On December 2, 2014, Dr. Roy Spencer posted on the Internet University of Alabama-Huntsville satellite global temperature data for November 2014 of 0.33 degree Centigrade. This temperature is not the warmest in recorded history because November 2011 was 0.39 degrees. These temperatures are departures from 1981 to 2010 30-year average temperatures.
Within days press releases will be published across the world stating November 2014 and the year 2014 are the warmest in recorded history. Recorded global temperature history is really only from about 1880 to present.
Seth Borenstein with the Associated Press seems to be a contact by NOAA or NASA for announcing alarming temperature data. This is part of the Obama Administration’s policies to promote record global warming as justification for eliminating use of coal and reduce use of oil and natural gas as energy sources.
Data from NOAA and NASA is from land-based temperature stations subject to inflated temperatures due to their locations in large metropolitan areas across the world. Temperatures rise in metropolitan areas as they grow and add more concrete and asphalt that absorb heat. This is called the Urban Heat Island Effect which is a human-caused local global warming. Satellite data is not subject to these distortions.
For the eleven months of 2014, satellite data shows the global average temperature is 0.27 degrees. The years 1998 and 2010 had warmer eleven months with temperatures of 0.44. Even if summer occurred in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres for December 2014, the year 2014 will not be warmer than the years 1998 and 2010.
The recently posted satellite data shows a graph of global temperatures from December 1978 to the present. This graph shows a pause in global warming since the 1998 high point in global temperatures due to a supper El Nino event. In keeping with the Holidays it can be said, “Yes Virginia there is a Santa Claus, and there is no global warming.”
Professor of Nuclear Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology (ret.), Climate Change and Energy
