Global Temperature Page- January

This page will be reposted around the middle of February, as soon as SOI and UAH data for the previous month are available.

The December UAH value is +0.13  making the running 12 month mean +0.15 +/- 0.1.  December SOI reached 23.

All through 2011 I watched my predictions get further and further away from the actual 12 month mean of UAH temperatures.  I decided to change two factors in my algorithm with startling results- the calculated 12 month mean temperatures are closer- much closer- at least for the last two years.   Here are my old figures and new calculations compared:

Month	Predicted 12 month running mean	Actual UAH 12 month mean	New Calculations
March 2011	+0.29 +/- 0.05	+0.27	+0.31
April 2011	+0.23 +/- 0.05	+0.25	+0.27
May 2011	+0.21 +/- 0.05	+0.22	+0.26
June 2011	+0.16 +/- 0.1	+0.21	+0.24
July 2011	+0.12 +/- 0.1	+0.21	+0.22
August 2011	+0.07 +/- 0.1	+0.20	+0.19
September 2011	+0.01 +/- 0.1	+0.19	+0.15
October 2011	+0.01 +/- 0.1	+0.17	+0.14
November 2011	0 +/- 0.1	+0.16	+0.13
December 2011	0.07 +/- 0.1	+0.15	+0.12
January 2012	0.08+/- 0.1		+0.12
February 2012	0.12+/- 0.1		+0.13
March 2012	0.15 +/- 0.1		+0.13
April 2012	0.17 +/- 0.1		+0.13
May 2012	0.18 +/- 0.1		+0.12
June 2012			+0.12

So we’ll see how we go this year!

Last month I tipped “the next major enhancement to weather with heavier rainfall should be in the last week of December to mid January”.   Two cyclones appeared and caused major flooding in the Northern Territory, plus a Christmas Day storm in Melbourne (probably not connected!) and heavy storms about the Queensland Central Coast, so a little earlier than I expected but not much.

Although there are extremes about right now (12 January) I expect the next major build up of heavy rain and possibly cyclones off the east coast around 22 January to mid February.  This is the usual time for the arrival of the Wet season in this part of Queensland- when school starts.

So here’s my plot of what global temperatures could be like over the next 11 years, excluding major volcanic eruptions or other unforseen factors.  These represent my long range predictions for 12 month running mean global tropospheric temperatures as recorded by UAH.  This is based on my analysis of the UAH record compared with the 120 month running mean of the Southern Oscillation Index with a lag of 11 years and the 12 month running mean of the SOI with a lag of 6 months.

The upper and lower limits are for the maximum and minimum historical values for the 12 month mean SOI (+23 and -23).   If the global 12 month means exceed either of the black lines for more than 2 years I would consider this prediction falsified.

I calculate as follows:

T(12)m,y = [(SOI(12) m-6, y) /9 + (SOI(120) m, y-11)] /12 + FF

where

T = 12 month running mean up to month m of year y of global atmospheric temperature anomalies in degrees Celsius

SOI = running mean of inverted SOI values for (12) or (120) months

FF = fine-tuning factor, which for long term purposes can be assumed to be +/- 0.1.

(FF is some factor I am unable to identify but may be related to PDO, aerosol concentrations, or maybe even CO2!)

Here is a plot of the calculated means vs actual UAH 12 month means since 1979.

Note there is great variability.  Far from falsifying my hypothesis, I consider that this clearly shows the effect of volcanic eruptions.  The correlation between my calculated and actual values for 12 month mean UAH from January 1998 (the year of the big El Nino) to December 2011 is 0.7348, and from 1979-2011 is 0.6898.

I also include graphs showing the contribution of various factors.

12 month running mean of SOI values is obviously related to UAH, but other factors are involved.

Running 120 month mean of SOI since 1876- note the big jump since 1976.  What if we advanced it by 11 years and combined it with the 12 month mean.

Here’s the calculated values 1979-2011.

I expect that I will need to rework my calculations in the light of future data.  In particular, I’m sure that the long term values have varying influence  which is why there is variation.  These are still early days.