http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature...ticle10866.htm

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but we are talking about a very short timescale here, how does this "wipe out" years of global warming?

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One thing I have read about is global dimming, which could be the cause of the drop in temperatures and the reduction of global warming. This is caused by pollutants in the atmosphere reflecting more sunlight back out to space than normal.
But, ironically it seems, the greener methods of travel by airplanes etc is reducing this effect and bringing global warming back into play.
Global dimming was measured after 9/11 when aircraft were banned from flying over the USA for three days, and a rise in sunlight filtering through the atmosphere was measured.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/prog..._summary.shtml

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I brought up this subject sometime ago on another thread. I suggested then that planes flying the trans polar routes be equipped with smoke generators that could be turned on at high latitudes. In not too long a time, a polar haze of particulants would develope that would increase solar reflection and contribute to cooling of the Artic region. Clean air people would oppose this solution but the "Save the Polar Bear and Walrus" people might support it.

Until all the polar bears and walrus' developed lung cancer.

There's something funky about that data being "January only", I'd say the whole report should be taken with a grain of salt. We did have a cold January, that's clear, but note that even "global warming" can produce fluctuations that might temporarily look like a cooling.

If the average temp is colder now than any time in the last 50 years, then it is on average colder now than 50 years ago. That means that the warming has cooled off.

Ken is right tho, until the drop in temp is more than a month, it is just more cherry picking data.

The following is a link to NASA’s land + ocean by month temperature anomaly, summary.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.C.txt

Comments:
Based on the NASA Land + Ocean (Above Normal)
Average (2003 to Jan, 2008) = 0.55C (Above deemed normal.)
Temperature Jan, 2008 = 0.12C

The change in planetary temperature (ocean plus land) as compared to the five year average is = -0.43C (3.6 Sigma)

The ocean’s surface temperature has been dropping which is consistent with a strong La Nina event, with the drop in ocean surface temperature about 2.5C.

Typically La Nina events are short and there is typically moderate ocean cooling. Another possibility is that the ocean surface temperature cooling is due to the solar cycle 23/24 magnetic cycle change, which has increased GCR. The increased GCR should increase cloud cover over the ocean. Still not clear whether the solar magnetic cycle has been interrupted. (If the solar magnetic cycle has been interrupted then this "La Nina" event would persist.)

Comment:
This is a link to a site that measures changes in Galactic Cosmic Rays. With the data range setting, set to 2005 Jan. to 2008 Jan. Assuming a linear relationship between neutron counts and GCR intensity, GCR has increased by about 10% over that period.


http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/Request.dl...=00&mR=00&PD=1

From Wikipedia:

Although I don't know if this suspicion is correct, what I suspect is that the data presented is normally a yearly average, but when the year is incomplete they just take the data they have and present it like it were a yearly average. So that's why the data from one month will always show greater variation than a yearly average would. Furthermore, the northern hemisphere has systematic differences from the southern hemisphere that may leave a persistent signal in data taken purely from northern Winter. I predict this result is a complete red herring of data mismanagement.

This is a plot of planetary temperature anomalies, land and ocean (2003 to 2005 average Vs current.) The cooling appears based on this data to be significant and world wide. This change in planetary temperature, is interesting due to its magnitude, its rapidity, and to the extent of the cooling.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gi...s=1200&pol=reg

I support, however, Ken G.'s comment that a longer term period of cooling, say a couple of years would be required, to seriously challenge the belief that the planet will continue to warm. If the cooling trend continues, a natural question would be how low and how long the planetary temperature will drop.

I dunno. With the way GW is treated, making a claim like this is pretty bold. They have to know how it would be recieved.

Taking a second look at the link in the OP, the graph is a 20 year monthly temperature anomaly chart. Looks like the difference between the monthly average and a baseline monthly average for each month since 1988. To say that because of a single large change GW is gone seems more deliberate than accidental

But who's "they", and why should they care how it will be received? Information mismanagement is the norm, not the exception, for people with strong political bias.
What they are doing in effect is nothing more than making the observation that this January was a heck of a lot colder, globally speaking, than the January a year ago-- which was strangely warm. There is essentially zero other content in the claim. They pretend to point out that the "cooling trend" has been going on for 12 months, but that is completely bogus-- if you don't consider last January (abnormally hot) or this January (abnormally cold), you see no such cooling trend at all-- and the remaining 10-month baseline is also too short to tell if there is global warming or not. It's data mismanagement, clear as day. We can really say nothing from comparing one very cold month to one very hot month-- wait another year or two and this whole "blip" will be put in its proper perspective.

