January through March anomaly is 1.04C above the already-warmed 1950-1980 baseline. The record-warm 2016 was .98C above. I hadn't thought there'd be any chance that a (so far) non-El Nino year would beat the 2016 record, but now I'm not so sure.
Who knows what regression to the mean means anymore for climate, but given even odds I'd still guess 2016 will come out on top. And OTOH given even odds I'd say 2017 will beat 2015's former warmest record of .86C. I'd take some level of odds against me that 2017 will be at least the third-warmest year on record, easily beating 2014's former warmest record of .74C. The rest of 2017 would have to average below .64C to end up less than 2014, a temperature that was typical 10 years ago but not anymore.
UPDATE May 22: see the comments, April data is coming in. April for GISS is the coolest month yet, and it's still slightly warmer than 2015. Temps will now have to drop significantly lower than 2015 for the rest of the year if that year will end up warmer than this. So it's nearly a lock that 2017 is one of the two warmest years on record, it's just unclear if it's #1 or #2.
How many people would have guessed that 2014 would BOTH be a #1 warmest-year, AND that every subsequent year would be hotter?
ReplyDeleteTo the extent that China is burning less coal the East Asian brown cloud will be less. Based on what I see here in southeast Washington state I think it is less than formally. Maybe some of the same is happening in South Asia. The absence of these aerosols will immediately lead to a warmer climate.
ReplyDeleteOn the positive side shark attacks should go down because surfers won't have to wear wet suits and look like ready-to-eat seals..
ReplyDeleteKAP- agreed as to 2015-2017. I'd still expect at least one year in the next 10 to be colder than 2014, though. Eyeballing the record it seems that it takes about 15 years to get to a point where past record warmth becomes too cold to ever happen again.
ReplyDeleteFernando - I think that's better than the typical arguments saying more CO2 is good for the planet.
NOAA and Hadley are only up to February at the moment.
ReplyDeleteNOAA
2016 av: 0.939
2017 av: 0.935
HadCRUt4
2016 av: 0.774
2017 av: 0.794
David B. Benson
ReplyDeleteTo the extent that China is burning less coal the East Asian brown cloud will be less. Based on what I see here in southeast Washington state I think it is less than formally. Maybe some of the same is happening in South Asia. The absence of these aerosols will immediately lead to a warmer climate.
Indeed it will. And the rapid abatement of luke - sorry - Luckwarmer optimism.
Another metric that is not reverting to the mean is sea level. NASA recently updated their graph, and the downward trend expected with La Niña had suddenly reversed and the trend was back up. AVISO does the same thing. Not long after the NASA graph appeared on their website it disappeared. There is a notice that the page is kaput.
ReplyDeleteJMA have the preliminary result for March 2017, so comparing first quarter 2017 to the 2016 average:
ReplyDelete2016 av: 0.442
2017 av: 0.443
JMA lists 2016 anomaly at 0.45 here. But I got a slightly different result from their monthly global temperature index here.
ReplyDeleteNOAA have just updated to the March anomaly.
ReplyDelete2016 av: 0.939
2017 av: 0.967
March anomaly hit the 1C mark (1.05). First time this happened in the record was last year.
HadrCRUt3 is updated to March now. Comparing the 1st quarter 2017 temps to 2015 annual av:
ReplyDeleteHadCRUt4
2016 av: 0.774
2017 av: 0.821
HadCRUt3 is a typo obviously.
ReplyDeleteSome of the April data is in. Comparing first 4 months of 2017 to 2016 av global surface temp anomalies:
ReplyDeleteGISS
2016 av: 0.98
2017 av: 0.99
NOAA
2016 av: 0.939
2017 av: 0.947
JMA
2016 av: 0.442
2017 av: 0.425
Close race.
Thanks Barry. Whatever happens, 2017 is almost a lock now of being one the top two warmest years. GISS temps would have to cool down to .80 for the rest of the year to take this year's average below 2015.
ReplyDeleteApril data is in for HadCRUT4. Comparing last year av to year-to-date av.
ReplyDeleteHadCRUt4
2016 av: 0.774
2017 av: 0.799
May data is in for the other surface temp anomalies.
GISS
2016 av: 0.98
2017 av: 0.97
NOAA
2016 av: 0.939
2017 av: 0.922
JMA
2016 av: 0.442
2017 av: 0.412