Despite President #Obama‘s assertions that 2016 will be hotter than 2015 as a prelude to ratifying the climate accord, newly released data shows he’s off the mark. Dr. John Christy, who maintains the UAH satellite temperature dataset, said that August was only the “second warmest in the satellite record,” but just barely: 0.44 degrees Celsius (0.79¬∞F) warmer than the 30-year average.
The preliminary data also showed August was only 0.05 degrees Celsius higher than July’s value of 0.39 degrees Celsius. That’s not unusual since August is generally considered the hottest month in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s also a statistically insignificant amount. According to computer models, warming should be occurring at a much more significant rate as CO2 is pumped into the atmosphere.
Behind the readings
The ongoing satellite project is run by the UAH (University of Alabama/Huntsville) in cooperation with NOAA and NASA and shows the global, hemispheric and tropical lower tropospheric anomalies when compared to the 30-year average. The UAH dataset also breaks down each region since different areas have vastly different readings or none at all. Isolated areas of the rainforest, deserts, oceans, and much of Antarctica, have little-to-no reliable data being collected. That’s why satellite temperatures are so important. Weather balloons match closely with the UAH dataset, demonstrating their reliability and accuracy.
Global Temperature Report: August 2016 https://t.co/hw2PAjiB1A pic.twitter.com/dxccTMmkOM
— Watts Up With That (@wattsupwiththat) September 1, 2016
La Nina projections off
Current projections regarding a possible La Nina show it won’t be as strong as previously thought, and that warmth in other areas is offsetting cooling in the Tropical and inflating global temperatures. The computer model average for surface temperatures for August according to WeatherBell was 0.42 degrees Celsius higher than average. That’s a 0.02 degrees difference with the satellite record.
According to retroactively adjusted land and sea temperature datasets maintained by NOAA and NASA, they show that July was 0.1 degrees Celsius warmer than previous warm Julys in 2009, 2011, and 2015. Those readings come from a variety of methods, including land stations, dwindling rural locations, ocean buoys, ship readings, etc. Temperature analysis for August will be available by those agencies in mid-September. NASA GISS Director Gavin Schmidt also said July 2016 was the tenth straight month with record warm temperatures, something unprecedented since recordkeeping began or even in the last 1,000 years.