Nevertheless, to my eye there is a much more significant aspect to the graph than a tale of two Januaries: not a whole lot seems to have happened in the last 10 years. I don't know how that compares with other data, and I do know that ice is melting and so forth, but that graph seems to indicate that there was significant warming from 1988 to 1998, but it has been pretty flat from 1998 to 2008. Again, since we have seen all kinds of other evidence over the last 10 years that warming is continuing (just ask the Inuit and the polar bears), I cannot speak to the validity of the dataset as a whole-- I can only say the buzz over this January is clearly bogus, but there is surprisingly little evidence of recent additional warming if that data is to be believed.

I guess I am thinking that it is a bit too mismanaged to be an accident. No real evidence tho.

As for the temp data, it is correct. Since 1998 or so the change has been pretty flat. This is the third or fourth different place I have seen similar data. I dont keep track of sources tho, so dont quote me on that

There is a difference between warming and warmer also. The Inuit may notice a change cause the climate is warmer even if it is no longer continuing to rise. I would give more precedence to the temp data than anecdotal, but even still, a decade long change, or not change, as the case may be, is still pretty short term to worry about.

I don't know where they're getting their data from, because around here, it was a warm January. Temps pushing the 60F mark, when they shouldn't be more than in the low 30s.

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This is the by month, by year NASA land + ocean temperature anomaly data, which provides a better overview of how much variability there is month to month and year to year.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/ta...LB.Ts+dSST.txt

As others have noted the planet cooled 1964 to 1976, which requires an explanation. Some have noted that as the temperature anomalies 1976 to 2008 have been almost exclusively positive, that the planet will continue to warm.

The theory of green house gas warming requires that the average, planetary temperature should increase, as GHG increases.

If the planet abruptly cools that would indicate that there is another mechanism that is at least in part responsible for the observed 20th century warming.

This is the global ocean surface temperature anomalies.

http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SS....1.28.2008.gif

85% of the planet’s heat capacity is due to the ocean, 5% due to the land masses, 5% due to ice sheet melting/freezing, and 5% due to the atmosphere.

Due to the high thermal capacity of the ocean, ocean surface temperature dampens out short term temperature changes. Ocean temperature therefore provides a good indication of trend changes, as opposed to month by month variation.

As others have noted the oceans in the early 21st century stopped warming. They now appear to be cooling.

I see what you mean, I just don't know if it's a sincere effort or an intentional manipulation. I suppose I'd be willing to believe it's sincere-- one must never underestimate our powers to fool ourselves when we want to believe something, on either side of a question.
That's puzzling. It must be that the temperature is elevated, which is creating the melting effects, but because there are secular changes happening the temperature is stabilized. It might even be like when you put ice in the oven-- for a while its temperature will increase, but when it starts to melt, its temperature will stabilize until it is all melted-- then the water will continue to rise in temperature. So we might now be burning through some kind of "thermal inertia" term-- a term we do not wish to discover the consequences of exhausting.
You are right, but note that temperature itself has difficulties when used as a proxy for thermal driving-- witness the ice in the oven. It might be more meaningful to go with the Inuit!

You've been lucky-- Iowa had a cold and snowy Winter!

Everyone knows there are other mechanisms involved in the global temperature, but what affects a month cannot logically be associated with something responsible for a century-long warming trend. Not every day in Winter is colder than every day in Summer, yet we still look for an explanation involving the tilt of the Earth's axis. Denying global warming based on a single month of data is a lot like denying the tilt of the Earth during a warm spell in midwinter.

This is a very different argument. I'm confused, which is it-- are we looking for some other driver of the warming of the planet, other than greenhouse gases, or are we looking for the agent causing the planet to actually be cooling? Global-warming deniers don't seem to mind whatever is the argument, as long as it contradicts the scientific consensus. (I don't say your data is invalid, because I don't know-- I would just like a consistent argument, the shifting sands make it hard to evaluate the claims.)

For example, when you talk about the "heat capacity of the oceans", are you talking about the total heat capacity of all the water, or just the heat capacity in the layers where the temperature information is gathered? Can you be certain that if the temperature drops at the surface, it cannot rise in the interior? What happens when you melt ice onto the surface of hot coffee?