No Record Temperatures According To Satellites
BBC put up a deliberately apocalyptic picture while telling us the world is on course for the warmest year on record. What they failed to tell us was that the more accurate satellites, which monitor atmospheric temperatures over nearly all of the globe, say no such thing. Figures from UAH are out for November, and these show a drop from the October anomaly of 0.27C to 0.33C. This means that at the end of November, this year is only in a tie for 3rd with 2005, and well below the record year of 1998, and 2010.
Moreover, despite El Nino conditions for most of this year, this year is only running a modest 0.03C warmer than last year.
RSS data for November is still awaited, but is unlikely to alter the October YTD position, which ranked 2014 as only 7th warmest.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/
What the BBC also failed to tell us was that there are large uncertainties in the surface datasets, which they are reporting on. Colin Morice of the Met Office warns:
Record or near-record years are interesting, but the ranking of individual years should be treated with some caution because the uncertainties in the data are larger than the differences between the top ranked years. We can say this year will add to the set of near-record temperatures we have seen over the last decade.
