The complete UAH v6.0 data for March have been released. I present all the graphs for various regions, and as well summaries for easier comparison. The Pause refuses to go away, despite greatly exaggerated rumours of its death.
These graphs show the furthest back one can go to show a zero or negative trend (less than +0.1C/ 100 years) in lower tropospheric temperatures. I calculate 12 month running means to remove the small possibility of seasonal autocorrelation in the monthly anomalies. Note: The satellite record commences in December 1978- now 37 years and 4 months long- 448 months. 12 month running means commence in November 1979. The graphs below start in December 1978, so the vertical gridlines denote Decembers. The final plotted points are March 2016.
As I intimated in the previous post, there have been some small changes in the data. Some slope values have changed slightly.
[CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE]
Globe:
Sorry, GWEs, The Pause, for more than half the record, is still an embarrassing reality! For how much longer we don’t know.
And, for the special benefit of those who think that I am deliberately fudging data by using 12 month running means, here is the plot of monthly anomalies, which shows that The Pause is over by my rather strict criterion:
I will continue posting these figures showing these scarey trends from monthly anomalies. The Pause will return sooner with monthly anomalies than 12 month means of course.
Northern Hemisphere:
The Northern Hemisphere Pause refuses to go quietly and remains at more than half the record. It may well disappear in the next month or two.
Southern Hemisphere:
For well over half the record the Southern Hemisphere has zero trend.
Tropics:
Tropical Oceans:
Northern Extra Tropics:
The Pause by this criterion has ended in this region, however note that the slope since 1998 is one tenth of the slope for the whole period.
Southern Extra Tropics:
Hmmm!
Northern Polar:
The Pause here has shortened.
Southern Polar:
As the trend exceeds -0.1, this region is cooling for the entire record.
USA 49 States:
Australia:
The next graphs summarise the above plots. First, a graph of the relative length of The Pause in the various regions:
Apart from the North Polar, whose Pause is shorter, and the Northern Extra Tropics, whose Pause has ended, all other regions have a Pause of 18 years or longer- including the South Polar region which has been cooling for the whole record,
The variation in the linear trend for the whole record, 1978 to the present:
Note the decrease in trends from North Polar to South Polar.
And the variation in the linear trend since June 1998, which is about halfway between the global low point of December 1997 and the peak in December 1998:
The only region to show strong warming for this period is the North Polar region: the Northern Extra Tropics has very mild warming: all other regions are Paused or cooling.
12 month means will continue to grow for the next few months, so the Pause may disappear shortly, and may not reappear until early 2018. The impact of the coming La Nina will be worth watching.
Tags: climate, global warming, Pause, temperature, UAH
kenskingdom 
April 8, 2016 at 11:08 pm
[…] The Pause Update: March 2016 (Complete) […]
May 5, 2016 at 3:24 am
[…] The Pause Update: March 2016 (Complete) […]
May 5, 2016 at 4:27 pm
Pardon me for reminding you that you would attempt to reply – 7 weeks ago – on 14 March 2016 in your blog “Trending Trends Continued: An Alternative View”.
Ken, it is appreciated that you have been away and had computer problems, but have you a response?
In the meantime, from discussions by others, the ‘global’ temperatures are ‘anomalies’ from a means for a given time period, so error bars are almost impossible to calculate. The question does remain as to whether the trends of the several sets really differ from one another and whether the warming calculated is significant and any warming from CO2 is discernible?
May 6, 2016 at 8:25 am
Here is your comment from 14 March:
“Although not specifically applicable to this posting, there is one issue bothering me, as to when all statistical uncertainties are applied to the several “global” temperatures are there any truly significant differences between them all, say, over the last 18-20 years, that is for the period of the ‘pause.’
Most of these trends are derived with monthly or annual data as discreet numbers, but all have error bars. All these start as the mean of daily maxima & minima for a month for a given location, with error bars. This is then added to the other 11 months, together with other locations, to give annual data, for a country, or specific longitude-latitude regions (of unequal surface area), or other portions of the planet, with additional sets of errors. Not all of these are all land or all sea surface, so another issue – it is difficult to combine reliably land temperature, which are air temperatures about 1.4 m above the surface, to sea surface temperatures, which may be actually slightly below surface temperatures.
Are corrections made for the altitude at which the temperature is made? Not a problem if all sites are included for the whole set of data, but for some set locations have been added and others dropped out.
Satellite measurements avoid some of the above problems, but what is the precision of the measurement, and how affected are these measurements by the varying distribution of clouds and rain.
Yet people quibble over fractions of degree differences in so-called records, or highest or lowest since “when!””
Firstly, sorry, I did overlook this.
I make no comment on the pause in other datasets. Uncertainty in UAH datasets is +/-0.1C. This has been confirmed by Dr Christy. Measurements are of the bulk atmosphere. Clouds account for some of the difference from surface measurements but the major factor in the difference is rainfall (at least in Australia).
As you point out, there are unknown unknowns in surface land and sea datasets (including BOM’s Acorn, which indicates, if it really is world’s best practice, that the others are just as unreliable). Land vs sea differences and altitude (I think) are not a factor as all comparisons use anomalies. All datasets are “gridded” i.e. they make allowance for longitude and latitude, areas, and distance between sites.
Satellites give more reliable data because they are constantly sampling the bulk atmosphere and cover almost the entire globe. On the other hand, we only have 38 years of data.
I hope this answers your comment.
May 7, 2016 at 2:37 pm
Thanks, Ken, the use of anomalies referred to a given period of time provides satisfactory reference data, provided the measuring locations (weather stations) do not change nor does their quality.
Data prior to the reference period may be questionable where there is lack of continuity, but it is the only data available.
June 2, 2016 at 5:56 pm
[…] The Pause Update: March 2016 (Complete) […]