geol105.sitehost.iu.edu/images/gaia_chapter_4/milankovitch.htm
eldrosion…”Feedbacks in physics simply means a change in a system alters conditions in a way that increases or decreases the original change”.
***
That explanation is straight out of the Gavin Schmidt school of physics and is far too simplistic. In fact, it is wrong. It fails to satisfy the defining equation for PF…
G = A/(A + AB)
It is imperative to understand that we cannot get something for nothing. If we want to increase a quantity like heat we need to amplify it. Heat will not amplify on its own and the 2nd law tells us that heat cannot transfer itself from cold to hot, just as no other form of energy can transfer itself from a lower potential to a higher potential by its own means.
How do we amplify heat from the Sun? What is a heat amplifier, how does it work? Positive feedback can only work where a form of amplification is available. In nature, the only means I know of doing that is through resonant structures and even at that, the amount of amplification is limited.
Specifically, in order for a positive feedback to work, there needs to be a mechanism wherein the output is isolated from the input. Otherwise, the two systems cannot interact in such a manner that an increase can take place in the output so that it can send a signal back to the input to increase the output even more.
If you have straight resistive network without an active device like an amplifying transistor, it is impossible to speak of positive feedback. We can talk about negative feedback to an extent and in the atmosphere, without an amplifier, all we can discuss is negative feedbacks.
Albedo is of necessity related to negative feedback, not positive feedback.
With electroncs/electrical signals, the amplifier acts as an impedance buffer that essentially isolates the input from the input while allow the input signal to affect the gain of the transistor. The gain is due to a lower current in the input of the transistor allowing more current to flow in the output, however, the extra current is produced by the power supply. Ergo, we are not getting something for nothing.
Transistors are designed to do that but there is no mechanism available in the atmosphere to do it. Since the Sun supplies all of our heat, a positive feedback system, in order to increase that heat, would need to interact with another device that allows an increase in heat. One such mechanism would need to increase heat from the Sun while another would need to draw heat from another source, like another star.
Alarmists have made the egregious mistake of presuming a trace gas in the atmosphere can act like that independent heat source. Not only does that theory contradict the 2nd law, by allowing heat to be transferred from a colder atmosphere to a warmer surface, it is an example of perpetual motion whereby heat from the surface is recycled back to the surface to increase the surface temperature independently of the Sun.
If you think there is such a mechanism, please explain it in detail without resorting to generalities as does Gavin Schmidt. He does a lot of hemming and hawing without explaining the exact mechanism. In fact, he cannot explain it mathematically because he tried and botched it.
Snow on a slope is not an example of positive feedback. Basically, you have the force of gravity acting on the snow, which has compacted and supplied friction to hold it in place. If the snow freezes, which it will, and new snow falls on it, the frozen surface supplies a lowered resistance and the downhill force finds it easier to overcome the resistance. Of course, vibrations help to break the bond holding the snow but the entire mechanism is not an example of positive feedback.
Albedo is not a form of positive feedback. We are looking for an amplification of heat and that requires a greater input of heat or a lowering of heat dissipation from the surface. The Sun is the input and unless there is a mechanism for retaining heat that is controlled by a feedback mechanism, there can be no positive feedback.
The atmosphere serves as a means of retaining heat longer but it is the entire atmosphere, that is 99% nitrogen and oxygen that is involved not the trace gas acting a lone.
Explain your albedo theory to show how an input of heat from the Sun can be controlled in a feedback loop.
What we need is a natural vibration capable of resonating at a specific frequency. A perfect example is the Seattle-Tacoma Bridge collapse. It was a suspension bridge built with cables supporting the bridge deck. The wind blowing past the cables caused them to resonate like a guitar string resonates with the body, especially in an acoustic guitar.
Unfortunately, with the SeaTac Bridge, the deck supported by the cables formed a resonate structure that vibrated at the same frequency as the cables. Vibration was fed back from the deck to the cables causing them to vibrate harder and the resonance escalated till the deck was vibrating like a long sine wave.
There are ijits out there arguing in retrospect that it was not resonance that caused the collapse. However, nothing else can explain such an amplification of oscillation due to a 40 mph wind. Obviously, such a wind is insufficient to cause a rigid bridge deck to oscillate on its own. In other words, without the suspension cables, the bridge would not have gone into oscillation.
Gordon, you may want to check your references about the failure of the Tacoma bridge. The failure of the bridge was to do with the deck not the cables. Failure of that & Ferry bridge caused a lot of research into aerodynamic effects on structures.
And unlike Bindy Brownshirt I don’t consider myself an engineer, just have family in the field. But then again Bindy considers himself a guru on computer etc.
anon…the problem I have with that theory is that a structure stiff enough to carry vehicles is highly unlikely to vibrate due to a 40 mph wind.
I think it is far more likely that the supporting cables would begin vibrating, even slightly, and that the vibrating energy would get transferred incrementally to the main structure. If the main structure was tuned in some way to the vibrating cable frequency, that could enhance resonance to the point where the bridge failed.
After all, winds don’t resonate, they supply the force required for the cables to vibrate. I am sure the actual problem is far more complex but I can hardly see a steel structure designed to carry vehicles vibrating due to wind.
Gordon,
Ever been in a skyscraper when the wind is a strong breeze. The building sways. I think that the twin towers used to sway over 11 meters and affected people. A skyscraper is a lot more rigid than a thin bridge deck.
kynqors…”By the way, in your earlier comment were you interpreting the term “noise” as fake or erroneous data? “Wild variation” is exactly what statisticians mean by noise”.
***
I was using the definition of noise from electronics systems where noise is an unwanted and often a spurious signal. In other words, it has nothing to do with the desired signal.
I don’t know why statisticians would describe wild variations of real data as noise. Wild variations in an audio signal is not regarded as noise unless it is an unwanted signal produced by something like EMR. I don’t see anything in the UAH data that I’d call noise.
The red running average is designed to smooth out wild swings and produce a curved trend that indicates how the data is trending.
In music, especially with a guitar, three notes that are related like CEG, (first, 3rd and 5th notes of the C-scale) sound good when played on a normal tuned guitar. However, if you play the same chord through a distortion unit, the combination of notes will produce spurious harmonics that are are not in tune with the original chord. That combination produces essentially noise that is unpleasant to the ear.
Rock guitarists get around that by playing power chords through distortion units which are often combinations like firsts and fifths. Those notes produce harmonics that are pleasant yet adding a 3rd through the distortion unit does not. Spurious harmonics produced are unpleasant to the ear.